I owe Bree Newsome Bass an apology. She doesn’t know this yet, but I do. So here we are.
Somewhere in the past, for reasons I no longer remember and probably weren’t valid then either, I formed a dismissive impression of her and her work. This has led to thinking and speaking of her and her work as performative and commercially driven, without checking the facts.
That was wrong. She didn’t deserve that, she doesn’t deserve that, and I apologize for it unreservedly.
With that said cleanly and clearly, I’d like to take a look at “how this happened.” I think that doing so can be instructive and empowering for those of us who take seriously the duty to always grow and learn and improve who we are, recognizing that none of us are or ever can be perfect, faultless, or without error.
Additionally, this all sits squarely inside the domain I claim to inhabit professionally and ethically. This is the work I do – or say and like to believe I do, at least – all the time. Strategic documentation, ideological mapping, recursive accountability, integrity of principle. If I’m going to present myself as someone who understands these mechanics – who builds relevant tools and teaches methods and critiques others – then I carry an amplified obligation not just to do the work, but to show the work, to make the process legible, and to model the audit, not just the outcome.
Anything less is performance. Performance under the pretense of activism and action isn’t just part of the problem. It’s literally the problem my thinking was addressing in my whole wrong attitude toward Bass. Consequently, to let the apology stand without unpacking the architecture of the error would be more than an oversight; it would be a concealment. A failure to show the work.
So let’s talk about how I got here, what I might have done to fix it far sooner within myself (and potentially thereby preclude the offense entirely), and how this apology seeks to both engage in active growth, and ensure that it continues.
Forensic Deconstruction Of Calcified Bias
Let’s put the specific event that led to this point into some context for you real quick.
The detailed story is that I made a comment on Mike Ingraham For Everyone’s page in response to a Bree tweet, the same one that is at the top of this article. Mike called out the problematic tone of that comment, which I didn’t recognize in the moment, and that pushed me to look closer – “now that you mention it, why do I have these feelings about this person?” He did the work of holding a mirror I should have been holding for myself.
The first error, the initial source of disinformed negative valence, where the core of my opinion of Bass was formed, I genuinely can’t identify specifically. I can say that it’s been there more or less for as long as I’ve been aware of her. So when Mike’s pushback forced me to ask myself why, the first giant red flag I detected was that I could not answer that question in a meaningful way. That absence of origin, that inability to locate the source, goes beyond inconvenience to condemnation. It meant I’d been carrying a judgment I couldn’t defend – and worse, hadn’t even tried to. This is a failure of principle, and I hope that the combination of genuine embarrassment and contrition, public apology, AND applying the same critical tools to my own thinking that I apply to everyone else’s serves as a correction of that failure.
So: “In the beginning, there was misinformation, and it was bad.” Somewhere at the start, I failed to interrogate my first instincts thoroughly. I leaned on assumption where I should have demanded evidence, and that assumption calcified into fact, in my mind, simply through time and failure to interrogate my own assumptions for so long that I forgot they were assumptions. That was wrong, and given how much of my own public work and personal values are based on the idea that we must always, recursively and diligently, interrogate our own assumptions, it would be nothing short of deliberate concealment to not have this conversation.
Having come to the realization that I couldn’t defend my own thinking to myself, I dragged out the toolbox, and took another look at Bree Newsome Bass as a public figure.
To my embarrassment, I couldn’t find a single specific reason, event, action, or statement that reasonably would have led me to throw her in my mind’s “grifter” bin. If anything, I was giving her the same short shrift that has so long plagued my own public visibility and impact, and based on information just as flimsy or even fabricated for harm as that I could find within myself to validate or reasonably explain where I came to my negative opinion of Bass.
As a matter of integrity, I couldn’t avoid the conclusion: I wasn’t and haven’t been giving her proper credit in my own mind – nor consequently in public discussion – for her work and perspective, and my failure was borne of ignorance. The opportunity to question myself and try to track it back to a “wait…why exactly do I think this, anyway?” has presented an opportunity to correct that ignorance, and with it, my misinformed general internal opinion of Bass. Further, it presents an opportunity to both model growth and discuss how reasonable observations can lead us to these unreasonable conclusions, and to publicly correct the record as a specific mass retraction of any prior criticisms that I may have made in the past based on the same flawed reasoning.
To be clear: that reasoning is not, so far as I can tell on diligent self-examination, based in “racism.” I have always had significant antipathy toward those who co-opt ideologies as branding and promotional tools. Possibly in some transient moment, I misinterpreted something she said as being that type of behavior, but that is the behavior I attached to her in any event, and that was wrongly done.
But it’s not just that it was wrongly done, which requires diligent deconstruction. It was the quieter thing that clings: the unexamined sediment of bias that can live in people who believe they are already vigilant.
I thought I was catching myself.
I wasn’t catching enough.
That is a systemic failure, and for that reason, I decided to not just let this moment pass by quietly and adjust my own thinking a little bit, but to pull it out into the light and take it apart piece by piece, just like I would any similar display by someone else, in the hope that someone else might learn from my mistakes.
Ms. Bass deserved clarity, accuracy, and better from me in public and in the privacy of my own thoughts. I failed to give it. I am sorry.
I will continue to examine my assumptions recursively, to put my judgments through harsher tests, and to be accountable when they fail, correct the record when I am wrong, and continue to strive daily to listen with less haste to comment and more care to evidence.
Bree, Mike, and anyone else I put in the wrong by acting on half-formed belief: I hear you. I was wrong. I am sorry. I will do better.
You hear a lot of talk, usually from right-wing trolls and ‘bot farms and influence operations, about how terrible left-wing authoritarianism is. Constantly the screams of “socialism” and “communism” are used as boogey-men to startle the easily manipulated away from their own best interest.
It’s important to understand that all authoritarianism is not the same.
The real left has been in “dad vibe mode” for a long time. Part of your job as a dad is the hard, hard task of letting your kids learn their own lessons. You gotta watch ’em try things you know won’t work and might even sting a little, because they’re not going to believe you TELLING them what’s gonna happen, no matter what you do.
And then sometimes you’ve got say okay, this has gone on long enough, time to step in.
There’s a very current-day Undertaker vibe to it, if you’re a wrestling fan. Like “okay, we’ve had our fun, but it’s time to set some things straight now because this has got out of hand. Watching the campfire is cool. Roasting marshmallows is cool. Playing with matches isn’t, and you won’t put ’em down, so now I’m gonna have to bark at you and startle you and scare you a little so you do, because you have to put them down, for your own good and everyone else’s.”
It is the inclination of the left to be hands off. Real anti-authoritarianism (as opposed to performative flexing, the people who can scream along with the lyrics of every Rage Against The Machine song but don’t understand a single word) has always been a leftist inclination. The same values and attitudes that make us leftists make us very disinterested in telling anyone else what they should do or trying to enforce social compliance with authoritarian tactics.
But…once in a while, the alternative choices start getting slim.
That’s how you can tell the difference between genuine leftist movements and right-wing propaganda campaigns pretending to be leftist, like so-called “communist Russia.” Genuine leftist movements abhor and avoid tactics of force and intimidation and coercion whenever possible.
