Book It, M!

Madame M,

Am always up for a summer of books!  Will follow whatever line you take!  You don’t  make this easy, as I have a lot competing in my head, lol.  [Ten?!!!  How can I choose just ten? J]

Okay, here goes.  For the “favorites off the top of head” list, also in no particular order (I’ve taken the liberty of mentioning as one books that go together):

Homeland and Exile, both by R.A. Salvatore.  A fantasy story of a good and honorable master swordsman raised in a society of unending evil, and the deep and epic insights.

The Greatest Miracle in the World, by Og Mandino.  The story of Simon Potter the ragpicker, and his influence on Augustine Mandino through the God Memorandum.

Embraced By The Light, by Betty Eadie.  A vivid near-death experience, and one of hope.

I Can’t Accept Not Trying,  and For The Love of the Game, both by Michael Jordan.  One of history’s greatest athletes—and maybe its greatest competitor—in telling his story relates to the rest of us what real success usually requires.

A Man Called Peter, by Catherine Marshall.  The story of Scottish immigrant Peter Marshall, Preacher Extraordinaire and a mighty man of God, who preached what are maybe the best sermons since Jesus (some of which are included in the book).

A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, by Robert Olen Butler.  Stories of Vietnamese immigrants.  A way to look at the world, and a deep richness, that belies all the stupid simplistic talk.  If you’re going to read only one book about Vietnam, this is the one to read to have any hope of beginning to truly understand Vietnam.

Things Fall Apart, by Chinhua Achebe.   The classic African-written novel of village tribesmen in pre-colonial Nigeria—and the incredible insights into humanity.

Oil!  Upton Sinclair’s masterpiece novel of socialists, capitalism, the auto civilization, the fossil fuels industry, and more.

Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.  Lester Brown’s masterful work of just that.  By no means just an environmental book.

Conan 1, by Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague deCamp, and Lin Carter.  The truest and best barbarian, with scant resemblance to the movies.

A veritable riot is taking place in my head right now.  The clamour from those that did not make the cut is that loud! J

A Summer of Books

Professor J,

We are launching into our summer lounge fest? Oh, thank goodness. I'm exhausted. We need to restore our reserves since we are headed into an election year. It never really ends anymore though, does it?

So to introduce summer (which I wasn't trying to do in my last post, but okay) I'm listing ten favorite books. That sounded easy at first, a cop out almost, but then questions arose about which books to include.

Best summer reads? Most influential? Most beloved? In the end I decided not to get too bogged down but to just list the first ones that came to mind when I thought about it. Here they are in no particular order. I really couldn't bear to have to rank them.

1. Les Miserables. For so many reasons, too many to list.

2. To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus Finch is pretty much the perfect man.

3. Beau Geste. Just so much fun. You can't beat a good adventure.

4. The Chronicles of Narnia. Some of my favorite memories are of reading these aloud to my daughter.  (Yes, I know that technically this is seven, this is my list and these are my rules)

5. Gone With the Wind. Scarlett is a far more complex character than in the film. It's actually a coming of age tale.

6. Auntie Mame. Because I laughed all the way through. Out loud.

7. Jane Eyre. Every girl needs a fictional heroine. 

8. Little Women. Which I never read as a child but it's another beautiful memory of reading aloud
    to the kids. More heroines. Charming ones.

9. The Firm. So many Memphis references. Such a fun read, when no one knew who John Grisham was.
 

10. Slaughterhouse Five. Vonnegut was the man.

Hmmm...now I'm thinking I could have done a list of classics, or children's books, or my favorite thrillers. And of course now that I'm done I've thought of fifty more titles but these were the first ten off the top of my head as promised.

Are you up for a summer of books? Best thriller? Most life changing? Best plot twist? Most beloved character?  Most heartbreaking? Most hilarious?

And yes, War and Peace is still lurking about unfinished. :)

Tidy Up Decisions

Madame,

A great summer story!

Before we take our traditional summer soiree into lighter fare, let me “tidy up the place,” so to speak.

The Supreme Court handed down what were termed surprise decisions this week.  One essentially refused to give credence to a ridiculous argument about the Affordable Care Act, and the other removed restrictions on homosexuals legally marrying.

While there is much that can and should be celebrated, let us peer through the curtain a bit:

The Supreme Court threatened (by taking the cases) to do something that could have had strongly negative consequences for a lot of people.  It is a victory these days when they…don’t do it.

The little secret in Washington, leaked by more than a few credible sources, is that Republican Congressional leaders, and even many Republican presidential candidates, wanted (lobbied hard, albeit indirectly) John Roberts especially and his court in general to make the right decision, which he/they did.  Those “leaders” knew that they had no plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, and that it would be a political rebound disaster on them to have it gutted.  Their emergency contingency plan, that they worked feverishly on while awaiting the decision, was, if it had been gutted, to declare a 2 year continuation while they worked on something. 

Why, you or readers might ask?  Because Obamacare is, with some minor (albeit irritating to them) tweaks, their (the Republicans, from the Heritage Foundation) plan.  Opposing it via lippage and ineffectual measures serves their ends well however.  They like to whip up the suckers that comprise so much of their unthinking base and keep them distracted with it, because it serves their ends, but they know they have no substitution that would be anything but politically harmful to them.

Although there is less evidence concerning the other decision, much of the same rationale applies.  Few things, as demonstrated by the lightning-rod Indiana law against homosexuals, whip up their opponents’ supporters more effectively than gender-preference discrimination.  They know they only have a chance of winning the presidency and retaining control of Congress, given the change in demographics, if their opponents’ numerous  but flighty/hot and cold varying supporters stay home.   If those supporters think that things are “trending” in the “correct” direction, there is a very good chance they will lose focus and not turn out. 

Our food “system” is now so suspect on so many levels that merely making “good choices” is not a suitable mantra.  When 2/3rds of Americans are now overweight or obese, and obesity is showing up in younger and younger (and more of them) individuals, how can it be that they are all such sluggards?  Well, they all aren’t.  The system, by much evidence, appears stacked against them.  Many, MANY more people are gaining weight and feeling terrible, and one can no longer ascribe all of it merely to poor life choices, as there are systemic contributors that transcend most individual control.  In fact, it almost makes one want to believe the consipiracists:  That the plutocrats are deliberately enervating all but the upper class  and those that serve that class in order to, over the long term, create a sparsely populated, feudalistic society that is neither threat to the planet, nor, more importantly, a threat to them and their descendants.

While I’m not sure about that, I am in strongly questioning mode, and will be thinking about this a good deal.

