Brown, Garner, et. al. post #3: If it's all about power, why are we talking about race?

So we've established now that the arguments surrounding the logistics of the cases - the condemnations of Brown and, to a lesser extent, Garner, and the lack of impeachment of the police officers who killed them - are actually arguments about power.  But this does leave alone those arguments about race that get made, where the Right says race isn't a part of it, and the Left says it is, and people roll out statistics to back up their claims either way.  I certainly believe the statistics of the Left more than the Right, but we believe the statistics we want to believe, so let's ignore them for a moment...

We need to understand that the argument about power is deeper than simply the cause of fear via abuse.  Power is wielded constantly by the powerful to help maintain that power.

This is something inherently understood by most people.  We can all imagine a corporate CEO who wheels and deals with a board of directors to make sure s/he keeps his/her job when the company seems to be doing badly.  We can also imagine politicians who ignore threats from independent candidates to focus on candidates from their rival political parties, thereby showing the voting populace that only the two parties' candidates are legitimate.  We can imagine easily both parties being owned by financial interests, as Gore Vidal famously said:

I have been saying for the last thousand years that the United States has only one party—the property party. It’s the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican.

It isn’t an opposition party. I have been saying for the last thousand years that the United States has only one party—the property party. It’s the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican. - See more at: http://www.progressive.org/mag_intv0806#sthash.ndT4BMLU.dpuf

Regardless of whether you vote Democrat or Republican, you're always voting in favor of big corporations.  The specific corporations these parties support are somewhat irrelevant.  People vote based on non-corporate decisions - such as fears over Ebola and terrorism, fears about climate change, fears about abortion and homosexuality (either for or against), but the first thing a party does when it comes into power is to change laws in favor of their big corporate donors.  Need proof?  Look at the tax bills that passed the senate and house, which rolled back the consumer protections of Dodd-Frank we put in place after the economic crash of 2008.  Banks didn't want those changes, so they funded people who would change them. 

By keeping the conversation merely two-sided, these parties set up a false dichotomy that causes conversations outside of the dichotomy to become irrelevant.  That is, they take what ideally should be a false premise - that a third party candidate cannot be elected - and then they throw money into arguments with each other and ignore outside arguments, which prevents the third party candidate from getting valid and free attention that the inside-party candidates get, and they force the premise to be true as a result.  And we, the voters, believe their premise and vote for the parties accordingly.  By naming ourselves as "Republican" or "Democrat," we identify more and more with their policies, and defend them when they do things we didn't want.

This is how power maintains itself - by focusing conversations in such a way is to invalidate the non-powerful.

Racism is nothing if not a tool of the powerful.  Racism is, in essence, a way of separating "self" and "other."  For white Americans like myself - and we are still the majority - racism means promoting our power over that of other races, and assuming that those races are trying to actively usurp or derail that power.  We see this in obscure ways...

In the case of Garner, we see a fight between corporate and individual power.  The corporation has a vested interest in maintaining sales, and so it packages cigarettes in bulk for sale.  Individuals who cannot afford a full pack, but who are nonetheless addicted, must either suffer through that addiction or save enough for a pack.  There is no way to casually smoke.  Corporate power, already made powerful by way of a huge mountain of cash, is codified into the law by making the selling of individual cigarettes illegal.  There is no essential crime behind the selling of loose cigs - that is, there is nothing different between the selling of an individual cigarette and a pack of cigarettes beyond three things - the surgeon general's warning, the age of the purchaser, and the protection of the corporation.  Since the law doesn't specify that loose cigs can be sold if the surgeon general's warning is provided, and if the age of the purchaser is verified, we can assume that the law is really about the third issue. In this way, the corporation has greater protection under the law than the individual.

And, since poverty is still largely racial - that is, it affects black people more than white people - and poverty is a large driver behind the need to purchase loose cigs, we can also see how the law protects the rich more than the poor and whites more than blacks.

We see this repeated throughout society across all laws, but especially drug laws.  For some statistics, I'll turn to an admittedly-biased source - but, since they're statistics, they should be fairly safe from bias (the takeaway from them might not be, but let's limit that at the moment):

African Americans represent 12% of the total population of drug users, but 38% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 59% of those in state prison for a drug offense. (source)

So, our entire criminal justice system is slanted heavily against blacks. We already know this.

We also know that police systems are nothing if not power systems - that is, they are the enforcement arm, at the local level, of the state power structure.  Because power systems have a need to continue maintaining power, they also have a vested interest in protecting members of the power system who abuse that power (See parts 1 & 2 of this article for more info on that).  And, because power systems were established by mostly white people, they reflect white values of power, which largely inhibit black power by way of making illegal things that are available to black people and taking away systems that might change that balance of power (such as public schooling and public assistance for college, which have both been declining). 

That all explains why blacks are the victims of power itself more, but is that true of police power?

Well, take a look back at an article I wrote in August.  There, I talk about the perception of "thuggery" and link to an article that reveals that blacks are killed by police at an alarming rate.  That perception of thuggery, I think, is the key to why this might be the case. 

