Good Afternoon, Mr. Strawman

                So there I was, derping on Facebook, when a happy little gem popped up from one of my more conservative (read here “uninformed, old, white and well-off”) “friends.” It read: “And to think it was just an ordinary citizen that was allowed to roam his own property that found this Islamic terrorist.”

                Whew. That’s a mouthful, spastic approach to grammar aside. The author finds the wherewithal to go on, however: “So we need an entire SWAT team and the National Guard armed with semi and fully automatic rifles, similar to my semi automatic AR-15s, to locate a 19 year old idiot, yet the government tells me I don’t need one for self defense. Where’s the logic in that?!”

                After reading this, I had to step away from the computer for a moment, because I was drinking a beer at the time and almost spit it out. Computers are expensive, you know?

                Moments later, I was back, beer safely in my stomach, and I was dumbstruck that someone would post something so stupid for the entire world to see. Then I remembered that Congress exists.

                Where is the logic, Mr. Strawman? Allow me to draw you a map.

                First, let’s consider the monopoly of force. The government has it. It’s one of the oldest and most well-defined functions of government. The monopoly of force allows the government to use violence, whether deadly or not, to execute its will which, in the case of a democracy, is nominally the will of the people. Perhaps you’ve seen an old Western, in which the local sheriff deputizes a posse so they can do some good old fashioned posse hanging justice. Without the deputizing- without being officially made a part of the government- that hanging would be what we in the North like to call “a lynching” and what certain people in the South like to call “the good old days.”

                Now, since you brought up the armaments of the authorities, I suppose it is possible to send a bunch of police officers out with, say, baseball bats and slingshots in order to apprehend their suspect but that seems, at best, to be inefficient and at worst to be utterly ludicrous.

                The meat of the problem, Mr. Strawman, is of course that you want to be the fellow with the gun doing the killing of the suspect. Let’s dispense with the niceties: you don’t want the suspect apprehended because you know he’s Islamic (better informed people use “Muslim,” for the record) because Fox News told you that and Sean Hannity has never lied. You don’t want him apprehended because he has a name you can’t pronounce, comes from a country you’ve never heard of, and committed an act of terrorism that killed…fewer people than Adam Lanza killed. But don’t forget he’s Islamic!

                You want him dead, of course, because he’s a terrorist. And you don’t want him tried by American laws, because he’s a terrorist, never mind that he’s an American citizen. Terrorists haven’t got any rights, have they, Mr. Strawman?

                You mention self-defense, but you’re a lying liar. In your ideal world, you’d be out prowling the streets with your friends, packing the kind of heat that would render you overdressed for World War III. You’d find the sniveling Islamic guy with the weird name and you’d bust a cap in his ass so hard! Totally! Then you’d go back to the local saloon, raise up your glasses against evil forces, and wait for the President to call and tell you how great a guy you are. Also the president would be a white guy named John or something. You’d be a hero, Mr. Strawman, just like you used to be in the fantasies you had when you were five years old. A real, true hero.

                The trouble, Mr. Strawman, is that the world doesn’t work that way. Your masturbatory fantasies about blowing away Muslims with your civilian grade rifle are a beautiful example of all that’s wrong with this country today. Grow up, open a book, do a little research and realize that you’re not five years old, brown people aren’t out to get you, and you’re woefully on the wrong side of history.

                And, to the friend who posted this bullshit: I’d unfriend you, but you’ve earned a reprieve by giving me this column with a bow on it.

                Until next time, remember: we’re all in this together and I’m pulling for you. Davis out.

A different kind of debt: on the bombing at the Boston Marathon

I haven't yet been able to articulate a reaction to the horrific bombings that happened in Boston on Monday during the annual marathon. So many people, including my colleague Tyler, have already written poignant reactions, and so many more are off doing the hard, necessary, and fundamentally good work of getting on the ground and helping people to recover from the violence.

Thank you to all of those people.

I'd like to talk about a discourse that immediately emerged after news of the bombings began to spread -- the discourse concerning the value of human life transcending national borders. I've seen plenty of articles and Facebook statuses lamenting that Americans cry outrage when Americans die in violence like what we saw in Boston, but don't nearly value the lives and deaths of people outside of our borders in areas of the world where violence is more quotidian.

