CROWS AGAINST MURDER

[crowsagainstmurder]

Prayer, Ritual, and the New American Normal

It is difficult now, in the wake of yet another mass shooting, to find a means to convey the sense of gravitas that these events deserve. Not because the necessary words are especially difficult to find or to read, but because their ability to impact has been so eroded by repetition that they are now meaningless; at least in regard to the murder of dozens of innocents by gunfire, our language’s ability to convey despair and fury and condolence has been bored out.

We can call the shooting in San Bernardino this past Wednesday a tragedy, a travesty, a calamity, but it is difficult to extract meaning from these statements anymore: this is what everyone says, yet, if we all agreed that these things are best avoided, surely we would take steps to avoid them?

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The response to San Bernardino from the political right was typical, which is to say, swift, brief, and of no value. The professional dirtbags who are currently running for the Republican nomination for President rushed to Twitter and offered their prayers, to which several people quite justifiably responded by pointing out that prayers aren’t worth much when they’re the only thing any of them are willing to give.

I do not think it is a stretch to say that these offerings’ stated purpose is bogus in the main; nobody thinks Paul Ryan gives a fuck about anyone other than Paul Ryan, even less the dead, even less Californians. What’s interesting is the fact that they all take almost an identical form--set all the tweets next to each other and you could come to the conclusion that they were all written by the same person. Thoughts & prayers, always to the victims and families, amen.

I daresay most of the mass shooting post-process is carried out by rote at this point. We react with fear, we determine the race of the perpetrator and, when it is inevitably another white fascist, decide that ideology had nothing to do with it. The media turns makes hay for a few days, then everyone gives an exaggerated shrug, buys more guns, and goes home to clutch them in the dark. We pretend to be surprised when it keeps happening, but that’s part of the process.

In fact, we have ritualized these shootings. For conservatives, this false solemnity is simply the price of living in a heavily armed society.

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Emma Green wrote an especially naive response to the prayer backlash for The Atlantic, in which she asserted that this was an attack on religious people as a whole:

There are many assumptions packed into these attacks on prayer: that all religious people, and specifically Christians, are gun supporters, and vice versa. That people who care about gun control can’t be religious, and if they are, they should keep quiet in the aftermath of yet another heart-wrenching act of violence. *

Like most criticism of the left from within, this misses the entire point. When people criticize Republican congresspeople for offering prayers to victims of mass shootings, it is not because they resent the idea of prayer. It is because they know that these politicians have not only aided in the deaths of American citizens by opposing gun control and any social policy that might help, they are also participating in the ongoing hypocrisy that allows the country as a whole to pretend that there is nothing to be done.

We are not objecting to religion, but to the normalization of mass murder.

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* http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/prayer-gun-control-mass-shooting-san-bernardino/418563/

[crowsagainstmurder]

The Gun as Problem Solver

"Humans are not innately disposed powerfully either toward aggression or to peace.  It is culture that largely weaves the patterns in human societies." Roger Lewin "Almost every animal capable of self-defense, from the smallest rodent upward, fights furiously when it is cornered and has no means of escape."  Konrad Lorenz Excerpts from Simon Von Booy's collection of essays "Why We Fight" It was only a matter of time before this post, which I started after the last mass shooting, became relevant again.  They have become as reliable as earthquakes in Japan, or hurricanes in Florida.  Shootings are natural disasters of American culture. You can set your watch by the post-shooting media coverage and public reaction: the Breaking News with frantic anchors describing over and again what happened as the same reel of videos of the latest location repeats.  A few shots of a victim being carted into an ambulance.  Some yellow police tape. Some witnesses interviewed.  Some spokespeople comment on behalf of police.  Token statements of condolence.  Suggestions about the potential motives of the shooter.  A breakdown of the shooter's identity, typically shaped by their race and class.  Statements by politicians that change is possible. Outrage by victims' families that something was not done differently to prevent this.  Outrage by millions at the failure of any decent gun legislation.  Reactionary outrage by the pro-gun folks, reminding us that guns don't kill people, that they protect them, and in fact there should be more of them.  A devolving, polarizing argument about what guns do and who is responsible.  Fingers are pointed at video games, various types of music, bad parenting, poverty, affluence, lack of religion, religious fundamentalism, sexual frustration, bullying.  We know exactly how to react to shootings now - we're very practiced. Meanwhile, we execute prisoners.  We engage in violent conflict abroad (i.e. we go to war).  Our police use lethal force.  We defend ourselves.   Whether overtly or unconsciously, killing is viewed as a way to solve a problem - it removes conflict, supposedly, by deleting resistance to a way of being or a change desired by the killer. Though I suspect it was named with a degree of irony, the Colt "Peacemaker" was nevertheless aptly named - for many, peace is not the absence of violence, it is the removal of conflict through violence or threat of violence.   In America, we use killing to solve problems as a matter of course.  Put another way, there are certain problems that we as a culture have decided are best solved by annihilating a human.  We do our best to fight for peace. Distilled, the belief that everyone should have a right to own a gun is an expression of a belief that everyone should have a right to kill, or at least threaten to kill, another person, if the need arises. Naturally, criteria have been established for that need: it usually takes the form of a perceived threat from another person.  Guns, then, are a solution to the problem of being under threat. The ability to perceive and evaluate threat is a feature common to many species. And it is the reason why many species which are otherwise peaceful/passive lash out - violence in the animal kingdom is largely a means of solving problems, too: problems of territorial dispute, of mate procurement, or of status maintenance.   If we are to believe Lewin, that human culture ultimately determines whether humans are violent, and if we are to believe Lorenz, that threatened animals lash out, we are left with the question: what is it about American culture that makes us feel cornered to a point where so many of us are motivated to own a gun? Which parts of our identities are under threat? And by whom are we threatened?  Most importantly, why do we so often assume that violence is the answer to the threats we perceive? I think it is important that these questions be at the center of the debates that follow the shootings we endure. The debate over gun legislation is useless if the people who argue and lobby so fervently in favor of gun rights still feel threatened.  In fact, it probably adds to their perceived threat.   I won't pretend to have answers to these questions, and frankly, I'd sooner have people think about this than put forward my favorite explanations and argue about whether I'm right.  This isn't about me. You don't need to be an expert to ask questions, just to answer them.  So much of the post-shooting discourse (and any discourse at all, these days) is dominated by op-eds from people who want to be experts about what the specific problem is and how to fix it, and it becomes a contest, which becomes a fight, which makes people feel threatened.  People don't listen or ask honest questions of themselves when they're threatened - they shut down.  They grasp more tightly onto their guns.

