Breaking Points

We now have a name to go with the deed. 

After several days of withholding his identity, the Pentagon has announced that the alleged perpetrator of last week’s massacre in Afghanistan is a soldier named Robert Bales.  We’re told that Bales, an Army staff sergeant with eleven years’ service, left his base camp without authorization on the night of March 11^th, went into the villages of Balandi and Alkozai, Panjwai, Kandahar Province, and murdered sixteen civilians in their homes.  Another five were reported wounded in the attack.    

Most of the news accounts I’ve read and watched this week have been concerned with the attack’s potential consequences for U.S.-Afghan relations and future NATO operations in Afghanistan.  Never mind the human rights of the victims; already they have become abstractions in our foreign policy calculus.  To be sure there are diplomatic causes for concern not least of which was the surreptitious spiriting of Bales first to Kuwait, then to the United States.   The Panjwai massacre may very well be the breaking point in our relations with Afghanistan.  The Taliban have already broken off negotiations with the Karzai administration over the incident, further setting back prospects for peace and the Obama Administration’s objective of withdrawing U.S. combat forces by 2014.   

But, back to Robert Bales.  News reports state that he had served three previous deployments, all of them in Iraq.  Assuming that the deployments were at least a year in length, Bales’ time in war zones nearly equals that of America’s involvement in the Second World War.  When you consider that the majority of our World War II service members never saw anything approaching that much time in combat, this fact takes on a certain significance.  Add to this the knowledge Bales had suffered a traumatic brain injury in Iraq and was diagnosed with PTSD, and he becomes an object example of the human toll of our post-9/11 wars.

None of this excuses his crimes.  But I can already see how this is going to play out in the arena of public opinion.  Our political and military leaders will do their best to minimize the incident as an aberration.  The mainstream media is already framing Bales’ acts as the tragic-but-inevitable consequence of a punishing operational tempo and inadequate military medical and mental health services.  There will inevitably be more than a few self-proclaimed “patriots” who will portray Bales as a wronged hero.  But I think the incident will quickly fade from our collective consciousness.  In the coming days and weeks, other news stories will claim our attention.  I doubt that the people of Afghanistan will forget quite as soon.    

We cannot simply write off the Panjwai killings as the deeds of a man pushed past his limits or as something out of character for us as a people.   Even though Bales’ acquaintances say he wasn’t prejudiced against Muslims, our culture reflected a strong anti-Muslim bias long before the September 11^th attacks.  When you consider our mindless propensity for conflating the words “Muslim” and “terrorist,” the spate of civilian murders by American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last few years was probably inevitable.  As it is, our faith in our national superiority causes us to take a dim view of other cultures.  When we are armed and among people we have been conditioned to hold in contempt, it takes little provocation to produce a tragedy.  

Considering the larger implications of Panjwai, it’s little use at this juncture to speak of our image in the Muslim world.  The United States, along with Britain and France, squandered its credibility there generations ago.  I suspect the most galling thing for people in the Middle East and in Central Asia is the glaring disconnect between Western democratic ideals and Western actions.  Americans like to claim they are bringing democracy to the oppressed.   Yes, Afghans were oppressed by the Taliban.  It’s true that the Taliban’s harboring of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda posed a threat both to the region and the rest of the world.  But a decade into our occupation of Afghanistan, can we really say its people are any better off?  Has anything fundamentally changed to make our conception of democracy a reality in Afghan society? Outside of Kabul, traditional ways continue as they have for centuries.  Pashtun culture is rooted in local custom and familial ties, rendering the kind of state-building pushed by the U.S. and its allies ineffective.  (The fate of the 1980s communist regime after the Soviet withdrawal is a grim example of what might befall Karzai’s after ISAF departs.)   Regardless of whether or not the Taliban ultimately return to power, there are timeless qualities in Afghan society which militate against exogenous change.  Perhaps it’s best that we finally learn the lesson the Afghans have been trying to teach the West since the “Great Game” of the nineteenth century and leave them at last to their own affairs.       

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar

Too Good to Be True?

