Stay in Touch, Okay?

The first in an occasional series

The name on the email seems vaguely familiar.  Giselle Jones?  Is this someone I should know?  A moment passes, and then I remember she is a student who took my intro to it all class maybe three, maybe four years ago.  My curiosity is mildly piqued.  I open the message:

“mr. scholar,

“u have to send me a copy of your fall 2007 syllabus.  i took ur class at snoflake and now im in college in utah and my adviser wont transfer the credits from ur class without a syllabus.  she says its the only 1 i need all my other classes r ok.

“i called big campis and they said u didnt work at snoflake anymore and i was really confused so i e mailed somebody else i don’t remembir her name i dleted the msg and they said u were still there.

“she said she would tell u to send a syllabus but u never did and now im e mailing u.  i need this rite now ok?

“giselle jones”                 

I search my memory a moment and recall forwarding a copy of the Fall ’07 syllabus to an administrative assistant who had requested it on behalf of Ms. Jones.  I am certain that the admin followed through.  While the life of the mind at Snowflake College* leaves much to be desired, I’ve never known our support staff to drop the ball.  I suspect the shortfall is on the student’s end.   I wonder which college she’s transferred to, and why Utah?  I conclude that Giselle is either a devout Mormon or she’s majoring in skiing. 

I reply:

           “Dear Ms. Jones,

“I’m sorry you haven’t received your requested copy of the syllabus.  The person with whom you spoke at Big Campus is in error; I am still employed at Snowflake College.  You could have avoided any delay by contacting me directly.

“I’m sending you the syllabus as an attachment.

“Regards,

“Unassuming Scholar”

I click “Send” and decide this is the end of this episode.  Ms. Jones and I will each live happily ever after. 

Nearly two weeks later Ms. Jones replies, perhaps to thank me for my kind assistance.  Alas, the news is not what I had hoped for:

“i cant open ur file.  i really need this now.”

Ah, another “digital native” who can’t figure out the most widely used word processing program in the world!  Just to make sure, I open the file on my computer.  No problems there.  I respond,

“Ms. Jones,

“My apologies.  Perhaps there was a glitch that prevented the file from opening.  I’m resending it.  Please let me know if you have any further problems.

“Sincerely,

“Unassuming Scholar”

Still another two weeks pass.  At this point, I figure the matter is at last closed.  And then, another missive from Ms. Jones,

“mr. scholar,

“ i still cant open ur file.  why dont u send me the rite 1?  My adviser needs ur syllabus asap or i dont get credit for ur class and i cant graduate on time.

“i cant believe this.  ur the worst teacher ever.

“giselle jones”

I take a deep breath, suppress the urge to tell her to go piss up a rope, and carefully prepare my response.

“Ms. Jones,

“Flattery will get you nowhere.  Nevertheless, I have cut and pasted the requested syllabus into this message rather than attaching it as a Word file.

“If that doesn’t work, I don’t know what to tell you.  You’re on your own.

“Cheers,

“Unassuming Scholar”   

It’s been a month now and there hasn’t been any further word from my erstwhile student.  No news is good news, right?   And yet first thing every morning I peer warily at my email inbox…   


* A tip of the hat to the blog College Misery (http://collegemisery.blogspot.com) and its much-missed predecessor, RateYourStudents.com.       

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar

Deportee

On this day in 1948, an airplane chartered by the Immigration and Naturalization Service crashed in Los Gatos Canyon, California.  The accident, commemorated in the Woody Guthrie poem, “Deportee,” took the lives of 28 Mexican migrant workers who were being involuntarily repatriated.  The victims included:

Julio Barron

Manuel Calderon

Francisco Duran

Santiago Elisandro

Rosalio Estrado

Bernabe Garcia

James A. Guardaho

Severo Lara

Elias Macias

Jose Macias

Tomas Marquez

Louis Medina

Manuel Merino

Luis Mirando

Martin Navarro

Ygnacio Navarro

Roman Ochoa

Ramon Perez

Apolonio Placentia

Ramon Portello

Guadalupe Ramirez

Alberto Raygoza

Guadalupe Rodriquez

Maria Rodriguez

Juan Ruiz

Salvadore Sandoval

Jesus Santos

Wrapped in the American Flag?

It’s hard to believe that it has been nearly nine years, but I vividly remember the night the Iraq War began. 

