Sunday, November 13, 2022

Who okayed the violence?

 "Dads fire shots in road rage incident, hit each other's kids" read a headline in the local section of my paper on October 24, two weeks ago. 

The same day's paper reported on a driver who, on being given a ticket, gunned his engine and fled, running a red light at a nearby intersection and killing two people in the subsequent collision.

That's just the road rage.

A customer came out of a popular local bar and witnessed a man casing cars in the parking lot directly behind. When the customer spoke out, the burglar turned around and shot him dead. My son works at that bar, although he was not at work that night.

Threats -- from both directions -- regarding free speech

Threats to elections workers

Threats -- from both directions -- against teachers

Threats and violence toward flight attendants

Violence toward public safety officials

Threats and violence toward Jews; threats and violence on the basis of presumed identity

Threats to doctors for promoting vaccines

Threats over talking about anything we don't like

Threats and violence toward judges

Threats and violence -- from both sides -- toward politicians. Intrusion into their private lives; doxing.

Vigilantism.

Suicide.

Telling people to put down their guns doesn't impact them in the heat of the moment.

How did these floodgates open, and can we close them?

The social fabric in its weakened state is letting through too many instance of violence.

Our impulse to blame may serve only to further shred the social fabric.

If society is racist all the way down -- or socialist, radical, elitist, unfair, inequitable, or traitorous, or if it has abandoned you -- then why should you listen to it?

I began this thought process wanting to assign blame -- assign it to both sides and then crack their heads together. But would that help?

Wait: what about the macro level? The backdrop affects what we see and what we do.

Like when segments of the population fall out of the economy. 

Parents can't look forward to a better life for their children when they themselves are barely scraping by. Or not. So they become populists and aim to trash the system that has failed them and simultaneously blames them. 

Black people, claiming racism is permanent, will no longer put up with their own outsider status.They say they cannot get what they deserve, while others don't deserve what they get. They claim a unique predicament They too want to demolish the system. 

A lot rides on victimhood: public opinion, the support of allies, and the justifying of even more violence

Demonizing the other side justifies hatred: "they" weren't closing schools and businesses to save lives; "they" were doing it for their own sake, and to ruin your life.

Inflation: not a product of the pandemic, supply-chain problems and Putin's war, but loosed on you by your political enemies.

Enemies, not opponents.

Powerlessness, helpless rage, hopelessness: nothing to lose.

These stories, these perceptions, these lenses through which we are seeing the world: they further weigh on societal edifices. 

When these ways of viewing, of making sense of the world, are being urged on us, do we have to go along? Are there other ways to work together and build team spirit besides mutual acceptance of ideology? Who benefits if we're at each other's throats?
What about that advice to "follow the money?" Could that be good advice in these times?

Can we see that we could be played against each other?

Do we have to fight this fight? Is it permitted to take a look around?

To stop long enough to consider whether the fight is truly our fight?
Stop long enough to get our bearings?
Hesitate in the headlong nature of our reactions?

Possibly we could try something different. Try on another view. Act; don't react. 

Listen for another story. Or write one.

Is it too late? Must we be swept along?

Can we ask questions?

A personal note:
I personally sometimes like to go where I might not be wanted. I mean that I may not want to automatically accept some story that says I'm not wanted so stay away.
No, I'm not talking about dangerous situations. Not physically dangerous, anyway.

In this endeavor, remember to distinguish between what's internal and external, meaning in your head vs. outside. Changing the story is likely to stir things up inside, so assess what's going on, and if it's a matter of stirring you up inside, then tighten your mental seat belt if you can, and go for it.



Thursday, July 15, 2021

Series of my Facebook posts from before the election through May 2021

Prior to the election, I found myself impassioned to post short, editorial-length updates on Facebook instead of blogging. After the election I've had a few comments but with less focus.

Lately thinking in the US has ended up on either side of a chasm between what the left considers legitimate and what was termed far-right thinking by the left -- for example, local resistance toward "anti-racist," "woke," and "CRT"-based educational initiatives. Other thinking does exist but so far either it has fallen neatly into place or it has not gained much of a toe-hold. Before I try my hand at something other than group-think on either side of the political divide, here's where I've been.

Addendum of July 26, 2021: These posts do not represent my final thoughts. They are my thinking, my thoughts in process.

My posts from September 2020 - May 2021:

September 12, 2020
It's not over til it's over.
Despite all, Trump might win, just as he's overcome all challenges so far. We might snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.

To prevent that, we need to stop awarding truths to Trump.
For example: that he loves America and wants it to be great, but that Democrats hate it.What we need to do is repudiate the part of the philosophy that says America is nothing but bad, that it's corrupt all the way down and nothing but racist from the beginning. We need to repudiate hatred by finding praise as well as condemnation.It's kind of like having gratitude as well as complaints.
You may feel strongly about calling out wrongs.
But remember that condemnation is not a winning philosophy.
Don't hand Trump a truth that says he loves America and we hate it.
 
I'm going to be trying to bring out some of these issues. You may not want to associate yourself. But please take note.
He's so bad that he can't get back in on his own, but only if we put him back in.
 
 
September 14, 2020
Trump says Democrats are creating havoc in the streets and burning down the cities. He says, to stop the violence, reelect him.
We, the Democrats, answer with excuses: only a small percentage of the protests turn violent. A false-flag right-winger started it. Or, the favorite: it's just a few people who are violent. That's defensive. Basically, OUR "bad-apple" theory.
Antifa is not real. Or, not a monolith.
Excuses.
We have to do Biden one better and repudiate the violence AND the philosophy behind it. Otherwise, we're handing the truth to Trump.
We don't like the idea that the philosophy has violent components, but it does. We ourselves, conceding the point, turn around and say, well, people are angry, and anger gets attention.
It's the wrong kind of attention! All we need is a few more incidents like last night's ambushing of the deputies, while protesters in the street cheer....
By saying the violence is "understandable," we as much as support the violence. It's that nothing-but-condemnation perspective again, a losing philosophy that lends truth to Trump's message.
We have to make up our minds.
He can't get back in on his own without our help. Are we going to keep helping?
1. Don't stop with what's wrong with America. Take away Trump's prerogative to proclaim what's right.
2. Make up our minds on the violence thing. If we want to kick ass -- or see it kicked -- we risk seeing four more years.
 
