Obama, Orwell and "Modest Encroachments" of a "Classified" Kind

Imagine a society in which every key stroke, telephone conversation and online transaction is recorded by the government. This information is sifted at will and out of sight; there is no oversight of the program save for the presence of a few token monitors who are tolerated only to lend it a veneer of legality.

And while there are episodes of sudden lucidity, these are few and far between, an occasional aside offered to lull the grazing herd back to sleep. Do not worry, they are told, Big Brother is watching over you. With his soothing voice lingering through their ears, they forget that this is precisely what they should be worried about.

No, I am not writing about a fictional dystopia or communist society of the forgotten past. I am talking about the America of today.

This week President Obama acknowledged, albeit elliptically, that the U.S. government has been spying on the American public through the National Security Agency (NSA). The NSA, a sprawling bureau whose activities are clouded in secrecy, has been illegally monitoring the communications of American citizens and who knows else. And Obama admits it.

What’s more, instead of opposing these illegal activities Obama has chosen to expand them. As president, Obama – an expert in constitutional law – has decided that in order to safeguard democracy in America the government must transgress democracy’s every principle. 

________

But let us try to enter his world for a bit.

 Like a schoolmaster, the President lectured the audience that “you can’t have 100 percent security and also have 100 percent privacy.”

This is a very difficult mathematical theorem to wrap one’s head around. Judging by the recent Boston bombings and school shootings, we must still enjoy at least some "privacy" from this decades-long program. Or am I mistaken?

But then again, he did say that the surveillance program was directed solely at foreigners.

So the greatest threat to national security is – contrary to all existing evidence – not the troubled people among us whom we have neglected, but those people out there. We should not worry about rehabilitating people at home but, rather, fear those evil people lurking out on the dark horizon. Yes I know, I have never actually seen, met or spoken to one of those people, but I have heard they exist (Mr. Obama told me). And they are out to get us!

Not so quick, though. Lest we get the wrong idea, professor Obama stepped in to assure us that evil does lurk amongst us because our borders are not totally impermeable to foreigners. We must guard against people whose very existence is “illegal,” to use the political term now in vogue. “Illegal” immigrants, with their “illegal” existence, simply cannot be trusted.

They grow our crops, build our roads and – gasp – even pay taxes! Look at all the opportunities they have to wreck our finely tuned democracy. We must thank Obama for his great foresight and steadfast leadership. Remember, anyone whose skin is not white is suspect; that is, anyone except Mr. Obama. 

________

I would continue this parody, or rather, exposition of Washington-style logic, but the rest of Obama’s presentation was farcical enough and too important to leave unaddressed.

Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the speech was the word choice, it being strewn with contradictions that Orwell would have appreciated.

To cite a typical example, Obama took pains to emphasize that the surveillance program was not a cloak and dagger set-up. On-lookers were assured that the agency’s investigations were not “secret” but “classified.” The significance of this semantic difference was not satisfactorily explained. Perhaps it too is “classified.”

Then Obama went on to say that far from offering the American people a simple “trust me” the program is regulated by “congressional oversight and judicial oversight.”

That same day Senator Ron Wyden, a member of the congressional intelligence committee, stated that all the success stories touted by the President all could have been solved by traditional, that is to say, legal methods:

“As far as we can see, all of the useful information that it has provided appears to have also been available through other collection methods that do not violate the privacy of law-abiding Americans.”

Wyden and another member of the intelligence committee – the “congressional oversight” that Obama referred to – have repeatedly denounced the NSA program as an assault on basic civil liberties that runs counter to the ideals of democratic governance.  

There was a senator on the intelligence committee, however, who staunchly backed the necessity of NSA surveillance. Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the committee, stated that there were cases which definitively show that the “program has worked.”

This happens to be the same Senator Feinstein who several months ago expressed surprise upon hearing that the operative definition of “combatant” in American drone strike attacks includes any male of adult-age. Her shock was untimely, seeing as ‘The New York Times’ had prominently published this information months earlier.

Perhaps Senator Feinstein should study the existing open-source literature before making sweeping claims about the American intelligence system, a system which she apparently knows very little about. 

________

Echoing Feinstein’s unsubstantiated claims, a former defense official said that “If you’re looking for a needle in the haystack, you need a haystack.”

This statement, made by the former chief of staff to Leon Panetta, likely reveals more than the author intended. If the government truly is targeting only the information of foreigners than the amount of data they collect would surely amount to less than a proverbial “haystack.”

So there you have it, a former top defense official divulging the news that the U.S. is trawling through much more information than it currently claims – and indiscriminately so.

