American Exceptionalism Once Again

The last week before Labor Day and summer closes with a bang.  Literally, but in the old sense of the word.  Neither something strange nor anything new happened today.  How much less exceptional?  And while we're talking about things unremarkable, like how being offended is a necessary feature of the perils of learning in college (Duke University) along with nature's criticality that eventuates in crisis (fires, drought, climate change and its deniers), I am sure you heard about or saw the clip today of a perfect puff piece on local Virginia TV where the reporter and her cameraman are suddenly murdered on camera by a gunman.

I await Wayne LaPierre to tell us again how our 2nd Amendment rights would have protected us. Commentator Charlie Pierce said, "If this had happened in Somalia, we'd have a lot of earnest talk about the dangers of a failed society. If it had happened in Syria, Lindsey Graham might liquefy entirely and disappear in a rush down a storm drain. But it happened here, in the exceptional home of American exceptionalism, so, once again, we will be told that Alison Parker and Adam Ward are merely more of the price we pay for the exceptional exceptionalism of a free society."

So here's what happened to me after the initial human experience of horror. Don't say "disbelief." You know too that that's not true. I think maybe you thought what I thought, "What would make this anything other than a typical day in America?" There was the shooter's FB posting and it happened on live TV ---where reality is the new old entertainment---but other than that, this is nothing new even as it qualifies as news. Sure, we will write to legislators, march for gun control laws and mental health services and even lobby to repeal the 2nd Amendment but if first graders gunned down in their classroom or worshipers gunned down in their church haven't changed anything, neither will this. This is who we are. This is what America has come to. Don't expect change anytime soon. Nothing exceptional happened today but the usual American exceptionalism. And that is the problem. This doesn't mean things are hopeless. It means we live in worlds of our own making, and when stories like this are commonplace, we're nothing like who imagine ourselves to be.

Here's the NY Times link to the report: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/27/us/wdbj7-virginia-journalists-shot-during-live-broadcast.html?&target=comments&hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&modref=HPCommentsRefer&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news#commentsContainer

It is no small matter to advance the courage of one’s convictions, especially if your values and actions fail to identify with majority culture or, in this Age of the Meme, those who manage the discourse.   Whose story gets told is not an equal opportunity promise.  The fiction of unity often holds us together when the realities of difference are less empowering.  But perils come with every form of human collectivity, not even a party of one is exempt.  Religion exacerbates these issues as much as it provides for definitions of “us” and what it means to be “them.”  To embrace diversity requires the binary, whatever problems necessarily ensue.

The etymology of the word "religion" ---a word not used until about the 4th century---is "holding together" or, to put this in more modern terms, “solidarity.”  The clear sense is the maintenance of group identity. What does it mean to be one of us?  Of course, to answer such a question necessarily implies at least a dash of self-superiority and patronizing of dissent.  Who, after all, believes their beliefs to be only just as good as another’s?  The worst that too-much-conviction brings comes close on these heels. What happens if another’s “love your neighbor as yourself” strikes you as not such good advice, in fact, an imposition, and you mean to convey that opinion?

A tribe's commitment to identity language and symbols always becomes a play for power, however contrary to human decency.  If I merely mention Nietzsche or Marx here that will suffice to ruffle enough feathers to make my point.   We are all invaded by the body snatchers, one way or another, because being different, much less the “other,” has real consequences.  How do we express our freedom without that costing others’ theirs?  When is one person’s matter of conscience another person’s oppression?  How can we mitigate the conflict that invariably appears when human beings have genuinely diverse opinions?  The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is certainty and what is a better indication of oppression than the asservation of only one truth?  We can put this another way: how many interpretations of religion eschew certainty as willingly as they embrace tolerance?  Tolerance is not merely about accepting another’s differences; it is about the effort to prevent one’s own views from becoming another person’s oppression or exploitation.  That is fine line territory and rarely a place where we find comfort and inclusion.  So how do we learn to live with the intimidation that follows from dissenting opinions or being someone else’s other?