 
September 24, 2020
(on the topic of "defunding the police")
There's been a lot of talk lately about substituting mental health and social services for the police.
I worked almost 20 years in outpatient public mental health, ending in 1998. The mental health center was in an area where the patrons suffered from poverty and other social issues. Not everyone in the community suffered from those ills, of course, but the well-to-do weren't the main patrons of public mental health. Crises were not uncommon, and over the years of my employment, a lot of people had to go against their will to get evaluated for inpatient treatment, due to being dangerous to themselves or others. Usually the way that happened is that deputies would come when summoned to transport the patient to Georgia Regional Hospital for the evaluation. I can't remember episodes of serious violence among those patients, despite occurrences of yelling or cursing or even stripping naked. But most usually, once events began to unfold, the patient waited without further ado to be transported to the hospital.
Am I advocating for the handing over of mental health emergencies in the community to psychologists and social workers?
No.
Things went smoothly at Mental Health not only because of the skills of the staff but also due to the aura of authority: doctors, nurses, psychologists, offices, in an official institutional setting.
Once during the period of time I was working there, Dennis and I were at the Plaza for a movie, and we saw a disheveled and agitated man with a wild beard pacing back and forth in the parking lot outside. Could I intervene as I would have done at work?
No -- because I had none of the accoutrements of authority that I would have had at work. Nor had the man been brought in or come on his own for help.
Police could consult mental health. Police could refer to mental health. But in life-or-death emergencies where somebody could get hurt or come to harm, the police will do the best they can.
Mental health or social service workers might accompany police in dealing with violent emergencies in the community, but would have to hang back until the violence is stabilized. You're not going to send in a psychiatrist to take a weapon away from an agitated person.
Institutions and the authority that comes with them cannot be so easily dispensed with.
 
 
November 8, 2020
LET'S HEAR IT FOR LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
Part of the rationale for 2016 was that a lot of people were fed up with business as usual -- scandals, less-than-perfect politicians, logjams and gridlock, and, worst of all, not being treated right. So now we've had our flirtation with totalitarianism lite, and maybe a few trains did run on time, but mainly it's been a train wreck. Are you ready for some normalcy? I am! Liberal democracy may be a slow and messy process, but right about now, business as usual is looking pretty good!
 
 
November 28, 2020
I am thankful for the investigative reporters who delved into election law and history to report what Trump likely would do if he lost, and for the scholars and legal teams and their "war" games on how to handle. I'm thankful for the mainstream media who began to insert warnings re his strategy into the nightly news. Thus, Trump lost the element of surprise.
The media was right on, as we can see from the actions of the Trump campaign. He would NOT concede. He would keep claiming fraud. His team would try to declare the election had failed in swing states and that Republican state legislatures should appoint slates of Republican electors while disenfranchising millions of voters.
And I'm thankful for Lady Luck, who decreed the vote wasn't close enough to enhance Trump's game.
Trump, like Tinkerbell, is saying clap if you believe, but the applause is diminishing.
 
 
December 18, 2020
What was the message of the recent election?
Some centrist Democrats have faulted the more progressive members of the party for the term "socialism," saying that's why certain voters supported Biden but not the down-ballot candidates, and why the House lost Democratic members.
We like to capture problems in a single word. But "socialism" is not it.
So why do Biden Republicans and some on the center-right think divided government is a good idea? Why do they want to elect Perdue and Loeffler, even if they don't buy the BS?
It's not "socialism."
Maybe it's the emphasis on the color of skin instead of the content of character. On treatment of others that violates the golden rule. On differences of opinion treated as heresy and silenced. On public shaming and getting even, conducted not out of strength but out of fear and insecurity. An if-you're-not-with-me-you're-agin'-me attitude: in short, an inverse version of the divisiveness we have just been enduring for four years.
We can call it "wokeness." Or identity politics. Or Critical Race Theory. Some say "successor ideology."
The ideological language is not limited to progressives. It has crept into ordinary mainstream journalism, some of it even into Biden's speeches.
I'm not talking about the term "socialism."
We have to engage in actual thinking about the words we use. And the accusations we make.
Not indoctrination. Not slogans.
Thinking.
 
Why is it so hard to bring up this stuff?
  
 
December 20, 2020
Systemic Racism
It's said that whoever owns the common wisdom owns history. The common wisdom today is that we're beset with systemic racism
That would mean the system is sick; infected.
Well, we are infected with this disease metaphor!
Back in July, DeKalb County declared racism a public health crisis.
I'm not complaining if the CDC studies racism. They should resume studying gun violence, too.
In August the president of the Atlanta Rabbinical Association editorialized that racism is a sickness in the soul of our country, later shifting his metaphor to call it a social illness.
Like juvenile delinquency in West Side Story? A "social disease?"
I wasn't surprised, since I'd long heard of the virus metaphor for antisemitism.
I've been thinking along these lines for more than a decade.
Who cares if these are metaphors?
I care.
Why
Because these aren't germs.
Racism is TAUGHT, not CAUGHT.
With the metaphor, racism is everywhere--and nowhere.
Do we really want to be rooting it out of generic white people?
How does that help with the Boogaloo Bois, or the Proud Boys?
Nor does the metaphor differentiate between what's out there in society and what's inside. Externals can be policed, but a victim mentality must be overcome otherwise. That's how you gain true agency.
And finally, step away from the creation of enemies.
With hindsight it's easy to wonder why Japan perpetrated Pearl Harbor. They woke up a sleeping giant, they unified the U.S., they created their enemy.
Blaming everybody for racism does not separate the evildoers from the merely inane or the innocent. Some institutions, some individuals really have reformed or improved. Blaming everyone across the board acts as a slap in the face, a kick in the teeth. It is divisive.
It creates the enemy.
 