But Obama’s speech still takes the cake. It is not every day that you hear the President praise, and without even the slightest hint of irony, “modest encroachments.”

Yes, he admits, these activities may be illegal, antithetical to democracy and violate your civil liberties, but only in a “modest” way.

Perhaps there is a good reason for this apparent contradiction but Obama did not provide it. But then perhaps this too is “classified.”

Education In Chains: Examining the Prison of the Classroom

       

        The following is an abridged version of my last essay as an undergraduate student. It was written for my modern political philosophy class and required that I use the ideas of one philosopher whom we had covered for the purpose of engaging a present-day problem. I chose education.

        Some of the essay, especially the theoretical stuff, may seem unintelligible or even crazy. To an extent this is intentional; the essay is supposed to be argumentative and engage education in a way that most people do not commonly think of it today. So while this piece is serious, it does address the issue with perhaps too broad of strokes at times. Unfortunately, I fear that I may be more right than wrong on this issue, at least as is articulated in this post. 

        Some advice. If you do not like political theory then just skim the big third and fourth paragraphs (section two). The rest of it is more straightforward and practical; it should read fairly smoothly even without much attention to section two. 

        So here it is, my last essay as an undergraduate student. For the sake of posterity and stepping on people's toes...

         Last month administrators at the University of Oregon proposed a six percent increase in the cost of tuition. While the proposal was met with tepid protest from a few quarters, the majority of students quietly tightened their belts upon hearing the news. It had been expected. Exhibiting unsurpassed administrative foresight, the University leadership had managed to surmount another barrier towards their accomplishment of an unparalleled feat – the doubling of tuition costs within a single decade.

        How are we to understand this unprecedented development? Contrary to popular belief, the proposed tuition raise is indicative of something deeper than the obvious issues of economics, student representation and administrative venality. Rather, it is indicative of a series of power dynamics which are deeply rooted in modern conceptions of education. Drawing from the philosophy of Michel Foucault, this essay seeks to provide a small glimpse of these power dynamics at work, taking a deeper look at the recent tuition raise in order to show that it is but the latest episode in a process of control and disempowerment that occurs within educational institutions. What becomes clear is the fact that institutions of education almost universally fall short of their mission statements which speak of fostering critical thought and a love of learning. And this is intentional.

________

        Foucault writes that modernity is characterized and, indeed made possible, by the exercise of a peculiar form of power which he terms disciplinary power. Its historical genesis is best observed in the European penal system’s transformation from one of stunning violence and rule by fiat to a system which prides itself for its apparently humane punitions and legal uniformity. This astounding development, Foucault suggests, did not arise out of thin air but, rather, was championed by specific interests and made possible by discernible socioeconomic developments. More specifically, “the economy of illegalities,” which had so incensed bourgeois interests with its competing courts and seemingly arbitrary character, was “restructured with the development of capitalist society” to suit the interests of the ascendant bourgeois class (Foucault 87). This exchange of a “bad economy of power” for a more rational one entailed a dramatic restructuring of the penal system (79). Consequently, a “double process” occurred in which the graphic “spectacle” of royal power was abandoned, followed by the “elimination of [conspicuous] pain” from the legal process (11). What arose in its place was a set of judicial norms which sought to assess “something other than crimes,” namely “the ‘soul’ of the criminal” (19). To put this differently, the penal system became an instrument through which the normality of an offender was measured and, consequently, this measurement functioned as “a technical prescription” for the “possible normalization” of the offender (20).

        But why, one might ask, was there sudden preoccupation with normality? As the locus of power shifted from the monarchy to the bourgeoisie, young capitalist societies required a new type of subject if the emerging economic paradigm was to function smoothly. Thus the king's subject was molded into the industrialist's rational citizen, a denatured and interchangeable cog within a monochrome social order. In the legal realm this meant that the “expiation that once rained down upon the body” was replaced by one which “acts in depth on the heart, the thoughts, the will, the inclinations,” ever testing the limits of humankind’s malleability in order to produce a more perfect citizen. Foucault asserts that this obsession with uniformity, precision and, perhaps most notably, productivity has left an indelible mark on modern society, shaping all its facets through a diffuse “micro-physics of power” (26). This all-encompassing system of “indefinite discipline” is “exercised rather than possessed,” and based on the idea that the “body becomes a useful force only if it is both a productive body and a subjected body” (227; 26). Modern society is suffused with methods of discipline, ill-perceived but powerfully coercive means of conditioning our actions, thoughts and values for the purpose of maintaining economic productivity and existing social hierarchies.

