Fear is Rational

Let’s talk about North Korea for a second. You know, that crazy little country somewhere in Asia with a nut-job dictator who lies to his people and doesn’t seem very stable. Over here in the U.S. (with a nut-job President who lies to his people and doesn’t seem very stable) we’re mighty afraid of North Korea. That fear is rational. They are a belligerent country with a large army and now, apparently, nuclear weapons, which they suggest they will use on their enemies if threatened, and they view the U.S. as their main adversary. They have serious social problems because they’ve spent so much money on their military but the only way for those in power to stay there is through controlling the population and whipping up support through nationalistic pride. Having a credible threat to fight against works to their advantage. We should be afraid of them.

Of course, they view us as a belligerent nation, with an even larger army and more nuclear weapons. We have a lot of problems in our society but we spend more on our military than anyone else on earth, more than the next ten countries combined. Our military-industrial complex keeps raking in enormous profits and our leaders constantly use the threat of attack to justify increasing their power and stifling the opposition. They are very afraid of us.

The biggest difference between our two countries’ perspective is that their fear is much more grounded in history.

Most Americans don’t know that history very well, but even a casual review will show their animosity to be very rational and their actions to be quite sane. Start with the end of WWII where the U.S. and Soviets arbitrarily divided the country in half with a dictator on each side. North Korea’s goal of unifying their country is as good a justification for war as any. During that war, their enemy ( de facto the U.S.) committed many war crimes. As many as a million civilians were killed in indiscriminate bombings, with more munitions dropped on their little country than we used in all of WWII. It was brutal. It ravaged their country in a way that the U.S. has not experienced since our Civil War. And the war technically never ended - there was no surrender, no truce, just a cease-fire that has held for a long time.

And during that period of relative peace, North Korea has watched the U.S. invade countries all around the globe. We’ve sent in troops, bombed places from the sky, fought proxy wars, all with the intent of imposing our will and way of life on the world. We often advocate for regime change under the pretense of bringing stability and democracy to a people, though that has never been the result. Even countries that work with us, especially those that agree to give up any nuclear aspirations (Iraq, Libya), are eventually subject to our need to destroy and replace. In fact, the only countries that appear to be safe from our interference are those who have a credible nuclear deterrent.

For over sixty years North Korea has shown that they are capable of restraint, that they understand the threat we pose and are not interested in entering into a war that will lead to their destruction. Sure, they talk about wiping us out, just as often as we talk about wiping them out, but they haven’t attacked South Korea, or the thousands of U.S. troops stationed there, or any of our allies in firing range. Their fear of the U.S. is rational and they have been behaving in a rational manner.

Now, this doesn’t mean they aren’t the bad guys. They have a repressive regime that literally tortures their own citizens who are often starving and freezing due to the poor state of the country. Their leader is quite possibly insane and most certainly evil. They are bad. But that doesn’t make us good. We helped create this mess and we certainly are responsible for our actions in the past which were also quite evil, and our record on the world stage is not a pleasant one. There isn’t always a good guy in every story.

The point is that we should be afraid of North Korea. We don’t want them to have nuclear weapons. But we don’t really have a moral high ground to make that demand or even a reasonable approach to enforce it. What we do have, hopefully, is two nation-states who bluster and threaten but up until now have shown the self-restraint necessary to avoid a war, nuclear or otherwise, which would assuredly kill hundreds of thousands of people on both sides. Let’s hope everyone keeps acting rationally.

Let the Statues Fall

The long debate about what to do with Confederate Monuments has heated up recently, and it always amazes me the number of liberals who argue we should keep the statues up. What’s worse, they do it with the same lazy logic and false equivalencies as the Right. So let’s break down the arguments and try to come to some reasonable conclusions.

Let’s start by getting this out of the way: the Civil War was about slavery, not state’s rights. This one really only comes up from southerners in denial or die-hard racists, so don’t even go there. It’s ridiculous on its face and I’ll let the preponderance of evidence speak for itself: Declarations of Cause of Seceding States (https://www.civilwar.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states)

But most people know the war was about slavery. Most people know that slavery was wrong. But they argue we can’t erase our history, even the bad parts of it. Here’s the thing, statues aren’t history. They aren’t even how we remember history. We have these things called books and museums, which are used to teach our history to children all over the country. The statues we are talking about were erected to honor the Confederacy (or someone who represented it). They were mostly erected fifty years after the war during a period of segregation and put up in public spaces as a reminder of who controlled those spaces, as well as our government. And the facts and information listed on most of the statues aren’t even historically accurate or particularly germane to the truth of that history. There is a difference between remembering something and honoring it, between stating the record and romanticizing a horror. We don’t need statues celebrating Benedict Arnold to remember the Revolutionary War. If the statues themselves are historically important, then we can certainly keep them in a space where memorials are appropriate without giving them a place of honor in our society, because we should have no pride in what the Confederacy stood for.

