Why is our culture so horrible now?

I don't understand the anger and the violence, particularly from those on the right.  Their guy won.  But they seem consumed by grievance and rudeness, seasoned with glee at the pain of others.  Indeed, much of our discourse is cruel, and suffused with an undercurrent of potential violence.  Anti-semitism, racism, hate crimes against gays and Muslims are all increased.  It's as though the GOP victory has allowed a festering sore of hatred to be exposed.

 Obviously some of these are the professional provocateurs of the Alt-Right.  But it's not them I want to discuss. It's the casual cruelty of the average Trump supporter, who is so mad.... mad at the elites, mad at the folks in cities, mad at washington, just plain mad.

How do we recovery decency?  John Pavlovitz promotes a solution:  the Church of Not Being Horrible. He writes,

our sacred calling is to be decent, to be kind, to be compassionate, to be whatever it is that we believe the world is lacking: to be the kind of person the world needs—and it definitely needs people being less horrible these days. 

And this call to humanity isn't limited to any belief or denomination.

If you’re interested in joining the church, you don’t need to pray a magic prayer. You don’t have to attend a membership class or recite any creeds or take a test or promise to give financially. There are no theological or bureaucratic hoops to jump through. 

There is no conversion, there is only commencement. You simply begin, right where you are, in this very moment—seeking to be less horrible to the people you live with, work with, come across in the street, interact with online, see from a distance. That’s it.

It may seem like a low bar to set, but it’s actually a beautiful aspiration: making the world less cruel, less violent, less insulting—less horrible.

But not as long as violent would-be brown-shirts are in training to beat up "libtards".

Stop it now

We do not live in a world of absolutes.  We live in a world of shades and nuance.  The mediatainment industry does not thrive on nuance, but on soundbites and outrage.

It is possible to deplore the actions of a few police who disproportionately use violence against black men, while recognizing that the majority of police work bravely to serve the public.

It is possible to deplore the violence against officers by an angry black man, while recognizing that he is in no way representative  of nor supported by people who are concerned about police violence.

I am deeply concerned at the divisions I see between those who are angry at the death of Philando Castile, shot during a traffic stop, and those who see themselves as police supporters, who feel that the shocking attack on police is a consequence of media and liberal outrage.

It is possible to see both these events as deeply wrong and deplorable, and to mourn all victims.

 Frankly it behooves both sides to recognize that there are no absolutes. It would help if the police supporters would admit that sometimes cops do the wrong thing. Take Tamir Rice, for example (the boy shot in Cleveland with a toy gun):  the police officers arrived and immediately started shooting. In contrast, in another Cleveland Park earlier this year, two boys playing with toy guns were safely apprehended by an experienced officer who did not screech up with his gun out.

 Similarly, it would be helpful if those concerned about police violence consider the snap reactions an officer must make.  For example, Michael Brown (in Ferguson) was not shot in the back, and evidence supports a close struggle with the officer for a weapon.  The officer's subsequent pursuit of Brown may have been a wrong judgment, but the physical evidence supports his story.  No favors are done by pretending otherwise.

We all have work to do on racism and knee-jerk reactions, on community building and common goals.

There are plenty of forces who right now thrive on division, on us-v-them, on race wars, or police wars, or violence.

 We must not let them win.

"I can't breathe" and guns

In 2014, New York police were videotaped holding down a black man who was being arrested for selling CDs illegally on the sidewalk.  They had him pinned.  A passerby filmed it with a cell phone.  Eric Garner (the black man) groaned "I can't breathe!" as a police officer held him pinned in an illegal choke hold.

Garner died.  The coroner determined that holding him and choking him to death was a homicide.  Despite this, despite the video, the policeman responsible was not indicted.

Earlier this week,   Alton Sterling was selling CDs in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  The police arrived to arrest him (why, is not yet clear).  They claimed he was threatening people with a gun, and they used a taser.  He was on the ground, pinned down.  They shot him.  He is dead.  But he had a gun in his pocket, which the police say is the reason he was shot. There is video of this, which disproves some of the police claims.

Last night, a police officer in a suburb of St Paul, MN pulled over the car driven by Philando Castile    for a broken tail light.  Castile  told them, appropriately, that  he was a licensed owner of a gun.  The police officer  told him to put his hands up, but shot him in the arm 4 times as he did so.  He died.  This was recorded on video by Castile's girlfriend, who asked why the police shot a man who was just getting his license? She was pulled out of the car, handcuffed, and put in  the back of a police car with her 4 year old daughter.

Remember John Crawford, who was shot by police in a Walmart for carrying a BB gun he wanted to buy?  (And then the police tried to badger his girlfriend into saying he was a threat.)  Remember when   Tamir Rice, a child of 12, was  playing in a Cleveland park with a toy gun (as boys do), and was shot literally within seconds of the police arriving?   These killings were also videotaped.   The police were not charged.

Except for Garner, all these deaths involve black men (or a boy) with a gun.  These leads one to conclude that an African American exerting his second amendment rights is quite literally taking his life in his hands.

Indeed, I am not the first to suggest that if you want gun control, encourage African Americans to buy guns.  But you'd better buy them body armor too.   Because the response of the police to a black man with a gun appears to be "shoot first".

This is a living nightmare.

 #Blacklivesmatter

Under the influence

A while back, we were all shocked by the hit and run death of a cyclist in Baltimore, by a (now former) Bishop who was drunk.  The alcohol may have been the reason for her impairment but not an excuse for driving drunk and causing grievous harm.  She's in jail, as she should be, for years.