 
January 8, 2021
 
An inconvenient truth
Yesterday Atlanta Journal Constitution columnist Bill Torpy's column described how GA Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan pushed back against Trumpish allegations of voter fraud and stolen elections. Duncan spoke out against the need for a special legislative session to nullify the vote. He contradicted Trump's lies about "winning big" in Georgia. Why speak out? asked some Republican officials. The Lt. Gov. spoke out "unneccessarily," they said. Just "increasing his exposure." He "loves attention." "He loves the power. "He believes the Lord sent him to save the world." Then they threatened him with being "primaried." From further afield came those death threats.
Why is the truth so inconvenient? It runs up against the narrative, that's why. If the truth is heard, the narrative is torpedoed. I mean the one about election fraud and Trump's big win. Hit by the truth, that narrative sinks.
Without the narrative, our erstwhile Republican candidates are revealed as appeasers. Fearful appeasers: cowards.
Let's hear it for the truth.
But we gotta be truth-tellers all the way around. Not just about the opponents' narrative. Otherwise we're being politically expedient, not tellers of truth.
That's the hard part. The truth is inconvenient and awkward. People take offensive action against the truth, as happened with Lt. Gov. Duncan.
What helps in resisting the pressure? A thirst for truth. 


January 21, 2021
 
Thinking in progress:
The impeachment should go forward. The insurrectionists should be found and prosecuted.
That said, we should not valorize one side of our political divide while delegitimizing the other. We talk of a "long overdue racial reckoning" but don't want to look at how we got to the point where a huge number of Americans wanted Trump and, despite all, wanted to keep him. It's easier to point the finger and call them -- as a class -- evil, racist, conspiracy theorists and worse.
There can be more than one kind of reckoning. The world is complicated. Reality is complex.
We've reaped the consequences of NewtSpeak and Trumpism, of making the other side the evil enemy. (On this, the left gave lessons to the right, and, before that, probably the right taught the left.)
Punishment where punishment is due, yes, but of scapegoating, enough already!
The right side won. Don't gloat.
People were not made to riot or provoked to participate in insurrection. They did it, and now they must suffer the consequences.
Can't we get to the bottom of why so many people felt the need for Trump and fell under his sway?
I'm not so enamored of the usual explanations and favor an economic angle.
 
 
February 19, 2021
 
Truth and goodness go together...like a horse and carriage? 😄
I don't mean "your truth" and "my truth" -- arguably, code for what you believe and what I believe. The truth is out there.
If lies are out (lies meaning NOT good), then we have to be able to tell the difference between lies and truth. How do you know what the truth is? A Zoom lecture this week advised using your gut, heart, and mind. He was a bible scholar, yet he said the greatest tool we have for discerning truth is the scientific method. You form a hypothesis and make your observations. If the observations (facts; evidence) don't bear out your hypothesis, you need to change (improve) your hypothesis about what is going on. DON'T fiddle with your hypothesis to MAKE it fit.
Okay, so now the plot thickens
Say that my NARRATIVE is my hypothesis (narrative being how I connect the dots, in other words, what I say what is going on).
If I say off the bat that my narrative is fact, how am I any different from my opponents who are also pushing their narratives? If what I say is not open to question? If I call those who disagree with me traitor? or to take another example, racist?🙂 


February 22, 2021
 
Truth, Narrative, and Values
A few days ago I wrote about truth and how to discern the truth, where truth has to do with being good. The responses I received had to do with testing and questioning one's assumptions.
But, what if you don't question because you don't think you need to? Your narrative already accords with your assumptions -- and with your biases. How does it even occur to you to question and test? That's the thing: if there's no daylight between your narrative and your worldview, why would you question? If you believe you're supporting justice?
That's how we end up with the true believers on each end of the political spectrum.
Here is an instance that might pry open the minds of a small segment of people: On last night's NBC Nightly News with Kate Snow, in for Lester Holt on Sundays, a story ran on the great vaccination job being done by Israel. At the tale end of the story, though, the anchor added that Israel has provided far fewer vaccinations to Palestinians.
The NBC story did not distinguish between Arab Israeli citizens and Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. I'd previously heard that the BBC apologized for a story saying that Israel hadn't vaccinated Palestinians in the occupied territories. During the Oslo Accords, Palestinians requested and received the right to administer their own vaccination programs.
The relevant UN agency admits that was the Oslo agreement, but says international law takes precedence. So Israel should have nevertheless vaccinated those Palestinians.
The vaccination question tops a recent list of myths about Israel from the Jewish Virtual Library, which quotes a Palestinian Authority health official as saying that they are NOT a branch of Israel. "We have our own government and Ministry of Health, and they are making huge efforts to get the vaccine." Another official says they have not asked for Israel's help. Israel says their offers and attempts to engage have been rebuffed.
I did only a little research and can't be absolutely sure of its accuracy. Still, have the news agencies done their research? Or have they fallen into their own narrative, biases and all? Have they taken the easy way out and gone with their assumptions and expectations in how they tell this story? Did that conclusion to their news story serve as an admonition against too much praise for Israel in a case where their narrative has a stronger pull than the facts?
I am a member of a Reform (liberal) synagogue, where the predominant voices are those that uncritically support the progressive narrative about race and identity in America. Like many (but not all) Democrats, most (but not all) of my friends there accept the progressive narrative as true and good. But, being Jews, some of them might notice the way the narrative about Israel, Palestinians, and the vaccinations is playing.
If they are able to see differences between narrative and fact in one connection, might they become willing to see it in another?
I don't think this particular story would provide the same opening for progressives who are not Jews. For them, the story about Israel and Palestinians would probably coincide with their overall narrative.
Hannah Arendt wrote about the hazards of thinking in slogans. I have a strong interest in how people begin THINKING. If we're thinking, we might question and test our assumptions and fit our narratives to the facts instead of vice versa.
 