There’s been little notice taken of the Satanic Temple’s efforts to place their thorn strategically into the American discourse but they have done us all a favor.  We are compelled to take them seriously.  (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/us/a-mischievious-thorn-in-the-side-of-conservative-christianity.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region).   It’s remarkable how little this group’s efforts have been taken seriously in mainstream media without the usual dismissive or condescending assumptions.  Americans are not particularly adept at seriousness, which may explain why Stewart, Colbert, and now Oliver appear more like the news than the news.  If it’s not entertaining or reduced to Twitter© worthy we are a short attention span society.  When the going requires seriousness, we preserve tolerance by embracing simplicity, nowadays reduced to meme, slogan, or whatever picture can be sold with commercials.

Satanic Temple is obviously working the distinctive angle of the American First Amendment with a particular eye on the disingenuous "religious freedom" meme that fundamentalist Christians are currently working in public.  (http://thesatanictemple.com/about-us)  Let’s assume that certain evangelical Christian agendas offend and embarrass other Christians who don’t share these political advocacies or impositions.  But the Satanic Temple’s more-than-satire (think: Flying Spaghetti Monster) is incisively aimed: their contrariety means to be a thorn in any religious agenda that uses the First Amendment to advance the right to discriminate. 

We will only see more “religious freedom” laws from elected officials (re: Republicans) supporting those who can’t find it in their hearts to issue marriage licenses or bake cakes.  “Satanic Temple” is language that goes to the heart of Christian fear of the Devil and obviously means to insult the hypocrisy of evangelical agendas.  Wilfred Cantwell Smith who served as Director of Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions when I was a graduate student made it a point to say that he found the imposition of Christian views from his own Christian standpoint “uncharitable” and so unloving--- a violation of his religious principles.  This is hardly an endorsement of secular method in studying religion but as a religious stance Smith’s acknowledged tolerance is as much a wariness of the power of a dominant religion over others.  Professor Smith could never quite step into a secularist’s creed in which insult and intolerance is as much an instrument of serious enquiry as respect and inclusion.  The issue isn’t whether you will insult someone with a question or comment.  Nor can we use a standard of efficacy: does anyone really believe that your interlocutor will change his mind because you have the better argument?  The only reason left to risk insult is because the method of open inquiry promises more rather than less to consider.  Not everyone wants more.

If you are not willing to risk insult to another's conviction, then you may have already given up learning.  Learning means asking any question and holding every viewpoint accountable to reason.  Learning involves changing your mind, even when that might involve questioning your most hard won convictions and toppling yourself.  If there is but an incremental change in opinions, we might consider that a worthy end.   More compelling is how learning demands that your viewpoint is no exception beyond refutation and that you pursue self-subversion as a principle of honest investigation.  Of course, none of this sounds odd in a college classroom or to any methodology involving secular learning.  Science warms to revision in ways religion does not.  We are left to create a meaningful juxtaposition to how many religions do their business.

Religion in America is the place were someone’s incontrovertible beliefs are respected enough to be voiced freely.  (Yesterday, on the day of South Carolina’s removal of the Confederate battle flag from State grounds and into a museum I witnessed at least three such flags within ten miles of my home in western New York.  Free speech? Willful insult?  If there is a difference here it is without distinction.)  When does an insult or a symbol of hate become oppressive?  When it is sanctioned---that is, made sacred---as it was by the State of South Carolina for these many years or when advocacy becomes the means of repression.  We can afford to err uncomfortably on the side of freedom when efforts to enforce conformity or oppress the other are effectively marginalized.   This is why majorities need protect diversity and the experiences of minorities.   Rural white America knows it is growing old, dying, and becoming the minority.  (Last week Latinos became the ethnic majority of Americans in California.)  In America you are free to be that jackass with the Confederate battle flag: perhaps better we know that you are so that we can marginalize such views.  How do we protect their minority views?  Do we?  I think we will need the Satanic Temple’s principles.

To cite the New York Times piece above, "Although he, like Mr. Jarry, is an ‘atheistic Satanist,’ meaning that he no more believes in a literal Satan than he does in a literal God, he finds special meaning in Satanism, which represents to him the solidarity of outsiders, those judged and excluded by the mainstream."  Add the Satanic Temple’s seven fundamental tenets (“’It could be eight tomorrow, it could be six,’ Mr. Jarry said.”) and what you see is the ordinary agenda of secular learning in full evidence.  (http://thesatanictemple.com/about-us/tenets)

It’s not without irony and seriousness that these "Satanists" likely mean to juxtapose religious agendas with the quotidian pursuit of learning that governs higher education.  Their tenets actually serve to protect those who would oppose them.  Without irony I can declare none of these tenets violate my own religion, which apparently has more in common with the Satanic Temple than I might have first imagined.   The lesson shouldn’t be lost on us: beware tenets that abide change and address differences, no matter how sure you are that you too need some of your own. 