[crowsagainstmurder]

Back to School

There are multiple types of synesthesia.  One makes you see particular letters as colors.  Another makes you taste specific flavors when exposed to certain words.  And there is one, called spatial sequence synesthesia, which causes you to perceive numerical sequences like dates or time as physically oriented around you.  This is a real thing.  You might even have it.

I have always had a very strong perception of September as being situated directly in front of me.  October is to the right, and the rest of the the year circles around me so that January is behind me, and every other month between it and the fall is somewhere to my left, in order.  

September is the beginning of everything, as far as I’m concerned, because for what is still the majority of my life, that was when the school year started.  And school was pretty much where life happened.  It is where I made friends.  It is where much of my major, measurable personal development occurred, where I learned foundational things about the world, its history, and my place in it.  It was the setting within which my accomplishments meant something. And it was the center around which my extracurricular activities revolved.  To my younger self, it was the Real World, even if I understood that it was a pond which would eventually deposit me into the ocean. Around the first week of September every year, my body gears up for a beginning.  When the weather gets just a shade colder, and it starts to get darker a bit earlier, I feel immense anticipation.  This year, especially. But the milestones from my youth are no longer relevant.  I don’t have a promise of seeing old classmates, or meeting new ones.  I won’t develop new relationships with teachers or mentors.  Nobody will curate information for me to consume.  There will not be a semester, nor will there be the accompanying guaranteed measurable accomplishment that I can feel proud of by the time Winter Break comes around.  There isn’t even such thing as “Winter Break” anymore.   Most disorientingly, I’m no longer building towards a discrete point at which I will have “graduated” from my current world to another one that is somehow more real and meaningful.  I’ve arrived in that world.  And it feels less real than the old one. I try to comfort myself by pointing out that now, for the first time, I am free to determine my own milestones.  And last September, the way I did that was by signing up for a post-graduate certificate in Scientific Illustration.  Which is to say, I just went back to school.  And it helped, somewhat.  I felt accomplished this year, at the end of Spring, when I had a little mini-graduation, and got my little certificate, and looked back on a year which was a certified job-well-done, and which an academic authority considered to be time well-spent.  But I can’t do that again this year.  I don’t want to.  Because if I don’t break out of the need for those imposed milestones now, I can’t think of a reason why I ever would.  The challenge of defining one’s milestones isn’t just one of devising a calendar to follow.  When you are out of school, and are defining your own milestones, what you are doing is deciding what your life is going to be about.  You have a finite amount of time to decide this.  Essentially, the transition from relying upon school’s imposed meanings to relying on your own comprises an existential crisis.  And most people my age are having it, while simultaneously struggling with a shit economy, a planet which is teetering on the edge of doom, and a relative absence of prescribed values, tradition and direction which guided their parents’ transition into adulthood.  Rather than discovering in our mid-lives, amidst the consequences of the thoughtless decisions of our younger selves, that our lives are ours to decide, some of us are realizing it now. Which is good, because it buys us that much more time to be intentional about our lives.  But also: we’re having our mid-life crisis, and we can’t afford the sports car to make us feel like we have some measure of control. The challenge of whittling down the options of how to exist meaningfully is overwhelming to me.  Nobody is holding me accountable for progress in any direction, except me.  There will be no test to determine if I have learned the important lessons of life, except the tests of my own making, by my own criteria, which are subject to change.  The separation of the Ends (graduating to the Real World) from the Means (doing a bunch of stuff) is absurd. Doing things for the sake of doing them is really the only thing that makes sense, now. I have to remind myself of this on a daily basis.  I am not obliged to build anything that I don’t want to build, whether it would take me a day or ten years.     I have incredibly warm memories of being in school. People who went to elementary school in the PNW are probably familiar with the concept of “indoor recess”.  It was my favorite kind of recess, because it meant we got to stay inside and take advantage of various art supplies, if only for 20 minutes.  There are many book reports that I vividly remember writing.  Many PE classes I suffered through.  Countless social humiliations.  But everything is colored rosily by the fact that it occurred during a period of fumbling, mistake-ridden attempts at new things in an environment which encouraged and forgave such foibles in service of personal growth.   That, I think, is the basis upon which post-school meaning must be founded. Ultimately, even if the academic world imposed temporal and achievement-oriented milestones on me, it was still a safe space that would insulate me from the real-world consequences of being a novice in everything.  And I mistakenly assumed this meant that, once in the real world, because no one would temper consequences with a second-chance mentality, the safe space must necessarily evaporate.  But actually, it just means that I have to learn how to create a safe space for myself, in which I can try things, make mistakes, endure their consequences, and forgive myself as a learning, growing person. You can pick the “wrong” way to be, and realize it, and try a different way.   That is what it would look like to dissolve the gap between the ends and the means.  There might be consequences that appear to trap you.  You might hurt someone.  No, you definitely will.  You might even end up homeless, or imprisoned, or maimed.  I am not saying that you can wheedle your way out of the shenanigans you cause by choosing your identity.   You can’t even wheedle your way out of the shenanigans other people cause.  You do not get to choose the consequences.  And you especially don’t get to choose how you feel about the consequences.  That is not how emotions work, and fuck all of the people who say that. Jesus. But you do get to choose your own conditions for failure.  And also, therefore, of success.   Or maybe, don’t even take life as a Pass/Fail course.   

[crowsagainstmurder]

The Donald

The GOP primary was such a perfect shitstorm of racism, sexism, and lies that I already thought it was some of the best entertainment in years (albeit also the most depressing). The whole thing was more like the first half of a Christopher Guest movie than the process by which our next president would be selected (though it occurs to me that there isn’t any reason it couldn’t be both).

