Drag

In the first season of Mad Men, protagonist Don Draper crashes at the apartment of a would-be girlfriend’s bunch of beatnik associates.  Needless to say, they don’t hit it off.  When asked how he sleeps at night, ad executive Draper replies, “on a bed of money.” 

Nevertheless, they agree on one thing.  They eventually fall asleep after smoking a large quantity of pot.  In the morning, they awaken to a police raid in progress at a neighbor’s apartment. 

Draper, needing to report to work, straightens his tie and tugs on his suit coat to pull out the wrinkles.  As he opens the front door, one of the beatniks anxiously objects, “You can’t go out there!”

Don pauses a beat and says, “No, you can’t,“ and walks out, nodding at the policemen in the hallway as he goes.

I was reminded of this a couple of weeks ago as I boarded a plane for a brief vacation in Mexico.  Walking down the jetway, I passed by a Customs and Border Protection agent.  Suffice it to say, he was playing the part.  Body armor, M-4 carbine slung across his chest, etc.  Briefly looking over at him, he gave me a slight nod.  Reflexively, I nodded back.

A fleeting exchange to be sure, but telling all the same.  Like Don Draper, and unlike many other people, I can pass.  I’m an average-looking middle-aged white male who presents conventionally.  In a sense, I’m above suspicion.  I’m just grateful no one can detain me for my thoughts.  Yet.

At least the CBP agents were clearly identifiable. The news of late tells of law enforcement officials unidentifiable by agency or uniform rounding up migrants and student activists.  Are they or aren’t they actual cops? 

The second coming of Donald Trump has provoked a resurgence in militaristic cosplay.  I first noticed the trend the first time around during the lockdown phases of the pandemic.  We were shown the spectacle of white men donning tactical gear and brandishing weapons at urban civil rights protests and setting up unauthorized roadblocks in rural locales asserting authority they did not possess.  The January 6^th insurrection appeared to be the climax of this nonsense which would simmer down with the absence of Trump and his minions from Washington.

Wishful thinking.  Shortly after the election, I was at the airport waiting at the baggage carousel when I noticed a young man milling amongst us.  He was white, with a beard of course.  Otherwise dressed in civilian attire, he was sporting a tactical vest.  He walked slowly, with a serious expression, thumbs hooked at the top of his vest.  I had no idea who the hell he was or why he was there aside from being an arriving passenger, and I asked myself if anyone else was even noticing this.  No one seemed to.  It is common enough lately that such sights scarcely raise an eyebrow.

Much as they had during Trump 1.0, the real authorities have gotten in the act.  News and phone footage showing what seemed to be ICE agents abducting individuals in public are disturbingly frequent.  The agents are generally clad in black or in casual wear, their faces obscured with balaclavas or masks, and they are not displaying badges or other markings identifying which agency they represent.  Homeland Security officials defend the practice as protecting law enforcement personnel from being doxed.   

Maybe, but probably not.  The intended effect is performative intimidation made more ominous by ambiguity.  It also looks cool, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem is the poster girl for posturing as substitute for public safety.  We see her in tactical gear joining Border Patrol agents on a raid.  We watch her posing in front of a packed cell of deportees at El Salvador’s supermax CECOT, sporting a $50,000 Rolex no less.  She parries a question from U.S. Senator Alex Padilla at a press conference on the wholly unnecessary federal intervention in the civil unrest in Los Angeles by siccing the Secret Service on him.

The optics are lost on her.  Appearing before a congressional committee recently, Rep. Bennie Thompson greeted her by thanking her for her time amidst her busy schedule “of photo ops and costume changes.”  Noem scarcely batted an eyelash.   

As to be expected, bad actors are getting in on the act.  You, too, can buy ICE merch online.  Young white males have taken to stationing themselves in Home Depot parking lots wearing ICE jackets to scare off day laborers looking for jobs.  Even more troubling are reports of midnight “raids” on immigrant households by people claiming to be government agents.  In one instance, a family was told to hand over their phones and any cash in their possession.  Contacting ICE and Homeland Security offices afterward, the agencies denied knowledge.

The Trump administration’s methods of ensuring law and order have encouraged vigilantism and enabled common criminals to prey upon vulnerable people.  You could reason that this is an intended consequence.  In the first category, we have a small group of MAGA diehards who believe Trump possesses extralegal authority and that anything they do on his behalf is justified.  (I call this the deputization defense; several J6 rioters believed Trump had “deputized” them to stop certification of the 2020 election results.)  In the second category are opportunistic crooks and garden variety assholes exploiting people who can’t go to the police.

Authoritarians are drawn to military and police regalia.  Perhaps even more so when the individual never served in the military or law enforcement.  (Consider Trump’s fixation on parades.)  At a certain point, fantasy and reality blur.  At a certain point, the biggest Walter Mitty losers can delude themselves into believing they’re the good guys simply by cultivating a look. Provoked by the violent rhetoric emanating from Trump and his allies or internalizing a belief that white men with guns are sheepdogs protecting home and hearth, and you have a recipe for tragedy. 

Policing in a stable democracy must operate in the open.  Law enforcement should be clearly identifiable to the public they serve.  If you’re acting legally, there is no reason to hide who you are.  Otherwise, you erode public trust.  When legitimate law enforcement is indistinguishable from the LARPers you don’t believe your eyes anymore. 

Perhaps this moment will stimulate reform.  We can set guidelines for law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and local levels relating to how they present themselves to the public they serve.  Place limitations on the sale and possession of certain items such as body armor and certain kinds of lethal and non-lethal weapons (though this probably wouldn’t pass constitutional muster in some cases).  Introduce stronger sanctions against impersonating law enforcement and military personnel.  Any of these would be a good start.