There's something right about that. And it's ok to point that out. It is perfectly possible to sincerely mourn for the victims of what was truly a horrific and inexcusable act of violence and at the same time to be aware of and give attention to the political discourses and contexts which surround the violence.

I was reading from Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals last night, and I found myself thinking about the bombings in Boston and the discourse I just cited above. Specifically, the paragraph which grabbed my attention begins by asserting that "the community has the same basic relationship to its members as the creditor to the debtor." Two things came to mind: (1) a conceptualization of debt which I believe is an appropriate way of talking about the violence of the bombings and the discourse of global violence recited in reaction, and (2) a questioning of who gets to be included in the kind-of-racist Nietzsche's "community," and by analogy/extension, what do we mean by community and who are we (not) talking about when we invoke the discourse of global awareness of violence following a horrible tragedy within out own borders?

Amidst all of the talk about financial debt we are surrounded by every day in our political and economic discourses, I think we should also consider talking about moral debt. Taking the Boston Marathon bombings as an example:
What happened on Monday was horrible, and definitely tragic. No question. But it is also important to be aware of the fact, as some folks remind us, that what surprises us here in the United States is much more common in places like Syria or Palestine. Really, there is a kind of privilege to living in a country where we can afford to be surprised by violence like this (can we afford it, though?). Just think, those of us who were born here were simply lucky enough to be born here. We didn't do anything to earn our place. And yet we benefit from the fact that we are part of the American community. I would therefore suggest that those of us who fit this description thus owe a moral debt (and this is not a novel or profound argument; Socrates makes a version of it in Plato's "Crito"), we must pay back for the benefits we enjoy by doing what we can to mitigate violence like this from happening anywhere in the future, even if such violence is being carried out by our own country, and even if it's being ordered or approved by people we admire or support.

But that whole last paragraph has an obvious difficulty in it. Who counts as part of the American community? And why is the mapping of quotidian violence as always something that happens exclusively outside of U.S. borders so easily accessible when we want to make a point about making sure we remain aware of violence that affects people everywhere? I would like to remind folks that quotidian violence is not exclusively relegated outside of U.S. borders. For many people of color in the United States, especially folks living in cities, there is the constant threat of police violence coming out of anywhere at anytime, sometimes for no reason other than because someone looks like they're not white. Day-to-day violence is not foreign to U.S. soil.*

So again, I must ask, even in this moment as we rally around calls to unite all people in one common identity -- "We are all Bostonians;" "There are no Democrats or Republicans, just Americans" -- who are we really calling? Who gets to be part of these communities? What violence is erased by the call to look outward for examples of people who don't get to live with the privilege of being surprised by violence?

What happened in Boston was a tragedy. I cannot repeat that enough. I was devastated by it. Luckily, neither I myself nor any of my loved ones were physically harmed by the bombings. I think it is important for us to mourn and to do what we can to support those communities that need support at this time of darkness. As my friend Tyler wrote, we've got to kick.

But we should also think about the debt we might owe, a different kind of debt, not necessarily monetary, but moral. Those of us who were lucky enough to not be in Boston, lucky enough to have been born in the United States, lucky enough to have a body that is not policed by quotidian violence or interrogated and examined for its worthiness in being included in the national body politic, those of us who are that lucky, we owe it to our fellow human beings to do what we can with the abilities and resources at our disposal to work towards building a world where violence is rarer for everyone.

That's a debt we can certainly work towards paying.      



*I should point out that I am not drawing an equals sign between an individual being harassed by police officers and hundreds of people being injured in a bombing. These are admittedly not the same exact thing. But I would insist, however, that violence is violence. And that matters.


    

  

Thoughts on the Boston Marathon Bombing

From my desk high upon the tower in Manhattan, I kept a close eye on the events unfolding in sleepy little Boston, where several bombs have gone off in the area around the finish line for the Boston Marathon. I am blessed to know that my friends living in Boston are safe and sound, but there are many families who are suffering, and there are a few families who have been forced to experience the loss of a loved one way before their time, and as much as my co-writer Aaron will hate what I'm about to say (he's not one for platitudes), my thoughts are with those who are suffering through the unthinkable right now - if anyone in Boston is reading this right now, please know that us here at Liberal DOGMA and all of America are Bostonians today, and we share in a part of your grief, though we can never truly feel what you must be feeling right now.

