The Difference in the Similarities

Everything is polarized these days: Liberals vs. Conservatives, Republicans vs. Democrats, Black vs. White. We are so busy dividing ourselves into Us vs. Them that we miss out on the many commonalities we share. The truth is, most of us have similar beliefs. We share a similar morality and generally want the same things out of life. We even go about achieving our goals the same way - we get a job, work hard, make friends, fall in love, raise a family, do right by those in our lives. People are more similar than they are different.

But those differences, sometimes just little things, DO matter. Drawing them out can be of utmost importance for a society and the arc of its evolution. Make no mistake, differences matter, but how we talk about them and what we ignore or focus upon guides so much of our conversation.

A case in point: I recently read an interesting article from a self-described pro-life feminist. The thrust of the article was how reasonable and sympathetic she was. That her goals are fundamentally the same as many of the pro-choice camp. In fact, the suggestion was her's were more female-friendly: she wanted to reduce the need for abortion, she recognized that abortions disproportionately affect women of color and therefore are discriminatory. She wanted to help women, and when she explained that to the angry pro-choice protestors she met they were won over by her rationality and given a new understanding of how pro-woman her position really is.

Except it's not. The similarities are there. I agree that abortion is not a good thing. If we can help women avoid facing that incredibly difficult choice then they are likely to be better off, especially the disadvantaged who are most likely to face negative repercussions regardless of the decision they make. We should have a better support system where having a child when you're single, poor, or in other bad circumstances doesn't ruin your chances for a bright future.

But we should also have a support system for those who recognize the reality of the hardships that they will face if they keep their child, for those who know they are not up to the task of carrying a baby to term, much less the years of demanding motherhood to follow. We should have more readily available options for birth control, especially for women, to avoid the situation in the first place. Some anti-abortion proponents might agree with these ideas, but many do not. Many seek to tackle the problem of abortion by making it more of a problem. They want to make it more difficult to get (which means more difficult for the poor - the rich always have options). They want to make it more of a stigma, making the choice more difficult and damning for the woman. They often want to withdraw the support system we have, reduce availability of birth control, and refuse to educate women on their options and responsibilities in general. We all want to reduce abortions, but how we accomplish that is a defining characteristic of who we are as a people.

In her own words, the author of the article slipped in the truth. Alongside all her talk of being pro-woman, all her reasonableness and support for women and understanding of the discriminatory nature of the questions, in one quick aside she laid bared the heart of the difference between those who call themselves pro-life and those who truly support the lives and choices that women are faced with. She said 'The pro-life movement is trying to make legal abortion less available, sure, but ...'. The but doesn't matter. All the talk about all the other good stuff doesn't matter. At its heart, the pro-life movement is trying to limit the legal right of women to choose for themselves, knowing full well who those limitations will hurt the most.

Maybe we should focus more on the agreement - it would be great if pro-lifers supported programs that reduced unwanted pregnancies (like cheap access to effective birth control which Planned Parenthood provides), fought for greater paid leave for new parents, were willing to pay for a better education system that would increase the options for the poorest among us and create a stronger safety net for all women at every level. But the fundamental difference exists, and if you condemn those who do not believe what you believe and deny them the right to act upon it, if you admit that right yet fight against it, you undermine everything you say you stand for. Stop trying to tell the other side what to believe and spend more time actually supporting women in a way that makes sense, and I bet you'd find the difference is still there, but far less potent than it currently is.

Biting the Hand that Feeds

It's a common theme amount salt-of-the-earth types that the people who work the land for their livelihood would all be just fine if the government would only get out of their way, stop persecuting them, and leave them to their own devices. They'd be able to support themselves and their family and at the same time would be the best stewards of the environment. The evil government has ruined their world and the only solution is to remove it entirely. It's pure bullshit.

The truth is that the government is the only thing that allows them to exist. If not for government subsidies on water, disaster relief for severe weather phenomena, and price supports built in to agriculture, the small family farm wouldn't have a chance. And the truth is that society doesn't really want it - what we want is cheap and plentiful food, and the way to get that is through factory farming. There's a reason there aren't many blacksmiths or ferriers making a good living these days. Times change, normally for the better, and some jobs and industries get left behind as we advance. That's as it should be.

And more truth: the past wasn't any easier. I don't believe there has ever been a time when earning a living by raising animals or growing crops was an easy and bountiful option. That's not because of the government, it's simple economics. When land was cheap, those who found ways to own lots of it and farm out the labor to others are the ones who got rich. Before our current era of corporate farms we had land barons, and the average family suffered under their control just as surely and likely more cruelly than anything the government has done since. If you remove the government from the equation - take away the cheap grazing land the BLM provides, the huge expense of water storage and irrigation supported through public works - and the family farm would be ruthlessly eliminated as an inefficient player in the market. That's how it was in the past.

