Words Matter - a Possible Shift

"Precision, accuracy, and clarity matter, as gestures of respect to those to whom you speak; toward the subject, whether it's an individual or the earth itself; toward the historical record. It's also a kind of self-respect; there are many old cultures in which you are, as the saying goes, as good as your word." 

 Rebecca Solnit, Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays,) 2018, Haymarket Press.

I have been wondering for quite a while what would happen to our society if we changed the words that we use to describe law enforcement. Just as we have increasingly militarized our community police forces with products of the military-industrial complex, we have perhaps unwittingly weaponized their orientation to managing conflict. Note the distinctions in the definitions of these words from the American Heritage Dictionary:  

Police - "the governmental  department charged with the regulation and control of the affairs of a community, now chiefly the department established to maintain order, enforce the law, and prevent and detect crime." American Heritage Dictionary, 4th edition, 2002 (p.1077)

Peace Officer - "a law enforcement officer, such as a sheriff, who is responsible for maintaining civil peace." AHD (p. 1024)

In our current society, pundits, elected officials and citizens rarely use the word "peace" whether applied within communities or between nations. The bombardment of violence on television and in movies depicts, as commonplace, murder, war and terrorism, with courageous armed defenders who save the day. We are saturated with these visions, day in and day out. It may well be that the gun-carrying vigilantes in our midst feast at this trough of fear and macho heroism.

We have a President who believes that bullying is the best way to manage people and affairs.  Tracey Meares and Tom Tyler, directors of Yale Law School’s Justice Collaboratory, perhaps asked the right question recently in The Atlantic – “The First Step is Figuring Out What Police Are For.” Following the 50-year-old Kerner Commission and Obama’s Task Force on 21^st Century Policing, as they suggest, may help us begin to answer that with real policy changes. But as Solnit and other great writers tell us, words matter. Imagine official vehicles in the community emblazoned not with POLICE but instead with PEACE OFFICER. How might that new moniker affect not only how police see themselves but also how their community sees them if their work is redefined to align with the word “peace”?

The emblems of force that pervade typical policing – guns, sticks, pepper spray, handcuffs and, more recently, armored vehicles, drones, acoustic grenades and other military hardware-- create their own fear and power of control. In the hands of a bully, these are weapons used to dominate the other. Distinguish that from individuals dressed in vests that exclaim ”PEACE” who are inserting themselves between potential adversaries and using conflict resolution techniques to tone down potentially escalating conflicts. These “peace officers’” first dictum is to prevent harm and then to resolve conflicts peacefully. In a recent discussion with strong supporters of gun ownership, one of the fallback arguments shared was their belief that government shouldn’t be the only faction with weapons. If we demilitarize the police, could we then deny open-carry adherents their rationale for publicly brandishing weapons?

We have tried increasing the availability of weapons as a way to reduce violence (fight fire with fire) and it hasn’t worked, certainly not in the long run. Nonviolence has better and longer lasting peace effects. That we don’t hear the word “peace” uttered much in the public sphere anymore is perhaps the fallout of the militarization of our society. Peace is not simply the absence of war. A sustainable peace, as noted by leading development economist Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, would offer all a sense of personal security, not just protection from violent actions but also access to the necessities of life – food, shelter, energy, access to health care and education, and the opportunity to develop the possibilities of a fulfilled life in a prospering and ecologically healthy society. As the late peace leader A.J. Muste noted, “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”

Not Enough Bullets

I am struggling to remember an earlier time in my life when I felt like the world was as surreal as I find it now. We have a person in the drivers seat so self-absorb, most professional mental health experts I know concur  that he suffers from Narcissistic Behavior Disorder (NBD), based upon his public statements and behavior. 

        "Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of ultraconfidence lies a fragile self-esteem that's vulnerable to the slightest criticism." (Mayo Clinic)

 As a result, he is making decisions that defy any rational worldview while bringing great embarrassment to the country he represents. If it was just the embarrassment, I would not be so worried. But his policy decisions are almost mind-numbing. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in his recent budget proposal that trades $54 billion for more militarization of our already overly militarized society, in exchange for a combination of tax cuts- mostly for the wealthiest, and reductions in social, environmental and diplomatic programs.