The back side of that is when someone like me tells you, this is how it’s got to be, that’s not because “I say so.” It seems like those of you who tend to think in those terms have a really hard time grasping that not everyone does. Very, very little of *anything* I’ve said in the last thirty years, even before I started getting off the drugs and detoxifying my thinking around 25 years ago, has been said simply as a matter of throwing my opinion around. My opinion isn’t any more meaningful or powerful or authoritative than yours; anything I say that I think is “more authoritative” is so precisely because it’s not an opinion but a series of descriptions of observed facts.
That’s really important to remember, because there’s a difference between strong-arm tactics backed by abused power, and good advice, and part of the strategy of those who rely on strong-arm tactics to maintain their power is keeping you confused about which is which.
I’m not telling you that you have to reject bigotry and xenophobia and hate and oppression as behaviors and thought processes simply because I find those things distasteful and obnoxious. I don’t have to be around you, if that’s the case.
I’m telling you that because the consequences of not doing so are the existence of the species and the ongoing, right now, day to day quality of your very own life, which is itself oppressed often without you even realizing it, using exactly the same tools and values and attitudes that you’re using to oppress others, and until you figure that out, none of us is gonna get the boot off our necks so we can deal with the clowns at the top of the pyramid whose relatively tiny footprints are somehow holding all of us down under their weight.
I’m telling you that because I can see that the consequences of your behavior are making you miserable, even if you can’t see it.
(Yet. People like that usually catch on, and usually about five seconds after the acute and material costs of their behavior come due.)
That’s the difference between “authoritarianism” on the left and on the right. On the right, they live for that crap because they all believe that if they’re just big enough jerks and can sufficiently prove their heartlessness and ruthlessness to their owners then they’ll be allowed to become an owner one day.
On the left, we’re mostly pissed because you made us get off the couch, and we’re gonna want to get this over and done with quickly so we can get back to singing kumbaya and watching TV or tending our kale gardens or driving our lesbian friends around in a Subaru or whatever stereotype you want to throw around for a little cock-eyed giggle.
If you’ve been around enough people, you know. The folks who tend to the right are the ones who yell and threaten and hit and make a big production out of things and there’s all the theatrics and this is gonna hurt me more than it hurts you gaslighting.
The folks who tend to the left are the ones who snatch your ass up about two seconds before the consequences of your actions hurt you, which gives you a nice three seconds to let your life flash before your eyes and give you a real good scare before sitting you down, looking you dead in the eye, and saying “now don’t you feel a little dumb for doing that? How about you don’t do it again?” And we do it knowing you’re going to hate us for it, at least a little bit, but also knowing that if we don’t, you won’t be around to hate anyone.
And that’s the lesson you remember and learn from. You might remember getting hit. You might even believe it’s the right way to do things and do the same to your kids. But you’ll rarely remember any specific reason it happened, any specific action for which the violence was a consequence, any particular moral or ethical lesson you learned from it.
But you remember that feeling of having disappointed someone you respect and admire, for the rest of your life, and you try not to do it again.
Right wing authoritarianism is their default setting. Bullying and pushing people around and ordering compliance and throwing your weight around is part and parcel of what attracts people to right-wing ideology, it’s why they work so heavily on anger and fear and ego.
Left-wing authoritarianism is reluctant, always a last resort, and always executed in the hope of being a temporary expedience to solve an acute issue, and letting go of it when that issue is solved.
As the current situation worldwide shows us, sometimes, as reluctant as we are, we have to stand up and say :no more, or else.” That’s a form of authoritarianism, to be sure…but it’s the only one I can see having any ethical redemption or validation – reluctant leadership that wishes to stop leading the minute it’s possible to do so.
It’s time for us as a species to accept a hard reality: about a third of us have no respect for nor intention of adhering to the vital social contract that hold us together and keep us functioning as a species.
About a third of us – and this is across the board, not just in the US or any particular demographic group, which we’re going to discuss in a minute – are openly and proudly rejecting every lesson of human history about the futility and waste of tribalism and isolation and fear of the “other,” and are enthusiastic to proclaim their refusal to recognize or cooperate with any so-called “social contract.”
I’ve observed many times in the past that in any time and place where there are large enough groups of people to form governments, about a third of the people in question are perfectly willing, or at least easily convinced, to throw the rest of them under any available bus if they think doing so will get them laid, paid, or praised.
Clearly and for good reason on this day, the second of Donald Trump’s second term as US President, there’s a lot of frustration and trepidation and anxiety about what the future will bring, as well as a quite reasonable incredulous outrage at the idea that somehow there are 80-odd million people in this country stupid and evil enough to vote for him.
We need to talk about that, both in terms of the risks it presents to our own integrity and in terms of how to address the emergent and exigent situation that has, as of noon eastern on Janyar 20, 2025, successfully ended American democracy, and is doing the same to democratic countries all over the world.
First I want to talk about this “social contract” thing and where it comes from and what it means.
What is the “Social Contract?”
Formally in philosophy and political science the “Social Contract” is a theory with roots going back to the Greek sophists, and the first real description and labeling of which is usually credited to philosopher Thomas Hobbes (for whom that adorable tiger is allegedly named, incidentally), with Locke, Rousseau, and others following up and developing and applying various high-minded philosophical concepts focusing largely on the broad ideas of individual liberty versus the utilitarian and ethical demands of functioning on a planet which also features other humans (or forms of life at all, for that matter; cf. Bentham “does it suffer?”)
In popular and informal use outside of academia, political science (and that weird subset of “m’lady” guys who think that being a verbose sanctimonious dull-witted boor somehow makes it better), the “social contract” refers to the very broad range of human activities and institutions, formal and informal, written and unwritten, from governments to handshakes, express or implicit, that generally tend to facilitate humanity not boiling down into a perpetual stew of hostile warring tribes.
Clearly, it’s not a cure-all or some binary condition under which, once met, Society Functions Properly. It’s just the label we give to that set of ideas and systems and institutions and philosophies that say we’re generally not going to run around trying to hurt each other because that’s stupid and causes the whole species to evolve and progress more slowly.
Governments and laws are one functional expression of that social contract, mechanisms by which people can be informed of and held to account for respecting the million little things that go into keeping us from collapsing into a frothing mob.
We all agree to drive within the lines. If you don’t agree but insist on doing it your own way, you’ll be sanctioned. If you’re not aware of that clause in the social contract and violate it through ignorance…well first and foremost you’re probably driving without a license but also you might face a less punitive sanction that includes an educational component – go learn to drive and get a license before you try it again on public roads.
So that’s what four years of political science classes taught me about what this “social contract” really is. Now let’s talk about why we need it.
Divide And Conquer
If you let the shiny junk distract you, you won’t see the monster behind you until it’s too late. Image courtesy Bing AI.While it’s always important to keep in mind, in a time of trepidation and previously unimaginable decline of ethics resulting in what appears to most to be an almost overnight collapse of the US political system into overt and unambiguous fascist totalitarianism such as we’re currently facing it it is critical to our survival to remember that none of this is about demographics and groups.