But some of the Confederate soldiers were good men, they say. Of course they were. But you haven’t put up a statue commemorating their good deeds; the statues commemorate their worst failing: fighting to maintain the abomination of slavery. Maybe Robert E. Lee was a good university president, but the statues of him are always of a white man in a regal uniform looking brave and determined on his trusty steed as he heads into battle. It’s quite clear the honor is for his leadership and courage, but in the service of an evil cause. He hunted down slaves. He executed them. He fought and killed fellow Americans to maintain his right to own black people. Those are not good deeds.

But if we take down the statues of anyone who wasn’t perfect, where will it end? The old slippery slope argument. First, let me reiterate that it’s not just about the man of the statue, but what particularly deed or philosophy the statue is commemorating. George Washington might not have been a better man than Robert E. Lee, but a statue to Washington is there to remind people of his leadership and courage in fighting for our freedom from British rule and the establishment of a country founded on principles of equality and fairness. Neither the man nor the country entirely lived up to those ideals, but the concepts themselves are clearly worth honoring.

Second, taking down one statue doesn’t require we take down every statue any more than putting up a statue for one person requires we put up statues for everyone. We have a process for both that revolves around our democracy and the ability of our elected leaders to not only respond to the will of the people but also to make considered judgments for the good of all. Sure, I expect they’ll screw that up sometimes like they always do, but it’s not an argument to do nothing. If we can’t be trusted with the decision to take certain statues down then we shouldn’t have been trusted with putting any statues up, which is indeed an argument to get rid of all statues.

An argument that I’ll only hear from liberals is that we should let them have this one - meaning we shouldn’t worry about small things like statues, and it’s counterproductive to piss off the people who want to keep them up. The argument goes that if you want to win over the racists to our side, or to make them less racist, let them keep their trinkets to make them happy and start a dialogue. This is bad on many levels, the first being that these statues have been up for a hundred years, so if keeping them was going to work we should have solved racism long ago. Letting someone hang onto their racist artifacts, letting them honor an atrocity, saying it’s okay for them to distort history and deny the pain and suffering that slavery inflicted on so many in this country is not a path towards healing and reconciliation. But perhaps most importantly, it’s fundamentally wrong to look at the issue of slavery and say: let’s let the white people have this one. If any group deserves the right to decide what is done with these statues it is the descendants of the slaves and those living with the still all too prevalent acceptance of the hateful discrimination that followed.

One of the weakest arguments but still out there, is that we should respect the art. But most of these statues are nowhere near artistic masterpieces. Most were mass-produced on the cheap to satisfy the urgent need of southern whites to find a way to assert their dominance without breaking the bank. And if you want to preserve art, once again that’s what museums are for.

If you’re a Southerner and proud of it, that’s fine. The South has produced many a fine human being and has many noble virtues. If you think the Confederacy and those who fought to maintain slavery fit that description, you have a fundamental problem with your morality and no sense of history. If you need a statue of the Confederacy to remember your heritage, it shouldn’t be one of a noble white man on a horse, but one of a black man beaten and in chains. That’s what the Confederacy stood for, and we the people of this United States should never forget we all started there, but we should not honor it. We cannot erase the past but we can grow beyond it, but only if everyone is ready to let go.

Analogies: Setting the Rules

Imagine you were starting a TV reality show with two groups of people - group A and group B. Each week they had to play some sort of game or contest and the winner got first choice of a limited supply of food for the week. To start things off, group A gets to choose the game and set the rules for the first contest. Don’t you think it’s likely they would set up rules to favor themselves? Even if they tried to be fair, you know the game would be tilted to their advantage, because there is nothing to stop them and no punishment if they do. It’s just human nature.