We have a cultural perception that blacks are more likely to be criminals than other races.  It's actually true, sadly.  Violent crime is where that distinction is most marked, as the number of black people who commit murder each year is 6 times higher, per capita, than whites (source).  But this is a problem of perception - while blacks do commit more murders than whites, the rate is still "only" 20 per every 100,000 people - meaning that 99.9998% of all blacks in America are not murderers.

This cultural perception is a two-part problem: first, it started with perceptions way back in slavery times that whites used to reinforce their feelings of superiority over their slaves, a kind of self-created authority allowing them to keep slaves without violating their morals; second, it got reflected in the media.  See, something "we all know" is that the media is a fear-mongering propaganda machine, overemphasizing dangers we face ostensibly as a way of informing us of how to protect ourselves, while at the same time using that fear to make obscene profits.  The logic of the news media is now circular - it will only report on stories people want to watch, but people only want to watch stories that agree with the things they already believe, and they already believe those things because they have seen them on the news.  In such a way, it consistently reinforces its own beliefs of racial power, including ideas of black violence and criminality. 


So, with the perception of criminality in place, police naturally and subconsciously react to it.  It's impossible not to.  It's the natural result of power.

Power is always racist.

Conceid

Imagine, if you will, that you're a straight man.  It's easy for me to imagine, of course, and there's a reasonably good chance (somewhere around 43%) that it'll be somewhat natural for you to imagine as well. 

As a straight man, you know one very important thing about sexuality: women are hot.  Not all women, necessarily, but many.  There are aspects that you might use to identify a woman that you would also identify as being attractive to you: breasts, slender legs, diminutive features when compared to an adult man, long hair, large eyes, high cheekbones, red lips or cheeks, and so on.  Your specific definition might be unique to you (perhaps you like women with mohawks, or women who've had amputations; I don't know), but you'll likely identify with several "standard" ideas of what's attractive in a woman.  We agree so well on these that scientists have produced ideal ratios of attractiveness (If you measure the distance from the top of a woman's head to the bottom, the distance between her eyes and lips should be 36% of that first distance for optimal attractiveness; similarly the distance between eyes is 46% of total width - Link).

It's easy, as a straight man, to see what other straight men see in a beautiful woman.  It is also easy to understand what a gay woman might see in another woman.  It is quite easy for us to understand homosexuality in women, even if we might dislike it for fear of its extracting women from the pool of eligible mates (yes, that's how I actually thought back in my older, dumber days).

But homosexuality in males is another matter.  It's difficult for a straight man to see another man as sexually attractive, even if the other man is physically attractive - that is, I can readily admit to the physical attractiveness of your Brad Pitts and George Clooneys of the world, but difficult if not impossible to translate that understanding into an understanding of someone's sexual desire for them. 

As a result, we deny their physical sexuality by virtue of their attractiveness, and ascribe sexuality to other factors - fame, money, prestige, strength, masculinity, and so on.  We assume that a woman who is interested in them must be interested in them for one of those reasons (aka, "gold diggers") rather than physical attractiveness. 

We take this even further when trying to understand homosexual men's attraction to another man, and assume either femininity on the part of the attractee - that is, the more masculine male in the relationship is attracted to the more feminine male because of his femininity; the more feminine male is projecting his own femininity by searching for a more masculine partner.  (This is the assumption behind the "pitcher and catcher" cliche.)  When seeing a gay man alone, who does not possess any obvious (read: stereotypical) gay traits, we may search for other causes, such as a missing father figure (the need for non-sexual male bonding being mistaken for sexual male bonding). 

Regardless, the reason can never be simple physical attraction.

And, as you can hopefully see, these are exactly the points we all generally agree with - that is, unless we know we have things incorrect and have investigated them to draw them out, we take these points at face value, and they drive a lot of our conversations about each other.

Which is a backwards way of saying that everything we think about sexuality and what is attractive and what assigned roles people are filling within this complex story are all directly derived from that initial premise: that the actor and subject creating these definitions is a straight male. 

Brown, Garner, et. al. post #2: We're still assuming it's not about race...

What is left unsaid in both of my critiques is the undertone of each...

The undertone of the Randian argument is fear that someone who is unbound by the law will be able to do those things which I (if I were a conservative), being bound by the law, only wish I could do.

The undertone of the quid-pro-quot argument is that I (as a liberal) recognizing that quid-pro-quo happens constantly in matters unrelated to law enforcement, fear it happens there as a protection of police who have used and will, as a result of a lack of punishment, continue to use physical abuse against various people, myself included.

Both are based in a common fear: powerlessness.  We are primordially afraid of people who have power over us because we see examples of that power being abused every time we turn on the news.

Case in point - the language of gun rights activists:
In a home invasion in Georgia, CNN tells us, a man used a crowbar to break in, and the female homeowner, hiding with her children in the attic, unloaded on him when he opened the door.  The response by gun rights activists was completely typical for what we've seen on national media many times before:

"It's a good thing she wasn't facing more attackers. Otherwise she would have been in trouble and she would have run out of ammunition," said Erich Pratt, director of communications for the Gun Owners of America.

Don't you hate it when your home is broken into by roving gangs of marauders?  Yeah, me too. 

