Didactic Synapse

All this talk lately about a new Civil War in the US has got me thinking.

First, we should all recognize that the election of Donald Trump voided all attempts at predicting the future. Such prognostications are a staple of TV “news”; they creep constantly into our discussions on social media. What will happen in the midterms? Will Trump leave if he’s voted out? What’s Bernie going to do next? Given our inability to determine the weather in four days, we’ve got to start ignoring these feeble efforts at speculation. (If they mattered at all, there would be consequences for those who are wrong. There are none, so they do not.)

Second, as desperate and violent and hateful as the proto-fascist elements of the US right wing are (and I don’t mean to diminish their capacity for violence), I’m skeptical of the idea that we’re headed for a war, because they remain a tiny minority. Trump has corralled them for his narcissistic purposes, and the Republican “leadership” has allowed itself to be driven into a cavern of psychopathy for the sake of a greasy tax cut and a couple of Supreme Court picks. But the actual fascists and proto-fascists are a noisy, hideous gaggle of disgraceful children. (Armed children, but children nevertheless.) They have the means and the motive to kill people and cause suffering on a massive scale. But starting a war is different. It takes numbers.

Ergo, third, what about the outer circle of conservatives and independents and libertarians who have been seduced by the proto-fascist propaganda coming from this gaggle of scumbags (Bannon, Gorka, Miller, Trump, et al)? They’re the second-most important — and the most complex — piece of the puzzle. Many of them are obviously swayed by racist and xenophobic rhetoric. Many of them are closed-minded, surrounding themselves with cocoons of reassurance. Many of them are armed and hostile toward all the undesirables who are, they are assured, coming for their stuff.

The Outer Circle makes me sad and angry, but they don’t scare me. Maybe that’s my white privilege talking (along with my male and straight and middle-class privilege), but I keep hearing about how many people voted for Obama in 2012 and then switched to Trump in 2016. Which makes me think: Anybody that quick to abandon their allegiance to slightly-left-of-center principles can surely be herded into aligning with them again.

Who Do You Trust?

Getting more folks on our side, in my humble and profoundly non-expert opinion, is a project of consciousness raising. If people support dismantling the tiny regulatory changes of Dodd-Frank, it’s because they don’t understand how important stronger regulation is to preventing another crash like the one in 2008.  If people support brutal tactics to punish undocumented immigrants, it’s because they don’t understand the immense suffering and hardship so many people have experienced before arriving in the US; and what those tactics do to our fellow humans in need. If people continue to support the regime of mass black and latinx incarceration, it’s because they don’t understand the terror and misery that regime has been creating for 40 years.

The problem of enlightened consciousness, of course, is not one of information — we’ve all got easy access to a universe of information. The problem today is one of trust. Hardcore MAGAts trust President Trump absolutely, and they refuse to question his outlandish statements. They will not entertain independent reactions or fact-checking; they are convinced that all such attempts to ground us in a universal reality are part of a “fake news” conspiracy to discredit their hero.

But the rest of us operate from a place of trust, too. I trust Democracy Now! and The Intercept, because they have years of journalistic credibility. Of course I don’t trust them uncritically; they occasionally offer perspectives and guests that deserve scrutiny. But for the most part, I believe they are providing me with an accurate picture of the world as it is.

And it’s not just news. We trust the Union of Concerned Scientists on climate change. We trust Amnesty International on torture. We trust the American Cancer Society on risk factors. We trust airline mechanics. We trust other drivers to obey traffic lights. We trust restaurant workers to avoid  spitting in our food.

Many educated people reject this notion, insisting that they are fiercely independent and always do their own research, but this is nonsense. Who among us has the time and expertise to independently check the science behind climate change? (I remember one angry Republican student handing me a 50-page sheaf of papers explaining a study from a prominent anti-climate-change professor. He insisted I read the whole thing and accept it or refute it.) There’s no way for us to verify everything we believe, so we must rely on trust in various forms.

This makes consciousness-raising more tricky, because (A) most people don’t discuss, or accept, the significance of trust in the first place; and (B) how do you get people to trust you? Fortunately (A) is an academic point. If I can win someone’s trust, then I don’t care what they call it. My life would be easier if we could talk about who we trust and why, but then my life as a teacher would also be easier if my students were honest about why their work is late. As for (B), it’s a tricky business. Ironically for our purposes here, the Outer Circle isn’t going to trust moderate or leftist sources if they use the same rule book as Trump and the proto-fascists. We won’t be using fear and hatred of Mexicans and Muslims, so we can’t just tap into that seething hostility.