What we may not be able to fix is a cultural toxicity that long predated Trump and MAGA.  They are a symptom or the latest permutation of that ugliness.  The only road to improvement is through individual hearts and minds.  And that is a task fit for Sisyphus.

 

 

© 2025 The Unassuming Scholar

Vanity

Tomorrow’s the big celebration.

President Trump is finally getting the parade he’s been after for years.  On his birthday, no less.

There will be several thousand soldiers marching through the national capital.  There will be Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and self-propelled howitzers rolling down the streets, and a swarm of helicopters in the city’s skies.

But wait, there’s more.  There will be fireworks, musical performances, and appearances by astronauts and NFL players.  In other words, the parade looks as if it will be the sort of cheesy corporate spectacle[1] that has characterized any number of “patriotic” celebrations of the last twenty years or so.

I don’t plan to watch.  I dislike these kinds of overblown displays as a general rule, and the fact that the administration has misappropriated the United States Army’s 250^th anniversary to serve the Narcissist-in-Chief’s unbounded vanity is a bitter pill.

But, you’re probably thinking, the president is making a heartfelt gesture celebrating soldiers past and present.  How could anyone object to that?

Well, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be awfully pleasant for the soldiers marching past the reviewing stand.  According to the Army’s public affairs office, the soldiers will sleep on folding cots in vacant federal buildings.  Rather than providing them with at least two hot meals a day, something easily achieved with mobile kitchen trailers, the soldiers will enjoy two MREs and one catered hot meal daily during their stay.  (Each will also receive partial per diem which will undoubtedly go far given the cost of takeout and fast-food meals these days.) Some news sources report that personal hygiene opportunities are being rationed, with field showers operating on rigid schedules.

Now that’s what I call military leadership, screwing the troops you profess to care about.

What’s most concerning are the optics.  There’s the frequently voiced objection that such displays are worthy of Russia, China, and North Korea.  That’s bad enough, because it’s true.  The mindboggling cost of the parade, not to mention the street damage which will inevitably result from numerous tracked vehicles passing over them, provokes wonder at the administration’s priorities.

However, the widespread perception across the political spectrum that this event was planned solely as Trump’s “birthday parade” is what I find most galling.   On the right, Saturday’s quick-time lollapalooza will be yet more justification for the MAGA revolution.  For the left, the association with Trump serves as further proof of our military’s supposed evilness.

Neither camp appreciates the planning and logistics involved.  It’s been known for a very long time that the Army’s sestercentennial was coming up, and you don’t just throw together a large-scale public display at the last minute.  In other words, there would most likely have been a public commemoration even if Kamala Harris had won the election.  With less bombast, perhaps, but a military parade nonetheless.  The emerging details of the logistical clusterfuck housing and feeding 6,600 people suggest the original plans had been more modest before blowing up at the last minute.

Context dismissed, the Big Parade will be always remembered as Trump’s celebration of Trump.  Before the media hype conflated the Army’s 250^th anniversary commemoration with the president’s autocratic fantasy of one-upping Putin, Xi, and Kim, I had privately looked upon the milestone with quiet satisfaction.  It was a satisfaction borne from the longevity of an institution which had played a part in shaping me as a person.  It was satisfaction that I had played a part in its story.  A trivial, momentary part, but I had been there for it all the same.

I don’t feel that now.  It’s as if something special of mine has been sullied.  I am also concerned by the MAGA influence on the military.  President Trump’s address to troops at Fort Liberty Bragg this week reflects this.  The speech was the usual word salad complaining about political correctness and how Joe Biden, Gavin Newsom, and Karen Bass ruined America.  The soldiers’ laughter, cheering, and boos were disturbing.  Subsequent reports said these soldiers were prescreened volunteers attending what was for all purposes a political rally.  While it’s reassuring that the audience were self-selected MAGA-heads who are not (we hope) representative of all Fort Bragg’s soldiers, an important norm is eroding.

That norm is the traditionally apolitical military.  Servicemembers are expected to keep their political opinions to themselves while on duty or any other occasion they are in uniform.  That custom is fading into the past.  The unprofessional conduct of the soldiers at the president’s speech, gratifying as it may have been to Trump, is a bad sign.

The public is noticing, and their conclusions do not augur well for the military’s reputation and its societal role.  You cannot turn the military into a political instrument in a democracy and have it remain a democracy.  This is what is at stake.  The question now is whether there is any turning back.

 

© 2025 The Unassuming Scholar

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[1] The Army reports that “more than 20” confirmed sponsors are (partially) funding the festivities.

Freedom at Play

Brett Kavanaugh couldn’t stay for dessert. 

This week’s political tempest in a teapot concerns Kavanaugh’s hasty backdoor departure from a Washington, D.C. Morton’s steakhouse after protestors had gathered out front.  (Some accounts claim he was unaware of the demo, but the decision to leave through the back tends to refute this.)  Morton’s management took to Twitter, asserting that their high-profile guest’s right to dine in public had been violated. 

Yes.  And no.  Certain activities noted of late, such as protesting outside officials’ private homes, make me uneasy.  Similarly, I ask myself whether we should condone interfering with their non-official activities (as in the case a few years ago when Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Northern Virginia restaurant after its employees objected to her patronage).  However, in the case of sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices, who can serve for life should they choose, there is precious little recourse to publicly register pushback against decisions which adversely affect the liberties and rights of vast numbers of citizens.  