The utter folly of this approach is clear to most serious economists.  CNN Money Magazine called it

"President Trump's first budget can be summed up like this: Big gifts for the rich, big cuts for the poor."

     He would give a lot more money to the defense industry and wealthy                      taxpayers, and he would pay for that with an unprecedented slashing of safety      net programs for America's poor. (CNN/Money)


Of course, when someone does offer criticism the NBD individual often exhibits the following symptoms:

    "At the same time, you have trouble handling anything that may be perceived as criticism. You may have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, vulnerability and humiliation. To feel better, you may react with rage or contempt and try to belittle the other person to make yourself appear superior. "(Mayo Clinic)

While our NBD leader continues to keep everyone off balance trying to anticipate his next decision, tweet, or comment, others are busy at the state level reeking havoc on our society. Our legislature here in Michigan tried to pass legislation to repeal the state income tax while our schools, colleges, infrastructure, health care and safety net are disintegrating as we race to beat Mississippi to the bottom of the rankings.

While we dodged that bullet for the moment - they are regrouping, another gang of NRA legislative servants have moved to do away with permits for guns, and therefore with any required training one might hope the vigilantes would receive. Of course, they argue that the 2nd amendment absolutely permits citizens the right to own and bear arms of any kind, any where, any time. As I left the hearing room last week after offering testimony urging the committee members to slow the arms race, not to accelerate it, I was followed out by an open-carry advocate all the way to the elevator, concerned that I was willing to allow the police to be the only perpetrators of violence.

I am not a psychologist, but I wonder if the ardent gun enthusiasts suffer from a syndrome not unlike the NBD. They seem either paranoid that they will be randomly attacked by some scheming criminal just waiting for them to walk by, or they get some strange rush from having the feel of cold steel next to their body. They talk as if there are criminals everywhere looking for strangers to assault, whereas we know that most gun deaths are among people who know each other. Such was the case of the young man I saw shot and killed a few hundred feet away nearly 50 years ago. They had been playing pool the night before.

The committee just passed this legislation on a party-line vote (guess who voted for and against). The insecurity industry that feeds the fear is aided and abetted by the television and motion picture industry which fill the airways and theater screens with endless violence. Violence, where the hero, like in the old westerns of the last century, always manages to shoot quicker, aim straighter. The villains are dispatched and everyone lives happily ever after. Of course, those fictions never have innocent bystanders harmed. We don't see the orphans, the widows, the maimed. 

Our addiction to violence in guns runs from the continued enlargement of the US military footprint - now more than 800 military bases around the world, the number one seller of arms of all kinds to almost anyone willing to pay. Heck, if you're a friend (especially if you're a dictator or monarch) we'll give you the weapons as foreign aid. Who wins - the weapons makers. Lockheed Martin's stock goes up every time there is a rumble somewhere on earth that the US might get involved with. Who stands to make a killing if the US follows through with President Obama's plan to spend $1 trillion on our nuclear weapon arsenal? Will the guy who now holds the launch key, up the ante? 

The arming of citizens in our public spaces is simply a parallel response to the fear that has been sold, often by those who can profit by it. The gun as solution prevents us from addressing the causes of violence, the lack of a hopeful future and the escalating inequality. The temporary elixir of superior power is an addictive drug that permeates our society. A war on this addiction is not the answer any more than was the war on drugs or the war on terror. Instead we need an investment in social and mental health therapies. Starting with the guy with the nuclear codes.

That Exceptionalism Thing

I just finished reading Noam Chomsky's latest work, Who Rules the World this morning, As the craziness of this presidential election unfolds around us both the major party candidates share the dominant script of America the Exceptional.


In fact, both not only wish to preserve and protect that image, but one would even expand it. Both candidates are bully on the War on Terrorism and see nothing that more military punch and power can't fix. Neither willing to consider that perhaps that expansive military approach only accelerates that which they are attempting to end.