It's times of tragedy such as this where we are forced to reflect on ourselves and come to terms with the reality that there is something wrong in this world. There is something wrong in the world where people can commit acts of terror on a crowd of innocent people, whether it be bombs at the Boston Marathon or bullets in Sandy Hook, without batting an eye. Someone who can pull the trigger on such a heinous act that results in anyone else's death is a reprehensible human being. There is a level of pain and hatred in this world that, some times, can be incredibly difficult to decipher and understand, and it's hard to figure out how to navigate a reality that allows for such insanity to manifest in such a violent manner.

An event such as this, though, can make us reflect on the strength of the good side of humanity - first responders and civilians alike running toward the carnage, not away from it, in order to help the many others who needed help; the marathon runners who, after crossing the finish line, proceeded to keep running to Massachussetts General Hospital to give blood that can be received by those who have lost so much; the thousands of Bostonians who opened their homes to the stranded marathoners after the attack. Patton Oswalt said it best on Facebook in the hours after the bombing: "...the vast majority stand against [the] darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evildoers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak." In times of crisis, the majority of us, as men and women, come together, protect and prop each other up, and kick at the darkness until, hopefully, it bleeds daylight, and we can smile once more.

Take one look at your family and, if they're within arm's reach, give them a hug. Call your parents, or your siblings, or your children, and let them know how much they mean to you. It's so easy to think that this could never happen to us...but the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing thought the same thing right up until it happened to them. In the face of evil, the strongest armor of all is love, and we saw that love and compassion come out today on the streets of Boston. Keep that love alive, because it's love that, when all is said and done, prevails over darkness, hate, and violence.

In time, Boston shall run again - it is our job to make sure she knows we have her back.

That's all for today - class dismissed.

Bang to Rights, Part 1

No doubt every reader is familiar, at least, with the skeleton of the “debate” currently being carried out most vociferously over the right of Americans to own and use firearms, but just for the sake of bringing our one visitor who’s been living under a rock into the light, here’s the down and dirty version:

                In the wake of the Newtown massacre (Aurora, Columbine, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum notwithstanding), it was generally decided that the time to talk about guns had arrived. In one corner were the gun rights activists, who loudly declaimed that all Americans retain the right to own and use literally any type of gunpowder-centric machine imaginable for literally any reason at all. In the other corner were the gun control activists, who loudly declaimed that firearms may or may not be the single worst thing the human race has ever come up with and that we should do away with the wretched things entirely. Most people’s opinions fell somewhere between the poles.

                The debate grew heated, as debates will, and propaganda for both sides started pouring into everything and now we have this bizarre battle of ideas that, strangely, doesn’t seem to address firearms in any real or logical manner.

                So let’s talk about them now.

                Foremost, a gun is a tool, and it has a purpose. The purpose of a gun is to kill things with. Many gun rights schills have claimed that lots of guns are for sport or for target shooting or for protection. This is true. It does not change the fact that all firearms are designed with the express purpose of ending life. It’s a fact, get over it.

                Second, a gun is not an inherently evil object. See above. I personally have had the pleasure of growing up with guns- shotguns, rifles, a pistol- and have never once sacrificed a cat to them or whispered demonic curses over them in the dark. I have also never killed anyone, wounded anyone or threatened anyone with a gun. Most people don’t.

                Bearing all  these things in mind, I think it’s essential that all Americans have the right to own a firearm, discounting those with violent criminal pasts (looking at you, felons of the world) and those who have mental disorders that render them incapable of owning or using a gun safely.

                It boils down in my mind thusly:

                Given that an essential tenet of liberal thought is the preservation and expansion of human rights,

                Given that the fundamental human right, to my mind, is the right to defend one’s life and other rights (pursuit of happiness, liberty, the right to eat Swedish meatballs that aren’t made of horse),

                Given that, when it comes to defending one’s life, violence can be a very real and very necessary- if unpleasant- condition,

                Given that the playing field involves firearms wielded, sometimes, by those intent upon harming others,

                Therefore people ought to have guns, if they like.