It’s important to remember that rough third I talked about in the previous section can’t be identified by any external characteristic. They are rich and poor, black and white, Chinese and Ghanian and Guatemalan and American, they are man and woman and non-binary and trans, they are Christian and Muslim and Jewish and Hindu and Buddhist and Jainist and shiniest and atheist. They are sex workers and PTA moms and deadbeat dads and captains of industry and church leaders and police and average everyday people you probably share a coffee or maybe lunch or some gossip with on slack or maybe they’re a member of your family. Maybe ALL the members of your family are part of that one-third.
It is a time-worn and long-proven effective tool of oppressive and totalitarian power to set the populations they seek to subjugate against one another based on various meaningless attributes usually appealing, at their root, to fear and ignorance.
There’s certainly some reasonable criticism to be directed i our current situation; large identifiable demographic groups contributed significantly and inexplicably to Trump’s victory. Among other relevant observations I’ve had my own words for the Latinos and those of middle-eastern descent who withheld their votes from Harris or voted for Trump on some pretext like failure to support Palestine or the “sin” of women not being compulsory brood mares for any man who cares to force himself on her. because they’re among those groups most certain to be targeted by the Trump administration for oppression soonest and most violently, and I think that’s a thing worth noting for any number of reasons.
So I’m not saying I don’t “get it.” Nor am I trying to shout down the idea of saying “hey wtf were you thinking over here? Seriously?”
If we allow ourselves to fall into the trap of focusing on those demographic numbers and wondering about specific examples of why this group or that group would have to be out of their mind to have done this, we will alienate others like us and begin thinking in precisely the ways we’re trying to resist. That’s why making such divisions happen is so important to the despot or tyrant. The more intramural rancor and hostility and distrust can be sewn among the proletariat, the easier it is for the aristocracy to get away with unimaginable levels of exploitation and malice in the distraction.
Ironically this can only be done by first pushing us together under labels – black, white, gay, straight, Christian, man, woman, Jew, etc. – and then defining an antithesis to that label and pushing others of us under that, and then setting us at each other’s throats like a disturbed child agitating cats to fight each other.
The only defense against that is a diligent ongoing mindfulness about our own thinking, because human brains like patterns and groups and categories and sorting things and labeling them, and we’ll do it off-hand if we’re not paying attention and not even realize it until months later it dawns on us that some basic idea worked its way into something way back when that didn’t belong there and has caused harm to whatever ongoing effort it infected.
We have to be honest with ourselves and we have to be willing to admit when we’ve blown it, because none of us are perfect and we’re all going to screw up sometimes. The important part isn’t that you’re perfect, but that you’re aware of your imperfections and working in good faith to ensure your thinking is clear and hasn’t become infected with some bad idea without you realizing it.
Individual Choices
Demographics don’t vote. Individuals do.Edmond Dantès at PexelsWith all that said, in the end elections still come down to individual human beings making individual human decisions. Every single person who voted for Trump knows what he is and what he’s about and they signed on to it. There is no demographic descriptor that covers all of those people, nor one that guarantees through some other observable trait that they can be easily identified.
It’s about individuals, and that’s really important because you know what? We gotta fix it individually. That means no more debate callouts and back and forth and trying to give benefit of doubt or keep the peace or reach across the aisle. That means we don’t just roll our eyes at ol’ drunk uncle Cletus when he starts screaming racism, we make it quite clear and without any room for further debate that Uncle Cletus is welcome to either stop being an unrepentant monster or he’s welcome to not come around at all, period. Yeah, that’s gonna hurt his feelings and make you feel bad, tough. You have to stop letting these bullies push you into allowing them to be part of your lives when all they do is make you miserable and exploit you and insult you and disregard you on every human level unless they want something.
It means no more relentless relitigation of every conceivable idea just because team dumbass tagged in a new partner. No, I don’t have to rationalize or validate my belief that we shouldn’t be pushing trans kids around just because some adults are sex-obsessed perverts. No, I’m not required to step through my every internal dialogue for the last fifty-four years related in any way to whatever we’re talking about just so you can whip out some snotty condescending gotcha when I make a typo or get a meaningless trivia point wrong.
We’re done doing all that now. That is my individual choice. And yours. If you want to persist in holding values and beliefs that are objectively reprehensible, then I am under no obligation to keep explaining to you why they’re objectively reprehensible.
That also means you might be the odd person out, maybe you’re in a whole family of these ridiculous cretins and somehow you’re the only one who managed to find any human decency or redeeming character trait. This is where it gets hard, because we need a community out there that’s ready to be family to those folks, that’s ready to take the place of the sniveling, cowardly traitors who turned their backs out of ignorance and fear. And that doesn’t just mean a pat on the back and thoughts and prayers, a lot of folks are stuck in these situations because they have nowhere else to go. That means you need to consider being a place for them to go if you have one. Not because they share your hobbies or identity or interests or religion but because they share your humanity.
Individuals did this. Individual human beings making individual human choices to allow or create suffering in others for their own benefit.
THAT is the problem that needs fixing.
The only way it gets fixed is we make it frankly and unambiguously clear to every one of them one by one that their money’s no good here and their custom isn’t welcome, playtime’s over, this is no longer acceptable at any level under any circumstances, and if that’s too big a problem for someone then they are welcome to remove themselves from the society whose contracts they refuse to respect.
Because what they stand for and advocate and support is what has made my life far too often a miserable waste as it has billions of others, it’s disgusting and it’s evil and it’s wrong and I don’t want it around me and no human being should be subject to this treatment and these conditions and this futility of a life, and that’s all the reason I need. Dismissed
As long as they’re going through life supporting and propagating and validating ignorance, hate, servility to power, bigotry, and violence, they have self-selected non-participation in our society. They have chosen to egregiously violate the social contract, to the extent that some of them will haughtily declare they didn’t sign one and millions of others want to renegotiate it.
That means they don’t want to be part of our society, so GTFO. Can’t throw most of ’em out of the country, but I can damn sure throw ’em out of my world, and I can make sure they stay gone.
As long as someone is willing to try or help those who are trying to replace progressive democracy with totalitarianism and oppression and exploitation, they are not welcome in my life, or my social circles, or my church, or my public events. They are shunned. They are subject to precisely the same treatment they wish upon others whose sole offense against them is their existence, because that is the justice that has been long-delayed by the distaste held by decent people for the unavoidable unpleasantries of seeing it applied. If they want to use my bathroom, they have to show me their genitals first so I know which one they need AND I know they’re not lying about it to gain access to me or my family in a vulnerable moment. If they want to eat my food, they have to show me they earned it. I wouldn’t want to impose my socialism on them by just giving it to them, they have to contribute somehow. If they want anything from me, at all, they have to jump through every hoop I can possibly come up with and then I’ll deny them anyway. Because that’s the world they’re trying to create for us, and I’m not having it. Or we can talk about them growing up and acting like an adult and facing the facts that the way they think is harmful to others and that is wrong and they need to change it, starting right this minute.
Because anything else is their choice to dishonor that social contract, and if they’re not participating in the contract, they’ve self-selected out of that society.
That was their choice to make, as an individual.
And these are the costs of that choice.
