Well, this was a fun little surprise in my inbox. Happy New Year!
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,000 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 33 trips to carry that many people.
For the political junkies of America, 2014 was something of a big year. In spite of every indication that Democratic policies coming from the White House have made this country wealthier, safer, etc and even after the Tea Party led effort to shut down the government, the public decided to vote in a Republican Senate as well as a more conservative House. Well technically one of the lowest turnouts in recent election history voted in Republicans, but let’s not split hairs. I only bring this up because there is not expected to be the same level of dramatic political fights in the next year, least of all at the polls, which means that all the talk is focused on 2016 and the next presidential election. In Democratic circles this means that the name Hillary Clinton is among the first to leave the lips of pundits and voters alike. Here’s why I’m hesitant to take a stand with the former Secretary of State, Senator, and First Lady.
There are, essentially, two major reasons why I don’t want everyone to just get used to the idea that Mrs Clinton will be the Democratic candidate: I don’t hate her and many people do. To the first point, what I mean is that although Mrs Clinton is a fine candidate, and although I am actually in great agreement with past proposals she has made concerning healthcare, the simple fact remains that she isn’t a stirring candidate. I don’t hate her, but neither do I particularly like her, in spite of the fact that she has been a very effective public servant. People have been talking with some regularity about the odd situation that would occur if the opponents in 2016 were Hillary Clinton and Rand Paul, and this gets to the heart of why I don’t particularly like Mrs Clinton. On military issues she is something of a war hawk, and has consistently tried to separate her image from President Obama’s by highlighting disagreements in the various conflicts in the Middle East. For whatever reason, she has been making bold claims about the importance of American military power in a way that echoes President Bush more than President Clinton to my ears.
I can empathize that, as a Democrat and a female politician, she feels the need to conquer the “mommy problem.” For those unfamiliar, there is a perception that Republicans are the ‘daddies’ of American politics, stern and ready to use military force; whereas Democrats are the ‘mommies,’ compassionate and weak on foreign policies. This perception has continued against all reason and records because Republicans are usually keen to be seen ‘supporting our troops,’ in part because their records are rife with examples of how empty that support really is. Nonetheless, it is common knowledge that Democrats in general have had problems with the appearance of strength, so there is good political strategy in creating an image of hawkishness. So here is another problem with Hillary Clinton as a candidate: if she is simply making these statements for political expediency then she has given in to the appearance game and given up credibility, if she actually believes what she is saying then she really is not a terribly progressive candidate worth voting for.
I could go onto other smaller issues that we disagree on, but aside from small things like the cap on social security taxes, I generally agree with her fiscal policies and most of her social advocacy. It is perhaps worth remembering that it was her husband that actually put his name to DOMA, admittedly because he faced a veto-proof majority, so her lack of leadership on certain social issues notwithstanding she is at least on the right side of the issues now. I am willing to vote for the lesser of two evils, and though I’d rather wait to make that decision only after the good candidates have dropped out, the problem is a little more nuanced than that.
You see there is a larger problem beside her being a less than ideal candidate, which considering the opposing party would seem to make less than ideal look like gold. The larger problem is that she won’t win. I mentioned earlier that there are many people who do hate Mrs Clinton, which should come as no surprise given that she is a high profile person and celebrity does bring out the hate in numbers. In fact some of the greatest and most capable people have a great many people who hate them. With politicians especially, the fact that there are people and groups dedicated to defaming you and seeing you fail is something of a prerequisite more than a disqualification for high office. The trouble is why normal people hate her, aside from the misogynist element who simply don’t want to see a woman in power.
The Republican Party has been having a bit of fun in the aftermath of Jeb Bush’s announcement that he will be in the running for president this time around. In the short term he has surged in polls, mostly because he is essentially running unopposed as of yet, but everyone knows why he won’t win. The first President Bush was competent but not terribly popular, hence the single term. The second President Bush was… well I’m not sure we should really get into that here. But the mere idea of a third President Bush is so laughable that only a Bush would consider it a possibility. As much as Americans like the pomp of monarchy whenever William and Kate come stateside, we are not generally a fan of nobility. Though it is true that every so often we get the same name and family as before, e.g. Roosevelt, Adams, Johnson.
On the off chance that Bush ends up on the ballot, the very last thing the Democrats should do is to put Clinton on the other ticket. The constant repetition of these usual suspects is distasteful to say the least to voters, even if they like one of them specifically. It would simply be the confirmation of every critic claiming that elections don’t matter if that really were the case. However I would be shocked if either of these two made it through their primaries anyway. In the case of Mrs Clinton it is altogether worse, because let’s face it, at least Jeb hasn’t spent nearly as much of his life in DC.
This is the biggest problem with and for Mrs Clinton, the fact that she is a denizen of DC. If there is one thing that people on all ends of the spectrum can agree to right now, it is the all too pervasive influence of that isolated city has gone a bit too far. In theory there is nothing wrong with a professional political class; however, the corruption on all sides has gotten to intolerable levels. To quote Miss Lisa Simpson, “The city of Washington was built on a stagnant swamp some 200 years ago, and very little has changed. It stank then, and it stinks now.” But seriously, Mrs Clinton faces the grim reality that Americans are simply unwilling to continue with the tiresome exercise of perpetuating the DC status quo.
Democrats, specifically, do not do the whole rising through the ranks thing well. Whenever one of those kinds of candidates does appear on the ticket, e.g. John Kerry or Al Gore, they lose. The same is true on smaller scales as well, if you look at something like the recent gubernatorial election in Massachusetts for example. The kind of entitlement and security that the race is theirs to lose brings that loss about. Democrats win when they run the candidate who is seen as separate from the DC machine and committed to changing it, e.g. Obama, JFK, FDR, and of course Clinton. The only exception that comes to mind is LBJ and even then the only reason he became president in the first place was not because he won a presidential election.
So set aside the whole glass ceiling, because I think that there are plenty of other women who simply would have a better shot of winning, like Senator Claire McCaskill. There are plenty of other women who would be better representatives of a progressive vision, like Senator Elizabeth Warren. Above all what we need is not to be “ready for Hillary,” but to be ready to win and once we win to actually have a vision to move forward. And if I am wrong, if the Clinton campaign wins and brings progressive leadership to the table, I would be thrilled to be proven wrong. But let’s not forget that she lost the last time she ran, and her perennial candidacy seems a little too much like the losing strategy of Romney than anything else at this point.
When we get to the end of a year it can be nice to reflect on what we’ve accomplished and take stock of what we want to do in the coming year. It’s good to set goals and celebrate when we finally can check them off our lists, but I get the feeling that a lot of the larger goals we set for ourselves become so overwhelming that we lose sight of why we set them in the first place. The urgent matters of our lives take precedence over the important things, in part because we simply forget why they are important. So as we enjoy the end of a year and brace for a new one, I want to remember why we work for progress.
