Author: skzb

I play the drum.

Patiently Explain

Panic is the product of awareness of the need for immediate action combined with uncertainty about what that action is.  Panic seldom results in the best choice.
 
In previous elections, every election, “You aren’t voting for my candidate so you are letting the other guy win so you are a <insert favorite calumny>” would come up now and then. Of course, the “you are letting the other guy win” is business as usual, but the added insult, or expression of hatred, was rare. One would write the individual off as not worth talking to and move on with one’s life.
 
This election is different. This is happening a lot. For those of you who, like me, are not voting for either of the two major candidates (I’m voting for the Socialist Equality  Party),  I’m just writing this to suggest patience. This election is distinguished by a more extreme crisis among the two capitalist parties—indeed, it pits the two most hated candidates in living memory against each other—than I’ve ever seen. More, it is a reflection of an entire society in crisis, and masses of people feeling the increasing need to find a way forward, and less and less understanding of how to do so.
 
My point is, we need to try not to take the insults and abuse personally. Hell, I’ve felt it myself, the desire to scream, “WHY DON’T YOU PEOPLE GET IT?” This reaction isn’t helpful, but it is understandable. The threat of Trump, who was (in my opinion) produced exactly by the system personified by Clinton, is hitting us hard. Things are scary.
 
Trotsky’s words describing the activity of the Petrograd Soviet in 1905 were, “patiently explain.” This has never, in my life time, been harder to do, and never been more important.

Inequality and the Police

If we are to combat police violence, racial or otherwise, we must first begin by understanding it.

Social inequality is a reflection and a product of economic inequality.  Unless we are to wallow in unscientific claptrap about “human nature” and “tribalism,” we must recognize that the essence of social inequality is that it provides a material and ideological structure that permits some to take things by denying them to others.  Racial inequality is a particularly clear example of this.  For anyone who hasn’t read it, I recommend MLK’s speech at the end of the Montgomery to Selma march.  Whatever disagreements I have with King’s pacifism and reformism, he certainly understood the origins of racial oppression, and gave a beautiful and succinct summary beginning in paragraph 9.   I also cannot recommend too highly the book he refers to, The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward.

In order for economic and social inequality to exist, three things are necessary: the first is the production of a surplus; you cannot have an argument about who gets the extra apple until there is an extra apple.  The second is an ideology that accepts inequality as normal, as just part of life–the idea that we live (or could live, or almost live) in a meritocracy is one, a sense of morality accepted from the oppressors through their control of the media and the academy is another.  Any moral code, such as pacifism, that interferes with the fight for equality serves the interests of those who benefit from continued oppression.   Reformist ideology by definition treats the object it intends to reform, capitalism, as permanent, and thus plays its part in accepting inequality is normal.

The third is a means of enforcing the inequality through violence and the threat of violence.  This is, and always has been, exactly the role of the police.  I think, of all the illusions under which many people operate, one of the greatest is that it is possible to fight against police violence without simultaneously fighting for social and economic equality, because violence in defense of  economic inequality is why the police exist.  The fight for social and economic equality is the fight for socialism.

Independence Day

It is Independence Day and the yabuts are out in force. The reactionaries like to set off fireworks and avoid realizing that the system they believe is the be-all and end-all of human achievement arrived by revolution, by mass action of a people fighting against those who thought their system was the be-all and end-all of human achievement. Meanwhile, the pseudo-lefts dominate the discussion where I am listening: Let anyone dare quote “All men are created equal” and out they charge: “Yeah, but what about the native peoples?” “Yeah, but the founding fathers owned slaves and permitted slavery.” “Yeah, but what about women?” they cry.

To me, the statement “All men are created equal” is a promise, a rallying cry, and an inspiration, and what the yabuts prefer not to look at, is that this promise and inspiration did what it was supposed to: it inspired the Abolition movement, the women’s suffrage movement, the labor movement, the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. Over and over, leaders from Frederick Douglass to Lincoln to Eugene Debs to Elizabeth Stanton and Lucretia Mott to Martin Luther King, Jr have referred to this document as an inspiration, as an “unfulfilled promise,” using it as a banner and a sword to further the cause of human equality.