I was in graduate school at the time, and I was walking with a friend toward the University Union to have a cup of coffee.  As we approached the door, a woman thrust an antiwar leaflet at us – “Stop the invasion!”  My friend waved her away.  As we walked off she hissed, “Fascists!”

I was taken aback, and a little bemused.  The leaflet lady didn’t know me, of course, but I had spent much of that week engaged in various campus activities concerning the impending conflict.  I’d participated in two antiwar demos already and had been part of a panel symposium on the war and its likely consequences.  But the epithet stung.

For many in the American left, “fascist” is a catchall label for people and ideas they oppose, a word thrown around much in the way right-wingers so often did with “Communist” in earlier generations and do with “anti-American” and “terrorist” today.   All these terms can be thought-terminating clichés.  But remembering that encounter all those years ago outside the University Union has made me reflect on what fascism is and whether it could take root on American soil.

This is a worrisome question that has recurred in times of social ferment since the 1930s.  In fact, we often allude to it in everyday discourse—consider the popularity of the reductio ad Hitlerum as a rhetorical device.  However, since 9/11 there has been particular cause for concern.  In spite of the best efforts of civil libertarians to raise the alarm the American public as a whole has been remarkably quiescent in the face of the PATRIOT Act, no-fly lists, increased surveillance, ever-tightening airport security measures, and a policy of extrajudicial killings abroad.  Although Americans have unprecedented access to news and information most seem to believe ignorance is bliss.     

As they did in many Western countries, various fascist movements took hold in the United States in the years before the Second World War.  While none of them had large memberships or gained widespread support, the German-American Bund and the Silver Shirts are still mentioned in histories of the time.  Similarly, demagogic public figures such as Huey Long, William Dudley Pelley, and Fr. Francis Coughlin were characterized by their detractors as fascist. 

After the defeat of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, it became socially unacceptable to openly espouse fascist ideologies.  However, the anti-Communism engendered by the Cold War represented the sort of sociopolitical reaction that too often aped fascism, albeit loosely.  To this day, currents of fascist tendencies run beneath the surface of American political discourse.

Fascism is one of those elusive concepts that form in the eye of the beholder, as we saw in my opening anecdote.  But we do have a few good rules of thumb for recognition.  For instance, Umberto Eco points to characteristics such as preoccupation with tradition, anti-intellectualism, intolerance of dissent, xenophobia, middle class fears of economic distress, populism, and the need for an external enemy to provide unity.  Stanley Payne identifies like attributes, among them the belief in a need for strong political authority, anti-liberalism, and anti-Communism. 

Certain character types may be particularly attracted to fascist ideas, such as the authoritarian personality described by Hannah Arendt.   Similarly, Richard Hofstadter’s description of American anti-intellectualism incorporates fascist tropes such as resentment of cosmopolitan urbanites and foreigners.  The American preference for practical pursuits over the contemplative life is reminiscent of the pronouncement of Benito Mussolini’s in-house philosopher, Giovanni Gentile, that while fascism wasn’t opposed to intelligence per se it was emphatically against intellectualism.

While we like to see ourselves as individualists, and while our national self-image is largely built on this belief, there is a strong current of conformism and deference to authority in our daily lives.  I don’t think this is case just with blue collar red staters, either.  Training in the top-down group ethos begins early regardless of social background, whether we recognize it or not.  Parenting practices may range from strict, “Because I said so” demands for unquestioning obedience to presenting a narrow range of “choices” to follow, but few parents teach their kids to be truly autonomous.  Starting in elementary school, we sit in orderly rows reminiscent of soldiers in ranks.  By high school, our teachers and administrators choose our leaders and heroes for us; they seldom if ever rise from below.  We’re also told, sometimes overtly, sometimes by default, who doesn’t fit in and should thereby be socially excluded. 

As adults our work is often highly structured.  We attend church much more frequently than our brethren in other Western countries -- a belief in revealed religion is not normally conducive to independent thought.  Our heavily corporatized media presents a homogeneous viewpoint that doesn’t challenge the status quo.  The propaganda function of the mainstream media is well-documented and we can’t blame it all on Fox News or AM talk radio, either.  Minor editorial differences aside, news content varies little from source to source.  Rarely do we ever see or hear progressive views.   

And so we're always ready to rally ‘round the flag.  Patriotism is defined as unquestioning support for our leaders, politicians of all ideological stripes sport flag lapel pins as a silent protest of their loyalty, and anyone who questions the direction in which the country is heading clearly “hates America.”  The chilling effect on dissent over the past ten years has been significant; peer pressure and deference to authority has become the norm.  While we look away from the acts of the powers that be, we focus all the more on the powerless.