As We Celebrate Marriage Legality

 To choose with whom we will forge a life in intimacy, with all its imperfect implications, is a remarkable human gift and, as we have learned, it is indeed not a blessing conferred by God but rather by social contract.

The Justices in dissent of the majority Supreme Court ruling have been able to deflect their moral and religious objections to same-sex unions and instead focus on the overreach of Court’s Constitutional role.  There were not merely four dissenters, there were four dissents, each of which made an implicit case for rejecting the collective social will.  Some commentators suggest an incitement to treason. (Look here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/27/did-dissenting-justices-suggest-treason.html)

But no matter how we construe their dissent, it is a thinly veiled religiosity that fuels their discontent.  Justice Scalia is simply the most undisguised and mephitic in his effort to impose his personal pieties in the guise of constructionist interpretation.  While same-sex marriage is now the law of the land there is every reason to believe that a significant minority of hearts and minds are non-consensual.  We can, of course, compare this week's events to the civil rights movement that has indeed shifted attitudes and values with a generational tide. But that tidal wave too has also seen new walls built to prevent the sea change: the Court’s regressive ruling concerning the Voting Rights Act along with Congress’s unwillingness to renew its critical provisions are supported by States imposing restrictive voting laws aimed directly at repressing minority voters.  Law may be a measure of progress but progress is not best measured by law.  Neither is what we teach our children the meaning of law; it is the difference between right and wrong.

There was a time not long ago when marriage was hardly the blessing or the gift it is today understood to be in America.  Especially for women.  We need only reference Emma Goldman’s remarks in 1910.

From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is her ultimate goal; therefore her training and education must be directed toward that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she is prepared for that. Yet, strange to say, she is allowed to know much less about her function as wife and mother than the ordinary artisan of his trade. It is indecent and filthy for a respectable girl to know anything of the marital relation. … As to the protection of the woman—therein lies the curse of marriage. Not that it really protects her, but the very idea is so revolting, such an outrage and insult on life, so degrading to human dignity, as to forever condemn this parasitic institution.  (Cited from Lapham’s Quarterly.)

Goldman goes on to reflect on how women are left uninformed and made shameful of their sexuality.  How much of that has changed?  Even a brief look at the history of “marriageable age” reveals the depths of sexism that continue across the world.  Anyone with a cursory understanding of cultural anthropology knows that the legal age of consent has little to do with reality.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriageable_age)  Once again, the law speaks to but one feature of civilization while culture speaks to so many others.

America has addressed an injustice and finally joined with Canada and much of Europe in a commitment to legal same-sex marriage (http://www.pewforum.org/2015/06/26/gay-marriage-around-the-world-2013/).  Perhaps it’s also a good time to remember that there are seventy-nine countries in which being actively gay is still very much a crime.  (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-25927595)

Things have changed and the law speaks to change.  But the law is not all we must contend with.  Human decency has a far longer road to travel.

Our Complicated Lives

As Thomas Jefferson made clear the Constitution’s First Amendment intended to build “a wall of separation between church and state.”  Do note how Jefferson maintains it is possible to live in such a world:

Citing the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, he writes to the Danbury Baptists:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

Mr. Jefferson’s own opprobrious history as a slave-holder, and far worse, is as much a part of our “complicated heritage” as the matter of institutional racism that encodes itself America’s DNA.   Should we consider theses matters in tandem, the issues become all the more contentious. Charles Blow offers up an insightful summary definition of institutional racism and its deniers. (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/opinion/charles-blow-confederate-flags-and-institutional-racism.html?ref=opinion)

Do follow up with the reader’s comments on this piece to gather a better sense of how this debate is at once recognized as an American reality and then both accepted and denied with requisite resignation.

“Complication” is another way of describing our deep divides, under-developed conversations, and the unwillingness we share to educate each other. 