So Group A wins the contest. No surprise there. But here’s the kicker: the winner of the contest each week gets to set the rules for the following week’s contest. Winner's rules - that’s the American way. Now after several weeks of Group A winning and Group B going hungry, Group B will complain it isn’t fair. But Group A says they're simply following the rules. Group B starts each week with just as much chance to win. And maybe even feeling a little sorry for Group B, Group A now tries to set rules which are actually fair, though after months of eating well and Group B living off their crumbs, it’s hardly surprising that even under equal rules Group A keeps winning. But it's fair, right?

It’s not just about making sure everyone follows the same rules. It’s about setting up fair rules. It’s about leveling the playing field by making up for unfairness in the past. Life is a set of rules called society, and it wasn’t created by some neutral third party. Our rules were determined by those who took advantage of their advantages in the past, and they are propagated by those who win in a system that advantages them. Fairness is a different path entirely.

Analogies: Removing a Pencil from your Eye

Imagine I stuck a pencil in your eye. That’s clearly wrong. It was done with deliberate intent to hurt you and as long as that pencil was there you’d be in pain, half-blinded and full of rage. But what if you went to the ER and the doctor said he couldn’t remove it. He didn’t want to upset me and I clearly wanted that pencil to be in your eye. How else will you remember that I hate you, how else will I remember that time when I was able to hurt you so much? Two wrongs don’t make a right. Crazy, right? Who cares what I think - get that damn pencil out of my eye and do it NOW!

Most of the Confederate monuments in this country were put up long after the war. They were put in public spaces often without discussion, paid for by private groups, certainly without the support of African Americans who often weren’t allowed to vote at the time. They were erected to remind those descendants of slaves who really controlled those public spaces. There is nothing honorable or decent about the actions they memorialize, a war fought against this country to support the institution of slavery. They were a pencil to the eye of equality, and as such need to be removed. That it still entails debate is a sad commentary on the moral fiber of our country.

It's not Trump, it's Republicans

Trump is no longer the story - he is what he is, we all know what he is and he’s not going to change. Sure, what he does still deserves attention and has very important repercussions on the world, but the deep-seated problem we need to discuss is not about one man. It’s about many. Republicans have embraced Trump, they voted him into power, they support his policies and actions, they deny or decry any reality that doesn’t agree with their fantasy world-view. The entire party apparatus has built the Trump phenomenon through decades of attacks on political institutions, public norms, and the rights and liberties of those who disagree with them. Trump is the result, not the cause.

A majority of Republicans would support postponing elections to keep Trump in power, a majority would like to ban immigrants based on religion, a majority believe Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim. They believe Trump won the popular vote, that climate change isn’t happening and certainly isn’t caused by human activity. They don’t believe Trump Jr. met with Russians even after he admitted it and released the emails confirming the meeting. They believe trickle down economics works, that crime is at an all-time high, that colleges have a negative effect on our country. They don’t believe discrimination based on race/gender/religion is real or significant, that Russia hacking our elections is a problem, or that humans evolved from monkeys. They really don’t like Obamacare but they’re okay with the Affordable Care Act.

I’ve talked before about the false equivalency that’s so often drawn between our two political parties, and some of that is policy ideas and honest debates over data analysis and historical records, but most of it comes down to the crazy. Republicans - party leaders, conservative think-tanks, right-wing media - have gone out of their way to destroy a fact-based, reasoning electorate in order to tribalize their side into a win-at-all-costs political machine. In many ways it has worked: Republicans dominate government both nationally and locally in spite of being a minority in overall numbers and on the polling for most important issues. And now we’re stuck with ‘the base’, the twenty-five percent or so of Americans who are die-hard Republicans, who will vote for anyone with an R after their name, will believe anything their dear leader tells them, who will ignore/deny/attack any facts or information that threaten their world-view, and have become so detached from the shared reality rational people use as a base for communication that they cannot even hear us.

It’s a scary time. Trump will burn out but the problem will remain. They’ll jump behind the next demagogue who suggest the ‘others’ are to blame and willingly toss away the foundation of our democracy through a constitutional convention in the name of safety. Safety from a threat that doesn’t exist. The only hope I see is to pull back those who are standing at the edge but have not jumped, those Republicans who have misgivings about our current state of affairs even if they’re willing to go along for a chance at a tax cut or two. But in looking at the beliefs held by a majority of the party, it’s hard to see where these reasonable, rational Republicans might be hiding out. Wherever you are, please come out into the light before we all end up in a darkness too deep to escape.