The current economic crisis has the middle class groping blindly for culprits.  Not the obvious ones, mind you.  Since your typical suburbanite feels a stronger affinity for CEOs, hedge fund managers, and investment bankers than for the poor and marginalized, it’s the latter whom he blames for the subprime mortgage meltdown.  In his mind it was Democrat-imposed legislation forcing banks to lend to low-income borrowers, particularly minorities, that pushed us down the slippery slope to disaster.  In this climate it’s no surprise that James O’Keefe’s prank on ACORN resonated with conservatives and that President Obama’s past work as a community organizer raised hackles during the 2008 campaign.  It’s probably best for him that he didn’t try to organize immigrants.       

Nativism is alive and well in America, as a cursory look at recent events shows.  It’s hardly new, though.  The escalating war on immigrants, documented or not,  reflects a cyclical phenomenon in our history stretching back all the way to the Know-Nothings of the early nineteenth century.  But despite the progress we tell ourselves we've made since the Civil Rights Movement, the enactment of SB 1070 in Arizona and HB 56 in Alabama lays bare a decidedly ugly vein of bigotry.  Another example is our exaggerated fear of Muslims and people who are or are perceived to be Middle Eastern.  Racial profiling in general is a result of a deep-seated fear of people unlike us.            

The phrase, “people unlike us” may well apply to the so-called Red/Blue state divide though this is hardly a new development.  The rapid urbanization of American society a century ago engendered a deep-seated distrust of cities among rural and small-town people.  For them cities were breeding grounds of sin and magnets for un-American elements.  The Scopes Trial, rural support of Prohibition, and the revival of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s were all signs of a emerging social chasm that has persisted to this day.           

Another hint of a latent fascism shows in how we’ve constructed our national identity.  Our society valorizes toughness and violence.  It isn’t just our penchant for action films, first-person shooter video games, and other escapist pastimes.  It’s interwoven in our heritage of conquest and global hegemony.  The cult of strength also reveals a certain misogyny—if masculinity is good, its inverse, femininity, is implicitly bad for its presumed weakness.  Moreover, this bias is reflected in statements from our national leaders.  President Bush’s taunt to Iraqi insurgents to “Bring it on” played well with the public, despite the backlash from his political opponents.  When Donald Rumsfeld claimed “weakness is provocative,” he was not just pointing out the need for a strong defense.  He was expressing a contempt for those who fail to live up to the ideal of the taciturn lone hero of our popular self-imagination. 

I suppose we don’t notice these tendencies as we’re a steadfastly apolitical people not given to reflection.  We’re put off by the drone of daily coverage in no small part because we aren’t offered any real choice with the two major parties.  We vote—that’s the extent of our political activity.  Otherwise, we tune out.  Without any meaningful outlet for involvement we turn inward to our private concerns.  Because we’ve largely abandoned the public sphere, the vacuum has been filled by those who don’t have the public good as their priority.  And their manipulation of public sentiment puts us at risk of being ultimately complicit in our own oppression.   

Do I believe that the United States is fascist?  Of course not.  Do I believe that our country has the potential to become fascist?  I believe that we're susceptible given our cultural proclivities.  If and when fascism does come, it won’t be with banners, black shirts, and jackboots.  Sinclair Lewis’ pronouncement is as prescient now as it was 75 years ago: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar

The Fools' School

There are exceptions to every trend.  The Fools' School, a new venture offering an alternative to the traditional college experience, has opened in San Francisco.  The first 6-week session of classes is already under way, with future sessions planned.  All courses are free and open to the public.

For information, visit The Fools' School website at http://tesseract.typepad.com/thefoolsschool/.

Education at a Price

A gaffe by Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney last week concerning rising higher education costs provided a standout example of our society’s attitudes toward what education is and what it means to be an educated person in America.

For those of you who missed the story, Romney told an audience at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire that students struggling to pay for college should consider enrolling at private, for-profit institutions.   Market competition among for-profit colleges, Romney explained, would force them to become efficient thereby lowering tuition costs.  As an example, Romney cited a media design school in Florida called Full Sail University. 

What Romney neglected to add was that Full Sail’s CEO, Bill Heavener, is a major donor to Romney’s campaign and that the “competitive” tuition at Full Sail runs around $80,000 a year.  

Higher education, once treated as a public good by policymakers, is becoming increasingly privatized.  This isn't surprising.  Education is big business, perceived more as a commodity than as a personal attribute.  College is considered a ticket to better, well-paying jobs.  As such, students' goals tend to focus on skills training and workforce preparation.  

While this is a perfectly reasonable expectation, the vocational focus has come at the expense of curricular balance and intellectual rigor.  The teaching of critical thinking skills traditionally imparted by the liberal arts, when they are taught at all, has been relegated to an assortment of lower division general ed classes where more often than not students simply go through the motions.

Educational privatization is a new frontier for corporate America.  There has been talk of higher education as the next economic bubble.  The phenomenon of higher ed as commodity has become evident in all its facets, from corporate grants supplanting taxpayer support of public universities to the proliferation of for-profit institutions.  The latter advertise aggressively, particularly on daytime TV, offering both resident and online classes.  Often, their courses of study are in fields for which employers once provided apprenticeships or on the job training.  What isn’t mentioned is the exorbitant cost of attending these schools, often financed with federally guaranteed student loans that can’t be discharged even in cases of bankruptcy, the high-pressure sales tactics they use, or the sketchy job prospects faced by their graduates.  Federal and state regulation of these institutions is weak to nonexistent.   

Commodification permeates the college experience even at traditional campuses.  Students on the whole seem to embrace this fact without question.  Classes are more about the grade than any knowledge the student gains from taking them.  The banking model of educational progress offers the student a roadmap: Earn 60 semester hours and get an associate’s degree.  Earn 120 credits and get a bachelor’s degree.  Earn a bachelor’s degree and get a job.  Simple, right?

Perhaps not.  Many of the current crop of students seem to have been pushed into college without really knowing why they’re there.  The average time to degree for a B.A. / B.S. has increased substantially in recent years.  Various reasons (aside from cost) include impacted enrollment in popular majors, the need for many students to take remedial coursework, and funding cuts for required courses.  Added to this is the problem of parents and high school counselors pushing college on kids as a nebulous objective divorced from their individual aptitudes, temperament, or goals.

Because of their low tuition and open admission policies, community colleges become a temporary repository for large numbers of these students.  Lacking direction, they flounder for a while and eventually drop out.  Community colleges continue to fulfill the “cooling out” role first described by sociologist Burton Clark over fifty years ago.  The difference today is the social expectation of getting a college degree is much stronger now than it was in 1960 even though opportunities remain comparatively limited.  So, when these “cooled out” students fall short of their own expectations the for-profit schools dangle the illusion of achievement in front of them.  They promise quick results financed with plenty of student aid (i.e., loans).  If they don’t make it through the program or can’t find jobs afterwards it doesn’t matter; the school has already cashed their tuition checks.  Meanwhile, the students are stuck with the debts and are no better off for the experience. 

Yes, I’m perfectly aware that the freedom to try is also the freedom to fail.  But should the consequences be so potentially disastrous?  Should an industry profit from preying on society’s most economically vulnerable people?  Mr. Romney to the contrary, it isn’t private sector competition that will make quality, affordable postsecondary education widely available.  Instead, it will take greater public oversight, a renewed commitment to public investment, and stronger consumer protection laws.  Most importantly, it will take a close reevaluation of the role of higher education in our society and what it really means to have a well-educated citizenry.

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar

The Lawrence Textile Strike Centennial

Having just posted about the 75th anniversary of the Flint Sit-Down Strike, I would be remiss if I didn't mention another landmark in U.S. labor history.

This month also marks the centennial of the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike.  Led by the Industrial Workers of the World, the Lawrence strike is probably the first large-scale direct action involving women workers. 

The strike began after mill owners lowered wages in response to the passage of a Massachusetts law shortening the work week.  The goals of the protest centered not only on better pay and working conditions, but on quality of life as well: "We want bread, but we want roses too!" is the slogan by which the Lawrence strike is best remembered.

To learn more about the Bread and Roses Centennial, click here.     

The Flint Sit-Down Strike – Its Legacy 75 Years On

An important milestone in American labor history took place 75 years ago this month.  The Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1937 occurred under socioeconomic circumstances not unlike those we are experiencing today.  Although largely forgotten, its influence lives on in the form of the nonviolent sit-in and we can even consider the tactics of the Flint strike an antecedent of today’s Occupy movement.

Workers at the General Motors die-making plant in Flint, Michigan occupied their factory in late December 1936.  Previous United Auto Workers’ efforts to organize GM employees in Flint had faced considerable opposition from the company and local authorities.  Seeing an opportunity in a strike at the GM Fisher Body plant in Cleveland, one of only two that made body parts for GM cars, the UAW leadership decided to strike the second Fisher facility in Flint.  Rather than picketing outside and permitting management to keep control of the plant, the workers occupied the inside of the factory to halt production.  Workers at a Chevrolet plant across town soon followed suit.

The Flint sit-down action was a model of worker self-management.  The strikers in the factories adopted consensus-based governance.  Union support committees made sure the strikers received food and other needed supplies while representatives chosen by their fellow workers at each plant participated in negotiations with GM management and Flint officials.   

The strike lasted six weeks before General Motors agreed to negotiate with the UAW.  The sit-down strike became a popular union tactic against employer abuses until the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ruled them illegal in 1939.  By this time, however, the Wagner Act guaranteed workers the right to bargain collectively with their employers and American labor unions grew in numbers and political power over the ensuing decades. 

By contrast the state of organized labor after thirty years of conservative policies is depressing.  Labor had been steadily losing ground well before the watershed 1981 PATCO strike and President Reagan’s mass firing of striking air traffic controllers.  The downward spiral only accelerated afterwards.  Today, unions represent just over 10% of the U.S. workforce compared to one third of workers in the 1950s.  So-called “right to work” laws, business opposition to the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, and Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union policies in Wisconsin are just a few manifestations of the increasingly hostile environment in which unions work.  A concomitant problem is worker apathy. 

Of course, there are a number of reasons why today’s workers don’t seem interested in organizing.  The most significant is that our working class doesn’t even consider itself working class.  Ask almost any American, and they’ll proudly tell you they’re “middle class.”  What they don’t realize is that if workers in this country enjoy a decent standard of living it is due to a century and a half of struggle by organized labor.  These gains have become so deeply established we take them for granted.  The eight-hour day, child labor laws, the minimum wage, and workplace safety regulations are all fruits of labor activism. 

Another reason for the decline of unionization is lack of awareness.  When I ask my community college students if they know what a union is, maybe half the class will raise their hands.  Many of those students are quick to tell me they’re opposed to the idea of organized labor.  They’ll tell me they think unions are a bad idea because they’ve heard their dues would go to line the pockets of union officials or, more insidiously, that benefits such as pensions and health insurance cut into employers’ profit margins. 

This last claim underlines the sad truth of why many workers are hostile to unions: They identify too strongly with their employers.  In an era where downsizing and offshoring have become alarmingly commonplace, Americans’ faith in the capitalist system remains unshaken.   No one believes they will feel the effects of neoliberal policies that seek to minimize labor costs.  If corporations can’t maximize profit by cutting wages or benefits in the U.S. they will send jobs to places where they can.  Notwithstanding, the Horatio Alger story of the self-made individual remains an indelible part of our social myth.   We tell ourselves, “If I just work harder, my neighbors’ bad times won’t happen to me,” ignoring the inexorable truth that public issues lead to private troubles. 

There are signs of life, however, and perhaps even a strong chance for revival.  The Service Employees International Union has made headway among some of our economy’s most vulnerable workers.  The Change to Win Federation, of which SEIU is part, offers a dynamic field organizing model superior to the ossified bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO.  And it may well be possible that we can see the first glimmers of hope on an otherwise bleak landscape.  The Flint Sit-Down serves as only one reminder of the toil and sacrifices of generations of American workers to achieve justice.  The crucible of the Great Depression produced the modern labor movement.  Let us hope that the present economic crisis leads to its resurgence.  

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar

A Few Thoughts on Triumphalism and the Other

Two news items in as many days have spurred uneasy thoughts concerning the war on terror and our views of the Muslim world.

The first was a video showing U.S. Marines allegedly abusing corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.   It’s reminiscent of any number of incidents over the last decade ranging from the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib to the circus-like atmosphere of Saddam Hussein’s execution to the Koran desecrations at Guantanamo Bay.  The common element is an offhanded dehumanizing of the enemy, evinced in this case by a marine urinating on a body and walking away with a sardonic, “Have a nice day, buddy.”