Dang it, now I’m going to enjoy that 4^th of July hot dog a great deal less now! J

I Am and You Are

Madame,

Spending being good for the economy speechmaking has been around since at least Keynesian economic days of the Great Depression, but its tone was generally muted and occasional, although the rise of the expanded consumer economy in the 1950s began to change that.   In the late 1970s and early 1980s, spurred on by the ravages of inflation, but also by the surging strength of the plutocrats, such talk became more open, direct, and frequent.

You are right that beginning in the 1980s (although the 1970s had given it a boost), fewer families lived within their means.  While much of this had to do with the absurd phenomenon of  “Affluenza” (to use the name of a good book), where people spent to meet some ridiculous hyped-up “standard” set up by Madison Avenue and others, an increasing majority, unfortunately, came about because wages simply weren’t keeping up—and at the same time that even more burdens were being thrown on the individual/individual family.

Your points about interns are so appropriate.  The exploitative mentality has now infected most of the big companies, and even many big institutions.  The exploiters keep harping to the field, to the workers, to sacrifice and quit thinking about fairness and money, and instead serve the company/country and sacrifice “or everything will fail.”  The cruel irony that the best compensated, best treated, most privileged at the top are exhorting the least compensated, worst treated, and least privileged to do more calls to mind that very S word you mention.  Thus living out the worst aspect of robber-baron capitalism: How to get the most work out of the workers while paying them the least.

But despair is enervating.  Readers are suggested instead to watch a documentary called, “I Am.”  Everyday acts—even small acts—can change things over time.  Building up, over time, a consciousness that brings change.  Realizing that accumulation beyond your needs is probably a form of mental illness.  That nothing in nature really takes more than it reasonably needs.   That only aberrations do that.  Cancers do that.

G.K. Chesterton  is credited, when asked  by the most famous paper in Britain what was wrong with the world, as simply replying, “I am.”

The documentary maker—a rich and once high flying Hollywood filmmaker—says to us that can also be our answer when asked what is right with the world.

Readers can find out more at: http://www.iamthedoc.com/

Be Brave and Spend

Professor J,

The picture you paint, all too realistically I fear, is grim. And then I got all the way to the bottom of the post and saw that you have come to the same conclusion as me. Bernie Sanders is the only person running who is even bothering to address any of the real issues in an honest way. Bet you never thought you'd hear me say that! Socialist Smocialist.

Is it just me or is the entire Republican party leftover from an 80s frat house? Donald Trump's announcement seemed like the rich father who shows up and instead of trying to bring about order offers to buy kegs for the next party. It would all be laughable if it weren't alternately sad and terrifying. The Dems don't impress me much either but Sanders and Warren (if she would run) look like sensible grownups who have an understanding of how the world works and how scary and dangerous that makes it.

I'm not surprised at all to hear about the abysmal savings and for all the reasons that you point out. I can remember saving being a big thing to my parents and other adults when I was a kid. Then in the 80s something shifted and the appearance of affluence, name brand products and certain labels on clothes seemed to become inordinately important. Fewer families lived within their means and went without the extras to save. And we began to hear about how good spending was for the economy. I'd be interested to know when that kind of terminology came into political speech. This idea of spending in frivolous things being almost our patriotic duty. We remember the worst example after 9/11, of course but it was programmed in previously. Be brave and go shopping.

So we did. The Millenials have wised up a bit more than their parents thanks to the recession, but as you point out, the system is failing. The system is rigged and unbeatable under the current circumstances.

And people don't see solutions. They certainly don't see politicians who offer up solutions. It's just more of the same. The same tired ideas. The same phony candidates. The same feeling that there isn't any real choice. The realization that no change is coming. Voluntarily by those in power, anyway.

I found this article this week that I thought was telling, Goldman Sachs tells Interns to Take it Easy and Only Work 17 Hours a Day.

Corporations have really hit a gold mine with internships which, according to this article, do not tend to lead to jobs. Is it just me or has the idea of internship exploded? I can remember when being an intern meant that you were going to be a doctor but now every corporation has scores of minions that they don't have to pay or give benefits to. And just like the actual employees of these businesses the attitude is that no one can question it, because, you are so lucky to be there.

But back to the GS article. We'd call it slavery anywhere else. But this is the mindset we've created and the values we've embraced. More. Bigger. Shinier. Better than the next guy. At any cost.

How Close To The Bottom Do We Have To Go?

Madame,

Even if we manage to avoid a Great Recession/Great Depression type calamity, few are ready for the looming “Retiremageddon.”

Retirement is a relatively modern invention to accommodate much longer life expectancy.  Its invention rested on a three legged stool:  1) pensions companies and governments set up (defined benefit),  the largest piece; 2) individual savings (defined contributions, sometimes assisted), the next largest piece, and 3) Social Security, the smallest piece. 

In the 1970s and 1980s the assault on pensions was intensified for misleading reasons I might detail in another post.  Today,  the war of annihilation on pensions is nearly complete.  Few have them anymore and they are often being modified or eliminated (at least for new employees).

That left retirement to somehow make it on two legs, even though stools don’t make it on two legs.  Not to worry, the plutocratic misleaders told us.  Companies would “match” all sorts of savings, and the government would even give economic incentive to save.  What they failed to tell everyone was that, despite great increases in productivity (the profits from which went to a few), wages would almost certainly not keep up, leaving little to save.  And that each individual would also become responsible for more and more things, and thus further be able to save even less and less.

Contributing to the misleading discourse have been the financial idiots who are always blathering on that they wish they could “opt out” of their pension (for those few lucky enough to have one) or Social Security and “keep that money for myself.”  Those suckers are the financial equivalents of the voters who keep voting against their economic interests.  Like them, they have bought in to a philosophy where it is all too easy to exploit the individual.

An individual has so little economic power, even on occasions when they might have a little financial savvy.  They can’t command the economic clout that big institutions can.  And so, consequently, they don’t get the same financial returns, even when fees are small, which they rarely are.  What’s worse, individuals get hammered and exploited in the upswings and downswings of the market, let alone the crashes.  They have little to no protection against inflation either.  And that’s even if they don’t get outright ripped off by a financial industry that purposely complicates and confuses things to prey on ignorance and take advantage of greed.

A generation that bought the 401k, IRA, etc. “promise” is about to discover some pretty harsh truths.  When the money—for those frugal and lucky enough to have some saved—runs out, the wailing will begin.  What am I talking about?  Read on, readers!

According a March 2015 study, among households on the verge of supposed retirement, the median retirement account balance is…less than $15,000.  Not the yearly income one could expect from the “investments,”  but the total BALANCE.  Over 60% of American working households aged 55-64 don’t even have a total retirement savings sum that even equals ONE YEAR of their annual income.

And what of the formerly 3^rd  (now 2^nd) leg of this weak stool?  Social Security replaces, percentage wise, the greatest amount for lower-income earners.  Yet at most that is 40% of one’s annual income—and that’s for low income earners.  If they can barely make it now on 100% of their income, they sure aren’t going to make it on 40%.  For middle income earners, the prospects are even bleaker, with Social Security replacing at most around 15-35%. 