Once in a while, something in the news gives me renewed hope for the world: Misogynistic tool Tucker Max said in a recent Forbes article that he’s forsaken his über-frat-boy lifestyle and gone into therapy…    

Slut

I’ve never understood the popularity of Rush Limbaugh.  I’ve always found him loud, pompous, and graceless.  So, it didn’t surprise me in the least this week to learn that Limbaugh had once more jammed his foot firmly in his mouth. 

The occasion for Mr. Limbaugh’s latest faux pas was the congressional testimony of one Sandra Fluke, a law student at Georgetown University, in support of the White House’s proposed contraception mandate for healthcare providers.  Limbaugh, in the midst of his long-winded invective over her appearance, called Ms. Fluke a “slut.”  He’s since apologized, albeit feebly, and almost certainly in response to being dropped by several of his sponsors.

I know next to nothing about Sandra Fluke.  In fact, like much of the rest of the world, I’d never heard of her until a few days ago.  However, Rush Limbaugh’s savaging of her reputation for the entertainment of his listening audience underscores yet again the erosion of civility in our culture.  Nowhere is this decline more evident than in the static-filled intellectual wasteland navigated with the AM radio dial.   

Conservative talk radio is gangster rap for pissed off middle-aged white males.  It’s their primal scream, their cri de coeur, the death rattle of dying privilege.  Rush Limbaugh’s persona is tailor-made to appeal to his audience, who look upon him as the arch-avenger of their long-nursed grievances.  Limbaugh was in rare form the other day, even hauling out his shopworn “feminazi” epithet to hurl at Ms. Fluke.  

It doesn’t take a discerning eye to read the subtext of Limbaugh’s message.  Like other men seeking to parry (or roll back) the gains made by women, Limbaugh promotes feminine virtue as an instrument of social oppression.  If women have access to birth control, this means they might actually have sex!  And if they’re having sex, you know what that makes them.   Limbaugh’s claim of satirical intent rings hollow when you actually read or hear what he said.  He’s clearly angry at the thought of a woman who doesn’t know her place.

It’s no surprise this subject arouses Limbaugh’s ire.  Feminists have advocated contraception since the movement’s early days.  The efforts of pioneers such as Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes, and Katharine Dexter McCormick to divorce childbearing from sex were part and parcel with their desire for equality.  Readily available contraception was the surest way women could free themselves from the social confines of kinder, küche, kirche.  

Indeed, the advent of reliable birth control is often credited for the success of second-wave feminism during the 1960s and 70s.  However, the benefits of safe contraception are enjoyed not only by women but by society as a whole.  If the advantages of personal liberty don’t convince you, consider the matter from a cost-benefit standpoint.  When you weigh the social costs of unwanted pregnancies, the gains from funding family planning services, including birth control medications and devices, make it fiscally pragmatic.  It’s almost…conservative…in its simplicity. 

It’s quite doubtful any arguments along this line would ever convince Rush Limbaugh or the dittoheads of this, but that is no reason for people of sense to stop making them.  I, for one, am thankful Sandra Fluke has the courage of her convictions.               

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar

On the Clock

Not too long ago, I was sitting in a restaurant when I overhead the conversation at an adjoining table.  The topic was work.  More precisely, the topic was employee management and one of the diners holding forth on it was some HR type who was taking a hard line.

“An employee came up to me and said he was stressed over management’s expectations,” she said.  “I told him he should be stressed.”

The HR type sat back with the smug satisfaction that she had put the guy in his place.  Nearby, I was quietly seething.

Ever since the recession began (yes, I know, the economists tell us it ended a while back, but it still feels as if we’re deep within it), workers have been understandably feeling under the gun.  The prospect of losing everything you’ve earned in life to unemployment is a powerful goad to hold on to your job no matter what.  The consequence is that working conditions, particularly in the service and manufacturing sectors, have deteriorated.

The capitalist ideal has always been to simplify tasks and treat workers as barely sentient livestock.  Frederick Winslow Taylor is the patron saint of this movement. 