So the government, in spite of its fallible nature, in spite of its burdensome regulations and overzealous pursuit of disparate goals, is the famliy farm's best benefactor. But it isn't their friend. It shouldn't be. The government's role is not to prop up a small group of people's economic interest. The government is there to manage public resources in a way that best serves the nation as a whole, and while that may include making sure that food is inexpensive and reliable for the masses, it also includes making sure that those resources are not used up, destroyed, or contaminated. It requires we preserve some wilderness for future generations and protect the environment in a way that might not prioritize immediate economics of the local over long-term benefit to the many. The government is how we as a people allocate our resources and if they dont' like it there's a process for making change - it's called voting.

I put family cattle ranchers in the same boat as coal miners. They seem like good people. I'm sure they work very hard to eek a living off the earth and it's probably all they know, all they want to do. I understand their fear and anger that their way of life is disappearing and I feel sorry for them. But I also realize that we as a society are better off without such jobs. That working people hard to pull carbon from the ground or raise an inefficient food source like beef, which requires so much water and land to deliver a not-particularly healthy food source, is not in our best interest. The effort and ethic they put into their work is indeed noble; the work itself is not. There are better ways to use our resources, including the labor of such fine folk, and while they may not want to make that change, it is in all of our best interest if they do.

Refugees Ain’t Peanuts

Republican Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee recently offered the following analogy to the issue of taking in Syrian refugees: “If you bought a five-pound bag of peanuts and there were about ten peanuts that were deadly poisonous, would you feed them to your kids?" he said. "The answer is no.”

This is, in a nutshell, the basic Republican approach to the refugee crisis, and by examining the many ways in which the analogy fails you can see the flaws in their thought process and understand what they’re really trying to do.

First off, the lives of human beings are not peanuts. Refugees are people. Bakers, plumbers, taxi drivers. Mothers, daughters, grandparents. A wide slice of everyday humanity whose existence is just as valuable as our own, regardless of the color of their skin or who they pray to. But the Republican view is only focused on us. We are the consumer and everything else is simply a commodity. Our lives matter. Other’s don’t. It puts fear before compassion and takes no account of the level of risk. If there’s any chance of any harm coming to a single one of ‘us’, then there’s absolutely no reason to help out any of ‘them’. Safety comes first.

But even that is a lie. Let’s grant that there are some poisonous peanuts out there. They want to withhold the five pound bag, but we’re at a picnic with many other foods. There’s some peanut butter cookies over on the dessert table, some Chinese chicken salad in the dinner line, and peanut butter sandwiches with the crust cut off everywhere. The Republicans either ignore all these other food dangers (like tourist visas, legal immigration, American-born Muslims) or they call for a complete ban on any type of nut whatsoever (Trump is really one step away of saying we should ban Islam from our country). The one approach does nothing to safeguard those worried about peanuts because peanuts are everywhere, and if we ban everyone from having any type of nut we’re getting rid of a lot of good food – and more accurately a lot of good and decent people who contribute to our society. It goes against the very nature our country was founded on of religious tolerance and diversity. But once again, religious freedom is important for ‘us’, not them.

Yet banning nuts still wouldn’t make us safe. There are lots of food allergies out there, lots of dangerous meals. They don’t really want to get rid of all the dangers, just the ones they know they didn’t bring. They don’t like peanuts so no one else can have them. Never mind the truth that right-wing Christian fanatics have killed more Americans than Muslims. Never mind that Americans have killed far more innocent civilian Muslims since 9/11 than the victims of that tragic day. Never mind that more American soldiers will die fighting the war on Islam they’re starting. Their rhetoric does not lead to safety.

Finally, the analogy assumes that our kids are eating peanuts at random. The truth is far different. That bag of peanuts Huckabee is talking about will get inspected. Each individual peanut will undergo a thorough review by a peanut expert. It’s past, from the day it was planted to the day it arrived in that bag, will be studied and questioned. It’s not a perfect process, but the chances of finding and separating out the poisonous legumes are pretty good. The same can’t be said for the chicken salad. The Republicans want to ban the one group of Muslims who are most rigorously vetted before they enter this country. French citizens pulled off the attack in Paris. Saudis perpetrated 9/11. The San Bernadino shootings involved an American and a Pakistani here on a visa. Refugees are not the danger.

It was never about safety, though. It’s about fear. They want us to be afraid of the peanuts. They want us focused on the foreign threat because it gives them an easy way to lay down the rules and prove that they are in charge. No peanuts. Listen to your parents. It’s easier to control your kid when they’re afraid. If you have to exaggerate a little and say that peanuts are going to kill them, well, it’s for their own good. You see, the Republicans think we’re children who turn to them for guidance. That they know best and we’ll like them more if we think they know everything and are protecting us. They want to be the good parent because we'll listen to them and let them remain in charge. Perhaps that’s also why they’re always promising us candy – lower taxes for everyone, no decrease in government spending, and magical four percent economy growth.