Statistics on invasion events are hard to find, but here's some detective work we can do on it:

• There are 115,226,802 households in the U.S. (link).
• There are 3,700,000 household burglaries in the U.S. annually (link). 

Many of these households will be burglarized more than once, but even in the worst case, that means 3.2% of people would experience a break-in during a year.

• 266,560 home break-ins result in violent harm to residences of the home (link). 

That's a 0.23% chance of being the victim of such a break in each year.  That's still a significant value - 4 out of every 1,000 homes.  The fear of such an event is not without its reasoning, and people should take precautions to try to protect themselves if they can afford to.  

But the real question is - how many people are involved in those crimes?  Are marauding gangs of thugs involved?

Well... sadly, yes.  Sometimes.  We don't have statistics on that - for some reason, no one is asking that question.  To listen to, for instance, Erich Pratt's quote above, you'd think it was happening in every break-in.  It's not.  But, to what extent it is happening, we just don't know.

But gun laws are based off of the belief that it's always happening - which is why we insist on the need for guns with high rates of fire, so that if four people come into the house, the homeowner can mow them down in a hailstorm of bullets.  It's the fear of these invasions, the fear of "stranger danger," that drives some people to buy guns for protection.

(I'm not, here, getting into the argument of whether that causes more harm than good.)

In the same way, it's fear of police officers abusing their authority that leads some people to protest them.  Certainly not all, but some.  That fear seems justified in light of the statistics I previously posted about the incidence of indictments of police officers.  Here again, though, national statistics are impossible to find, and only local state statistics can help to fill in the gap a tiny bit.  In Cleveland, for instance, the Justice Department recently released a report showing that cops “too often use unnecessary and unreasonable force in violation of the Constitution” (link).

So fear of crime is justified.  Fear of cops is justified.  Each one of these things is an example of a power dynamic - a fear of powerlessness in the face of power.

The two types of power are markedly different, though.

Normal crime, even violent crime, is a personal power.  It is the ability for one person to overpower another through physical means - which could be strength, weapons, drugs, and so on.  In this situation, the perpetrator acts relatively alone; while he or she could have the support of criminal colleagues, the support ends there.  There is no intended institutional support for the criminal actions, and there will never be a vote of the people to grant political power to the criminals in those actions (e.g., a "right to rob someone's house").

In the case of a criminal attack, there are means to fight back.  A person can own guns and use them in self-defense.  A person can learn martial arts and use that for self defense.  A person can buy alarm systems, a very large dog, security bars, and so on.  These measures ARE supported by law.

Police brutality, on the other hand, is an institutional power.  When a police officer places a suspect in a choke hold, or shoots a suspect, or sits on a suspect, etc., the institutions in place help to protect that officer (the lack of indictment is just one example; another is the fact that the officer continues drawing pay even if on leave while the incident is investigated). 

In the case of a police attack, there are no legal means to fight back.  Anything a person does is taken as resisting arrest, and many people are quick to rush to the defense of the officer by saying that the brutality wouldn't have happened if the suspect had simply not resisted (See this NY Times article on the Garner case).  When an incident between an officer and a suspect comes into court, we as a society are inclined to believe the officer's side of the story, even though both sides have bias and their own reasons for lying to the court.

The inherent power we grant to police officers is far greater than that of criminals.  This is by design, so that police can fight crime - but, currently, the result of that power is the abuse of said power.  Rather than going easier on police as we currently do, we should be harder on them than we are on criminals, to hold them to a higher standard, to expect more out of them based on the power we grant to them.  If punishment fits the crime, then every crime of the police that has a non-police antecedent/corollary should also include "abuse of power" as part of its bill.

It's why we send teachers to jail when they sleep with their students, even the students who are of legal age - because the chance for an abuse of power is too great, that the teacher could expect sexual payout for good grades, etc.

And note that even our arguments of fear of criminality assume violent criminality; in the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, there was no violence on their parts.  Selling untaxed cigarettes ranks even further down the "dangerous list" than jaywalking, and stealing cigars by pocketing them and walking out, rather than using a gun or making any threats, etc., is akin to shoplifting.  Yes, it's bad, but there's a reason we don't allow security guards at Wal-Mart to shoot people who've shoplifted - because it's not the equivalent of a human life.

So even if this whole thing is not about race, we still have a very real reason to stand in support of Brown and Garner, of Tamir Rice, Rumain Brisbon, John Crawford, Ezell Ford, and the seemingly inexhaustible list of other black men and women killed by police - because we do not tolerate bullies, and when police abuse their power, that's exactly what they are.

(All that said, it is still about race... but if I write that part, it will be part 3...)

Brown, Garner, et. al. post #1: Let's assume it isn't about race...

I'm going to assume, for a moment, that the Right is honest in its protestations that recent police killings are not about race.  Let me propose a couple of theories as to what could be going on...

#1.

Republicans as a general rule hold three literary sources to be holy and sacrosanct: the Bible, the Constitution, and the collected works of Ayn Rand.  Randian ideology holds up the individual as exemplary.  Truth is knowable, and deeply internal.  A person who seeks Truth will find it, and can use it to become mighty.  Truth can be recognized in the individual by those individuals who shuck off the bonds of society and grab for themselves everything they want, because not only is Truth the divine right of the individual, but so is everything else.  The mightiest person is the one who climbs on top of the heap of others, becoming the most politically and economically powerful, too.  Many people can achieve success and be Randian, but certainly not most, and only the king of them all is the true winner of the philosophy.

