The System
Of course there is no single system, but that does not change the fact that sometimes institutional or ideological factors significantly impact our lives and our capacity to understand, debate, thrive.  For instance, we know that people just like you and I, when born into extreme poverty, are extremely unlikely to be able to fight their way out of the chains, no matter how hard they work.  And that the situations we are locked into are ripe with extra penalties built in: cheaper food is less nutrious, cheaper housing is less safe, when coping mechanisms turn deviant in poorer communities these behaviors are targeted for extreme punishment that is uncommon as a response to the most common forms of deviance in affluent communities.  The place one is locked into is itself criminalized. So, this cartoon caught my eye today.

 When we consider the current sexual assault problem in the US military, for instance, we are not suggesting that every soldier, or even most, are violent sociopaths.  We can respect their service and value national defense by focusing our attention on systems, institutions, including in this case the institutional culture that has developed in the military to encourage, condone, ignore, and protect perpetrators of sexual misconduct.  Yes, individual agency matters and cannot be overlooked, but when we see a particular behavior so highly concentrated within one context, culture, institution, system, we cannot understand (or remedy) this situation with a lens that narrow our vision to only individual behavior.

 

 



 

Similarly, the 'imperial executive' has been a problem for generations, dating at least back to Nixon's Watergate, Reagan's Iran-Contra, Clinton and W.  This systematic and institutional and culture problem was not resolved when the individual resigned (Nixon) or we did not find a smoking gun (Reagan) or his term expired.  Of course, other institutional and behavioral factors must be considered (see earlier blogs on Mann and Ornstein's book), including the profound dysfunction of Congress, but we are naive if we think this systematic problem will be repaired by defeating, or even systematically obfuscating, President Obama. 

By the way...always looking for great political cartoonists!  Suggestions?

Sometimes I just want to read a novel or watch a movie...
"We all share the burden and the privilege of constructing a life."  I no longer remember who said that.  It was a speaker at my brother's graduation, a poet I think.  And it is possible that I have inadvertantly altered the quote over the years.  Regardless, it still speaks to me about the struggle and celebration we all share.  And sometimes embracing this struggle is itself a challenge. :)

Talk Radio
Reading an essay from Consider the Lobster where David Foster Wallace, with his usual penetrating style, argues that "one of the more plausible comprehensive theories is that political talk radio is one of several important 'galvanzing venues' for the US right....a kind of electronic town hall meeting where passions can be inflamed and arguments honed under the loquacious tutelage of the hosts" (288). 

As DFW points out this lens has the advantage of not assuming what must be demonstrated.  Rather than define talk radio as systematic disinformation, effectively dismissing alternative perspectives and silencing debates, this frame defines it in a way that allows for us to examine it with an open mind.  I do not like Limbaugh or Hannity and their ilk, but (again, agreeing with DFW) I like less comparing them to Hitler.  In fact, that is one of their techniques I despise most because it undermines political communication and democratic deliberation needed to learn by observing the consequences of our actions and improve our polity.

DFW also argues that this frame helps us better understand why the "energy" in American politics is on the right today.  One option DFW considers, that I think worth considering, is that talk radio today is "a wildly successful strategy for bringing a large group of like-minded citizens together, uniting them in a coherent set of simple ideas, energizing them, and inciting them to political action."  He compares this to the energy-edge the US left enjoyed in the 1960s.

Wallace further argues (290) that "whatever the social effects of talk radio or the partisan agendas of certain hosts, it is a fallacy that political talk radio is motivated by ideology.  It is not.  Political talk radio is a business, and it is motivated by revenue."

My first thought was 'capitalism is an ideology,' but this dismisses his point without considering its analytical value.  DFW is pointing out that Air America failed because it did not produce revenue.  This is a very different conclusion than it failed because the right shouted it down or that citizens have been duped or that citizen perspectives have been gradually moved to the right. 

Talk radio is a product, designed to sell advertising, that also happens to sell the idea (the world view) that commerce is the unifying theory, the consumer is king, and the market free from government interference is the source of individual liberty.  But if it did not sell advertising by attracting audiences it could not also saturate communication channels with bullshit until the mere repetition of the bullshit compels mainstream media outlets to pick up the story. 

The addition of its commercial prowess to the explanation for talk radio matters and operates at least quasi-independently from the explanatory value of its selling of a particular perspective on the role of government.

After all these years, and with no disrespect to my disciplinary colleagues, I am still amazed and surprised and delighted when I experience again the joy of learning a lot about politics and power from English professors.  I have not finished this final essay in Consider the Lobster yet, but I both look forward to leanring more and I am sad that this will be the end of a great, great collection of essays.  Many thanks to my brother Tom, one of the most intelligent men I know, for recommending this collection and buying it for me.

Good Question EJ
How Long will Congress Accept Slow-motion Mass murder?
3,947 gun deaths since Newtown

E.J. Dionne: How long will Congress accept slow-motion mass murderMay 13,2013 10:58 PM GMTE.J. Dionne Jr.Washington Post Copyright � 2013 Washington Post. All rights reserved.

MILWAUKEE: Public officials are very selective about when violence and death matter.

Massacres and terrorist incidents cannot be ignored, but the day-to-day toll from gun violence is often swept aside. Politicians who tout themselves as advocates of law and order don’t want to be unmasked as caring even more about their ratings from gun lobbyists.

And opponents of the most moderate gun reforms engage in a shameless game of bait-and-switch. Because measures such as background checks would not stop every murder, they’re declared useless even though they’d still save lives. Then the gun lobby turns around and opposes other measures, such as a ban on high-capacity magazines, which could prevent some of the killings that background checks might not.

The lack of coherence doesn’t bother those who are willing to tolerate all manner of violence to keep the gun business free of inconvenient restraints. Their goal is to exhaust supporters of sane gun laws and get them to give up until the next big tragedy strikes.