Heaven is a popular topic for people, a promise of a final reward for a life well lived and a respite from the less pleasant aspects of the world. The number of books claiming to prove heaven exists or that postulate what it might be like are too numerous to count, but there is always that vision of hell hanging just around the corner. Hell is that stick to go with the carrot of heaven to remind people to be good. Like heaven it is set off as something after death; however, I know that hell exists and that it exists on earth, even if I’m a little ambivalent on heaven. Hell has always been with us, as long as there has been suffering.
Now, suffering in and of itself is not hell. In fact suffering can be quite constructive as it gives you the impulse to change the world for the better, to change your own life for the better. The suffering we all endure in our lives, to whatever extent we experience it, is not hell on earth. I can give a personal example of suffering that I experienced from dealing with Crohn’s disease. Imagine enduring day after day of nausea and pain, to the point that a good day is vomiting less than ten times and simply not being immobilized by pain. Imagine the embarrassment of constantly running from of conversations and meetings in a mad dash to get to a toilet before it’s too late, and then having to clean it all up if you don’t make it in time. Imagine the horror of seeing how much blood you can lose in a day while straining over a toilet, and being powerless on your own to make it stop. Imagine the desperation of seeing the small pile of pills you have to take on a regular basis just to keep operating, while experiencing the full gamut of side effects that get glossed over at the end of medication commercials. And if you can imagine all of that, you still aren’t imagining hell on earth.
No, hell doesn’t begin until you see a loved one go through all of that, coupled with the realization that you are incapable of making it go away. The first circle of hell on earth is having to look a loved one in the eye while they fight back the tears of pain and suffering. It’s holding their hand to give them something to squeeze, but knowing that’s not nearly enough but that it’s all you can do. Hell is wishing that you could endure all that pain and humiliation and horror if only to keep your loved ones from experiencing even a fraction of it. That first circle of hell is only momentary, though, because in the back of your mind you know there is a nurse or a doctor on the way to do what you can’t. The first circle of hell reminds you of how impotent one person can be to stop the suffering of the people you love, but comforted to know that there is reprieve.
The next circles of hell only add to the anguish of seeing the people you love suffer and being incapable to get help in time or afford the help, such as it exists. Any person who has seen the people they love in pain will know the resolve that they will pay whatever price they need to, but sometimes it isn’t enough. America is a rich and powerful country, our hospitals have some of the best doctors and equipment in the world. Indeed America has among the best healthcare imaginable… if you can afford it.
America holds the distinction as one of the last developed nations to have a healthcare system that holds the power to ensure that its people remain healthy, but which refuses the responsibility. We are essentially the last hold out of developed nations that refuses to guarantee healthcare as a right to its citizens, and it costs us dearly. Our private healthcare system is the single most expensive one in the world, even though privatization is supposed to save money. Our nation has terrible quality of health and longevity compared to nations with universal healthcare, even though socialized medicine is supposed to be lower quality. And though these are important factors to bring up in a debate about healthcare, it is not the crucial question to me.
What are we doing to remove hell from the earth? That is the crucial question, because for many families within the richest and most powerful country on earth, we seem perfectly happy to claim that we are powerless to do what so many countries have already done. It’s only by ignoring our own humanity that we can allow ourselves to be this backward. While the passage of the ACA has brought healthcare to millions more; it is not nearly enough. The end of “pre-existing conditions” is a laudable achievement, but until every person can enter a hospital in this country without fear of the bill, it is just a task half completed. Because, like the defense of all citizens by the military, it is a basic duty of the government that the people can rest easy knowing that their income bracket does not determine whether or not they will be covered.
There are so many important issues we have yet to address for any number of reasons. Some issues are considered “third rails,” where anyone who tries to even touch the issue will expect a very quick political death. Others simply carry the stigma of being labeled by a fat, pill-addled, radio blowhard as socialist. In either case, the people in charge of making important decisions are too scared to make even the most common sense ones, and the result is the continued existence of hell on earth. This is why we work for progress.
For so long we have had to live with the fact that we cannot treat even the most basic diseases, so that when modern healthcare finally came about it seemed too good to be true. We treated healthcare as if it were caviar and not the bread that sustains a nation, or else we let people go uniformed and risk their lives and the lives of people around them by choosing not to get basic immunizations and preventative care. Healthcare is both a right and a responsibility, necessary for the fulfillment of our own pursuits of happiness as well as for the preservation of life. We have come so far as a people in ridding the world of terrors like smallpox and reducing the mortality of some of history’s greatest killers like the flu. We have come so far in the progress of humanity, but we are now allowing the task to remain unfinished.
Jonas Salk balked at the idea that a person could take something as fundamentally necessary for humanity as the polio vaccine and make it a tool for profit. “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” But since then others have worked so hard to patent even the most basic building blocks of life, because we refused to stand for common sense and our common humanity. America once stood together on the basic tenant that the people who came before us, who made the world we inhabit possible, should not die in abject poverty and so created social security. Since then we have looked at our senior citizens and continuously asked how we can stop paying for them instead of how best can we serve them. We once worked hard to get children out of factories and mines to ensure they had a place in schools, but since then there has been a conscious effort to undo this by “allowing” school aged children to work jobs. And so we’ve seen repeated efforts to ensure hell has a place on earth.
The goal we strive for is not to rid the world of all suffering. The goal we strive for is not utter wealth equality, because this only takes away the personal resolve to do more. The goal we do strive for is an end to hell on earth, to ensure that people have the ability to seek help and live their lives. The goal we strive for is opportunity and meritocracy, so that the place of your birth does not dictate how you will live and die. The goal we strive for is the progress that allows people to live healthier, freer, happier, safer than any other point in history. And we must remember that every step forward is tentative, as there will always be those who would rather tear it down than build up humanity. As we move forward we need to do what we can to rid the world of hell in all its forms and ensure that things don’t revert to their worst state. Or to put it in the words of the father of medicine, “to help, or at least to do no harm.”
Conservatives don’t get enough credit for the genius behind so much of their campaigning. Political operatives like Frank Luntz or Karl Rove should be recognized for the unadulterated brilliance of terms like “death tax” or “death panel” that now shape our discussions of, what would otherwise have been, basic issues of taxation and healthcare. Granted these certainly fall under the lens of evil genius, but genius they are nonetheless. Today I want to talk about another example of such propaganda and how it has absolutely gutted America and the American Ideal, all for the sake of making certain politicians and positions palatable to the masses. Because today I want to talk about how the phrase “law and order,” if not associated with a popular TV series, has become a welcome part of the GOP image and a fundamental danger to America.
Why is it that extremist right wing groups use this phrase, or synonyms of it, to gain popularity? Certainly the Nazis gained what popularity they did because they convinced a number of people that they stood for law and order. The regimentation of extreme conservatism is what made fascism popular, as Mussolini supposedly made the trains run on time. But it should be crystal clear by now that groups that run on a platform of law and order really only mean the latter, because the rule of law simply gets in the way. Equal treatment under the law, fair and conventional use of punishments, and above all an appreciation for the basic rights of all people are the first things to go under regimes that tout law and order. While this is eminently clear under tyrannical regimes, the same is true under the democratic versions of these policies.