One problem occurs when we realize that the heroes of Rand's books are not beholden to the law, and in fact actively work to subvert the law when the law seems to prevent them from attaining all the power they believe is their right.  The law cannot stand up to the Truth of a Randian hero. 

And once again, this is what I was actually taught in my own religious upbringing - that when Truth and law disagree, it is the responsibility of people to stand up to the law in favor of Truth.

We all believe this, of course.  We praise Rosa Parks for fighting for Truth.  We praise Martin Luther King Jr. for fighting for Truth.  We praise Nelson Mandela for fighting for Truth.  Abraham Lincoln.  George Washington.  etc.

But we tend to forget that those they fought against also thought THEY were on the side of Truth.  The slave owners had convinced themselves that slaves were actually better off under their control.  In the American Revolution, many people born and raised on this continent gave their lives in service to King George. 

Truth, as with other things, may be decided by the victors.

But while we're in the midst of a fight, Truth is still decided by the individual - each individual fights for his/her own unique definition of Truth.

And, as I've noted before, on the Republican side of the aisle, we have a supposed arbiter of Truth that cannot be argued against.  That is, that when someone believes his/her Truth comes directly from God, there can be no discussion about it, no bending, no giving in to the demands of the other side...

no diplomacy.

The other side always already belongs to Satan, because if God is Truth, and Truth is absolute, then those who agree with Truth are with God, and those who disagree are with Satan.  It's exceedingly and necessarily dichotomous. 

And it is this Truth that narrowly limits the Randian heroes from everybody else.  For, when a person walks into a store and takes everything at gun point, they are not living within the Truth.  When a person uses legal means to take everything from someone else, however, they are right in doing so, for they are the ideal Randian hero.  When a social group, like the government, uses legal means to take a portion of things from someone else, they are right if those things are to be distributed to other Randian heroes, and wrong if those things are to be distributed to others. 

Sadly, the inner Randian is often at odds with the Truth.  For a true Randian would not give one whit about someone ELSE's definition of Truth, even if that someone else is a religious figure of global impact.  Ayn Rand herself was, after all, an atheist.  If a Randian wants to take someone else's property, at gunpoint or no, then he will take it - or will long to, and believe it is his/her divine right to do so, but may stay his/her hand to avoid going to jail. 

And this sensation lies under the surface of the subconscious, always waiting for a chance to act.  The greatest Randians I've known haven't held themselves back very far.

Now consider what someone might do who holds that philosophy and encounters someone who does not pay attention to the law, someone who takes what s/he wants or does what s/he wants.   The existing feeling of entitlement would find itself jealous, and would seek to eliminate the competition.

It could do so through passing laws for longer prison time, through allowing Randians to commit murder of those they deem a threat to their order, and through economic and social manipulation to ensure that those on the other side who have not yet gone to prison or been murdered by the Randians would have to stay as far away as possible, in their own worlds. 

Now, thus far I've been theorycrafting, but we see this every day. 

In the case of Michael Brown, those on the Right claim he is a thief, as if it's OK to gun down a thief in the street.  Well, in the model I just described above, it is!  A thief takes what s/he wants, and a Randian who follows the law cannot abide that, so the Randian will accept the thief's murder as a just punishment for the crime.

I'm making no claim here whether Brown did or did not steal anything - rather, I'm making only a claim about the justification for the use of lethal force.

Based on all of that, we could, perhaps, make a claim that it isn't about race, but rather purely about the extremes to which Randian beliefs have taken over the Right. 

Then we got another case similar to Michael Brown's.  Like Brown's, Eric Garner was a black man killed by police for suspected illegal activity.  Unlike Brown's, his criminal action wasn't quite on the same scale.  He was suspected of selling individual cigarettes, which would help people avoid paying tax on them.  As Ben Shapiro notes on Right-wing blog site Breitbart.com, "Garner had been arrested some eight times for selling 'loosies.'  That said, even Shapiro says, "by virtually any logic, it is the height of irresponsibility and depravity for a man to end up dead for selling loose cigarettes" (link).

I would, of course, claim the same is true for simple theft of cigars, but there may be a link to my Randian argument yet - remember that in Brown's case, he was supposedly stealing directly from a store, pitting a non-Truth Randian (Brown) against a Truth Randian (a store owner); however, in Garner's case, he was supposedly a non-Truth Randian stealing from the government of New York, a government that is, itself, inherently non-Randian.  Ergo, no crime was committed against Randianism.

And yet, Garner still died.  And not only did he die, but police were cleared of charges, even though by all accounts they used an inappropriate subdual method.


#2

Grand Juries almost always indict.  Ben Casselman, on ESPN's news site "fivethirtyeight.com" (I know... ESPN and news in the same phrase...), reveals the numbers:

... U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, the most recent year for which we have data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them.

That's  0.006%.  That's 1 out of ever 14,727 cases.  You have a better chance of winning an Academy Award than avoiding an indictment.  You have a better chance of injuring yourself with a chainsaw.  Or with a toilet.  You have a better chance of dying in a horrible bicycle accident. 