Chomsky's work was completed before Mr. Trump had locked up the Republican nomination earlier this year.Nonetheless, all should read his heavily documented review (more than 629 cited references) of the forces alive in our world, their antecedents, and specifically the US actions that have nurtured the world we face together. Whether one disagrees with the complete analysis Chomsky offers, any reader would at least have to begin to be skeptical of the utterances of the dominant narrative that engulfs conservatives and liberals alike.

No one relishes reading about misdeeds of their home team. We might occasionally accept the idea that 'one bad apple' doesn't spoil the whole bushel. Or that OK, no one is perfect (we hear that one a lot during this presidential campaign as supporters of both major candidates defend their support for their favored candidate). Chomsky challenges us to consider why the rest of the world thinks that the US is the "greatest threat" to world peace ( this reported in an international WIN/Gallop poll p.222). He constantly contrasts the myths we live in with the facts that display our utter blindness to the reality as others experience it.

Nowhere is this more evident than the use of the word 'terrorist'. Chomsky, as he has written for decades, notes that we (US) use the term to describe the acts of those we disagree with (our enemies), but absolve any acts by us or our surrogates that have similar if not worse consequences for people outside our borders. So when we send a drone to take out someone we don't like and blow away innocent civilians, that's not terrorism but our right to defend ourselves. Yet when a Palestinian attacks an occupier in his own country, it's terrorism. From the Vietnam War to the debacles in Libya and Syria, Chomsky shines the light on the hypocrisy.

This is hard to read as an American who wants us to live up to the vision of a just, compassionate democracy among democracies. It certainly cries for what Rabbi Michael Lerner so eloquently expressed in a blog this week, "American Politics: The U.S. Needs Repentance and Atonement".


      "We need a New Bottom Line of love and generosity that could reshape every dimension of our economic, political, cultural and spiritual assumptions about reality. To get there, we need a fundamental transformation of consciousness. Although not in the same league of outrage as what Trump has done to legitimate misogyny, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and xenophobia, the Democrats would also be challenged by a New Bottom Line–and even Hillary Clinton’s call for a “no fly zone” in Syria would have to be scrutinized against the alternative approach to foreign policy a New Bottom Line would suggest (namely, seeking homeland security through generosity and a Global Marshall Plan so that the US becomes known as the most generous and caring society in the world, not the toughest and most militarist)."

In another penetrating analysis of our current wave of political upheaval Charles Eisenstein actually finds a ray of hope in his "The Lid is Off."


     "Clinton and Trump are a product of their conditions, playing the “game of thrones” according to the secret rules of the insiders, in a system that has long allowed, encouraged, and in some ways nearly required hypocrisy. That system is coming to an end. We are entering by fits and starts an era of transparency in which, we may someday hope, secret rules and hypocrisy will have no purchase."

War - What is it Good For?

President Obama is about to release his budget for fiscal year 2017. There is every reason to believe that the amount we spend for war will dwarf every other discretionary expenditure. 


The National Priorities Project "Costs of National Security" website helps paint that picture. But numbers are cold facts that like the winter winds numb us.





Ernie Regehr in a new book Disarming Conflict (2015, Zed Books) takes us through what armed conflict has bought us as a human family since the end of the Cold War.




 Most of the wars over the past few decades have been civil wars or intrastate wars. Millions have died. Destruction of mind-boggling proportions have accrued, Refugees and internal displaced persons are at record highs. And yet we prepare for more of it. Regehr sifts through the data about what has been won. The answer is rarely anything. And yet we persist.

Chris Hedges in his first hand account of wars he covered as a war correspondent for the New York Times in his award winning yet distressing War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning lays it as bare as words without pictures possibly could.

Peter Van Buren's We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People depicts the horrid waste and madness of trying to rebuild what we just destroyed while expecting it to be better than ever. 



Andrew Feinstein' Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade will open one's eyes to the skulduggery, corruption, and power of the world's arms merchants and why the intractability of the flow of arms is making powerful players wealthier and more powerful.



While we urgently fight the rise of gun violence in our cities, we have yet to make the connection with our own national proclivity to violence. Bernie Sanders made an insightful statement during the debate this past week about capital punishment when asked if he supported it. 

    "Of course there are barbaric acts out there, but in a world of so much violence and killing, I just don't believe that government itself should be part of the killing."