New York City in the latter half of the Twentieth Century was something of a codeword for crime. The big city got a big reputation for drug dealing, murders, and robberies. It was in this context that the traditionally liberal city elected Rudy Giuliani as mayor in 1994. He promised to bring law and order by being tough on crime, particularly against the mafia. The city since has certainly gone under a big transformation into the much safer city it is today, where only white collar crime goes unpunished. Mr Giuliani should be commended for stemming the tide of crime that had gripped the city, though the fact that the same happened in cities across America at that same time undercuts his achievements a bit. The point I really want to make is this, how else can you explain the kind of authoritarian privilege of many NYC police officers if not for the basic law and order ideology he helped to create with the “broken windows theory?”
Let’s be clear, police officers are put in harms way on a regular basis and need to be given the respect that the job merits, but when a person can get away without even an indictment for choking an unarmed and non-confrontational suspect, there might be a problem. Law and order in this context means the law will do what it must to establish order, even ignore the actual laws. The police department banned the practice of chokeholds for the exact reason that it can lead to unintentional death, yet the police officer, as representative of law and order, can rest secure in the knowledge that he gets a pass. This not to mention other practices like ‘stop and frisk,’ which consistently show disregard for equal treatment under the law by targeting minorities. In the pursuit of order in the city, which arguably they have achieved, what has been lost? Because certainly order has been largely achieved by simply pretending that law does not necessarily apply to those enforcing it. More troubling is the reality that people still crave law and order, even when they are no longer willing to elect a conservative leader.
Which brings us to the conduct of the War on Terror by those in the more shadowy parts of our national defenses. We have known, at least since the revolting images of Abu Ghraib, the level of lawlessness that has been tolerated under the guise of protecting Americans. The recent Senate report is simply a confirmation of what we have long suspected, that the CIA and operatives working for the US have used torture as a means of executing the goals of the War on Terror. In response to these reports, the defenses of these actions have been as overwhelming as they are disgusting. First the denial that these practices constitute torture, despite the words of people, like Senator McCain, who have actually been tortured; then the claim that these practices worked, despite the findings of the report; and finally the accusations that this report weakens America, despite the polar opposite being closer to the truth.
Here’s the thing, this report did not and could not weaken America; the practices described by this report did. America claims to be a land under the rule of law, but the campaign of those calling for law and order seems to have proven that given the right circumstances we will bend on that. I want to believe there are profound and fundamental differences between this country that I love and something like the Islamic State. I want to believe that we will remain the country that gives a fair trial to the people responsible for the Boston Massacre. I want to believe that even in the midst of the worst crises that we are strong enough in our ideals of liberty, justice, equality, and humanity to stand tall even when we are scared. I want to believe, but my faith is so often tested.
When we got scared after the attacks on September 11, 2001 we gave free reign to the people in charge to do “what had to be done.” In doing so we lost more than a bit of the country worth defending. If we allowed ourselves to torture just because of fear these foreign terrorists, in what way are we different from those terrorists, who torture because they fear the foreign invaders? If we were willing to lock up Japanese Americans in internment camps because we feared a foreign nation, in what way were we different than the Japanese who locked up foreign nationals during the war? If we are always so willing to give up on the very things we love admire about this country the moment we get scared, then what is there actually to admire?
I understand the desire to seek security in times when it seems like the sky is falling, I really do. I understand why figures who speak calmly in distressing times might seem compelling when they call for law and order, but we can ill afford to give up everything of value for that snake oil of security. It’s never going to be perfect, we do need to empower our various defense agencies to do the work necessary to keep us safe, but we can’t do this. Set aside the reality that these kinds of tactics don’t even work, because if we’ve learned nothing else it’s that the defenders of such policies will never understand that anyway. Let’s just focus on what kind of country we want to be. We can be a country that follows the rule of law, or we can be a country that allows law to be silent in times of war. We can defend the prohibition against the use of cruel and unusual punishment, or we can waterboard people and force-feed them via all orifices. We can be a great country, or we can be just another country.
The Bill of Rights does not describe rights of citizens nor of Americans. The Bill of Rights describes the rights of the people, all people. All people should rest secure in the notion that they will always be afforded a speedy trial with the presumption of innocence. All people should live with the confidence that no matter who they are or what they do that they will be afforded the common decency that is the birthright of humanity. The rights we uphold should be upheld for all people, but they aren’t. We cannot enforce our laws in every jurisdiction throughout the world. What we can do is ensure that within all of our jurisdictions the rule of law and the rights of humanity will always be upheld, even for those who wish ill upon America. In fact, especially for those who wish ill upon America, because only by treating them better than they would treat us can we prove our point. America should never be a country of “law and order,” we must always be a country that holds the rule of law alone above all else.
Today is the second anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting, and very little has changed. There was another school shooting in Oregon recently, making it the 42nd school shooting in America this year. This is just a part of the nearly 32,000 annual shooting deaths in America, not to mention the further 80,000 plus injuries. America right now does have fewer gun owners than last year, but paradoxically there are now more guns in the hands of Americans. With a few notable exceptions, like the state of Newtown itself, many states have furthered the cause of gun rights in the two years since that shooting. Indeed recent polls indicate that more Americans come down in favor of gun rights than gun control as of right now. So what gives?
Well, let’s start with some statistics that gun rights activists like to talk about. Gun violence is actually down from twenty years ago; a period of time that has seen increased gun ownership. Many gun owners would claim that it is because of increased gun ownership that good people are able to deter threats, which could explain the national drop in gun violence. Furthermore, although school shootings are tragic they are statistically very rare, and as a cause of death, guns remain low on the list of threats compared to obesity or cancer. But there’s a slight problem with these statistics, and that’s the fact that the states with the highest incidents of gun violence are the states with the most lenient gun laws.
Even in otherwise blue states like Maryland, gun rights lobbies have been quite effective in maintaining protections against ID requirements, mental health checks, permitting, etc. For all these protections of gun rights, the lives of people in those states is really not much better. The result is that you are about 3 times as likely to be shot in Louisiana than you are in Illinois, even with “Chiraq” included. There are, of course, outliers to any set of statistics. New Hampshire is usually pretty conservative with gun legislation and yet it is among the safest states to live in, whereas Washington DC, though not a state, is one of the most dangerous places to live in the US. But those are pretty easily understood outliers as DC has about 70 times the population density of New Hampshire. Nonetheless the fact remains that it is the states that most fervently cling to gun rights that would most benefit from gun legislation.
But let me make myself clear on where I stand on guns. In the abstract, I don’t care one way or the other if you own a gun. What I do care about are the real world consequences of gun ownership, for good or for ill. The rallying cry of many gun rights groups is that the 2nd amendment specifically, and the defense of guns more broadly, is to ensure that we the people are defended against threats foreign and domestic. And I can build on that, because basically it seems that the question comes down to how do we preserve and defend life. If the argument is that gun ownership potentially saves lives in the event of a tyranny, than it should be up for contention what the cost of that same gun ownership in practice. So with that said, I am not an enemy of rifles, assault or otherwise. They make easy targets for people to demonize because they look and sound scary, but you are about 17 times more likely to see a handgun as the weapon involved with deadly shootings. If we were going to simply going to try and go after types of guns, as asinine as that may be, certainly handguns would be the place to start.