The saddest thing about the entire analogy is the fact that it works. That so many people who espouse a faith that specifically calls for welcoming the less fortunate are more concerned about minuscule threats to their own easy lifestyle than they are about helping others. That our fear of the radical Islamic terrorists half a world away out-trumps the true horror suffered by those who lived under their regime. It’s an appeal to our own weaknesses, the worst part of human nature that fears the other and responds to hatred with more hatred. Our country was founded to be better than that. We’ve had dark moments in the past - when we turned away Jewish immigrants fleeing Nazi Germany, when we placed Japanese Americans in internment camps – so it’s nothing new. We are all imperfect beings who suffer fear and react instinctively instead of intelligently.

But we can be better. What defines a person is not the mistakes they’ve made in the past but what they’ve learned from their actions and how they behave in the future. We have a chance to show our character. We can be that beacon on a hill and light the way for a better world. Or we can toss peanuts on the ground.

Of Xenophobia and Instinct

In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, the social media world, the media world in general, and the general world in general, have all erupted in mourning, debate, accusations and incriminations. The responses are neither surprising or new. But their very consistency lends itself to self-analysis and potential learning. Though neither seems likely.

The first response of many is one of fear and fight. The attack in Paris is seen as a threat to all Western life in a way that the similar bombings in Beirut a few days earlier were not. In a way we can understand and, more importantly, imagine happening to us, the way death and destruction caused by war on a country's own soil is not. Paris is a proxy for all the West and demands a response because it is us. We cannot so simply turn away.

The world is too large to grasp and appreciate, so we reduce it to similarities and the familiar. In so doing we deny its truth, we miss the universalities disguised by surface differences. We look for ourselves in everything and miss it everywhere.

So we vow revenge. We demand action. We send in the planes and drop the bombs and trust that we kill for noble reasons, out of self-defense, and our actions are in no way comparable to the enemy's. That we have killed more civilians on their side than they have on ours is irrelevant. That the extremists have killed more of their own kind than ours is irrelevant. They are all the same if we lack the ability to tell them apart. If we kill them all we will surely get the right ones among them.

At the same time, we flight as well as fight. We call to close our borders. To expunge those who might be the enemy simply because they belong to the same general group of people. We do this only when the attack comes from a minority, a segment of society that is easy for the majority to disparage and eliminate. When white men commit atrocities, when Christians commit disgraceful acts in the name of their god, we cannot run away. Because we are them.

The other is the greatest threat to the self. It challenges everything held dear; it weakens every belief and threatens every foundation. It brings us together in defense of the common good and unites individuals into a community. And in so doing, we lose our selves to the masses and the war is already lost.

We look for a simple answer and the obvious truths. Bad people exist. They are a threat to us. If we eliminate them we will be safe. But people are merely the pawns of movements, ideas brought into action. We make no attempt to find the root cause or change the thought process. If people hate us for our militarization and interference, we will send our military to interfere some more. We believe those who tell us it will work this time, in spite of so recent memory that they've said that before. We'd rather believe the obvious lie that comforts us than an inconvenient truth that scares us more. We need satisfaction now - justice is swifter through violence than education.

The grand gesture is rarely a lasting sentiment. The immediate response seldom a solution. If we have any hope to make change, to improve life, it will only come piecemeal, over generations. What is done long after the fact will decide what comes next.

There is naked evil in the world, and Islamic extremists represent one face of it. But there are many forms of hate, many ways in which we deny what's noble about humanity and reduce ourselves to an instinctive drive to survive at all costs. When we vilify those of with different beliefs because a tiny percentage have wronged us, when we show compassion for those who look like us but turn our back to those of a different color, when we respond to hatred in kind, we lessen ourselves.

We can resist. We can pause to consider and use our higher principles and rational brains to seek understanding and learn a new approach. We don't need to cower in fear or strike out in anger. We can fight back and show strength through character instead of belligerence. Doing so would take a bravery I fear we lack. It would value the long-term result instead of immediate satisfaction. It would value all people equally and improve the world for more than just ourselves. It could work. It won't happen. It's why I mourn for Paris - not because of the immediate tragedy, but because it belongs to a world where it will inevitably happen again.

Empathy, or lack thereof, appears to be the core problem of human relations. We misunderstand, miscommunicate, and misrepresent each other in a constant struggle to declare our own truths to be universal and undeniable. We simply lack the ability to think in a way other than how we’ve learned to think. If we are forever limited by our own experiences we will never come to understand the other until we experience more than ourselves.