Casselman goes on to explain,

Cases involving police shootings, however, appear to be an exception. As my colleague Reuben Fischer-Baum has written, we don’t have good data on officer-involved killings. But newspaper accounts suggest, grand juries frequently decline to indict law-enforcement officials. A recent Houston Chronicle investigation found that “police have been nearly immune from criminal charges in shootings” in Houston and other large cities in recent years. In Harris County, Texas, for example, grand juries haven’t indicted a Houston police officer since 2004; in Dallas, grand juries reviewed 81 shootings between 2008 and 2012 and returned just one indictment.

Yikes.  In Dallas, at least, you have only a 1 in 81 chance of being indicted if you're a cop.  For comparison, you have a 14545 times greater chance of not being indicted if you're a cop, at least in Dallas, than of not being indicted if you're *anybody else*. 

The obvious answer to that, of course, is that the prosecutor likely intentionally threw the case.  That's easy to imagine, given that the prosecutors in Grand Jury cases are the same prosecutors as in every other criminal case, and thus they have to rely on and work with the police department every day.  At the least, there's reason to suspect they would throw the cases just to stay on the good sides of law enforcement, a kind of "I've got your back, you've got mine" mentality.  At worst, it's a reflection of outright fraternity between prosecutors and police. 

This, of course, presents a problem from the standpoint that both police and prosecutors are supposed to be working not for each other, but for the people of their districts.  If the people need to be protected, even from the police, then it is the job of the prosecutors to go after the police and keep the people safe. 

What's weird, though, is that even with this knowledge, we see the Right saying that a lack of indictment in the Brown case was the right thing to do.  For reference, an indictment is not a conviction - rather, it's saying that there's reason to further try the case, much like impeachment is not removal from office.  It would have given people a more thorough and more open trial, to see all the evidence and make a decision for themselves, rather than allowing police to hide behind the protections of a Grand Jury to prevent that evidence from becoming a matter of public record. 

It's weird, I say, only if this case was purely about attorneys protecting police - because anyone can acknowledge that it's wrong for them to use their position to protect an officer from being further tried in a court of law. 

But it's not about that... it's about power.  And I'll get there in my next post on this topic.

True Christian Fundamentals

The Fundamentalists were well-intentioned folk.  Amid the chaos of Protestantism and the millions, perhaps billions, of different interpretations of Scripture it indulged, church leaders tried to identify a minimum number of things people should believe to call themselves "Christian."  This was, at its outset, a decidedly conservative approach - it fought against changes to Christianity that it perceived from liberalism and evolution, by reinforcing core beliefs such as Biblical Inerrancy, which allowed them to state that the creation of the world as outlined in Genesis was absolutely true, simply by virtue of its being present in Genesis.  More on that in the next post, I think.

These were people who thought their world was becoming more evil, who feared an active and powerful Satan leading people astray with false beliefs.  While some, certainly, may have engaged in fundamentalism as a way of solidifying their political power, back in those days, fundamentalists were on the ropes, and there was little power to be gained.  Power was developed slowly, over a period of many decades.  It wouldn't be until the 70s that that power began to coalesce behind the Republican party.  Such is the source of the famous Barry Goldwater quote:

Source: http://berkshireonstage.com/2014/05/09/mr-conservative-barry-goldwater-play-about-christian-politics-and-dc-gridlock/

But, that's not the point of this article.  Instead, I want to offer a challenge to Fundamentalists to solve one problem: That is, how do you know the heart of another person?

You see, Fundamentalism is entirely external - it is a codification of beliefs, so that those beliefs can be reinforced across denominations; but, just because a preacher stands before a congregation and shouts and rattles the pulpit and appears to be calling down lightning from Heaven with his words, that doesn't mean he himself believes the things he's saying.  It doesn't mean that those in the congregation will buy into his words, either.  Christianity today is, as many of you have noted, a "luke warm" belief, with congregants attending church more for the social scene than for any actual conviction.

A friend of mine from the UK once told me that all of the Anglican preachers she knew over there are, in fact, atheists.  This is but a symptom of the problem.

I also saw this in a much more publicly-broadcast way back when I was dating, which really wasn't that long ago.  I used to read profiles on OkCupid every day.  That site offered the ability to winnow down your potential matches on a wide variety of criteria, and further to read their responses to a wide array of questions that could help provide further insights into their beliefs.  The majority of users I found who lived in Tulsa and who listed "Christian" as their religion held wildly divergent beliefs that were anathema to their supposed religion:

1. By and large, these Christians felt it was inappropriate to teach evolution in schools.  Where they accepted that it would be taught, they almost always said it must be taught side-by-side with Creationism.  Most, however, said only Creationism should be taught.
2. Most said homosexuality was a sin.
3. Many smoked.  (I'd estimate 40%, but it's entirely a rough estimate based on personal perception and not on the exhaustive work of actually coding the responses.)
4. Most said that they would need to have sex with someone before marrying them.

The latter two seem at odds with the former two, because in the codification of Fundamentalism that gives rise to the former two beliefs, the latter two are also verboten: smoking is a violation of the treatment of the human body as a temple to God; sex before marriage is a violation of the arguments Paul made against fornication.