Now is that how I want to be to people? No. But there’s about eighty million of y’all who need to hear me loud and clear, right now: You’re not leaving me or anyone else with a conscience any choice. You ARE the trolley problem, and we’re the ones who have to decide whether to act or passively allow harm to happen to innocent people including us.
Clock’s ticking. There’s only one right side of any of this. Get on it and mean it.
The “price of bread” is a tried and true hook on which to hang any given complaint from any given ideological perspective to shock the consumer, draw attention, and stoke feelings of anger and frustration. The “bread” in question is a metaphor for any consumer good. The arguments in question tend to take the general form of “I can’t believe how terrible the economy is today. Why, when I was young I used to get two packs of name-brand cigarettes and two 16-ounce glass bottles of Mountain Dew for $2!”
The “price of bread” argument fails not only in that it’s usually highly subjective and prone to strong influence of personal bias e.g. artificially glorifying “the past” as having been “better,” but it’s also completely meaningless by itself. Numbers increase, particularly in capitalized systems wherein the currency is based on an intangible asset like “the full faith and credit” of the issuing nation, as is the case with all such nations including the United States. By itself this increase means nothing that can be said to meaningfully reflect on the average quality of life.
Worse than that for those seeking progress, it often inadvertently draws attention to weaknesses in argumentation and flaws in a given logical calculus attempting to rationalize or validate progressive social policy. In doing so, the net effect tends to be empowering counter-arguments rather than advancing the ostensible agenda at hand.
In today’s example we’re going to look at a tweet by someone calling themselves “Fred Krueger” (not likely to be a real name, but it’s possible). Mr. Kreuger, who is entirely unknown to me, claims to hold a PhD from Stanford, and says he’s a “bitcoin maxi,” whatever that is, in his twitter profile. I’ve included a link to the original tweet below, but given conditions at Twitter I thought it best to also include a screenshot.
The median family income in the US has gone from 10K in 1971 to 55K today, a gain of 5.5x
however,
The median cost of a car has gone from 4K to 48K, an increase of 12x.
The median cost of a house has gone from 25K to 357K, an increase of 14x.
Original URL: https://x.com/dotkrueger/status/1873320780739510285Screenshot of original tweet posted at https://x.com/dotkrueger/status/1873320780739510285
The tweet reads as follows: “The median family income in the US has gone from 10K in 1971 to 55K today, a gain of 5.5x however, The median cost of a car has gone from 4K to 48K, an increase of 12x. The median cost of a house has gone from 25K to 357K, an increase of 14x. The median cost of an ivy league college has gone from 3K a year to 87K, an increase of 29x. The average cost of healthcare per person has gone from $400 to $15,000, and increase of 37x. Basically, the average person in the US is worse off today than in 1971. So much for “progress.””
Problems Of Fact
There is a whole lot wrong here. First and foremost there is no indication of any of the sources of any of this information, so let’s track that down first. The Census Bureau tells us that the first number isn’t far off – the median family income in 1971 was $10,290. We also find with a bit of quick google-fu that the median price of a new car was $3890, and a new home was a nice even $25,000. Of course none of those numbers are normalized – those are 1971 dollars being compared to 2024 dollars, which is sort of the whole point of the exercise.
The “reader added context” in this case isn’t particularly helpful and leans toward its own agenda.
First and foremost the reader feedback ignores that the entire point of the framing is to compare price increases of specific items to baseline inflation. I believe the intent of the writer was to imply that life is much more economically challenging for most of us than a simple broad average inflation rate tells us, so noting that the numbers haven’t been normalized doesn’t really address any of the problems with the tweet and in fact mostly serves to point out that the people offering that particular criticism didn’t understand what they read very well. The fact that the numbers aren’t normalized is the whole point of the tweet.
Second, there aren’t many people alive right now who were around in the 70s who really feel like they have nearly twice as much purchasing power today as they did fifty years ago, and there are some very good reasons for that.
While the implication that quality of life is significantly improved across the board for most people is ostensibly supported by adding up the cash value of various goods and services, it also overlooks the necessity of far greater levels of spending than were necessary fifty years ago, even accounting properly for inflation. This is propaganda in the other direction; suggesting that people are basically doing just fine right now and any struggle you’re experiencing must be down to something other than a steadily decreasing quality of life. In short: gaslighting.
But I digress, let’s get back to the tweet at hand and check some numbers. I’ve included a few direct citations links, those numbers not directly linked come from the same or similar sources.
The median family income “today,” i.e. 2023, the most recent year for which statistics have been properly documented, is $80,610 – a difference from the quoted post of about $32K, and an increase of 8x, rather than 5.5.
Already this is going to make the comparisons less striking, and we haven’t even checked them yet, but let’s finish the job for posterity and we’ll move on to understanding why we can’t keep doing this, nor allow it to continue being done.
A new car in 2024 is averaging about 48,400.
A new home is about $420,400 – a greater increase than the tweet by about 18% (and an increase of about 17x rather than the 14x cited).
The rest of the numbers are similarly garbled; an ivy league education in 1971 was 2600 rather than 3K – a difference of about 13%. Today’s cost is 64,690 – $25K less than cited. The Social Security Administration tells us that per-capita health care expenditures in 1971 were $358 – less than 90% of the number given here. The most recent available information is for 2022, which the WHO tells us is 12,473 – about a sixth less than this tweet reports.
So we’ve established that, at the very least, there are significant errors in basic information here, which of course throws all the calculations off.
We’re not off to a good start; if someone wanted to argue against the core thesis of the tweet (that the average person in the US is worse off today than in 1971), this writer has certainly given them plenty of ammunition to call their basic reliability into question, which delegitimizes the thesis in the reader’s mind before it even happens.
It all forces us to consider: why are we listening to this person or taking this message seriously in the first place?
Problems of Reason
On the other hand, here are two semi-randomly selected prices for 25-inch televisions from the Sears catalog in 1974. One is 609.95, the other 759.95, which average to 684.95. Divide by 25 and you’ve got 273.98 per viewable diagonal inch, in old-school NTSC resolution at best.
I’m currently using a 40-inch Polaroid flatscreen as my desktop monitor. I paid $259 for it in 2019, which is 319.62 in 2024 dollars, or 7.99 per viewable diagonal inch.
That’s a 97% price decrease, and this is why item price comparisons are always a flawed argument.
Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, this isn’t less true but more so when the flawed argument is supporting a larger (and entirely valid) point about the relative cost of living.
In 1974 the minimum wage was $2.00 an hour, that would be 12.80 today. But that’s also not a fair comparison because so many things have changed since then about how we make and spend our money. The internet and its accouterments were not a required part of living in 1974, and the expenses one might incur to replicate the necessary functionality were often far lower but also with much lower quality of access, e.g. looking up information in an encyclopedia at your local library rather than on your cell phone. Fundamentally free or close to it, but also limited access and functionality. (Worth pointing out for pedantry that there are of course costs involved in transportation plus the value of one’s time, but that’s still not working out to a monthly cell phone bill of $50-$200+ dollars…and if you’re a kid in the seventies and eighties like I was, you were at school with a library full of reference material several hours a day anyway).