 
March 11, 2021
 
The Dr. Seuss discontinuations etcetera
I learned my Greek mythology from Margaret Evans Price's Myths and Enchantment Tales and gorgeous art deco illustrations, 1950 edition. And when I bought a new edition 10 or 15 years ago, the story about the pygmies was gone. Replaced. No matter; wasn't one of my favorites. Just saying that some of this isn't new.
Remember the big to-do in 2018 over the renaming of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award? The Association for Library Service to Children removed Laura Ingalls Wilder's name from the award because her characterizations of Native Americans had become unacceptable. She wrote, for example, that the West was open and empty (since nobody lived there except Indians); even worse, that the only good Indian is a dead Indian.
James LaRue, Director of the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom, wrote that this is not censorship. They did not ban the book; just changed the name of the award. Some people had concerns, though, that the change offers an excuse to remove her work from libraries and reading lists.
Defamation seems to represent unkindness, or, even more than that, a threat, since describing people as less than human can be a rehearsal of treating them that way.
Yet denouncing such occurrences is so damn random.
L. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz was denounced early on for his witches, talking animals, and the strong female lead, but far from it lately. Yet he wrote editorials that far exceed the sentiments that can be found in the works of Ms. Wilder, which in fact were widespread in that day and time. Some legacies, it seems, are left alone to flourish as they may, while others are made targets of ire and made to serve as examples. Where is the justice in that?
In 2017, the Association for Library Service to Children bestowed the (then) Wilder Award on distinguished poet Nikki Grimes, despite the fact that her body of work contains a book about Easter that stoops to profoundly antisemitic tropes. Not only did she literally follow Jew-blaming New Testament verses, she also found new ways to add to them. Yet her receipt of that award has not been questioned.
Criticism of the antisemitic poems of T. S. Eliot was long in coming, but it did come.
Allowing the work of Nikki Grimes to be awarded uncritically makes the Association for Library Service to Children appear hypocritical.
We call out some people but not others. We willingly see the dangers inherent in what some people say and do, but not in others.
Such are the workings of power.
Power, not justice.
As long as these discrepancies exist, I am profoundly distrustful of our call-out culture in all its guises.
 
 
March 13, 2021
"The recent decision by the estate of Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel to pull six of his books because of crude stereotypical portrayals has exploded in the news. Some claim that the action represents the worst of cancel culture, while others praise the decision because they believe the depictions can promote racial insensitivity.
But Geisel’s heirs aren’t the first to confront the sanctity of children’s literature and whether books should ever be altered for changing times. In 1959 and 1960, some of the world’s most beloved fictional characters—Nancy Drew, Frank and Joe Hardy, Tom Swift and others—received a face-lift as publishers grappled with a similar challenge. In 1959, series fiction published by the Stratemeyer Syndicate underwent a multiyear rewrite, ostensibly to eliminate racial and ethnic stereotypes and to conform to modern times.
Those extensive changes weren’t publicized and remained unknown for years to unsuspecting readers, including parents, who assumed their children were reading the same books they read decades ago as kids. The “updating,” as the publishers called it, was a secret worthy of the talents of the Hardys or Ms. Drew.
Even the author of the first group of Hardy Boys books, the man behind the pen name Franklin W. Dixon, wasn’t aware of the changes. Hardy Boys ghostwriter Leslie McFarlane was told about the changes by a Toronto reporter more than three decades after he wrote most of the books.
McFarlane had moved on to become a successful writer and film producer, but he was shocked by many of the changes. McFarlane didn’t mind that the revisions eliminated the description of a Chinese character as having “an evil yellow face,” nor did he care that criminals were no longer described routinely as “dark” or “swarthy,” often with foreign accents. He and his fellow ghostwriters were equal-opportunity xenophobes: Cops were..."
That's all I could get to! The article goes on to say the books were dumbed down, shortened; big words and any literary references, such as to Shakespeare or Dickens, were removed. And any objectionable features of authority figures were cleansed! Cops couldn't even be bumbling anymore, much less, mean. As the blog referenced below indicates, the main characters were made more "wholesome," with any rebellious features deleted. Starting in 1959 or '60!
Nevertheless, the youth revolution was NOT deleted!
 
 
April 13, 2021
Judging from a NYT article reprinted in my paper today, sounds like the science supports a "vaccine passport:"
From a 1905 Supreme Court case (Jacobson v. Massachusetts), "a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members."
Sounds like the article is saying that it's digital vaccine verification apps that are generating the debate. Why? Because of equitability?
The President doesn't want it. The WHO is citing equity concerns.
Some Republican governors are barring state agencies or any private entities that get state funding from requiring proof of vaccination.
Yet having such a requirement sounds like "No shoes, no shirt, no service."
Per the NYT article, by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Adam Liptak, state and local health services are "mystified" by the official federal reticence.
"It's going to be necessary to have this, and there is going to have to be some kind of system where it's verified," said Dr. Marcus Plescia, the chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
 
 
May 17, 2021
Israel-Palestine
I am going to venture a few words because what you are hearing is not merely an oversimplified narrative but a false one.
Netanyahu did not start this fight to retain power. The evictions in the East Jerusalem neighborhood weren't the trigger, nor the march nor other actions re the end of Ramadan. They are the excuse.
Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) promised to hold Palestinian elections, perhaps for the sake of the incoming Biden administration, but his own party is fractured. Some wanted another slate of candidates. Also, Fatah (the Palestinian Authority) might lose to Hamas, the party in control in Gaza. Abbas needed an excuse to cancel elections.
Fatah, also, was losing popularity in Gaza. It needed to retain its power and assert itself over and against Abbas' party as the voice of Palestinian nationalism. It too needed an excuse.
Fatah isn't so much fighting to free Palestine as to assert itself.
Whenever Abbas' party and Israel get along, for example, if they were to make any progress toward peace, Hamas perceives that as an existential threat. For some reason the Palestinian rupture is rarely mentioned in the US news.
Bibi Netanyahu has not been able to form a government after five elections. On May 5, his rival Yair Lapid was asked to try. The head of the Israeli Arab Islamist party was (is?) planning to participate, even if a right-wing party also becomes part of a unity government.
If Hamas can't stand the times when Abbas' party gets along better with Israel, how do you think Hamas feels if Arab Israelis are going to participate in the Israeli government?
If that happened, what would be Hamas' raison d'être?
That's why Hamas attacked. Not so much about freeing Palestine. Not about peace.
If Palestine were free, what would be Hamas' raison d'être then?
If Hamas is not after freedom or peace, they aren't the agent that's going to help the Palestinian people. They are using them as well as attacking Israel, and need to be stopped.
I'm glad President Biden has held out this long. He seems to have some understanding.
Important: the situation between Israel and Palestine does not map with American racial politics.
Since Hamas can get the material to build thousands and thousands of rockets, maybe they could also get material to build for the future. Or someone could.
Build it and they will come!
I'm not an expert, and what I have written is oversimplified, but I believe it's getting at the truth. I will try to answer if you have questions.
 