And then Donald Trump announced that he was running. I do not think anyone predicted what has happened since, but we really should have.

Trump is currently polling better than anyone else in the field, though the brightest minds in political analysis (Nate Silver and his crew) still say his chances of winning the nomination are minimal at best. The reasons for this, Trump’s popularity, should be pretty obvious: Trump says what everybody on the right is thinking. He spent the last debate saying that Mexican immigrants are killers and rapists, telling Megyn Kelly that she was on her period for daring to question him, and being generally an asshole--and the crowd loved him for it. Of course they did. They’ve been trained to.

Right-wing media have spent the last thirty years transmitting fascist ideology into the cultural consciousness of this country; we like to blame people like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Alex Jones and all the rest for this, and it’s true that they share some culpability, but the reality is that they wouldn’t exist if they didn’t have an audience. The need for these people originated with groups like Stormfront and the Hammerskins (and, going further back, the Klan), but their veneer of mainstream legitimacy has since allowed for their putrid ideological sludge to percolate into society at large. Meanwhile, the GOP proper has spent the past half-century blowing as hard as they can on every racist dogwhistle they can think of, and simultaneously lamenting the fact that PC culture keeps them from saying what they really mean. So, yes, of course the result is that everyone on the right is racist, but also furious about the fact that if they say anything racist then someone might call them an asshole.[1]

And so, The Donald. He is the id of the modern Republican. He is the true nature of the party’s base personified: unabashedly racist, completely resentful of the political process, simultaneously a bully and a victim [2], completely divorced from reality, obsessed with his own image and still somehow totally ignorant of what it is like to experience him, and finally at long last willing to say all the racist things that he believes, out loud, with his mouth, on camera. His policies are insane where they have any substance at all [3], he is a simpleton jingohead whose foreign policy is categorical murder, and he craves the presidency for no other reason than he thinks he deserves it. He is The Beast, puking bile into our hearts and telling us that we should be grateful he is here to save us.

In any other context, it would all be funny; it’s hard to write a better indictment of our politics than Trump, and yet here he is, real, and running for president.

He will probably not win the nomination, thankfully, though I am curious as to how the party plans to deal with him. The problem is that they can’t get aggressive towards him, because nobody in the current field can play that game better than Trump himself. I almost wish he had run in 2012; eventually, he’d have insulted the five giant fat babies in a suit pretending to be Newt Gingrich during a moment of low blood sugar, and there’d have been this incredible clash of arrogant stupidity and petulant condescension.

This year, it comes down to Chris Christie. He's got exactly the right mix of hatred and pride to just cut loose with the kind of fusillade of furious invective that will actually discredit Trump--if someone as unpopular and unattractive and Obama-chummy as Christie can beat him in an altercation, he’s going to lose a lot of support. But I think, deep in his heart of hearts, Christie still sees himself as the fat kid on the playground; Trump is therefore all of his greatest fears, set in front of him at the lowest point of his political career. I doubt he has it in him to confront The Donald.

More likely, Trump will simply fade away. He is nobody’s second choice, and as candidates drop out, all their supporters will go to Jeb! Bush and Scott Walker. He may still credibly be in the race until Super Tuesday, and his pride will keep him from dropping out until the end, but when the Republican convention starts there will be no question that the nomination is going to Bush or Walker.

More importantly, though, is what Trump’s campaign means for future elections. His campaign is not a serious threat to the Republican party leadership, but it is a symptom of one--the Koch brothers and the rest of the billionaire cadre have warped the elections process so much that we are nearly at a point where a candidate can be nominated for president without the support of the party apparatus. And when the establishment candidate loses in 2016, there may well be enough rage in the base to explode the entire party; the best-case scenario is that what replaces it is no more hideous. But I am not hopeful.

[1] Never mind, of course, that you can do damn near anything racist with no backlash. But that’s another post.

[2] You’ll note he waits for opponents to say anything vaguely negative about him before he takes a shit on them via Twitter.

[3] For example, his campaign website says that his plan for Mexican illegal immigrants is basically to confiscate all remittance money they send back to their country, but he also wants to deport all of them at the same time, which, how are they sending money back if they’ve been deported??

[crowsagainstmurder]

If (and only if) you see something, say something

Ten hours ago, I was seated inside of a court room listening to a teenage trans boy appeal to a judge for his name-change.  It was granted.  ‘Congratulations, Evan’ the judge wished this boy and his very supportive mother, just before they exited the court, tearfully beaming with an expression of pride that I had not seen until today.  It was good. Nine hours and fifty minutes ago, I was waiting silently as that same judge thumbed through a giant stack of papers, each containing the ugliest, most disturbing insults and threats one can imagine, hoping to hear that my petition for a restraining order had been granted.   Nine hours and forty-nine minutes ago, I felt crushed by the fact that it had, indeed, been granted. The restraining order was made against a friend who, due to an apparently untreated mental illness, began slandering me in unrelenting personal messages and public posts.   This person was clearly, clearly detached from reality. This person needs help. They are not well.  And I just made it worse. Because apparently, the only way this system is even remotely capable of dealing with invisible problems like acute mental illness is by letting them get so awful that they begin to make visible scars.  We would sooner make criminals of the mentally ill than get them the help they need, and it’s fucking ridiculous.  It’s more expensive, it has longer lasting, more harmful consequences for more people, and it is downright inhumane.   This is how we deal with all of our invisible problems: just deny that they are problems until their side-effects start to show, and even then, point at the side-effect, proclaim “Look, a problem!”, and treat (or mistreat) the symptom instead of the cause.  “Look, a school-shooting! Teachers should probably have guns.”  “Look, a drought!  On the entire planet! Let’s restrict water usage. But carbon emissions are probably not in need of similar restrictions.”  “Look, unwanted pregnancy!  Let’s tell teens not to have sex, instead of giving them the tools they need for safe sex.” I am fully aware that I’m not saying anything new here.  This has been reiterated by millions of people for the last several decades.  It’s tiresome, really. And I hate to end a post on such a pessimistic, unoriginal note.  But the need for optimism and originality should not be allowed to eclipse the more urgent need of addressing these problems, even if we are bored of hearing about them because they appear on our newsfeeds once a week or so.

