Special Interest Group: Americans Who Don't Want to Be Shot

I haven't said much lately about U.S gun policy though I'm tired of the mass shootings and tired of hearing about crimes in Chicago being committed with guns from Indiana. Here satire writer Andy Borowitz has a few things to say:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – Americans who are opposed to being shot, a constituency that has historically failed to find representation in Washington, are making a new effort to make its controversial ideas heard in the nation’s capital....Carol Foyler, founder of the lobbying group Americans Opposed to Being Shot,...believes that the right to not be shot, much like women’s right to vote, the right to same-sex marriage, and other rights that were deemed controversial in their day, may be an idea whose time has finally come.“For years, we’ve been talking about the right to not be shot and people have been looking at us like we’re out of our minds,” she said. “But recent polls show that a vast majority of Americans, in fact, do not want to be shot.”

While Foyler and other anti-being-shot activists believe that Washington may finally be receptive to their radical ideas, Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice-president of the National Rifle Association, is doubtful. “People who don’t want to be shot are a very narrow interest group,” he said.

I was struck by the last episode of Downton Abbey (Season 6, Episode 8). So much of the show revolved around showing compassion versus negative judgments. 

People are lined up along the rail of the ship waving good-by to those waving along the shore. This is the beginning scene of Brooklyn, a movie about separation and loss, about starting anew on a different continent. It represents the many whose immigration to America was bittersweet. There is a good trailer here.

Just So

Susan Werner, Part Two

This song goes well with this year's presidential election.

Susan Werner, Part One

Been listening to Susan Werner lately.  This is a good song for contemplating one's self-concept.

What Now?

In May of 2014, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote “The Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic Monthly magazine. I have been rereading it recently, and I posted last week that I would try to write about it. I find myself unable to say much other than, read this article, just read it.

It has been controversial, and I wonder how many potential readers were turned off by the word reparations. It is difficult to imagine how reparations could work. But Coates believes something else is more difficult to imagine. If this country were to discuss reparations, we would have to look at things we don't want to look at. “For the past 25 years, Congressman John Conyers Jr., who represents the Detroit area, has marked every session of Congress by introducing a bill calling for a congressional study of slavery and its lingering effects as well as recommendations for 'appropriate remedies'” (Coats). That bill has never made it to the house floor.

Maybe, if it were only about slavery, Coates might not have written this article. It is, however, as the subtitle states, more than slavery: “Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy.” It is a grim history difficult to coexist with our prized stories of freedom and equality. He continues.

Perhaps after a serious discussion and debate—the kind that HR 40 [Conyers' bill] proposes—we may find that the country can never fully repay African Americans. But we stand to discover much about ourselves in such a discussion—and that is perhaps what scares us. The idea of reparations is frightening not simply because we might lack the ability to pay. The idea of reparations threatens something much deeper—America's heritage, history, and standing in the world.

I hope that those who disagree with the idea of reparations will first read Coates' entire article.

Imagine...

This meal arises from the labour of all beings,

may we remember their offering.

Above is the beginning of a chant we recited before every meal at the meditation retreat I attended recently. Rarely do I think about all the people who participate in making sure I am fed, partly because it's impossible. On a snowy day yesterday, I bought a bag of carrots. From the person who put the seed in the ground to the woman who took my money at the store, how many people were involved?  I can't quite imagine. (I tried unsuccessfully to find the source of the picture above.)

A Speck on the Time Line

A few weeks ago, I read Paul Krugman's review of The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J. Gordon. I don't know if I will read Gordon's book, but the following statements in Krugman's review keep returning to me as I think about how much different my life is than it was for those living a relatively short time ago.

Robert J. Gordon, a distinguished macro­economist and economic historian at Northwestern, has been arguing for a long time...[that d]evelopments in information and communication technology... just don’t measure up to past achievements. Specifically..., he has argued that the I.T. revolution is less important than any one of the five Great Inventions that powered economic growth from 1870 to 1970: electricity, urban sanitation, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, the internal combustion engine and modern communication....

In “The Rise and Fall of American Growth,” Gordon doubles down on that theme, declaring that the kind of rapid economic growth we still consider our due, and expect to continue forever, was in fact a one-time-only event. First came the Great Inventions, almost all dating from the late 19th century. Then came refinement and exploitation of those inventions — a process that took time, and exerted its peak effect on economic growth between 1920 and 1970. Everything since has at best been a faint echo of that great wave, and Gordon doesn’t expect us ever to see anything similar.