Taylor was an engineer who developed a theory of scientific management in the late nineteenth century.  His basic idea was rooted in the premise that employers should maximize their workers’ labor potential.  Managers could achieve greater efficiency by reducing wasted motion.  This goal was particularly achievable with the simplest menial jobs. 

Taylor tested his idea on an immigrant worker in a steel mill.  He had learned that the worker, despite hefting pig iron all day, nevertheless had sufficient energy at the day’s end to build a house for himself on his off time.  Taylor decided that if this was the case, the worker had to be slacking on the job.      

Taylor told the worker that he could earn more if he consented to Taylor directing and timing his every move.  As a result of what was probably the first time and motion study in American business, Taylor was able to streamline tasks so that the worker was able to do more work faster.  It is unrecorded whether the worker had enough stamina left over to finish his house.

In theory, scientific management techniques benefit management and labor alike by increasing productivity and profits.  The reality is that treating employees as labor units rather than as human beings and suppressing initiative by directing every aspect of work inculcates intangible social costs.  By imposing autocratic control over individuals, management stifles their ability to organize.  Each worker ends up living in isolated alienation, absorbed in the sundry distractions of daily life.

With the slow death of the New Deal consensus on the cross of Reaganism, working conditions are reverting to a postmodern version of the early industrial age.  Our culture reflects a rising anxiety manifested in an eagerness to please, and not only in the service economy.  Literally or figuratively we’re all hanging around hoping for a tip, counting on the capricious generosity of the affluent.   White collar work still affords a certain degree of autonomy, but many of even those jobs are subject to some form of micromanagement.  Still, it’s at the bottom rung of unskilled work that we see the worst abuses.

Mac McClelland’s Mother Jones exposé of warehouse work at an e-commerce fulfillment center is depressingly illustrative of how Taylorism pervades the 21^st century workplace.  McClelland, of course, wasn’t reliant on this position for her livelihood.  But what about those of us with no other alternative?  Walking a tightrope without a safety net, lacking retirement and healthcare coverage, unable to take sick days or even bathroom breaks without fear of losing our job?  This is the reality for millions of American workers, and it doesn’t look as if it will get better.

One reason is that the overall employment situation remains precarious, and many workers simply can’t pick and choose the kind of work they do.  Outsourcing and offshoring of jobs remains the norm in many industries.  Strangely, one trend that had been undermining manufacturing in the U.S. has begun to reverse itself.  The “race to the bottom” that sent factory jobs to China and India is slowing.  In fact, manufacturing jobs are returning.  Why?  Because wages have fallen and benefits cut or eliminated, it’s actually becoming cheaper to make stuff here in the good ol’ U.S. of A than it is overseas.  In other words, we're competing with developing countries by making our workforce resemble theirs as much as possible.  Even then, manufacturing jobs as a percentage of the overall workforce have fallen to 8.5% in 2012 compared to 18.3% in 1980.[1] 

It’s fashionable among conservatives these days to accuse progressives of waging “class warfare.”  Really?  It’s the owners and their minions who initiated the class war, one of soft violence against labor.  Instead of using police, National Guard troops, and hired thugs to enforce labor discipline as in the past, today’s employers use the law, the public policy process, and pleas of economic necessity to accomplish their objective.  Right-to-work laws hobble organizing efforts.  At-will employment preserves the pretense of an arms-length contractual agreement while favoring the employer by virtue of the scarcity of jobs.  Corporations move to red states for their lower taxes, reduced tax rates ironically subsidized by federal transfer payments funded by blue state taxpayers.  In this climate it's inevitable that workers are treated as interchangeable, disposable units.  If they suffer, it’s for the greater good, it's the wisdom of the free market, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, etc., etc.             

This “let them eat cake” attitude has to go.  Why shouldn’t the HR woman in the restaurant worry a little for once?  Why shouldn’t she lose sleep?  The day when that happens is a long way off.  Change does not come from above.  Until workers regain class consciousness, organize, and fight back, the malignant ghost of Frederick Winslow Taylor will continue to haunt the American workplace and the dehumanization of workers will go on and our society is all the poorer for it.