I also reject the notion that “civility” will win the day. Those of us who spend time organizing street action and movement politics understand that we fight with dignity that is not always civil. Respectability politics has long been weaponized to silence and marginalize those fighting oppression and injustice. Also ironically, if “civility” had any impact on MAGAts and the Outer Circle, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. (Hillary Clinton has been a model of civil political discourse her entire life. Look where it got her.)

Main Point #1: What War Is

Okay, that was a heck of a tangent. Let me move to my main points. First, we need to recognize what it means to actually go to war. It’s a terrible, wretched business that always always always spirals out of control. The Syrian Civil War was supposed to be a quick crackdown on children spray-painting anti-government graffiti. And now 500,000 people have died.

We tend to jump right into World War II as an example of a Good War that did Exactly What It Was Supposed To Do. But World War I was, we would hopefully all agree, a terrible war that did nothing it was supposed to do. Before the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, we anti-war activists tried to sound the alarm of death and misery and suffering that were on the horizon. We were ignored. In the 1980s, the people of El Salvador and Nicaragua and East Timor tried to tell the world about what the wars in their countries were doing to them. They were ignored. Too many people are ignoring the horrible realities of the war waging right now in Syria.

And this leads me to Main Point #1: Those of us behind the “Peace & Justice” barricades understand that war is usually the worst option. Besides the other side having most of the weapons, we understand that — even if it is sometimes inevitable or necessary — war is an atrocity. We read history to learn about other options, and study those heroic individuals and organizations who have prevented terrible situations from becoming even worse through actual warfare.

Most leaders are not Hitler. Most government actions are not Stalinist pogroms. Most swarms of violent morons clutching tiki torches are not actual Nazi stormtroopers. Again, I don’t want to minimize the violence or terror the proto-fascists are capable of. But this is not a small matter: If 1% of the most dire situations we face require war to avoid obliteration or absolute subjugation, then 99% of them do not. And if you prepare for war when there are other options available, then you make a better course of action difficult (or impossible). Everybody always says war should be a last resort; even Reagan said it while arming the butchers of El Mozote, and Bush Jr. said it right before plunging Iraq into its atrocious nightmare.

The real question is: How do we live and act in a way that actually sees war as a dire 1% extremity?

Main Point #2: How Wars Start (and How They Can Be Prevented)

As an English teacher and armchair historian, I am not qualified to provide a comprehensive overview of how wars start. But it seems to me, after studying some gang wars, and the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the fight against Apartheid, and the liberation of East Timor, that we can see a few strains coming together.

Everybody involved in the start of a war believes there is some horrible overreach that requires The Good Guys to fight back. In the US Civil War, it was the “tyranny” of Lincoln and the abolitionists trying to force their opposition to slavery on the south. In a gang war, it’s usually a cycle of revenge, getting justice for a loved one murdered by the other side. “From ancient grudge break to new mutiny”, as Shakespeare said in Romeo & Juliet. (A play which is, after all, about a gang war.) Israel took land from Palestinians to protect themselves after the Holocaust, and Palestinians attack Israeli cities to resist the occupation and impose retribution for these injustices.

Main Point #2: To avoid a war, one side usually must give up something to which they are morally entitled. When the people of South Africa dismantled Apartheid with a nonviolent strategy, no one in the world believed they did not have the right to resist the violence of that regime with weapons. But they wanted the bloodshed to stop. And that’s the core question: Do you want revenge, or do you want an end to the bloodshed? Because you cannot have both.

In the movie Slam, Mike is morally entitled to seek some kind of punishment against the guys who shot him. But Raymond shows him another path, one less likely to continue the cycles of death and misery. The same is true of Debbie Morris, and every family member who finds the strength to show mercy despite unbelievable suffering.

Avoiding war is not sexy. No one wants to watch a movie called We Never Had to Save Private Ryan Because He Was Never Deployed in the First Place. Avoiding war happens with meetings and protests and reading and conversation and reporting and love and empathy. You look much cooler if you display your battle scars and declare your willingness to Give Your Life for What is Right. We often think of the people brandishing weapons as the most important warriors who keep us safe. But very often, the people who actually keep us safe are unarmed. They use words and typewriters and computers and hugs and information.

In 2015 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, who found a way to keep their country from descending into the chaos and warfare that so many nations in the Middle East experienced in the wake of the Arab Spring. Organizations who had been opponents for decades came together in order to find a less-terrible path among the 99% of options before them.