If we extend that logic to all the ways governments enable killing beyond capital punishment we might reduce the scourge of war and murder. As Regehr points out wars don't start without access to arms.In fact the research shows that there are four chief ingredients to start wars.

1)  The presence of heightened political, economic, and social grievances;
2)  Intergroup competition and conflict that reflects disunity within a society;
3)  Capacity for sustained use of force;
4)  The perceived lack of alternatives to settle grievances through nonviolent conflict resolution.

The gun lust that hearkens us all to own and brandish weapons is a key feeder of war. Not only are we a gun-happy culture, but as the largest by producer and seller of arms, we have exported the concept and thus have helped sow more wars.

To read Regehr, Hedges, Van Buren and Feinstein that becomes all the more apparent. As Regehr poignantly notes: 

   

     In conflicts between states or blocs of states, the greater the armaments and armaments competition, the more the focus shifts away from the political and economic substance of the conflicts to concentrate instead on the competitive accumulation of arms and fighting forces and the political distortions that accompany them. It is a process of dynamic militarization that both relies on and generates a climate of intense suspicion, distrust, hostility, and confrontation, all of which are deeply inimical to rational attention while the political conflicts that visit an interactive world. The arms race itself becomes a primary point of contention while the political issues at stake are lost first to the drum beat and then the fog of war...

... the capacity to wage conflict by military means, between and within states, continues to enjoy disproportionate attention and funding. Political and business acumen has been employed to the fullest to exploit lack of controls and the pervasive secrecy that characterizes the arms industry in order to promote universal access to the tools of war - arms and ammunition - along with maximum profit. President Eisenhower's famous warming about the military-industrial-complex is certainly no less salient today than it was when he raised it in his January 1961 farewell address. It continues to drive an insatiable appetite for military aggrandizement that can never admit to reaching a point of sufficiency. The perceived threat seems always to exceed the accumulated military might to counter it. And so, a relentless culture of vulnerability is promoted by the military-industrial-congressional-scientific-think tank complex (one could keep adding to the list of the component elements). It seeks to keep military funding on track and helps to shape the political culture and national psyche.(p.134-5)

Perhaps our poets and songwriters can put this in a perspective that journalists, scholars, and activists can't quite convey of this scourge and its causes. John Gorka's song War Makes War is perhaps a most succinct summary. But the song that inspired the title of this post, made popular by Edwin Starr in 1969, is equally poignant.

War

War, huh yeah
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, oh hoh, oh
War huh yeah
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, say it again y'all
War, huh good God
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, listen to me

Oh, war, I despise
'Cause it means destruction of innocent lives
War means tears to thousands of mothers eyes
When their sons go off to fight and lose their lives

I said
War, huh good God y'all
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, just say it again
War whoa Lord
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, listen to me

War, it ain't nothin' but a heartbreak
War, friend only to the undertaker

Oh war, is an enemy to all mankind
The thought of war blows my mind
War has caused unrest within the younger generation
Induction, then destruction who wants to die

War, good God, y'all
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, say it, say it, say it
War, uh huh, yeah, huh
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, listen to me

War, it ain't nothin' but a heartbreaker
War, it's got one friend that's the undertaker

Oh, war has shattered many young man's dreams
Made him disabled bitter and mean
Life is much too short and precious to spend fighting wars these days
War can't give life it can only take it away, ooh

War, huh, good God y'all
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, say it again
War, whoa, Lord
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, listen to me

War, it ain't nothin' but a heartbreaker
War, friend only to the undertaker

Peace love and understanding tell me
Is there no place for them today
They say we must fight to keep our freedom
But Lord knows there's got to be a better way

War, huh, good God y'all
What is it good for?
You tell 'em, say it, say it, say it, say it
War, good Lord, huh
What is it good for?
Stand up and shout it, nothing
War, it ain't nothin' but a heartbreaker

Songwriters
Strong, Barrett / Whitfield, Norman J.

Published by
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

 

Arming Ourselves to Death

Such a fixation our culture has on guns and violence as a response to fear. From Dwight Eisenhower's famous farewell speech warning against the Military Industrial Complex to the NRA's no holds barred to make sure everyone has a gun on them at all times, our culture is sick, probably cancerous, and possibly stage 4.