This is of course where things break down, if they hadn’t already the moment someone tries to have a conversation about guns. Because people aren’t simply concerned with the preservation of life, even if they should be. For many people guns are a part of life, part of tradition, part of culture. While I may have some sympathy for the personal attachment a person might have to their friendly neighborhood gun, it’s a rather piss poor excuse to put people’s lives at stake. To take a rather obscene analogy, we didn’t allow the institution of slavery to continue because it was a part of people’s lives, traditions, cultures, etc. If we are going to pretend to be adults, let’s do it and simply talk about what is going to keep people safer and freer.
As I see it, guns are quite a bit like a lot of evolved human tendencies. We evolved to seek out sweet and fatty foods, because in the wild these are rather scarce and nutritious sources of energy. But over the millennia we’ve made food production much more efficient, leading to the problem of an overabundance of sweet and fatty foods. The leading causes of death in America tend to have at least a correlation with obesity, because our minds are still set to seek out these foods even though the excess is killing us. In the same way, guns were extremely useful in times where you were more likely to die because of invading armies, marauders, murderers, etc. For an example of where owning a gun might be a good choice, see Syria. But without the immediate threat that necessitates gun ownership, those same guns that may have kept you safe put yourself, your friends, your family, your neighbors, etc at a greater risk.
Whether it is because of that one time in a million where you didn’t pay attention to the safety or because you got a little too hot under the collar, guns can indeed kill. If you want to get really pedantic, the bullets kill, but now we’re splitting hairs. Guns make people who want to kill, much more capable of doing so in a way that would astound the people who wrote the second amendment. The wording of that amendment speaks to the limitations of firearms at the time, prefacing with “a well regulated militia.” This wasn’t simply because they were worried about militias getting rowdy, but a recognition that the only way you can make a musket into a decently effective weapon is by bunching together several people with those weapons and having them fire in one clump. Essentially turning a number of individuals with muskets into one large guy with a shotgun.
This is why we seriously need to reconsider the context of the second amendment, because it is no longer necessary to amass a number of people together to create a sufficiently deadly weapon. One kid with a repeating firearm today is a much more effective killing machine than a group of ten guys carrying around smoothbore muskets. Guns are more accurate, faster shooting, and cheaper than could possibly have been imagined by the framers of the Bill of Rights. The difference being that someone like the Sandy Hook shooter can readily get their hands on several handguns, rifles, and a shotgun to terrorize a group of innocent civilians, whereas one guy in the 18th century would have to carry many more, heavier guns to let loose a fraction of the projectiles in the same period of time. This being a longwinded way of saying that guns might just be more dangerous to us than the potential threat posed by a government.
All of this setting aside the reality that a group of less than adequately trained civilians would have a tough time putting up a fight against a military with state of the art aircraft, armored vehicles, drones, high-precision artillery, and nuclear weapons. But more to the point, our military is filled with our brothers and sisters, if you are really worried about the military turning on us, it can only be because you don’t have any family or friends serving in it. Which of course begs the question, why are the people who are ostensibly so pro-military, so afraid of the military? In the equation of balancing freedom and safety, we need to remember something else.
Freedom is not simply personal liberties like gun ownership. Freedom is getting to go to school to become a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher or whatever you choose. Freedom is getting to go to a place where alcohol is being served, with some certainty that if someone gets too drunk the place won’t turn into the O.K. Corral. These freedoms were stripped from all the people who died in school shootings this year. These freedoms are denied to all people who simply have to accept that the people with guns would sooner have them ripped from their cold, dead hands than consider the consequences. These freedoms are denied by all the people who plaster their bumpers with slogans like “guns don’t kill people.”
It is said that history is written by the victors, but this isn’t quite right. At least not with the concept of history that is so often in people’s heads. History is not the eternal and unchangeable record that we tend to believe it is, because history is constantly changing. What people thought about President Truman when he left office was different from what they believed about him at his funeral, was different from what we believe about him now. What actually happened in the time between his oath of office and that of President Eisenhower is set in stone, but our understanding of those facts and our judgements on the importance or morality of his decisions evolve greatly over time. This is the simple reality of taking something as infinitely complex as a legacy and forming it into the comprehensibly simple scope necessary to convey information. That said, there is a disturbing trend toward simply rewriting history on the part of an emboldened few, regardless of the facts.
I could sit here and claim that Thomas Jefferson would be what we call an atheist if he were judged by appropriate standards. He did rewrite the gospels to exclude any passages that alluded to miracles or god for Christ’s sake. Incidentally it does make an interesting read because the lack of ‘exciting’ miracles makes the messages of Christ stand out in a much more profound way. In his later life he chose not to practice certain sacraments, like when he refused to be a godfather at baptism. It is equally true that he attended church with some regularity and spent a great deal of time thinking about religion and spirituality. Moreover some of his most famous writings are littered with references and allusions to either the Christian god specifically or else some higher power, thus giving credence to claims that he was at least a deist. However, it would be a bold faced lie for me to claim that he was an orthodox Christian, whose objective was the construction of a Christian nation. To make that claim would ignore complexity and run in direct contradiction to the facts, yet this is the history that is being forced into many school lessons in particularly conservative areas.
It was particularly worrying when these kinds of trends came to pervade the Texas Board of Education as they were deciding on text books. This was not simply frightening for Texans, but for many Americans who end up forced to use the books they choose as a matter of publishing practices. And while the new Common Core standards have shifted the weight away from that one state’s influence, it still remains true that there are some people in many areas who work very hard to create a narrative of history that serves their particular values, regardless of the facts. It’s for that expressed purpose that there are many children taught at home, safely segregated from ideas that might challenge their beliefs. While the corruption of young minds in this way is indeed disturbing, I find it hard to find a better general practice than to assume that most parents will do what is best for their children, so that will have to be a problem for another post. Besides, children have curious minds that want to learn and plenty of time to seek out the truth, what concerns me now is the indoctrination of adults in response to rewritten history.
One of the perpetual stories on the lips of media personalities concerns the president’s dipping approval ratings. In a vacuum this might seem like a particularly distressing trend for Mr Obama, but in context things aren’t as bad as they’re made out to be. President Obama’s approval rating did indeed drop this year… by about a half a percent. He started the year with an approval rating just above 42.5% and right now it hovers at 42%. At the same point in President Bush’s administration he was struggling to get a rating above 36%. So why is it that I am suddenly flooded with posts claiming that “Bush was better,” or billboards with pictures of Mr Bush with the caption “Miss me yet?” Because I am perfectly willing to accept that Bush’s legacy is improving from when he left office, but only by rewriting history can you begin to make an argument that Mr Bush is even comparable to Mr Obama in leadership quality, let alone better.