Apparently, though, if you are a privileged white athlete at Stanford, alcohol absolves you of personal responsibility and it's somehow acceptable that you have "20 minutes of action" (as his father actually put it) performing a violent sexual assault on an unconscious woman.  The judge gave this nice white man a mere 6 months since he's suffered already.  In return the rapist promises to talk about booze and promiscuity on campus.  The media has a winsome picture of this blond haired, blue-eyed, boy-man looking sad.

As his victim wrote in a searing letter, the problem isn't promiscuity.  It's CONSENT.   The whole thing is disgusting, not least of which what it says about any man who physically violates an unconscious woman's body.   (Go read her letter.  It is powerful.)

Interestingly there was a case in Tennessee this spring as well, where a former Vanderbilt football player was convicted of raping an intoxicated, unconscious woman.  He's going to get at least 15 years.   What's different in Tennessee?  Either their judges get it, or, black football players get different rules than white swimmers.  What do you think?

As one internet meme put it, we make laws against trans people using the bathroom to prevent women from being assaulted, but apparently we can't convict a man who actually assaults a woman.

Because, well, it's going to ruin his life.  Poor boy.

Talk about privilege.

Fanning the flames of the new sexism

Somehow, the election of Barack Obama allowed all the racists to crawl out from under their rocks and expose their blatant bigotry. I’m not sure why opinions that in my youth would have been repressed as shameful, are somehow now acceptable in the light of day. The resurgence seems to be promoted by the anonymity of social media, its ability to unite people with unpopular opinions, and to pile on in twitter storms with hashtags.   This appears to have risen just as we have loosened community social norms and personal expectations, as people become more isolated from real life interactions.

Similarly, we seem to be under a rebirth of sexism,  with a vile new internet component. This has exposed a scary undercurrent of angry men and made our advances as women seem far more vulnerable than they felt 10-15 years ago..

Three on line articles that I saw today make this point.

Item 1: 
A female comedian posts a comment on Twitter about guns, and is subject to vigorous disagreement by men. Disturbingly, this degenerates into threats of rape and sexual violence, and internet stalkers spread the threats to friends and colleagues.

What’s upsetting is that so many men took that statement as a springboard to making me feel uncomfortable and unsafe. And they felt fine doing this because I’m a woman. Two male friends of mine with much larger followings had tweeted similar jokes and didn’t see a fraction of the hateful responses that I did. And I’m sure they saw none of the same threats.

This isn’t the first time that a woman has been harassed online. It’s definitely not the last time, either. That’s really the problem. This is one small instance in an unending series of events. We need to stop accepting this behavior as an unavoidable consequence to writing on the Internet. Harassment doesn’t need to be just the cost of doing business.
…..

My point is for men: Stop doing this. The only thing gained from you saying disgusting, aggressive, sexual, violent, and threatening things on the internet is that we now know that you’re part of the problem.

This woman’s experience is a dishearteningly common. See, for example, “Gamer Gate”,  in which some male video gamers are angry that women and gays are part of the community and changing the sorts of games it produces, and reacting violently and angrily against inclusive gaming. It is deeply disturbing and ongoing online harassment including techniques such as “doxing” (publishing personal information online) and “Swatting” (telling the police there’s a shooter at your address) which are hugely frightening.

It is only a small step from this to

Item 2 
Apparently, there’s a figure named “Roosh” who advocates for legal rape of women, and is trying to arrange world wide gatherings in major cities of men who agree. These are men who assume that a woman’s body belongs to them by virtue of their sex. Roosh is part of the internet “manosphere”, the sort of online misogynists who inspired shooter Elliot Rodgers who complained he couldn’t get a girlfriend.  Rodgers went on a violent stabbing and shooting spree targeting women at the university of California, Santa Barbara, and killed six people.

This objectification, although contributes to the less scary but still disturbing

Item 3 
Seems that Susan Sarandon showed some cleavage in her dress for the recent SAG awards. Whereas this and more is apparently acceptable for the young things, the fact that Sarandon is 69 brought out ridicule and body-shaming.

To be clear, Susan Sarandon is a grown-ass woman who can wear what she wants. The suit was tailored, the bra was barely visible, and her breasts were only a “distraction” to those who would make them a focal point of conversation in the first place. You don’t want to be distracted by a woman’s breasts? Here’s a thought – LOOK AT HER FACE WHEN SHE’S TALKING. THAT’S WHERE THE WORDS ARE COMING FROM.

Another commenter writes,

it’s strikingly awful that Sarandon alone was the target of the social media bigots.

Sarandon is 69 and therefore it’s apparently not OK for her to remind us all that she’s still a living, breathing, sexual being.

Just saying, I thought she looked great.

Again, it seems to me that somehow the internet has empowered people (men, mostly) to express opinions that social pressure would normally?  at least, previously,  repress. And the speed of reaction and ability to connect across distance magnifies this.  

Indeed, we see violent reactions to political disagreements or other counter opinions on line, many of which are overtly sexual in their threats (to both men and women).  What is it about those who are angry and threatened that makes them think of sex as a weapon?

So instead of making steady progress toward a rational, equality driven future, we seem to be regressing into a violent, tribal past where the biggest man bangs his chest, and drags the woman away by her hair.

WTF?

Fundamentalist violence in all faiths

We already know that there is a vicious strain of fundamentalist Islam that turns to violence in an effort to impose its views.

In India, fundamentalist Hindus have attacked those of other faiths, including Christians.