All of those commitments would assuredly hurt, require time and effort, and cause the consternation of change.  Learning is not complicated: it is arduous and invites vulnerability because we might have to change our minds.  Complacency is as much the complementary infection of 21st century America, evidenced in everything from our pathetic voter turnout to the gleeful dismissal of electronic media for purposes of mere entertainment all the while deriding it as a cause of individual desolation.  We critique those immersed in electronic trivia as if looking at your cellphone were the reason we are so reduced.  We could be using the remarkable powers of this communicative media revolution for, you know, a revolution of ideas and a prompt to pay attention.  Instead? This coming fall semester I will ban the use of electronics in my college classroom because I simply cannot control the abuse of inattention.  The problem is not the media or our even attention span: it is our unwillingness to evolve a more serious self.  That would require a greater effort, ardor we apparently reserve for more pleasurable endeavors.

I am not much surprised that Americans of this age debate institutional racism.  Rather, I am acquiescent that our society is not on the brink of any important soul-searching.  There is no evidence of some new consciousness because the Confederate battle flag and its cohort are at last officially recognized as better museum pieces than representations of values.  Those values will persist no matter where politicians now resolve to put these egregious symbols of hate.  And as for any “heart-awakening"---or in the parlance of my work “yoga revolution,” I’m equally unimpressed that a World Yoga Day will do more than mix political exercise with unreflective meditation and produce instead only more embarrassing posturing.

Religion is always mixed with politics, if by “religion” we imply the original Latin etymology of the word “to bind together.”  Religions refer to what holds an “us” together.  And there is no “us” without a “them.”  So for all the ways that religions proffer identities construed to elevate the human condition to better intentions and actions, religion cannot help be just as much the mechanism of divisiveness.   We cannot keep religion out of politics.  But we can object to religions just as honestly as we object to politics.

All of us possess deep convictions and whether we call that our “religion” or something else, we are moved to act beyond our private conscience because we are necessarily social and political beings.  Mr. Jefferson’s admonitions notwithstanding, the issue is how we instantiate religious values in our politics.  To reduce religion to matters of private conscience or eschatology is a “thou doth protest too much” moment in which we mean to become exempt from the inevitable comingling of conviction with actions.  Alas, we act from what we believe, even when our beliefs are evidenced-based rather than reformulated from dogmas.  There’s no separation of religious ideas and feelings from our efforts to be human in the world.

For your bemusement have a look at the conundrum facing the current crop of Catholic Republican Presidential candidates as they answer to Pope Francis’s environmental encyclical Laudato Si, which also fingers corporate exploitation and income inequality.  These candidates will need plenty of yoga (how disputably “unchristian” of them) to create religious fealty and answer to their kleptocratic masters' efforts to purchase the government while satisfying their own grifting aspirations.  It’s no easy dance to criticize Il Papa but when there is that much cash on the table, it hardly requires a Rogers and Astaire.  For a tango of this, have a look at The National Review, with its Buckley-Catholic heritage conservative politics as an official response piece reflecting the oligarchy’s consternation with His Holiness.  (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420167/pope-francis-environment-encyclical-mixed-blessing-conrad-black)  Do get out the popcorn if you intend to watch Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, et. al. ---it is at present more of a lunatic bus more than mere clown car-- -explain away their religio-political conflicts of interest.  Note as well Huckabee’s virulent evangelical Protestantism in “I told you so” brimstone mode.  You know, those Papists aren’t to be trusted with the stewardship of the earth even if we can agree to agree that the church must control women’s reproductive choices.  (Of course, no one who lauds Laudato Si wants to take much note of The Church’s official stance on reproductive rights or same-sex marriage.) The real conflict between church and state is being played out everyday if we choose to pay attention.

Whatever happens to the symbols of religiously-justified ideology, such as the Confederate flags, the deeper issues are nowhere to be seen.  Nicholas Kristof makes this perfectly clear in today’s Times.  (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/opinion/tearing-down-the-confederate-flag-is-just-a-start.html?ref=opinion)

Kristof writes:

America’s greatest shame in 2015 is not a piece of cloth. It’s that a black boy has a life expectancy five years shorter than a white boy. It’s that the net worth of the average black household in 2011 was $6,314, compared with $110,500 for the average white household, according to census data.

It’s that almost two-thirds of black children grow up in low-income families. It’s that more than one-third of inner-city black kids suffer lead poisoning (and thus often lifelong brain impairment), mostly from old lead paint in substandard housing.

