Soon Enough, Gas Prices will be the Punchline of that Joke!

Like the cycles of the moon the march of history, and the rise and fall of civilizations are beyond the control of any single human being. The Roman Empire lasted for 1,000 years, the sun did not set on the British Empire for hundreds of years, and the American Century is unlikely to see its 100th birthday. These great societies changed the world, but with time and an inability to change themselves they succumbed to the churn of history. As the world moves at a quicker pace, the longevity of superpower supremacy grows shorter, and the fragility of the world grows ever greater.

Today the world is consumed by war in Ukraine as it faces off with Russia. There is much in this conflict that does not meet the eye but remains obstructed by design. Is this a battle of unequal military adversaries to assure Russian security from its western enemies? Or is this another nail in the coffin of the world’s liberal democracies? It is clear that the democracies have united to contest Russian aggression, but many in the extreme right in those western societies have sided with Putin and question support for Ukraine. These demagogues who see power as leadership, who see an iron fist as right, remain in awe of the Russian strongman and hold in contempt democratically elected leaders whose elections they contend to be illegal.

Power players, like Koch Industries support Putin, they have long opposed American democracy, calling for a Constitutional Convention to limit the power of the federal government and focus the power of government on securing their personal power and wealth. The Kochs, Trumps, DeVos family and others oppose public education, oppose voting rights, and oppose a pluralistic society. They support Russia.

The horrors going on in Ukrainian cities are very real. Death and destruction is very real and painful to watch in real time on our multitude of screens. It is also a distraction from the penultimate objectives of this violent clash, one the west has been unable to fully commit to. Putin and his supporters in and out of the United States push to destabilize America’s democracy and the current administration. They push to delegitimize the necessity of addressing climate, race, and issues of survival, using this war as fodder for their actual, but opaque, political goals of domination.

Revolutions are not won or lost because a majority of people are engaged or active in the fight. From the American Revolution to the French, from the Russian Revolution to governmental overthrows in the Philippines, Egypt, Venezuela, Cuba, it has always been a small, committed number of people who overcome a disconnected body of office holders with little connection to the public. We have seen this behavior globally and locally with bands of armed citizens challenging law enforcement and elected officials at every level of government.

Those armed insurgents continue to train, continue to winnow down those who they welcome in as they expand the lists of those they aim to displace. Laws passed by legislatures in Florida, Texas, and other states in the U.S. point to a clear direction of discontent and the extremists within their ranks intimidate anyone standing in their way.

As Abraham Lincoln reminded us, using words far older than the nation he addressed, a house divided against itself cannot stand. We have not heeded those words and we have already crossed that divide. As with the Civil War in the United States and civil wars in other nations that have, are, or will face such crisis, the only way to heal is to go through the pain and suffering of “war” until one side surrenders and the other claims total victory. In the American Civil War, the South seemed well prepared with weapons and military leadership entrenched in its system. The North was unprepared and divided in its conviction that war was the best or only way to accomplish its objectives.

The war lasted for four brutal years killing more Americans than any war before or since. There was total surrender at its conclusion, but the North, through failed leadership after Lincoln’s assassination, failed to win the peace. That mistake was made again in World War I but was not repeated following World War II.

We again see failure in how the west addressed the end of the Cold War. Because it did not take place on the battlefield, there was no formal surrender, or an admission of loss. The victors did not demand structural, political, or societal changes and the world stumbled on.

Like with the failed efforts of a perverted Reconstruction after the American Civil War and a disastrous post war effort after World War I, animosities grew, tensions exploded, and rancor reigned. For the later it led to World War II, the former led to constant strife in the U.S. including the horrors of Jim Crow and the structural solidifying of a racist culture that impacts all elements of our lives. With the fall of Communism, we again followed the path of least resistance. Instead of government investment, instead of a Marshall Plan, we left the field open for pillage by western business and financial interests.

Russia remains a military fortress with few global industries, few businesses with international reputations, and a society of have nots, and an elite that carries their billions in foreign currency as far from Russian soil as possible. It is no wonder that this nuclear power distrusts western democracies, it is no surprise that it invests heavily in the destruction of those democracies. While most Americans and others living under liberal democracies paid little attention to, or even thought about Russia, Russia remained consumed with the slights it faced and its feeling of fragility in a world where it often stood alone. This does not excuse its behavior, but it points out where our policies and attitudes went wrong.

The world we live in today is one infested with those who divide us to gain power. There are few if any unifiers with the talent of Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Nelson Mandela. Those individuals believed in human dignity and the Golden Rule. They understood that making friends of enemies was far more important to their goals than using enemies to inspire their followers to act.

Dividers, of which there are many, use the threat of their enemies to enhance their own power. It gives them no incentive to find solutions to problems, but rather to exacerbate those problems for political gain. Dividers do not exist exclusively to any one side of the political or social world, they are everywhere. Anyone who points fingers rather than extending their hand fits that category. It is true that firebrands can be helpful at moving a society and culture towards a more perfect union, but it is the unifier who gets us there.

Years ago in a cluttered apartment, and PDHRE office, on New York’s Upper West Side, not far from Columbia University, I sat with Shulamith Koenig. We worked and sat like this almost every day, struggling to come up with ways to extend the reach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We would review the news, from what was going on around the corner to what was going on around the world. We were always looking for that “entry point”.

Often Shula would ask if there was anything that could be done as the world seemed to careen out of control. She would remind herself that the only solution remained universal acceptance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by every woman, man, youth, and child on the planet. After all, human rights as a way of life was the stepping stone to universal human dignity and that was the way to achieve lasting peace.

Were there steps we could take, were there people better suited to this work, did a place of hope yet exist where this document could find a home and like a pandemic pass from person to person and infect humans with humanity?

On this one day I mentioned we might not be able to save the world as we know it, it might have reached a tipping point that is no longer reversable, but, we should consider preparing the world for what will come next as it will have to rebuild and search for a foundation that can accommodate a new world built on the ashes to the past with a view to the future.

This became our focus going forward. We still held out that there was a benefit to knowing, claiming and acting on the Declaration immediately, but that the world’s direction could not be stopped and that knowledge and commitment to human rights would be of greater value as we emerged from whatever the politicians and warlords might subject us to in this time of division.

Shula passed away in the summer of 2021, at 91 years old. Her dream lives on in me and countless others who crossed her path over the years. PDHRE remains small, but with the footprint she made, it is integral to the history of human rights. If Eleanor Roosevelt is the mother of modern human rights, Shulamith Koenig is the person who set its path for the future, keeping Roosevelt’s dream alive.

I know where Shula would stand on the crisis facing Ukraine. I know she would want to focus on the future of global and U.S. democracy and its survival. Democracy is the best delivery system for human rights, and human rights is the best system at maintaining a healthy democracy. She would see this battle for what it is and she would suggest that the only genuine solution remains the adoption and integration of Human Rights.

Standing on the shoulders of these two women who gave their last breaths to give hope to a dividing world, I ask for your support in planning for the 75th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its kicking off of a movement to ensure that all 8 billion people on earth know, claim, and act on it before 2048, the Declaration’s 100th anniversary.

Robert Kesten/ [email protected]