I hope — I believe — that we can do the same in our 21st century American crisis. The trickiest thing for me is advocating against war without minimizing the harm being done. If I use metaphors and premonitions of war, no one can doubt the urgency of our moment. And yet (once again) I demand a third option. I will declare unyielding hostility against oppressive policies, hateful rhetoric, misogynist violence, and the poisons of racism; while urging my fellow Americans to resist the bloodlust and thirst for vengeance that leads to war.

This is a trying time, no doubt, and my blood boils for the pain and suffering the MAGAts and proto-fascists are causing (ignored or applauded by the Outer Circle). I believe we have to fight, but I also believe we can (and should) avoid an actual war. So let’s work to make that happen, please and thank you.

A luta continua.

I was going to relax and play Fallout 4 after school, but instead I wrote a thing about terrorism and ISIS. If you want to know what I think, here it is.

I don’t believe that there’s anything fundamental to Islam that predisposes it to violence more than other religions. I read the Koran a long time ago, and most of what I remember is how terrible the suffering will be for those who deny the glory of Allah.

Reminded me of the Left Behind novels, where all the sinners get bulldozed into pain and torture by a Romanian nuclear disarmament activist who moves the UN to Jerusalem. And the authors of those books insist they’re based on an orthodox reading of the Christian book of Revelations.

What’s the Problem?

I won’t deny that there are terrible things being done in the name of Islam, but that’s always been true about every religion — there’s even a Buddhist guy in Myanmar who’s calling for terrorism toward Muslims. Are there more violent acts carried out (intentionally) against civilians in the name of Islam than other religions? I don’t know, I haven’t done the math. Does it feel like it? Kinda. But the US also drops a LOT of bombs on innocent civilians with our flying robots — and Christianity is the dominant religion in this country. I know we’re not dropping those bombs in God’s name, but when you’re on the receiving end, that distinction evaporates pretty darn fast.. (Just as lots of conservative folks are ignoring divisions within Islam pretty darn fast, after WE got bombed.)

I think it’s important to remember that we’re at war with an ideology, not a religion or a culture or even just one death cult. (It’s certainly fair to use that term for ISIS.) We could wipe out ISIS, just as we could maybe eventually wipe out al’Qaeda, if we kill enough adults. But the ideology can spring up again and again and take new and interesting forms. (I mean, think about this progression: al’Qaeda –> ISIS –> ??? Could there be an even worse form of these same scumbags? Sure; things can always get worse.)

How Do We React?

So how do we fight an ideology? Well, that’s difficult. Destructive ideologies are pernicious because they can sculpt our perception of reality to their will. In other words: Once the lens of an ideology attaches itself to the third eye, it’s very difficult to pry it off. And because we pass everything we see through that lens, we come to ignore parts of reality that don’t mesh with our ideology — and most of the time, the ideology comes with a method to explain away the stuff that doesn’t mesh. (So for example with ISIS, they’re convinced that everything is a plot by “The Crusaders” — ie Christians — to destroy them, their religious purity, their families, their Islamic paradise.)

But the tricky thing about ideologies is that we ALL have them. I do, you do, everyone does. There are things you believe, way deep down in the core of your psyche, that influence how you see the world. And examining those things — to say nothing of adjusting or removing them — can be extremely difficult.

For example: Most people in the US believe that our government generally acts in the best interests of the world. Most Americans believe that we can be too aggressive, or insensitive to other cultures, but at the end of the day we’re out there all the time trying to use our power to help people and stop The Bad Guys.

But there’s a good bit of evidence to suggest this isn’t always true. And not just a couple of rare outliers, but a number of historic cases (East Timor, Guatemala, Iran-Contra) that demonstrate the reality that, from time to time, the US acts out of unconscionable self-interest and leaves corpses in its wake in the name of hegemony.

(Is it obnoxious for me to acknowledge the fact that I’m using some fancy words that some folks probably aren’t familiar with, like “ideology” and “hegemony”? Yeah, but I always want to encourage people to look that stuff up if you don’t know about it. Besides, the only way you’ll really get a sense for what they mean is to read stuff about them. Like Derrida. Don’t get me started on Derrida or his obnoxious, useless fan club.)

The horrible cyclical effect of our ideology is that we’re 100% convinced that we’re The Good Guys and our military only fights The Bad Guys. This can prevent (and sometimes does prevent) our ability to realize that we do some terrible things at times. (Some people believe that our military is ONLY or PRIMARILY used for “evil” purposes, but that’s the same simplistic ideology — only flipped.)

The worst part of THAT is that it means we’re likely to do things that prove the case that the ideology of ISIS is trying to make: The US military is The Great Satan. (Again, I want to make clear that i do NOT agree with that ideology.) So both sides keep playing by this tired old script book, and neither is able or willing to admit that our ideologies (and our egos) are what’s really at war.

Blood Will Have Blood, They Say

So how do we fight an ideology? Yeah, I was supposed to answer that. (We’ve been watching “Barton Fink” in Creative Writing, and I’ve been in “circular logic and dodging questions” mode for several days.)

Well, how did we defeat Naziism? I mean, yeah, it’s not dead — scumbags still paint swastikas on things — but it’s got 1% of the life it had in 1935. But the point is: Many people once believed that it would never be abolished. The frenzy in their eyes was too strong. They weren’t human! Same with the Japanese, right? But now we’re all good friends.

Would it take an actual war, like WW2? Even if that were possible (which of course it’s not), ISIS seems like a cockroach in its capacity to survive great physical assault, and keep going. (Heck, the absurd ideology of Wahhabism might even CELEBRATE such a thing.) And besides, I don’t think it takes wars to change ideologies.

But changing ideologies requires empathy, respect (of self and toward others), and compassion. So that guy in Paris explaining to his kid why the flowers are more powerful than the bombs — he’s absolutely correct. (Only in the long term! Kids, do NOT try to stop bullets with chrysanthemums. OH MY VARIOUS GODS! [Futurama, remember that?] I just spelled “chrysanthemum” correctly without looking it up.)

Because if we keep getting kicked in the teeth, and then kicking the other guy in the teeth, and then he gets mad because we just kicked him in the teeth, and so he kicks us in the teeth, and so on.. well, you know. Who kicked who first? Who cares! We go back far enough and it’s Cain vs. Abel (as we all agree, since it’s Old Testament, heh) and it doesn’t matter.

What matters is what we can teach the rest of the world about what it means to be a decent human being. And a decent family. And a decent community. And a decent city or town. And a decent state. And a decent nation. And a decent species. (The Chicago rapper Capital D said: “My father taught me — kid be a man, protect your family / But what if my family is all of humanity?”) THAT’s how you defeat an ideology. The ideology of fascism took a BIG hit from the Marshall plan. People tend to hate you less when you actually help them rebuild. (We haven’t done very well in Afghanistan or Iraq.)

Decent nations don’t ignore the horrors that ISIS is inflicting on its region and (occasionally) on the US and Europe. But decent nations ALSO do NOT ignore the horrors of its own drone strikes, nor do they ignore their moral commitments to the people suffering from war, hunger, poverty, and violence.

I demand a third way. (That’s my ideology, a refusal to accept only two ways of seeing a thing.) I insist that we CAN stand up for the rights of women, men, and children in every nation on Earth, without requiring the perpetuation of a flawed ideology of moral certainty in the form of military action and unenlightened short-term self-interest.

That’s what I think.

I know sometimes it seems like this blog is just a list of recent SynCast episodes, but .. well, I can’t think of a way to finish that sentence. I should write more here, but I guess I feel like I need something special when it’s time to write. Also I’m mad busy! Deal with it.

Anyway, in this episode I reflect on Ferguson, the US midterm elections, the TPP trade agreement, and (of course) fracking. Enjoy!

DS#95: Castrating Pigs on a Urine Comet

Top Links + Action

• Afghan Villagers Say NATO Airstrike Killed 7 Civilians
• Lt. Gen. Dan Bolger on DemocracyNow
• The Police Are Still Out of Control. I should know. by Frank Serpico
• Take Action: Human Rights in Ferguson!

Current Events

• In Texas, Traffic Deaths Climb Amid Fracking Boom
• Pentagon Confirms Islamic State Got U.S. Arms Drop
• The Truth About The Wars
  • FBESP (2008): There is No War in Iraq
• Officer’s Errant Shot Kills Unarmed Brooklyn Man
• Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street problem
• Zephyr Teachout on Bill Moyers

Economics

• Prosecutors suspect repeat offenses on Wall Street
• Lori Wallach: Obama & McConnell Pledge Cooperation; Will Fast-Tracking Secretive TPP Trade Deal Top Their Agenda?
• FTC: AT&T slowed speeds of unlimited data smartphone users

Killer Robots, Etc

• Comet smells like rotten eggs and horse urine

Hip-Hop: Dem Atlas

If a primary purpose of combat fiction is to remind us of the horrors of war, you couldn’t pick a more disturbing setting than the Democratic Republic of Congo. The conflict there has killed five million people, including unspeakable terrors of rape and torture.

It is in the DRC that Lynn Nottage sets her Pulitzer-winning 2009 play Ruined. It holds nothing back from the truth of war, displaying the most inhuman moments of evil and forcing us to confront people at their worst.

But it is a play that is, by design, not pessimistic. It’s not naive or simplistic, but it avoids the trap of pessimism so common to 21st century writers, especially Game of Thrones novelist George RR Martin. (I’ve written about his pessimism before.)

Nottage traveled to the DRC and Uganda with the theatre director Kate Whoriskey. They met women and men who had experienced war in its most hideous manifestations. They saw the psychological, emotional, familial, physical, and spiritual decimation caused by the fighting. They spoke with women whose bodies, minds, and souls had been violated and torn asunder.

And still Nottage wrote a story of hope.

Whoriskey says it perfectly in her introduction to the play:

She decided […] in favor of a structure that was true to our experiences in Uganda. What struck both of us from our trip was that while there was incredible chaos in the region, this was home, and people were determined to survive and build lives here. When the media focuses attention on these areas, they often describe the violence, the poverty and the AIDS crisis. It is rare to hear the full story, the positive alongside the negative.

What was so rich about our trip is that we witnessed great beauty, strength and artistry.

[…] On a different trip to the region, Lynn spoke with a Rwandan about life after the genocide. He said to her, “We must fight to sustain the complexity.” This phrase became a mantra for creating the piece. We did not want to focus solely on the damage but also the hope. […]

Lynn has the gift and genius for looking inside moments of profound disruption, witnessing the chaos, absorbing the psychic damage, and then synthesizing a narrative that shows us we are capable of so much more.

I find no hope in Game of Thrones. I find it to be a story utterly devoid of hope, committed primarily to stylistic innovation (of which it contains plenty) and audience manipulation (which, again, it does well). The fact that Martin cares very little about reflecting the hope we humans so desperately need proves (to me, at least) that he is unwilling to fight to sustain the complexity.

As a result, we don’t get the full story.

It’s been months, but this show is worth the wait. Over two hours of didactic goodness! We’re covering everything from Iraq to Edward Snowden to people pretending to be US Department of Energy spokesmen. Plus — as always — we give you the latest on fracking and high-frequency trading, with a visit from everyone’s favorite cigar-sucking businessman.

Enjoy!

DS#93: The Formula

Top Links

• Amazing Grace: Woman in Iran halts the execution of her son’s murderer
• Video: Glenn Greenwald and Paul Rieckhoff on Real Time with Bill Maher
• Video: Posing as US Officials, Yes Men Announce Renewable Energy Revolution at Homeland Security Congress

Take Action

• Stop the mass executions in Egypt

Current Events

• Video: Neil DeGrasse Tyson on race, gender, science, and society
• The Yes Men
  • DN: Extended interview with the Yes Men
  • Yes Men fake DoE speech
  • Trailer: The Yes Men Fix the World
• Net Neutrality
  • PC World: What it is and why it matters
  • DN: Internet for the 1%
  • The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age (Preface)
• Fracking
  • Feds: West blast was preventable
  • Texas family’s nuisance complaint seen as win against fracking
  • Scientists say tests prove fracking to blame for flaming wells
  • Nat Geo: Scientists warn of quake risk from fracking operations
  • The Guardian: Write-down of two-thirds of US shale oil explodes fracking myth
• Dave Zirin on LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling
• Amazing Grace: Mother of Oklahoma murder victim asks for clemency

Economics

• Millionaire survey: Higher taxes, please
• For the Love of Money
• Strike at Chinese factory supplying Adidas and Nike
• Michael Lewis: “Wall Street has gone insane”
• BW: Companies choose profits over productivity
• Video: Joseph Stiglitz on Tavis Smiley
• Video: William Easterman on Tavis Smiley
• Video: Matt Taibi on DN
• UK “aid” is financing a corporate scramble for Africa
• McDonald’s CEO says We provide “real careers”

Education

• NPR: What is quality pre-K education?
• DN: Jim Crow in the classroom
• ProPublica: Segregation Now
• InBloom shuts down amid concerns over privacy

Killer Robots, Etc

• Google’s Robot-Buying Binge
• The Bureau of Investigative Journalism: Covert Drone War
• Glenn Greenwald describes Edward Snowden’s background and why he leaked the NSA documents
• BW: The Flu tricked Google. Can Wikipedia do better?
• AdWeek: Waiting in line: You’re stupid
• Trailer: Drone: The Movie
• Pepper the robot knows when you’re sad, will give you a hug

Hip-Hop

I’m postponing the discussion of hip-hop for a special episode coming soon. Stay tuned!