The Declaration of Independence was revolutionary and inspirational at the time it was written, and it is revolutionary and inspirational today. Whatever the yabuts say, the fight for equality is not hindered by an appreciation of those who, earlier, took what steps were available to them, and handed us a torch with which to burn the hands of those who try to lay hold of our revolutionary traditions for the purpose of stopping them.

There is so much more to do in the fight for equality, which now focuses more and more on the inequality between those who must toil in order to live, and those who live on the fruits of others’ toil. To look on the past as if one had achieved such moral perfection as to permit condemnation of the battles others fought does nothing to advance this cause.

Contradictions Inherent in Changing Gun Laws

Gun safety and gun laws in the US are one of the most difficult things to discuss in isolation from other social problems: mass shootings that are the result of combinations of factors such as desperation, anger, inadequate mental health care, living in a country where the government and the police see human life as without value, along with backwardness, intolerance, religious fanaticism, and other signs of a decaying society.  This complexity makes it almost impossible to look at gun issues apart from their interaction with everything else. When we see supposed liberals, who up until a month ago railed against the “terrorist watch” no-fly list as racist, arbitrary, and undemocratic (which it is) now cheering wildly to increase the powers of the list, we can get a hint of how inter-related gun issues are with everything else.

Nevertheless, there are some inherent contradictions in gun issues that are worth pointing out:

The easiest targets for modifying gun laws, ie, banning semi-automatic rifles and improving background checks, will do the least to reduce the actual number of gun deaths.

Requiring demonstrated knowledge of gun safety before owning a firearm will do a great deal to reduce the worst sorts of gun violence, (children getting hold of them, or impulse suicide). But there is an inherent conflict between storing a weapon in such a way that is useful for home defense and one that is safe from children.  The question of home defense is itself contradictory, simply because, while the fear of home invasion is drastically over-stated by those who make money by peddling fear, nevertheless there is some justification for it.

There are ways around the gun-safety vs gun-access conundrum (quick-release lockboxes keyed to a thumbprint, biometric tirggers, &c), but they’re expensive. This gets into areas where things like insurance and bonding, that some have suggested, end up tying the question “may you own a firearm?” to the question, “how much money do you have?” which, for obvious reasons, I am not at all comfortable with.

Most self-defense uses of handguns are never covered by the news, because most of them never involve discharging a weapon, thus it is very hard to get numbers on them.   Part of the reason for this is that the US government won’t permit any of it’s agencies to make such a study.

What might be the biggest contradiction is this: The notion of using personal weapons to defend against a tyrannical government is nonsense, but giving the government authority to prevent personal ownership of weapons is a step toward tyranny.

Other than a complete and drastic restructuring of society, I do not see a way to resolve these contradictions.

Orlando and the Need to Talk About It Anyway

Let’s see if I can manage to say this right.
 
Orlando was a horror. We’re shocked, disgusted, angry. Moreover, many of us believe we understand an important piece of why it happened and what should be done (I’m not pointing fingers, me too), and we don’t agree, and the disagreement gets angry and frustration grows and we just want to scream at our computer WHY DON’T YOU IDIOTS GET IT?
 
Of course that’s what happens. Because it matters.  We’re horrified, and we want it not to happen any more. And it matters. Our usual, general feeling of, “I want to convince you I’m right” is suddenly three octaves higher, because people are dead, and it is so very ugly and wrong and the need to find a solution is suddenly acute. It matters.
 
Yes, now is when it is hard to try to be patient, to try to explain your position, because (if you’re like me) you’re furious and upset, and because the person you’re trying to explain it to (if he or she is like me) is also furious and upset. And you want to say, “I don’t want to talk about this any more.” And, hey, maybe that’s the right call, I’m not saying to force yourself into anything.
 
I will continue trying convince you that I’m right (and you’re wrong) about how to look at this, and I will try my best to be patient and to explain as clearly as I can, and I understand if you get angry and want to shut down the conversation, and maybe I will get angry and try to shut down the conversation. But I’ll remind myself that the reason this is hard to talk about is exactly why it is important we try to do so. Because it matters.