The galling arrogance of the new SCOTUS supermajority, and that of Justices Alito and Thomas particularly, is horrifying when we take into account that its holdings will reverberate in people’s lives for generations. The power of these unelected officials, half of whom were nominated by a president who received a minority of the popular vote and confirmed by a Senate with a majority representing less than half the country’s population, is largely unchecked.  They are well aware of their freedom from accountability, hence their newfound disregard for precedent and stare decisis.  They are fast paving the way to a Christofascist future in which the majority of Americans do not want to live. 

So, misgivings aside I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Kavanaugh’s spoiled evening.  He chose to become a public figure with considerable authority and thus has a lessened expectation of being shielded from public scrutiny.  Yesterday’s near-confrontation sent a message that thousands of unread critical letters, emails, and online posts cannot.  I doubt neither he nor his colleagues care about public sentiment either way, but at least a public protest is visible.  As long as no one is harmed and no property is damaged, citizens should be permitted to gather for political expression.  

Perhaps Mr. Kavanaugh will spend his future evenings quietly at home.  And perhaps Morton’s will court a more respectable clientele.

 

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar

 

 

 

 

Backsliding

Everyone knew it was coming, of course.  That didn’t make the news any easier to accept. 

The U.S. Supreme Court has formally handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, nearly two months after Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion was leaked to the public.  The resulting backlash notwithstanding, it appears the final draft is identical or nearly so to the preview.  There is no longer a nationally recognized right to abortion.  

The extent to which a woman enjoys reproductive freedom now depends upon the state where she lives.  In my own state, little or nothing will change in the wake of Dobbs.  There has been talk of making our state a sanctuary for women seeking safe terminations.  But even then, measures elsewhere such as the Texas snitch law may thwart this particular haven unless the woman doesn’t return home. 

Emboldened by their right-wing supermajority, there is already talk of harsher actions to come.  Clarence Thomas has publicly said it may be time to consider limiting access to contraception. Rights such as same-sex marriage may also be at risk now that SCOTUS has issued a total reversal of what was once considered settled law. 

Despite having won, the right is nevertheless taking refuge in their perennial claims of persecution by a malevolent “woke” left.  Congressional wingnuts are already conjuring specters of a violent backlash to further entrench the hysterical tendencies of the base.  Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah (where else?) warned of a potential “constitutional crisis” resulting from a rumored “invasion” of the Supreme Court by the “pro-abortion left.”  (Sorry, Mikey, inciting mob violence is your party’s brand.)  

The decades-long assault on reproductive rights is deeply disturbing to me on a visceral level.  This may read counterintuitively considering men can’t get pregnant (except in emojis).  But the two things I value most are my privacy and my autonomy.  If I insist upon these for myself, then it is only right that I want them for you as well.  Anti-abortion and anti-contraceptive policies limit privacy and autonomy for women of childbearing age, and that is wrong.  

Dobbs is a landmark on the backsliding route our country is traveling.  It is also a warning.  We have arrived at a place where a moderate majority are increasingly subjected to the superstitious fanaticism of right-wing leaders and their legions of scruffy devotees.  It’s sickeningly awful to witness them fouling our nest while our freedoms erode and life in America becomes harder to bear.  We face more grim days such as this.  The darkness is gathering fast.

 

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar

It's Happening Here

I find YouTube ads a necessary evil to get free content.  I almost never watch them through.  Last night I saw one that made me watch to the end.

It was a campaign ad.  The candidate was a former student, a MAGA fan who was an unconscionable pain in the ass the whole semester.  He’s running for county clerk, who is also the registrar of voters.

The spot itself was unremarkable though professionally done.  The candidate appears on camera throughout, first as a talking head then in footage of him walking down a farm road with his wife and preschool-age daughter.  He’s as I remembered him, receding hairline, beard, red face, beer gut, etc.  Same lack of an indoor voice. 

His pitch emphasized his military service and his commitment to faith and family.  (The usual conservative campaign ad tropes.)  He also promised to “clean up” the voting process in our county.  As a sometime poll worker in the county, I can assure you with certainty that our polling process is already clean. 

I’m not worried that he will win.  Although the long-time incumbent is leaving office, his deputy is running and appears the most viable candidate of the three in the primary race.  However, I don't like that many of the disturbing trends seen elsewhere are seeping into my community. 

The post-Trump era has not resulted in peace of mind.  Voter suppression efforts across the country are just one facet of what Bill Maher has called a slow-moving coup by the right.  Approximately two-thirds of Americans are white.  They make up three-quarters of registered voters.  To not see an underlying white supremacy behind voter suppression laws is willful blindness.  And yet the opposition flails impotently to stop them.

Trump-era hysteria permeates red state political culture.  Screening proposed textbooks (some of them math!) for “woke” themes or supposed references to Critical Race Theory is a distraction from serious policymaking while inflaming white ressentiment.  The “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida and the pending measure in Texas forbidding parents to seek gender-affirming care for their trans children are solutions to nonexistent problems.  (Concerning the latter, it strikes me funny that the same people who refused to let the government to coparent when it came to masks now support government coparenting transgender kids.)  Adam Serwer got it right; the cruelty is the point.

To add to the darkness enveloping our country, it came to light this morning that a draft majority opinion in the Mississippi 15-week abortion ban case written by Samuel Alito leaked from the U.S. Supreme Court.  It comes as no surprise that if issued as written, Roe v. Wade would be definitively overturned.  Still, I always figured SCOTUS would probably gut Roe rather than overturning it outright.  The Texas snitch law passed last summer was the shape of things to come from our 6-3 conservative majority Court; it’s doubtful there will be a happy ending in this case either.

