I know, the title is a poor ripoff of James Agee, but it is appropriate. I would say "now read" but we can read and not hear what the authors say to us.
I also know that someone could offer a truly insightful diary on either piece about which I am now going to write, but I wanted to be sure that you saw both, and I am too indecisive to pick between them. It would be like asking me to choose among my cats which is my favorites,
Let me offer one line from each. First,
It can be scary for small children to watch the former mayor of New York morph into Wayne LaPierre on national TV.And then,
Public sanity requires following in Gertner's footsteps.
The first line, by Bob Herbert, is from a piece entitled Rambo and the G.O.P.. The second is by Derrick Jackson, entitled A judge asks the tough questions. Please come below the fold to see what I think we should listen to both men.
There is a connection between these two columns, beyond the fact that both are written by terrific op ed writers for major newspapers, each of whom happens to be an African American. They touch on a disturbing trend in our politics and government, where we have allowed our policy to be driven by fear. That is not always easy either to see, or to address.
Jackson begins with an attention getting paragraph:
US DISTRICT JUDGE Nancy Gertner joked that she worried about a headline that could have read, "Limousine liberal lets crack dealer off." This was for setting free 37-year-old Myles Haynes last week after 13 months in jail for selling a small amount of crack cocaine in a Boston housing project.The man in question could have been held for several more years, but she looked at his overall history, and more importantly, at his family situation, and told him
Gertner told Haynes from the bench, "When I see your son, I think that public safety requires that you be with your son so that he doesn't follow in your footsteps."Then comes the line I quoted above the fold, worth repeating:
Public sanity requires following in Gertner's footsteps.Jackson uses this incident, and the thoughtfulness with which Judge Gertner approaches the issue of sentencing to revisit the 100-1 sentencing disparity between crack and powdered cocaine, a disparity the U. S. Sentencing Commission has been willing to relax, which conservatives like Sens. Hatch and Sessions have been willing to revisit, and which is wreaking havoc on the African-American community. Let me quote one more selection:
"This makes me crazy," Gertner said in a phone interview this week. "Has anyone studied the streets to see if we just replaced one set of drug dealers for another? No one doubts there is a public safety issue. But it is also public safety what these sentences have done to a generation of African-American young men. That doesn't get into the debate at all. All we have done in so many instances is take kids off the street, put them away for many years, and give them no skills at all to function in a modern economy.As always, Jackson's column is a thoughtful exploration of an important topic."We take them off the street at 25, return them to their neighborhoods at 35 with no skills, then they can't get jobs because of felony records. How are they to contribute to society?"
As is Herbert's. His is almost impossible to illustrate without violating fair use, but I will try. After warning in his opening sentence that perhaps small children shouldn't be allowed to watch the Republicans debate he offers the following:
There's so much talk of violence and mayhem as the solution to our ills. The candidates seem so eager to flex their muscles and engage the nation in conflict: Let's continue the war in Iraq. Let's show them what we're made of in Iran. Let's round up those immigrants and ship 'em back where they came from.He also, after briefly touching on the words of Tom Tancredo, points at one real issue:It's like watching adolescent boys playing the ultimate video game, with no regard for the consequences. Rudy, the crime-fighter and terror maven, says he's tougher than Mitt, who actually had illegals working on his property. Mitt begs to differ and says he'd like to double the size of the Guant+ínamo prison.
Are we electing a president or a sheriff?
(The bludgeoning of logic is yet another form of violence coming out of the debates.)With all the real issues confronting our nation - looming recession, housing foreclosures, lack of medical coverage, festering problems from Katrina - the Republican candidates seem to want to prove how tough each is. As he writes
I'll concede that it's difficult to have a thoughtful exploration of complex issues in a format that allows a candidate just 90 seconds to answer. But the Republicans, far more than the Democrats, go out of their way to present themselves as 21st-century Rambos - a childish, cartoonish posture that solves nothing and can easily lead to tragedy in a world that is in fact quite dangerous.He points out how much the solutions offered by the Republican candidates involved the application of violence:
The Republicans running for president are embarrassed to mention George W. Bush. But with few exceptions - Mr. McCain's principled position on torture is one - they want to continue Mr. Bush's failed, often belligerent and sometimes sadistic policies. (On immigration, an issue ripe for demagoguery, most of the howling G.O.P. pack has sprinted away from Mr. Bush, preferring a more macho, politically exploitive approach. Mr. McCain is again an exception.)The incessant drumbeat of brute force as the favored solution to difficult problems serves to normalize state violence to the point where we hardly notice it. Before his widely reported crack about Jesus being too smart to run for office, former Gov. Mike Huckabee talked proudly about the tough challenge he faced in "carrying out" the death penalty in Arkansas.