So it’s worth getting the record straight, particularly now that we are forced to endure the sight and sound of Mr Cheney again. The Bush administration was not the worst thing to happen to this country, but it was by no means a positive on the whole. I can give Mr Bush credit for unifying the country at a tough point in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but this does not and can not give him a pass for his truly disastrous policies. Whether you are looking at military policy, infrastructure, economics, foreign relations, homeland security, immigration, and social policies President Bush has been on the wrong side of most fights in a way that left the country weaker, poorer, and more divided.
I find it particularly odd that anyone who considers themselves to be a ‘fiscal conservative’ would want to claim that Mr Bush was their man. His policies weren’t so much fiscally conservative as they were stupid. Yes it’s true that he cut taxes for the richest Americans, in that awful tradition of voodoo economics, but normally those tax cuts are paid for by decreasing spending. This was not the case during the bulk of his presidency and it certainly wasn’t true when the economy ultimately collapsed at the end of his tenure. While it may still be debated what the full effects of the stimulus were in saving the economy, one thing it certainly was not is conservative. The debt under Mr Bush inflated in a way unprecedented as the deficit that had been growing throughout his administration finally exploded to stop the bleeding in 2008. People need reminding that it was Mr Bush who started the fire and Mr Obama who has been putting it out.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mr Bush attacked Al Qaeda and Taliban forces that were ruling Afghanistan. This much was understandable and called for by the vast majority of Americans as we found out that these were the groups responsible for orchestrating the attacks and protecting the masterminds. However, in the midst of that war, without provocation, Mr Bush decided he would also attack Iraq. I can’t claim to have shed a tear for Saddam Hussein, and the world is almost certainly better without him, but if you want to know where ISIS came from it was from the vacuum left after toppling that dictatorship. The Bush administration lied, obfuscated, mislead, or hid any reasoning or evidence that would have been useful in determining if the war in Iraq was a good decision. Yet I don’t hear a lot of criticism against those decisions, instead I am now hearing people claim that Mr Bush did not emblazon “Mission Accomplished” on the USS Abraham Lincoln, that Iraq was all about fighting terrorists, that Mr Bush was a strong military leader.
See I’m perfectly willing to accept that people have different opinions than me, that there are people who simply don’t care for President Obama, etc. What I have a problem with is the destruction of facts and the perversion of history to rewrite the world into an image that fits with the bubble you like to live in. Any accusation that can be leveled against President Obama can be leveled against his predecessor, but all the achievements, not so much. President Bush did nothing to stop Putin invading Georgia nor did he have a problem using the NSA to keep watch over American civilians. While President Obama may not have followed through, so far, with his pledge to shut down Guantanamo Bay prison, he wasn’t allowing torture to be conducted by our operatives. Yes, let’s not forget that although Mr Obama keeps getting the blame for all these messes, which he consistently cleans up, that it was his predecessor who made them in the first place. And until that can be the common starting point with which people start have conversations about how best to address these issues, I will still be forced to conclude that the effort to rewrite history is still as strong and dangerous as ever.
Every so often you feel that with the bar set so low for public discourse, there is no way that you could be surprised by the insanity that is put forward as an argument. Then you hear something so profoundly ass backwards you have to double-check your surroundings to make sure that you are in fact still inhabiting the same universe you had been the moment before the statement was uttered. This is certainly the sensation that hit me when I found a conservative arguing that President Obama was receiving “black skin privilege.” It wasn’t bad enough that there were conservatives blaming him for the lack of civility in politics these days, there is somehow still a way to shock me to the core with the full profundity of idiocy possible. And though I find myself momentarily speechless from this raw display of the worst parts of humanity being turned into words, I will do my best to express what those of us who live in the real world like to call reality.
President Obama is not a socialist. He is not a Muslim or a homosexual or a terrorist or a dictator or whatever ridiculous accusation is most recently hurled at him. In fact let’s start with the most basic of things so we can build toward a more complete representation of truth. Barack Obama is a human being, who was elected by a majority of voters twice to be the President of the United States. He is a moderate member of the Democratic Party, and while in office has accomplished many laudable achievements, but has failed to live up to the hopes that people had for change when he was elected alongside a majority in Congress. In office he has not made gun ownership any more difficult, in fact under his administration many jurisdictions have expanded the full range of places guns can be brought to include churches, parks, bars, restaurants, trains, etc. I bring this up because during his presidency gun sales have also shot up due to the belief that somehow at some point he has actually gotten any firearms restrictions passed. This being just one of the more easily demonstrated realities that go right over the heads of his critics.
In his time, thus far, as president the country has gone from a recession to a growing and prosperous economy with over 4 straight years of job growth. He inherited this economy from an incompetent predecessor whose main objective was to cut taxes for the rich, no matter the cost to the country. The resulting disaster that came in the final years of the Bush Administration could only be compared to the Great Depression to give an appropriate historical context for this country, and yet President Obama has been called, by even skeptics, one of the best economic presidents in the history of this country. Even though the rebound has been a bit sluggish at times, the fact of the matter is that the US is growing year after year, now including wage growth. This is not a universal trend, as we see the Eurozone stumbling again with its recovery. And he has done all of this without raising taxes at all for Americans, unless you want to claim that the return to old rates before the Bush era tax cuts for those making over $250K a year is a tax hike.
In fact one of the criticisms that is often levied by the Left against Mr Obama is the fact that he has allowed income inequality to continue to get worse by refusing to confront Right wingers on taxes. That critics notwithstanding, President Obama has certainly been a pragmatist on economic matters in an effort to regrow the economy, even if it means boosting up the richest of the rich. In any sane interpretation of reality, President Obama might be considered the polar opposite of a socialist, yet the accusation is constantly hurled at him. That along with claims that he is a dictator for using fewer executive orders than any president since Carter. Or else they claim that he is lazy for taking fewer vacation days than Bush or Reagan for that matter. So when I hear people say all this, usually with a racist depiction of President Obama as a witchdoctor in the background, I have no sympathy for the claim that he is the one degrading bipartisanship.
Now an objective person might be able to construe all of what has been presented and still withhold judgement about whether this is pettiness solely aimed at the President or whether it is emblematic of the larger shift toward tribalism in politics. It is true that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid do receive their own share of epithets and insults and threats on a near daily basis. This is an unfortunate reality of anyone living in the public eye, but only President Obama was so coldly targeted from day one by the Right to be a ‘one term president.’ That was the expressed number one goal of the GOP after the election, not say governing the country, and though they failed miserably the pettiness never went away. So a rational person has to sit here and wonder, why Obama? Even when there were impeachment proceedings toward the end of the Clinton Administration, the level of comfort in slagging off the president was not nearly as ubiquitous. What is the difference?
Well the difference is now being highlighted by conservatives as the only reason why President Obama gets to do anything, because he is black. Yes, apparently the color of his skin is suddenly the only thing he has going for him; and not, say, his excellent economic record, his dedication to ending torture tactics, his delivery of affordable healthcare to millions, his commitment to the rights of all Americans (including the LGBT community), etc. I’m sorry, but it seems clear to me and everyone who has a functioning brain that the President has faced overwhelming opposition every step of the way and has taken it all in stride. He has proven that even with the most rabid racists at the helm of a major political party that he is more than capable to lead this country out of the mess left by them between the years 2001 and 2009.