________

        This genealogy of disciplinary power provides a useful theoretical framework for understanding education in the modern world. Apparent diversity in classes, programs and institutional philosophies mask the role of several coercive principles which are universally shared by academic institutions. Contrary to wispy statements about the value of critical thinking, schools are above all meant to achieve one goal: the subordination of all creative instinct and total integration of young people into prevailing social and economic norms. Foucault directly engages this reality when he writes about the Lancaster method of schooling, the quintessential model of industrial education. Styling itself as a “machine for learning,” the Lancaster method prepared children for the highly regimented world of the factory by instilling obedience as well as an unquestioning work ethic (165). A deep and profound respect for authority is inscribed on the souls of the students, and, as in the workplace, students are divided along the lines of rank and performance. There is a time for everything as, indeed, every moment of the school day is rigidly accounted for. There is time to read, write, count – everything except for time to freely think. In short, the Lancaster student is taught all that they need to know, that is, if they are to be a cog within the industrial order.

        While the inscription of obedience and industrial discipline on the souls of the Lancaster students may seem hardly analogous to the inner workings of present-day academic institutions, the two fulfill much the same function. One must remember that the Lancaster students were all drawn from the lower-classes and, consequently, the type of obedience instilled in them was meant to suite their particular position in the social hierarchy. While students who attend universities are generally from higher social strata, their education is nevertheless meant to instill a type of obedience to the existing economic order appropriate to their prescribed role. And though the manner in which university students are impressed into this order is different, it is no less insidious. In any case, it is certainly no less ruthless.

        The University of Oregon’s six percent tuition increase for the next academic year provides an illustrative example of how students are rendered docile and obedient to the status quo. In a nation of debtors, student debt has become one of the most outstanding financial burdens imposed on Americans – and essentially financially illiterate youth, at that. Yes, we can smirk while reading about the plainly authoritarian character of the Lancaster method, but one should not forget that today’s students are in their own way hammered into the preexisting socioeconomic order -- a hierarchal system which grips them by a chain of debt about five to six figures long. For the Lancaster students, there was never this degree of material leverage so they had to be controlled by immersion in a more palpably authoritarian environment if they were to remain docile. In striking contrast, the average university student today is animated by an additional mode of discipline: a form of debt-bondage whose combination of psychological violence and less refined forms of coercion grip them while employing the most questionable legal/economic rationale. It is a type of control which lies at the crossroads between Foucault’s conception of disciplinary power and power’s more vividly coercive modes.

        And as in the courts and industrial schools of the nineteenth century, institutions of education today are eminently concerned with questions of normality. That is to say, schools in a very real way function as laboratories in which the productive capacity, mechanical endowment and obedience of the student is measured for the purpose of crafting the ideal citizen. Today the measurements or “technical prescription[s]” for the “normalization” of the student are so obvious as to be unnoticed (20). Within the laboratory of the classroom the student is administered ‘tests’ as if they were a chemical solution within a ‘test’-tube. Any impurities are duly noted and a ‘grade’ which categorizes, classifies and ranks the quality of the student is assigned, much like determining the ‘grade’ of industrial steel. As Foucault explains, the “educational space” is not merely a “learning machine” but also “a machine for supervising, hierarchizing, [and] rewarding” (147). If the ‘grade’ is low then there may be hope of salvaging the material while it is still young; however, there is always the danger that the corrupted material will contaminate others. Thus at one point it may become necessary to quarantine the abnormal ones, especially if they will not stay confined to the cell of their desk, corrupting other impressionable material. Such students are sent to ‘detention,’ an auxiliary laboratory of sorts where pathologies are assessed as well as the prospect of the aberrant student’s reintegration into the ‘student body.’

       It is also worth noting that the regime of power that schools embody is, as Foucault suggests, linked to the creation of knowledge and its dissemination. Just like prisoners, students are reduced to “objects of knowledge,” a preoccupation of scientific fields; and it is important to note that the exercise of power and production of knowledge “directly imply one another” (27). In fact, the complex interplay of power and knowledge is manifested most obviously at the level of the school. Not only are students assayed with the intellectual tools and technologies of discipline, but they themselves are simultaneously taught these same scientific powers with the intention that they will eventually take part in the maintenance of disciplinary power. To state this differently, even while the students are judged they are trained to become “subsidiary judges,” or people who perpetuate the system of coercive controls, especially those who are at institutions of higher education (21).