"I did it more than any other governor ever had to do it in my state," he said.
Herbert acknowledges that Republicans have won a number of elections taking such an approach, one that I might be tempted to describe as "I can piss further than you can" or some other childish attempt at demonstrating a superior ability to appear as "macho." Herberts hopes that perhaps the Republican candidates are misreading the public, that perhaps the voters have concerns about other issues, that perhaps those who lead us might be able to
squarely address the concerns so many voters have about the deteriorating economic climate here at home and America's diminished standing abroad.He ends on that note, although makes it clear that it is an as yet unresolved question, and implies that it is only a hope.
For me these two thoughtful mean each provide a window into what we have become, and offer at least an implicit challenge about what we have done to our nation, our society, through how fear has driven our politics and hence our policies. Herbert is focused on the political process, how the candidates run, touching also on how this means that real issues may not get fully addressed in the debates. Jackson examines the real cost of the policies that flow from such an approach. Think how we got to the sentencing disparity that has cause so much damage in the African-American community, with candidates attempting to out-tough one another in their response to the crack "epidemic" where cracked-crazed addicts were going to destroy our society.
I am fond of many of the words of Mohandas K. Gandhi, and have, in a recent diary, offered a number of them. Perhaps it is because I have spent much of the latter stages of my own life struggling with my ow tendencies towards violence, even if merely in thought or implied by my words. I want to offer several I think applicable to what we encounter when we read these two columns. I do this to set the foundation upon which my own reaction to what I have read, and then have shared, with you.
An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.So much of our approach to criminal justice is retributive rather than restorative. we continue a cycle of violence by application of state-sanctioned instances: capital punishment, extensive sentences, permanent branding of offenders who possibly could be converted into useful and productive members of society. We take away hope, and then we are surprised that those without hope see no reason to abide the rules of the society which has denied them that hope.
I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.Too often those who seek political power offer solutions of violence because the are easy, because they touch that part of ourself that wants to demand retribution, that seeks to drive away fear by ourselves becoming more fearsome, as if somehow making others fearful assuages our own fear, but it does not. It increases the totality of the fear, makes people far more likely to resort to violence because of the fear they face. This applies on the interpersonal level and the international level. Think of the rationalization some offer for making a first strike against an enemy: we have to hit them before they hit us. And yet if on the other side the same attitude prevails, how little will it take to spark a war, which in a time of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, can have a devastating impact even upon those whose nations are not directly involved in that conflict? If security forces in a combat zone have rules of engagement that allow them to open fire upon the perception of a threat, then it does not matter if those who pull the trigger are uniformed American military personnel or Blackwater contractors: we get the kind of death and destruction we saw in a square in Iraq, or when an Italian journalist had been rescued from her captors.
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?I would extend the idea of orphans and homeless to those whose families are destroyed by the imbalance of sentencing that Jackson explores in his column. Clearly it also applies to the way this nation has chosen to use force to assert its will in other nations. And there is a clear connection when cities like New York under Giuliani rationalize police who too readily resort to guns and brutality in the name of establishing or preserving law and order.
We are in the midst of our next major election cycle. Politicians of both parties are striving to obtain the highest office in our land. others contend for high office in the Federal legislative branch, or offices in states and cities across the nation. Far too often our use of violence begins in our rhetoric. Even those who disavow some kinds of violence, perhaps saying they will withdraw our troops from Iraq, still resort to verbal expression that starts the process of proving their toughness, a first step towards an assertion of rhetoric, and then of force. Perhaps I am odd, but I think that first step occurs when a candidate says "I'm the only one who ...." and then at least by implication has embarked on the pissing contest, on the comparison that "mine is bigger than yours" and the other juvenalia that so often leads to at least silly and far too often tragic consequence.
