Reflection on Charles Blow's despair

Mr. Blow, I don't know if this will help when people vehemently deny being racist. It's something I wrote after Ferguson, me being a reflective sociologist-type. I offer it in the hope it may help (not to excuse racism, but to dig into one facet).

I saw TV news coverage of a counter demonstration seeking to support the officer whose shots killed Michael Brown. We saw the woman in mirrored state patrol-style sunglasses who spoke from a platform, presumably to a like-minded crowd. When this woman, probably in her thirties, called for support for the officer, Darren Wilson, what struck me was she locked together her appeal for support with a categorical statement that his action was “justified.” This has meaning worth examining. She offered no evidence justifying his action. She apparently felt evidence was not called for. But that’s not what requires closer examination. Instead, she linked support of the officer to justification (of the killing). And vice versa. If you are set on supporting the officer, you must declare him justified regardless. That was what the support hinged on. That just turned me inside out, and it didn’t help that I credited her with sincerity, with an unawareness of her own assumptions, her own universe of meaning. Obviously, the linkage is a shared one, among how many I have no idea.
    So, before I got all caught up in painting her white folk audience as racists, wherever that gets us, I pondered whether this is a pattern in social thinking—even outside of racial violence. Does supporting someone mean you have to say he or she was right? I think what was really going on in making that linkage is that some in Ferguson were  having unmanageably strong emotions that threatened to engulf them in shame. Or in fear, fear of great damage to their world, their town. Unlike the Victoria harbor tour operator who was willing to admit wrongs of two centuries standing, this situation was immediate. It’s strange to think that admitting a wrong action, even a horribly wrong action, just the admitting could feel like it might usher in the end of your world. But is it really so strange to our experience? It’s not just there in Ferguson. It’s in international news—recall when the new Jerusalem embassy was celebrated and dozens of Gazans killed in May of 2018. The next day, an Israeli citizen, clearly disturbed, was quoted as saying, “When we hear of the dead, it pains us. I hope at least that each bullet was justified.” (NYT May 16, page 1).
    The word “justify” in my old Collegiate Merriam Webster’s has several meanings, leading with this one: “To prove or show to be just, right, or reasonable. Absolve.” But that is not all. In the same way that this shooting brought out very old race reactions, an old definition seems to have nosed its way back in the emotional aftermath: further down in the definitions, Webster lists one I call almost archaic, because it is associated with the old-time religion: “To judge, regard, or treat as righteous and worthy of salvation.” (Italics mine.)
    Is that old definition still today quietly giving an extra zingy charge to the current standard definition? We don’t just want to be in the right—we don’t only want to be shown that we act reasonably—No, we desperately need to be in the right, at the risk of severe punishment. Not jail, but by being despised, shunned, and drummed out of society, as the unsaved. For minor wrongs, this social treatment may not be permanent, but it can cause a severe kind of pain even so. I notice it in myself, and just did with Justice at the Table, though the drama was held within myself. Without thinking about it, I feel if I’m wrong I become unacceptable somehow.
    The night previous to the newscast, the movie “The Horse Whisperer” ran on TV, and a scene struck me for the way it illustrated the meme. The storyline itself is certainly not a common instance—a teen who’s been maimed in a horrific accident that cost her friend’s life is having trouble healing. But the story's solution is a commonly prescribed one. She can’t be healed until a trusted elder tells her, “Grace, you did nothing wrong.”
    Well, but what if she had done wrong? Would we throw her away? When you scale the emotion up to social groups, it feels like the sky will fall if we don’t re-stabilize our world quickly and with whatever force or harshness it takes in order to feel that we, or our kind, did nothing wrong.
    But we can do something better than that reaction. We can acknowledge that we may have a part in the cultural contradictions that lay behind the wrongful action of one of us. And we begin to do things differently, with love, or at least respect.

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Today I deleted Facebook

To my FB friends

The disclosures about Cambridge Analytica have influenced me to delete my FB account.  I know FB is important to many and will continue to be. My plea is to not let it take over politics. The manipulators aren’t dumb, and once they profile you they know what sort of message you (or others like you) are likely to believe. 

We may all feel superior to the individuals who did the little fun questionnaires and somehow mentioned an interest in the occult, and they got scammed by the Hillary-runs-a-satanic-thing-in-a-pizzeria-basement. But what of less ridiculous memes that circulated before the presidential election? Memes that purported to come from friends on the left, yet may have had no function but to poison the well and reduce voter turn-out or increase votes for Jill Stein? Like “bought and paid for.” Are you kidding? (Anything one is 100% guilty of, the playbook trick is to accuse the other side of equal guilt, even if they are maybe 5% guilty--and this false equivalence and dampening of good judgment works so often!)