But even that is uncertain now.  The plutocratic (and their shills/politicians) assault against Social Security is relentless—and increasing.  The lies being spread against one of the most successful social responsibility institutions ever devised are repeated over and over because the plutocrats—and the media they control—know that a lie endlessly repeated gets believed.

Our disengagements from being informed and being involved mean we presently live in a plutocratic oligarchy with the veneer of a democratic republic and the last remaining vestiges of social responsibility.   The vast majority of Americans are poorer, more stressed, more insecure, see fewer opportunities, and see most of the economic trends going in the wrong direction, even though they strongly disagree on causes and solutions.  Their educational systems and infrastructure are either crumbling or starving for real investment, even when people don’t recognize the plutocratic withholding about all that.  Somewhere in the back of their minds, they suspect that all this debt—personal, business, government—is due to fundamental weakness, that things aren’t making it, once again even when they don’t recognize the plutocratic withholding that contributes strongly to that.  They fret about health care—the number one cause of bankruptcy—regardless of what “side” they are on.  They know the tax code is unfairly tilted away from them and toward the already rich.  They realize how corrupted and ineffectual the so-called “elites” have become.  They feel helpless against giant, rich, powerful entities that do what they want and face no real consequences from us.  They probably suspect at some level that our priorities are all off, that maybe we shouldn’t have a giant, ravenous, corrupting military-private sector-security-intelligence resource sink, and one used in perpetual conflicts that sink resources even more—and change us for the worse, maybe Orwellian-like.   They may see—or experience—freakish weather catastrophes, droughts, or floods, may even agree with scientists that we are changing the climate for the worse.

Then they blank it all out.  Or latch on to some minor thing.  Or simplistically lay blame on one (usually wrong) cause—and usually with some equally wrong “solution.”

Thus leaving the problems to the few activists—and to the power of money.  Leaving it to others (including their descendants) to deal with, let alone try to solve.

While the battering rams of our failures to meet our problems thunder at our doors, our response so far is only to turn up the volume louder on our electronic and other diversions.  This mass denial, if it continues, will be—rightly—judged harshly and venomously by future generations.  Instead of The Greatest Generation, we will be known as The Failure Generation, The Despised Generation, The Contemptible Generation.  Unless we quit diverting and “amusing ourselves to death” in Neil Postman’s apt words,  we will, like opiate addicts and lotus eaters, still be diverted when the problems break through and finish us.

Every day we don’t arrest our descent is future pain—deep, agonizing, lengthy pain—for ourselves and our descendants.

GD, we can do so much better.  I for one don’t want to be despised by the future.

And yes, I realize that, except for the last few paragraphs, I sound surprisingly similar to Bernie Sanders.  What a pity the man has no power base, no team of best and brightest, no movement to sweep with him into office in state and national legislatures.  Without that, any effectiveness of his would be greatly reduced.  Even a year and a half is not enough time for anything except near-total people power to overcome the many (and deliberate) roadblocks and transform the political scene.  It takes a lengthy effort, not some relatively brief and emotional one.  

It requires a continually engaged public.  One not in evidence so far.

Listen To Sebastian Unger

Madame,

That Jon Stewart piece is not only brilliant about sexism, but has a brilliant dissection of US Middle East “policy.”

How interesting (ironic?) for our discussion that Vanity Fair not only has the Jenner cover, but also brings us a truly brilliant piece on connection.  Sebastian Unger has written what is all too rare in American navel-gazing:  a look into some of the prices of our individuality—and our disconnection.  He points out prime reasons why it is so hard for combat vets to “adjust back” to American society.

“One could say that combat vets are the White Indians of today, and that they miss the war because it was, finally, an experience of human closeness that they can't easily find back home. Not the closeness of family, which is rare enough, but the closeness of community and tribe. The kind of closeness that gets endlessly venerated in Hollywood movies but only actually shows up in contemporary society when something goes wrong-when tornados obliterate towns or planes are flown into skyscrapers. Those events briefly give us a reason to act communally, and most of us do. ‘There is something to be said for using risk to forge social bonds,’ Abramowitz pointed out. ‘Having something to fight for, and fight through, is a good and important thing.’”

How many times have we attained, then lost, that closeness with our fellow citizens?  Whether it was helping to shore up a levee as waters rose, or knocking on doors after a terrible ice storm, we remember how good we felt working together to accomplish something.  We weren’t harping on each other’s differences, or pointing out faults, or retreating back into our enclaves, but instead were…connecting.  And when it was “over,” we felt a sense of…loss.  Unger continues:

“Certainly, the society we have created is hard on us by virtually every metric that we use to measure human happiness. This problem may disproportionately affect people, like soldiers, who are making a radical transition back home.

In America, the more assimilated a person is into contemporary society, the more likely he or she is to develop depression in his or her lifetime. According to a 2004 study in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Mexicans born in the United States are highly assimilated into American culture and have much higher rates of depression than Mexicans born in Mexico. By contrast, Amish communities have an exceedingly low rate of reported depression because, in part, it is theorized, they have completely resisted modernization. They won't even drive cars. ‘The economic and marketing forces of modern society have engineered an environment promoting decisions that maximize consumption at the long-term cost of well-being,’ one survey of these studies, from the Journal of Affective Disorders in 2012, concluded. ‘In effect, humans have dragged a body with a long hominid history into an overfed, malnourished, sedentary, sunlight-deficient, sleep-deprived, competitive, inequitable and socially-isolating environment with dire consequences.’"

And still we don’t want to look at ourselves and what we’ve become?  Still want to thump our empty chests?  Still want to say how “great” is “American exceptionalism?”  That the individual is the all?  More Unger:

“In the 1970s, American mothers maintained skin-to-skin contact with their nine-month-old babies as little as 16 percent of the time, which is a level of contact that traditional societies would probably consider a form of child abuse. Also unthinkable would be the common practice of making young children sleep by themselves in their own room. In two American studies of middle-class families during the 1980s, 85 percent of young children slept alone-a figure that rose to 95 percent among families considered ‘well-educated.’ Northern European societies, including America, are the only ones in history to make very young children sleep alone in such numbers. The isolation is thought to trigger fears that make many children bond intensely with stuffed animals for reassurance. Only in Northern European societies do children go through the well-known developmental stage of bonding with stuffed animals; elsewhere, children get their sense of safety from the adults sleeping near them.