This is, most likely, endemic of two factors: #1, it's easy to believe in those things that don't directly effect you, while it's easy to disregard those things that do; #2, the extent to which arguments against evolution and homosexuality are made in popular Fundamentalist discourse, in lieu of other arguments.

Therein lies the problem I present to Fundamentalists at the moment (although obviously, I have many, many other problems with Fundamentalism than this): how can you claim that divergent theologies are sinful, when you don't know the actual hearts of your members?  When the people who make up your congregations, and even your leading pastors, hold wildly heterodox beliefs, how can they be Fundamentalists?

It's a problem of the internal versus the external.  We say that those who hold true beliefs will bear Spiritual Fruit, but then ignore those who do bear Spiritual Fruit.  For a good example: Princess Diana often went on mission trips into Africa, holding the poorest and most desperately in need dear to her heart; yet, we throw out that Fruit because she wasn't "Christian" in the mindset of the Fundamentalists.  Mother Theresa exhibited an even greater problem, as she was undeniably Christian by her actions, and yet her beliefs had her in a religion that Fundamentalists are not entirely comfortable with (leading to the claim that it's possible to be a Christian even in non-Fundamentalist religions).  When Fundamentalists get caught doing something wrong, they are often excommunicated socially (though not legally) from the church if the church wishes to remain out of the controversy, but more often than that, they are still held to be members of the church and Christians, because of their identification with these Fundamentalist groups.  Their sins are ignored, their lack of Spiritual Fruit is ignored, because of their in-group identification.

That's what Fundamentalism really is - the identification of the in-group, the "Us" that allows believers within the group to also coalesce their hatred of "Them." It's important to fight beliefs such as that, just as Goldwater did:

Source: http://bigfishink.com/?p=3108

Jesus was a communist

You heard that sort of right - Jesus was a communist.

Or, rather... Jesus really didn't take a stand on it in any direction, except to say that people who live by the law die by the law, and that love is bigger than all of that.

So, perhaps it's better to say that Paul was a communist.  As were the disciples.

But here we have to draw a distinction between communist and Communist.  A Communist is someone who follows after the pattern of Stalin and Lenin, etc., someone who believes that the people should control the means of production, because theoretically the only way that people will accept that control is through military totalitarianism.  A communist, however, is someone who believes in communal living - that is, that within the community, all people work together, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.  It does not depend on a strong military, but it does depend on people buying into the idea of communal living and having some limited idea of leadership.

We get to see this play out in the Bible.  In Acts 4, we see the believers sharing their possessions:

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.  With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. (Acts 4:32-35)

So, the apostles - the spiritual leaders of the community - were also the political leaders of the community.  This should not be a recommendation for spiritual leaders to always be political leaders (after all - imagine if Judas had not killed himself and had remained one of the Twelve).  Rather, these particular leaders were anointed by God as witnessed by the faithful, through not only the calling from Christ, but also from the appearance of the Holy Spirit as fire upon their heads.  It was a clear sign of their election by God.  We have no such clear signs today.

Nevertheless, people lived communally, and shared all they had together within the community.  And it worked, because there were those who were generous enough to donate to the needs of the community and fortunate enough that they had the money available to sell.  There's no indication that those who sold their land had any belief or request that those who didn't own land or those who weren't working shouldn't be eligible to receive.

This was a community in which those with money and means lived the example of Christ to those who did not have.  Remember the story of the rich man who asked Jesus:

“Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”
“Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”
“Which ones?” he inquired.
Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”
“All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”
Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. (Matthew 19:16-22)

The story here is that the rich man didn't truly love his neighbor, because he had great wealth.  In giving away his wealth, he would show that he loved others more than himself, that he was willing to sacrifice everything for the love of God.

When those who lived communally did exactly what this rich man seemed hesitant to do and was depressed by the thought of doing, selling all they had and giving to the community, they were taken care of.  They did not suddenly have to worry about where they would live and what they would eat, because the Apostles distributing their wealth could take care of them.  Within the community, it was safe to distribute money in this way, and so while they certainly still had to take a great leap of faith and sacrifice of themselves, they still had security for their futures.

It was social welfare.  There are those who argue that no, that's not what we should take away from this, because it wasn't a legally-enforced social welfare - and they are somewhat correct.  However, the social pressure was, nonetheless, there.  Ananias and Sapphira, who a chapter later did the same thing but secretly held some back, surely sold everything they had to make it appear like they were just as holy as their brethren.  They felt pressured to give as others had done, even if such pressure was not overt.  Their sin was that they wanted the best of both worlds - their greed and the respect of their peers - without realizing that the real reason for selling everything they had and giving to the community was one of love for the community.  They were not required to do it, but they were rewarded for doing it, both by social respect and by the guarantee of care from the Apostles.