        It is hence to be expected that education has a corporatizing element behind it, which is to say that it is primarily meant to homogenize students for the purpose of maintaining existing socioeconomic arrangements. The exercise of individual liberty, and indeed the creation of subjectivity itself, takes place within this homogenizing process. One then should not be surprised that the most valued intellectual endeavors are limited to those with immediate economic utility such as finance, economics and the hard sciences; in school, there is a definite hierarchy of knowledge. Inversely, discussions of education inevitably engage the issue in terms of cost-benefit analysis, viewing education as primarily an economic ‘investment.’

        What's more, the ‘liberty’ the student is confronted with may be understood as the choice between what regime of discipline they shall be subjected to at school depending on their field of study. And when considering the relationship between school and work – for education is inevitably understood in terms of its economic function – students implicitly exercise their ‘liberty’ to choose what regime of discipline they will be subjected to in the workplace through their field of study. We must also remember that institutions of higher education have themselves become profit-driven businesses, legalized cartels which raise tuition costs to ever dizzying heights even while making the laughable claim that they are ‘public’ institutions. To paraphrase Foucault, it should not be surprising that schools are like businesses, businesses like prisons and prisons like schools. That most students remain quiet under the weight of such exploitation is a powerful indicator of the extent to which disciplinary power has instilled an acceptance or, at the very least, imposed a resigned obedience to this nasty process.

________

        Lastly, it is worth examining some of the technologies by which discipline is exercised in the classroom, ones which students of the Lancaster method would easily recognize. Perhaps the most obvious similarity between current and past methods is the calculated use of space and time. Whether desks are assigned to rows or other military-like formations, the classroom is a space in which education is to be maximized. Space and rigid class schedules are premised on the goal of “constituting a totally useful time,” rather than allowing for the exercise of creative power or deviation from the prescribed lesson (150). And as in earlier forms of religious schooling, the goal is the “gradual acquisition of knowledge and good behavior” (161). But how is this “knowledge and good behavior” to be acquired? Since the rise of industrial education the education model has been premised on the idea that knowledge is to be inscribed on the student by the teacher, whether by repetition or dispensation.

        The most notable example of this dogma at the university level is the lecture, the teaching format which has come to personify the university experience itself. At its basic level, the lecture assumes that the student will ‘learn’ a subject within a prescribed period by absorbing the information delivered through the teacher, almost as if the student is to gain knowledge across an osmotic gradient. The role of the student is inherently passive: the student sits as the teacher stands; the student listens as the teacher speaks; and the teacher sets the agenda for learning, not the student. In short, the student is taught that they are not capable of learning anything on their own power but, rather, require the help of a divine intermediary – the teacher. At this stage, however, the disciplinary process has reached a point of maturity. To most students, the fact that they are to sit quietly without making a sound, almost as if in a state of prostration, appears to be the most natural thing. For by this point they have nearly completed their transformation into the model citizen.

        Despite the pervasive power of disciplinary regimes, it is important to note that these regimes are never entirely successful. Even while the Lancaster method was in vogue, the landscape of Europe was punctuated by strikes and contoured by an undercurrent of dissent, sometimes revolution. And at present, a healthy skepticism resulting from the United States’ wars in the Middle-East and the Great Recession has electrified people towards acts of resistance, many of whom would previously not have thought about challenging the status quo. These observations remain true for education. Student debt, poor practices and authoritarian ideas continue to shape education worldwide, especially at the institutional level. In the face of these pressures, however, there are still excellent teachers, students who are hungry to learn and classes that encourage students to think for themselves...

        

Works Cited:

 Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon, 1977. Print.

Obama and War: Weeding out the Lies in His Recent Policy Speech

Did you hear Obama’s recent policy speech on national security? For those who did not have a chance to listen, here is the abridged version:

Al-Qaeda, blah, blah, blah. America, blah, blah, al-Qaeda. Weapons, blah, blah, America, blah, al-Qaeda. Blah, blah, let us not forget about al-Qaeda, blah, blah…drones, blah. God bless America, blah, blah. Drones.

I will admit that this synopsis is not entirely fair, as there was one noteworthy part of this otherwise insensate piece of political theatre. What I am referring to is the speech’s interruption by an articulate audience member who criticized Obama for the indiscriminate detention and torture of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.

These prisoners – alternately referred to by the coolly Orwellian titles “Persons under Control,” “Illegal Combatants,” or “Enemy Detainees” – have been languishing in America’s Auschwitz at Guantanamo in stunning contravention to international law, many of them for years. The illegality of this practice had been criticized by Obama, an expert in constitutional law who promised to close the concentration camp at the beginning of his presidential term – that is, his first term, over four years ago.