Mayor Tom Barrett of Milwaukee has never given up and never given in. One of the earliest members of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group spearheaded by New York’s Michael Bloomberg and Boston’s Tom Menino, he has made curbing urban bloodshed a personal cause.

Every year between Mother’s Day and Memorial Day, he organizes a “Cease-Fire Sabbath” that enlists clergy around the city to preach against violence. “The ministers and other clergy can reach people that I can’t,” Barrett said in an interview in his office last week. Here’s a faith-based initiative that everyone can believe in.

Barrett has paid a price for his steadfastness on guns. In his rematch last year against Republican Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin’s recall election (he lost to Walker in 2010), gun groups spent more than $800,000 to defeat him. Such sums are designed to have a chilling effect on other politicians who might take on the gun lobby. “It hasn’t chilled me,” Barrett says with a smile, “but obviously I’m not the governor.”

Since late last year, Barrett has made the case for extending background checks to online and private purchases as well as gun show sales by pulling out a large cardboard blow-up of a request sent through an online gun market on Oct. 20, 2011.

It reads in part: “Looking for a handgun that is $300obo or best offer. … Looking to buy asap. … Prefer full size. Prefer .45, .40. … I constantly check my emails. …. Also I’m hoping it has a high mag capacity. … I’m a serious buyer so please email me asap. Have cash now and looking to buy now. I am mobile.”

As The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported, the ad was posted by Radcliffe Haughton days after his wife Zina Haughton “was granted a four-year restraining order against her husband because she said she feared for her life.”

“The couple had a volatile relationship,” the paper explained. “Police had been to their Brown Deer, Wis., home on 20 different occasions. These red flags should not have been ignored, but they were.”
The day after the ad went up, Radcliffe Haughton gunned down Zina and two other women at the Azana Salon & Spa in Brookfield, Wis.

The Journal-Sentinel noted (and Barrett also makes this point) that Radcliffe Haughton “may well have found another way to get a gun. But that doesn’t mean that such legislation would not keep guns out of the hands of others who buy them every year without undergoing a background check.”

The slaughter in Newtown decisively shifted the nation’s discussion on guns, and Barrett says he’s still hopeful that a background check bill will eventually pass. The law is needed, he said, not just because of gruesomely spectacular killings but also to stop “what my police chief calls slow-motion mass murders in the cities around our country.”

But can the politics be overcome? At a recent talk at Georgetown University, former President Bill Clinton spoke of how politicians draw warnings from past political fights even when those lessons have become obsolete. He used the analogy of the cat that gets burned on a hot stove, and will never jump on the stove again, even after the stove has cooled.

As of May 8, according to Slate magazine, there had been at least 3,947 gun deaths since Newtown. The political heat is now coming from those who have lost patience with slow-motion mass murders. Will Congress notice the temperature change?

EJ Dionne is a Washington Post columnist. He can be emailed at ejdionne@washpost.com

Mother's Day 2013
Neither words nor pictures (thanks Hallmark) can avoid feeling over-wrought on Mother's Day. The impulse to try to say something on that one day that might capture all that our mother's mean to us is, frankly, both doomed to fail and, too often, a reminder of all the ways we could've done more to show our moms how much they mean to us on the other 364 days again this year.

My Mom & Dad joined us for a trip to Ireland and, in the restaurant on top of the Guiness Brewery in Dublin, posed with my Guiness!  This is one of my all-time favorite pictures, because Mom does not drink and does laugh like no other.  No one I know is more serious about trying to be the best person she can be (Dad is a close second, but this is Mother's Day) and yet Mom is always ready to laugh, including laughing at herself.  I love that.

Lori came up from Florida and Tom had us all to his place in NYC for Thanksgiving this past year.  Ray and Amanda brought Cecelia and Colton to spend some time with their 'big cousins' Brian and Casey.  Found some amazing dumplings in Chinatown, a short walk over the bridge from their apartment.  Annie was totally cool as a city dog.

This is one of my favorite pictures of both of my parents.  They look so completely happy and content and at ease and satisfied.  Perfect.

These two make each other, and the rest of us, laugh in the most life-affirming ways.  In both of these pictures, you can see it on their faces. 

And no mother's day reflections would be complete without a shout out to Julie.  She showed me, from the other side of the parent-sibling relationship, and in her relationship with me, how to love.  After my own mother and father, I have never seen anyone so consistently and thoughtfully put her children first in all ways, at all times, cheerfully and because her love is that deep.

Jay-Smooth, Aisha Harris and Ta-Nehisi Coates
On Auto-Tuning and Charles Ramsey

Racial conflict and controversy is not new, particularly not in America.  But usually the conflict starts out ugly, invites denial and gets uglier, creating more confusion, more heat than light.  The conflict and controversy surrounding the heroism of Charles Ramsey in Cleveland (already got t-shirts with his face on them) includes this familiar pattern-by-design but also has so much more, making it worth a closer examination.  Coates brings together three great voices doing just that. 

The video is, well, smooth and thoughtful and easy to digest.  Accessible and smart, as we expect from Jay-Smooth.  Thanks to Coates for reposting it along with his own thoughts and the link to Harris for some data.  Thanks Julie for introducing me to Coates a while back! 

Also, check out other Jay-Smooth videos as well. 

You can also listen to one of Charles Ramsey’s initial interviews for yourself: a real life hero who happens to love Big Macs.  It is very hard not to love this guy.  Thanks Charles Ramsey for being yourself...a leader in your own life and now a publicly acclaimed hero.

Joanna Weiss (Boston Globe) also provides a commentary on all of this that is worth reading.

David Foster Wallace
A selection from 'This is Water' with video
9 minutes