[crowsagainstmurder]

Preamble

I have a post in the works. Besides this one, I mean.  It is highly personal, and is therefore prone to a special brand of perfectionism that I reserve for such personal endeavors.  And yet it is precisely because it is personal that my tendency to over-edit is problematic: the more I polish a statement about my experience, the more it loses the blemishes which make it real and worth telling.  

To paraphrase Charlie Kaufman quoting Harold Pinter: lying keeps you safe. That is its appeal.  I’ve opted for safety for so long that I am very practiced and consequently very good at fabrication.  

Part of what I’ve come to realize,  lately, is that the equation of “safety” with “good” and "risk" with "bad" is a model that was sold pretty hard to me by my parents and teachers, and it can serve you really well for the first ten years of your life.   The intention of that model is to prevent painful and injurious experiences, and yeah, that's pretty nice.  Even I will not enter into a serious debate about whether looking both ways before you cross the street is a generally good idea.  And it is remarkably easy to keep that model into your twenties, thirties, and beyond. Because you will continue to encounter events which, had you paid closer attention, would've had better outcomes.

Erasmus probably didn't realize that his statement "prevention is better than cure" would come to define an entire industry of scammy cosmetics and "wellness" products.  Trouble is, much (most?) of the pain of living is unavoidable, even if you are smart, even if you catch every red flag, even if you proceed with maximal caution. 

We're to the point where "prevention" is as much of a selling point as "eco-friendly" was a few years ago.  There is even a magazine marketed to women named Prevention (my mother is a long-time subscriber).  You cannot prevent wrinkles by smearing goo on your face any more than you can stop climate change by buying the flimsy brown paper plates made with 80% post-consumer fiber.   Of course, climate change was one of those rare items that was at one point preventable, but our prevention fetish went limp when we discovered it would require certain of us to be less obsessed with money. Any suggestion that you can prevent these things is a falsehood.  You can only forestall them.  The question of how you will cope with your inevitably haggish appearance must eventually be answered.

All "prevention" of unavoidable painful experiences, therefore, is actually just procrastination.

If you're raised in an environment where prevention is the default, you become very skilled at anticipating and avoiding risks.  But for every painful experience that you are able to avoid or forestall, you deprive yourself of needed practice at healthily coping with pain, which adds pressure to the need to avoid it altogether.  And you develop a preference for avoidance, rather than confrontation.

It's not sustainable.  Shit confronts you if you don't confront it.  My attempt to avoid writing something substandard, to perfect what I write and become a Good Writer, has paralyzed me to the point where I am no writer at all.  My attempt to avoid exposing my vulnerabilities while telling a story about my experience has led me to create a fictional character with whom I cannot identify.

Making a decision that you know will lead to agony seems impossible until you acknowledge that the agony isn't a result of your decision, but rather is immanent in your situation.  Authenticity in the face of ceaseless external pressure to omit the ugly, nonconforming parts of oneself will potentially lead to judgment, and agony.  But self-denial, and omission of parts of oneself, are equally likely to lead there.  The agony bit really isn't a choice.   Ownership of why you feel agony is.

And now I’ll post this, and agonize over it for the foreseeable future.

[crowsagainstmurder]

There's No-one Else and That's the Point

Hillary Clinton has sauntered through the formality of officially announcing her candidacy, surprising exactly no-one. Predictably, those of us on the far left responded with crossed arms and grunts of disapproval, and equally predictably, the centrist Democrats have started wagging their fingers at us.

Clinton’s announcement itself is largely theater and hardly even worth addressing, but the infighting in the left over her coronation has been frustrating, to say the least. We are being told, essentially, that Hillary Clinton is the best we’re getting, which is, of course, exactly the fucking problem.

We want a chance for our criticisms to be heard and weighed. We want a chance for other candidates to make a case for themselves. We want a chance for someone to force Clinton to commit to some progressive goals, to make her convince us that she is not everything she appears to be: a corporate shill and Wall Street crony, a chickenhawk who will continue the neocon drone war in the Middle East, and an agent of the status quo who wants power for no other reason than she thinks she deserves it.

In other words, we want an actual primary.

Which, as of right now, this surely isn’t. For perspective, at this point in 2007, there were at least three candidates who had a credible shot at winning the nomination, and Obama and Clinton both had just two endorsements from Senators; nobody knew who was going to win, and anyone who claimed otherwise was obviously full of shit. This time, she has close to thirty Senate endorsements and zero credible challengers. Elizabeth Warren doesn’t want to run and is more useful in the Senate anyway, and Sanders would have already announced his campaign if he were really going to (which, don’t even get me started on the fact that now, eight months from the start of the actual primaries, it is too late to mount a serious campaign).

Nobody seems to be arguing with the fact that Clinton is probably going to be a mediocre president, not even her fans; her policies are humdrum, she agrees with Barack Obama on every point that matters. It is known. And nobody on the far left is saying that we shouldn’t tick her box when it comes time to toe the line in the general--we know that she is preferable to whatever intellectually-gangrenous throwback the GOP manages to belch out. The reason we are angry and disenchanted is because this is the year that the party should be pushing hardest for a true progressive. The abuses of the GOP after a disastrous midterm election are still fresh in the mind of the public, as is the catastrophic second term of the last Republican president. The electoral math heavily favors any candidate the Democrats bring to the table, and the GOP is so fractured that their best bet is the son of a one-termer and the brother of a punchline. The 44th president will be a Democrat. The constant refrain in the left is that progressives cannot win, that the public cannot see them through the Overton window--but right now, the public will see whatever the party wants them to see, and the only candidate we are being shown is the kind of mercenary compromise who appeals to everyone and therefore no-one, the kind who you run because maintaining the positional authority of the party is more important than actual policy, and because you’re expecting it to come down to knives and chains in the streets.

We have been told to wait our turn and, having seen it arrive, are furious that it has been given to someone else.

[crowsagainstmurder]

Discrimination is not a choice, but the criteria for discrimination are.

“Religious Freedom” is a loaded term, as we learned last month when Indiana’s governor signed a bill which will allow business owners to cry religious oppression in order to avoid serving gays and lesbians (or any other group of people who are deemed by a given religion not to be worthy of a god-damned bouquet of flowers for their weddings).  

This is of course what we expected would happen, a year or so after Hobby Lobby used a similar sentiment to exclude contraception from the health care it is required to cover for its employees.  

I think the spirit of the phrase “religious freedom” is being betrayed here.  To explain this, I must use a thought experiment. Let’s say that a particular religious text could be interpreted as saying that each person who is homosexual is such because they have been told by God, personally, that they will henceforth be attracted to members of the same sex, and that they should behave in a way that fulfills this attraction. That is, in this religion, one’s identity as a homosexual is dictated by a divine force, and exercise of one’s religious beliefs includes having sex with and possibly marrying consenting members of the opposite sex.

Now say that John and James, both cis-gendered male members of this religion, and both residents of the state of Indiana, have decided to get married.  Since gay marriage was legalized in October 2014 for their home state, they don’t have to worry about the fact that if they had wanted to get married in September of 2014, they would have been prevented by the state from practicing their religion.

John and James send out their invitations, rent a beautiful venue, select fabulous, beglittered tuxes, and hire an Elton John impersonator as a wedding singer.  A week before the big day, John and James are refused service by Thomas, the owner of a flower shop, on the basis that selling flowers to John and James for their big, gay wedding would violate his religious freedom, as a practicing member of a religion that prohibits him from selling to or even interacting with homosexuals (especially engaged ones).  Thomas, creator of jobs, even tries to hire an intermediary to speak to John and James on his behalf, but because his business is so small, cannot afford to.

After several legal kerfuffles, the case John and James vs. Thomas reaches the United States Supreme Court.  

John and James are fighting for the right to purchase flowers from Thomas, the best florist in their home of Shitty-Town, Indiana, claiming that refusal of service on the grounds of Thomas’ religiously-motivated exclusion of homosexuals from all aspects of life is itself religious discrimination, as John and James are homosexuals in virtue of their religious faith.  Thomas is fighting almost the perfect converse of this: that serving homosexuals is against his religion, even if they are homosexual for religious reasons.  Also, Thomas would like the state of Indiana to pay for an intermediary to speak to John and James, as Thomas is prohibited from doing so by his religion, and cannot afford to pay for one himself.

The Supreme Court must, in other words,  decide how to evaluate the standing of two opposing religions.  No matter their decision, one thing is clear in this scenario: one of the religions will be demoted, and its followers told that their way of life cannot be enforced legally.  Religious discrimination is not an option, it is the rule which governs this case.

Several realizations I’ve had from this thought experiment bear mentioning.

1) There is no functional difference between John and James’ homosexuality being a result of religious dictates and it being a result of their personal identity or choice.  In both cases, they’re two dudes playing with each other’s dangly bits. (And I should say, there is no law prohibiting the formation of John and James’ religion IRL, at least in the states where gay marriage is already legal -the only requirements the US government makes upon a religion in order for it to be “legitimate” are that it be genuinely, faithfully believed by a person, and that it not contradict previously established laws).

The only difference is that in the first case, they are being told to do something by a deity, and in the second case, they are simply asserting their own identities and feelings.

I am extremely concerned about what this says for the relative importance that we place on authoritarian versus autonomous control.  That we are comfortable with compulsion of an individual to do something by an unknowable mind, but less comfortable if they are motivated to do the same thing for personal reasons, is indicative of a very different valuation of individual choice than we as freedom-loving, American patriots are claiming. This also goes for Thomas’ case - Thomas would not have the same grounding if he said that he, personally, wanted to discriminate against homosexuals. Allegiance to authority (especially divine authority) is given such deference that its invocation can shield individuals from having to justify their personal motivations.  

2) For reasons similar to those in #1, the meaning of “religious freedom” is not functionally different from that of “freedom to live how one chooses”.  That is, in practical terms, the thing that is being protected under the banner of religious freedom is a way of life that precipitates out of a belief.

In this sense, the example of John, James and Thomas sets them on equal footing: they are all pursuing a way of life on the basis of some ideology.  

3) Were the SCOTUS tasked with deciding which religion to demote, they would come up against a fairly familiar paradox - in order to demote a religion which actively discriminates against (i.e. makes value determinations and restricts the free actions of) a group of people, they themselves must be given special rights to discriminate against the followers of that religion.  But, as we’ve already established, they will have to discriminate against members of one religion or another in either case.  It is unavoidable.  

I can’t honestly say I know what the SCOTUS would do in this situation.  But what should be done is obvious:  the religion which is most feasibly a shield for a personal prejudice which we would not support if it weren’t demanded by a divine authority is the one you demote.  

Let’s try this out in the example. 

For John and James’ religion, what are the possible personal prejudices they could be attempting to hide through their religion, which informs them of their homosexual identity, and compels them to act in a way that maximizes their happiness as homosexuals?

For Thomas’ religion, what are the possible personal prejudices he could be attempting to hide through his religion, which compels him to avoid serving and interacting with homosexuals?

...Yeah.  Sorry Thomas.

[crowsagainstmurder]

We Return

My cohort and I have been away for a truly inexcusable length of time, for which I apologize. This has been due largely to the fact that everything sucks, always and forever.

We missed the period in which it would have been appropriate to reflect upon the bygone year, so I will not remark upon 2014 except to say that it was total bullshit, for reasons which are obvious to anyone who was paying attention.

Onward! 2015! Will it be any better? Of course not, because we have a Republican congress and it's the year before a presidential election, silly! What a foolish question. At the very absolute best, we're in for some good TV.

Other things to look forward to: 1) In the next month, I will be posting a long, probably mulit-part piece on fascism and how it has become the curdled core of rightwing thinking in America; I will also provide our take on politics and current events where appropriate (i.e. Shorter Ferguson: cops are racist and that is apparent to anyone who was never kicked in the head by several horses).