Since then Obama has not only equivocated on this simple moral issue but a litany of others. Instead of listening to the audience member, however, he chose to shrug her off, testily replying “Obviously, I do not agree with much of what she said, and obviously she wasn’t listening to me and much of what I said,” before closing with the predictable “May God bless the United States of America.”

“May God bless the United States of America” for what? Sodomizing innocent prisoners, abducting children from their homes (yes, children), murdering defenseless people just because they have an Arabic name?

I would suggest that the problem is not that the audience member “wasn’t listening” to Obama but, rather, that Obama was and has not been listening to the American public, international law and his conscience, if indeed he has one.

As far as substantive policies concerning Guantanamo Bay, the administration has said that it hopes to close down the prison by shipping the prisoners to other countries for incarceration. This is a transparently political move to quell domestic criticism since it in effect outsources the torture and imprisonment of these prisoners to foreign governments.

If the policy goes through then Obama and his quislings can continue to market themselves as “liberals” and plausibly deny that the U.S. abducts and tortures people. Of course, this will only be because the U.S. will have other governments hold and torture them for us. As one U.S. official confided during the long days of the Bush II era, if you want information, send them to Jordan; if you want to torture them, send them to Syria.

It is also worth noting that the policy speech was given in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings. The president’s call for scaling down of the Global War on Terror while memories of the bombings remain etched in the public’s memory is, contrary to the official rhetoric, a tacit admission that the past decade of war has not made the U.S. any safer.

In fact, it is telling that the Boston bombers cited the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as the key motivating factors in their move towards terrorism. Just as all the regional specialists and experts had predicted from the start, killing millions of Iraqis and Afghans would not make us safer but only embitter people towards the U.S. In other words, by chasing our own illusions we created our own enemies too, the ultimate act of “terrorism.”

And let no one make the mistake of thinking that Obama really intends to scale down the wars. Like Nixon and Kissinger who pulled the troops out of Vietnam only to escalate aerial bombing campaigns, Obama’s numerous and lyrical references to the use of drones makes it clear that the government plans to keep American drone warfare in the Middle-East a mainstay of U.S. policy for years to come.

The use of drones, if anything, just makes the wars even more one-sided. Now instead of risking any U.S. soldiers’ lives in war against elusive “terrorists” of our own making, our military gets to reap all the destruction without any losses. In other words, American forces can slaughter at will and without oversight; there will be no public feedback because no American lives are lost by manning drones, and because the drone programs themselves are shrouded in near-complete secrecy.

So I guess that Obama is right in one sense when he claims that drone warfare is not, in fact, warfare. It really is rape. One side gets to penetrate the other at will, regardless of boundaries or the sovereign rights of the victim. Totally and utterly powerless against the most formidable military force in world history, the other side does not get to tell their story of victimization even as they bleed themselves dry. And as the victims lie wasted in the gutter the perpetrator gets to deliver policy speeches at gala affairs, dressing down any naysayer who dares to question his management of an illegal brothel with the claim that she simply "wasn't listening."

“May God bless the United States of America”

 

 

 

The NRA Took My Baby Away

“Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, "for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.””
         - Mathew 26:50b-52

Watching the NRA exhort the faithful to arms has been mildly amusing. At their annual rally the leadership claimed that the Obama administration has not only chosen to politicize gun ownership but wage a cultural war against American values.

Owning a firearm, we are told, is inseparable from being an American; it is a part of the national fiber. To even suggest that guns need to be subjected to greater oversight smacks of heterodoxy, even sacrilege. In any case, it is thoroughly un-American.

The NRA definitely takes the cake for being the master of spin. Contrary to the organization’s claims, the Obama administration has never insinuated that it is going to outlaw gun ownership. Though the administration does support firmer gun controls, the changes it proposes are so slight and commonsensical that to raise the alarm of cultural warfare makes the boy who cried wolf look like a Cassandra.

Attempts to take high-capacity gun magazines off the market and adopt background checks for gun purchasers are characteristic of the administration’s proposals. If guns really are for self-defense as the NRA claims then these measures should, if anything, appeal to gun supporters. After all, if guns really are needed to protect people then why would you want them getting into the hands of the very people they are meant to defend against, an occurrence which background checks would help limit at the most basic level.

What is most laughable, however, about the NRA’s critique of those seeking these benign and, quite frankly, watered-down measures is their claim that Obama and his colleagues are “politicizing” the issue of gun ownership.

