November 29, 2016--This Is Depressing

In response to one of my blogs, Dr. S, a good friend who is also the best audiologist on the east coast, issued this warning. All in capital letters--

CAUTION:  THIS IS DEPRESSING. DO NOT READ ALONE OR WHILE STANDING ON A TALL BUILDING.

He went on to tell me about his ongoing frustrations with the outcome of the election. How we should not spend too much time beating ourselves up about not doing enough to forestall the outcome or struggle too hard to "understand" Trump voters. We have fallen into times where things are seen in extremes of black and white and right and wrong. He advocated calling Trump supporters out for being racist, sexist, and even worse.

I responded--

We do live on the 14th floor and have a terrace with a low railing so, heeding your warning (thank you) I read this in a room without a window or exterior door. The same place we go to when there's a tornado warning.    

I do get your point.  

It likely is a dangerous time even if Trump is a closet moderate and will find ways to wiggle out of some of his most outrageous positions. Dangerous in my mind since he is wicking out the worst in some people. 

I leave his "some people" for him to deal with. (Speak about reaping the whirlwind.) But I also have been trying to urge the rest of us to recognize that even people who voted for Trump also represent just "some people." 

I can't think of what to say to those who are as you describe them. They are out there and probably not up for grabs. I mean politically. 

So I've chosen to try to find a few ways to be optimistic and to spend most of my time trying not to get crazy while chiding the people with whom I affiliate--mainly progressives--to get up off the mat (or pot), stop feeling powerless and defeated, and get back in the game. But this time being sure to keep it up, not just do some marching for a few days and some annual check writing and then revert to the too frequent--talking, writing, fulminating.  

There's a war going on for the soul of America and too many on our side are not, I feel, behaving accordingly. Including, in my view, taking the full measure of who's on the other side. I see them as a bit more diverse than I am hearing many of my friends describe.  

To me what makes them dangerous is not that they are identifiable alt-right people (many obviously are) but people with genuine frustrations that deserve attention. People who, for example, have been lied to and manipulated by both parties, are working 2-3 jobs and still falling behind, whose kids have $50K or more in college loan debt, and who fear their children will not have good lives or a chance to live the American Dream. 

So I've been reading Kevin Phillips again (mainly American Theocracy) and the new Thomas Frank book (Listen, Liberal). For me they've figured out a lot of what's been gathering the past 30-40 years. And can serve to help explain what we might do to take back our America. 

I'm getting beat up by some friends for my efforts to urge them and myself to get more sustainably activated, but activated with as deep and nuanced an understanding about what happened as possible, to take note of the antecedents in recent and earlier American history, and also to take a hard, critical look at ourselves since I feel it essential right now not just to understand the Trump people. We need to look within. No more jerking ourselves around thinking that because we have the right views that that's enough.  

Clearly it isn't.  

We lost in very disturbing ways (look at all the swing states Trump won--Pennsylvania to me is most disturbing), look at how shallow the Dem's political bench is, look at the PC responses (see what's going on with the American flag at highly-selective Hampshire college as just one recent example), try to hear the pleas behind some of the right-wing bombast.  

Most important, I have been trying to say, it's essential to be honest about what one believes and how, among other things, one may have been a passive beneficiary of some of the right's regressive policies. How, I confess, I have benefited by the Bush tax cuts and am thereby contributing to the inequality I say I abhor. 

I've been trying to do that and am not entirely happy with what I have been discovering about myself. Another example--I find myself more Islamophobic than I'm comfortable admitting. Sadly, I could go on.

But now I'm ranting when I should be thinking about what to do with still-left-over turkey. 

Hang in there. It could get worse. Likely will. So we need to do some struggling. Including among ourselves. Maybe, starting there. 

Cozy up with a six-pack and watch some football. 

Beyond that, keep off rooftop balconies.

His response--

On occasion, especially during moments of weakness, I have found it easier to see things in black and white.  Two beers, a good night sleep, and I am again seeing the gray.   

I was really feeling like it was the end of the world, between the anti-Semitic picks and now the Secretary of Education . . .  

I realize now it’s going to be OK, eventually.  The New Yorker article, “Obama Reckons With a Trump Presidency” by David Remnick also helped.  Liked, “I think nothing is the end of the world until the end of the world.”  

I’ll keep talking and sending checks to the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center.

At Hampshire College

June 10, 2013--Snooping

There is a fierce debate underway about what data the government collects, especially should collect, in order to thwart terrorists.

Should the CIA or the National Security Agency (N.S.A.) have the authority to know who you call and for what duration? Should the Feds be able to access individual's Google searches and e-mail traffic?

President Obama, employing the authority of the Patriot Act which was passed shortly after 9/11 and reauthorized and signed during his presidency, says there are ample safeguards so that our constitutional right to privacy is being carefully protected while the CIA and N.S.A. root around looking for terrorist activity.

But Obama said on Friday, in today's world of threats, "You can't have 100 percent security and then also have 100 percent privacy."

Like it or not, this is probably true.

But there is criticism from the left--for example, from the American Civil Liberties Union--that this policy and these practices threaten our civil liberties; and there is equally fervent criticism from some on the right such as Rand Paul that the expansion of the powers permitted by the Patriot Act is yet another example of the growth of government's intrusive powers.

Polls show that Americans support what others see to be intrusive polices. To keep us safe from terrorist bombers and mass murderers, most appear to be reasonably comfortable with all the street surveillance cameras (look, they say, without them the Boston Marathon bombers would not so easily have been identified and captured) and are basically all right with police and intelligence agencies being able to read what we say on our Facebook pages or to be able to know if we are using Google to learn how to make pressure-cooker bombs.

Do we prefer to keep all of this information secret and private until after the fact--after the hijacking, after the bombing, after the plane is blown out of the sky--do we want to maintain all of our civil liberties, our full right to privacy, habeas corpus and all that (information that might be useful to prevent terrorism), do we want authorities not to have access to any conspiratorial information until after heinous deed are done?

This is very complicated; but, again, most Americans are willing to allow federal agents to do a good deal of preventative snooping.

In addition, consider this significant irony--

How many in the ACLU, how often does Rand Paul, how frequently do Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow, how prevalent is it for the media and bloggers to talk with urgent concern and outrage about other, more substantial breeches in our privacy perpetrated by Google, Facebook, Amazon, and even the Home Shopping Network?

Though they are not governmental, still these companies make billions by gathering all sorts of very detailed information about each of us and then either run targeted ads aimed at us or sell the intimate information they have collected to data-miners and anyone who wants to sell us books, vacations, pots and pans, dating services, or Viagra.

Google knows more about you and me than N.S.A. or the CIA combined. Including the detailed sexual preferences of those tens of millions of us who search for erotica on the Internet.

This is not as fiercely criticized; but if we had been able to know in advance the intentions of the marathon or underwear or shoe or 9/11 bombers, if we had seen what they had been googling or e-mailing or posting on Facebook, would the ACLU and New York Times be as agitated as they currently are by what the government has been up to in gathering information about citizens and legal residents?

A final word--

If it were impermissible to gather this kind of information or, shifting the subject slightly, if our security forces were not allowed to use laser-guided weapons and drones, what would the Civil Liberties Union have us do to intercept incipient terrorist activities?

In print and on all the talk shows during which critics of the Patriot Act are given free reign, this question never gets asked--the what-should-we do question. The criticism is at times thoughtful and trenchant as it needs to be--these kinds of policies and PRISM programs need careful scrutiny and must be kept within constitutional bounds--but, once more, in this era of asymmetrical threats, where even U.S. citizens are plotting against us, what should we do?