There is also a long, LONG list of important social advances that have happened in the last fifty years. That we are not yet in some progressive utopia doesn’t change that. However as a rhetorical tactic, to ignore or disregard that progress out of fear that people will think the job’s done and stop trying or something (see: “post-racial America” circa 2009) is insulting to the people who made that progress happen and disheartening to those working to ensure we keep moving forward. It also adds to the general sense of futility that can attach to any attempt at meaningful social change, on any level.
Cherry-picked statistics are a fundamentally dishonest and manipulative tactic, and we have to start recognizing that and holding our information sources to a proper standard of valid reasoning and factual accuracy.
“People aren’t going to change and it’s a waste of time to try. You may as well give up, because even with all this advancement you’ve gotten nowhere.” This is a critically important subtext contained within this entire argument. It’s messaging that serves only the interests of the entrenched and abused power to which so many people taking this attitude believe they’re working against.
A loaf of bread ran 28 cents in 1974. It’s 1.92 now. That’s only 7 cents off the standard rate of inflation.
These comparisons have no meaning. They’re only intended to shock and grab attention, but they don’t convey meaningful information. What they are is a nice setup for someone who understands why this framing fails (consciously or unconsciously; Hanlon’s Razor applies) to come along and yank out a list of similar comparisons – go ahead and price what would’ve conceivably passed for a home computer in 1974, or a mobile phone! – in an attempt to invalidate the core point that we’re living in a capitalist-sliding-quickly-into-fascist dystopia, which stands just fine on its own without making a bunch of cherry-picked comparisons in an appeal to emotion.
In both cases – and this is important! – the actors at hand, both the person throwing these kind of “information” around and those who show up to try to undermine the thesis by attacking the obvious weak points in the supporting arguments or evidence, are deliberately and intentionally aiming at your emotional responses in order to subvert, distract, and ultimately mitigate your critical thinking, because they both know their arguments don’t hold up to critical analysis.
Why It Matters
“RAWR! THERE’S NOTHING BUT LIES AND DAMN LIES IN HERE!’ (Bing AI generated image, with modifications by JH)As with so many discussions of this nature, the first objection one can usually anticipate is some sort of argument from apathy – why does this matter, you’re just splitting hairs, this is all just pseudointellectual self-indulgent twaddle, insert dogwhistle for whatever audience e.g. “wokeism” or appeals to ridicule, etc.
So let’s talk about why it matters for a minute.
First, cherry-picked statistics are a fundamentally dishonest and manipulative tactic, and we have to start recognizing that and holding our information sources to a proper standard of valid reasoning and factual accuracy.
This seems like one of those things that would hardly bear saying out loud, but apparently it does: the most effective way to lie is with as much truth as possible. Simply throwing a bunch of statistics around without context and validation is often the tactic of someone who knows they’re trying to make a point, but doesn’t know how, and doesn’t want to let that get in the way of the dopamine rush and-or traffic bump and-or possible passive income generated by throwing around empty aphorisms and questionable statistics that are emotionally appealing and don’t invite careful scrutiny.
(NB: When this is done at high volume with deliberately malicious intent, it can quickly turn into what’s become known as the “Gish Gallop,” wherein the speaker just throws such a ridiculous pile of misinformation around that by the time you sort through it you’ve forgotten the original point and likely made some superfluous error the speaker can then seize on as evidence of your incompetence. Hence the troll…)
But there’s more. Inherently the application of dishonest and manipulative rhetorical tactics reflects, at the very least, a lack of confidence on the part of the speaker in their own words – if they believed what they were saying they wouldn’t think they have to lie about it to convince anyone else. By using these tactics, the subtext we’re writing is that either we don’t believe our position holds up on merit, or we don’t believe we’re not capable of expressing our reasoning effectively. Most importantly, it shows. People tend to pick up on it when you’re trying to con them, whether they do so consciously or not.
To a discerning media consumer – and we’re all media consumers, discerning or not – this is an immediate red flag that the speaker may not be a reliable information source. Maybe they know they’re lying; maybe they’ve bought into it and are choosing to resolve any internal cognitive dissonance between what they want to believe on one hand and reality on the other by trying as hard as they can to convince other people to believe with them. Whatever the specific situation may be, people who are paying attention are going to pick up on the flaws in the argument almost immediately, and that calls into question the validity of the entire thesis. As I’ve noted above, they’ll often pick up on it even if they don’t consciously realize it.
Arguably however the real damage comes among the less discerning consumers, those who repeat this information in earnest good faith, not realizing that they’re basically being set up to fail. Now they’ve distributed the information, and those who consume it via their distribution will hold them responsible for its accuracy. The entire conversation is now reduced to back-and-forth arguments that resolve nothing and are all based in factual and logical error. They’ve sacrificed their own credibility and taken on a huge set of arguments, while validating the source of the bad information!
I have a problem with this in a pretty serious way because I happen to fully support and believe in the surface thesis presented by this tweet as a question of personal ideology. I was alive and conscious in the early 70s and I absolutely believe that in many important ways we were all doing far better then than we are now. Many of us were also doing far worse, which nobody of any sense wants to ignore or pretend isn’t the case. However it’s also true, and important to recognize in this context, that in terms of stability and security in the lives of the average American, the 70’s and early 80’s were far superior to any time since including the present, and indeed the nature and pace of our social progress has sunk to embarrassing lows by contrast as well, especially when one thinks not in terms of what constitutes the current status quo but in terms of what’s being done to improve it, and why, and for whom.
We had a lot of work to do back then.
We still do.
We’ve done a significant bit of it as I’ve alluded above, and there are significant and powerful forces in this world who do not want that work done because our collective progress threatens their personal power. We were more honest with ourselves, culturally, especially in advanced nations, about our need to grow and recognize that we weren’t the pinnacle of human advancement but just the current step in a never-ending series of them, and that our job was not to be the best but to be the best we can, improve on what came before us and set up and inspire what comes after to do the same, where “improvement” is defined as being in more complete compliance with the “ultimate ethic” of keeping the species alive and propagating.
We know through the research of all human history that the greatest progress happens when human minds are well-educated and free to explore and express their thoughts and ideas in a fair and just context that ensures both the right of the individual to say their piece and the right of other individuals to reject their piece as ugly, ignorant, or malicious, including the right of society to collectively reject their values or ideology as unacceptable, immoral, or unethical.
We know that human progress individually and collectively relies entirely on our capacity to unlearn old lies. We also know that there are forces in this world whose power relies (no pun intended) on us not doing that. The capitalists can’t keep running everything if we refuse to be capitalized or to participate in their games anymore. Problem is we’ve been letting them do it for about five hundred years now and they refuse to get out of the way.
Now, given all of that…
Ya Thought I Forgot, Huh?
Our thesis is that dragging out prices fifty years ago, or a hundred, or twenty-five and comparing them to current prices is a waste of time and energy, except perhaps in radical situations like a collapsing currency where you’re seeing prices jump by orders of magnitude in a short period of time, and in very specific applications of economic analysis that simply aren’t either directly relevant to or within the personal intellectual capacity of the average person. It’s certainly of no value in social media conversations about the need for broad social reform of capitalized institutions.