Yes, in political campaigns those running have to distinguish themselves from their opponents. Compare and contrast will inevitably have elements of competition that can lead to rhetorical escalation. And there is no doubt that when running for president the American people must be convinced that a candidate will meet the baseline test of keeping them safe. I wonder if that is achieved by increasing their fears and then claiming only the one emphasizing a particular fear can keep the people safe. It is easiest to increase fear by focusing on someone different - by religion, by race, by nationality, by ideology, by sexual orientation. Help - we are being threatened by Catholics, Irish, the Yellow peril, the Communists ... or is it Jews, Muslims, 7th Day Adventists, followers of Falwell and Rastafarians; Haitians, Cubans, Iraqis, Iranians and North Koreans; socialists, Democrats, Republicans, and anarchists; gays, bisexuals and transgendered people; . . .
I believe it is possible to demonstrate strength without resorting to fear. We can realistically examine the threats that may exist without turning them into giants they are not. We can look behind the curtain to discover that the wizard is no more than an ordinary man.
I believe in a rigorous form of politics. I believe in challenging one's opponents and the voters we seek to persuade. I have no trouble with challenging the ideas. It is also legitimate to examine how the person has used whatever power s/he has had in the past.
But we can do all of this without resorting to fear. The greatest Democratic president of the 20th Century, even with all of his many flaws, was clearly Franklin Roosevelt, who had important words on the subject of fear. Perhaps we need to remind ourselves that without that approach we might not have survived the Great Depression as a democratic republic.
I read the columns of people like Herbert and Jackson because they provoke my reflection. I write about them here .. and elsewhere ... because I believe what they write might serve a similar purpose for others. I share my reactions to encourage you to be willing to offer yours, because you might give me an insight I had not otherwise encountered.
Nut I also write because I do have some core beliefs. And one belief of which I am ever more certain is that our appeals and resorting to violence and retribution, however much they may seem to assuage some need within us as individuals and as a society, ultimately make things worse. Gandhi put it this way:
Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.The application of violence might buy us some space or time, but it is almost certainly insufficient to solve the underlying problem. And each time we are forced to resort to violence it is an admission of defeat. The army that has to go to war has failed in its primary responsibility of preventing the need for war. Choosing the lesser of two evils, however necessary, is stil to find oneself having to resort to evil, no matter how great the good one seeks to achieve or sustain.
I have offered the words and insights and comments of two well-known op ed columnists. I have used a title intended to draw your attention, to invoke a mindset of reflection. I have offered further words from another thoughtful man who died more than half a century ago. And I tentatively present a few of my own musings in the hope that you may share yours, which may not be so tentative as my own.
May your weekend be full of thoughtfulness and caring.
Peace.
so I have left it undesignated.
I hope this is of some use to those who encounter it.
Peace.
I know that I am way out of the mainstream on this because I have strong libertarian leanings on this issue, but I am for outright decriminalization of possession and use of marijuana -- and I could be convinced that it makes sense to decriminalize (but not legalize) the use/possession of all drugs, and to use the money spent on the 'WoD' instead on treatment and rehab programs for those that commit non-violent crimes under the influence of said substances.
This "War" results in the US incarcerating by far the greatest percentage of its population of any state in at least first world, if not the whole world (see http://economistsview.typepad....
It achieves nothing, and, in fact, results in a less free and less just society.
You still need to move some people past the easy answer of locking people up (the out of sight, out of mind solution). Dealing with addiction and the issues that lead people to medicate their problems is a much more complex solution. But ultimately we have to deal with demand and not supply because demand is the issue.
That is why a Democrat must win. I doubt we can survive four more years of Bush Republicanism. There is too much to do and so many mistakes to correct. It's all too much to leave in the hands of Giuliani, Romney, Thompson, or Huckabee. But maybe I am overstating the problem, we did afterall survive the last 7 years.
I think Teacherken's discussions of fear-based politics are wholly accurate.
And if you have never read James Agee's "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" (with the haunting Walker Evans photos) do so.
Speaking of Walker Evans, to those who like historical photos, I highly recommend http://www.shorpy.com/, which bills itself as the 100 year old photo blog. It has amazing and poignant photos that not only reveal the past but also remind us that we must protect and honor the institutions that made America a more humane place to live (you'll see, for example, lots of sad pictures of child laborers). It also has many photos of the beauty of America.
Nearly every sordid and pathological tendency of Republicans and, unfortunately, of the Clinton administration's triangulation, is discussed in this article. It's the same 'bipartisan consensus' that believed fervently that Saddam Hussein had WMD and that he had to be removed by an American show of force.
A government totally lacking in humility and an understanding of cost/benefit analyses.