2) My cohort, as usual, will handle the metaphysical difficulties of existence and consciousness and how they relate to life in the modern world, because she is much cleverer than I, which I point out now both because it is true and because there isn't any other circumstance in which she'd let me get away with it.

So. Through hardship, with butterscotch, we begin anew, and grip our pencils with renewed vigor. You'll hear from us soon, ducklings. I promise.

[crowsagainstmurder]

Re: the Jon Stewart interview with Donald Rumsfeld, have you seen "The Unknown Known"? It's a full-length documentary interview of Rumsfeld by the guy who did "The Fog of War" (interview with Robert McNamara)... that guy was way more hostile to Rumsfeld and STILL Rumsfeld snaked his way through the questions. Stewart's smart; he's played hardball before even with savvy political types; but Rumsfeld is an evil genius at it.

I haven't! I saw a trailer or clip of it somewhere awhile back, and made a mental note to watch it, but never got around to it. I still want to, but also not really? I mean, it's pretty clear that he and the rest of that coterie of war criminals are never going to be held accountable, so I'd basically be deciding to be furious for a few days for no reason.Anyway. Rumsfeld always seems like he's basically counting on politeness to get away with his horrorshow succession of failures. Like, where Dick Cheney creates some ridiculous false dichotomy to justify whatever shitty decision he made, Rumsfeld will just tumble out some squirmy half-truth that's not even really relevant to the discussion, and nobody will call him on it because hey, turns out giving the lie is awkward. But I would be interested to see how skeevy he can get with someone who doesn't give a fuck about maintaining their access.

[crowsagainstmurder]

Many have said it: 2014 was not such a great year for humans. Rather than enumerate its many disappointments (and mourn the fact that Robin Williams isn't even around anymore to spin the tragedy into gold), I felt the need to reflect on what can be learned from our most recent journey around the sun. 

From all of the conversations, journal entries, articles and arguments, one piece of advice seems to be widely applicable: Let go of the idea that your perception of another person is comprehensive or accurate

Consider how much you conceal about yourself on a daily basis.

You may need to refrain from voicing an opinion or belief in front of your boss.  Perhaps you don't want to advertise to everyone that you absolutely hate football.  Or maybe you lie to your parents about your recreational use of marijuana.  You never reveal yourself to your long-running crush.  You pretend that you don't watch porn. Your best friend believes they have your full support in their firm decision to marry someone they met two months ago, but they don't.  Your family believes you are straight, but you aren't.  Your entire community thinks that you share their religious beliefs, but you don't.  No one even suspects that you were a victim of abuse, or that you abused someone, or that you didn't learn to read until you were ten, or that you were homeless, or that you were born to a fortune.   These things aren't apparent because we hide them on purpose, to maintain the different identities that serve us in all of the environments we inhabit.  The image we get when we meet someone is a single, tiny mirror on the colossal disco ball that is their identity. People, just like you, have secrets.  They are multi-dimensional.

In the case that should be obvious, judgments made on the basis of some overarching identity category like race, gender, orientation, class, etc. are absurd, because people in those categories actually vocalize and demonstrate (adamantly) that one stereotype or another is inaccurate.   But it is less obvious to us that a person's presented identity is also not necessarily representative of how they are.  The tendency to assume that our perspective is the most informed, insightful, and objective often overrides our ability to imagine what another person's private life might be like.   So, the next time there is a disagreement in your workplace, consider that it may not be the most vocally upset person who was most impacted by it.  That apparently cis-gendered person who you labeled as having straight-privilege may actually be in the closet, and doesn't know how to come out (and now you've probably made them feel defensive).  The Mormon who knocked on your door who you called "idiot cultmember" might have lost his faith privately, but may still feel compelled to pretend he believes because he knows no other world, and has just received direct evidence that others who share his true beliefs are unkind and unaccepting.   So, if you haven't made a resolution yet, consider this one: before you hurl insults at, make accusations of, or dismiss another person, play a little game.  Imagine that they have a secret identity, completely dissimilar to the one you pictured before.  Maybe they rehabilitate injured birds. Or they host and care for their mother with dementia. Maybe they seriously believe they went to Hogwarts.  Maybe they DID go to Hogwarts, and they weren't even in Slytherin.  The more absurd, the better. Because even the most absurd imaginary identities you assign them could be more accurate than the one you assumed they had at first.

[crowsagainstmurder]

The Great Bait and Switch

When I was in the Navy, I spent a lot of time sitting in one office or another, waiting for the phone to ring. I took a lot of messages and got a lot of food and coffee. Essentially, I did all the work that anyone could have done. I was completely dispensable and my paychecks always made me feel guilty, little as they were.

And I heard a lot of sea stories. Like most stories, they come in two basic flavors: comedy, usually short, usually lewd, usually during field exercises. These are the stories you tell in the office and over lunch, in crowds, at parties, with strangers. They have no footprint and leave nothing behind. If you have occasion to hear these stories firsthand, watch the room carefully. You may notice nothing. But you also may notice one person who laughs a little softer, who asks no questions and makes no comment. They may stare at the floor, perspiring drink in hand forgotten, and what they are doing is remembering the other story (for there is only ever one), and wondering if they should tell it. And the answer will be no, and they will remember their drink and they will laugh at the right times and their life will go on. Or not.

This story waits for a certain moment, a moment of need so fierce that it surges up and out and over and through and in, and you are suddenly in exactly the right place and time and company, and you tell the story. And maybe things change.

This moment is not Veterans Day. It is not the moment in which a stranger thanks you for doing something they don't understand because they've been told it's right and therefore now saying the words makes them feel like they're a good person. Veterans Day is not what it should be, it is not when people want to hear the truth, which is that people die for no reason, to no end and no purpose or effect, because of one or a series of bad decisions made by persons with nothing at stake, so far removed from repercussions they might as well be in another universe, and a thousand other truths about war and surviving it that people refuse to hear. It is not a day for veterans. It is instead a day for lip service, a day of ignorance and of falsity, the Super Bowl of political football.