One should note that the NRA is a political lobbying group which rallies for political measures through political channels, using funds contributed by political supporters. In other words, the very existence of the NRA, a political lobbying group, politicizes matters of gun ownership and to claim otherwise requires them to lie through their teeth.

And if the NRA really believes that guns are an inseparable part of American culture, a claim which I find hard to swallow, then this is in actuality very scary.

By definition, a gun is a weapon whose function is to kill or wound. Consequently, to say that guns constitute something unique to American culture is to imply, whether knowingly or otherwise, that violence is an important part of our national identity – part of who we are. Even more disturbing is the suggestion that this violence is not only intrinsic to our culture but a good thing, something we should not change but choose to glory in.

The gun death of 30,000 people annually in the U.S. is not a tragedy but an efflorescence of American greatness. Sporting the highest rates of gun violence in the world is not a blot on our reputation but an indicator of our shining exceptionality. Slaughtering millions of Iraqis, Afghans and our own children with instruments of violence is not a grotesque act of savagery but necessary to assuage the bloodlust of our national gods.

Or so implies the NRA when they claim without a hint of irony that guns are an inseparable part of our culture.

True, the NRA does not really mean to imply this. But in callously averring that guns are an integral part of American culture – a rather fatuous proposal – they unwittingly hint at a real truth: violence really does contour American interactions at home and overseas in a uniquely American way. This has nothing to do with some ethereal warrior culture, however; it has everything to do with the existence of powerful American interests who profit from arms sales and war.

It goes without say that the NRA stands at the center of these interests. Without a porous arms market and frayed nerves of a public shocked by gun atrocity after atrocity, the organization would cease to exist. At the very least they would have to struggle harder to cajole the public into swallowing its emetic logic.

According to this disgraceful reasoning, the shootings of children are not aided by easy, even promiscuous access to guns. Do not worry, we are told, you can be protected from guns we manufacture by – wait for it – buying our guns!

For good measure here are a few other knee-slappers:

'Guns do not kill people, people kill people.' (But what did they kill them with?)

'Having access to guns makes us safer by providing us with ways to defend ourselves.' (If we are protected because of an open gun market then why did the Newtown shootings, or any of the others for that matter, happen at all? If we are safe because of the way things are – for that is in substance what they are saying – then these events would never have happened in the first place.)

Lastly, it is worth noting that the very language of cultural warfare betrays a violent tendency on the part of the NRA. They cannot even countenance an open, honest and civil discussion of gun regulations, as even when their position is thoughtfully questioned they reflexively resort to cries of warfare against their own person. Like a savage, untamed beast, they gnash and writhe upon perceiving the smallest slight, an ebbing shadow which they eye leeringly with a jaundiced gaze.

For them, an organization evidently suffused with violence, even dialogue is interpreted as an act of "war."

Let us put down our fists and our guns, and start to use our heads. The NRA and aligned interests have everything to benefit in seeing the American people go at each other’s throats while their own privileged positions are left unquestioned. There is a reason that their leaders are accoutered in custom-tailored suits and it is not because they are looking out for our best interests.

The domestic and global arms trade is one of the biggest money makers in the world economy; violence may be wrong but it is also extremely lucrative. That the transparently misleading justifications used by the NRA to bolster its position are seriously entertained at all is a startling yet eloquent testimony to its undue command of the political process.

This does not have to be the case, however. Together we can strive for a more sane, peaceful and safe world for everyone. To begin this process we must first recognize that weapons do not make the world a more peaceful place but only increase the potential for violence and, in many cases, breathe it into being.

It is not without reason that Jesus said, "all who draw the sword will die by the sword."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Blind and Raging: A Look at a Peculiar but Devastating Form of Power

"I have reckoned upon a Medium, that a Child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar Year if tollerably nursed encreaseth to 28 Pounds. I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for Landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the Parents, seem to have the best Title to the Children."
        - Jonathan Swift, from A Modest Proposal

This is an examination of a peculiar sort of power, one that allows millions to suffer and waste away for no apparent reason, for what is preventable to become the inevitable, and for the highest form of lunacy to be touted as the most refined form of logic. It is the power to not care.

To begin this post I would like to take a look at the argumentative stance adopted by the putative opponents to this most crazed but stylish of opinions. Perhaps by doing so you will start to understand the cool, calculated insanity of it all.

Niall Ferguson, a prominent history professor at Harvard, wrote an article a few years ago about Harvard students' views of Henry Kissinger, one of Harvard's most renown graduates.