We have no such reward system in place today.  Our social welfare system does not guarantee a livable minimum of care.  Rather, it guarantees a completely impoverished minimum of care, jeopardizing the physical and mental health of those who would enter into it.  Imagine giving away everything you own today.  No one would take that money and reinvest it in you - rather, they would take that money and distribute it far and wide.  And, while you might have enough income to support yourself, you would have to buy a new car just to get to work, clothes to work in, utensils to cook your food, and so on.  There is a minimum of stuff you would have to re-buy - and, if you couldn't, you'd lose your job and be unable to support yourself.  In our country, it is impossible to literally sell all you have and give to the poor.

But that is still what Christ would recommend, for you to truly understand love for your fellow man and trust in the Lord.

Many years ago, compassionate Christians took a different approach to care for their fellow man.  It was compassionate Christianity that gave us welfare.  It was compassionate Christianity that gave us medicare.  It was compassionate Christianity that gave us food stamps.  It was compassionate Christianity that gave us social security.  Christians understood that they had a responsibility to ensure a minimum level of care for their fellow man.  They chose as an electorate to do this thing from a tax-supported position, despite the fact that the Bible didn't outright command such a position, because it was the only way of instituting communal living of the type enjoyed and employed by the early Christian Church.  Donations have never been, and are certainly not now, enough to fund the difference.

Part of that is because the minimum is so low.  To allow all of us who are able to support ourselves to sell all we have and give to the poor, we would need certain guarantees:
1. That we will have transportation to and from work.  This means that an infrastructure of public transportation must be established where it doesn't exist and improved where it does, so that when we sell our car to give the money to the poor, we can still get to work.
2. That we will have shelter.  This means both shelter from the elements and security from those who mean us harm.  Public housing must be free of cockroaches and drug dealers.  It must be safe for a person who has given everything to the poor to walk alone at night as he or she comes home from a job.
3. That we will have food and water.  This means that food must be available so that those who give all they have can still have a hot, healthy meal.
4. That we will have clothing.  Yes, you already know I'm a nudist, and if we could go to work naked that'd be swell.  But, there are times when clothing is a necessity - to block the light of the sun, to warm in the cold winter months, to protect our skin from hail or insects or brambles.  The person who sells all he or she owns and gives to the poor will still need to be dressed to get to work - all the time unless you want to humor my nudist side, and a significant amount of the time even if you do.
5. That we will have health care.  Someone who gives all he or she owns to the poor should not have to sacrifice his or her health to do so.
6. That we will have education.  Someone who gives all he or she owns to the poor should still be able to learn new things that will further his or her employment.

In such a society, a person could potentially sell all they have and give to the poor repeatedly, without fear for the future.

#GamerGate, Part 2

Now that I've covered the issue of media ethics, I turn my attention to what, for the rest of the world, is making #GamerGate infamous - that is, its treatment of women.

This, itself, is in two parts: a fear of a changing games culture and vicious attacks on women themselves.

Again, most of the people involved are not directly attacking women.  A very small subset of the Internet has focused its energies on this task and is brutally efficient in doing so.  Case in point: Felicia Day posted on the subject and had her personal information leaked within an hour. 

This constitutes a brutal attack because it seems to be done with the specific intent of giving people a way of harassing her that goes far beyond the Internet and into real life.  Internet harassment is difficult enough, but it seems even more dangerous when real-life information is obtained - in the former case, attacks can be so painful that they drive a person to suicide, but in the latter case stalkers can literally wind up on a person's doorstep and kill them. 

And more than that, it is an attempt at intimidation, literally telling the person, "I know where you live," as if the person releasing the data and making the intimidation will actually follow through and attempt to attack their victim at home.  It is, in the modern vernacular, terrorism, in that it uses terror as a weapon.

Ironically, perhaps, it was that very fear that Day proclaimed she would no longer be subject to, that she did not appreciate what the fear did to her, and what the attacks did to her community. 

As the time article notes: Chris Kluwe - who admittedly is not as famous to gamers as Day, but is, nevertheless, famous - did not get attacked in the same way.  The attacks are reserved for women, because the intent to cause fear is reserved for women, and that's all because women are seen as weaker and more able to be controlled through fear.  That is part and parcel of misogyny culture. 

We've been controlling (or attempting to control) women through fear for thousands of years.  Case in point: while some men have experienced street harassment (sexual harassment from random strangers), a vast majority of women have.

I would argue that in any situation where we (all humans) have the ability to hold power over another human being, we're tempted to do so.  Societal bonds (including laws and ideological instructions from churches and schools) can help to limit the extent to which we do, but they can also exacerbate the problem.  What misogyny culture means is that those bonds exist in our culture to structure our interactions in such a way that the idea of women as being weaker and the idea that it's OK to exert power over weaker gender forces are empowered and codified.    In our society, it's not only OK but good to be a man, which doesn't mean to possess a penis, but does mean to be physically stronger than everyone else and to exert your power willingly over everyone else and not be ashamed of it.  It's the essence of Blake in Glengarry Glen Ross, in all the heroes of Ayn Rand's shitty stories and Terry Badkind's shittier stories, in all Fox News interviewers, and in the ideas that I've been writing against since the beginning of this blog: that those who are powerful deserve their power and should use it, and those who are not powerful do not deserve a voice.  It's what Colbert mocks by co-opting that dominating interview personality.