Many soldiers will tell you that one of the hardest things about coming home is learning to sleep without the security of a group of heavily armed men around them. In that sense, being in a war zone with your platoon feels safer than being in an American suburb by yourself. I know a vet who felt so threatened at home that he would get up in the middle of the night to build fighting positions out of the living-room furniture. This is a radically different experience from what warriors in other societies go through, such as the Yanomami, of the Orinoco and Amazon Basins, who go to war with their entire age cohort and return to face, together, whatever the psychological consequences may be. As one anthropologist pointed out to me, trauma is usually a group experience, so trauma recovery should be a group experience as well. But in our society it's not.”

And instead of realizing the fundamental importance, and of taking the time for the deep examination to get truly better, we reach for the illusion of easy.  Unger gets to central portions of our failure:

"'Our whole approach to mental health has been hijacked by pharmaceutical logic,' I was told by Gary Barker, an anthropologist whose group, Promundo, is dedicated to understanding and preventing violence. ‘PTSD is a crisis of connection and disruption, not an illness that you carry within you.’

This individualizing of mental health is not just an American problem, or a veteran problem; it affects everybody. A British anthropologist named Bill West told me that the extreme poverty of the 1930s and the collective trauma of the Blitz served to unify an entire generation of English people. ‘I link the experience of the Blitz to voting in the Labour Party in 1945, and the establishing of the National Health Service and a strong welfare state,’ he said. ‘Those policies were supported well into the 60s by all political parties. That kind of cultural cohesiveness, along with Christianity, was very helpful after the war. It's an open question whether people's problems are located in the individual. If enough people in society are sick, you have to wonder whether it isn't actually society that's sick.’”

Notice that it is anthropologists, and often foreign ones at that, who have to do our deep thinking and true self-examining.  Not psychologists, or MDs, or social scientists, not even historians.

And our fighting of wars by the professional class, with most of the society disconnected from the experience and any effects, is symptomatic of our disconnection.  And undoubtedly why we pursue violence, in ill-considered fashion, in too many places, for misty objectives and even mistier reasons.

“According to Shalev, the closer the public is to the actual combat, the better the war will be understood and the less difficulty soldiers will have when they come home. The Israelis are benefiting from what could be called the shared public meaning of a war. Such public meaning-which would often occur in more communal, tribal societies-seems to help soldiers even in a fully modern society such as Israel. It is probably not generated by empty, reflexive phrases-such as "Thank you for your service"-that many Americans feel compelled to offer soldiers and vets. If anything, those comments only serve to underline the enormous chasm between military and civilian society in this country.”

There are few REAL community bonding ceremonies for combat veterans.  If there were, we would know truth—and we could get real healing and re-connection for our combat vets who often feel so lost:

“Some vets will be angry, some will be proud, and some will be crying so hard they can't speak. But a community ceremony like that would finally return the experience of war to our entire nation, rather than just leaving it to the people who fought.

It might also begin to re-assemble a society that has been spiritually cannibalizing itself for generations. We keep wondering how to save the vets, but the real question is how to save ourselves. If we do that, the vets will be fine. If we don't, it won't matter anyway.”

Incredibly well said, Mr. Unger.  Readers, I highly recommend the whole article, and it should be one of the required pieces we begin with to…begin to reconnect.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/05/ptsd-war-home-sebastian-junger

Drowning in Disconnected Silence

Madame,

It is indeed “a sad forgery and misrepresentation.”  America’s image to the rest of the world, let alone to itself, keeps getting more and more perverted, to our collective detriment.

Our atomization as society means in some respects we don’t have A society, per se, but at best a collection of sub-societies, and at worst seas of individuals with occasional common preferences. These sub-societies often exist in a kind of uncaring/unconcerned toleration, but only occasional “acceptance,” and some are hostile to each other or even to all others.

Far, FAR too many of us can readily retreat into comforting and deceiving echo chambers of sycophants and unthinking fellow “believers” (about whatever it is—politics, religion, social relations, subjugation of nature, etc.).  If we were instead connected, we would have to stand before fellow citizens and have the blinders removed.

Abuse becomes common in disconnection.   Simultaneous catalyst, consequence, and byproduct, abuse manifests itself (and surges) via arrogance, by the brutalized becoming the brutalizing (the odds of the oldest Duggar boy having himself been abused at some point is probably better than even), by impunity, by sub-cultural toleration and defense, by denial.

And so we get a culture where a 12 year old boy with an obviously toy gun is massacred by police in less than 2 seconds—and no consequences.  Where the same police force sprays 125 bullets into a car where 2 unarmed people die inside—indeed, where one cop stands on the hood of the car to empty his weapon—and all are acquitted.   And then, in colossal and cruel gall, those same officers sue the department for…discrimination.   

This is a system that believes itself immune to consequences, that need not concern itself with what any “public” might think. 

Such disconnection.

It’s 50 years later and “The Sound of Silence” still rings with poignancy at how we don’t connect with each other.

It’s not that we haven’t made progress in some things; we certainly have.    It’s that so much of our progress has been stained or wiped away by the regressions or intensifications of our drawbacks and failings.  We have, in Black Widow’s words, too much “red on our ledger.”

And it’s dragging us down.  I have much more to say on this subject, but will pause for now!

Reality Skewed

Professor J,

You'll recall that a couple of weeks ago I posted about an uncomfortable church service I attended. This week the blogosphere exploded with a related story that everyone has probably heard about unless on a strict digital detox of some sort. Even if one doesn't watch much television it would have been pretty difficult to keep from hearing about the Duggars, their 19 children, and their show on TLC. 

I bring it up here because it conveniently brings together for us several topics we've discussed recently and can serve as a microcosm for things we see in society. For readers who may be completely unfamiliar with them the Duggars are fundamentalist, home schooling, adherents to the Quiverfull Movement. They are friends of, and campaign for Mike Huckabee and regularly take stands against the LGBT community. So last week when it was revealed that the oldest son, Josh, had sexually molested 5 girls (including his own sisters) the backlash was swift and loud.

As happens so often in modern American culture we see the "party" lines split just as we'd expect. There's the side that thinks since JD is sorry and his parents provided "counseling" that all should be forgiven and everyone is just being mean or that the Duggars are being persecuted for their beliefs. On the other side we have the people who want the show cancelled and possibly all the minors placed in protective custody while DHS does a full investigation. Did I mention that he was 14 when the events took place and that there's been no apparent misconduct since then? Certainly nothing that would indicate that the behavior is ongoing. The religious right just cannot understand the level of vitriol being hurled in the direction of this sweet family from Arkansas.

That's the problem. 

Nothing is more infuriating than hypocrisy. The right doesn't seem to get that. To the outside world this just looks like another case of the hyper-religious conservatives saying one thing and then doing something else. Getting caught. Asking forgiveness. Politicians. Mega-church leaders. Conservative celebrities. It's a long list and while Christianity is based on forgiveness, which we are reminded of when these scenarios happen, the world outside the church doors wants to know where that same forgiveness is for others. Many bloggers and tweeters this week asked the excellent question--what if he'd molested his brothers? Would the parents have been so hasty to cover it up and then stand by him? Would the little brother (s) have been told to get over it and trotted out to smile for the cameras at their father's campaign events (he has been a state rep) and the family's reality TV show?

This entire scenario reminds me of the Republican debate in the last election primary. Rick Santorum (another Duggar favorite) explained in one of his responses that the reasons Muslim extremists hate America is because of our freedom, democracy, blah, blah, blah. Ron Paul in his turn made the point that explaining things that way is simplistic and dishonest. They hate us because of our foreign policy. They hate us because of the way our government interacts with them. The religious right has the same problem but they don't see it. Are they hated because of their beliefs or how they relate to others? If everyone on the outside just hates Christianity in general and Bible believing Christians in particular then how do we explain the respect of a figure like Mother Theresa among the religious and secular alike?

Because unlike what we hear from the RR average people actually do know what Jesus taught and recognize it when they see it. How sad for all of us that it is seen so rarely. What is offered up instead is a sad forgery and misrepresentation, then dismay and anger when we are called on it.

Maybe They Need Heard Too

Madame,

“Lots of people tend to think of our problems in little compartments that don't affect anything else. It may be our fatal mistake.”

Well said.  You keep spinning the gold!

Our blind and often destructive bludgeoning of nature to force it to do our will is meeting the lack of wisdom we have exercised in that force of will.  Various short-term tasks or challenges we “successfully” address blow back on us with consequences we have chosen to not foresee. As just the honeybees example demonstrates, we can probably dispense with the sapiens sapiens part of our species classification.  Maybe even the sapiens part entirely!

Or maybe we should just auto-exclude America, as we seem to lead the charge into unwise behavior—and our behavior then manifests into 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th order effects across the rest of the world.  Yes, yes, there is much wrong in the world that is not a result of America’s actions and inactions, but the America-can-do-no-wrong crowd are injurious fools for failing to acknowledge where we have gone and do go rogue.

We know why many of us refuse to acknowledge reality, or worse, distort it or allow others to distort it for us:  “Reexamination of basic assumptions temporarily destabilizes our cognitive and interpersonal world, releasing large quantities of basic anxiety.  Rather than tolerating such anxiety levels, we tend to want to perceive the events around us as congruent with our assumptions, even if that means distorting, denying, projecting, or in other ways falsifying to ourselves what may be going on around us.” Edgar H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership.

I see and hear many angry statements from the above crowd. Are those statements not in most cases the result of anxiety? Anxiety that deep down they know something is off and maybe wrong, that their world-view is not consistent, that the world is changing in many ways, that their previously established “standard order” is transforming and they’re not ready for it to do so, that despite supporting the views and policies they have that things are not getting better and in fact are getting worse?  Are they not people who do not know what their place in the world might become, but in any case are fearful that it might not be a good place—at least not as good as what they’ve become accustomed to?

Is there a way to reach out to them in their anxiety?  And, especially, is there a way for those who will collectively become the new majority to reach out to them?  To acknowledge their fear, the anger, the anxiety, the division, and then try to transcend it?  That maybe if we acknowledge that we hear their anxiety, that we can then address its roots and have healthy, healing conversations about all that?  Or is this vocal quarter so resolutely, blindly, destructively on the wrong side of history that the tide of history must simply wash them aside until they are ready to swim with it?

I think we as society should be strongly seeking to answer the above.

Your ideas for positive, empowering action should be heeded by all.  The depressive assault must be combatted, and people must empower themselves to the greatest extent—the various political and economic and institutional systems out there are rarely if ever going to do it. 

Seeing “Tomorrowland” might help a bit.  No spoiler alerts here though! :)

Connect Or Die

Madame M:

I did not know.  Thanks for the education!  How very many things there have been throughout history that have been subverted and perverted away from the originator’s intent.  Thinking about that makes me wonder how likely it would be that my Independence Week idea could be corrupted in much the same way.

You and I have not met in person in quite a while now, and we are both not the richer for it!  If we feel that way, how much the letter writers from the days of difficult and long travel must have felt it even more.

When the female bees demonstrate social and economic cooperation, amazing how much easier and more satisfying things seem to be.  In the book The White, which I mentioned once before, a similar phenomenon was demonstrated among the Native American women, of whose society the white woman had become part of.  She contrasted it with the hectic, overworked, highly stressed life her white mother had lived in the hyper-individualistic society of her youth.  When are we going to be ready to take our lesson?  Our good friends the Scandinavians have demonstrated that one does not have to give up one’s individualism to live in a cooperative society.

Yes, we need men and women of calm and reason in aggrieved and put-upon communities.  But as you rightly intimate, if we just end only with our very, VERY large expectation—that the repressed and victimized swallow their emotions and not “get out of hand” or “go violent”—then we will have selfishly, arrogantly, compassionlessly failed to be siblings to our fellow human beings.

What’s more, we will be self-blind to the intricate pattern we are ourselves woven into.  Because just like about environmental responsibility, in social and economic responsibility, we keep thinking there can be an “away.”

But sooner or later, there isn’t.  The social and economic injustice we inflict, or even that we permit or look the other way and deny about, has a way of coming back to haunt us.  Even if we don’t make the connection.  The brutalized, the marginalized, the communities nearly sucked dry of hope, the young with no real opportunity, the lack of ever growing up safe or getting to feel safe, the ever-present racism (both overt and subtle) that infects law enforcement and society both like an angry poison—how dangerously foolish we are to think that all that can be contained or quarantined. 

Things spill out, spill over, spread.  Those with few options and little to lose are a powder keg of hostile variability.   It happens in the Middle East, and it happens right here. 

Except we keep missing the connections.  That actions and lack of actions have consequences, sometimes delayed years or decades, but consequences nonetheless.  Robbery, drugs, kidnappings, violence, death, to name just a few.  Where there is little or no justice, there is no peace.  Where there is little or no fairness, there is no tranquility.  Where there is marked economic inequality, there is no sustainability.

Connection may be our only hope.  We need—desperately—to reconnect with each other. 

Because the alternative is, for both us individually and as society, literally killing us.

Communities Large and Small

Professor J,

Thanks for the good wishes for Mother's Day. It's a holiday I have a love/hate relationship with, much like Valentine's Day. Something in me dislikes having feelings manipulated. "Feel this emotion today! Oh and let us sell you a nine dollar card." Guilt and obligation are the last two reasons I'd want to receive anything. My kids always make the day lovely and I appreciate it but they know it's not expected. They turned out to be wonderful adults and that is the best gift every day of the year. You probably know that the woman responsible for the day spent the second part of her life trying to get it rescinded when she saw what it became once the card companies and florists got a hold of it.

Your new preamble was brilliant and funny and sad.

As to our "struggling" I think sometimes we find ourselves in the weeds by parsing words or opinions too carefully. Unfortunately this happens because we are at the disadvantage of not being able to use  the ninety percent or so of communication that is non-verbal in these discussions. It would all be so much less tedious across a table wouldn't it? But this is the available medium and so we forge on. Correcting, redefining, clarifying.

Community policing: It's easy to see how well that might work. We saw it in Baltimore to some extent when the community pulled together to clean up after the initial riots and looting and the next night when we saw citizens form a line and lock arms between protesters who may or may not have turned violent and the police line. Vietnam veteran Robert Valentine stepped forward to tell young rioters to go home. He was a dignified but firm voice exhibiting love for his city and earning respect in the process. We desperately need men like that to be the voice of calm and reason in their own neighborhoods as well as communicate the concerns of citizens with authorities and work toward solutions. More than anything else, people who feel powerless want to know they are heard. There has to be some validation of their concerns before any real action or change can take place.

It would be helpful if our city leaders, community leaders, and police departments could forge alliances and keep communication ongoing instead of waiting for the powder keg to erupt. 

Could the 2016 election actually be more Clintons and Bushes? It's like a scab that won't heal. One that's indicative of a worse condition.

I've got a hopeful candidate picked out but it's early yet. 

 You rightly point out that the worker bees are female. Something interesting that I've noticed in the hives is that, though they are famously hard workers and known for being busy, those workers actually spend quite a bit of time resting and hanging out. Sometimes literally on the front of the hive in hot weather in a phenomenon called bearding. The take away lesson is that when they work they do so in such an efficient and cooperative way that the time spent not working does no harm and surely prolongs their lives which are very short during summer. We can imagine the tremendous benefits among humans if work were carried out this way.

But those are the females. Drones lumber around consuming valuable resources and waiting to mate with a virgin queen that might show up. I've been on the watch for a tiny little bee bar (serving meade no doubt) hidden in the hive with a tiny flat screen TV but haven't found it yet. :)

That Quarter

Madame M:

First, let me wish you and all mothers a great Mother’s Day!

Second, let me thank you for covering for me while overload was upon me.

There is as usual, entirely SO much that needs to be talked about in just the American landscape, let alone elsewhere, and that doesn’t even take into consideration all the points I need to address while you’ve had the soapbox solo the last three postings!  I will try mightily to restrain and focus in order that some faint measure of brevity can be attained!

To cover a bit of previous before addressing your recent post:  1) I was not aware we had been “struggling,” but maybe that’s the surest sign, lol, 2) if we had been, your “Digging For Answers” post came through and bulls-eyed it superbly (prime exhibit #1: “We ask people to live under impoverished conditions while pressing their faces up against the glass of wealth and privilege. Then we just can't imagine what all the anger is about”), 3) The “Digging For Answers” post needs to be taught nearly verbatim as part of a lesson in a university social science class, 4) Plan B, the book, listed some correctives to the disconnection that design of our American cities brings, 5) answer to your question:  Community Policing.  It has worked and does work better than anything when it is implemented earnestly (including when police and citizens sit down in relaxed and informal settings), and can work (and has worked in specific instances) in this large country precisely because law enforcement in America still retains large measures of de-centralization,  6) all efforts at law enforcement reform are made harder inside a plutocratic political-economy and widespread poverty, 7) how interesting that the worker bees you illustrate in your Rethink Community post, the cooperative engines of bee society, are female.

As to your post, I see we have swung the pendulum to full agreement, and I am sparked to add some things.

We the undiscerning, mindless robots of tragic failure, in order to perpetuate a more dysfunctional disunion, foment injustice, ensure domestic discontent, feed the devouring military-surveillance-fear-repression consortium, ignore the general Welfare, eviscerate the environment, and undermine the foundations of Liberty to ourselves and our descendants, do hereby disestablish preservation, protection, and defense of the Constitution of 1787 in favor of a vague and misty imaginary one we cannot articulate but still“know“ is being “threatened” by those we choose as ideological enemies.

I came up with that after reading your quite on-target “rant.”

Thomas Frank,  born in the heart of America in Kansas City, has chronicled very well the infuriating and frustrating phenomenon you/we relate.  In his books, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule; Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right; and his most famous one, What’s The Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, he details what has happened.  For those who have not yet read his books, just going to the Wikipedia entry on him will give you some quotes from them that can be instructive.

Kansas has, in the 10+ years since he wrote the book, become even a deeper example.  It has a governor and legislature so in tune with ideological extreme (and demonstrated failure) policy that Kansas has gone into economic and governmental dire straits.  And what was once an educational system that ranked in the top third in the nation has been shredded.

A plutocratic political-economy takes three broad groups, and that’s precisely what we have:  1) The enormously wealthy individuals and corporations.  These are the true rulers.  They are the plutocrats.  2) Their mouthpieces/shills/politicians and other paid or sponsored henchmen.  These are the otherwise “powerful” that have been purchased or forced through money and influence to make the system work for the plutocrats—and to gum it up so that it can’t work against them.  3) the emotionally manipulated (emotions—often false ones—of fear, disgruntlement, resentment, anxiety, greed, distrust, racial “preference,” religious “persecution,” etc.).  The unkind call these low-information voters “suckers” for voting against their economic and democratic interests, but there is no doubt they are vocal, demanding, organized—and they vote in droves.  In so doing they perpetuate the plutocracy.  And in the process do all—and more—of the insensible things you list. 

Including campaigning for Mike Huckabee, a man who, while he doesn’t believe in a minimum wage, believes in a MAXIMUM wage, a limit for those who are EARNING a living.  He, of course, being a shill for plutocrats, says nothing of maximum income.  No, no, no.  That would step on the strings of his puppeteers who thrive on carried interest, dividends, capital gains, and other unearned income.

But there is another catalyst in this plutocratic setup.  The apathetic, the distracted, the ill-informed, the uncritically thinking, the diversion-fanatics, the shallow, the willfully ignorant, the uncaring, the selfish, the overly apolitical, the self-indulgent, and even the despairing and the disgusted share a common trait.

They rarely show up to vote, and even then not consistently.  Or even to register.  And getting them to be engaged and retain focus on an issue is usually beyond their capacity.

Thereby giving excessive, destructive influence to the vocal, demanding, organized quarter of the population who arm and armor themselves to fight cultural wars while the real problems slowly devour all of us.

Hey three-quarters, are you listening?

Handbasket Ready

 Professor J,

Warning: This one's a rant.

I sat in church on a recent night and squirmed. My stomach churned and I felt sick. I didn't know if getting up and walking out would be the right thing. The sweet distant family member who had invited us wouldn't have understood and sometimes you have to decide where and when to try to explain why you disagree with something. I felt like the old lady in the insurance commercial whose friends are confused about social media--That's not how this works; that's not how any of this works.