In the last few days, we have seen violence from fundamentalist Jews, for example in one case an orthodox man stabbing people at the gay Pride parade in Jerusalem, and in another, burning to death a Palastinian child in a protest over illegal settlements.

Christian fundamentalists are also violent.  In this country, abortion-related murders of and bombings are associated with explicitly Christian extremists.  Some Christian pastors have called for death for LGBT people. And a  recent article in Salon points out that Christian reconstructionism is inherently violent, anti-woman, and pro-slavery.  Recently, Christian conservatives have advocated calling in the national guard against legal processes they don't like, like abortion or same sex marriage (and if that's not government tyranny, what is?)

What is it about fundamentalists of all flavors, who see violence against others as justifiable?

Complicity, racism, and the legacy of the Confederacy

In reaction to the massacre in Charleston, SC, people are taking a new look at the Confederate battle flag.

What do you think, when you see it?  I remember visiting San Antonio TX on a professional trip, and seeing a pickup drive by with  a huge Confederate flag flying off a pole in the bed, and I thought, "they don't like my kind here," my kind being liberal, academic, lesbian. I knew I would be scared  to meet the  men driving the truck because I instantly associated the flag with white conservatives and anti-gay, anti-black, anti-women values. 

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes compellingly in the Atlantic,

That the Confederate flag is the symbol of of white supremacists is evidenced by the very words of those who birthed it:

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth...

and stirringly concludes,

Take down the flag. Take it down now.

Put it in a museum. Inscribe beneath it the years 1861-2015. Move forward. Abandon this charlatanism. Drive out this cult of death and chains. Save your lovely souls. Move forward. Do it now.

Well, this demand has been made before,  but now there's support from an unexpected quarter.  Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention agrees with Coates (a pigs-flying kind of event):

The cross and the Confederate flag cannot co-exist without one setting the other on fire. White Christians, let’s listen to our African-American brothers and sisters. Let’s care not just about our own history, but also about our shared history with them. In Christ, we were slaves in Egypt—and as part of the body of Christ we were all slaves too in Mississippi. Let’s watch our hearts, pray for wisdom, work for justice, love our neighbors. Let’s take down that flag.

And yesterday, the governor and senators of South Carolina agreed and called for the flag's removal from the grounds of the State Capitol. Meanwhile, Walmart announced it would remove flag-themed merchandise from its stores.

But let us not delude ourselves into thinking that removing this potent symbol will cure what ails us.  Paul Krugman writes in the NY Times

I’m sorry to say this, but the racial divide is still a defining feature of our political economy, the reason America is unique among advanced nations in its harsh treatment of the less fortunate and its willingness to tolerate unnecessary suffering among its citizens.

 He goes on to cite the sobering scholarship that supports this statement, and concludes that while things are better, we aren't there yet:

[A] history of slavery is a strong predictor of everything from gun control (or rather its absence), to low minimum wages and hostility to unions, to tax policy....Every once in a while you hear a chorus of voices declaring that race is no longer a problem in America. That’s wishful thinking; we are still haunted by our nation’s original sin.

Slavery is the root of our long battle with racism.

And let's not pretend we aren't all in some ways complicit.  Here in San Diego, our Spring Diocesan newsletter addressed issues of race and reconciliation (before the recent shootings), and the Bishop and the Editor received what they describe as "angry and vitriolic" letters in response.  Now, the newsletter isn't particularly strident, and in fact as I re-read the articles knowing the response they elicited, I was extremely surprised at how mild they are. And yet apparently many people felt enough offended by what was expressed to write angry letters.  Our Bishop shepherded the Diocese through The Gay Issue successfully (so that it's no longer an issue here), so one might think that Episcopalians in Dio San Diego are all in the same place. So it's quite a surprise to realize that our self-satisfied "enlightened values" here aren't so enlightened after all.  I wonder what response the Bishop will get to his latest call,

My sense is that nothing is going to change until we get rid of the guns and we actually pay the price, as a nation, for what we have done to generations of African-Americans from the days of slavery until today. The wasteland we have created calls for a new Marshall Plan to transform the lives of our brothers and sisters. It is time. There are no excuses. The next time we recite our baptismal covenant and say the words, "to respect the dignity of every human being," race relations and reconciliation are what we should be thinking about.

You go, Bishop Mathes!  But you might want to have some asbestos gloves to handle your mail after this one.

Death Belt states

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  From the NCRonline:

The Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., finds in its new study, "Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror," that "an astonishing absence of any effort to acknowledge, discuss, or address lynching" remains in the communities where this form of racial terror was most prevalent.

Most astonishingly, this includes our churches. Forgetfulness of lynching and the death penalty in America demonstrate an appalling apostasy on behalf of Christians who tolerate this evil.

This legacy endures in the states of Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and my home state of Louisiana.

Scholars call these "Death Belt" states because of the high correlation they find between the history of lynching against African-Americans and today's disproportionate arrests, prosecution, and sentencing to death of African-Americans. We deem these unworthy of life along with the economically poor and people who are mentally or psychologically disabled.

The correlation between the practice of lynching and the death penalty goes down to the parish/county level.

Cry, cry.....

On science and religion, and angry fundamentalists

After a Christian student was relieved to hear that his faith was okay with evolution, physicist Max Tegmark wondered whether religion really is unfriendly to science.

This gave me the idea to start the MIT Survey on Science, Religion and Origins,.... We found that only 11 percent of Americans belong to religions openly rejecting evolution or our Big Bang. So if someone you know has the same stressful predicament as my student, chances are that they can relax as well....

So is there a conflict between science and religion? The religious organizations representing most Americans clearly don't think so. Interestingly, the science organizations representing most American scientists don't think so either: For example, the American Association for the Advancement of Science states that science and religion "live together quite comfortably, including in the minds of many scientists." This shows that the main divide in the U.S. origins debate isn't between science and religion, but between a small fundamentalist minority and mainstream religious communities who embrace science.

In a followup, Max describes how he was prepared for an angry response to his news that most faith groups are actually pretty okay with evolution.

The vitriolic responses poured in as predicted. But to my amazement, most of them didn't come from religious people, but from angry atheists!...I have three criticisms of these angry atheists:

1) They help religious fundamentalists:
A key point I wanted to make with our survey is that there are two interesting science-religion controversies: a) Between religion & atheism b) Between religious groups who do & don't attack science.

Some forces pushing for creationism in US schools try to conflate the two so that they can pretend to represent the majority, and taunting religious groups that don't attack science can play into their hands. In contrast, I think that drawing attention to b) is the most effective way to weaken the anti-scientific fringe and improve the prospects for future generations.… 

2) They could use more modesty: 
If I've learned anything as a physicist, it's how little we know with certainty. ... 

3) They should practice what they preach: 
Most atheists advocate for replacing fundamentalism, superstition and intolerance by careful and thoughtful scientific discourse. Yet after we posted our survey report, ad hominem attacks abounded, and most of the caustic comments I got (including one from a fellow physics professor) revealed that their authors hadn't even bothered reading the report they were criticizing.

Just as it would be unfair to blame all religious people for what some fundamentalists do, I'm obviously not implying that all anti-religious people are mean-spirited or intolerant. However, I can't help being struck by how some people on both the religious and anti-religious extremes of the spectrum share disturbing similarities in debating style. 

You think? I'm not surprised, there is considerable anti-religion antipathy in some of more-rabid atheists. But frankly most of us are happy to live and let live, and don't really care what you believe as long as you don't inflict your beliefs upon us.

And then there's the angry Christian fundamentalists. When erstwhile religious dating site e-Harmony were sued and so put together a same-sex site, says their founder,Neil Clark Warren

we literally had to hire guards to protect our lives because the people were so hurt and angry with us, were Christian people, who feel that it's a violation to scripture. 

 Yup, nothing says Jesus-follower like death threats.

Fundamentalism is by its nature intolerant.  We see this lack of tolerance and respect throughout society, ranging from anti-gay to anti-Islam....to anti religion.  But the step beyond that into threats of violence, is deeply, deeply disturbing.  And it boggles the mind that followers of the "prince of peace" ever resort to  violent rhetoric  (previous examples here here and here ), when confronted by anyone different.

Exposing the problem (updated)

Our good friend JCF is not happy that I seem to equate the nudity debate in San Francisco with the gun shootings in Connecticut.  As I responded in a comment, I don't equate them the way JCF fears:  obviously, one is tragic and elemental, one is ridiculous and superficial.  yet, I think they point to the same sickness, part of which is a disconnection between our concept of liberty and a concept of community. And in San Francisco, finally they decided to tackle their faintly ridiculous problem of public nudity, despite claims that they were offending freedom.  i fervantly wish that we as a people could tackle the much more serious issue of guns, which have the same cries (albeit from the opposite sie of the political spectrum).  And if you think I view the NRA as the same as wankers, I do, only more so.

Here's the problem, From an op/ed in the NY Times:

I came to realize that, in essence, this is the way we in America want things to be. We want our freedom, and we want our firearms, and if we have to endure the occasional school shooting, so be it....

More horrible still — to me at least — is the inevitable lament, “How could we have let this happen? 

It is a horrible question because the answer is so simple. Make it easy for people to get guns and things like this will happen. 

Children will continue to pay for a freedom their elders enjoy.

More:

As our Constitution provides, however, liberty entails precisely the freedom to be reckless, within limits, also the freedom to insult and offend as the case may be. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld our right to experiment in offensive language and ideas, and in some cases, offensive action and speech. Such experimentation is inherent to our freedom as such. But guns by their nature do not mix with this experiment — they don’t mix with taking offense. They are combustible ingredients in assembly and speech.

Private gun ownership invites retreat into extreme individualism — I heard numerous calls for homeschooling in the wake of the Newtown shootings — and nourishes the illusion that I can be my own police, or military, as the case may be.

And:

Our gun culture promotes a fatal slide into extreme individualism. It fosters a society of atomistic individuals, isolated before power — and one another — and in the aftermath of shootings such as at Newtown, paralyzed with fear. That is not freedom, but quite its opposite. 

There is a really provocative piece over at Digby's, talking about the roots of our gun culture being an obsessed fantasy about a  deep-seated desire to unwind the social contract and cleanse undesirables who are allegedly stealing their tax dollars.  Go have a read of that.

But I will argue that the gun control debate is  at some level a symptom, not a cause.  The shootings in CT happened in part because guns were too easily accessible, which is because of the gun lobby.  Yet stronger background checks, licensing, insurance, and more restrictive gun control would not have prevented these shootings.  The guns were purchased legally by one of the victims (the shooter's mother), who registered them properly.

But I don't want to keep talking about guns. Because, trite as it is, the guns did not shoot up the school, a person did. The problem here, in this horrific case, is not just gun control.  Now, don't get me wrong:  I  absolutely believe most strongly that we need to tackle this love affair with violence and this peculiar notion that we should all have semi-automatic weapons;  the Founders writing the Constitution viewed guns as muzzle-loading muskets which were not agents of mass murder.  But that's not the only thing we need to work on.  We need to work on the care and treatment of those with mental health issues.

Have you looked at the boys who have committed too many of these murders?  Their faces are eerily the same, they are bright, but misfits, bullied, unhappy, unable to fit in to the snake-pit of modern high school.  We as a culture drove them to take action...and thanks to the guns, we provided the tools, and thanks to our obsession with violence, we provided the idea.

This powerful piece is going around:

I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.

A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7 and 9 year old siblings knew the safety plan -- they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me...

By day three, he was my calm, sweet boy again, all apologies and promises to get better. I’ve heard those promises for years. I don’t believe them anymore.

On the intake form, under the question, “What are your expectations for treatment?” I wrote, “I need help.”

And I do. This problem is too big for me to handle on my own. Sometimes there are no good options. So you just pray for grace and trust that in hindsight, it will all make sense.

I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza’s mother. I am Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s mother. I am James Holmes’s mother. I am Jared Loughner’s mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho’s mother. And these boys—and their mothers—need help. In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness..... 

When I asked my son’s social worker about my options, he said that the only thing I could do was to get Michael charged with a crime. “If he’s back in the system, they’ll create a paper trail,” he said. “That’s the only way you’re ever going to get anything done. No one will pay attention to you unless you’ve got charges.”
....

I agree that something must be done. It’s time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health. That’s the only way our nation can ever truly heal.

God help me. God help Michael. God help us all.

Talking about guns will not solve the question.  The CT killer used guns, and yes, we want to make those guns less accessible. Let's not lose sight of that.  We want to delegitimatize violence, and restore our reaction to it, to one of horror.

But the root cause of the shooter's violence, and why he violent, was not guns per se.  It is something deeper, and more difficult, which we did not successfully treat or heal. And why people like the shooter are still sick, well,  that is a conversation we also need to have.

Update: Andrew Sullivan has a very personal reflection about mental ill-health.

A change of heart on guns?

Many people are hoping we will come to our sense on guns.

It will not happen.  The people obsessed by having access to semi-automatic weapons that murder 20 children in a few minutes, believe that is the only thing keeping the black helicopters from the Socialists coming to take them to camps.  No wonder their favorite movie is Red Dawn, where the only thing preventing us from being conquered by Russians is brave gun-bearing American teenagers.

Meanwhile, not-so-brave gun-bearing American teenagers (or post-teens) have been on a murder spree in the last few months.  Loners, unhappy, unconnected, they have suited themselves up like  soldiers and acted out with murderous violence.  And no surprise, as we Americans worship violence.  We have no problem with absolutely vicious violence on TV, but show a kiss or someone making love and we faint, clutching our pearls. Our values are completely backwards.

I don't actually want to take most people's guns away.  I've had hunters in the family, who kept their weapons responsibly and would have been insulted at the thought they would  need semi-automatic weapons to kill the deer they hunted for dinner.  (Semi-automatic means that you can keep pressing the trigger and it will continue firing, as opposed to weapons like a bolt-action rifle where you have to manually intervene to eject the used shells and insert a new one into the chamber. )

I just think guns should be licensed and regulated at least  as much as a car, and you shouldn't be able to buy them over the internet or at gun shows without a background check and proper training, and NO ONE should have semi-automatic or fully automatic weapons who is not in the military or police force.  Because those weapons exist for one reason:  to kill people.

And I don't think guns are a problem as much as a paranoid mind-set that worships violence as part of every day culture, and men who feel stronger if they have a pistol stuffed into their waistband, like the man who killed that boy in Florida.  Big Tough Guy playing vigilante.

Of course, the NRA will demand that it keeps its guns as a constitutional right, the same way old ugly men defended their right to walk around San Francisco stark naked, until the city finally had enough.

So the NRA and its supporters really are no different than those literal SF wankers.  The city of San Francisco had enough of that.  Would that the rest of us would too.

Meanwhile, my brain cannot really wrap itself around the horror of Newtown CT and my eyes are filled with tears.

On telling lies (2): hate speech and calls to violence

Following up on yesterday's post:  The Family Research Council is complaining that the fact the Southern Poverty Law Center calls it out for "hate speech" is a "license to kill". The SPLC responds that this is "outrageous".

For more than 40 years, the SPLC has battled against political extremism and political violence. We have argued consistently that violence is no answer to problems in a democratic society, and we have strongly criticized all those who endorse such violence, whether on the political left or the political right.

But this afternoon, FRC President Tony Perkins attacked the SPLC, saying it had encouraged and enabled the attack by labeling the FRC a “hate group.” ....

Perkins’ accusation is outrageous. The SPLC has listed the FRC as a hate group since 2010 because it has knowingly spread false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people — not, as some claim, because it opposes same-sex marriage. The FRC and its allies on the religious right are saying, in effect, that offering legitimate and fact-based criticism in a democratic society is tantamount to suggesting that the objects of criticism should be the targets of criminal violence.

The Washington Monthly reminds us that "criticism is not persecution".

This is a group that wants to use the coercive power of the state to....tell churches and other religious organizations whose relationships they may honor. It also engages regularly in slurs of anyone who doesn’t agree with its agenda as secularist Christ-haters.....

Those determined to frustrate the Christian Right’s desire for total secular political power are neither Romans nor Communists nor Nazis, and it is far past time for smug powerful men like Tony Perkins to climb down from that cross and stop pretending they bear any resemblance to the actual Christian Martyrs who suffered and died—and still suffer and die—for their faith.

The Family Research Council is not a religion. It is a professional political advocacy group with an anti-gay agenda.  It does not represent Christians.  Plenty of Christians support gay rights, and plenty of gay people are Christian.

Here are some examples of what FRC folks say, that got it that SPLC designation. Now, if you don't see a problem with the quotes, under each one I've changed it to describe a different minority group. I don't think we'd consider the sorts of comments that they make about gay people to be acceptable to the mainstream if targeted towards other people. Would we?

Gaining access to children has been a long-term goal of the homosexual movement.”
Gaining access to children has been a long-term goal of the Roman Catholics. 

“[Homosexuality] … embodies a deep-seated hatred against true religion.”
Jews embody a deep-seated hatred against true religion. 

“[T]he evidence indicates that disproportionate numbers of gay men seek adolescent males or boys as sexual partners.”
“[T]he evidence indicates that disproportionate numbers of black men seek adolescent males or boys as sexual partners.”

The FRC has the right to say what it wants.  But it does NOT have the right to do so without legitimate criticism.  And legitimate criticism is not a call to violence.

Finally, if you want to look at explicit calls to violence, perhaps NOM (the National Organization [against] Marriage [Equality]) should explain some of these events, duly noted by Rob Tisinai at Box Turtle Bulletin.  Here's some examples.

When Reverend Ariel Torres Ortega stood on your stage as your guest at your rally and proclaimed that gays are “worthy to death,” NOM was there. But you didn’t condemn it at the event, on your website, or on your blog..... 

When Fox News asked NOM founder Maggie Gallagher about a pageant contestant who said gays “shall surely be put to death and their blood shall be upon them,” Maggie was there, not to condemn the call for violence, but to praise “her courage in coming forward.”

As Rob says,

The shooting at FRC was deplorable. Violence has no place in this debate. We can look at this shooting, as well as the people who are killed every year just for being gay, and agree on that. You certainly say you agree. So please, live up your own press release: stop supporting the very thing you claim to condemn.

Update: John Aravosis on the methods the FRC uses to tell lies.

Notes from Around, in the wake of attack on the Sikh temple

Provided without comment.

Huffington Post

Page was the leader of a white supremacist band called End Apathy, and gave an interview to a music website declaring that he wanted to "end people's apathetic ways" and that "I was holding myself back," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Page said he had been part of the white power movement since 2000.

Paul Raushenbush

Sikhs are not Muslims and Sikhs are not Hindus, but jumping to clarify difference leaves the unfortunate, if unintentional, perception that there is something wrong with those "others." 

I am reminded of the run up to the election four years ago when the Obama campaign kept on emphasizing that the candidate was not a Muslim. Only Colin Powell had the guts to stand up and say the obvious: The fact that Obama isn't a Muslim should not be the focus of the campaign, rather we should all remind ourselves that it shouldn't matter if Obama were a Muslim.

Another HuffPo;

The outlandish accusations of Muslim Brotherhood affiliations made against American government officials and agencies by Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and four other Members of Congress have rightfully been dismissed by many public figures and members of themedia as utter nonsense. While it's tempting to shrug this off, the incident could have significant repercussions for the individuals singled out for accusation and for religious tolerance generally.

Rolling Stone

By one count, about a fifth of Americans incorrectly believe Barack Obama is a Muslim. (He is a Christian.) That's messed up. Know what's more messed up? That half of Republican voters in Alabama and Mississippi think he is. Of course, there's nothing wrong with being a Muslim. And it would be fine with me if our president were a Muslim. But he isn't. Now, maybe some of the Deep Southern GOPers who told Public Policy Polling they think Obama follows Islam don't actually think so, but rather were using "Muslim" as a proxy for "not a real American," or "someone I don't relate to," or, who knows, "a guy with terrorist sympathies." Also messed up.

From Southern Poverty Law Center:

Kathleen Blee: One thing we know from studying hate violence on the Internet and other media is that when people have violent or racist ideas, they are often very vague, very amorphous. What the Internet does is get people to focus, to make their racist and violent ideas much more coherent and much more targeted toward particular kinds of people. If you have somebody who is predisposed toward violence or predisposed toward racism, even vaguely, this can really gel [his or her] ideas. They [racist websites] give people a sense that violence is not only possible for somebody to commit, but laudatory. 

From the AP

A mosque in southwest Missouri burned to the ground early Monday in the second fire to hit the Islamic center in little more than a month, officials said.

Eliminating the opposition: lessons from Norway

Anders Behring Breivik, described as a right-wing Christian extremist with strong anti-Muslim views, has now confessed to the terrorist attack in Norway. Breivik was outraged by immigration and Muslims in particular.

He's not alone. In the US, there have been hearings about Islam and protests against the building of mosques. There have been general, shameful protests against the Muslim community simply for existing. To his disgrace, Herman Cain, Republican presidential candidate, is running on an anti-Muslim platform.

[He] started a few months ago by telling a reporter that he would not be comfortable with a Muslim in his cabinet. During a televised debate last month, he said his discomfort was due to the intention of some Muslims “to kill us.”

He quickly moved from that offensive and absurd generalization to advocating an overt violation of the Constitution. He traveled to Murfreesboro, Tenn., this month to make common cause with residents who are protesting the construction of an Islamic center there.

Can you imagine the voices of outrage if Herman Cain advocated against Jewish synagogues, or Catholic cathedrals?

But Breivik wasn't simply an anti-Muslim xenophobe; if so, he'd have shot a mosque.  His motivation wasn't religious;  he defined himself as a "cultural Christian" rather than a believer.  No, his distaste for Islam was merely part of a larger, far-right wing theory. The Guardian describes his

idea that the elite have sold out to "Marxism", which controls the universities, the mainstream media, and almost all the political parties, and is bent on the destruction of western civilisation. "Europe lost the cold war as early as 1950, at the moment when we allowed Marxists/anti-nationalists to operate freely, without keeping them out of jobs where they could seize power and influence, especially teaching in schools and universities," [Breivik] wrote.

These two grand conspiracies are linked by the "Eurabia" conspiracy theory, which holds that EU bureaucrats have struck a secret deal to hand over Europe to Islam in exchange for oil.

In his manifesto against liberal "multiculturalism" he

calls for a "conservative revolution" and "preemptive declaration of war," including "armed resistance against the cultural Marxists/multiculturalist regimes of Western Europe."

It describes "attack strategies," including assassinating professors and carrying out coordinated assaults on multiple targets at the same time.

It is no accident that Breivik attacked the meeting on the island of Utøya. It is there that the Norwegian left had a youth camp of up-and-comers in their teens and 20s, along with current politicians and advisors. Breivik wanted to wipe out the leadership and the future of the political center left in Norway.  

Journalist David Neiwert calls this "eliminationism",

a particular trend that has manifested itself with increasing intensity in the past decade: the positing of elimination as the solution to political disagreement. Rather than engaging in a dialogue over political and cultural issues, one side simply dehumanizes its opponents and suggests, and at times demands, their excision.

It's the root of the attacks used against President Obama, attempting to delegitimize him, cast him as a Muslim, an African, a non-American who stole the white house, is inevitable. It started with shouts to "kill him" at Republican rallies, before he was even elected--shouts that went largely unrebuked.   That's eliminationism.

Pure crazy can hit either side of the political spectrum, but In the last two years it has particularly hit the right. The language of eliminationism is a staple of right wing radio.  And people act on it.

• July 2010: Byron WIlliams initiates a shootout with police he was angry at Congress passing all those "left-wing agenda items".
• March 2010 John Patrick Bedell, who harbored anti-government views, traveled from CA to shoot up the Pentagon
• Feb 2010 Joe Stack flew an airplane into a government office leaving an anti-government manifesto behind
• March 2010 Jerry Kane Jr and the right wing Christian Hutaree Militia planned a wave of attacks on government
• June 2009: James von Brunnfired at the Holocaust memorial museum and murdered a guard
• April 2009 Richard Poplawski killed three officers because he feared liberal gun control.
• July 2008 Jim David Adkisson shot up a Unitarian church in Tennessee because it was full of liberals

And much as we'd like to leave this across the Atlantic,eliminationtist rhetoric, with the language of violence in place of political discourse, is very much alive here.  Casting the opposition as the "other" is a political staple, even amongst so called "Christians".  When Sarah Palin puts gunsights over democratic congressional districts....  When Maggie Gallagher promised a "bloody mess" in New York over marriage equaltiy...  they are using the language of violence for political disagreement.

Anders Breivik is not a Norwegian aberration. What he represents is not unique to Norway. It's very present amongst us. We ignore it at our peril.

Bombing in Oslo

BP and I have traveled several times to Oslo, where we have several friends and colleagues.  It's a lovely city, and we are very fond of Norway and the Norwegians.   Sensible people, family oriented, beautiful country.  How awful to hear that the peaceful streets of Oslo were shattered by violence, which spilled over into a youth camp.  The dead are still being counted.  BP and I have not yet heard from our friends, but hope and pray that they were at work, and  had no reason to be near the government buildings.

I mean, NORWAY?  Who attacks Norway?

Photo by IT, from the Vigeland sculpture park in Oslo

The face of hate (updated)

Glenn Greenwald points out the virulent anti-Muslim hate growing in this country, and shows us a video from a protest last month in Orange County, CA where vicious comments were hurled at the Muslim community attending a charity event. Some of the remarks came from a sitting Congressman. Greenwald writes,

I think what was most striking about that video is that the presence of small children didn't give these anti-Muslim protesters even momentary pause; they just continued screeching their ugly invective while staring at 4-year-olds walking with their parents. People like that are so overflowing with hatred and resentments that the place where their humanity -- their soul -- is supposed to be has been drowned.

Look familiar? Make no mistake: we've seen it before, in different guises.







Should this vile speech be blocked? No! But it's important that we see it, that we know who engages in it (a sitting Congressman????!!!!) and we react accordingly. Only if we know about it can we counter the ignorance, fear, bigotry, and hatred that it represents.

UpdateIt continues: two elderly Sikhs shot in Elk Grove CA.

Police said Saturday that they don't know why someone gunned down two men – frail from heart attacks and advancing years – as they slowly ambled through a quiet Elk Grove neighborhood during their daily afternoon walk.

Surinder Singh, 67, died Friday afternoon on the sidewalk along East Stockton Boulevard near Geneva Pointe Drive. Gurmej Atwal, his 78-year-old friend, was shot twice in the chest. His family said he was in critical but stable condition.

In a statement released late Saturday, Elk Grove Police Chief Robert Lehner called on witnesses to come forward and said, "We have no evidence to indicate there was a hate or bias motivation for this crime; however, the obvious Sikh appearance of the men, including the traditional Dastar headwear and lack of any other apparent motive, increasingly raise that possibility.

Why arming the public isn't a solution

Did you hear about the Arizona man, Joe Zamudio, who was in a nearby store? He rushed to the aid of the victims with his handgun, ready to take down the shooter. (My emphases).

As he rounded the corner, he saw a man holding a gun. "And that's who I at first thought was the shooter," Zamudio recalled. "I told him to 'Drop it, drop it!' "

But the man with the gun wasn't the shooter. He had wrested the gun away from the shooter. ….

This is a much more dangerous picture than has generally been reported. Zamudio had released his safety and was poised to fire when he saw what he thought was the killer still holding his weapon. Zamudio had a split second to decide whether to shoot. He was sufficiently convinced of the killer's identity to shove the man into a wall. But Zamudio didn't use his gun. That's how close he came to killing an innocent man. He was, as he acknowledges, "very lucky."

That's what happens when you run with a firearm to a scene of bloody havoc. In the chaos and pressure of the moment, you can shoot the wrong person. Or, by drawing your weapon, you can become the wrong person—a hero mistaken for a second gunman by another would-be hero with a gun. Bang, you're dead. Or worse, bang bang bang bang bang: a firefight among several armed, confused, and innocent people in a crowd. It happens even among trained soldiers. Among civilians, the risk is that much greater.

We're enormously lucky that Zamudio, without formal training, made the right split-second decisions. We can't count on that the next time some nut job starts shooting. I hope Arizona does train lawmakers and their aides in the proper use of firearms. I hope they remember this training if they bring guns to constituent meetings. But mostly, I hope they don't bring them.

Jon Stewart comments on rhetoric

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Arizona, and language....and a quote of the day

George Packer, in the New Yorker:

Only one side has made the rhetoric of armed revolt against an oppressive tyranny the guiding spirit of its grassroots movement and its midterm campaign. Only one side routinely invokes the Second Amendment as a form of swagger and intimidation, not-so-coyly conflating rights with threats. Only one side’s activists bring guns to democratic political gatherings. Only one side has a popular national TV host who uses his platform to indoctrinate viewers in the conviction that the President is an alien, totalitarian menace to the country. Only one side fills the AM waves with rage and incendiary falsehoods. Only one side has an iconic leader, with a devoted grassroots following, who can’t stop using violent imagery and dividing her countrymen into us and them, real and fake. Any sentient American knows which side that is; to argue otherwise is disingenuous.

And yet plenty of people who ought to know better are making just that argument, with a heat that suggests they protest too much....

My post stated at the top that no one but the shooter is responsible for the massacre. But other people, far from the Tucson Safeway, are responsible for pushing language, thought, and feeling to an extreme where political violence begins to seem legitimate.....

As David Frum wrote yesterday: “This talk did not cause this crime. But this crime should summon us to some reflection on this talk. Better: This crime should summon us to a quiet collective resolution to cease this kind of talk and to cease to indulge those who engage in it.” That was the point of my post, and it’s remarkable that Frum seems to be the only conservative who’s had the courage to say anything like it (other than one Republican senator, who, not so courageously, requested anonymity).

I think the anonymous conservative senator is one of the scariest things I've heard. A US Senator is AFRAID to state an opinion that "reflection is necessary". As Steve Benen notes

We've reached the point at which a GOP senator wants to say that "tone matters," but can't quite bring himself/herself to say so on the record.

That, it seems to me, is about as significant as the sentiment itself.

Presumably Senator Anonymous is concerned that other Republicans will attack HIM, like a pack of hyenas, if he actually behaves as a statesman rather than a gutter fighter.

Meanwhile it continues. Rush Limbaugh says,

They're shutting down any opposition and criminalizing it. They've had a plan filed away in a drawer to take away as many of our political freedoms as they can. The Democrats just lost an election, and now the only other thing they can try to do is silence the opposition."

and GLen Beck thinks someone will try to assassinate Sarah Palin, telling her an "attempt on you could bring the Republic down."

That sound is my head spinning.

Does Language Matter?

Much of the response to the attempted assassination of Rep. Giffords centers on the vitriol and language used by the right. The idea that the right needs to take arms against the government is no longer wacky way-out talk--it is spouted by sitting Representatives (Michelle Bachmann, R-MN, wanted her constituents "armed and dangerous" over Obama's tax plan ) and would-be Senators (Sharron Angle, REpublican candidate for Senator from NV, suggested that there were "Second Amendement remedies" to cure the "problems" with Harry Reid). Giffords' opponent in the last election had an event "in which voters were invited to “shoot a fully automatic M-16” with him to symbolize his assault on her campaign." And of course, Sarah Palin's webpage put graphics of rifle sights over the Democratic Congressional districts she wanted her followers to target.


In AZ, Rep Giffords endured vandalism and threats. She said,


Of course we all have the right to free speech. But with rights come responsibilities. No one sensible wants to ban language, just re-establish sensible norms of usage. No one thinks Sarah Palin advocates actual violence, but she foments outrage using the language of violence. When Palin, on the campaign trail, went on and on about Obama, a supporter shouted "kill him!" and she did not reprimand him. The right's rhetoric is not against the ideas of the left, but against the left's very existence. And the consequences to such language, used intemperately, are dangerous, as we've discussed before.

H/T to ELizabeth Kaeton for finding this quote from John Cole:

The point we have been trying to make for the last couple of years is that Republicans need to stop whipping up crazy people with violent political rhetoric. This is really not a hard concept t
o follow. There are crazy people out there. Stop egging them on.

More examples of language and events here