The second was the car bomb murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist, the latest of several in recent years.  The assailant or assailants in this and the previous bombings are unknown.  However, it is not too far a leap to ascribe the deaths to the machinations of U.S., British, French, or Israeli intelligence, acting singularly or in concert.  I am not simply echoing Iranian accusations; I am identifying the states with the most to lose should Iran develop a nuclear weapon.  Certainly, the question of halting Iran’s nuclear development program by removing its scientists from the equation has been posed in the past, most notably by right-wing blogger Glenn Reynolds in 2007.[1]  But I suspect that in the coming days the media emphasis will be less on the murdered scientist and more on the real and imagined perils of Iran’s “nuclear ambitions” as they are so often called. 

Media coverage reflects how our popular attitudes shape our approach to policy and vice versa.  Our perceptions of the non-Western world are inlaid with a deep vein of xenophobia, tinged with a profound ignorance of its complexity.  When most Americans probably can’t locate Afghanistan on a map or tell the difference between Iraq and Iran, Arabs and Persians, or Sunnis and Shiites, our ability to have an intelligent public debate is lost.  That our news is delivered to us in quick-cut edits and sound bites doesn’t help.         

Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism, the Western cultural construct of Middle Easterners as “Other,” is useful here.  Western dominance in the Middle East and Central Asia was informed by an image of the region’s inhabitants as weak, childlike, and easily manipulated.  Resistance challenged these long-held assumptions, whether it was Arab opposition to Israel, the Iranian Revolution, the Afghan mujahedeen war against the Soviets, or the emergence of al-Qaeda, among numerous other events over the past sixty years.   And so what began as essentially anti-colonialist struggles for cultural and religious dignity have been consistently portrayed as threats to democracy and global security, which is to say that they are a threat to American supremacy.  Because even in 2012, led by an African-American president, it will not do to have people with dark complexions defy us. 

This has been a particular a sore spot for us since the Vietnam War.  Defeat at the hands of a postcolonial peasant army poked holes in our deeply ingrained belief that America would always prevail.  One result is that as a culture, we have taken a triumphalist attitude toward our country’s recent conflicts.  I first noticed this after the invasion of Grenada.  The following year, President Reagan was running for reelection.  The College Republicans on my campus commemorated the anniversary of the invasion as “National Liberation Day” with a well-attended rally on the quad…all in honor of the world’s most powerful military having defeated a handful of Cuban construction workers.  The occupation of Panama was greeted in a similar fashion.  The high tech media spectacle of the Persian Gulf War was a harbinger of things to come—the emergence of a pervasive belief that war is a push-button endeavor involving faceless adversaries. 

Our faith in automated warfare is a conceit that has only grown with time.  Witness the response to the targeted killing of al-Qaeda militant Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen last year: There was scant dialogue in the mass media over the morality of the act or whether al-Awlaki’s due process rights as a U.S. citizen were violated.  He was a problem that could be (and was) solved by anonymous individuals pushing buttons in a room hundreds or thousands of miles away. 

Another legacy of Gulf War I is that, simply put, war has become a spectator sport for Americans.  Consider the reaction to Osama bin Laden’s death.  Interspersed with the pronouncements of anchors and pundits was TV news footage that showed college students, few of whom could have had any clear memories of 9/11, whooping and hollering and dancing around bonfires as if after a football victory.  I half expected to see them holding up huge foam rubber fingers proclaiming, “We’re #1!”  While I won’t shed any tears for the late Mr. bin Laden, I question how we marked his demise.  There wasn’t any reflection on the conditions that gave rise to militant Islamism in the first place or the long-term implications of bin Laden’s death, if any, on the war on terror.  Rather, it was yet another paroxysm of the kind of un-self-conscious jubilation in which we indulge at times like these.

Which brings me back to where I started.  This week’s events reflect and reinforce our underlying attitude regarding our Middle Eastern policy: We will not brook opposition from our inferiors and their deaths are barely worthy of our notice.  Longstanding cultural portrayals of Muslims as alien and malevolent have served to dehumanize them in our eyes.  In such circumstances it’s easy for us to accept defiling the enemy’s dead, it’s easy to feel relief that maybe the Iranians won’t get the bomb as soon as we had feared, and it’s easy to ignore the violent loss of human life in both cases.  The feeling that we’re somehow safe, even if fleeting, is enough for most of us.  And a few days from now, something else will have our attention.  

   

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar

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[1] Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com, Jan. 11, 2012, http://www.salon.com/2012/01/11/more_murder_of_iranian_scientists_still_terrorism/singleton/