These students, he explains, obviously possess greater political acumen and finesse than those of past years, judging by their effusive reception of Kissinger during a recent visitation to the university. Such warm greetings could not have differed more starkly from past receptions of the former secretary of state since, as Ferguson grudgingly recalls, previous students often protested Kissinger's visits due to the destructive policies he pursued during his tenure in Washington.

Seething with venom -- as well as self-satisfaction -- Ferguson writes that other members of academia should follow the "younger and wiser generation" of students in choosing to welcome Kissinger with open arms. They need to realize that mud-slinging at Kissinger, though once "fashionable," is ultimately childish; in other words, they need to "grow up."

Ferguson -- a Harvard historian, believe it or not -- evidently wants us to forget about Kissinger's illegal bombing campaigns in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia which killed countless civilians and destabilized Cambodia, paving the way for the ascent of the genocidal Khmer Rouge (which the U.S. then backed diplomatically). Apparently he also wants us to forget the former secretary of state's move to support, and then cover up, the Indonesian military's genocidal campaigns against the indigenous people of East Timor -- a country it crushed with ample military aid from the West.

And of course, I would be remiss if I failed to mention Kissinger's steely maneuvers in Chile. By freezing Chilean assets and backing militarist forces he directly aided the toppling of the democratic Allende government of Chile on September 11, 1973. (Yes, Kissinger is one of the orchestrators of the original September 11.) After a paroxysm of violence, which left some 30,000 dead, came the infamous Pinochet dictatorship, a chapter of repression which has become synonymous with despotism in Latin America.

Yet, according to Ferguson, it is childish to raise these points. One should not only stomach Kissinger, war crimes and all, but grant him a privileged place at the country's top institutions, lavishing him with unqualified praise despite the bespattered blood of millions coagulating on his filthy hands. It is no longer "fashionable" to do otherwise, he assures us; we all just need to "grow up."

________

Many conservative intellectuals like Ferguson are adept at discrediting the unfathomable suffering of millions by insinuating that if it is not "fashionable" to remember these crimes then it is simply not worth doing so. Incalculable human tragedy is reduced to the despicably trite language of a modish trend. And not only is sticking up for those who suffer derided as conforming to "fashionable" trends, but this particular style is denounced as uncool.

Anyone with a simulacrum of decency would realize that ridiculing those who champion the rights of the victim when attempting to be a historian -- a recorder of truth -- is not only naïve beyond words but crass beyond comprehension. Most of all, the existence of the victims is obfuscated, their graves and scars pissed on if not simply denied.

Ferguson, a famous white historian descended from European colonizers of South Africa who now spends his time writing books at an ivy league university, has the privilege, indeed the power to not care. For him the daily hell of war, famine and political repression can be understood as a fashion, one he is free to not concern himself with, or to in fact distort if it does not conform with his tastes.

His decision to disparage the advocates of justice instead of even assessing the veracity of their message speaks volumes about his understanding of history, morality and politics. To Ferguson, these are nothing more than titillating games. And while maligning the protestors' positions he does not even mention the victims. In his eyes the victims are expendable, not even worth mentioning. (During his diatribe he does not even mention them once, as if they never existed!)

________

 

While the brute callousness of conservative intellectuals like Ferguson may seen exceptional, this could not be further from the truth. Unfortunately, the fantastic logic employed by Ferguson is virtually the same logic and approach which underpins the thinking of intellectuals across the First-World's political spectrum.

 

When hypothesizing from the comfort of an air-conditioned room, coffee in-hand, it becomes all too easy to gloss over the reality of suffering elsewhere in the world. That is to say, everywhere else.

 

Perhaps there is no more callous example of this amongst first-world thinkers than the current hype about world population growth. If whitewashing the crimes of the world's war criminal par excellence is "fashionable," then it is most certainly "fashionable" to bewail each increase in global population.

 

The typical "problem" is framed like so: the world population is increasing at an unsustainable rate and this will accelerate environmental degradation, plus engender humanitarian crises of epic scale. Those who have large families are engaging in backward practices, especially those living in the Third-World who are most vulnerable to the effects of high birth rates. Family planning must be put in place in order to preclude near-certain crisis -- the specter of Malthusian collapse.  

 

The October 2011 edition of 'The New Yorker' echoes this line of thought, its blurb on population growth centering around the infamous theories of Thomas Malthus which state that population growth will inevitably outstrip the world's ability to produce food at some point. Though the section does not address the Third-World with overt condescension, the piece is predictably approached from the vantage-point of First-World concerns.