                This comes with a caveat, however. If we insist- and I believe we should- upon having a right to bear arms, we must also insist upon the responsibility of learning to safely and judiciously exercise that right. If the second amendment must be upheld as it is written, then firearm education must become commonplace. Consider it this way: we give teenagers the legal right to propel multi-ton vehicles are unnatural speeds after they partake in a ubiquitous training regimen and pass a basic competency test. A car is no less deadly than a gun (in fact, traffic fatalities outweigh gun fatalities, though the two numbers are set to converge by 2015).

                TL;DR for the lazy kids: Americans should have guns because humans are entitled to self-defense, as long as we institute a rigorous and comprehensive- and mandatory- gun safety course, ideally for adolescents.

               

Why Shouldn't We Talk About Politics?

Since this is my inaugural post here at Liberal D.O.G.MA, I figure y'all deserve an explanation as to why I got into this in the first place. Unlike the many others who publicly express their opinions on politics, I'm not in the game to pontificate or proselytize, nor am I here because I get paid to spout the talking points of the day and to get into cat fights with other amateur pundits. No - take away every assumption you have about political blogging and throw them out the window, because I'm about to blow your mind. I'm here to make you both smarter and politically aware, all at the same time

I think - no, I know - that our country is in decline because we, the American people, don't care about what our government is doing, or what direction it's taking. I find it a damn shame that children recognize Ronald McDonald faster than John Adams, or Spongebob Squarepants faster than the Speaker of the House. I find it reprehensible that grown men and women - the taxpayers that make America function - would rather watch "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" over CNN, and they can rattle off the last seven Taylor Swift singles, yet have no idea who represents them in local, state, and federal government. I can't stand how Americans choose not to vote because they "hate politics," but always muster enough breath to whine and moan about how they pay too much in taxes while taking advantage of the services paid for by the taxes they pay. We have a certain level of political ignorance in this country that defies our self-proclaimed status as the "greatest country in the world," or our status as the world's sole superpower.

If you walk the streets of Rome, or sit at a café in Pristina or Athens, or go to dinner with friends in Helsinki, you will find a common trend in conversation: politics. Around the world, people are more aware of political realities than ever before, especially due to the Internet - Canadian students protest the Parti Québeçois for anti-Anglophone legislation, or Greeks contesting an EU bailout - and yet the United States holds the distinct and pitiful title of "Most Politically Ignorant and Apathetic Country in the Developed World."

...seriously? America - the birthplace of modern republican democracy - is so ignorant and apathetic about its politics that we refuse to even talk about it? We're too apathetic to even exercise the most basic political right of voting? This isn't even a shame - it's a goddamn disgrace, an embarrassment, a massive failure by us to keep alive the passion and interest in politics going for future generations. As an evolving electorate, we must break out of this rut and give this dying institution a little defibrillation, a new spark plug. Without lively political debate, we keep our ideas and views of the world hidden to ourselves and, if we don't challenge our own ideas and the ideas of others, this ideological divide we are witnessing today will only grow more divided. I anticipate that the fires of hatred an violent rhetoric will only grow higher and hotter until it burns alive the fair, beautiful maiden we call Progress.

I will be damned if I allow Progress to die. By sharing our personal politics, we can find common ground, see the similarities in ourselves and see that shared bond we all have for our beloved home. We an make this land truly great once again, and that is why I'm here.

I am not an ultra-lefty Liberal, though I am left-handed. You will see that there are things my colleagues will say with which I will disagree, but you will find that I am a lower-case liberal who demands common sense and progress from his government and his people. I see this land, and this medium, as a classroom for proliferation of great ideas, and I fully intend to be your professor and your moderator in this great debate. I'm about to drop some knowledge, so grab your textbooks, friends - class is now in session.

Disproportionate Repetitions

A couple of weeks ago I read a New York Times editorial about the use of credit-screenings by employers on potential employees. The editorial talked about a recent study that suggests that such practices unfairly designate prospective job-seekers as poor job candidates when in fact there is evidence that poor credit history does not necessarily signify a poor job prospect and the likelihood that "most of those who suffered degraded credit ratings during the recession either lost their job, lacked medical insurance or incurred debt when they were injured or got sick."