More consequential than that flag is our flawed system of school finance that perpetuates inequity. Black students in America are much less likely than whites to attend schools offering advanced science and math courses.

The one public system in which America goes out of its way to provide services to African-Americans is prison. Partly because of our disastrous experiment in mass incarceration, black men in their 20s without a high school diploma are more likely to be incarcerated than employed, according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

So I’m all for celebrating the drawing down of the Confederate battle flag, but now let’s pivot from symbolic moves to substantial ones.

So what do we care about?  And what are we willing to do about it?  We might ask ourselves too why these topics are untouchable.  For that we can return to a movie favorite (well, maybe that takes it too far) and the dialogue between Officer Jimmy Malone---finely casting the Scot Sean Connery as an Irish beat cop with Costner’s Eliot Ness:

Malone: You said you wanted to get Capone. Do you really wanna get him? You see what I'm saying is, what are you prepared to do?

Ness: Anything within the law.

Malone: And *then* what are you prepared to do? If you open the can on these worms you must be prepared to go all the way. Because they're not gonna give up the fight, until one of you is dead.

Ness: I want to get Capone! I don't know how to do it.

Malone: You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. *That's* the *Chicago* way! And that's how you get Capone. Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that? I'm offering you a deal. Do you want this deal?

Ness: I have sworn to capture this man with all legal powers at my disposal and I will do so.

Malone: Well, the Lord hates a coward.

[jabs Ness with his hand, and Ness shakes it]

Malone: Do you know what a blood oath is, Mr. Ness?

Ness: Yes.

Malone: Good, 'cause you just took one.

Of course, this is precisely what has already happened but by those who would keep the Confederate flag and wave their guns as their emblems of freedom.  We are told in daily memes by those espousing Second Amendment rights that we must arm ourselves to protect each other from ourselves.  (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/06/most-awful-reaction-charleston-mass-shooting-nra)

To face the deeper truths of our American sickness would require a revolution without the guns.  What is there to suggest we are prepared to do that?

Hope in the Age of Obama

Today America reacted again to redeem itself through sacraments of political exigency. I watched unamazed as the Governor of South Carolina, followed by a series of would-be Republican Presidential nominees each pursue their absolution and provide the required rhetoric. As Governor Haley surrounded herself with those appealing to hope to confer upon her newfound awareness the requisite gravity to carry forward the charade, I remained unconvinced. America will need to do more than hold news conferences and take down flags.

Yesterday’s ardent apologists have now made their rhetorical revisions to suit the faithful, all calculated to insure a commitment to deeper unfeigned change.

"Part of the problem why we continue to visit these moments is because there is of a lack of honesty about how we got here. Racism, bigotry, prejudice and hatred are elements woven into the fabric of this country. There can be no healing in this land if we are not honest about who we are."  --Rev. Michael A. Walrond Jr. (the pastor at First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem, June 21 2015)

Both ideological constituents and financial directors can rest easy: the Governor's words will not overwrite the convictions Reverend Walrond, Jr. so well understands.  America's tortured reality will soon resume its natural course.  The Republican politicians fabricated duress will convert into more comfortable slogans or simply be elided from the next news cycle. This satisfying if not unexpected outcome is all part of the show for those for whom any change would be deemed bad for business.

As we see a potent symbol of our tawdry history disenfranchised for a brief, shining moment under the bright lights of the media’s imperative to reclaim America’s moral superiority, the more lasting message should not be mistaken: the solid ground upon which this Confederate battle flag stands is dutiful.  Its unapologetic meaning will endure even when it is no longer residing under the overt symbols of hatred sanctioned by the State. A significant portion of the American public today is as intractable in its inner volition as it is incapable of attending long enough to feel the discomforts deeper self-reflection would require. As Walmart moved to remove Confederate flags and decorations from its shelves, Amazon saw a 2,300% increase in sales: today.

Americans are not people for whom the realities of self-revision have much provenance beyond immediate economic gains unless it is to provide an update that reclaims old, well-founded prejudices. We prefer instead to act as if there were no yesterday, to pretend nothing endemic in the failure that lies at the root of our founding as a nation. To register “progress” because slavery has been abolished and racism is now beyond fashionable norms tells us less about what we have achieved than it does how much we prefer to refuse to understand. By next week, well, things will be just fine. Again. Lather, rinse, repeat.