When strangers thank me for my "service" (always the word), I affect an air of benevolent arrogance: "Hey, no problem. I'm here for you." 

But inwardly, I seethe.

Imagine: you are sold a false picture of nobility to which you dedicate years of your life, and in return, society rewards you with discounts on nachos once a year.

[crowsagainstmurder]

Perspective

I recently experienced several personal failures, in addition to the ongoing ones I try to hide from everyone.   When I enumerated these failings, I felt strongly that I was a Bona Fide Fuckup.   And then, as I re-read my list not five minutes later, I recognized how completely irrelevant those failings are compared to the troubles of others, and I felt childish. Phase three of this process has been my realization that, even though I might sound like a spoiled brat to some for feeling genuinely distressed at the comparatively minute obstacles in my life, I do have a Real Problem. I am a perfectionist, and I hate failing, and I hate being vulnerable. I want to be the best at everything, and say the best things, and be cool. I want people to like me, so I can feel better about not really liking myself. But the more I struggle to that end, the more I alienate myself from others, and from the opportunity to learn from mistakes, rather than simply wallow in self-hatred for making them. I know, from hearing and reading others say this, that it is a common affliction.  Insecurities are frequently described as central to a person's identity and functioning.  People talk about it as though your failings aren't just things you do, they are you, the "deep down" you. I wonder why we tend to attach such importance to a person's faults compared to their strengths.  A successful, effective public figure can undo a lifetime's worth of good deeds by getting caught in an affair.  A one-time convicted thief will have a black mark on their record for their entire life.  One false-step in a job, in a relationship, in an appeal for approval of any kind can jeopardize everything.   Craving approval is a survival strategy in a distrustful, withholding environment.  The fact that I am very good at attaining approval from certain people is not a badge of honor - it shows that I've been immersed in that environment for too long. And the worst part is that I perpetuate it. One of the things I actively fear is the possibility of becoming homeless. I have feared this since I was a little kid, even though there was very little risk of it ever actually happening.  Despite this, I saw homelessness, and particularly the wall that people build between themselves and the homeless, justified by some notion of the homeless as being untrustworthy or otherwise deserving of their status. Of course, as I've aged I've noticed that this attitude is applied to all people, it is only more pronounced with regard to the poor.  The wealthy are those with the ability to exist with the least need to appease others.  And most of us are competing to attain this. Somehow, the option to simply stop requiring others to appease us is continually overlooked.

[crowsagainstmurder]

Personhood, Places, and Things

I try to steer clear of discussions about abortion, these days. There are several reasons for this. My many experiences discussing it in the past have led me to believe that the discussion is not one of facts, evidence or formal argument, but rather of feelings. Specifically, feelings about what constitutes a person, and what rights a person has. Discussions can lead to alterations in feelings, but it is rare.  Feelings aren't really amenable to that format.  Including my own. Another reason is that I've discovered (on more than one occasion) that a friend differed from me on this issue, and in the process I realized I have a really hard time staying friends with people who do not share this particular view of mine.  I don't really have as hard a time with other controversial issues. This is partially because I tend to disagree with most people on most things, and have had to develop an ability to remain friendly despite serious differences.  But this one remains, and it bothers me, because I do not like the idea that people who are not part of my ideological demographic are The Enemy.

But recently the dreaded topic came up in a conversation.  And I found the need to evaluate why this topic, of all topics, is especially divisive for me and others.  Attempting to do this, I asserted that the common "pro-life" assumption, "abortion is equivalent to murder", is dehumanizing, particularly to women, and was asked to explain this.  So, against my better judgement, I am writing a blog series about it.  Because one post would be agonizingly long, and there are a number of separate issues I want to address.

Feelings may be injured as a result of this.  It's a risk I'll have to take, because this issue affects everyone, and a solid understanding of the arguments for legal abortion is an important part of modern thought, and potentially a requirement for a just society.

(Please note: I am aware of the viewpoint that questions of personhood detract from other relevant questions such as body autonomy.  I plan to address this in this series, but also think it worth noting that since personhood is often the issue pro-life people care about more than anything else, addressing personhood from a pro-choice stance is a more effective way of engaging in discourse than simply insisting that they care about it less.)

[crowsagainstmurder]

No Wonder He's a Mets Fan: Jon Stewart's Softball Interviews

I saw Donald Rumsfeld speak once, when he was still secretary of defense for George W. Bush. He'd come to Iraq to pay his political dues, to give the impression of leadership, and like every low-ranking soldier, I'd been told that listening to his talk was completely voluntary, which meant, of course, that attendance was mandatory. It was uninspired; he spent a half hour or so saying nothing substantial or worthwhile. He was smug condescension personified. I hadn't paid close attention to our leaders at the time of the invasion, or even after I joined the Navy. What I knew about Rumsfeld at the time was the impression of him I got in that moment. And he struck me as the kind of person who is immune to criticism--someone who can rationalize anything because they never spare a moment for introspection. The sort of person, in other words, who is both very competent and very dangerous in vertical power structures.

Years later, I learned that he was one of the primary architects behind a war of choice for which he personally failed to prepare us, a fuckup which certainly killed American soldiers and Iraqi civilians, and which he then tried to brush off as entirely circumstantial--his "a general goes to war with the army he has" moment. I watched the footage of Rumsfeld when it was discovered that, shortly after Baghdad was captured, rioting and looting got so bad that people were pulling down concrete walls and prying out the rebar to sell as scrap so they could just barely afford to feed themselves another day; Rumsfeld's response was to quote Chicken Little. And I added him to the list that I keep in my head, the list of people who've inflicted large-scale, grand injustice on humanity, people whose crimes are gripped with such enormity that balancing the scales doesn't even seem possible, and who, it seems obvious, will never be held accountable.

When Jon Stewart interviewed Donald Rumsfeld, I was giddy with excitement. I thought I was about to see Frost/Nixon in miniature, a man in the right with the facts on his side about to score one for everyone who had watched the world go completely fucking batshit over the past decade.

I was wrong.