During his confirmation hearings Chief Justice John Roberts stated that Roe was settled law.  Guess he’s changed his mind.  Despite her open religiosity, Amy Coney Barrett’s limited record of abortion-related rulings offers a faint glimmer of hope but I’m not holding my breath. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Thomas are lost causes.  If one believes Sen. Susan Collins, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh lied about their stance on reproductive rights during their respective confirmation hearings. I look upon this development with unsurprised disgust.  What do you expect from a pig but a grunt?

There’s been some hopeful commentary that the leak will damage Republican prospects for this year’s midterms and may even fend off a GOP (Trump?) victory in 2024.  Don’t hold your breath.  It is more likely that it will further energize and further embolden the base, as will the probable passage of the spate of anti-LGBT bills in the South.  Speculation on both sides of the divide predicts that Republicans will attempt to overturn results in states with Republican legislatures that go Democratic in 2024.  I don’t doubt that such attempts will occur.  Perhaps they will succeed. 

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.  Somewhere along the way, we took our eye off the ball.

 

 

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar

Enemies in a Lifeboat

 

“Alright then, we are two nations.”

John Dos Passos, The Big Money

 

Dos Passos was referring to the ideological divide surrounding the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti nearly a century ago.  The statement could just as easily apply today. 

As we approach a third year of pandemic, the divisions in our society have become a gaping wound for all the world to behold.  Its successive waves have limited physical mobility making escape from the social upheaval a distant vision.  I’ve long dreamed of becoming an expat in my retirement, but the desire to travel the world has morphed into an urge to flee and not look back.  Unfortunately, that is no longer feasible for most of us.  And as time goes on creeping political repression may make it even less so. 

In the aftermath of the “stolen” 2020 presidential election, we are entering what Jason Stanley terms the “legal phase” of fascism.  Much of this is happening at the state level given the narrow Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, though the 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court will almost certainly enable these enacted and pending measures.  Restricting voting rights, limiting the right to publicly protest, gerrymandering which further entrenches Republican legislators in red states, and the de facto purge of anti-Trump Republicans in Congress and statehouses are all calculated to pave the way for the Orange Führer’s triumphant return in 2024.  (To further raise alarm, it has come to light that Boeing and Pfizer were among the corporations and trade groups which donated $8 million to Republican lawmakers who voted to decertify the 2020 electoral results.)  

Nor has the past year mitigated the threat of right-wing extremists or self-appointed “good guys with guns” taking the law into their own hands.  While the verdict in the Ahmaud Arbery murder trial may signal a renewed intolerance of vigilantism, the not guilty verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse case is disturbing.  (One reason I suppose the jury was inclined to acquit was that Wisconsin’s “stand your ground” law doesn’t apply to public spaces.  By initially attempting to flee a confrontation with an armed protestor, Rittenhouse was arguably fulfilling his duty to retreat.)  The brazen, high-profile antics of so-called militias give further cause for concern.  

Misinformation exacerbates the divide.  It helps further what Bill Maher has called the slow-moving coup.  Social media fueled hysteria over mostly nonexistent threats surrounding gun control, vaccines, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, Critical Race Theory, and so forth.  It also promotes anti-science attitudes and misinformation about COVID, leading to lowered vax rates and increased spread each time a new variant emerges.  

It is no wonder that Donald Trump loves poorly-educated people.  They are the most susceptible to the message and the least likely to understand how our constitutional system actually works.  While affluent, educated suburban whites supported Trump as well, it is the unruly mass of working class whites who pose the more immediate threat.  Gullible and hostile and ready to accept any sort of bullshit shoveled at them as long as it caters to their anger and prejudices, they are the most liable to resort to mob activity. 

What we are seeing is a progressive normalization of ignorance and rage-fueled rhetorical and physical violence, fueled by social media.  At its worst, this violence has taken the form of looting in cities to violence against protestors.  Legal consequences fall differently depending on the person and the offense.  One year on, few of the participants in the January 6^th Redneck Riot have suffered any meaningful punishment for having attempted to overthrow the government.  Most of the convictions have been for trivial crimes such as trespassing, rather than for sedition.  Had it been, say, a Black Lives Matter protest, the penalties would surely have been swifter and more severe. 

To quote Dos Passos again, “They have taken the words of our fathers and made them slimy and foul.”  Watching the recent New York Times documentary on the riot, possibly the most complete dissection of the event so far, we behold scenes of self-proclaimed “patriots” confronting law enforcement officers demanding they uphold their oaths to the Constitution notwithstanding they were doing exactly that.  At the risk of repetition, it was these “patriots” who sought the disruption of the very government prescribed in the Constitution. 

The transposition of surreality over mundane normalcy characterizes the present moment.  Life goes on as usual, but with a pervasive sense of dread.  And I am beginning to think there is (admittedly anecdotal) cause for worry.  A couple of years ago, just before the pandemic, I took a trip to Europe.  Not only was the flight delayed without explanation for nearly two hours after boarding, but we had to submit to two separate document checks before boarding.  Perhaps it was only a routine security precaution.  Perhaps it was a harbinger of future restrictions on Americans traveling abroad.  

Which brings me back to my deep-seated wish to check out of the mess our country has become. I fear my contrarian opinions may make that more difficult if not impossible as time goes on with the prospect of even more repressive measures.  I’ve learned having money of your own confers freedom, freedom which includes leaving home.  Security legislation since 9/11 has given the federal government greater oversight of bank accounts.  All of mine are in the U.S., which means my assets can be frozen or seized by the authorities on the slenderest of pretexts.  Goodbye, freedom.  Our sweet land of liberty may well become a lawless place where mobs of heavy-gutted, bearded white men armed with guns and superstition are calling the shots and where decent people will have no means of escape.  

More than ever in our contemporary history it has become a matter of us and them.  We are seemingly locked in a death embrace with our enemies at home and escape may no longer be no longer an option.  There is scant cause for optimism.

 

 

 

© 2022 The Unassuming Scholar

Headlong into the Past

 

It was only a coincidence, but a fitting one just the same.  This past week, I’ve been bingeing The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu.  Absently scrolling through my newsfeed as I watched, one headline caught my eye.  The U.S. Supreme Court has granted certiorari in a case involving a Mississippi statute banning abortion after the first fifteen weeks of pregnancy. 

While such a story is troubling under normal circumstances, the ideological shift of the federal judiciary to the right during the Trump administration provokes outright angst.  Before 2017, any ruling re Roe v. Wade was tempered by a reluctance to overturn it outright.  For instance, when Chief Justice John Roberts was undergoing his confirmation hearings in 2005 he noted that Roe was settled law. 

But perhaps not for much longer.  The influx of right-leaning judges into the federal courts, together with the new conservative SCOTUS supermajority, puts that into question.  A president’s lasting legacy are his judicial appointments.  In that sense, Donald Trump has created a threat to hard-won rights that will persist years after his tenure at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

The world of The Handmaid’s Tale is a funhouse mirror version of a right-wing utopia.  More to the point, it’s a reflection of present-day phenomena which, on a slippery slope, might result in something like it.  

Life in the postrevolutionary theocracy of Gilead is chockfull of slightly tweaked aspects of daily American life in 2021.  We have militarized law enforcement and omniscient public surveillance.  There is a growing tolerance of officially meted punishment in the guise of justice, with “othered” minorities particularly singled out.  Politicized evangelicals influencing public policy.  Propaganda and misinformation substituted for news.  

The series was especially prescient with Gilead’s backstory.  In the series universe, a terrorist attack against the White House and U.S. Capitol led to rule by decree by a cabal of religious fanatics. The Great Redneck Riot of January Sixth was an eerie evocation of an otherwise unthinkable event.  (Imagine what could have happened if the rioters had been organized…and planned ahead.) 

The rest of the quasi-fictional nightmare could be made more real through the law courts.  Central to the narrative of The Handmaid’s Tale is an unspecified environmental disaster affecting fertility rates.  Women who could still conceive were rendered as property, stripped of their old identities and forced into reproductive servitude to the male “commanders” who govern Gilead.  Although The Handmaid’s Tale is speculative fiction, it is also food for thought in the face of a gradual erosion of the personal rights gained by women over the past century.  

Concerning the pending abortion case, an outright overturning of Roe v. Wade seems attainable for the first time.  SCOTUS has bounded and further refined the legal protections afforded by Roe, but until now they remained comparatively slight.  No longer. 

Although it has no direct legal bearing on how the case is argued and decided, public opinion’s effect on politics cannot be ignored.  Over time I’ve detected a worrisome trend among my students, particularly the working class white males.  They are quite forward with their anti-abortion stance and their taste for authoritarian policies.  I think I know why.  Populist conservatism’s appeal stems from the feeling that the economic immiseration of white workers and America’s supposed loss of greatness is the result of our abandoning traditional values.  Traditional values which privilege men and subordinate women and people of color.  Things will get better if we just turn back the calendar.  After all, that’s what Jesus wants, right? 

The three most recently appointed justices were chosen with right-wing policy objectives in mind.  The views of Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett are no secret.  The touchstone issue, the long-running litmus test for the conservative base, is abortion. This in turn is prompted by a retrograde worldview informed by evangelical Christian tenets.  Taken literally, biblical law affirms ideas which privilege some and abuse many.  

Here is what is at stake.  Several states have enacted six-week abortion bans; a few more have passed bills imposing an outright ban in anticipation of Roe being overturned.  Should the Mississippi law be upheld, as it very well may, then we have taken the first step in rolling back equal rights for women.  We all must ask ourselves if this is the kind of society we want to live in.

If you want a nightmare vision of what that society may end up looking like if present trends persist, watch The Handmaid’s Tale. 

 

© 2021 The Unassuming Scholar

Disgrace

Nearly a week later, I am still in disbelief.  The events of January 6^th at the U.S. Capitol shock the conscience.

That is, if you have a conscience.  The redneck mob that assaulted the Capitol after being whipped into a frenzy by their lame duck President lacked this essential element of character.  The resulting melee hasn’t deterred the base; this morning an FBI bulletin released to the media warned of more armed demonstrations at the U.S. Capitol and all fifty state capitols.

The optics of the forcible occupation elude its perpetrators.  The death of a Capitol police officer and the injury of several more doesn’t seem to faze them.  Neither does the threatened prosecution of its identifiable culprits nor their loss of employment in some cases.

No, instead we hear about the San Diego woman shot to death by the police as she forced her way through a broken window.  Her husband described her as a “patriot,” a term debased by conservatives over the years and trampled in filth over the past four.  Although her death was unfortunate and perhaps even tragic, she nonetheless met her end committing a violent criminal act.

And to what end?  The mob delayed certification of the Electoral College vote by six hours and caused considerable damage to a national monument which will fall upon the taxpayers to repair.  Attempting to subvert a constitutional process, to undermine the United States Constitution itself, is the polar opposite of patriotism.  All identifiable participants should be prosecuted for sedition.

It’s unlikely they will.  White privilege will out.  The small police presence on Capitol Hill last Wednesday was rooted in an assumption that a demonstration by white people was not a potential threat.  Contrast this to last summer’s George Floyd protests, which were not only met by local law enforcement in the larger cities but by a constellation of state and federal police agencies and the National Guard to boot.

Consider the intentions of some of the invaders when we raise the question of penalties.  One had threatened to shoot Nancy Pelosi in the head on social media.  Another was photographed in the Senate chamber carrying zip tie handcuffs as if they planned to take hostages.  Then there was the gallows erected at the Capitol steps.  One could go on with like examples.

There is little doubt concerning the crowd’s sentiments, as evinced by the Confederate flags and Nazi paraphernalia about.  If you needed further convincing, take the bitter remark one woman made to Andrew McCormick of The Nation concerning the police.  “They’re shooting us,” she said.  “They’re supposed to shoot BLM, but they’re shooting the patriots.”

There you have it.  It’s law enforcement’s job to kill civil rights activists, not rioting white supremacists.  The destruction of a display honoring the late congressman John Lewis further underscores the racist nature of the insurrection.  In any case, the actions of law enforcement officers varied from actually doing their job defending the Capitol and its occupants, to making themselves scarce rather than confronting the assailants, to mingling with the rioters and posing for selfies with them. 

Meanwhile, buzz on the alt-right is framing the riot as a subversion.  It was the fault of the ever-elusive “outside agitators” and “antifa.”  The base continues to stick with is its narrative of deep-state conspiracies and pedophile elites.  No fable is too wild to be believed.

The Dems for their part, despite their victory at the polls, continue to flail impotently at the sociopath occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  The House is moving to impeach a President whose remaining time in office is down to mere days.  If they somehow succeed, and the Senate somehow convicts, the only effect will be to afford Mike Pence the distinction of serving the shortest presidential tenure in history.  Any attempt to invoke the 25^th Amendment is a nonstarter considering Pence’s refusal to even consider it combined with multiplying cabinet vacancies. 

January 20^th will be here soon enough.  Trump refuses to attend the inauguration, and it’s just as well.  But it’s foolish to assume the nightmare will end.  Talk of street protests in DC and elsewhere is rife, and will almost certainly take place.  Having had a taste of the potential havoc they can unleash militant rightists will feel empowered to repeat it.  Even as I write, Texas officials are concerned Trump’s visit to the border town of Alamo will lead to further violence.

For all their loud talk of freedom and love of country, the base poses an existential threat to our constitutional order and the liberties and rights it guarantees.  It’s doubtful many of them actually understand these.  Or care to.  I’m reminded of how common Russians welcomed the 1917 revolution believing that freedom meant absolutely no constraints on their behavior.  As we know, they were soon disabused of that notion, but I think a similar attitude animates the MAGA crowd.

It took almost four years, but I’m fully cognizant of how bad the situation truly is.  I never distrusted my own people until now.  The worst of it is there’s no escape.  We have so mismanaged the coronavirus pandemic that few countries will admit Americans.  I can’t even believe I’m entertaining thoughts of expatriating; I used to scoff at people who said they would leave if the candidate they opposed won.  Now I’m in the bizarre situation where I’m considering it myself, even after the guy I voted for won.  I want to live somewhere inhabited by sane people, if or when that becomes a possibility again.

In the meantime, it looks like the inmates will continue to run the asylum.  Don’t expect reason to prevail any time soon in the madhouse our country has become.

 

 © 2021 The Unassuming Scholar

Alone Together

The past months have been instructive as we endure an unforeseen emergency which has yet to show any sign of letting up.  If we believe the more pessimistic predictions, the future will be permanently altered and not for the better.

This is the third major crisis the country has faced in less than twenty years.  First there was 9/11, which itself came on the heels of the tech meltdown.  Next was the bursting of the housing bubble.  Now it’s the wide swath cut by an unseen killer bearing the awkward moniker SARS-CoV-2.

Being slightly north of fifty, I’m alarmed at the increasing frequency of these calamities.  Life in America has never been entirely secure for average people, but the worst thing I witnessed in my first three and a half decades were the stagflation and oil shocks of the 1970s.  Even if you throw in the domestic turmoil over Vietnam and Watergate, the difficulties of that era seem positively quaint in retrospect.

A sense of unity is essential for a society to meet extraordinary challenges.  What that means is a matter of one’s personal worldview, however.  For me, the closest example that comes to mind is Britain during the Second World War.  Confronted with an existential threat and living through years of material hardship, the British people met the challenge with plucky cheerfulness. 

A quick glance at your newsfeed or cable news will show instead that the fissures plaguing us before coronavirus have only deepened.  This should be surprising to no one.  The cultural and economic wars experienced by the past two or three generations have left us so divided the divisions may be irreparable.

Material satiety has done a lot to paper over these differences, but this has become less feasible as time has passed.  After the attacks on New York and Washington, George W.’s advice was to go shopping and visit Disney World.  We did, and the downturn quickly passed.  If you stayed employed through the Great Recession you probably came out okay; many of those who didn’t had yet to fully recover before the COVID-19 anvil landed on them.

Economic pressures are indisputably a factor driving the reopening controversy on the part of laid off workers and small business owners who abruptly lost their incomes.  But the great cultural divide in American life overshadows the coronavirus response as it does everything else.

A closer look at the news since March brings this conclusion into 20/20 focus.  Three and a half years of “fake” news accusations and “alternative facts” has made the discourse (if you can call it that) a bit unreal.  A local news channel interviewed churchgoers defying a closure order a couple of weeks ago.  One worshipper said he wasn’t concerned about the pandemic since for him it signaled the beginning of the End Times.  Another said he wasn’t worried because God would shield him.  Neither wore face masks.

Face masks have become an unlikely bone of contention of late.  If the opinion pieces I’ve read are any indication (and the President’s own statements echo this) it’s that being required to cover one’s face is a sign of weakness.  It is a form of forced submission, and so to go without a mask is an expression of one’s manhood.

Asinine?  Emphatically yes.  But there may be an added dimension to the pushback over masks.  An article in The Atlantic proposes that the reason so many white males on the Right reject masking is that it makes “vice signaling” difficult for them.  Put differently, covering their faces makes it less likely for them to receive credit for any public mischief they commit.

Vice signaling, as you’ve probably surmised, is the flipside of the conservative snarl phrase “virtue signaling.”  The MAGA contingent wants the world to witness its bad behavior and dares us to do something.  In the social media age, however, this can entail blowback as we have seen on recent two occasions.  Sadly, but unsurprisingly, both involve the deaths of black men.

The stalking and murder of Ahmaud Arbery is notable in that the perpetrators were so sure they would suffer no consequences that one of them recorded it on his phone for posterity.  The death of George Floyd at the hands (or, more precisely, knee) of a Minneapolis police officer this week was caught on camera by several onlookers.  One would think that the nauseating procession of public violence against people of color over the years would inhibit would-be race warriors and law-and-order thugs, but no.  Not only have they been emboldened, but they want the notoriety of going viral.

The Arbery and Floyd killings perversely demonstrate that while so much of our world has been upended some things do not change.  But as horrific as these deaths are, the extent to which the pandemic has disproportionately harmed minorities demands even more attention.  Not only are they more likely than whites to have the kind of underlying health issues making them vulnerable to COVID-19, they are less likely to have health insurance and are more likely to work in the essential jobs necessary to keep the country’s head above water.  The soft violence of social inequality will do far more harm to people of color over the pandemic than any random attacks on their young men. 

Throughout it all, I’ve been hunkered down at home.  I am one of the fortunate ones whose bosses have commanded to work from home.  I have ventured out twice since early March, once to the supermarket (before dumping my shopping needs upon gig workers via Instacart) and once to the bank.  Each time the world looked normal albeit with lighter traffic.  Everyone I interact with, few as they are and mostly limited to neighbors and the aforementioned delivery drivers, has been normal and even pleasant. My risk of infection is very low.  By all rights my only enemy should be boredom.

Yet, I continue to look at the world with trepidation. The antics of the Trump administration, its disingenuous minions, and its unhinged supporters have become less amusing and more appalling as this year’s election draws near.  I’ve assuaged my frustration with and distaste for daily life with occasional travel abroad, the future prospects for which are now remote.  Weeks of confinement, while tolerable, has also heightened a state of anxiety that sometimes drifts to the edges of paranoia. 

I thought I was immune to this; who knew?  I can’t be alone.  It’s our new normal.

© 2020 The Unassuming Scholar

A Paradise on Earth: Part 8 - Those Who Do Not Remember the Past...

Tragedies in America are ephemeral.  The information barrage brought by the 24/7 news cycle and social media gives little time to process before the next round of horrors manifests itself.

The demise of Peoples Temple happened in a simpler time, which is to say that the news media reported stories piecemeal as they collected and analyzed facts rather than breaking them in real time accompanied by anxiety-inducing speculation.  And so it was that the Jonestown story evolved over weeks, even in San Francisco as the city simultaneously coped with the assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk.

We like things simple.  In the popular mind, Peoples Temple was a cult whose fanatical leader led its members to their death.  Initial media depictions reinforced this.  A couple of years after Jonestown, the TV movie Guyana Tragedy offered a lurid depiction of Jim Jones and his Svengali-like hold on his followers.  The best thing about the film was Powers Boothe’s fine performance as Jones, but its historical veracity is flimsy.  Most of the published histories of Peoples Temple—Raven by Tim Reiterman, Our Father Who Art in Hell by James Reston, and A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres, to name but a few—tend to emphasize the cult-like nature of the Temple’s final years.

Shiva Naipaul offered an analysis drawing upon and reinforcing cultural perceptions of 1970s California in his work Journey to Nowhere (published as Black & White outside the U.S.)  Trinidadian-born Briton Naipaul (brother to V. S. Naipaul) begins his book with the last leg of his journey from London to Georgetown via Port of Spain immediately after the Jonestown disaster.  According to Naipaul, Guyana’s socialist leadership had created such severe shortages of everyday consumer goods that the passengers stole soap and toilet paper from the airplane’s lavatories before landing.  He strongly implies that Guyana would have been better off under continued British rule rather than suffer the inept governance of Forbes Burnham.  (Naipaul seems to have suffered what Frantz Fanon termed the colonized mind; a West Indian of East Indian extraction he was nonetheless an apologist for British cultural hegemony.)

Ensconced with other reporters at the Pegasus Hotel, Naipaul’s captious eye looked askance at the banalities of Christmas decorations, festive music, and his colleagues’ idle gossip around the swimming pool.  The daily press briefings yielded little information, and Naipaul decided to investigate the cultural milieu that produced Peoples Temple.  He was off to California.

Naipaul engaged in field research of a sort which brought him in contact with West Coast devotees of New Age beliefs, alternative religions, and other adherents of what remained of the 1960s counterculture.  He also delved into the question of what made a place like Guyana attractive to someone like Jim Jones.