 

And now, apparently a poisoning of an election happened on the Brexit vote in Britain. This is not something we should assume will soon be corrected for us.

 

The crisis continued to deepen yesterday as evidence was reported that wealthy Trump supporter Peter Thiel, who sits on the FB Board, had a hand in the election mess, originating with a “personality quiz” that people filled out on FB. I’m reluctant to even post a “like” on a page anymore, and that's too bad.

I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but I’m back to email and telephone. I’m sorry for what I’ll miss of your personal news. And of groups I've enjoyed being in. Hopefully we can catch up in other ways.

Jean

Ken Burns' Vietnam resumes

With the Vietnam series resuming tonight, I'm thinking, is it worth it? Worth the sobering sadness of continuing with the series.

I say, "You ready to go to Vietnam?"

He laughs as though he's read my thought.

Oh yes, it's worth it, Tommy Lee Jones says, with a touch of irony.

Bill just replies to me, with a twisted smile, "If you're strong enough."

It's good to start with a laugh, or at least a smile.

Perfect example

So often when I go for a walk, I notice something that prompts a creative thought. But of course I don't bring a notebook with me, and I don't have a smart phone, as yet, to speak into. By the time I get home, and deal with this or that, the thought is gone.

Also, even if I write down the kernel of insight, if I don't put it to use within a month, it's as good as lost. My notebooks are not searchable by topic or keyword, and my memory of the approximate date of a jotting fades with time.

But here's one from my walk today. For decades, newspaper delivery boxes are the same everywhere--plastic squared tubes, open at the receiving end. The only difference is in the color and the newspaper name on the outside. Then today I saw one for the local Herald that was fitted with a plastic hinged cover. What a good innovation! I take it to mean that it has finally gotten to them, and to enough of us, that a knotted plastic bag keeps the paper from getting rained on, but creates tons more plastic bags, made from petroleum, that can't be re-used. Unless you have more talent unknotting them than I have.

This solo newspaper box may be the leading edge of a trend, or maybe not, but I'd like to think it is. What's the thought, then?  Well, I tend to think that human behavior is similar whether it concerns big issues, or little ones, and so if I find an example of a little thing, it might help illustrate a pattern--like, for the longest time, it seems impossible to ask that we do something better than throwing plastic bags at a problem, and then eventually we change. Maybe an insight like that might give me more patience.

Focusing near and far

This afternoon I watched the snow fall through a large window. A bare maple tree is right outside this window, and it looked clear as a bell, the snow resting on it's branches adding outlines and emphasis. And in the far ground past the end of the driveway, the tangle of tall trees made a pattern, again, a clear picture that held still for me. But between the two, between the clear foreground and the clear background, all I could see was the movement of flakes falling. The movement was nice, but I couldn't focus on it or it would confuse my eyes.

This made me think of what the esteemed theater director Anne Bogart wrote:
“Middle distance creates a kind of buzz. A blur. The Fox News Channel, for example, and even CNN, produces an annoying buzz that makes it hard to hear, see, or think in a differentiated manner. Middle distance ambushes your perceptions.
    As an antidote to the buzz, listen below the buzz. Move in close. Then, alternatively, make distance from whatever issue you are grappling with. . . Because it makes everything seem vague and general, the buzz, the middle distance, leads to inaction, Engagement from the middle distance feels futile. But when you lean in or reposition yourself by changing your distance and posture, the movement itself helps to clarify issues.”

Empty bedrooms

The Seattle Times "FYI Guy" does a neat service--he'll investigate to find the answer to a question sent in by a reader.

On Dec. 16, he reported the results of the question, "How many empty bedrooms are there in King County homes?"

He counted 3 + bedroom homes that a single or married couple owns and lives in, with no kids or extended family living with them. He used census data to come up with the figure of 144,000 homes in King County that have empty bedrooms.

Starting with the third bedroom of these 144,000 homes, that was 200,000 bedrooms with no one sleeping in them.

Yes, empty nesters, mostly, peaking now with the Baby Boom generation. But it makes you think, doesn't it? Makes me think about sprawl, for one thing, as young families move outwards to new construction, while a single older person in a five bedroom home in the city stays put due to a tax break.