May 18, 2021
The Left, the Right, and the Center
A few years ago -- actually, it was 1994 -- Newt Gingrich made "liberal" a dirty word.
Well, even before that, "conservative" was a dirty word. Back in the day. Remember?
Either way, there was no center. One side was good, the other was evil incarnate, and if you weren't for us, you were agin us. Trump took it further. No legit criticism; if you weren't for him, you were a never-Trumper, a traitor, an enemy of the people.
Taking a page out of the Trump play book, if you aren't an anti-racist, you're a racist. No center. No legitimate dialogue; just "white fragility."
Latest is that the right is "obsessed" with wokeness. No legit crit. If you are THINKING about any of this political stuff, you are THE ENEMY.
NO THINKING ALLOWED. Thinking not needed.
Thinking would interfere with ideological purity.
I already spent the bulk of my life keeping my head down under the line of fire and my lips zipped. About ten or fifteen years ago, though, I got in the habit of THINKING. I liked it.
So, if for you, because I am thinking about the matter of Israel-Palestine (among other things), I must be a right-winger, consider whether you have slipped into requiring some sort of purity test -- and whether doing that is in fact liberal.
Liberal democracy can only exist where there's a center. A center where thinking -- and discussion -- can occur. For that there must be shades of gray. Nuance. Disagreement as well as agreement. Even mistakes. Who's perfect, anyway?
Maybe you would like to think about it before branding with the "enemy" or "bad guy" label. Maybe you would be willing to talk about it.
But once the brand is applied, no dialogue or debate needed.
They are "racist." Or "traitors." "Socialists," or "white." Or.... the possibilities are legion.
Branding -- labeling -- someone is a trick to sidestep dealing with their ideas. Who they are becomes the explanation.
And by the way how did it happen that "Israel" -- and Jews -- got branded as right wing? How did that even happen. Do you know? (NOT what's your excuse for it, but how did it happen?) Do you ever dwell on that?
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 

Thursday, May 13, 2021

If It Was Wrong

I wrote this in September of last year, 2020, before the election. Then, as now, I was feeling stymied and unable to speak. Subsequently, I did write: a series of short columns I published on Facebook, sometimes for my friends and sometimes for the public. I'm going to go on and publish this prose-poem now, and then will go reread those columns and see if I want to collect and post them to this blog.
Jan

If it was wrong to look at black people and say they were all the same
Then it's wrong to do the same thing to white people.
White people?
You're going to take all these people and put them all in the same basket?
Some of them didn't even know they were white.
Some of them wanted to be, but, before, you were telling them they weren't.
You must be seeing all of these people out of the eyes of black people
So they all look the same!
I've heard that before.

Somebody is always telling somebody else who and what they are.
Why? Let me ask you that; why?
In a previous life some people got to tell others what they were,
And still it goes on. The same people doing the talking
But with a different target.
Is that a change?
The old boss looks just like the new boss.

Let me give you an example
Of how none of this works.
Some of you are the same ones who judge Israel
Just like you are now judging America and the people you call white.
And what happened there?
Did your judgments fix Israel
And free Palestine?
No! What you didn't like became more so,
Then it spread:
We got Donald Trump
And creeping authoritarianism.
Here!
Your judging, which you meant to help, made things worse.

When you preach your religion of cherry-picked history
And black victimhood
You are making adolescents out of them
To meet a need of your own,
To absolve yourself, and
Eventually the ones who reject victimhood
Will emerge as leaders.
They will reject your offer of eternal victimhood
In favor of acting in history.

It can't happen soon enough.

Monday, September 7, 2020

The Trouble with Ideology, and the Dangers Thereof

What do we mean when we talk about a "narrative?"

Reality is complicated. A narrative has to do with the way we connect the dots and then say, "That's reality." 
 
A worldview. 
 
When a narrative hardens into orthodoxy, we have an ideology. A narrative could be open and subject to reality checks, but that's not going to be so easy if it's sustaining us over the void. We desire a narrative to which we can cling, it seems, even to the point of being "true believers."

If you are a Trumpist, then any evidence to the contrary will denote a "never-Trumper." No matter how bad he is, God is using him for good. And his opponents routinely will be said to be worse. Okay to talk about Trump Derangement Syndrome, but no bona fide criticisms ever; only haters and traitors. That way, you don't have to confront any contrary evidence. No discussion allowed since none is valid.

If, on the left, you are full-steam into systemic racism and believe that the status quo equals white supremacy, then, similarly, anybody who doesn't sign on is a racist plain and simple. As with the Trumpistadores, your position does not admit of legitimate criticism. Any disagreement reveals white fragility and is invalid. No thinking when slogans will do. Re-education replaces dialogue.

The recently enlightened are well-meaning and sincerely want to support reforms and improvements. But the ready-made ideology lurks, justifying their positions, and, next thing you know, they're preaching and proclaiming. 
 
They have the truth; the enemy has nothing but lies.
 
They can fit in and agree, even if that means being a people-pleaser -- and nobody likes a people-pleaser.
 
They don't see they're limiting their view to the part of the narrative they like. They don't see that the ideology comes with blinders permitting them to pin all the blame on the opponent. They are casting stones as though without sin.

The activists are strict about the narrative, what can be part of it and what can't. And who can be part. Mayor Bottoms said that enough is enough and that police brutality or society can't be blamed for the death of an eight-year-old. But first she had equivocated, delaying the cleaning up of the police-free zone -- the zone taken over by the protesters -- at the behest of a city council member who claimed she could negotiate with the protesters. And the child died. Yet subsequently, the activists back at that Wendy's called out Mayer Bottoms and said the blood's on her hands.

One of the main organizers of the big Atlanta protests was one of three arrested for the Wendy's arson. Did the charges stick? Haven't found that in the news. 
 