Let me explain.

We'd been asked to join one of the sweetest people we know for the evening service at the church we use to attend. A large church where Mike Huckabee came to speak when he was governor. A church full of people who will vote for him in primaries and cheer him every step of the way as he campaigns for president. 

First there was some rousing music and a long prayer for the city that everyone was encouraged to read off the giant screens together. It included things like and end to racism and for businesses to come here to provide jobs. So far so good. But then a picture of the Supreme Court justices was put on the screen with a list of their names. The pastor of the church then asked people to pray about the case they were hearing on Tuesday about same sex marriage. The atmosphere turned solemn and he asked people to get down on their knees and pray that they would not have enough votes to legitimize same sex marriage as a constitutional right. There was a lot of talk about judgement befalling America and how much we'll deserve it if a couple of guys can get married. The language was more eloquent, somber, and scary than that but I'm snarkily paraphrasing. 

 I'm always surprised how quickly church services can morph into political rallies and vice versa in this country. I sat in my seat and subversively prayed for the hearts and minds of everyone present to mind their own business, although I probably prayed something more like "open minds and give a spirit of compassion and love. Then have them mind their own business."

After a long prayer the entire congregation arose and sang God Bless America. From the tone of it you would have thought some government entity was going to force them all into same sex marriages at gunpoint right after the service. After that things proceeded in a way that seemed more like church. I felt as though I'd been a victim of the old bait and switch. 

Later I wondered what was so upsetting to me. I know the noisy philosophy of this church and what they believe and I oughtn't really have been surprised. As I wondered what about it bothered me the most I soon realized that it was the list of things we'd not been asked to get down on our knees about during the years I'd attended.

War
Poverty
Hunger
Greed
Injustice

Some things that are actually mentioned repeatedly in scripture as things that God seems to get pretty worked up about. That injustice thing is a big one. Funny how we never hear anything about in many churches. I've certainly never been asked to kneel at my seat to pray fervently about the spirit of greed on Wall Street or income inequity. No one ever seems interested in praying about whether we are acting like a certain ancient empire when we invade other countries to democratize or liberate them, without asking, because of course, we know what's best for them.  

For some reason this one issue of same sex marriage is the line in the sand that evangelicals have latched onto. So an issue that has two consenting adults trying to create a permanent relationship, home, and family upsets people more than war.

War.

We are supposed to believe that two men or women living together under the banner of marriage is more terrible than violence and bloodshed. Or worse than the total destruction we saw drone video of this week. We are supposed to buy that judgement will come from on high because a couple of guys want to register at Pottery Barn for wedding gifts but that God turns a blind eye to corporate backed wars where we invade and destroy third world countries while enriching corporations who manufacture items that kill, maim, and destroy. Then we vote for candidates who ensure those corporations get tax breaks but have a meltdown over a single mom getting welfare.

We parade these twisted priorities (it's like no one has even read the gospels) like badges of honor and claim persecution if anyone points out that perhaps, you know, just maybe, it's a bit off somewhere.

I've venting here because this is what happens when I'm left to my own devices too long alone with a soapbox. And because I thought you, and some of our readers, might understand. I am so not up for another election already.

How Bees Are Making Me Rethink Community

Dear Reader, our good professor is in need of more hours in his day and more days in his week so he asked if I wouldn't post in his stead today. Let's have a little bee lesson. I'm still evolving; how about you? That pesky growing and changing means that sometimes I have to rethink some previous ideas.

Here's an example that I recently wrote about on my blog: 

Bees are perhaps the most organized and productive society on the planet. This is possible because the bees are wired to care about the colony. They do things for the group and have a highly developed sense of community. They don't care who gets the credit for the work they do and they do wacky things like making sure all the work gets done and everyone gets taken care of. Pretty radical.

I have been a lifelong worshiper at the altar of the individual. In the  US it's kind of in our DNA. Everything is about me and my rights, right? God bless America and Ayn Rand.  I remember how I felt when Hillary Clinton said "it takes a village." I arrogantly spouted that is only took a couple of committed parents to raise happy and well adjusted children who would become productive members of society. And hilarious adults. Because frankly if you brought up kids with a lousy sense of humor I am going to judge you.

But on this side of parenting--the done side--I have a confession to make. That village that I claimed didn't exist was crucial. Because while I was claiming all the credit for having the most amazing children (or pretending not to know them depending on the day) lots of people were helping. Grandparents were giving me a break, Sunday school teachers were reinforcing not clobbering and biting, my friends were mindful and caring. Elderly neighbors shared wisdom learned over long lives. Whoever produces COPS was teaching them what NOT to do unless you want to end up on national TV in your underwear. When you are 8 years old that is pretty much the worst fate you can imagine.

As Americans we are terrified that saying that the group matters or that community is important is the pathway to group think and disregarding the needs and desires of the individual. Trust me as a creative person and parent of a couple of free thinkers, you would never catch me saying that. The key is finding the balance in the individual vs.society struggle. We come back to that a lot, don't we?

When I go to schools now to teach about bees one of the important lessons I try to get across to kids is that our actions don't just affect us. Our good actions as well as our bad ones end up affecting everyone. I often ask what their classroom, or home, or neighborhood would look like if everyone did what needed to be done without being asked (or told).

Their eyes light up but then they wiggle uncomfortably. So do I. As an adult this makes it hard for me to walk past trash at the park without picking it up. By the way bees do not tolerate any foreign substance in the hive and are meticulously clean. Just ask the guy who tried to hide 18K in cash from his wife during an ugly divorce. The bees chewed it up and pushed it out of the hive. He found a pile of green confetti in front of the hive.

Another great lesson is decision making by consensus and that a group is so much smarter than any one person (or bee) in it.

So while the bees also do some things we frown upon in society nowadays-- they will kill a queen if they sense she is weak and raise up a new one. They also throw all the males out in the fall because they just use up resources and are only good for mating so they let them starve. We probably shouldn't do that. And while they are super productive and efficient they aren't creative free thinkers which in human society we desperately need. But they have a few things to teach us about things like cooperation and hard work.  Lessons we seem to need to be reminded of.

This beekeeper/citizen/human needs them every day and often more than that.

Digging for Answers

Professor J,

My good man, we are struggling lately, aren't we? Or is that just me? But then we have been tackling a couple of issues that don't have easy answers. Although the older I get the more I think that things are more complex than I previously thought, that it's impossible to have all the information to make a fully informed decision, and we may not even understand the actual roots of lots of the issues we face.