A report last week from a Credit Suisse conference in West Palm Beach, noted

       "major defense contractors Raytheon, Oshkosh, and Lockheed Martin assured investors that they stand to gain from the escalating conflicts in the Middle East. Lockheed Martin Executive Vice President Bruce Tanner told the conference his company will see “indirect benefits” from the war in Syria, citing the Turkish military’s recent decision to shoot down a Russian warplane.
        The incident, Tanner said, heightens the risk for U.S. military operations in the region, providing “an intangible lift because of the dynamics of that environment and our products in theater.” He also stressed that the Russian intervention would highlight the need for Lockheed Martin-made F-22s and the new F-35 jets. [The Intercept, Dec.4, 2015).


Who says war doesn't pay.Why else would the Center for Responsive Politics be able to show that in 2015 alone, as of data reported by October 23, the defense industry had spent more than $95 million lobbying our government to insure their profitability.

Researchers William Hartung and Stephen Miles reported last summer what that looks like by looking at campaign contributions to House Armed Services Committee Chair, Mac Thornberyy (R-TX). I'll spare you the details here, save he has collected a mere $250,000 so far this election cycle. Put simply more evidence that Eisenhower was right.

With that kind of money floating around, and it's only the money that isn't hidden or dark, we can see an increasing part of the corruption that is our electoral and political system.

The US discretionary budget is now mostly military spending. When you add veteran's benefits it exceeds 60% of discretionary spending!!!!


Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates used to joke that he had more band members than the State Department had foreign service officers. We have 800 or more military bases on foreign soil and constantly flirting for more. The more bases, the more we need arms to equip those we station there -- an arms merchant's fantasy.

But it is not simply our military that's loaded for bear, it's increasingly our domestic culture. Even since the tragedy of San Bernadino last week, guns are flying off the shelves; the same shelves that supplied the deranged killers with their tools for tragedy. Here in Michigan, our medieval legislators are trying to lift any restrictions on concealed weapons being in our schools, libraries, or other public places. Do we really live in a Gunsmoke world where we need to deputize and arm everyone to shoot when someone looks threatening?

By this picture our priorities, both national and individual, are responsible for accelerating the violence our fear mongering culture readily glorifies in television and motion picture crime and terror, that seems to get bloodier and bloodier with each passing season. There seems to be few willing to stand up and oppose this runaway madness. Congressional candidates are largely afraid they will be labeled soft, or will unleash large funds against their re-election campaigns, if they stand up to the military, gun toting mindset that so holds our nation's conscience hostage. 

Enough! It is time to challenge the constant feeding of endless war in our name through the upcoming budget process. Our elected officials need to hear from us that it is time to shrink the military budget and the number of bases and weapons that arm the world. Especially because the Defense Department has never been audited!!!  Legislation that would require an audit of the Pentagon has been languishing in a Republican controlled legislature for years. Why wouldn't self-described fiscal CONSERVATIVES want to insure that the funds we collect are spent well?? Who could possibly be against this?????? Perhaps we need only look back up to origin of the $95 million figure at the beginning of this blog.

H.R. 942 "Audit the Pentagon Act" should be on everyone's agenda. Check it out yourself and then contact your representative and senators to co-sponsor and support it's passage.

The countervailing pro-active response would be two actions:

1) Fulfilling our commitments to the UN Peacekeeping missions in which we are currently in arrears ($337 million in 2014)

2) Support the Department of Peacebuilding Act, H.R. 1111 which would establish an agency which's first job is peace through non-military efforts while building a culture of peace globally and domestically.

And speaking of domestically, the clear first choice in my mind is to outlaw the reproduction, sale and use of assault weapons. They were designed to kill people. they are by design a WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION.  They have no use beyond that, unless making people afraid is a legitimate use. While I have no problem with people owning rifles or handguns on their property, their carry into public places is an anathema to me. 

These are much more sustainable choices than feeding the growing trends that promise to arm us all to death.Don't let the fear mongers win.