News stories that don't fit the approved narrative tend to drop out of sight. The approved narrative is about the goodness of peaceful protest of which violence isn't supposed to be part. Talking about stuff that doesn't fit can sound crazy, or even heretical. The media, being part of society just like the rest of us, is subject to ideological pressures.
 
Stepping out of line is not permitted. 

Who can be perfect enough to stand up to true believers who demand perfection and who have never made a mistake, for whom all criticism denotes heresy?

Biden?

What is the danger here?
 
A narrative is not infinitely flexible.
Reality exists. Truth exists (even when difficult to discern).
If you step off a cliff you will fall, even if your story is that you can fly.

At what point does that happen?
Even a coronavirus can be politicized, distraction or no, up to the point it rears up and bites you.
Even would-be peaceful protest can be politicized.

I want dialogue and the exchange of ideas that happens in the political center.
 
I want to love my neighbor, not demonize them, even though demonizing and creation of orthodoxy/heresy is good for crowd control and the marshaling of troops.
 
Loving my neighbor is not always equal to telling them what they want to hear. 
But, with dialogue, maybe, just maybe, they/we won't step off that cliff.

There's going to be a backlash. You can see it coming. Not a "whitelash" or "white rage;" not an effort on the part of "white" society to undo the gains of black people a la Carol Anderson. No. It's built-in, since at some point the preferred narrative, like an overstretched rubber band, will revert to truth.

My greatest concern:
that the departures from truth and failures in facing truth on the part of the left is handing ammunition to Trump;
that the force of the backlash will propel Trump to victory.

Sunday, April 26, 2020

Reopening the Economy: What's Ethics Got to Do With It?

Last month (March 2020) there were a couple of influential opinion writers who informed President Trump's approach to the coronavirus at the time -- a public health doctor and a legal scholar.  The meme was that fear of the coronavirus was worse than the virus itself. The cure, shutting down the economy, could be worse than the disease, they said. Dr. David L. Katz' letter was published March 20 in the New York Times; he was subsequently interviewed on PBS. Prof. Richard A. Epstein is a legal scholar whose March 16 piece for the Hoover Institute was analyzed in a March 30 New Yorker article.

Individuals who picked up on those opinions were not necessarily polemicists who valued financial stability over life. I was surprised to hear my own financial advisors voice the memes.

Back in March, part of the issue was disbelief. People simply couldn't see what was coming, It was unthinkable.

Then for a change the president pivoted toward listening to his health care advisors, Doctors Fauci and Birx. The predicted number of deaths impressed him. Further, we would not be open for Easter. The shutdown of the economy was extended while we sheltered in place. April was erased.

Subsequently, the number of infections and deaths in the early hot spots increased geometrically before leveling off at high plateaus, due to social distancing. However, the peak had not yet been reached in the less-stricken areas, often rural.

Over 50,000 people in the U.S. have died of COVID 19.

Flattening the curve, though, was only Step 1. Next comes testing and tracking, so the sick and their contacts can be isolated.

But staying the course is not this president's style.

Concerns about the economy are certainly legitimate. Segments of the population became restive. The president saw his political opening. As the end of the month approached, he played both ends against the middle: talking health out of one side of his mouth while revving up protests in states where the virus outbreaks had been the worst and appropriate follow-up was in the works. Free us. Reopen the economy. Or so the mantra went.

The president never planned or organized at the federal level. He said he was not responsible; the governors were, the healthcare workers, the scientists, the business owners (small and large), individuals. Political advantage, not the good of the country, was his lodestar. His politics requires polarization, not people pulling together.

And so, once again, pushback against the scientists and doctors has surged.

Written examples of this range from blatant to relatively subtle.

The column I characterize as "blatant," by Antony Davis and James R. Harrigan for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Sunday, is libertarian in nature, calling out the shutdown approach as an attack on our freedom by using the force of government to control individuals. They play the ethics card -- or, maybe, the "unethical" card -- claiming dissent is being silenced by calling dissenters "murderers."

Note that it has long been a role of government to control the spread of infectious disease. 

The more subtle example is by the same paper's "Money Matters" columnist Wes Moss. Last month he is in print as terming the shutdown of the economy an "overreaction." This month, he is praising the state of Georgia and Gov. Brian Kemp as leading the way out of the shutdown ASAP, lest the economy be not only "bent" but "broken." He wants to rely on "individual responsibility" to make the difference. He says the ability for massive testing is months away. He says we can't wait until the virus is completely eliminated -- a straw man, since no one is calling for that. He alludes to the responsibility for businesses in controlling the infection and says business travel may be "different." He calls on "courage, a renewed sense of personal responsibility, discipline and common sense" for a safe reopening.

About the charge that dissent is being silenced as Davis and Harrigan claim: I have not heard anybody say or write that, which is why I called it the ethics card. Not only appear to preempt your adversaries but make them sound unreasonable and mean!

But is the position of Davis and Harrigan unethical?

The whispered sentiment may be that some may die but that's the price of doing business.

That stance is utilitarian in nature, utilitarianism being the greatest good for the greatest number. In Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do, Michael J. Sandel says the problem with that is that only the total amount of good is considered. Individual rights are subsumed in the total and are not a consideration.

People usually register the difficulty with individual rights under utilitarianism, so we instinctively add just deserts to the mix. If individuals in some way deserve a bad outcome, we feel less bad about it. For example, in the "ticking bomb" question, we might find torture okay, but not entirely on the basis of utilitarianism. That is, we might argue that terrorists are bad people and deserve what they get. If, however, it was an innocent family member of the terrorist who had to be tortured, rationalizing torture would become harder.

Although Davis and Harrigan are crying assault on freedom, their utilitarian position actually assaults the rights of those individuals who would be lost to or injured by C0VID 19.

To the extent they are dehumanizing those who are more vulnerable, they may be rationalizing their utilitarianism.

Yet most of our religious traditions do command us to care for the widow, orphan, and stranger, as well as to treat the least of these justly and mercifully. We are to love others as we do ourselves, for goodness sake!

There are ways to open the economy safely. Those ways involve testing and tracking, which Wes Moss holds up as near impossible. But opening the economy willy-nilly is what's making testing and tracking impossible, by radically increasing the number of random social contacts.