There are criticisms to be made about President Obama concerning the roll of the NSA, drones, or nepotism in hiring practices. You can even claim that could have done some things better when he first took office to set himself up for a better healthcare bill or a more effective regulation of Wall Street, but these are relatively small issues compared to the allegations that are made up out of whole cloth and sold as if they had any resemblance to truth. Barack Obama’s skin has not been a privilege during his administration, but it could be argued that it is the sole reason why the GOP even exists anymore because there is a loud portion of America, however small, that seems staunch in its opposition to being lead by a person of color. But they feel justified because in their mind to shamelessly and baselessly attack the first president of color is to judge not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.
I am so sick of hearing conservatives usurp the good words of Dr King. Strike that, the only words that they usurp are one line from his famous “I have a Dream” Speech, because its the only words they know. Like the Bibles they thump, they have nothing more than a passing knowledge of Dr King and the full breadth of his activism. They don’t remember that it was the Republican Party labelling Dr King as a communist because he tended to the poor and wanted justice for them too. So for them to use one sentence of his as if it were the only sentence that ever had any value in his lifetime is an utter disgrace to his memory and a perfect representation of the lack of substance to their argument. So just remember if you are looking for a socialist with a little melanin in their skin, you’d be much closer to Dr King than to Mr Obama.
How could I expect any less of people who see healthcare for all people as a goal to be opposed, who see abandoned children and want to simply kick them out, who view poverty as a personal failing, who fail to recognize every form of inequality that remains rampant in this country, who see science and progress as enemies to their beliefs? This is the world we live in, and if you don’t recognize it, it my have something to do with the bubble you live in. Too bad, because the real world, though containing real problems, is not the terrifying place that Fox News wants you to believe it is. And when you stop standing on your head you may recognize that it’s not the earth that had turned upside down. Maybe then we can talk like adults about how best to move forward, but until then grow up or shut up.
Conservatism in America, such as it is, stands opposed to basic morality. The simple virtues of kindness, compassion, mercy, and grace, which are supposedly held up as god’s standard to the religious Right, are utterly absent from the platform and policies of the GOP specifically and American conservatism more generally. The universal refrain of judging the value of a person or society by how they treat the least among them is a concept completely foreign to the Right, and it is the absence of that basic morality that informs their understanding of a meritocracy. Because of this lack of a decent moral center, I find it all the more disturbing whenever I hear condemnation of various groups based on what they ‘deserve.’
It is common to refer to a division among the least in society, to split poor people into the deserving and undeserving poor. Whether these exact words are used or not, the message is clear from the conservatives that there are indeed good people who don’t succeed, but they are few and far between. Any discussion about how best we can help those who may need a hand is tarnished with discussions about how to weed out the deserving poor from the moochers who simply take advantage of our better nature. While I may agree that we should only expend resources in a way that lifts people up, instead of incentivizing sloth, time and again policies aimed at hurting the ‘undeserving poor’ simply prove the point that it is generally a straw man. What’s more policies aimed at scaling back programs to only help those with legitimate needs end up making things even more difficult for those in need as well as costing more than simply assuming that those seeking assistance actually need it.
Every so often there is a resurgence in poverty as a fashion for the rich. This was true for Tolstoy who lived out a fantasy as a peasant in the farmland he owned, this was true for Marie Antoinette who made a small peasant cottage for herself on the grounds of the most opulent palace in Europe, and this is often true of hipster fashion. But what all these groups ignore in their quest to play the fantasy of poverty is that poverty is not noble. Poverty is not noble for the people who actually live through it, though there can often be nobility in those people in spite of circumstances. Though conservatives generally don’t don faux homeless outfits, this idea that poverty isn’t all that harsh certainly informs the psychology. Statistics that say many poor people are able to afford space heaters doesn’t tell you that they often can’t afford to turn them on, and it doesn’t tell you what they choose to forgo if they do afford it.
The silent struggles of those who actually live in the holes of our social safety net does not bear out a picture of living good at the expense of tax payers. The people who are raised up and vilified, the ‘welfare queens,’ are about as real as the mustache twirling, cigar chomping, billionaire carpetbagger. It is a caricature of the reality people live through, and one used for the political end of demonizing the enemy. The simple fact of the matter is that most people living on welfare, food stamps, WIC, etc are barely scraping by and the strings attached to these benefits mean that these people are often working some 30 hours a week for barely subsistence. Still there are many who feel utterly vindicated in sneering at the poor, claiming they are leeches on society, and calling for the end of the kinds of social protections people fought and died for. This is why there are new ordinances against feeding the homeless in Florida, this is why ‘defensive architecture’ is on the rise.
And the poor are not unique in being kicked while they are down. If it isn’t the undeserving poor or the sexual assault survivor being maligned by conservatives, then why not people who are just seeking legal remuneration. Though it is not the centerpiece of conservative talking points right now, tort reform remains an essential part of the conservative vision for America. People who were injured and simply want to be compensated for damages find themselves labelled as frivolous at best. This was certainly the case for Stella Liebeck, who might be better known as the ‘hot coffee lady.’ She received third degree burns, requiring skin grafts, after her cup collapsed from the heat of the coffee served to her from a McDonald’s that, unbeknown to her, was repeatedly cited for serving dangerously hot coffee. She would seem, and was ruled, to be deserving of some compensation for her damages, but somehow she is a villain taking advantage of the legal system. Somehow the people who just want to know the hospital bills will be paid at the end of their ordeal are moochers and undeserving of any compensation beyond whatever limit is chosen.
This is, incidentally, the same logic that allows people to look at children in need and turn them away. Or have we forgotten the thousands of children who fled their homes in central America and made the treacherous journey through Mexico to seek asylum here? Have we forgotten how blindly riled up conservatives got, yelling at schoolhouses because they incorrectly thought they were the ones being used to transport these refugees to holding locations in the US? Of course in the aftermath of President Obama’s announcement that his administration would no longer use its limited budget to actively seek out undocumented families, conservatives were up in arms that he was only going to target felons and violent criminals for deportation. Apparently their definition of merit lumps those groups together.
This is how it turns out with essentially every issue, the conservatives stand against the dominated and stand for the dominant. They stand against gay men and women who have been targeted and attacked by ‘religious’ people and they stand for churches that seek to rewrite the law to carve out extra privileges for themselves, such as the case in Michigan right now. These are so often the people who claim to stand for Christianity, clearly not knowing what it says. They might take a moment to read Matthew 25 for once.
“For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.” Matthew 25: 35-36
It is with that I feel the need to talk about how conservatism treats those in prison when they do remember they exist. The Senate just released their report on the CIA interrogation programs in the aftermath of 9/11. At a time when our humanity was being tested, when we faced the question of how do we treat our enemies, we came up wanting. In the name of all Americans, the agencies charged with our defense gave into the worst of our humanity. We tortured people because we were scared, we treated them like dirt because we wanted information and felt justified because of what they did to us. But not all the people who ended up in Guantanamo Bay were actually guilty of anything and the report states that there was no benefit of reliable information. At a time when we most need to have a solemn reflection on our actions, what has been the conservative response?
From serving Senators to former Vice-presidents, the response has been a defense of the tactics and an attack on the truth. The conservative response has been essentially, what better angels of our nature? The callousness with which they disregard the humanity of those in our prisons is so total that they cannot begin to comprehend that what their saying could possibly be considered despicable. Their moral barometers are so utterly out of whack that they won’t even pretend like these are even contentious issues we face. So it’s times like this I almost wish I were a Christian because then I could believe the ending of that chapter of Matthew.
“Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.” Matthew 25: 44-46
But then I remember that in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, these conservatives are people too. Despite the near total lack of empathy, they still merit the full dignity of any human being. So as ever I am left not wishing for their torment, but I am left hoping that they too might be redeemed and deserve the human dignity they deny to others.
I had an odd epiphany the other day, when a political commentator mentioned that we are now in our thirteenth year of the War on Terror. Aside from being a rather inauspicious number, this has particular significance to me because it means that more of my life has been in the era of the War on Terror than not. I’ve already mentioned the glaring reality that I have never lived a whole year of my life when the US wasn’t at war somewhere, and this is true for everyone too young to have been alive during the Great Depression. But the revelation that the majority of my life has now been during a war on global terrorism, a war with no end in sight, brings with it the larger realization that the US does indeed have a great affinity with the concept of perpetual warfare, regardless of the costs.
The conflicts associated with the War on Terror are a bit perplexing to me, because they seem to have come at an enormous cost with little tangible benefits to speak of, particularly since terrorism is not a statistically big threat to the United States. Let’s begin with the absurdly low risk of terrorism enjoyed by the United States. Since the 9/11 attacks there have been 14 civilian deaths as a result of terrorist activity in the United States. This is why you will hear somewhat jarring comparisons that indicate you are more likely to die as a result of furniture, toddlers, or pig attacks than you are to be killed by a terrorist. This is, of course, not exactly for want of trying. Especially in the holiday season we are reminded of such would be disasters as the “underwear bomber.” But even if you include the tragedy that was 9/11, in that same year approximately four times as many American citizens were killed as a result of conventional homicide.
Particularly when you compare the threat of terrorism with any of the leading causes of death in America, e.g. heart disease or cancer, terrorism is simply not a pressing threat to Americans. Nonetheless we are willing to pay trillions of dollars and thousands of lives for the sake of fighting this war. All the more tragic is the fact that just looking at the death casualties of our armed forces. On 9/11, 2606 people died as a result of all the attacks. As of right now, 4409 Americans have died fighting in the War on Terror. More Americans have died in our response to the attacks than Americans died in the attacks. Needless to say, this doesn’t even touch on the hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians who have died as a result of the War on Terror. Let’s also remember the more than 30,000 servicemen and women physically injured and countless more psychologically scarred as a result of this endless warfare.
But it might still all be worth it if we actually had something tangible to show for it, right? Osama Bin Laden now sleeps with the fishes, Afghanistan is no longer in the hands of the Taliban and Al Qaeda is devastated. These should be laudable achievements, but the fact of the matter is that at every stage it seems like we’ve been fighting a hydra. Each head we chop off is replaced by new ones: ISIS, AQAP, Al-Shabaab, etc. At the same time, we’ve seen the power of relatively peaceful, self-led movements throughout the Arab world toppling dictators in a way that leads to much better outcomes than those we’ve created. And it pains me to say this, because I don’t want to believe that our fighting men and women have died in vain, but for all of our losses I don’t know if I can name any clear improvements as a result of the War on Terror.
At home we have also been dealing with the endless war syndrome that seems to afflict this nation. The War on Drugs has similarly cost us dear in terms of dollars and lives. There are more Americans imprisoned now than there were in Russia during the Soviet Union, in South Africa during Apartheid, in China at the height of Mao’s power, etc. Worse still, the conduct of the War on Drugs has been racially biased against minorities. Blacks are much more likely to be incarcerated for marijuana related charges despite comparable levels of use by whites, and crack cocaine carries harsher penalties than powder because it was presumed to be used more frequently by blacks. It is this kind of systematic action against black communities that has made many black people mistrustful of police.
The recent outrage in the aftermath of Eric Garner’s death and subsequent lack of trial comes in the wake of decades of warfare against minorities under the guise of a War on Drugs. And though his death was because they suspected him of selling cigarettes, it is cannabis that sends far more otherwise innocent people into the tender hands of the US incarceration system. Even now as states move toward decriminalization and legalization of marijuana there are hundreds of thousands of Americans in prisons and jails simply for possession charges. To add insult to injury, many more people have lost access to government assistance programs that might improve their lives because they have ridiculous blotches on their records. And though homophobes are quick to blame the LGBT community for HIV/AIDS, the single biggest cause of disease transmission is due to injected drugs. Which is just another way of saying that if the goal of the War on Drugs was to curb drug use and make us safer, it has utterly failed at the tune of some $50 billion annually.
However, I can think of a war that America was quite keen to end. The War on Poverty, in the first decade of its run, brought poverty rates down to their lowest in history to that point, but the moment a recession hit in the 1970s, enemies of the poor sought to end the programs that were there to help people when they needed it most. The one war that had tangible benefits to the American people, the one war that wasn’t costing lives, the one war that arguably was creating wealth instead of frittering it away is the one war that we needed to crush. I mean honestly, if we funded the War on Poverty the way we fund our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, etc we could not only end homelessness and hunger at home but abroad.
Yet I’m not asking for that, nor anyone else so far as I can tell. We have limited resources and we have to do the best we can with what we have. Defense is important and we need to have a well funded military and defense infrastructure to ensure that things like terrorism never become tangible threats in the first place. All I’m saying is that given the level of funding we already provide for the military we have long since passed the point where diminishing marginal utility kicks in hard. Our military and our endless war fascination has made us less safe by providing dangerous groups with the means to do serious damage to us and to their neighbors. ISIS is just falling in the tradition of the Taliban and Al Qaeda as a militant extremist group we armed to fight wars for us either directly or indirectly by not monitoring where the arms we provided actually went.
So what I am calling for is an end to pointless wars both domestically and internationally. We can no longer afford to put so much money into small threats, because we only inflate what would otherwise be a nonissue. The Roman Empire also had a strategy of swatting flies with a sledge hammer, and the end result was the same then as now, an untouched fly and a tired fly swatter. We need to pump our money into the kinds of nonviolent, self-led reform groups that actually work in toppling dictators. We need to end a drug war that only gives greater power to cartels and furthers the problems of addiction. We need to treat addiction as the illness it is and stop punishing those already suffering. By doing these things we get better results at a fraction of the cost. If nothing else, by pursuing these strategies we might finally go another year experiencing peace and prosperity for real people, instead of simply lining the pocketbooks of vultures and hawks.