Another AI take on trolls cherry-picking statistics, this one courtesy of OpenAI via Jetpack, and enhanced a bit by yours truly
I hope that by laying out weaknesses that are readily open to valid criticism in this framing, we can learn to first frame our own thinking more effectively but also learn to start rejecting those who either can’t or don’t.
Because the raw truth of the matter is that either you understand the things I’ve discussed here or you don’t. If you don’t understand them, you’re probably not qualified to be participating in the conversation as anything but a spectator, and that’s okay. I’m not qualified to perform heart surgery, and that’s not a reflection on my character either. NB: If I know I’m not qualified to perform heart surgery and insist on doing it anyway, that is definitely a reflection on my character!
If you do understand the things I’ve discussed here and still choose to frame things in this way, you’re being deliberately dishonest and manipulative. This means you can’t be trusted, and nobody with a worthy message wants to have it promoted by someone who engages in deceit and manipulation to communicate it. Since I happen to think that the underlying message of diligent and constantly refining progress of human quality of life is worth, I have to stand up and call out this radically unhelpful framing as it is.
If the message is worthy, deceit and manipulation isn’t necessary.
If deceit and manipulation are necessary, the message isn’t worthy.
What happens when we allow this kind of noise to flood our zeitgeist is that we begin to accept the premise that the behavior is necessary, like someone trying to rationalize lying on their resume. “Everyone does it, you can’t avoid it.” That argument has its place. For instance, I can’t avoid trying to make money with my work; I live in a world that requires money to survive and ensure my capacity to do that work.
That argument isn’t valid in this conversation; it’s a capitulation to the bullies and the liars, the manipulators and deceivers.
What happens when we allow those who are intentionally deceitful and manipulative to control the conversation is we force everything to become deceitful and manipulative in order to keep up. The deceit and manipulation undermines the legitimacy of the core ideas in people’s minds until eventually nobody knows what truth is anymore, and at that point Big Brother has won the game. We let them make deceit and manipulation necessary, and then none of us can trust each other enough to work together on anything…including pushing back against the powers who want to permanently convert the vast majority of us – everyone but them and those they choose – to “human capital stock.”
So please stop doing this stuff and stop putting it over. Stop believing and validating things just because they push your emotional buttons in a way that satisfies you. That reaction, all by itself, is what every perpetrator of evil has counted on in one way or another for as long as we’ve been telling each other stories.
The only way to stop the evil is to stop falling for it.
This was a fairly exceptional find; I’d honestly forgotten about this article, written in March of 2010. Of course when it was written I was jeered and rejected as a handwaving extremist – how could you possibly think Facebook is destroying democracy, that’s just ridiculous – by all right-thinking people, with a healthy chorus of helpful disdain and ridicule from the usual gang of trolls.
President Obama has proposed a 1.4% pay increase for active duty military in 2011. This is THE LOWEST SINCE 1973! Nice to know that during a time of rampant inflation, while war is fought in 2 theatres, our men and women in uniform get A LOWER PAY INCREASE THAN WELFARE RECIPIENTS!!! Please repost if you support our troops….1 Term say good bye
This is the second time in a couple of days I’ve seen this, yet I’m not having a lot of luck finding any objective source that discusses these events, just a FB meme claiming it happened. [2023: This was originally written on March 8, 2010. The claim has since been broadly debunked as the nonsense that it is; military pay is tied to the Employment Cost Index and the president is required by law to propose pay increases tied to this index to ensure military pay rises in line with consumer product price inflation. Much of the related information which follows was written without that knowledge in hand at the time. -jh]
I’d like to see more facts, including a broad discussion of the considerations which go in to making such a decision. For example, what if the rate of increase among military personnel has been 10x the cost of living, while welfare payment caps have dropped, for all of the last ten years except this year in which an adjustment is being made to compensate for decreased military need and increased public assistance need? [2023 – this is where I basically cited the true mechanics of military pay raises without realizing it, in spite of using an extreme example. The underlying reasoning is why military pay is tied directly to ECI. -jh] Obviously this very extreme example is not the case, but the underlying point remains: this is a complex series of issues, and the idea that posting some hyper-patriotic status message with a guilt-trip/us v. them tagline is going to solve anything is not only ridiculous, it’s incredibly destructive – and that’s the point of this article.
It’s not that I reject out of hand the assertion of this latest rabble-rousing meme [2023 – and again rightly so, as the raw numbers were correct, so rejecting the assertion out of hand would’ve been wrong. -jh]. Rather the problem is that I have serious concerns about the direction we are being taken by our collective will to participate in such things without first determining their objective accuracy.
It seems to me that this kind of thing, while usually well-intentioned, represents the same sort of shallowness of thinking that led to the Iraq war in the first place, to some 60% of the US still believing as late as 2006 that Iraq was directly involved with 9-11, to the gigantic stimulus package [2023: this was the enormous bailout of Wall Street banks in 2008. -jh] that regardless of necessity was passed with such haste and sloppiness that it’s an iron-clad certainty that it’s not going to work as well as it could have. We get all revved up over something and we just pounce, with little regard for the long-term results or the bigger picture.
Look around this country, this world, your own mind.
Are you one of the people who thinks it’s perfectly reasonable to continue beating the “Obama’s citizenship’” horse?
Are you someone for whom “because the Bible says so” is a reasonable basis for laws to be made?
Are you someone who doesn’t throw up in their mouths a little bit every time you see a well-intentioned friend post a status message that suggests that if you don’t do the same, you are a traitor to your country and you want soldiers to die?
Then I am sorry, but even if I love you from the very bottom of my heart, you are a Part Of The Problem.
How DARE any human being undertake to pass judgment on my love of country or fellow man – to suggest that I lack ‘patriotism’ or commitment to country or respect for those who volunteer their lives to defend it regardless of whether I think they’re ultimately being conned in 90% of the cases when this is their motivation for enlisting – based on my willingness to endorse with my name and supportive repetition a poorly-constructed paragraph full of – at BEST – emotively presented para-facts intended to do nothing more than stoke the ire of conservatives and further create a society of code words and passphrases by which we can identify “them” and “us” as defined by some arbitrary and subjective standard of political adherence that ultimately exists only in the mind of the person passing judgment? How terribly disrespectful and presumptuous.
Frankly, I wouldn’t post that paragraph in my status message even if I believed every word.
Why not?
For starters, it’s written with all the intellect and critical thought of a rambunctious sixth-grader. I’m 40 years old, and I’d be embarrassed to lay claim to the “logic” and “patriotism” presented here. Look at it. The SCREAMING CAPITALIZATION AND ABUSE OF PUNCTUATION! The saccharine exhortation to “patriotism” that’s really an exhortation to look down our noses at those un-American liberal commie heathens who Don’t Support Our Troops (and in the process of that coercion, an exhortation to frankly piss all over everything that actually makes this country worth fighting for). The snide, unspoken undertone that of anyone in Our Great Nation who might need some money from the government, them welfare leeches (read: ethnic minorities, brown people, and white women who have sex with them; these folks never care that the vast majority of welfare recipients in this country are white people in heavily Republican/right leaning states) better be the LAST in line. The suggestion that “supporting the troops” must necessarily entail supporting their orders. The relentlessly stupid and continually increasing attempt to lay the results of 8 years (and more) of utter mismanagement and malfeasance at the feet of a president who has been in office less than a year and a half.