Neither Davis and Harrigan nor Moss have made mention of the alleged increase of social ills -- substance abuse and suicide -- that comes with economic depression. A month ago the social-ills argument was often heard. I think it's prudent of them not to make that argument, for two reasons. First, suicide and drug addiction were rampant all the while the economy was going well. The opioid crisis, remember? And don't forget the unprecedented increased death rate among the white working class, all the while the economy was going great guns. Read more about that in this essay-length review of the new book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism.

Second, although economic depression has been associated historically with social ills, what we have now is something different: a genuine social crisis, medical with economic fall-out. And social crises often lead to a new sense of purpose and to people pulling together. Rather than succumbing to social ills, people are called to be their best.

And here's the rub: how people react depends on how they see what's happening, and that depends greatly on the message their leaders are broadcasting.

Currently the American people are being polarized and played against each other for political gain. Some are being provoked and stirred up by being told that others are taking their freedoms.

When their leaders are challenging them to come together to face a crisis, people can rise to very difficult occasions. Think Churchill or FDR.

The perverse leadership we have today is not only unethical; it is a crying shame.

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

The Art of Arguing

In recent years you may have come across the new findings that irrationality is not an occasional or random aspect of our thinking but instead underlies our thinking and is systemic. Most of us have heard of confirmation bias, or we've read the hypotheses that reason evolved, not to find the truth, but to win arguments.

Nevertheless, most of us are oblivious. We're likely to think of "bias" only in connection to racial matters. We go on accepting reasoning at face value -- or, at least, we go on accepting our own reasoning (or that of our designated spokespeople) that way. We certainly can see the cracks in the reasoning of our opponents while blind to our own foibles and fallacies.

A recent dust-up within an ongoing discussion group of friends has led me to focus on how we argue.

Or, I might have said, on how to argue.

I might have asked how we argue in groups. But we're humans. We're always in groups of one kind or another.

If not externally, than internally; we all carry around our internalized families and society.

When it comes to key ideas and positions, we often permit minimal deviation. If we are inclined toward the political left, for instance, anything closer to the center, let alone rightward, is suspect, and if we are right-leaning, what's further leftward is enemy territory.

This way lies polarization: you're either for us or against us.

We tend to label individuals in the public sphere as either good or bad. Jordan Peterson. Adam Schiff. Mark Zuckerberg. Same way for courses of action: either all beneficial or entirely harmful, as though those plans of which we approve have zero drawbacks, while those which we disavow are devoid of benefits.

Group cohesion presses us toward simplistic moral positions. Nuance is discouraged. That can mean thinking is discouraged. Thinking is likely to get you into messy middle territory and heretical positions.

Looking at ourselves is off limits. Thus it happens that if two contingents are together, they will confine their critique to a third party or group who is not present.

The pressure against self-examination makes observing how the group works a no-no as well, hence the difficulty of looking at group dynamics, that is, the group process and what is happening right under our noses and between ourselves.

The solution? Talk, each articulating our ideas as well as we can.

Find a group that has norms against personal attack and that values hearing a range of ideas. Or develop one: a group that goes beyond being "nice" yet that cares about its talkers; a supportive group.

No doubt, any ideas off the center will sound off-balance, even in such a group.  Convention and ideological conformism is the expectation. There will be rebuffs. You may be bruised.

Note: a male may in part push through his ideas on the basis of volume and size, that is, by a display of physical power, whereas a similar display by a woman would backfire, coming across as pushiness, stridency or the like. Or schoolmarmish and on the brink of tears (thinking Elizabeth Warren in the penultimate debate). No; a woman does best on the merits of her argument and without other recourse, a la Ruth Bader Ginsberg. And so does a man.

If the push-back knocks me down, I hope to get up and go back to the drawing board as soon as I can. Go home, think, regroup. Find a way to articulate what I want to express. Try again.

Adam Schiff's ability to keep on track despite blow-back did not emerge fully formed overnight. I'm speaking here of the impeachment hearings and trial, of course. That ability is a skill. It had to be developed, honed. Nor are we all RBG.

According to a January 27 New Yorker article by Jill Lepore, practicing that kind of skill in conversation was once encouraged. Groups that supported such talk for ordinary people became the norm all around the country in the 1930s and, according to Lepore, saved democracy.

Hard to believe now. What an inspiring article!

It’s a paradox of democracy that the best way to defend it is to argue about it.

The last time democracy nearly died all over the world and almost all at once, Americans argued about it, and then they tried to fix it. “The future of democracy is topic number one in the animated discussion going on all over America,” a contributor to the New York Times wrote in 1937. “In the Legislatures, over the radio, at the luncheon table, in the drawing rooms, at meetings of forums and in all kinds of groups of citizens everywhere, people are talking about the democratic way of life.” People bickered and people hollered, and they also made rules. “You are a liar!” one guy shouted from the audience during a political debate heard on the radio by ten million Americans, from Missoula to Tallahassee. “Now, now, we don’t allow that,” the moderator said, calmly, and asked him to leave.

Nobody praised calling names. The trouble is that once we call somebody out, we make them into somebody we would never speak to.

With radio, more than with any other technology of communication, before or since, Americans gained a sense of their shared suffering, and shared ideals: they listened to one another’s voices.This didn’t happen by accident. Writers and actors and directors and broadcasters made it happen. They dedicated themselves to using the medium to bring people together....

I wish we would do that. Sounds so good!

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Jews Who Don't Support Trump "Disloyal" to Themselves and Israel--What's That About?





So, Jews are supposed to be conservative now. They aren't, by and large -- but evidently they're supposed to be.

According to what story? To understand ourselves, we need to find out what story we're in. Let's do the same thing as a society: what story are we in, and what do Jews have to do with Trump?

Depending on how the story plays, "the Jews" are a wedge issue. The Arab world has been using that wedge to divide America and can also use it to distract their own restive populations at home. If that's your story, what's not to like?

Within western civilization, one side of the story is connecting Jews with money and blaming them for the economy. On the other side, conversely, are stories that connect Jews with socialism, communism and radicalism in general.