But I don't necessarily want to speak to those issues here. You can read the Times' editorial (it's really short). I want to talk about these two sentences:

"The study also underscored the fact that African-American families have been disproportionately affected. They had fewer assets to start with, and were easy targets for predatory subprime lenders who led them deeper into debt." 

Can a sentence become tokenized?

If I had a dime for every time an article about class-based inequality, from news sources both on the Right and on the Left, includes a sentence or two mentioning how African Americans (and usually Latino/as) are "disproportionately" represented in some demographic -- be it the unemployed, the imprisoned, or simply the poor -- I would be a rich man (which is different from being a wealthy man -- and that's important!). It is impossible, I think, to not notice the ubiquity of this repetition.

Almost like the token racialized subject, the sentence about "disproportionate" effects for African Americans is a required piece of any article on inequality that is itself a disproportionate repetition, appearing so many times so as to normalize the poverty of blackness in America, to turn the effects of violence into solidified facts of our socio-economic world.

I will take this opportunity of my first post here at Liberal D.O.G.MA to make clear one of my fundamental positions that will underlie a lot of what I will probably be writing on this blog: Disparities of wealth and income which play out according to racial demographics cannot merely be reduced to an explanation based on class. I will always vehemently reject and refuse the assertion, "It's really about class, not race."

In this blog of three liberals (and let me quickly say that I am a "liberal" on our two-dimensional political spectrum here in the U.S., but I am suspicious of the merits of [neo]liberalism as a political project towards which it is worth retaining an unwavering commitment), I situate myself as someone deeply concerned with material inequalities, but who also does not reduce inequality to issues of pure class struggle. I will always insist on attending to differences in race, sex, gender, sexuality, and other identities as they inflect and complicate strict class-based analysis.

This is because of my attentions to the continuities of history -- even as I wish to attend to ruptures as well. (Us African Americanists can be notorious for insistently invoking the "both/and" all the time!)

To return to the Times' own language, pasted with different emphasis: "The study also underscored the fact that African-American families have been disproportionately affected. They had fewer assets to start with, and were easy targets for predatory subprime lenders who led them deeper into debt."

That phrase I bolded and underlined is taken so much for granted so often in these instantiations of what I want to call disproportionate repetitions. I don't think mainstream dialogue really feels the weight of just what that means. There is so much violence written into that short phrase, from slavery and the unpaid labor that literally built this country's (not just the South's) wealth and power to slavery's aftermath in lynchings and the formations of police forces to control criminal (read as "black" -- see nineteenth-century newspaper editorials or Mayoral speeches for evidence; also read Bryan Wagner's awesome book Disturbing the Peace) people.

My point, I guess, is that while a strictly class-based analysis of material inequality works for a history-less population, it doesn't work in the real world where history -- especially the history of race -- continues to matter.

We need to investigate what's packed up in the "to start with" that always appears, be it implicitly or explicitly, in these disproportionate repetitions and pause to feel the weight of those words.

Where you "start" a story matters.

A Liberal Beginning

               Well this is a dubious honor. Where to begin, where to begin…

                Let’s start with a flag. There’s an enormous American flag presiding over the main intersection of Mt. Morris, NY, provided graciously at taxpayer expense, well lighted at night and rippling in the breeze. Fifty stars, thirteen stripes of red and white. A field of blue.

                And under the blue and the white and the red there are people, black and white and shades between, young and old and rich and poor, striving. Everyone strives.

                The striving of this country has become a central focus in recent years; we dicker over how people ought best to live their lives. The central conflict between the conservative and the liberal mindset is often credited to money. Conservatives want, broadly, to keep their money and starve the government. Liberals want the government to give freely, to help the less fortunate or to promote new and better lives and modes of living.

                The conflict goes deeper, though. The true center of the thing is change. This country is in a state of flux, as countries are wont to be. The conservative fears the change, the liberal embraces it.

                The essence of liberalism, I think, is in guiding the mutable nature of the body politic to a better and brighter future.

                The breeze has died down. The flag hangs limp but beautiful in color and sunlight. Change is upon us. It’s a strange and wonderful time to be alive and striving and changing.

                Come along with us, let’s talk.