In this last edition for the year 2024, I wanted to capture a few key national and global events that got etched into our collective consciousness. I suspect we all have such events – a few events that affected everyone, while other events cling more to individual minds based on our own unique experiences tempered by geographic, economic, racial, gender, and religious perspectives. There are numerous factors that affect how we process information, events, and experiences and which event lingers with us much longer and more intensely than other events.
First and foremost is the wanton disregard for life, human dignity, and human freedom in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that started in 1948 and continues to get more vicious and morally bankrupt every decade that passes, rather than reflect our shared humanity and faith in One God. The true nature of American complicity and European double standards became ever more visible in the past 14 months. India, the largest democracy in the world and a leader of the once non-alignment movement, has taken a turn towards supporting the aggressor rather than defending the vulnerable – both in Gaza and in Ukraine. The collective non-response and intentional distancing by Arab and Muslim countries are also troubling in this human tragedy that goes against the sentiment of average citizens in those countries, not unlike America, where the voters left Democrats in large numbers because of their moral failure in this human tragedy, even in the face of a surge in White Supremacy at home.
This then leads to the US election, which brought back Donald Trump to power for the second time despite his stated rhetoric against immigrants, women, rule of law, and his own criminal conviction. Despite these challenges that most Americans don’t agree with, he was able to touch on popular sentiments about race, evangelical morality on abortion, corporate greed, and the abandonment of rural America by both parties. The Gen-Z felt abandoned by both parties in the way they were treated during campus sit-downs, continuous aiding of aggression in Gaza, and aging politicians who have very little in common with younger generations.
In another part of the world, a small but populous country, Bangladesh, demonstrated a grassroots uprising by Gen-Z students to topple a corrupt regime that held onto power through unparalleled corruption, destruction of political diversity, and total compromise of judicial and financial institutions. These young activists had the humility to ask an older non-political figure to guide the country towards stability and resetting corrupt systems and institutions – a sign of remarkable maturity, even at a time when their very lives were threatened, cut short, and stressed beyond limits.
Among all these and the recent pandemic that stressed the lives of all, especially the essential workers – the health care providers, the warehouse employees, the truck drivers, the school teachers – the companies show record profits, exercise record share buybacks and dividends to benefit their shareholders, and dismally fail to reward those essential workers by giving them living wages and a work-life balance that are essential for a healthy society and a livable world.
Lack of political leadership and corporate greed are also creating opportunities for unusual alliances such as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders calling for a 10% cap on credit card lending rates, among other pressing social and financial injustices and inequities. Rural America cannot be restored to economic stability without bringing back productive capacities in the USA while supporting the global supply chain to uplift everyone on the globe, not just corporations and their shareholders in the developed world. The relentless pursuit of profit by these corporations leaves other countries not benefiting from their own natural resources and ample labor pool that a just worldwide economic and financial system should ensure. COP29 also showed that developed countries, which benefited by exploiting less developed countries and created an energy hunger and consumption level that is suffocating the entire world, lack empathy, focus on short-sighted public policy, and have a world vision based on domination and exploitation rather than the collective upliftment of humanity.
This collective lack of taking responsibility for creating and supporting human sufferings and the exploitation of the earth to a point of no return should be alarming to all people of goodwill and faith.