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar

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[1] Extrapolated from Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Afghan Unrest

More than a decade into the U.S.-led occupation of Afghanistan, it seems we're still learning (or relearning) hard lessons.  This time it's the alleged burning of the Koran by troops at Bagram airbase, and the results have been tragic.

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind...

Faculty Meeting at Snowflake College

I like to think I’m someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly.  Unfortunately, I’ve pretty much been ordered to.

It’s time for the semiannual faculty meeting at Snowflake College, a perfunctory affair held each semester the week before classes begin.  The agenda never changes: Although most of the folks in the room are returning faculty, the meeting is a review of basic administrative procedures, library hours, operating the classroom audiovisual equipment, etc.  

The main draw for me is that 1) It’s a paid training, and 2) The college provides dinner.  Three hours’ pay and free food?  Just for sitting and listening?  I’m there, dude!  I don’t care how many times I’ve heard this stuff.

As the sign-in sheet is passed around, Dean Kimpossible outlines the evening’s program.  She introduces the new faculty and the courses they’ll be teaching, offerings which afford our students opportunities for personal growth to augment such perennial favorites as Eidetic Portrait Painting, Indonesian Tribal Dance, and Tantric Navel Gazing.  Kimpossible solemnly reminds us it’s precisely this sort of curriculum that makes Snowflake College uniquely suited to educating a new, more discerning generation of students.

Kimpossible recognizes a few of the returning faculty, most notably Professor Duckie, the Most Popular Faculty Member at Snowflake.  A twentysomething only in his third year teaching, Duckie is beloved by faculty, staff, and students alike.  Rumor has it he’s gotten more chili peppers on Rate My Professors.com than any other prof at Snowflake, ever.  He invites his students to send him friend requests on Facebook.  He’s agreeable and apparently charismatic which of course gives everything he says added weight.  The fact that you could wade through his deepest thoughts and not get your ankles wet is something that seems to have escaped almost everyone in the room, which goes to show that cultivated superficiality will get you far even in academia.

After sitting through several pro forma presentations by our colleagues, the dean shifts the topic to academics.  Kimpossible’s teaching philosophy is informed by her recruitment brochure vision for Snowflake: Carefree youth in dreadlocks and tie dye playing hackeysack on the front lawn before traipsing off to tatami mat weaving class.  And so we’ve now reached that point in the evening’s proceedings where Kimpossible takes a moment to share her views.  We raise our metaphorical paper cups and prepare to drink the rhetorical Kool-Aid:

“Our students are ‘digital natives.’” (Translation: They’re adept at texting and updating their Facebook pages in class, and yet somehow can’t figure out how to access the course’s online content.)

“Our students don’t want to be lectured.  They are ‘knowledge explorers,’ and your job is to be their guide.”  (They want to do the least amount of work for the highest possible grade.  Your job is to be engaging and entertaining.)   

“Our students are idealistic.”  (Ideally, they would spend all their time on the ski run while Daddy and Mommy pay their bills.)       

“Our students have a different orientation toward work than our generation.”  (They don’t like it.)

“Our students know what they want and live by their values.”  (They have an exaggerated sense of entitlement and will angrily confront anyone who challenges it.  And that includes you, my dear professor.)

At this point Kimpossible pauses a beat, then delivers the punch line:

“Of course, you are responsible for maintaining Snowflake College’s high academic standards.”

Ay, there’s the rub!  Since our students’ exceptionalism is axiomatic, standards are pretty much moot.  I’d like someday to walk into my classroom and not feel like I’m in that Twilight Zone episode about the bratty kid who banishes the grownups he doesn’t like to the cornfield. 

Wait, we’re not quite finished yet.  Kimpossible closes the proceedings by reminding us why we’re all here.  She reads us an email from a student who recently transferred to Big State University:

           “Hey, Kimpossible!

           “Just wanted to tell you how I’m doing now that I’m at Big State. 

“The teachers here don’t care about students.  They’re not cool like at Snowflake.

“They expect me to come to class and do homework and stuff.  This jerkwad professor wouldn’t let me make up an exam even though there was six inches of fresh powder on the slopes and I had to go snowboarding that day.

           “It totally sucks here!”