The whole thing just plain sucks. It’s an intellectual void. I’m sorry that some people will take that personally, but let’s be real here: as much as I complain about people, I wouldn’t waste my time trying to point these things out if I didn’t love and respect them. I’m sorry that it hurts some people’s feelings or moves some people to drop me from their friends’ list or what have you, but remaining silent is not an option. I’d certainly rather your feelings be hurt by me rattling you out of your comfort zone with the truth than they be hurt twenty years from now when you realize it’s too late to stop the decline and part of the reason for that is you were allowed to continue believing things that aren’t true.
There are a lot of times when I’m writing that I feel like the guy at a party just sober enough to try and tell a friend that they’ve pissed themselves, only to get punched in the mouth for saying bad things.
America…you’re drunk on fear and you’ve voided hate and xenophobia all over yourself. Go sober up and change your pants. [2023 – spoiler alert: we not only didn’t sober up, we didn’t even bother changing our pants. We just drank more and more and insisted that anyone who didn’t void themselves in their Levi’s was an unamerican traitor in thrall to the illegitimate Kenyan non-citizen President. And it worked on about 70 million of us, and it’s still working. -jh]
All I’m saying is that if you want to have something to say, try to make it something meaningful and fact-based if you’re going to complain about the government. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to gripe without relying on this kind of unsupported hyperbolic hang-wringing panic-button nonsense, and in many cases (like this one) the unspoken messages tend to ring much louder with the coherent observer than the spoken ones do. When I see a message like this, all I read is “I’m really worried about the economy and my position in life, but I can’t be bothered to find an effective way to improve things for myself so I’ll just whine about the evil gubmint.” In the mean time, people are continually manipulated into cheering for the defeat of a health care bill that would, without question, save their lives or the life of someone they love in reasonably short order. [2023 – this was, of course, what became “Obamacare” after it was watered down and compromised to the point of being only slightly less odious than the godforsaken trainwreck of a health care system we had in place already. Obama’s compromise on this remains one of my greatest disappointments in his presidency. -jh]
But instead the politicians play on our fears and prejudices, and we continue buying in. It’s not health care reform people are rallying against, it’s the notion that they might have to pay for someone else’s care…which, if people were really angry about it, would be the absolute end of the insurance industry (and would also result in a 20-year drop in our life expectancy in a matter of a generation or two) given that’s the entire basis of the idea of insurance.
The problem in this country, quite frankly, is that we’ve become a nation of selfish, greedy, avaricious, entitled, lazy, ignorant, jerks. [2023 – and it’s only gotten worse since I wrote this in 2010. -jh] Until we get it through our heads that we are ALL in this together and when one person fails we all fail, we’re going to continue these silly, pointless arguments, and people will continue to die senselessly and our nation will continue to erode as our best and brightest are continually prevented from reaching their full potential by the efforts of those who hold the cash to avoid sharing it with anyone.
These snarky, factually void, and often logically broken memes are a huge part of the problem. They play on mob mentality and the human need for acceptance in order to manipulate people into rallying against the very things that would improve their lives. We get the leadership we get because we consistently refuse to educate ourselves to understand what real leadership and real solutions look like. These kinds of memes make this refusal not just okay, but popular and easy – why bother knowing what’s going on in the world when we can just get it from our friends’ status updates?
It is the fundamental obligation of a free citizen to make every possible effort to understand the issues and candidates that are spread before us at election time. It is a direct assault on that obligation, and on freedom itself, to reduce this obligation to a copy-and-paste lynch mob.
93% of people won’t have the guts to tell their friends to quit trying to manipulate them (and to quit allowing themselves to be manipulated!) via status messages….will YOU?
[2023 – you can see in this article some of the roots that led me to start attending university to major in communication and minor in political science about five months after this was written. While it’s not bad, I generally failed to make the points I was reaching for, in large part because my abilities were limited by my lack of formal education in the subjects under the review and criticism of qualified professionals in the field. Still, I prefer being honest to stroking myself with ego-gratifying lies, and the honest thing to do is let it sit as written and accept that while I did a competent job of explaining my position, it’s a far cry from the level of expertise I could’ve brought to the conversation even a year later, let alone now nearly a decade and a half in the future. Among other major issues, I failed to clearly make the point that absorbing our political information in memes and snippets crafted primarily to appeal to our egos is poisonous to our democracy and we not only need to stop doing it, we need to pressure social media companies to enact stronger protections against the propagation of disinformation. It’s a good article, but it didn’t make the case I wanted it to as strongly as I’d hoped, in retrospect. -jh]
Curated post from 2010, using the controversial anti-abortion ad aired during that year’s superbowl featuring Tim Tebow as a frame to discuss the larger abortion issue.
The debate over abortion in this country, and around the world, has raged since the first miscarriage. In the main, the debate has been characterized by an overabundance of emotive outbursts, handwringing, ad hominem attacks, and a paucity of facts, balance, and clear, rational thought.
One of the manifest expressions of the former list of attributes is the rise of hard-right “Christian” groups such as the American Family Association and Focus on the Family. As a part of their overall fundamentalist diet of exhortations to donate money, condemnation of everyone who “ain’t like us,” and rampant, cynical fear-mongering for profit, these “faith-based” organizations routinely seek out hot-button issues like gay marriage, free expression, and abortion with which to stir up their marks and generate donations.
The Super Bowl 2009 advertisement featuring football star Tim Tebow and his mom making vague statements about family has stirred up some debate, but for me it’s not about the abortion issue. The abortion issue is settled as far as I’m concerned; I don’t like them – and I know from the closest experience a man can that they’re not exactly a trip to the fun park – I wish they weren’t necessary, but until steps are taken to ensure that there is never a valid reason to terminate a pregnancy (steps that are currently well beyond the capability of our technology and our social evolution), they are. Since they are necessary, the solution is to reduce their necessity while also providing a safe and reliable means of abortion for women who need it. As need decreases, so will incidence. Period. There is no other logical solution to the “problem of abortion.” So that argument’s done.
My issues with the Tebow ad are not with his, his mother’s, or anyone else’s opinion about abortion. I want that made clear. Everyone’s entitled to hold an opinion, regardless of how ludicrous I think it is.
My issue is, first and foremost, with a group like FotF insinuating themselves into national discourse in the first place and secondarily with the stealthy way they’ve gone about it. Frankly, I’d have had less problem with the ad if Tebow and his mom just walked onscreen and said “This man almost didn’t exist because I seriously considered terminating my pregnancy with him. I’m glad I didn’t, and I believe you will feel the same way if you make the same choice. Thank you.” This heartwarming and light-hearted little diversion leads you to FotF’s website…where the indoctrination process begins. “Oh, look honey, they don’t like abortion! We don’t like abortion either! We should sign up for their mailing list!” And next thing you know FotF has a few hundred thousand more “members” that they can use to bully the media into covering them, and you as a member are suddenly being regaled with tales of doom and woe in which a vote for Barack Obama is a vote for mandatory gay marriage, mandatory gender education in first grade, the end of adoption agencies, nuclear war in the middle east, terrorist attacks in the US, a new Russian imperialism unchecked by a weakened and apathetic US military,[2023: and boy oh boy is that an entertaining read here in 2023, give that its premise is to predict the horrible, broken future of 2012 under the Obama presidency! It’s long and dull and enraging when you remember people actually think like that, but beyond that it’s hilarious. -jh] and all manner of other Terrible Things including a massive series of job openings when every good-thinking Christian quits their jobs and shuts down their business because they’re now being “forced” to act “against their morals” by (for instance) helping a gay couple adopt a child.