Stewart let Rumsfeld dictate the terms of the discussion--because for him, that's what it was, a discussion, and what it needed to be, the only thing it could have been for it to have been worthwhile, was a trial. Rumsfeld deserved to be put on defense, he needed to be accused, and Stewart focused on how the message was delivered, on the fact that the administration appeared to have operated from a position of certainty, especially in regard to whether Saddam Hussein held weapons of mass destruction. He didn't ask why they didn't start planning the occupation and reconstruction until three months before the invasion, he didn't ask why nobody selected to administer the post-combat operations had any experience whatsoever with nation reconstruction or the Middle East or even spoke Arabic, he didn't ask why it seemed that everyone who was selected for this very important work was related or otherwise connected to one member of the Bush administration or another, or why none of them were at all qualified for the work they were supposed to do, and he didn't ask why so many members of the administration profited economically from the war.

Today, Jon Stewart admits that he biffed that interview (he claims to lose sleep over it, to which I say, good), but what's interesting is the moment that he thinks is most crucial. To paraphrase:

Stewart: ...in the effort it took the administration to sell the war-- Rumsfeld: "Selling" is a little strong. Stewart: Let me back up. In the effort it took to.... Rumsfeld: Present. Stewart: ..........okay?

And this moment does not seem especially significant to me. What seems significant to me is that Stewart started the discussion from a position of subjectivity (Paraphrase: "It seemed like you guys were arrogantly certain."), when he should have hit him with unassailable fact and then, when Rumsfeld denied it (as he did even with Stewart's mealy-mouthed criticism), instead of laughing it off, he should have said, at long last, "Everything you said was wrong. Everything. And people even within your administration knew it, so the question must be, what is the real reason we invaded Iraq?" And, most importantly, when Rumsfeld resorted to fearmongering, and claimed that terrorists are less likely to come out of Iraq now, he should have pointed out that the nation has been completely destabilized and how, exactly, does he expect the populace to effectively govern and police itself now that we've destroyed their infrastructure and created two more generations of people that hate the US with full and eminent justification.

Stewart started the interview in good faith--he believed that Rumsfeld and the people who led us to Iraq were honest. Ultimately, he believes in the system. He's playing the same game as everyone in DC, except he doesn't seem to realize it. And this is why he is irrelevant.

[crowsagainstmurder]

You Have A Nice House - Wanna Do It? Art and Adaptability in the Animal Kingdom

This almost NSFW video (you'll see) shows the courtship behavior of one of the best creatures on the planet: The Vogelkop Bower Bird.  You'll notice the male Vogelkop is as drab as the females, which is rare among birds in the tropics.  Instead of flashy plumage, he uses something far more intriguing: artistic ability. I know this sounds like an anthropomorphization, but what else would you call it, really? He selects objects solely on the basis of how they appear, arranges them ever so carefully so that they catch the right light,  and spends years, YEARS cultivating a studio in which to show his work. The content of his creations may not reach the depths of human artistic endeavor, but his devotion to his craft is real. Importantly, each individual Vogelkop male has a different take on what looks best, and each bird actually varies what he will display each mating season.  It's not just a stereotyped collection of the same thing every time - it contains variety. On top of this, the objects he collects aren't always "useful" to his species (e.g. the dung), so the thing he is displaying is not necessarily his ability to collect useful objects, but rather, to collect objects that meet some other, elusive criteria known only to the female. Why would I show this video to anyone? I swear it wasn't to make you feel sorta skeezed out from seeing a bird's naughty bits.  This video shows the behavior of a non-human species that has a fairly developed aesthetic sense.  And even though one might initially conclude that the raison d'être of aesthetic sense in this and the human case is just motivated by sex, I think this misses the point, slightly. Yes, technically everything could be reduced to its utility in acquiring a mate and producing offspring.  But if we're going to play that game, we must acknowledge that there is diversity in the "winning strategy" throughout the animal kingdom. The fact that one of the winning strategies is aesthetic sense says something about the value of such an ability and what it communicates to others - an individual's aesthetic ability can convey complex information about their perception and mental capacity, memory, foraging ability, motor skills, etc.  In light of this, one might speculate that organisms with developed aesthetic sense possess certain types of mental states.  Sexual selection for these mental states suggests that they are useful not just for creating art, but for the types of behaviors that enable a species' survival. The common assumption that art is purposeless or extraneous does not account for the fact that art is a way of advertising "I have a certain kind of mind!!".  And it makes a lot of sense that the kinds of mental processes required for artistic expression are useful in other contexts: focus, inventiveness, attention to detail/good perception, ability to plan and invest time are all highly adaptive qualities.  Our artistic ability, like that of the bowerbird, is a token of what makes us viable.  So, make art a priority. That is, if you want to get laid.

[crowsagainstmurder]

My Room Comes With Free Smells

The funny thing about microhousing is that despite the small size and the "low" rent, it is still outside the realm of possibility for myself and almost everyone I know--we, the millennial underclass, look at a minuscule two-bedroom apartment in a bad part of town split between two or three people as an object of aspiration. I wish I could afford 880 a month, I wish I could live in a clean, well-lit shoebox.

This bit of fearmongering amongst the NIMBYs really tickles me: 

Murray’s commitment irritated many neighborhood activists, who have coalesced around this issue more than any other in memory. Some neighborhood opponents have posted flyers that pointedly ask what kind of person would willingly move into such a small space.

“People can’t imagine who would want to live like this,” says Scott Shapiro, a developer of several micro-townhouses around the city, all with an average unit size of 163 square feet. “Who are these people, they want to know. Well, they are your bank teller, your barista, your bus driver.”

I'm honestly wondering exactly how ignorant you have to be to think that kind of turbosketch steal-your-baby-and-trade-it-for-drugs cartoon character could ever afford any kind of housing in the heart of the city, let alone a brand-new apartment.

Listen, middle-aged people: the persons who need cheap housing right now are all your kids who graduated from college and found that you lied to them--the job market is actually non-functional and will be for the foreseeable future. And it is your fault, boomers. You've held the reigns of the entire planet for thirty years. All problems, literally all of them, are yours, either because you directly created them or because your parents handed them off and you decided to do nothing. And it is your children who are paying the price.