In my last post I noted two separate uses for video documentation of police actions, I thought it went without saying that such footage wouldn't solve the layers of complexity involved in all of these cases. I meant only that the near universal access to cell phones results in publicizing these incidents and allows any citizen who witnesses such actions to document them. In supporting the use of cameras on and around police officers my thinking was that it might affect an officer's behavior occasionally (even once would matter) but the usefulness would also prove to document events and actions so that we no longer just rely on the officer or the suspect to give an accurate accounting of their actions. You are correct in saying that police in the past have tampered with or seized footage of this sort. For cameras to be effective in any real way tampering with them would have to bring about strict penalties. Think pilots tampering with the black box on their aircraft once the flight is under way.

Monday night the situation in Baltimore devolved into violence and I followed the events via CNN and Twitter. Social media provides a rawer version of people's attitudes than reporters are able to capture even on live television. The statements tweeted by a cross section of the country revealed underlying attitudes. First there is an huge amount of racism and an ugly disrespect for others that people are willing to express in a semi-anonymous form. But I think we all really know this already. The second thing is that people in the neighborhoods affected have great insight, dignity, and in many cases a sense of humor and insider perspective. But the third thing and the one I want to focus on is the devastating lack of understanding of poverty and its repercussions in this country.

I was shocked and saddened by the missing compassion in many of the statements. Limited to 140 characters people only have enough space to say what they actually believe (or think is clever) and not to flesh out complete philosophies. It's surprising how many people believe that poverty is a choice or a result of laziness instead of a systemic problem that affects the psyche of a human being and over time a neighborhood or culture. This is true in third world countries where we see people behave in ways that illustrate their hopelessness (images of young people throwing rocks at police in riot gear looked a lot like Palestine) but here, in America, it takes on an extra layer of cruelty. Here due to our consumptive lifestyles and the prevalence of advertising and reality TV we ask people to live under impoverished conditions while pressing their faces up against the glass of wealth and privilege. Then we just can't imagine what all the anger is about.  Because, after all, shouldn't they just go to college and work harder?

But then ask the people who tout that philosophy if college should be provided for free or student loan debt erased...

...or whether they want to invest in public transportation so people without cars can actually get to a job...

We send a lot of mixed messages. This week a mother who saw her son on television taking part in the riots and chased him down on the street is being praised for hitting him and cursing him. That video has gone viral. Meanwhile middle class parents praise her while increasingly shying away from physical punishment for their own children who are obviously misunderstood by teachers and others in authority when they are behaving badly. We cut government assistance and demand that single mothers find work, then the other night on CNN the black reporter wanted to know where all the parents of the young rioters were. It didn't seem to occur to him that it was possible they could be their jobs.

One of the underlying causes of all of these issues is that with poverty comes a lack of safety and a feeling of security that the middle class has no understanding of. Last week in my city a young girl was killed when a gang drove by and shot her to death while she was sleeping in her own bed and another child was killed playing in her own front yard.

We have trouble imagining why someone would fear the police because in our everyday lives we feel safe. There were a lot of jokes with pictures last night on Twitter about why people would steal toilet paper while looting a store. No one was taking a moment to think what those images, and there were a lot of them, might mean. One of the parts of feeling safe is feeling that you have enough. We don't seem to grasp that our cities have entire neighborhoods of citizens who don't know what the safety of enough feels like. I'm not condoning the behavior (do I really have to say that?) but pointing out that the disconnect we have leads to a dangerous lack of understanding and empathy which is getting to at least the first layer of these issues.

Having said all this, I return to the issue of police brutality, which is a very real issue. As you've pointed out there is a culture of covering up for each other in departments and in the justice system taking the word of the officer over a suspect. This isn't new. I would even say that this is the history of many local police departments and moreover law enforcement for time immemorial. It's the problem of authority in all its forms. It's the problem of giving people authority and arming them. It's the problem of giving them authority, arming them, and trusting them to do the right thing and police themselves. That's a lot to ask of people given how corruptible we seem to be. So the issue isn't if this happens or how often it happens but how to correct and prevent it.

I think that part of the problem is that we have taken officers off the "beat" of literally walking a neighborhood and being part of a community and placed them in cruisers that make them not people but the anonymous symbol of authority and, to some, oppression. We can link that to the actual design of modern American cities where few of us can walk anywhere and so even as citizens are disconnected from each other. We barely know our neighbors let alone the officers who patrol our streets.

We've also militarized local police departments to the point where many neighborhoods look like occupied territories, a complaint we heard about Ferguson. 

Probably one of the things that could be done to reduce all of these problems is the legalization of marijuana. Trying to police the possession and sale of that one substance keeps the justice system clogged and our for profit prisons full.

Okay, a question for the historian: What's a  version of law enforcement you can point to that was effective in all the ways we need it to be including protecting citizens from abuse? And would it be able to be replicated in a nation with the size and diversity of ours? 

Transparency and Linkage

Madame,

It occurs to me now (too late!) that I should have originally phrased my words more carefully.  I should have said “I’m betting there’s a fair chance…” rather than stated so definitively.  Because the way I originally put it, I obviously tilted the odds of losing the bet! :)

All those things I put as general potentialities are specific realities for African-Americans and other minorities.   Living under that brings a level of stress, anxiety, and fear that is hard for those who don’t live under it to relate to.

My understanding of the law of allowed public recording of law enforcement actions is that it applies to public property/public space, and often does not apply to private property or space.  Some municipalities or even states have passed ordinances prohibiting videotaping of law enforcement officers.  Of course, these are technically against the above standard allowing of videotaping of officers doing their duties in a public space, but the ACLU (you know, that reviled organization) and others can only challenge just so many things in just so many places.  So local “good old boy” networks consequently get away with a lot, especially when THEY are responsible for enforcing the decisions of courts against them, and both the state and feds are often distracted, overwhelmed, or uninterested.

Even those few times when police are confronted for seizing or erasing (or harassing or arresting the recording individual) cellphones, the “penalty” (when there is one) is often little more than a slap on the wrist and a “don’t do it again.”

And courts have been VERY sympathetic to police officers who state they prohibited or pushed back recording because it was interfering with their duties, or, to be more precise, the person doing so was interfering with “carrying out police duties” or “inciting a hostile crowd.”  It remains to be seen how much the rash of publicized recent incidents will in actuality bring about a change to that standard.

I well agree, however, that cameras in all aspects of police duty would be a boost to citizen protection.  It is not flawless, however.  Those in power and control of the flow of information sometimes have turn off, override capability, or the ability to cause a “malfunction.” 

Rather like the Big Brother official in Orwell’s 1984.

So unless we inculcate cultural and institutional change, the cameras could become merely a loose band-aid.  However, if we push for change in the disconnected, parochial, defensive-aggressive, haughty, arrogant model that exists in far too many law enforcement organizations, the cameras would actually be a synergistic propellant to that change.

And then we could see about addressing who and what the “law enforcers” truly serve.