That's the light side of misogyny, if you will - I don't mean the good side, I mean the fluffy side, the easy-to-take side, the attractive-to-some side.  We can almost all of us agree that beating women is bad, but we can't seem to agree that creating a culture conducive to the beating of women is bad, and that's because that culture is attractive to so many.

And it lurks most easily in the dark corners of the Internet, where people laugh about misogyny and talk to others who share their beliefs, their anger at their own subjugation to greater powers building off one another to form a perfect storm of hate and resentment of another social group.  Don't get me wrong - this happens on the left, too, but fortunately our cognitive dissonance over that hate helps to constantly deflate the balloon.

Ok... let's get back to the other part of the #GamerGate debate that I said still regards misogyny - game culture.  One of the great concerns of #GamerGate is that games culture is changing.

First of all, I don't believe that's true.  A quick glance around modern games proves that with few exceptions, women character models are still crafted off the law of inverse armor coverage - that while armor suits for men are better if they're bigger, armor suits for women need to show as much skin as possible to be effective.  The only MMO game I can think of in the past 7 years, at least, that hasn't followed that rule is Lord of the Rings Online, which covers women just as much as men (and has perhaps the largest female-to-male ratio of any MMO as a result). 

But let's examine the problem a little more closely.  First of all, games culture didn't start as the highly-misogynistic dynasty it would later become.  Lara Croft could not exist in the early games culture for many reasons, not the least of which being that graphics weren't up to snuff.  But most of the earliest games were puzzle or limited competition games that gave not one crap about the gender of the players.  Ironically, the emergence of Facebook gaming has actually gotten us back to our earliest games culture, rather than subverting the games culture. 

Zork was relatively gender-neutral, for instance.  Pong (1972) certainly was.  Pac-Man (1980) was gender-irrelevant until they made Ms. Pac-Man (1982) as an attempt toward inclusivity, simply by sticking a bow on the top of Pac-man. 

As soon as games could be usurped by misogyny culture, however, they were.  The first pornographic games were already rolling out by 1981, and even titans of porn like Playboy have added their moniker to games. Of course, we all know that sex sells, and soon game makers were putting sexy women on everything.  There is no logical reason, for instance, why Lara Croft would have increasingly-large bra sizes over the years, and skimpier outfits, other than to attract men who would enjoy watching her breasts bounce.

But perhaps this isn't the "games culture" that these protestors are referring to.  Perhaps they mean, instead, the games culture that produces domination games.

Remember that being the dominant, "I can do anything I want" person is a highly socially-masculine role.  This type of character was popular in movies and literature already, as in the case of the gunslingers of Old West novels and movies.  For more in-depth explanation of that, check out my article about Firefly.  This ideology, in basic, says that a good man with a gun can stop an entire invading horde of bad guys.  If the games stopped the moment you got shot, then perhaps they would be more representative of real life - but instead, since they allow for saving the game and trying again, they create an effectively-immortal main character whose job is simply to unleash destruction on those he or she perceives as evil. 

They allow the players to step into that fantasy and unleash destruction on others, as well.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of First Person Shooters (FPSs).  FPSs have been around since 1973, but it wasn't until Wolfenstein 3D (1992), and shortly thereafter Doom (1993), that the genre really took off.  I knew it would be a popular medium when I first learned about Dennis Fong (Thresh) winning a Ferrari in a Quake tournament in 1997. 

Side note: I've dueled Fong exactly once.  He's every bit as good as you'd expect based on that tournament win.  I died, a lot.  But I killed him a few times, too.  Not enough to win by a long shot.

I say that because I, too, was a member of this culture.  I'd like to think I still am.  FPSs can allow their players to live out a fantasy of murderous rampages, but for those of stouter psychologies, they are simply fun and competitive sports. 

And the FPS genre hasn't gone anywhere.  It is, perhaps, more popular today than ever before. 

FPSs are, traditionally, masculine games.  They represent that culturally-masculine mindset very well.  But they can also be traditionally feminine games, as with Quake's old Capture The Flag mode, which allowed users to participate on a team.  Some players would take point and have the most damaging bonuses to allow them to strike hard and fast.  Some players would guard the base and have the most defensive bonuses to let them stay alive while incoming enemies stormed the place to grab the flag.  Everyone had a role to play.  Today's shooters are similar - online play pits teams against each other, and while it's possible to hop in a game or on a team where the roles don't matter and everyone's job is to simply shoot at everything, there are also team matches where teams are prebuilt and members still have important roles to fill. 

They are no longer strictly stereotypically-masculine ideals.  They've evolved, offering roles for everyone, regardless of how they identify.

And that's important, because these changes didn't scare anyone into thinking that gaming culture was changing in some horrible way - it simply changed, slowly but surely, and people either changed with it or got out of the way.  And this popularity of modern shooters has occurred simultaneously with other gaming advancements such as Candy Crush and Farmville and, yes, Depression Quest. These games have proven for years that traditional gaming can still be going strong while newer non-traditional gaming styles can well up from needs the world didn't even know it had yet, and no one has to be threatened by that.

I have no doubt that there will remain websites devoted to the more traditional games.  I have no doubt that some news sources will talk about newer games. 

So no - the idea that the culture is changing is bullshit, covering up a fear of being emasculated by other changing elements of the culture at large.