Kimpossible pauses dramatically to make sure the full meaning of this travesty sinks in. 

“‘It…sucks…here!’” she intones slowly.  “Always remember how special it is at Snowflake.  I’m proud we can provide such a nurturing environment…and I’m thankful we have such students!” 

And with that, we’re dismissed for the evening.  Welcome to another semester at Snowflake College!

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar

A Lament for a Lost Movement

I was born and raised in a “blue” state, and I live there still.  However, I also spent my childhood in a small rural town.  Coming of age during the Reagan era, I absorbed a lot of the conventional wisdom of the time.

Given my upbringing, it’s no surprise I developed progressive views relatively late.  But having lived through the past decade, I’m amazed that more people haven’t turned leftward.  In fact, I’ve been hard pressed to find a place where my neighbors share my ideas. 

For the last few years I’ve lived in a mountain resort community where I teach at the local college.  When I first arrived in Treetop (not its real name), it seemed like just the nice, free-thinking sort of place I’d been searching for.  I hoped to find friends who thought and felt as I do.  I thought it might be the where I’d realize a long-nurtured ambition to start a free alternative school.  I yearned to breathe free in the clean alpine air.

Treetop does have a reputation for having a free-spirited, youthful, alt vibe.  What I discovered underneath, however, was a pretty typical small town, right down to the weekly Rotary, Kiwanis, and Lions Club breakfast meetings.  The conversation at the wine and cheese parties differs little from what you’d hear in the suburbs.  Town ordinances ensure that one downtown building looks much like all the others.  

I shared my misgivings with an acquaintance, telling her I wished Treetop was more socially progressive.  She was taken aback.  “But Treetop is very progressive,” she protested.  “We have snowboarders, artists, and yoga studios.  I listen to NPR and read The Huffington Post every morning!”

I didn’t bother to argue.  While Treetop isn’t exactly the kind of place Sinclair Lewis would have satirized, neither is it a refuge for aspiring bohemians or dissidents.  My exchange with the neighbor underlines an important fact of American political life.  Progressivism is a fringe movement, probably more so than at any other time in our history.  Oh, we have a loose cultural tolerance we call liberalism.  But being a liberal is largely a matter of style over substance, just another meaningless fashion statement.  I blame this on the legacy of the 1960s.  More precisely, I blame it on people taking away the wrong lessons from that era.  The individualistic, do-your-own-thing, let-it-all-hang-out countercultural ethos seeped into the mainstream without transforming the soul of “square” society.  This is why you have kids today with long hair, tattoos, and body piercings who vote Republican and unabashedly seek business careers.   

The biggest roadblock to reviving progressivism is our essential, small “c,” conservatism.  We don’t like change.  We stubbornly believe individual initiative and hard work conquer all.  Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, we think the system is basically fair and should stay the way it is.  Most importantly, we don’t want to lose whatever social and economic privileges we’ve managed to hold on to.   In short, our national narrative and decades of propaganda have convinced us progressivism just isn’t a good idea.  It helps explain why the Occupy movement has failed to take off.  It hasn’t been police repression or official harassment.  It's been public skepticism and apathy.

So, what’s the solution?  In my humble opinion:

What we need is a compelling counter-narrative.  We need to take back the symbolism and heroes of our past.  We need to remind ourselves of the taken for granted gains made by our forebears.  We must let go of our preconceived notions.  This is easier said than done, but I believe it has to happen.  It may be a bridge too far to win over older generations whose members feel they have too much to lose.  Perhaps we can count on the open mindedness of youth to rebuild the movement.

To build a future movement, we have to look to the past.  We must revisit the experience of the 1960s New Left, the political movement that faded into historical oblivion even as the decade’s music and fashion became cultural icons.  Our goal should be nothing short of a revival of the New Left.   This next New Left must not simply engage in activism.  It must win the cultural war against reaction and corporate hegemony.  It will have to rely on moral suasion to remake our basic cultural values.              

This last charge – to fundamentally remake our collective beliefs – is the most critical and the most difficult.  I’ll mull the possibilities in a future post.

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar