From Within

This week marks six months of confinement for me.  Winter has turned to spring to summer and now to autumn.  From within four walls I’ve watched the world sink into madness.

The worst of it has been the senseless loss of people murdered simply going about their daily lives – Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd.  Then there are all the other maladies afflicting us at the moment.  The alt-right’s escalating provocations against civil rights protesters has made me increasingly uneasy as the November election draws nigh.  Wildfires are running amok in my part of the country, leaving the air thick with smoke and staining the sky an ominous orange hue.  Then there’s the pandemic, which shows no sign of abating and has already added several more months to my sentence now that my college has decided to stay “remote” through spring semester.

There are all kinds of things I could do outside which carry little or no infection risk, but I feel unmotivated.  Perhaps a more accurate description of my mindset is that I’m suffering an uncharacteristic agoraphobia that has gotten worse with time.  I miss being with others even as I dread any human interaction.  I pass the days in a state of free-floating anxiety.  I’ll doodle around the LMS for a couple hours, grade assignments, answer student emails, and violate the sanctity of my own home each Monday holding my required office hour on Zoom.  I’ve come to detest Zoom nearly as much as I’ve come to hate the phrase “unprecedented times.”

Watching the societal breakdown beyond my front door is my main pastime.  Divisions which seemed intractable before March have morphed into insurmountable fissures.  As events careen into bounded chaos, some verities about contemporary politics are made clearer. 

The first is that so-called post-truth politics have become the norm, at least on the right.  The “base” at this point will uncritically believe any crazy assertion put forth by the President, administration officials, or their pundit toadies.  Some examples from this week alone point up the trend.  There is the claim from U.S. Department of Health & Human Services official Michael Caputo that he received death threats because of his collusion with Trump to suppress information concerning the coronavirus pandemic.  Caputo then doubled down, stating there were left-wing “hit squads” ready to stage an armed insurrection to stop the President’s reelection.  He then advised people to “buy ammunition.” 

Another batshit statement that seems to have originated from a northwestern firefighting official and has since gone viral on Facebook is that “antifa” started the wildfires in Washington and Oregon.  (I’m amazed at how Facebook has gone from being a mindless timesuck for teens and twentysomethings to a mindless timesuck for aging wingnuts.)   

If the origin of the antifa arson rumor is true, it can only erode trust in public safety workers.  Law enforcement seems particularly fertile ground for the QAnon conspiracy fad, though we’ve only had small, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it clues.  In July, the NYPD union president gave an on-air interview to Fox News with a QAnon coffee mug visible in the background.  Last year a Broward County sheriff’s deputy was photographed greeting Vice President Pence with a QAnon patch visible on his tactical vest.  Another unnerving trend is the appearance of the Punisher logo on tactical police vehicles, no question about the intended message there. 

The juxtaposition of QAnon and other alt-right phenomena with the agencies tasked with keeping us safe is troubling.  Right-wing hysteria over Black Lives Matter and antifa illustrate the true role of policing.  The right has all but conceded that law enforcement’s mission is not about protecting and serving all citizens equally, but to defend the propertied classes and act as an occupying force dedicated to enforcing white hegemony.  

The personality types disproportionately drawn to law enforcement reflect an authoritarian streak as it is.  Some are cruel or indifferent to cruelty.  For instance, I recently had a student who had just gotten out of the military.  She was beginning work on a criminal justice degree with an eye toward joining the local police department after graduation.  During a classroom discussion about Abu Ghraib and the Detainee Treatment Act, I noted that torture is considered an ineffective interrogation technique.  My student countered that her NCOs had taught her differently.  It appears my student and her sergeants had slept through their mandatory Geneva Convention trainings.  It also left me asking myself just what kind of police officer she would be.  I suspect I’ll be reading about her in the news someday.  

The valorization of armed violence is as old as American culture.  To be more specific, it’s armed violence by Christian white males that we glorify.  Let’s consider the attitudes of the police to the rise in vigilantism.   The 17-year-old boy who shot three protestors in Kenosha, killing two, walked unchallenged through a police cordon carrying a semiautomatic weapon.  He seemed to be under the delusion that he was there to assist law enforcement, and the nonchalant attitude of the cops did nothing to dissuade him.  After the shooting he walked away, again unchallenged, got in his car, and calmly drove home to Chicago.   

Part of me wants to make allowances for the Kenosha shooter’s youth.  But what can we say about the motives of his adult defenders?  President Trump claimed the shooter acted in self-defense, never mind that the fact he came armed and was presumably looking for trouble.  Then there’s the legal defense fund started on a “Christian” fundraising platform which has netted nearly $1 million so far.  The soliciting organization is #FightBack.  This lovely band of trolls proclaims their mission is to “fight back for [a] forgotten America,” notwithstanding the high media profile of said forgotten.  

Time for an aside.  It comes as no surprise that Christian groups are rallying to the shooter’s defense.  Christianity of the evangelical Protestant strain is inextricably bound up with the American right.  The various churches may differ in theology, but their shared ideology emphasizes exclusion and punishment to a degree that can be construed as poorly veiled white supremacism.  Considering that the months of protests arose from civil rights abuses against people of color, their support for a killer of protesters causes the veil to slip further.  

Back to the vigilante problem.  As we have seen, law enforcement has no problem turning a blind eye if they use force against their own preferred targets.  And the problem isn’t new.  George Zimmerman’s acquittal of murdering Trayvon Martin foreshadowed much of what we’re currently seeing.  Of course, being white doesn’t afford absolute protection against violations of civil liberties and civil rights by both official and non-official actors.   

The militarized response to the protesters has emboldened the aggressive element always present among the political right.  One example from this week’s news involves an NPR news crew covering the Oregon firefighting effort.  They were run off public land by armed men who did not identify themselves and probably had as much authorization to be near the fire zone as the reporters.  Another example are reports that armed men are setting up unauthorized roadblocks along evacuation routes, potentially endangering evacuees.

Although isolated incidents, they demonstrate entitlement on the part of civilians being allowed to intimidate their fellow citizens with impunity.  The official stance toward the proliferation of paramilitary “patriot” groups resembles that of the German authorities toward the Freikorps immediately following the First World War.  Rather than being sanctioned for their extralegal actions, they are regarded as allies in preserving the existing order.  As we stumble blindly toward the November election, this stance carries the potential of emboldening further violence against vulnerable populations regardless of the outcome at the polls.   

© 2020 The Unassuming Scholar