Bigotry feels itself aggrieved, part 1

I have a working rule about bigotry and in particular about those who try to justify willful injustices.  I believe such people convince themselves that they are victims of the very victims against whom the injustices are perpetrated.  They feel themselves aggrieved by the victims and use that sense of grievance in a process of self-seduction to support something they might not otherwise believe justifiable.

By "willful injustice" I mean an injustice that someone chooses to do when they could have chosen otherwise.  I do not mean an instance where someone weighs all options, finds them all unjust, but must make a decision and tries to choose the least unjust option possible.

By "seduction," I mean making an argument to convince the will to accept something otherwise unacceptable.  By "self-seduction," I mean the person bears some fault both for succumbing to the argument and for engaging in it.  It is not necessarily the fault of the person alone.  Wider discourses about why "those people" need to be segregated, or why "those people" need to be disfranchised or why "we" need to expropriate (the word "steal" is not used) "their" land--they aid in the process.  But the person is an active participant.  The person sees the apple and knows that it is bad and yet convinces him-/herself that it would be nice to play god and to make themselves the final arbiter of what is just.


The feeling of grievance cum bigotry can manifest itself in many ways, and in future posts I shall explore my idea further and provide examples to illustrate.  But there are two challenges to what I've written so far that I should acknowledge even though I can't fully resolve them.

First, I haven't actually defined "bigotry" here.  The dictionary definition of a bigot goes something like this: "a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially :  one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance."  The problem with that defintion, as with many dictionary definitions, is that it doesn't really explore the qualifiers, especially the adverbs and adverbial phrases:  obstinately, intolerantly, with hatred, with...intolerance.  I submit that most people whom we can accurately describe as bigots either do not see themselves as obstinate, intolerant, etc. or delude themselves into thinking that they are not.  Indeed, that's another way of summing up what I'm arguing in this post, that bigotry feels itself aggrieved.  Still, I realize that my framing is circular.  I'm stating it is because it is.  I'm not proving it.

Second, and somewhat related, my hypothesis presumes something about the internal states of others.  It can therefore be construed as a judgment upon those others of the sort theNew Testament warned against:

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Now, whatever my actual practice, I do not in theory really think it's acceptable to impose moral judgments on others' souls.  (That doesn't, by the way, mean I believe all "judgment" is necessarily wrong, just that certain kinds of judgment are off-limits for mere mortals.)  But by introducing the ideas of "self-seduction" and "willful injustice," I am edging toward something that looks like a judgment.

My response to those two points--that I define "bigotry," if at all, in a circular way and that I am judging the internal states of others--is to partially concede the point but also to redirect how I want to use this concept.  I think we need to look at bigotry not as an isolated phenomenon, but as a way to measure our actions.  The goal, then, becomes not which of our actions is bigoted, or who is bigoted, but rather in what ways our (or others') actions are bigoted.  People who feel themselves especially aggrieved or victimized by others do, in my opinion, really believe at some level that they are aggrieved, even though I also argue that feeling or belief is partially a product of self-delusion.  We lie to ourselves and we are responsible for the act of lying, but we do on some level believe the lies.

As I provide further examples in later posts, I hope my general statements here become clearer.

The death penalty: a clarification

In my previous post [click here to read it], I stated the grounds / argument / reason I oppose the death penalty, namely,

The state should not kill a person once that person no longer poses an immediate threat to society.

I also stated why this "argument" wasn't much of an argument, and I identified what I thought were some obvious problems. The chief problem was that I believed (and still believe) it to be a "question-begging" argument: if one already agrees with it, then one probably does not need to be convinced that the death penalty is wrong.

What I didn't do is explain further why I don't try to convince people of it. What are the reasons behind my saying that the state ought not kill those whom it has neutralized? I could cite some of the reasons that Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry tries to "demolish" or at least offer rejoinders for--the near certainty that some mistakes will be made (he did, after all, write this in response to the outcry over Troy Davis's execution) and that the death penalty might not operate as a deterrent (although I personally find this argument unprovable and based on assumptions about the purpose of punishment that I do not necessarily share). I also would add the alleged--and to my knowledge well-backed up by statistics--race, class, and (I suspect) sex discrimination* when it comes to who gets executed. There may very well be other reasons, some of which boil down to "I don't want to trust the state not to mess it up." As reasons, they have a certain force, and if true, might lead anyone to oppose the death penalty as a practical matter even if they support it in theory.

The truth is, however, that none of these reasons constitute my true rejection. All of them could be shown to be based on false premises--or could be stipulated to be false--and I would still oppose the penalty. In short, to adopt those as the reasons I oppose the death penalty--even though at least some of them might be sufficient reasons in themselves--would be dishonest on my part.

In short, my "argument" is not an "argument." I cannot use it to convince someone who doesn't already agree with me. I do not expect someone who is pro-death penalty to hear my "argument" and change their minds because of it. I might try to convince them that they already believe, deep down, that the state shouldn't kill people that do not pose an immediate threat. But such convincing would be a different feat, an act of showing that my opponent is actually someone who agrees with me already, not someone whom I could convince.


*When it comes to this point, I know nothing for certain. I suspect--and it's only a suspicion, founded on nothing--that if a similarly situated man and woman commit the same type of capital crime, then the man would most likely receive the death penalty. Again, I have no evidence, and I acknowledge two points. First, women often are and have been executed. Second, I understand that men tend to commit more violent crimes than women do, so establishing a way to test my suspicion systematically is quite hard.

A rejoinder to Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

About two months ago, Pascal-Emmanual Gobry wrote of his admittedly reluctant support for the death penalty. (Click here to read his blog post in full.) His chief purpose is to "demolish" the anti-death penalty arguments and to explain why he supports the death penalty. I believe his argument for the death penalty is ultimately unworkable and unconscionable (which is not to say that it is not well-thought-out) and his attempt to demolish anti-death penalty arguments partially neglects an important argument against the death penalty, albeit one I do not believe I have heard others use and that I confess is almost a question-begging argument.

I share Mr. Gobry's reluctance to endorse some of the anti-death penalty arguments, although sometimes for different reasons from what he offers:

• Like him, I'm suspicious of the claim that "the death penalty is not a deterrent," not necessarily because I believe, as he does, that the sole purpose of "justice" is not to deter crime, but because I admit that even if it is a deterrent, its deterrent effect would not salve my opposition to it.
• I actually disagree with his argument that the death penalty is not vengeance--I think one function of the state undertaking to punish someone is to exact something I cannot call by any other name than "vengeance"--but at the end of the day, I submit that even if we stipulate the death penalty to be '"vengeance," then its essence as "vengeance" does not disqualify it any more than it would disqualify any other punishment exacted by the state.
• His argument against the claim that "the state should not kill people" works to the extent that his characterization of that claim is valid. His argument, quite simply, is that all societies allow some sort of state-sanctioned and state-implemented killing. I'll return to this argument later because my opposition is closely related to the claim that Mr. Gobry "demolishes" here. But again, if one accepts his characterization of the claim, then his counterargument at least lends food for thought to those who advance the claim.
• He addresses, but by his own admission does not "demolish," the argument that there is a real possibility of a miscarriage of justice. He his very honest that he has no perfectly good answer, other than to make the following points in mitigation against that argument: it is hard to truly compensate someone who, say, loses 10 years of their life in prison after having been found innocent of what they were convicted of (one might also add that compensation in such cases is in some states non-existent and in others very small); the assertion that "[p]unishment of the innocent is terrible to contemplate whatever the punishment, and yet society must punish and will always be imperfect"; the hopeful claim that [w]ith increasing prosperity and improving evidentiary science miscarriages should only become less likely, not more." I personally find these points woefully inadequate by themselves. First, it may be hard to "truly" compensate someone for 10 lost years--or even 10 lost days--but at the end of the day the person comes out of it alive. Second, the claim that society must punish and will always be imperfect strikes me as a bit of a dodge, almost the same as saying "it has ever been thus, so why change it."Third , I question the extent to which "evidentiary science," and the jurisprudence to accommodate it, will actually advance to cover most claims of wrongful imprisonment (I'm unclear how DNA evidence can even exonerate persons in most cases, and it seems to me that the appeals process does not always acknowledge such evidence as conclusive when it comes to ordering new trials). Despite my objections to this point, I'll concede him this argument if only because the underlying claim is not my true rejection of the death penalty. (I do think this "anti" argument, along with the argument that the death penalty is disproportionately assigned to persons of color, to poorer people, and (I suspect) to men, can be a true rejection for someone who otherwise might approve the death penalty.)

Mr. Gobry's "pro" argument seems sincere, and I hope to present it fairly. Namely, he seems to argue that extended prison sentences are cruel and amount to "torture," and that the death penalty, at least in cases of long prison terms, is the less cruel option. He cites the reports of prison rape and violence as examples of this cruelty. He also finds it a skewed set of values to say that life is more important than liberty, whereas he would prefer liberty to be more important than life, at least when it comes to punishment. To be clear, he is emphatically not saying that life is to have no value, but that rescinding all liberty is an ultimately more severe and cruel punishment than taking life (bold in the original):

Prison is immoral, cruel and unjust, and particularly life imprisonment. If we want to talk about what punishments are too cruel and beyond the pale, and we should, extended prison terms strike me as much more cruel than the death penalty.
A free society should reflect in its laws the judgement that liberty is a higher value than life, though life is very important.

He goes on to say that his is not an argument for prison reform per se. In fact, his despair of the likelihood of effective prison reform--"everywhere, the way politics work ensures that they will remain this way, because there will never be strong coalitions in favor of making prison 'livable', if that were possible"--supports his assertion that the cruelty of prison is well nigh inexorable. He does concede the possibility of "short and 'medium' prison terms as punishment and rehabilitation." Still, the taking of liberty for life or for very long terms shocks, or should shock, the conscience of a putatively free "democratic" society.

Unlike Mr. Gobry in relation to his efforts against the anti-death penalty arugments, I cannot claim to "demolish" his own argument. But I have several reservations after which I find his argument wanting:

• As I note above, he concedes the possibility of "short and 'medium' terms" of prison, presumably in in minimum- and medium-security facilities, which (or so I've heard) have fewer of the features that lead Mr. Gobry to characterize prison as "torture." However, given this concession, I don't understand how finely he would draw the line between "short and 'medium' terms" (or likewise minimum- or medium-security facilities) and the longer terms (and harsher facilities) that are allegedly more cruel than death. At what point--10 years? 20 years? 30 years?--is death the less cruel option? My understanding is that recidivism is sometimes ipso facto justification for putting someone in a higher-security facility and for longer terms, even if the crime itself would not otherwise justify it. It shocks my conscience for a third-time petty drug dealer who has been convicted of no other crime to be put to death rather than be sentenced to 20 years in a maximum security prison (I'll confess that I do not know the drug laws well enough to know punishments). Of course, my shocked conscience is no answer to Mr. Gobry's argument, relying as it does on the premise that extreme deprivation of liberty for long periods of crime is more cruel than death. (And perhaps he might suggest that the penalties for violations of drug laws ought to be revised downward. He does not claim the US justice system is perfect or ideal.)
• To elaborate my shocked conscience reservation, I'll point out that Mr. Gobry's argument relies to some degree on the question of "how do we punish those horrible murderers" who do horrible things to people--at one point he says as much when he writes "there are evil, inexcusable murderers in the world. The question is what to do with them and, again, how far we are willing to go in terms of cruelty toward them?" What about the long prison sentences administered to white collar criminals or (sometimes) to non-violent drug offenders or to admittedly violent recidivists who nonetheless do not rise to the level of "evil, inexcusable murders"? It seems like Mr. Gobry would like to have it both ways: prison cannot be made better and we cannot justify the "torture" that is prison even when it comes to murderers, but when it comes to other criminals, well, we just won't talk about what happens to them. Of course, I must concede that a lot of criminals, especially white collar criminals, probably have minimum security sentences. But my point is, that if Mr. Gobry is going to call prison torture, and be consistent with his advocacy for, or at least acquiescence in the existence of, the death penalty, he needs to address this wider problem.
  
• Mr. Gobry despairs of a political coalition that would reform the prison system to such a degree as to make American prisons more "livable." Yet the same quasi-privatized prison industrial complex (to use a loaded term) and the incentives among police officers and prosecutors to arrest and convict (and sentence to long terms) large numbers of people are (arguably at least) largely responsible for the continuance of long prison terms in conditions that Mr. Gobry probably accurately describes as torture. Why would that same complex be any more amenable to re-establishing the process that is due to alleged criminals that would prevent the false positives and miscarriages of justice that Mr. Gobry, in another section of his blog post, is so hopeful for? Again, my point here is not a full answer to Mr. Gobry's argument, relying as it does on a quasi-conspiratorial vision of a "prison industrial complex" (obviously, I'm sympathetic to the charge that it does exist and is pernicious, but I confess that if someone were to call me on it, I don't have at my disposal the evidence to prove it) and counteracting only a portion of Mr. Gobry's larger argument about extreme deprivations of liberty.
• Whose to say that extreme deprivation of liberty is indeed worse than death? For what it's worth, I believe the horror stories about prison are at least sometime true, and I fear that they are chronically true, and I think it's an outrage and would prefer that something be done. It is also facile of me to claim that a life in prison is a life worth living. But maybe there is something valuable to maintaining life, even in a place as hellish as the worst stories of prison. Again, maybe not. But unless I'm the product of reincarnation--and if so, then my memory has been duly erased--I have never died and don't know what it's like to die and on some level I confess to being afraid of dying even though I know that it is inevitable.
  

Again, none of the preceding reservations actually "demolish" Mr. Gobry's argument. But they are strong enough to convince me, at least, to reject it.

Finally, I'll say that Mr. Gobry's efforts to "demolish" the anti-death penalty arguments rejects another argument, the one akin to the claim that "the state should not kill people" and the one I promised to return to. As I said above, he has quite a powerful point when he says that the state already approves of and takes part in killing in at least some circumstances that most opponents of the death penalty would probably accept (a police officer shooting a suspect in self defense, a soldier shooting a soldier in the army of a country with which the US is at war). Therefore, it is hard to advance this argument. Moreover, Mr. Gobry is not setting up a straw man. There are, apparently, people who make this argument, and if you read his post, he links to one of them.

But there is a related argument, albeit more qualified and perhaps also a bit question-begging (in a similar way that the argument he "demolishes" is also question-begging: if one accepts that "the state should not kill" it's a 360 degree leap to get to the conclusion that of course, the death penalty is not right). Here is the--and my--argument:

The state should not kill a person once that person no longer poses an immediate threat to society.

In other words, it is, at least in theory, okay for the state (e.g., a police officer) to kill in immediate self-defense (one hears certain anecdotes and wonders how many such killings are, in fact, self defense), but not after the state has detained or otherwise neutralized the alleged criminal.

I acknowledge that my "argument" is almost no argument at all; it almost completely begs--i.e., assumes as evidence--that which I intend to "prove" with it. Someone, having accepted my formulation, must in most cases probably also deny the death penalty. The burden on me is to prove the validity of my formulation--the question that I beg--and not the almost perfectly valid conclusion I draw from it.

I say it "almost completely" begs the question because there are still some gray areas. There is (probably) no such thing as pure immediacy when it comes to threats or anything else outside the "approaches to zero" we find in differential calculus: how mediated does the immediate have to be before it's no longer "immediate"? I don't know exactly. I draw the line at the time the suspect is handcuffed. But what about the possibility of escape? Ted Bundy apparently escaped, and to kill again. What about the possibility of an "extremist martyr"? At least some argument is to be made that had the architect of the Oklahoma City bomber not been killed, he as a "political" prisoner might prove a rallying point for like minded extremists in a more violent way than he would not otherwise have been. (Maybe not; his co-conspirator was not sentenced to death, if I recall, and however such extremists might revere him, he doesn't seem to have been the focal point of more violence.)

And here I see the insufficiency of my "rejoinder" to Mr. Gobry. It boils down to this: he did not address my argument, and there are certain points he left unexplored (how to account for the way the prison system is) or assumed a priori (liberty trumps life when it comes to extreme punishment). But there I do see our differences.

We are the 99%, we are the 1%

The "Occupy Wall Street" movement has figured prominently in the BCM (Blogosphere as Consulted by Me) and, I assume, in the mainstream media, although I haven't looked much at the MSM in the last weeks. This movement appears to be largely a protest against what its participants believe to be the corporate greed and the unfair advantages enjoyed by the wealthiest of the population at the expense of most hardworking Americans.

One of its rallying cries is "We are the 99 percent," as opposed to the rent-seeking, greedy 1 percent who oppress us all and get government bailouts. One website that claims to speak for the movement explains what it stands for:

We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.

Who, then, are the 1 percent?

They are the 1 percent. They are the banks, the mortgage industry, the insurance industry. They are the important ones. They need help and get bailed out and are praised as job creators. We need help and get nothing and are called entitled. We live in a society made for them, not for us. It’s their world, not ours. If we’re lucky, they’ll let us work in it so long as we don’t question the extent of their charity.

I do not wish to dismiss this movement or the concerns expressed by its adherents out of hand. There are real problems out there and reading that website--which, from the first of its (so far, as of a week and a half ago when I wrote the first draft of this post) 67 pages, seems to be a series of posts by people who explain their personal plight, such as high debts, poor health, and joblessness--is quite sobering. It's one thing for someone like me to contemplate, in the abstract, others' statements about what is important to them. It is quite another to put a human voice to the person making that statement. Many of the problems voiced there remind me of some of my own challenges. Others of the problems are (thankfully, knock on wood, etc.) are, so far, beyond my ken.

I also do not wish to claim that this movement is saying something it is not. It is easy to chide the proponents of the "we are the 99%, and they are the 1%" formulation as both naive and potentially dangerous, indicative of a mentality that sees conspiracies in everything perceived to be unfair or simply unsatisfactory or unfortunate. It is also easy to point out that the 99% formulation is over-inclusive. The top 10%, for instance, probably benefit more than the remaining 90% by orders of magnitude comparable to that enjoyed by the top 1% over the 99%. I in fact made a comment to that effect in a post at the Lawyers, Guns and Money blog. One commenter there thoughtfully rebuked me, saying in part (the rest, along with my original comment you can get by clicking on the link),

Personally, I think it’s somewhat misleading to think of “the 99%” as a demographic group; it is, rather, a political designation, more akin to a declaration of faith and principles than a reference to one’s factual income. To declare oneself as part of the 99% is not to say that I make less than X amount of money; it is to declare that I am in opposition to the existing order of things, which has effectively written out large percentages of the population as not really relevant to the political community. Thus, for instance, I think that Warren Buffet could declare himself too to be of the 99%, and I would welcome it. So while its true that the 99% don’t share a common interest, it is equally true that the one core purpose of the movement is to transform things, to bring into being a new political subjectivity, which in theory at least, could contain anyone and everyone.

Now, I think this commenter has a point, and it's a check on my own smugness (and against what another commenter at that site, in another post, called being "a pedantic a***ole). At any rate, I reject the facile characterizations of the movement by such people as Charles Krauthammer, who, in his appearance on a recent episode of "Inside Washington," criticized the protesters for their alleged hypocrisy in owning I-phones and wearing designers jeans while declaiming against corporate America. (That's not the only time I've seen the "they use I-phones" trope....I questions, by the way, how many of those people actually do use I-phones.) Another casual dismissal comes from Tom Van Dyke at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen. Noting one protester who says he or she has $70,000 in debt:

I feel you, brother. $70,000 in hock to the Educational-Industrial Complex and still no job to pay off your medical bills, the ones you ran up spending your cash on clubs and sushi and gadgets instead of insurance. Now you’re streetcamping, trying to figure out how to make a meal out of Cup O’Noodles and a can of Red Bull.

I don't see how Mr. Van Dyke knows that this person actually eats sushi or went to the clubs or didn't even have insurance, just as I don't know how accurate is Mr. Krauthammer's assessment of the protesters' fashion capabilities.

These detractors might have a point. Young college educated people--and the protesters are at least portrayed as mostly young and college educated, although I suppose those assumptions might be a bit overwrought--might have it rough in this economy, but it appears that the lesser educated have it even worse. At any rate, I'm not sure we really know the demographics enough to make such a general statement about the protests. But no number of studies in comparative oppressions and no accusations of hypocrisy necessarily answer the protesters' arguments.

Another point from the the detractors, a la Mr. Van Dyke, is that these protesters are in the situation they are in largely because of choices they made, some of which might have been improvident or at the very least ill-considered. There's probably some truth to that point, and that truth oughtn't be denied. But there is also a point, I believe, where it is important to have empathy for others, regardless of how much they owe their position to their own improvidence. Who among us hasn't made at least some poor choices? Of course, what the common solution should be, can be, and is, is a different question. I'm not sure, for example, that a onetime student loan bailout, is the way to go (although, to be fair, I don't see a lot of people seriously arguing for a student loan bailout as much as I see them arguing for expanding the categories by which people can earn forgiveness or otherwise have their debts discharged or reduced). But if someone is in distress, sometimes it is helpful to listen to them. We might see ourselves.

Still, I feel constrained to reject the "we are the 99%" formulation. My rejection comes, in part, from the criticisms I mentioned above: the conspiracy-theory mentality the formulation plays into and the formulation's (what I and and at least one other person sees as) over-inclusiveness.

My rejection also comes from the way I believe that formulation mischaracterizes the beneficiaries of the bank bailout. Those who benefited the most are probably the investment bankers and jet-setting insurance executives, at least I am going to assume that to be true. But in the very short term, at least, other beneficiaries were probably the people much lower on the food chain who worked for those firms--the clerks and the janitors and the tellers and the couriers. My point isn't that the bank bailout was wise or that it was primarily an effort to help those folks. Rather, my point is that when protesters criticize "Wall Street" or "Bank of America" (in Chicago, the protests are taking place on LaSalle Street and Jackson, where the main Chicago branch of Bank of America is located), they often elide the distinction between those they call the "1%" and those who are trying to get by on more modest incomes at more modest jobs at these places. (In this sense, my rejection is based less on the protest movement's alleged "over-inclusiveness" and more on its "under-inclusiveness.")

Finally, my rejection comes from that formulation's rejection of what I take to be basic truth. We are all essentially just as greedy, corruptible, and rent-seeking as the next person. The difference between the "99%" and the mythical 1% is that the 1% are better positioned or better able, or both, to make their greed work for them. This assertion--that humanity is inherently greedy and corrupt(ible)--is of course not very original. Even if you don't agree with it (maybe in a later post I'll explain my theory of greed, which I have stolen from C. S. Lewis and now claim as my own), you have to admit that the idea is out there and reasonable people advance it. You don't even have to agree with my broad generalization to acknowledge that to the 1%, but for the grace of God, go the 99%. (I hope that makes sense.) Who among us can honestly and with certainty say we would, if we could, abrogate all the privileges we enjoy that give us an advantage over others? I can't, and I don't think the 99% can either.

At the same time, to demand such and honest and certain avowal from another human being is unfair. And I hope it's clear that my rejection is to a particular slogan--"we are the 99%"--and not necessarily to the movement itself, what the movement represents, or any solutions the movement advocates.

Left behind

In December 1999, I went to a grocery store in Boulder, the town where I lived at the time, and bought a box that had four 1-gallon jugs of water. They were on sale, on a special pallet in a prominent aisle. The store, of course, was trying to capitalize on the "Y2K" scare. My preparations for the coming calamity didn't extend much beyond this purchase, but I spent whatever amount of money I spent to get it. The following summer, there was still a box with four 1-gallon jugs of water in the room of my apartment--it served as a nice little table--and I had to empty the water when I moved out.

There was a certain amount of ridiculousness to all this. On most levels, I didn't believe the Y2K scare was much more than a scare, or I thought that, at most, maybe ATM's wouldn't work for a day or two, or perhaps the wrong date would appear on my bank statements, or my television, reverting to an earlier, double-digit aught-aught, would show only reprisals of Mr. Dooley or old "Mutt and Jeff" cartoons (okay, I made the last one up).

My purchase of water was also ridiculous for another reason: if things were going to be so bad that I needed 4 gallons of fresh water on stock, I would probably need a lot more than just 4 gallons of water. One can, I have heard, go without food for weeks and still survive. But without water, it is hard to survive (again, so I've heard) for much longer than a day or two. Four gallons likely would not have lasted me a week, and I'd probably feel obliged to share that with my roommates. One final point: I had water bottles and mason jars and the like--probably more than a mere four gallons worth, especially if I had sanitized old milk jugs that we saved for recycling--and could have stocked up on good ole tap water without paying whatever price the grocery store charged for what was probably also tap water.

The changeover to Y2K had no noticeable, direct affect on me personally or on anyone I know. I imagine some things stopped working as they should, but I either didn't notice them or if I did, they were so insignificant that I have since forgotten them.

Now, I hear that the much anticipated (by some) "rapture" of Christians has failed to materialize. The "rapture," as I understand it, is the notion that as part of the beginning of the end of this dispensation, Christ will take up the last remaining generation of Christians before the world undergoes a series of "tribulations" that will result in the second Kingdom of God. I suppose there are variations on the theme and although I think I have gotten the gist right, my description may fail in certain particulars. Anyway, apparently, some reverend somewhere has anticipated that the "rapture" would come yesterday, and it either failed to come or the number of Christians taken up was so small, and the Christians apparently so humble and so unworldly, that the remaining coterie of mammon worshipers has not noticed their absence.

This prediction has elicited at least some commentary (but then again, what prediction never elicits any controversy whatsoever?), most of it humorous or mocking. At Ordinary Gentlemen, Jason Kuzinicki has a quite funny post--followed by an amusing comment thread-- about the rapture predictions. And Alex Knapp, author of a "sub-blog" at Ordinary Gentlemen, has his own, more pensive, commentary on it. Other such commentaries abound. One facebook friend, for example, suggested that this was an essentially American phenomenon (if she meant that this particular prediction and instance of hand-wringing were mostly American, then I agree; if she meant that only Americans are susceptible to such millennialist anxieties, then I disagree). Most of the commentary I have seen (I have read nothing by those who purported to believe yesterday was THE DAY) embrace one or more of the following themes or ways of looking at the issue:

• The people who believed that the rapture would happen yesterday are stupid.
• The people who believed that the rapture would happen yesterday are/were so caught up in the narrative of their religion and are so willing to discount disconfirming evidence that their faith--or at least the faith of most of them--will remain, if shaken, largely unchanged.
• These people are rightly objects of our mockery.
  
• These people are rightly objects of our pity.
  
• These people are different from us, who are rational and not so subject to such wacky epistemological claims as those made by the true believers.
• The belief that the rapture would happen yesterday represents to some degree an absence of faith.
• The belief that the rapture would happen yesterday represents a misreading of the scriptural authority on which the notion of the rapture is based.
  

Perhaps humor is the right way to comment on these things. I have done and believed some wacky things in my life and sometimes the price of believing and doing wacky things is to be made fun of. And if one has even a modicum of a sense of humor, one can, hopefully, laugh at oneself after the sturm und drang is over.

Still, I hesitate to think that I or my more rationalist friends, are really all that free of such millennial or otherwise incredible (to others) thinking. Of course, maybe I'm an outlier--not everyone bought 4 1-gallon jugs of water, just as not everyone believes that if only we have a workers' revolution we will usher in a new era of peace, prosperity, and widgets for all--but at the same time, maybe I'm not.

I don't know what lies in people's hearts,. what others secretly fear. And for what it's worth, especially if the notion of a "rapture" is untrue, we are all probably going to die someday and will worry about our final end, especially because probably none of us has complete certainty about what will happen afterward, or if some claim to have certainty, that certainty will not necessarily ease every and all anxiety:

I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore.

It also seems to me that most branches of Christianity that accept at least some of the claims of the miraculous--even if it's only the incarnation--at least leave open the possibility, in the abstract, that something like the "rapture" might happen. Having been raised Catholic, I have never, or at least do not remember ever having heard, a priest expound on this possibility, but I have trouble believing that the notion of a rapture is so contradictory to Church doctrine that it is not at least debatable. I was, in a large chunk of my life, involved with what I will call evangelical faiths on at least some levels, and there I heard about the "rapture" in much more explicit and credulous terms. My point here is only that the most recent rapturists perhaps have committed an error (of faith? of timing? of hermeneutics? of hubris?), but they have done so drawing on beliefs that are not necessarily much different from those of some of their detractors.

It is easy to mock. It might even be necessary to mock. Still, I can't forget that I once bought 4 gallons of water.

Why so glum, Joe?

At creators syndicated, you can find a column written by Cliff Enrico, called "A Rich Guy Speaks Out Against Higher Taxes (part 1 of 2)." In this column, Enrico creates a hypothetical narrator ("Joe") who makes exactly "$250,000 per year before taxes" and works any one of a number of hypothetical jobs:

I [Joe] may work for a large company as a midlevel or senior executive. I may run a successful small retail or service business. I may be a professional — a doctor, lawyer, accountant or architect.

And he, apparently, works hard, sometimes as much as 60 or 80 hours a week. He has little free time and even on Saturday afternoons when he "(or, more likely, my spouse) [might be seen]...trying frantically to get the household chores done that we can't do during the week. But we have no time for small talk — we have to get back to work." He studied hard in college, working at menial jobs and not enjoying the fabled "undergraduate experience" of alcohol, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. "I'm actually," he says, "having a lot less fun than you are." He is either what amounts to an at-will employee, or a professional who has to worry perpetually about malpractice suits, or an independent business owner who lives his business 24/7. His ability to find other work if he is laid off is severely limited, especially if he is a senior managers whose skills structural changes in the economy have made obsolete.

In part 2, which I haven't found or read yet, he'll explain where his income goes. But "Joe" offers the following teaser: the money doesn't go "for luxury yachts, McMansions, sports cars, or fancy parties."

The tragedy (or comedy?) of this column is that Enrico raises an important issue. We (by which I guess I mean "people in general and on the news and politicians) target "the rich" and believe they live a life of luxury whereas many of them lead lives full of stress and worries and uncertainty (and, I suppose, quiet desperation).

The "rich" are not nonhuman drones; they are people just like you and me. In many ways, many of us are also the rich, even if we are far from the $250,000 a year threshold that "Joe" has attained. I have more than what a lot of the poorer people I meet on the street have, for example, and even more than what some of my graduate student friends, with whom I am in other ways (e.g., social class, access to opportunities) similarly situated, have. Yet, I would feel very put upon and resentful if (and when) I be accosted simply for my privilege. I would probably be upset if my tax rate were increased significantly. In fact, there was a recent issue that involved a very dramatic change in the way Graduate Assistants at my university are taxed. When I found my and others' paychecks were reduced by more than 50%, I was quite shocked and resentful. (At the same time, for reasons I won't go into now, I'm not sure the change is the rank injustice that some of my colleagues feel it to be.)

The "$250,000 per year before taxes" is of course a reference to the taxation plan that President Obama campaigned on in 2008 and that Democrats have been threatening to implement. (Curiously, the financial destiny of "Joe" and similarly situated comrades appear to have dodged that bullet until at least 2013.) Obama's plan was to ensure that people who made less than $250,000 would see either a decrease in their taxation or no change. (I'm not sure if the tier that Obama refers to includes original income or adjusted gross income (AGI). If it's AGI, "Joe" will still be off the hook by taking the standard deduction or donating about $50 dollars to a charity to put him into the next lowest tax bracket.)

Part of the appeal of Obama's plan is emotional and is attributable, I think, to the fact that a large majority, even most, even almost all, Americans make less than $250,000 a year and to the notion that such $250,000 a year pluss-ers have it so well off that they ought to share the wealth.

Enrico, through "Joe," points out that whatever the merits of this taxation scheme--and he concedes that "everyone should pay his or her fair share of taxes"--singling out hardworking, hard-worrying people like "Joe" is "not 100 percent fair." In fact, "Joe" is resentful that "now you want to raise my taxes so I can pay for YOUR health insurance or the federal budget deficit I had nothing to do with? Excuse me, but why should I pay for your — ahem — failure to achieve what I have in life?"

Again, I'm on board with the argument that I see as implicit in Enrico's column. I believe we should use utmost humility and caution when we become righteously indignant at how easy the rich supposedly have it. (For a recent example of me waxing indignant and forsaking humility, see my rant about tenured professors in this post.) We should remember how the lines we draw for tax purposes between "rich" and "poor" are drawn much more because a line has to be drawn somewhere than because the placement of the line represents a sharp moral distinction. Finally, we should beware of how facile it can be to say that the problem is members of group A have more money and are much less numerous than members of group B, and the solution to the problem is to take money away from group A. If that is indeed the problem--and I think, to some extent, it might be, although I have seen credible arguments claiming that most of us in America, regardless of our income, are materially better off than we would have been in, say, 1960--it is not the whole of the problem and such "solutions" are never so simple.

What I disagree with is way Enrico fashions his argument. He makes out his "Joe" to be too much the ideal type and more importantly he ignores certain important questions.

"Joe" is a bit too good to be true. He worked a menial job, or took extra classes to graduate early so as to save his parents money. He didn't, as he accuses his unnamed, imagined, and redistributionist-loving interlocutor of doing, engage in the college practices of "getting snoggered at fraternity or sorority parties or chasing each other around the dorms dumping buckets of water on each other while wearing only your underpants (you know who you were)."

"Joe"'s upright fastidiousness is hard to believe. He may have worked a menial job and took extra classes, but does that mean he never took any time off for himself whatsoever, even to watch a re-rerun of MASH on his TV or to take walks to settle his thoughts and enjoy the spring air? Did he never eat a candy bar or pay $5 for a fast food meal in lieu of a healthier meal that he could have made at home for $2? Did he never socialize beyond "networking with alumni, trying to land the entry-level job that would propel me into the upper-middle class"? Sad life, but I suppose it's possible.

But Enrico / "Joe" also neglects ways in which he was probably helped by more than just his pluck and abstemiousness. Did he have student loans? If so, he benefited from easy access to credit and, depending on the loan, credit that might have been subsidized by the government or at least has interest rate caps. If he had some sort of scholarship, even if it was merit based, that was help that might not have been available, and the money had to come from somewhere. If he went to a public university as an in-state student, a good portion of his tuition was subsidized by the state. If he went to a private university, his institution benefited from non-profit status. If his parents helped--which he suggests might have been the case--he benefited from having a family in a position to help him.

My objections here have something of an ad hominem flavor about them. If I am right, even on all these points, that doesn't disprove what Enrico is arguing. It does, however, call into question of who is likely to be convinced by his argument. I knew at least a few dedicated undergrads; in fact, I was one, although not as perfect as, and perhaps had more assistance than, "Joe." The list of people who have worked hard in life and yet still don't make $250,000, or even $30,000 a year is probably very long. Are they, upon hearing of "Joe's" abstemiousness and virtue, likely to agree to stop all calls for raising taxes on people in his income bracket? Are they going to abandon readily the facile assumption that "Joe" has it easy? Probably not, even though the actual facts Enrico sets out, if they are true, ought to lead the reader to that conclusion.

No, I suspect Enrico's target audience is either those who make $250,000+, or those who make, say, $100,000 +. The most likely effect of Enrico's argument, it seems to me, is to assuage the guilt that some in the higher income levels might feel about their own income and their relative privilege.

That is my guess and it's only a guess. And as a guess, it's only important if Enrico's goal is to reach others beyond merely his economic peers.

What bugs me more is the questions Enrico declines to address. What about people who work 60 to 80 hours a week and make, say, minimum wage or even a higher wage than minimum that does not, even with OT, make up the $250,000? Do these people cease to have chores and other things to take up their free time if they have less money? If the tax increases are unfair because they are targeted at the $250,000+ brackets, what would be a fair line? (One of his asides--"Millionaires and billionaires should pay more income tax than average folks because they can afford the 'hit' and still live the lives they've become accustomed to"--suggests that he favors merely ratcheting up the line at which people are considered justifiable targets.)

None of the issues I raise invalidate what appears to be Enrico's point about not demonizing the $250,000 crowd. I'll also acknowledge that doing what it takes to earn $250,000 is probably not worth it, for a lot of people, and that working less and earning less can be its own reward. I acknowledge also that columns have strict limits on the number of words an author can use--Enrico simply doesn't have enough space to go into the nuances of his arguments or the possible objections one might raise. Columns also function more as thought-pieces, meant to provoke discussion or convince people to look at issues in a different light. And in these senses, Enrico column "works."

And yet there was such a lost opportunity. I haven't read his part 2, so I don't know exactly how it will come out, but I regret Enirco's failure to acknowledge that we just might all be in this together. Maybe "Joe," instead of being the abstemious and self-denying business major, is someone with his own faults as well as virtues, someone who has committed his own mistakes and maybe made a certain share of wrong turns. He did a lot of things right, and he worked really hard, maybe even harder than many of his colleagues. But perhaps "Joe" might be human enough to regret the fact that some people find it difficult to make ends meet, even if they "had it coming." Such acknowledgement would not resolve the ever present problem of what the tax rate should be, what the best health insurance reform would be, or a variety of other issues. But it would edge us all close to the realization that, as one of S. E. Hinton's characters said, "things are tough all over."

What's sympathy got to do with it?

The people I am studying for my dissertation are, mostly, coal dealers, and they are not especially a sympathetic bunch. The key word is "especially." They were not evil or vicious (most of them), but like almost everyone else on this planet, they have not sacrificed their lives for the well-being of others without asking for anything in return.

They enjoyed more privilege than not relative to most of their neighbors and to other workaday Americans and Canadians. (I should point out that I am studying the "established" coal dealers and not the more marginal coal peddlers, whom the established dealers derided as "snowbirds" but who probably provided a service to many a consumer.) Some, of course, like Elias Rogers and his son, Alfred Rogers, in Canada and Francis Peabody in the U.S., enjoyed vast wealth (and even owned their own mines) and undoubtedly own their share of the blame for the sometimes violent labor disputes in the mines they owned and profited from.* Others, like the less famous small coal retailers, were more like the modern day convenience store owners who find themselves competing with grocery store chains and Walmarts, while still others fell somewhere in between.

A recurring theme in what I am studying are the ways in which these coal dealers engage in practices to limit competition and the ways in which the state exercises "competition policy"--with a focus on antitrust (U.S.) or anti-combines (Canada) policy, although I am also looking at licensing regimes and older policies such as laws against "forestalling the market"--to punish them for these attempts or to regulate the way in which they make these attempts. Here are the types of practices most of these coal dealers engage in:

• Monopolizing local markets by cornering the market on coal within a very few hands under the command of a single firm. (Here I use "monopolize" to mean "gain control of all or most of the commodity in a given market," and not "to secure an exclusive right from the state to trade in the monopoly.")
  
• Collusion with wholesalers to limit bulk sales only to "legitimate" retailers, legitimate being defined as "membership in local coal associations predicated on abstaining from 'price cutting' and from other 'trade abuses.'"
• Setting prices, either outright through price-setting conferences (more common in the 1880s and 1890s), or through some form of what by the 1910s became known as "open prices associations," where information on prices and costs was pooled in some central publication that factors in the industry could then use to determine how to set their costs.
• Labor-management agreements that regulated coal prices indirectly by standardizing labor costs. These agreements ranged from industry-wide (or almost industry-wide....West Virginia was a major exception until the 1930s) contracts ("joint agreements") between operators and the United Mine Workers, to local-market specific contracts between coal dealers and the local teamster's union(s). These local contracts usually involved some sort of exclusivity: dealers pledged to use only union labor while the workers pledged to work only for "fair" coal dealers.
  

The first practice almost never happens. In the soft coal industry, it was almost impossible to attain anything like a monopoly and only in very rare, very exceptional circumstances, and then only in a single (and small) market, could anything like a local monopoly on soft coal exist. In the hard coal industry, "monopolies" (using my looser definition) were a bit more common. Even then, they usually depended on the cooperation of wholesalers and retailers who were not owned/licensed by the anthracite operators; and even then, there were some hard coal operators (the "independents") who were not part of the monopoly. More to the point, hard coal had to compete with soft coal, with fuel oil (after 1900, and especially after World War I), with natural gas, and with hydroelectric power. I should say that attempts to use antitrust policies against these "monopolies" usually failed to meaningfully end them; but such policies were not necessary anyway to this end: these "monopolies" usually fell apart within a year.

For the other two practices, which, as the antitrust laws evolved, became increasingly "per se" violations--actions that by definition were violations of the antitrust laws and not subject to what became known as the "rule of reason" jurisprudence--antitrust laws were used much more aggressively and much more "successfully," if success is measured by conviction rates, having those convictions upheld in higher courts, and preventing at least the most flagrant violations.

The fourth practice--labor agreements--were sometimes subject to antitrust and other actions, and sometimes not, but they were more durable and enjoyed, sometimes, more state support.

(The New Deal is an interesting exception to all these points. The National Industrial Recovery Act not only legalized many cartel agreements, but made them legally enforceable. And even after the Supreme Court declared the NIRA unconstitutional (and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England, which had jurisdiction over Canadian laws, declared a similar program, proposed by Prime Minister Robert Bennett, "ultra vires," or beyond the lawmaking powers of the Canadian government), new laws in the U.S., like the first and second Guffey Acts, as well as labor laws, like the Wagner Act and Ontario's Industrial Standards Act, had the effect, sometimes, of tolerating, if not imposing, cartel-like behavior.)

Now, back to my original point. The dealers involved are not especially sympathetic people. The workers--the coal handlers/teamsters who delivered the coal and the miners who extracted it--traditionally evoke more sympathy, probably because their circumstances were presumably more marginal and because their livelihood depended on a boss and on the vicissitudes of a labor market. (Some of this has been challenged. Fishback's Soft Coal, Hard Choices explores some of the options of geographic mobility that at least some workers enjoyed. My point is that traditionally, the workers have evokee more sympathy.)

One of the many criticisms of antitrust laws, at least the criticisms that rely on sympathy for the targets of the laws, focuses on the apparent unfairness of how these laws affect the most marginal peoples. In the case of the coal industry, this would be the miners and the drivers, and their unions' subjection to the laws. One thinks of the incarceration of labor leader Eugene Debs in part under authority of the Sherman Act** and of the Danbury Hatters' Case, in which the Supreme Court held each individual member of the hatters' union individually liable for all the damages caused by the union boycott, held to have been an action "in restraint of interstate commerce." Sometimes, small business owners and farmers are also viewed sympathetically as hapless--and presumably unintended--"victims" of the laws. But outside of the coal trade journals, hardly anyone seems to have had much sympathy for the coal dealers and coal operators, even though some of at least the smaller retail coal dealers were the sorts of proprietary capitalists people sometimes have in mind when they talk about "small business owners."

Now, I'm not trying to uplift the coal dealers from the coal dust bin of history and say yes, they, too, need sympathy. But I am bothered by the apparent arbitrariness of antitrust policy. It's not just that the policy outlaws things not normally considered crimes, at least not if we take a step back and think about them for a while.*** It's that many business transactions people might consider legitimate could be a violation of antitrust policy, and violators are often prosecuted only when they do something that offends people's moral sensibilities.

These "moral sensibilities" are offended usually in one of the following circumstances: when people believe the price of coal is too high; when people believe the supply of coal is inexplicably low; when people believe the employees of the coal operators and coal dealers are getting a raw deal and need to be paid more (but not so much more as to raise prices too much). Added to the "moral sensibility" was the fact that coal was such a necessity, especially in colder climes. It seems to me, albeit only on impressionistic evidence (because I have not studied it systematically), that only eggs, bread, and especially milk--their prices, supply, and quality--evoked more emotion than coal. Newspapers recounted sufferings of especially poorer people during times of coal shortages of high prices, and these accounts, while probably sensationalized, were also probably true.

But here's my question, something I'm trying to wrap my head around: is it "just" to have a law predicated on the notion that someone could be prosecuted at any time for its violation without any showing of intent or mens rea? This question is, of course, a question-begging question (what my college logic teacher might have called a "complex question"). It assumes that my characterization of the law (that it outlaws what people out of necessity are always going to do anyway and therefore is enforced only when people's sensibilities are implicated and an "example" is to be made of someone) is accurate. My also assumes that my characterization is exceptionally accurate [see update below]: all human-made laws, to some degree, have a certain amount of vagueness and arbitrariness to them: if lines are to be drawn, they have to be drawn somewhere; if offenses have to be defined there are always going to be cases that don't clearly fit within the definitions; if laws have to be enforced, limited resources dictate that they will be enforced with at least some degree of selectivity: is the case of antitrust laws just a problem inherent in all human-made laws, or are these laws exceptionally bad, even taking into account the weakness of our fallen nature?

I hope to write, in another post, on the justness of such a law, assuming, of course, that my characterization of it is accurate. In particular, I will want to write, if/when I have the time, on what circumstances would be necessary to prevail in order for such a law to be just.

Update 4-29-11: Ugh! I wrote that the question was partially whether my "characterization" of the law was "exceptionally accurate," when I meant and should've wrote something more like: if the law is as I describe it, to what extent are its faults unique to it, or to laws in general? Of course, if any characterization I make is indeed accurate, such an accuracy would, with my convoluted writing, be indeed exceptional.

*I am not trying to deny the culpability of miners who killed or injured strikebreakers in such depressing debacles as the "Herrin massacre," but I am saying that the mine operators share some non-trivial responsibility for putting people (strikers and strikebreakers) in such desperate circumstances.

**The appeals court upheld Debs's incarceration partly on the ground of violating the Sherman Law. The Supreme Court, in upholding the appeals court decision, declined to opine (nice rhyme, mine and not thine!) on the Sherman Act, preferring to rest its decision on Debs's purported interference with interstate commerce and the federal mails.

*** Price-setting seems pernicious, with a whiff of conspiracy and backroom deals among portly, cigar-smoking, mustachioed men in suits about to down some brandy to celebrate foreclosing on an orphanage. But if one accepts that a business owner may set his or her own prices, then it is at least a bit challenging to decide why, in principle, two or more people may not agree to set the same price. I'm not saying such behavior necessarily ought to be legal, but only that the case for the oughtness of its illegality is not necessarily so clear cut as it might seem at first.

On taking a position

Somewhere in my blog-reading career--I think it was on a thread at the Volokh Conspiracy or at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen, although I don't remember exactly--one commenter wrote that atheism and theism were not "arguments," but positions that one takes. I think I agree, and I would add (heck, I will add) that agnosticism can/should be viewed in the same light. What I mean is, that each of these ism's takes a certain position for which it tries to argues or through which it processes evidence. (I am using "it" as a shorthand for those who believe in the athe- / agnostic- / the-ism). Here are the essential positions I see each ism taking:

• Atheism: there is no god.
• Agnosticism: it is impossible to know if there is a god or the jury's still out on whether there is a god.
• Theism: there is a god.

Now, this brief summary of positions leaves unanswered and undefined certain terms and questions: what kind of "god" are we talking about? what does one mean by "know"? who is sitting on the jury?

There are facts and arguments in support of each of these positions, and I tend to believe that these positions are not so hard and fast. Most atheists I have known, even the strident, proselytizing ones, admit that it's logically possible that a god of some sort might exist and that there might come a day where they might be proved wrong. Many theists I have known, although not necessarily the proselytizing ones, admit, on some level, that they might be wrong. Agnostics, perhaps by definition, seem to admit of the possibility of knowing one way or the other.

I am basing the preceding assertion based on what people of "goodwill" who take these positions would say. ("Goodwill" is a hard thing to define, and I'm not even a Kantian! I imagine that by "goodwill" I mean some question-begging definition that identifies "goodwill" as being willing to acknowledge discomfirming evidence.)
tend to believe that knowledgeable and curious people of goodwill who take such positions will acknowledge the discomfirming facts and arguments as well as the ones that tend to confirm the argument.

I'm not sure where I'm going with these thoughts, but I thought I'd put them out there.

I hope it got better

Yesterday, my girlfriend called attention to an internet campaign designed to tell high school students who are questioning their sexual orientation that "it gets better" if only they stick it out. This campaign comes in response to recent suicides by high schoolers who had been bullied for being gay or bi, and is an attempt to give perspective to people who might not see a way out of the bullying they undergo as teenagers.

This campaign reminds me of someone in my high school--I graduated in 1992--who was openly gay and who suffered much abuse. As far as I know, he was the only "out" student, and everyone made jokes about him. On at least one occasion that I know of, he was treated violently. On this occasion, he was apparently practicing for a school play as part of the school's theater group. He was in the auditorium and on stage, and someone hiding up in the upper row of the auditorium shot at him with a BB gun and hit him.

But this post isn't about him or about the one who shot at him. It's about me. I never did one thing to stop the jokes and verbal abuse. I realize now that I didn't even have to be a hero about it. I didn't even do the bare minimum, such as simply telling people that I didn't want to hear any gossip or jokes about anybody

Nor is it a defense that at that time in my life I believed homosexuality to be a sin and to be bad. Not that I believe that such a value system--that marks being gay as evil--can ever be a defense for the way he was treated, but my own value system at the time stipulated that one mustn't hurt another person for an arbitrary reason.

When we had heard that this student had been shot at by a BB gun, it was taken as a humorous thing by me and my friends. We had no role in the attack or in the planning of the attack, but we--and I would wager most people at the school--had a pretty good idea of who did it, and no one to my knowledge ever reported him. It was funny because, after all, the student who had been attacked was so openly gay he was "asking for it." Besides, BB guns are usually not dangerous and this student hadn't been physically harmed outside of a bruise that must have gone away after a few days.

A few weeks (or maybe a few months?) after the BB gun attack, one of the Denver newspapers--I forget if it was the Post or the Rocky Mountain News--published in its lifestyles section (if I recall correctly) on what it's like to be gay in the Denver Public School system, and this student was interviewed. His experiences with the BB gun attack were related. The publication of that story caused me to figuratively roll my eyes about the "liberal media" with their pro-gay agenda, and I probably thought to myself something like "why the hell do they give this f-- a story."

But then my aunt, who at the time was about 70 years old at the time (she actually just passed away a few months ago, at the age of 88), read the story. And she commented to me about how horrible it was that someone at my school had been shot with a BB gun just for being gay. The disgust with which she said it, with its obvious implication that it was inexcusable to bully people like that, filled me inwardly with shame that I, in my own way, had played a role in making this student's life at school at best miserable.

Incidents like that--my aunt showing me by her words and actions that it was wrong to abuse people for being gay--were part of a very slow process that started me thinking about homophobia and about why it was wrong to illtreat people just for being different and about my own complicity in perpetuating such treatment. There were other factors, too, and, again, the process, which I won't describe right now, was a slow one. But I gradually came to the realization that being gay is not bad and that it is wrong to abuse people for that reason or any other arbitrary reason.

But I do wonder sometimes, and again now, in light of the current "it gets better campaign": did it get better for this student? I do hope so. I know he had friends in the high school who stood up for him and offered him support, I hope they were strong enough to see him through to whatever he did after high school.

But again, this blog post isn't about him. I've done a lot of things in my life that I'm not proud of, and my failure to stand up for him, or at least offer him my friendship, is one of them. Now, from the safety of my desktop and my pseudonymous blogspot ID, I can write about the rightness, justice, and necessity of acceptance with almost no fear of negative consequences. If called in the future to take risks for others, I sure hope I would. But I know that in the past I certainly failed to do so.

To cross or not

The graduate union I belong to has voted, allegedly overwhelmingly,* to strike very soon if its negotiations with the union break down. The strike may begin as early as this coming Tuesday. I would then be faced, for the first time in my life, with the decision of whether or not to go on strike.

The union, I believe, is wrong in its demands. What the university is offering is, in my view, the best we can hope for in light of the severe constraints on public education in the state I live in. I am strongly inclined not to honor the strike and may cross the picket lines.

However, the issue is not quite so simple as my concluding that the union's demands are unjustified. I believe they are, but I also believe that most of its demands are not specious either.** The union advances a worst-case scenario on the construction the university may put on the new contract (a construction that would effectively increase significantly what graduate student employees would owe the university on a semester basis), and the union may very well be right. More to the point, something ought to be said for keeping a united front with one's union and with one's coworkers. Finally, while I disagree with the union, its demands are not immoral: i.e., this isn't a "hate strike."

Still, here are some random answers to those who would suggest I honor the strike. They are not in any particular order***.

1. To the charge that I am "free riding" on the risks the strikers are taking: in one sense that is true. The strikers risk going without pay. However, many--certainly a majority, if not an overwhelming majority--of people in the bargaining unit are teaching assistants. These TA's do not generally have to report their hours of work, so it will be hard for the university to justify docking their pay. (The burden is on the university to prove that TA's are not working.) As a GA, however, I have to report my hours monthly, and the report needs to be signed by my supervisor, and I am not going to ask her to lie for me. Also many TA's in my department have enhanced TA-ships, so they get paid about $500 more than I do and they are better able to weather a strike.
   