Guyanese prime minister Forbes Burnham, who led the country from independence until his death in 1985, was perhaps typical of the first generation of postcolonial leaders.  His socialist ideology dovetailed well with the revolutionary orientation of Peoples Temple.  Carrying it out was challenging.  British Guiana had been an undeveloped backwater of the Empire.  Even today, Guyana lacks a skilled workforce and adequate physical infrastructure.  Agriculture, logging, and mining remain the leading industries.

Guyana’s racial politics might also have appealed to Jones.  The indigenous Amerindians mainly inhabited rural areas and were underrepresented in the political process.  However, there were deep divides between those of Afro-Caribbean ancestry who were particularly impoverished and the more prosperous South and East Asian merchant class.  Burnham’s party outmaneuvered that of his rival Cheddi Jagan before independence.  He achieved this partly with covert American help; the CIA ironically wanted to avoid a Guyana led by Jagan because Jagan had been a self-avowed Marxist earlier in his career.

Once in charge, Burnham’s politics veered leftward.  Burnham had an affinity with outsiders on the fringes of their own societies.  Peoples Temple wasn’t the only religious sect that settled in Guyana.  Another group of American emigrés was the House of Israel, led by one Rabbi David Hill (whose birth certificate was issued in the name of Edward Washington).  Still another group was the black nationalist organization The East, which sought expatriation from the U.S. and, like Jones, saw Guyana as the ideal place.  Self-proclaimed Trinidadian revolutionary Michael X, who had been a minor celebrity in Swinging London, sought refuge in Guyana after it was found out he had killed a rival and his girlfriend and buried their bodies his back yard. 

Forbes Burnham’s revolutionary solidarity did not extend to harboring common murderers.  Attempting to flee arrest in Georgetown, Michael X impulsively hiked into the dense forest, got lost, and wound up being apprehended at a remote police post.  He was extradited to Trinidad, tried, found guilty, and hanged in 1975.  (V. S. Naipaul would ponder the significance of the Michael X case in the essay “Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad,” having already based a character on him in his 1975 novel Guerillas, portraying him as a figment of his own rhetoric and the prevailing zeitgeist.)

Returning to Shiva Naipaul’s attempt to link Peoples Temple with the West Coast counterculture, I believe such ties are tenuous.  The largest segment of its membership was African American and older.  For most of the Temple’s history, they made up most of the congregation.  The move to California did coincide with the rise of the counterculture.  There, it began to attract younger, idealistic whites who were brought in by Jones’ commitment to civil rights.  Toward the end, in San Francisco, the congregation took in individuals who were alienated by the failed promises of the 1960s.

The kind of revolutionary agitation Jim Jones favored had fallen out of favor by the late 1970s.  Peoples Temple bucked the trends of the Me Decade and the mainstream culture’s inward turn toward hedonism.  Its adherents were a self-sacrificing sort who needed a spiritual succor the prevailing cultural trends could not offer.  The downside was this self-sacrifice was taken to its chillingly inevitable conclusion.  This conclusion was justified, sadly, by Jones’ misinterpretation of Huey Newton’s concept of “revolutionary suicide.”  Newton did not advocate actual suicide; he meant that it may be necessary on occasion for revolutionaries to give their lives in the fight against oppression.  Jones probably knew of this distinction, but at the end it made no difference for the residents of Jonestown.

But Peoples Temple’s spiritual core was not anchored in the delusions and hypocrisies of Jim Jones, but in the hearts of its members.  Annie Moore, one of Jonestown’s nurses and a member of the inner circle, left a last note before dying.  One must be careful when weighing the words and deeds of Jones’ intimates; Annie Moore may have been idealistic, but she was arguably a mass murderer for her role in concocting the poison.  Nevertheless, her parting note was particularly heartfelt, even plaintive.  She praised the Temple for its inclusiveness and for accepting those society rejected, and echoed Jones’ belief that they could no longer go on in this world: “We died because you would not let us live in peace.”

Jonestown did not exactly live up to the rainbows and unicorns picture Annie portrayed in the note, but was it the hell on earth its critics claimed?  I tend to think not.  Again, we need to look away from Jim Jones and at the society which formed around him.  Peoples Temple brought out the best in many of its adherents.  As an intentional community, in the Midwest, in California, and in the rainforest, it functioned better and longer than any number of contemporaneous attempts at utopia.  The Temple afforded spiritual comfort, its leader’s probable atheism aside, a belief in building a better world, and material security.  In the end, it was mutual devotion to their ideals and to each other that bound them together.

On one level, Peoples Temple reflects certain truths about us.  We Americans are a seeking people, to the point of excessive credulity.  There is something which draws us to the irrational.  Recent media reports point to Millennials’ rising interest in the occult, for instance.  A widespread distrust of science and a populist woo which produces phenomena like the anti-vaxxer movement are indicative of a collective suspension of disbelief toward even the most dubious claims.  Knowing this, it’s not unreasonable to ask whether a broadly-based religious movement centered around a charismatic leader such as Jim Jones could emerge today.

Probably not.  Peoples Temple was a product of its time and places (plural intended).  It’s hard to imagine a similar experiment emerging today when the idea of social justice is frequently ridiculed and the most visible religious tendency in America is a politicized evangelical Christianity fixated on exclusion and punishment.  Heightened racial distrust would also inhibit the appeal and growth of such a church.  Our excessive individualism and self-absorption would also work against it.  Its tragic end notwithstanding, the lives and deeds of Peoples Temple present a favorable contrast to the barren social landscape we presently inhabit.

© 2019 The Unassuming Scholar