 

In other words, whenever the question of population increase is addressed the concerns of the affluent, First-World beholder come to the fore. The fact that the shirt on the beholder's back was produced in a Bangladesh factory for pittance wages, that the cellphone they use was likewise created through a system of waged slavery, or that their daily consumption of any resource dwarves that of any Third-World individual is left unstated.

 

Spoken plainly, pundits can heave and haw all they want about the alleged irresponsibility of those in the Third-World who have more than two kids. No matter how much hell they raise, they will never be able to alter the fact that the very real problems of environmental degradation and limited resources are not exacerbated so much by birthrates in the Third-World as by the hedonistic patterns of consumption in the Global North -- in other words, the rich countries doing all the whining.

 

No matter how much you try to mess with the statistics, this much is clear: the rich countries' consumption patterns are so much higher than those of the poor countries that even the comparison is ridiculous

 

Yes, the Philippines may be suffering from profound environmental problems, but this is to no small extent because Japanese construction companies have stripped the hills of timber. Yes, the Congo is experiencing resource shortages and engulfed in hellish civil war, but the American corporations which loot the country's wealth do not seem to mind. Yes, China is facing environmental catastrophe but where was your shirt made, your pants, your shoes?

 

Yes, Bangladesh may appear to be a backward country to the Western eye but how can we seriously entertain such judgments as locals struggle to free workers from the rubble of a substandard factory building. For the children who lost their lives in the rubble, Disney was likely associated with the toil they daily expended to produce its merchandise, not a series of memorable platitudes strewn across a silver-screen.

 

Furthermore, First-World pundits conspicuously neglect to mention that even the high birth-rates in the Third-World are encouraged by a specific set of economic dynamics which unambiguously favor the rich peoples of the world. The poor often choose to have large families because they do not have a social safety-net and, consequently, must guarantee that they have children who will take care of them as they age. Children also play an integral part in sustaining the family economy, contributing their labor so that the family can eat (and so that you have a pair of shoes to wear).

 

It is also telling that almost without fail a publication that decides to touch the issue of population growth, such as 'The New Yorker,' inevitably includes some reference to Malthus and his theories. It is first worthwhile to note that Malthus' theory became an archaism long ago. Even while he was writing in the late 18th and early 19th centuries the agricultural revolution in Western Europe already allowed places like Great Britain and France to jump the Malthusian trap. Populations grew significantly and food was plentiful.

 

Even so, industrialization and its attendant effects led to mass pauperization and hunger. Yet the deprivations faced by common Europeans were not because of a natural lack of food but a decidedly unnatural occurrence: starvation amidst abundance. Food was produced just fine, rather, the industrial-age crisis was engendered by conscious decisions made on the part of rich persons to wrest land away from smallholders, thus reducing previously stable households to poverty.

 

In other words, such crises were not natural or Malthusian, but conscious and manmade.

________

 

Today when the question turns to that of resources and scarcity, the facts are eerily similar. It is simply disingenuous to claim that there is not enough food and water to meet the needs of everyone. The logic that claims otherwise is nothing more than a self-serving illusion which releases the privileged subject from their responsibility to others as a fellow human-being. The problem is not a technological one or even a matter of the earth's (real) limits, but purely one of human will.

 

At the end of the day, the issue is a matter of those who have the power to make a difference choosing to do so. Put differently, what happens ultimately depends on those who have the power to either care or not care, to act or not act.

 

During the 18th century the great English writer Jonathan Swift penned a brief satire now known as A Modest Proposal. In it Swift -- with tongue in cheek, and teeth firmly clenched -- proposes that Irish suffering could be remedied by selling Irish children as food. The Irish back then, as until very recently, were economically exploited by the British with the greatest degree of cruelty. When famines or other disasters struck the Irish, obtuse British rulers refused to acknowledge their role in instigating the suffering, writing it off as a result of Irish backwardness.

 

Galled by British cynicism, Swift wrote his essay for the purpose of verbalizing the insanity which underscored British condemnation against the Irish, as well as British blindness to their own culpability in causing Ireland's crises. The logic he uses, namely that Irish should sell their children as meat for economic reasons, is stylized on the economic rationalism current amongst the British intelligentsia of his day -- an economic rationalism that is still very much alive.

 

Then, as now, the problem was not the backwardness of the poor, Third-World or those who are different from us, but the cynical logic -- or insanity -- that passes for logic today amongst both liberals and conservatives.

 

And then, as now, the problem could readily have been solved if the people who had the liberty to not care instead chose to care: to do something.