2. To the charge that I need to show "solidarity": Again, there is some truth to this. By crossing the lines, I am undermining the efforts of the union whose putative goal is to protect my interests and the interests of my fellow employees. This is especially true if an overwhelming majority indeed endorses the strike. Still, I resent the implication that I ought to do what others do simply because they are the majority. I know a few pro-walkout people who in other circumstances have inveighed against people they called "drones" who do what is expected of them, but when it comes to union actions, people who do what the majority expects of them are celebrated. Such people aren't bad, but there is an inconsistency here. I realize that ad hominems like the one I just indulged in isn't an argument, but I still find the disconnect rather telling.
3. To the charge that the university and management are the enemy: In a sense, I am making a strawman argument here. I have heard no one expressly say that the university is the enemy. But the rhetoric of the union is such that the university is positioned as the "enemy." The union's position is that the university is arguing in bad faith. There may be evidence to support this, but the union's account to its own membership is so one-sided, that it's hard to believe that all the blame is on the university, that the union is the sole fighter of right in this struggle.
4. To the charge that we need to "wake up" lawmakers in our state capital: Frankly, our university is not important enough to cause much of a disturbance at our state capital. We aren't the flagship university of the state. I also suspect that the general public is not inclined to support a group of relatively privileged people in their demands for even more, especially because in its public pronouncements, the union repeatedly stresses its wage demands front and center. Of course, I could be wrong about this. I can't predict the future. But if I were a taxpayer or a poor person struggling to get by, I would not be particularly willing to lend even moral support.

I am not one of those who says "unions were important way back when but now they have outlived their usefulness." I continue to believe in the importance of workplace organizing and workplace representation of employees (these two are not always the same: in my workplace, we are "represented" by the union but are not truly organized). But I also believe that unions are not in the right just because they are unions.

I know my points above are only incomplete answers to a a very complicated issue and that they do not take a lot of objections into account. I should also acknowledge that while I am very critical of my union leadership and what I believe its decision early on to push for a strike, the leadership has sacrificed hours per week for the past year in the thankless task of negotiating with the university. I must also say that every time I have emailed my objections to the union leadership, the leadership courteously and promptly answered most of my concerns, so that even though I disagree with their answers, they have been responsive.

Still, I am, at this moment, inclined not to honor the picket line, should one be set up.
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Update 4-4-10: In reference to the ad hominem of point #2 above, I should disclose that there once was a time that I was very gung ho about graduate student unions and was very quick to judge those who wouldn't go along with the program. Like most ad hominems, this fact is either irrelevant or minimally relevant, as I have long believed that one's hypocrisy does not invalidate one's argument. I'm just stating this to 1) acknowledge my own weaknesses and 2) because I really dislike it when someone does an about-face about an important issue and then acts as if they had never felt otherwise.
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*I say "allegedly overwhelmingly" because the announcement on the vote stated that 84% of people "who voted" endorsed a strike. It did not say how many people voted in respect to the number of grad student members.
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**The exception is its demands for a wage increase. I have a hard time seeing why some of the most privileged members of society (grad students) deserve special consideration when most everyone else is suffering layoffs, furloughs, or wage reductions. Before my current Graduate Assistantship, I had to struggle in the private sector with adjunct jobs and highly stressful and low-paid part-time employment to earn much less than I do now as a GA, and I was certainly happy to take my current position.
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***I am omitting relevant details so as not to disclose publicly what union or university I am referring to, in order to the give the union a chance to bargain with the university before the strike. Of course, anyone who has a lot of free time could, if they wanted to, deduce from my other blog posts which university I am talking about. Also, the few people who know my identity and read this blog will also know the university. Still, I don't think this post will make much of a public impact, so I am not particularly remiss about taking this quasi-public stance.

We the weak

In the early 2000s--probably 2002--UPN ran a remake of the old "Twilight Zone" series, narrated by Forest Whittaker. I didn't watch many of the episodes, but one I did see was about a man who got in his car one night on a dark street. As he started a car, a black man ran up to his windshield and begged him for help because he was being chased by some mugger or something. The man, afraid, drove away without helping.

Throughout the rest of the episode, the man experienced himself becoming darker and darker until he became black and found himself being chased by a mugger. He ran to a car and pleaded with someone in a car (who, if I recall correctly, was white) to help him.

I forget how the story ended--I forget whether the driver helped the man or not--but the supposed moral of the story was clear: an indictment against our (by which I mean "whites'," I guess) racist proclivities through a what-if-it-happened-to-you-or-if-you-were-in-that-situation trope.

That episode has bothered me ever since because it did not present what to me was a clear case of racism. Given the scene--a dark street, a stranger desperately pleading for help--it is unclear that the car driver's reluctance and refusal to help was determined, in the end, by his racism or by a sincere, if perhaps mistaken, fear for his safety. Very few situations that involve race or involve helping our fellow humans are ever clear cut. They're very messy, and I, for one, do not always--do not usually--do the right thing, and it's unclear to tease out cause and effect, motivation and rationalization, and self-preservation and cowardice.

I have a few times in my life been presented with situations in which I thought taking some action to help another was the morally right, and yet potentially dangerous, thing to do, even if the potential "danger" was merely being shown to have overreacted.

In most of those cases, I refused to act at all. I pretended not to see what was happening or just cursorily explained to myself that the world is unjust and I ought to have done something about it, but really, what can one do?

In one instance, I did act on what I thought might be the right thing. It was just a few days after an acquaintance of mine had been murdered in a suburb of Chicago in broad daylight. One of the strange things about that murder is that others had seen who was believed to be the suspect and found him suspicious but did not report him (the suspect, to my knowledge, has never been apprehended).

Anyway, it was nighttime, and I was in the parking lot of a grocery store in Uptown (a neighborhood in Chicago not as dangerous as some neighborhoods but certainly not the safest), and a woman was, apparently, being accosted by two other people while she was getting into her car. I walked over there, and unsure what else to do, I took out my keychain, which had a "rape whistle" on it, and started to blow it. (For whatever reason, the whistle didn't work very well.) Finally, one of the men pulled me aside and explained that they were security guards and the woman had been shoplifting. Further events bore him out, and I was, to say the least, a bit ashamed, chastened and embarrassed, but otherwise not harmed one way or the other for "getting involved."

Very recently, I was in a situation that put me in a position to potentially help someone. I won't go into the details, but I and the person I was with did a little bit to help. However, I did not do all I probably could have done. The situation itself was murky: was my refusal to do all I could a result of racism (the person seeking aid was black and I am white)? was it a sense of self-preservation (the scene was not, to say the least, a part of town or time of night where one feels safe, and I certainly didn't feel safe in this situation)?

I don't write this as a mea culpa; I write only to say I don't know the answer.

Poison trees

Residents of Chicago are by now well aware that its school board president, Michael Scott, died a couple days ago, apparently of a suicide, although the police department is still investigating the matter. It is quite touching to see the accolades and what appears to be the true and sincere sadness expressed by the elected officials who claimed Mr. Scott as a friend.

Before the death, I knew very little about Mr. Scott, save for some accusations last summer that he might have been trying to profit from the Chicago Olympics search through some real estate deal. I bring up this accusation not to speak ill of the dead; in fact, I have no idea whether the accusation is true.

Rather, I bring it up to examine more closely a disturbing tendency that I, and perhaps almost everybody else, am guilty of: feeding our own enmity toward others. In the past months, if I had thought of Mr. Scott at all, it was that he was a member of the "Richard M. Daley machine," which ever since I moved to Chicago has progressively disgusted me. So I think the "machine" is corrupt and represents part of what is wrong with Chicago. Fine. I'm entitled to my opinion as much as anyone else is.

The point is, though, the objects of my dislike--Mr. Daley, Mr. Stroger, et al.--are humans and have the right to life, liberty and happiness as much as anyone. (I used the word "dislike" because I hope "enmity" is too strong a word. But the simplest and most honestly held emotions can escalate into something not so simple and honest.)

In the hustle and bustle of politics, of charges and counter charges, of political "crusades" against our "enemies," it's easy to go too far and forget what is important in life.

We--or at least I--should remember that. There are people, some of whom used to be close friends and others who I have never been friends with, who I dislike very strongly. It is important to resist the tendency to enmity, and if the tendency cannot be easily resisted, at least it must be acknowledged for what it is: something dangerous. If anything bad were to happen to the people I claim to dislike, I would--at least I hope I would--be saddened at that person's suffering.

The evil of enmity is that it blinds us to others' suffering. In its less pure form, it merely blinds us to the possibility of suffering. Therefore a tragic event like the death of Mr. Scott--as a result of which Mayor Daley started tearing up during a news interview--brings me back to my senses. In its purer form, enmity blinds us to suffering itself, or leads us the wrathful to rejoice in the suffering of others. That is something I would like to work against.

It is helpful to remember what William Blake wrote a couple hundred years ago:

A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

UPDATE(11-19-09): I edited this post today to clarify some things. I have also changed the title of the post.