I learned somewhere that the Soviet Union initiated the Zionists-as-Nazis meme back in the '50s to sow division and antagonism in the West, yet the rapidity with which the story ignited and spread surprised even them. Supposedly the meme also became big in Germany in the second generation after the Holocaust. Anti-Zionism took off in Europe in concert with anti-colonialism and anti-Americanism -- understandable among America's adversaries, or those for whom America was a symbol of evil, or those who simply thought America needed taking down a peg. Stories are political.

At first America was relatively sheltered from anti-Israel and anti-Zionist propaganda. Although I felt foreshocks as early as the '80s, people like me who had been conditioned to keep their heads stuck in the sand could continue to do so. The anti-Zionist story remained hidden or on the fringes.

Not until I became involved in a liberal (that is, left-leaning) church I attended with my Christian husband was I fully confronted with this narrative to which they were receptive and were actively spreading. Around the same time, anti-Zionism was emerging on American university campuses, where Jews were increasingly being denigrated as "Zionists."

These experiences of mine began a dozen years ago, but when, looking for help in understanding and coping with the story, I turned to the Jewish community -- or, in my case, returned to the Jewish community -- I was still being told how there's so little antisemitism in America and how lucky we are. That, too, has changed, although it's very difficult, almost impossible, for liberal Jews (the majority of Jews I know) to acknowledge that that this part of the story has been coming from the left, including liberal churches and clergy we consider allies.

In the story, from the perspective of much of liberal America,"good Jews" are the ones who don't act too Jewish or practice Judaism and especially the ones who condemn Israel. The story makes it a no-no for Jews to love or maintain any positive connection to Israel at all -- a hard sell for most Jews. In other words it's a polarizing story whereby a Jew is "for 'em or against 'em"  -- "for us or against us."  That makes it easy to say who "the bad Jews" are: all the rest.

That makes for a story with a clear and present "bad guy:" Jews.

That also makes for a conspiratorial story. As such, Jews are frequently characterized as holding undue influence over America's foreign policy. Often, on the sophisticated left, other terms -- neocons, neocapitalists, neoliberals (as well as "Zionists") -- are substituted for "Jew." Sounds better and provides cover, plausible deniability, and even blindness to the workings of one's own thought processes. Permits the storyteller du jour to claim they are just telling it like it is.

Anti-Zionism justifies putting all Jews except for the self-proclaimed good ones -- those who have "converted to" the dominant story -- into the same basket with Israel. Doing so is framed as "just criticizing Israel," rather than, say, antisemitism.

Theological arguments can be brought to bear in support of the story, the claim, for example, that Jews "misunderstand" their covenant to be about the land or fail to jettison their particularity in recognition that "all are one in Christ." (Perhaps related to the latter, it remains a meme that Jews got persecuted because they "set themselves apart.")

And so the story became useful as a political tool of division, in the process, exacerbating the division among Jews themselves. We've got an echo chamber going: Jews calling each other "self-hating" and, meanwhile, in the populace at large, the left and right taking turns saying which Jews are the "bad" ones.

Trump has bought into the story, except for him the good Jews are the very ones the left says are bad. He agrees with the left in casting Jews as conservative, nay, Trumpist. They're loyal, to themselves, Israel, and him.

The story not only became useful as a tool of division for those standing outside of America but also provided a useful political tool for the left -- the proverbial "common enemy," or scapegoat, being a tempting way to assemble a following in rough times. It's easier and safer to say who you're against than to call attention to what you're for.

To be effective, a story must work. We know we shouldn't hate or hold others up for hateful treatment, but claiming Jews "deserve it" opens a loophole.

It does not hurt that saying Jews do deserve it has a long tradition. The story seems new, and in a sense is new to those born since World War II. However, we should say "new all over again," for it is not new.

Relatively subtle until recently, hidden behind some church doors or restricted to campus, only after much prior effort and in the last few years has it jumped the firebreaks into the public square.

Is the story anti-Israel but not anti-Jew? So claim its proponents. But only the intellectual elite can keep the two apart in their story, and even then not for long. I've come to consider as sophistry the epiphenomenon of advice on 'when it's okay to criticize Israel,' since critique of Israel the country and anti-Zionism are two different entities, apples and oranges.

In the story from the left, anti-Zionism masquerades as a social-justice movement, just as, a hundred years ago, antisemitism was "science."

The Zionism of the story is a hijacked term that has been turned into a pejorative, "Zio" being a stand-in for "Jew" in its old pejorative sense.

What Zionism means outside of that dominant story is a wish for a homeland for the Jewish people, and, now that there is a homeland, gratitude for that homeland. That's a simplified version of what Zionism is in the Jewish people's own story. Anti-Zionism has no beneficial impact on the country of Israel. It does not move it to the left. It does not further the anti-Zionists' stated goal of peace. Instead, the more Israel is attacked or demonized, the more right-wing it becomes. Meanwhile Israel's denouncers cling to their narrative.  It's their story and they're sticking to it.

Trump's reversal of the story won't help. It too is polarizing. Israel, from the other angle all bad, is now supposed to be all good. Neither is true. And watch out for friends like Trump.

Well, of course, the other side already had Jew standing in for conservative since whatever they don't like is represented by Jew. The difference being, naturally, that those other guys were more subtle about it.

From the first, Christians created an alternate "Judaism" to define themselves over and against. The antidote is for Jews to say what Judaism is.

According to Karen L. King, the early church took from Judaism what was popular and called that "Christianity;" they called the residue "Judaism." They made that residue their foil and Jews their Other.

Being the Other means standing for whatever is wrong and bad. Having an Other means having a garbage dump -- somewhere to put whatever you don't want to keep, including internal conflict. Especially internal conflict. The Other morphs as the story requires. When "white" was good, Jews weren't quite, and now that it isn't, Jews are the essence of whiteness.

In this story, a Jew is a political statement. "The Jews" are now to stand for the right wing, the Trumpists, notwithstanding that most Jews are liberals.

Thus we have Jews being told what they are, put in their place. They have their designated role to play in somebody else's story. To coin a phrase, It's the story, stupid.

Trump is only amplifying what was already reverberating around society, making it explicit and saying it out loud. And with friends like Trump, you don't need enemies.

...The antidote being to speak up.