Securing the high ground

I wrote earlier about the second amendment and why I feel it has no place in the current debate over how to handle guns in America. But since then there’s been another mass shooting (several, really, like there are every month in this country, but one in particular that’s captured the media’s attention), and I feel the need to address the fundamental arguments I hear from those who support (demand) the right to own guns, I’m writing again to make my position more clear. Gun-right advocates do have a case to make, but it’s one without morality.

The first thing they’ll say is that the constitution guarantees them the right to bear arms. I took  this apart in detail, but let’s just stick to the fact that no reference to a conclusion drawn by others represents an argument on it’s own merits. Just because some people thought it was a good idea a long time ago does not make it a good idea today. You have to at least state what their argument was and why it’s still valid. That’s hard to do because we don’t really have their argument – merely a lot of conjecture on what their reasoning was. And the words they used suggest it was based on a need for a militia which holds much less sway in a world where standing armies with nuclear weapons are the norm. So let’s move on.

Gun rights advocates argue against any restrictions because they say criminals wouldn’t follow any new laws anyway. Laws don’t prevent bad people from getting guns so we shouldn’t pass any more. There are so many logical problems here. First, if laws don’t stop anyone from getting guns, why are they worried about them? Why don’t they just let the rest of us pass laws restricting guns and they can ignore them like they say they will. Let’s at least give it a try.

But let’s follow their logic a little further. If laws don’t stop criminals or crime, why do we need any? Criminals break the law by definition. So, of course, criminals will continue to break the law if you add more to them. But the reason we have laws is to indicate what is allowed and considered right and what is wrong. And we back up our laws with punishment for those who break them. Laws reduce certain acts by making them criminal. Maybe not eliminate them, but certainly reduces them. I take this to be self-evident. If you want to live in a lawless society and see how that works out, go right ahead.

But on a more important note, why do you think criminals have such easy access to guns? The answer is simply because there are so many damn guns around. The U.S. has half the private guns in the world, one for every single person (including children) in this country. Of course it’s easy for criminals to get them. And it’s the fault of all the people over all the years who have argued that we all need the right to own guns. It’s those people who want to make sure the good guys have guns who have created a system whereby it’s easy for bad guys to obtain guns. The blame lies with their culture.

But maybe it is too late. The criminals are armed and the only way to stop them is to make sure the good guys have guns too. But I really wonder about how many good guys are really good. The truth is, it’s those good guys who accidentally shoot themselves while cleaning their weapons. It’s the good guys who leave the weapon unsecure so a child finds it and hurts themselves or others. It’s the people we thought were good guys who get angry and use the weapon against their wife or partner. It’s especially the good ones who get sad at all the badness in the world and put their gun to their own head to end the pain. And even the best among us will eventually pass away and leave their stockpiles of deadly weapons to the next generation who may not be nearly as worthy. Statistically speaking, good law-abiding citizens are far more likely to hurt themselves or innocent people with their guns than they are to stop a bad guy, and eventually their weapons will find their way into the wrong hands.

But they still want their guns. Their right to have a toy, to make themselves feel safer in spite of the evidence that proves it isn’t so, is far more important to them than the lives of the innocent people who will die in a system that grants them their right. It’s incredibly selfish. It should not be the basis for how a rational society decides what is best for the population as a whole.

I do agree that it’s too late. It will take generations to get rid of the ridiculous amount of guns in the country. But I’ll still argue for a sane course of action and an end goal that makes sense. It’s not laws or regulation that will make this country safer, but a change in the mindset that weapons are the basis for peace, that everyone needs the power to kill quickly and efficiently in order to survive. There are too many models out there that prove it isn’t so. In the meantime, it would be good to know what incremental steps we can take to make things better. To start us on a path towards a society where more guns are not the solution to a problem of too many guns. The truth is, it’s really hard to know what to do. But that’s their fault as well.

The reason we don’t have much solid academic study of the problems of gun violence is that gun proponents have fought tooth and nail to prevent it. The NRA has used all its power, every politician on its payroll, to stop the government from researching how guns impact public safety. To me, the only reason they would do that is because they know all too well what the answer will be. Those who fear to face the truth are the ones who already know what it is.

And that’s the truth of it. We all really do know that guns are bad. They’re designed to kill. Their purpose is evil. While it may be necessary to have such evil weapons in the world, we should never forget that it’s an evil necessity. We should take no pride in facing that necessity. We should look to eliminate it or reduce it at every turn. If we have any morality in us, we should all strive for a world without guns. The argument that it isn’t possible is proven wrong by many of the most developed and civilized countries in the world – it would be nice if the U.S. could be part of that group.