Trotsky & me

A couple years ago, I was invited to a friend's house for some celebration (I forget for what). The friend who invited me is a committed Trotskyite. That is, he adheres to the ideals prescribed by Leon Trotsky, the communist Russian revolutionary. More broadly, my friend embraces much of the violent communist prescriptions: that there must in all likelihood be a violent revolution for the eventual good of all and the relief of the working classes.

My friend knows that he's right. And to paraphrase Joseph Heller: my friend has courage, and he is not afraid to volunteer the lives of others for justice (at least rhetorically....I have never personally known him to hurt anyone and his lifestyle is, as he himself forthrightly admits, "bourgeois.")

Anyway, we were at this party and someone was there who, I assume, shares my friend's Trotskyite sympathies. This "someone" commented on the death of Jerry Falwell, which had happened just a few days before. For those who don't remember, Falwell was one of the leaders of the "New Right" conservative movement that helped propel the Republican ascendancy of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Whatever else Falwell was or was not, he was not a friend to the cause of Trotskyism.

This someone, at the party, raised his glass of wine or bottle of beer or whatever he was drinking and declared a toast to celebrate the death of Jerry Falwell.

Now, I could stop here and expiate on the immorality of those who fight for "social justice." And maybe I'd be right. But I'm writing to note that I, too, raised my glass (or maybe it was a beer bottle).

I suppose I could try to excuse my action by saying I was under peer pressure, or by noting that I didn't want to come off as a prissy moralist by declining the invitation to toast the death of someone else. But I need not have come off as prissy had I simply and politely decided not to join in. And even if I had so come off, would that have been bad? Maybe looking like a prig is sometimes the price one has to pay for doing the right thing.

(For what it's worth, I think it's morally problematic, at best, to toast the death of anyone, no matter how bad I think that person to have been or how much I disagreed with that person. There is, of course, the hypothetical instance of the death of an oppressive dictator against whom a world war has been waged. But Falwell, whatever his other faults, was not in that league.)

I have at times done bad things. I have, occasionally, for example, gossiped about others. Sometimes, my friends have corrected me, have called me out on some of the bad things I have said, and corrected me. I felt shamed but, after the fact, grateful that I was set aright. At this party, I had the chance to do the same for someone else, to remind him that certain excesses go over the line. Whether he would have heeded that admonition or gotten defensive, I don't know. But the thing is, I didn't stand up for what I thought was right.

I hope I do so next time.

"Cop Killer" Poetry

This is a difficult post to write because it is critical of a community that is dear to me, so dear as to command from me an almost religious reverence. It's the community of poets I belong to, or used to belong to. While I have specific scene and locale in mind, I will redact the names of the place and person(s) involved because I believe the problem I want to discuss is not specific to that poetry scene but is general to most of the poetry scenes I've been involved with.

One night at an open-mic poetry reading, a night where there was a pretty good crowd, a poet went up to the podium and said: "Repeat after me"

Poet: "KILL!"
Audience: "KILL!"
Poet: "COPS!"
Audience: "COPS!"

This poet then launched into a poem--I forget if the poem was technically good or just a rant, but my point holds even if the poem was a technical masterpiece. This poem criticized the cops and the oppression and violence of police brutality. The criticism targeted an important issue: the power of the state and how it is sometimes unjustly used against people. But I have a hard time reconciling that critique with the poet's original admonition to "kill cops."

Cops are people, too. They feel pain and they have families. They have a hard job (I, for one, would probably call 911 if I ever feared for my life. And if the fear for my life is justified, calling 911 probably means asking a cop to place his or her life in danger.)

They make mistakes and sometimes do unconscionable things (one gets plenty examples of this in Chicago, and the examples are probably just the tip of the iceberg for a larger problem). These commission of these unconscionable acts are probably part human weakness, part systemic, and part "fog of war" type responses to uncertain situations. (By "fog of war," I mean, for example, it's easy to criticize after the fact a decision to shoot someone who points a water gun at a cop, but it's harder if one is in the situation where one doesn't know if the water gun is a real gun or a toy).

They are human, and no one, I believe, is 100% evil (nor is anyone, I believe, 100% good). Counseling a "kill them all" attitude is wrong because it fails to treat cops as human beings. Even if it's done "in jest" it is wrong, because it creates a callous atmosphere that is that much more excepting of unwarranted and indiscriminate violence (unwarranted because there are other solutions to police brutality and indiscriminate because it identifies all cops as a general category).

Now, I don't for a moment believe that this particular poet really wanted people to kill cops. I should also admit, shamefacedly, that when he said "repeat after me" and "KILL!," I repeated after him. I demurred (I hope...my memory is fuzzy) when he said "COPS!"

But neither do I believe that this poet was merely speaking for a character. In other words, he wasn't writing a poem from the perspective of a would-be "cop killer" but was himself playing to the crowd.

Many of my poetry friends, who I value dearly even though I am not really in that community anymore, liked to protest, vocally, against the very real injustices our society and world face. Police brutality is as important as any of them, but there is an entire list others as well.

I do believe, however, that these peaceloving poets--and I do believe they are sincerely lovers of peace--need to realize that the distance between sincere love of peace and recourse to violence is smaller than many of them think. I'm not anti-violence in the sense that I believe that violence is sometimes necessary to achieve some ends although I am anti-violence in the sense that I think it is best avoided. I do argue that it should be the last resort and the "ends" must be good enough and clearly realizable by the use of violence; but that's the subject of another post. I also think it is unconscionable to counsel, even in wink-and-a-nod jest, the unreflective killing of others who, like all of us, are imperfect beings.

My poet friends, in short, need to learn a lesson that I have had to learn and relearn and will probably have to relearn again: we are all capable of doing some very bad things and in order to choose to do good, we have to have a sense of what we're capable of. Otherwise, we risk descending into a self-righteous version of that which we oppose.

George Bailey didn't sit on the draft board

I've been thinking about the classic film, It's a Wonderful Life. You will recall that the movie was about an honest man, George Bailey, who gave up his dreams of world travel and wealth and fame to run his late father's honest "Bailey's Building and Loans" business and to save that business from the clutches of the richest man in that small town, Mr. Potter.

The movie chronicles George's life, from his youth in the 1920s, to his marriage and his takeover of the building and loans business during the Great Depression, and through World War II. During World War II, George does good, helping, if memory serves, to ensure proper preservation of materials important for the war effort. (It's been a while since I've seen the movie, so I stand to be corrected on the specifics.)

Meanwhile, the evil Mr. Potter is head of the town's draft board. Of course he is. He's a bad man, and making people go to war involuntarily is an unsavory thing to do.

My question, though, is, isn't this a bit too convenient? It doesn't seem to me that George Bailey's character objects to the idea of drafting people, and the film's audience, probably, does not so object either, or is not expected to object. Yet, drafting people is unsavory, something that smells bad even if it's necessary, and why not let bad people do it?

Capra was obviously making use of a common literary trope--bad people do the necessary but unsavory things while good people do the necessary and savory things.

We see this a lot. For example, in the movie Bonnie and Clyde, with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, there is a scene where the protagonist--glamorous bank robbers who scrupulously attack only bankers and avoid stealing from honest, hardworking farmers--take a man (played by Gene Wilder) out drinking and carousing. They eventually find out that his occupation is that of an undertaker, and when they do, they abandon him on the road, far from his home. The moral, as I take it, is that the man who profits off other people's deaths is to be loathed. (Still, his services are necessary.)

I suppose such tropes are okay when it comes to entertainment. Maybe they're are even necessary. But is there not some room to acknowledge moral ambiguity?

NBC Dateline's "To Catch a Predator" and the Dangers of Entrapment

Some of you may have seen the that voyeuristic Dateline show called "To Catch a Predator." On that show, a Dateline works with a group called "Perverted Justice" to trap predators who troll the internet to look for underage children for sex. When the predator arrives at the house, Dateline nabs nabs the predators on camera and a reporter, usually Chris Hansen, interviews him before letting him go. After the predator leaves the house, he is arrested by cops.

Is this entrapment? As far as I can tell, from a legal standpoint, it is not entrapment. In other words, a judge would probably not throw out the case for reasons of entrapment. As a non-lawyer, I can just assume that the police, "Perverted Justice," and Dateline take the necessary precautions to stay within the law.

But legal questions aside, is this entrapment at a moral level? If I induce someone to commit a crime, am I morally guilty of something? If Dateline or "Perverted Justice" induces someone to commit their crime, or merely offers themselves as a foil on which the person tries to commit a crime, does the inducer have any guilt?

I am quite aware of the argument that most, maybe all, of the predators nabbed on the show would have tried to have sex with underage children if they had not been caught. I'll accept that argument for the sake of argument (although I have my doubts as to whether all of the people caught would have done what they did were it not for "Perverted Justice" enticing them). For what it's worth, I'll also say I have no sympathy for the people who are caught on the show.

But if I were to entice someone to commit a crime, even a crime that that person would otherwise commit, am I not "creating" the specific crime and thus share in the crime's guilt?