Indeed, almost half the book is devoted to changes that took place before World War II....I was fascinated by Gordon’s account of the changes wrought by his Great Inventions. As he says, “Except in the rural South, daily life for every American changed beyond recognition between 1870 and 1940.” Electric lights replaced candles and whale oil, flush toilets replaced outhouses, cars and electric trains replaced horses. (In the 1880s, parts of New York’s financial district were seven feet deep in manure.)

This one review has changed how I view the many conveniences that now seem necessities.

Yep...

Roz Chast tells it like it is.

White Privledge, Part Four

Early on during Debby Irving's process of Waking Up White, she describes watching the film Race: The Power of an Illusion. As the film begins to focus on the GI Bill, Irving gets uncomfortable. She describes it like this.

I remember thinking, Hmm, my father and uncles talked about that bill, about how great it felt to win the war and come home to free education and a housing loan. My father's law school education had been paid for by that bill. My parents' first home had been subsidized by it....But all of a sudden, the film started talking about the bill not being accessible to black Americans....The chilling reality is that while the American dream fell into the laps of millions of Americans, making the GI Bill the great equalizer for the range of white ethnicities in the melting pot, Americans of color, including the one million black GIs who'd risked their lives in the war, were largely excluded. The same GI Bill that had given white families like mine a socio-economic rocket boost had left people of color out to dry.

It was interesting to read this account from someone who benefited from the bill and felted naively foolish after learning this new information. And it motivated me to go back and reread “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates (The Atlantic, May 2014).  Once again, this article left me feeling sick.  And it made me think that the government backed loans that helped my father buy farm land and invest in production where part of this process, part of the reason why "white households are worth roughly 20 times as much as black households..."(Coates).

Coates' article is so full of depressing statics like the one above, that I don't know where to start.  If I can manage it, I'll write sometime soon about Coates' argument for reparations.  Right now, I'd just like to conclude with this reflection from Coates about our willingness to celebrate some of our history while other pieces of it we hide or deny.

One cannot escape...by...disavowing the acts of one's ancestors, nor by citing a recent date of ancestral immigration.  The last slaveholder has been dead for a very long time.  The last soldier to endure Valley Forge has been dead much longer.  To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slaveholder is patriotism à la carte....

Meanwhile, I think that every American should read Coates' article.  It's a brilliant and depressing piece of American history, and I'm afraid many will avoid it because of the word "reparations" in the title.

White Privelige, Part Three

Debby Irving, in her book Waking Up White , introduces readers to Peggy McIntosh who has compiled a list of ways she enjoys certain privileges because of being white. McIntosh says, “I have chosen those conditions which I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined.” Some samples from her list are below. More can be found here.

• I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time...
• If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live...
• I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed...
• I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented....
• When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is...
• Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability...
• I can swear, or dress in second-hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race....
• I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race....

"Don't do it"

On January 23, I posted Gail Collins' fantasy of going back in time to deliver messages. Here is another fantasy of carrying messages back to the past, one with an entirely different flavor. The narrator of Sharon Olds' poem imagines her parents meeting:

...they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,...

Read the entire poem here.

Just This

Last week I posted that I was leaving for a silent meditation retreat. I got home Sunday afternoon. I wanted to say something about those days but fount it difficult. Meditation doesn't lend itself to words, and it is, after all, very personal. I decided I would like to briefly share three ideas that I found moving and helpful.

• Listen to the silence. The silence from which all sound arises. The silence of the night sky. The silence of the room, the floor, the ceiling. The silence of the universe. My own silence.

• Just this. That's all, just this. This tea. This chore. This conversation. This step. This moment—just this.

This retreat took place in a lovely area, and I was aware of how much the beauty of nature makes mindfulness easier for me. (Right now, back home, a woodpecker is eating suet from a bird feeder about eight feet from where I sit.) Surprisingly, I was quite moved by the beauty of leafless trees and bushes. These are just some of the insights I will try to carry with me as I step forward.

White Privilege Part Two

Some folks find the idea of white privilege offensive. After all, I'm white, and I can look around and see scores of people more privileged than I am. But that's not what it means. It just means my default setting, in terms of race, is an easier setting than most other races. I think science fiction writer John Scalzi has a clever way of expressing it

Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?

Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.

This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.

Get it? You can still lose. You can still be clumsy, lazy, crazy or whatever. And you still have that white advantage.