It’s that most wonderful time of the year again. Starbucks has put away the pumpkin spice and brought on the peppermint lattes, Christmas songs of various quality are echoing on radio stations, nostalgic movies and semi-conscious cash grabs are a regular part of the primetime lineups, and the words ‘War on Christmas’ are already being formed on the lips of all the bad little boys and girls in the Fox network. It may come as a shock to people who only experience me through this sometimes snarky blog that I genuinely like the holiday season. In my opinion a holiday can be judged by how many good songs are written specifically for it and not to be played year round. And it’s at this time that I feel it most pressing to talk about what is perhaps the most ubiquitous Christmas story, aside from “A Christmas Story,” which has to wait until Christmas Eve to run on repeat for 24 hours on TNT.
There are undoubtedly some who will argue the story that matters most at Christmas is the tale of a redeemer, born in poverty, who would be hailed as king. There will be others who will argue that the story of Jesus is just a knock off of several other stories in the region and that the Christmas holiday was an opportunistic usurpation of existing pagan holidays. But while those two groups fight out what exactly is the original story that needs to be remembered at this time of year, I will stake my claim with “A Christmas Carol.” It’s a story that makes no pretension about being the original tale, but has nonetheless shaped so much of the way people celebrate Christmas, and not simply because it has spawned countless interpretations that may or may not include the Muppets. But this approximately 170 year old novella is still pressingly relevant today in a way that often gets lost, so I want to simply talk about why this Victorian story is still the one that needs to be talked about the most.
First of all we need to understand why this story is so universally beloved and infinitely repeatable. It is an unabashedly secular story, but open to those who want to retain the religious aspects of the holiday. There are passing references to church and the Jesus narrative, when the Cratchit family discusses how “It might be pleasant to them to remember on Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk.” There is also a theme of Christian charity that so often gets glossed over in the season of rampant commercialism. But other than that the story does not say the doom awaiting Scrooge is the result of his disobedience to Commandments, but the lack of concern for the business of humanity. In fact the threat issued against Scrooge doesn’t concern going to heaven or hell, but existing in the world after death powerless to help others, which could be construed as a form of hell but has no resemblance to the fires mentioned in the Gospels. The celebrations that are highlighted include feasting, dancing, singing, playing games, decorating trees, giving gifts, playing in the snow, etc but not sitting around a nativity or having the whole family go out to a midnight mass.
What’s more these celebrations, though echoing passed traditions, were not the norm at the time. England in the aftermath of Puritan rule was not entirely comfortable with Christmas celebrations, hence the importance of the defense of secularism. So much of what we imagine about Christmas: the snow on the ground, tree in the home, bird on the table, carolers at the door: have become a tradition because of the England Dickens thought up at that time. And climate change may go part of the way to explaining why London rarely has this kind of white Christmas anymore, but the image remains etched in our minds regardless of reality. It is a story that transcends time and place to fill the nooks and crannies of sentiment at this time of year, even if we no longer cook a Christmas goose and pudding. But universality and tradition of the text are nothing compared to the most important message of this novella, which was written in response to the English Poor Laws.
The Industrial Era, though responsible for so much of the wealth and prosperity we now enjoy, was hell on earth for the masses who had to toil in the sweatshops and mills and factories of the big cities. It took nearly another 60 years for another book, “The Jungle,” to disgust readers with its descriptions of the treatment of meat and man alike in industrial Chicago, a length of time where you would hope things had gotten substantively better. The great migration of people from the rural to the urban spheres brought with it endless questions about the responsibility toward the poor. It was at this time that people were confronted in a much closer way with the old belief in the ‘undeserving poor.’
“For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” 2 Thessalonians 3:10. This complaint of Paul’s about one of the churches has long been used as vindication of the kind of Social Darwinism that allows people to coldly ignore the plight of the poor because clearly if they had simply worked then they would be able to eat. This sentiment is echoed in Scrooge’s words that are later hurled back against him, “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” This was the sentiment that informed the Poor Laws of the era, wherein the commoditization of the poor as fodder for industry was so absolute that any form of unemployment assistance, such as it was, had to be lower than even the meagerest of wages. This was the logic that allowed debtors’ prisons to hold the poor hostage until their families paid not only their original debt, but the debt they accrued for their lodging in prison. And while we have come so far in making the world both more prosperous, more compassionate, and more just, the sad truth is that there are still many who would set up each and every one of these policies again if given the chance.
In this country there is a powerful movement dead set against any assistance to those in need because they assume that if you aren’t succeeding that it’s your fault. I can, and do, talk about the economic importance of ensuring the working class has enough money to stimulate demand, but this is far more fundamental than that. It is our duty toward our fellow human beings to ensure that there is respite from the cold, that there is an open hand ready to help you up, that there is food for the hungry. If you need to be told that there is damnation waiting for you if you fail to do so, I can’t say that speaks well of you, but so long as you know the virtue of giving to others it suffices. But no matter how many times this story is told and retold, it seems to pass through the ether without convincing a great many.
At this time of year we are most expected to indulge our generosity. We see boxes set out by Toys for Tots, we hear the ringing of little bells for the Salvation Army, food banks expect to receive donations to brace the poor for a long and cold winter. Truly this should be the time for charity, but it is always overshadowed by indulgences of a much less virtuous sort. The War on Christmas that people moan on about concerns the setting up of nativity scenes on public property or the use of the phrase Merry Christmas as opposed to Happy Holidays; however, you never hear of the war that is waged against ideals of Christmas. “We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices.”
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but winter does tend to be cold, and all the colder for those unable to afford a shelter or to turn on the heat. Yet we assume that because no one in our immediate family needs to seek Medicaid or unemployment or welfare or charity that the issue is now moot. What basic assistance we are willing to provide for the ‘deserving poor’ is already being taken advantage of if you listen to John Stossel or Bill O’Reilly. “I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support establishments I have mentioned—they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.” Any further want felt by the poorest of society is clearly their own fault and we have no further obligation to help them, which could very well be the party platform of the GOP as it gorges itself on Randian self indulgence. Every year there is a new call to cut benefits to the poor, to force prisoners to foot the bill for their imprisonment and accept slave wages for their labor, to “quit feeding stray animals [the poor]… because they breed.” And every year these people hold up a book as vindication for their heartlessness.
I too can hold up a book at this time of year as an example of decent morality. It is a story that is no less relevant today than it was when it was published, because no matter how far forward society advances there will always be those who remain stubbornly clinging to an immoral past. It is for the sake of those people that we need to remind the world that there are yet people shivering in the cold. There are yet people going to bed hungry. There are yet people, real people who need to be considered while we go about having fun and indulging in seconds of whatever foods grace your table this time of year. So I would highly recommend giving a second glance to a classic story that everyone knows, but few seem to have actually read. Best of all, it’s a rather short read and incredibly easy to get your hands on because it is public domain. Go read it, everyone!
cojsmithblog 