Focus’ tactics and methods are execrable and well-known. Any reasonably sentient mind can read the letter I linked to in the above paragraph and quickly note how often subtexts of pedophilia and homosexuality are both invoked and conflated. In paragraph after paragraph we are told that the evil liberals, “the gays,” the ACLU, and of course that old standby the Commies, are just waiting for President Barry to welcome them in the door and transform America into a nation of roving homosexual pedophiles, anti-religious violence, and a new pot-smoking effete bourgeoisie that revels in the sight of Evul.
Organizations like Focus on the Family are brutal and terrorizing manipulators of public ignorance. They rely on our inability to separate emotions from objective facts in order to push their dream of theocratic totalitarianism on the rest of us. “Dr.” James Dobson and his ilk, each and every one of them, wants to be Nehemiah Scudder when they grow up. This is the method behind their madness of the seemingly silly and naive attempts to influence education in this country; if we get ‘em while they’re young, they’re WAY easier to keep when they grow up. [2023: this isn’t just flowery prose; even as a firm atheist of some dozen years following decades of agnosticism, I still can’t – and never will – shake the brain-image of ‘God’ as an old white guy with a big white beard and flowing white hair. It was programmed into me before I could read, and I started reading when I was two. -jh]
I appreciate anyone standing up for what they believe in [2023: given what I’ve seen people standing up for since writing this article, I can no longer stand behind the statement. -jh], but I think anyone who chooses to do so has the duty to ensure that they are fully aware of the implications of who they’re standing with. I’m sorry, but if an organization like Focus on the Family came out hard in favor of anything I agreed with, I’d have to take a hard look at what I’m agreeing with.
I’d respectfully suggest that those of you who are applauding Tebow here, or who think that your “support” for this advertisement or for Focus on the Family is going to prevent ONE abortion in the world today, tomorrow, or ever, may want to reconsider who you’re hanging out with. Those groups are sick, endlessly focused on sexuality (and that often with a specific focus on children – EVERYTHING is a “threat” to “innocence” WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?! gimme money…[2023 and this con is also working better than ever, 13 years later. -jh]) and ultimately existing for the sole purpose of enriching themselves at the expense of the credulous, the frightened, the ignorant, the superstitious, and the confused…every one of whom are good people with kind hearts and the best of intentions, just like you.
While this curated article was originally written in 2010, the subject of school dress codes continues rearing its ugly head – if anything even more frequently now as the Trump-empowered autocratic-fascist contingent in our culture feel confident in their victory over the evil forces of individual identity. There are few more overt and clear mechanisms of deranged, malicious powermongering than bullying a little kid for how they look. While this odious, evil behavior is most often directed at young women showing “too much skin” they’re not the only ones targeted. Anyone who gets behind this particular type of oppression and suppression is a mortal enemy of everything good in the world.
Now here’s a story that’ll get you raging against the machine like a gutter punk in short order. It seems that a four year old boy in Texas has been suspended from school…for having long hair.
The school district responsible for this pornographically obscene attempt at powermongering, mandatory indoctrination to the status quo, and non-consensual behavior modification is Mesquite, Texas. According to the news story from the AP, their dress code is justified as follows:
“students who dress and groom themselves neatly, and in an acceptable and appropriate manner, are more likely to become constructive members of the society in which we live.”
I have a whole list of problems just with this sentence and the thought processes behind it. Who is to decide what constitutes “neatly,” “acceptable,” “appropriate,” and “constructive?” Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Jim Jones, and Bill O’Reilly all dress well. I would hardly call any of them ‘acceptable,’ ‘appropriate,’ or ‘constructive.’
And let’s look at the other side, shall we? In the early 19th century the works of Beethoven were derided as ‘longhair music.’ If our world only counted as valuable that which the Mesquite School Board finds acceptable, here’s a quick list off the top of my head of people who would not have done the things they did. Each of these people was, at one time or another, longhaired, unacceptable, and inappropriate:
Beethoven
Edgar Allen Poe
H.P. Lovecraft
George Orwell
H. G. Wells
Robert Heinlein
Issas Asimov
Jesus
Moses
Abraham
Lot, and especially his daughters
Hippocrates
Socrates
Homer
Shakespeare
The entire musical genres of blues, jazz, rock and roll, rock, rap, hip hop, country after 1956 or so, and all their derivatives, plus half their roots, and every artist in them from Robert Johnson to Miley Cyrus.
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
Abraham Lincoln
John F. Kennedy
Barack Obama
and thousands more
While I recognize the need for the school district and their teachers and employees to be able to maintain order, I submit that it would be much more valuable an exercise for an educational body to work diligently at the task of teaching kids to understand WHY maintaining order is important, and WHAT actual order is (versus sullen compliance under duress), and then the kids will tend to choose and respect order to a healthy extend (and to reject it to an equally healthy extent).
It is very possible to have a mob of angry, well-dressed schoolchildren trash a school.
It’s equally possible for a bunch of long-haired, starry-eyed idealists to change the course of human history forever and create the greatest framework of human liberty ever known.
Across our nation our schools are failing miserably to educate our children. This has been a problem for generations, and it continues to be a growing problem that long ago reached epic proportions. Not only are we falling behind the rest of the world in the classic “three r’s,” but five minutes on the ‘net or reviewing current popular culture trends will make clear that we’re failing to teach deductive or inductive logic, ethics, critical thinking, complex reasoning, independent thought, or genuine self-respect (as opposed to regurgitated slogans from 12-step groups that kids just roll their eyes at), and in some families we’ve been doing so for five generations or more.
I am hard-pressed to think of any recent example that more clearly and completely demonstrates Where And How We Have Gone Wrong than this story. “YOU!! FOUR YEAR OLD!! YOU ARE DOOMED TO A LIFETIME OF INCOMPLETE EDUCATION BECAUSE YOUR MOM THINKS YOU LOOK CUTE WITH BANGS!!”
The best part is the actual dress code, which you can find here. (Click the paragraph headings, and don’t feel bad – it took me a minute, too.)
Do me a favor. See that little “share” button up at the top of the page? Click on it, and share this with everyone you know. Enough is enough. I can’t and won’t speak for anyone else, but I’m sick to death of seeing the “land of the free” usurped by a collection of self-important, mediocre failures, lacking in passion and clarity of thought and consideration of others while loudly decrying everyone else’s ignorance and selfishness. Seriously. Spread this around. Enough is Enough.
Great things are rarely, if ever, comfortable. Nor are they generally safe, acceptable, appropriate, or neat. The United States Constitution was conceived of, written by, defended by, and ultimately enacted by a collection of longhaired miscreants who had the unmitigated gall to think for themselves. That gall, that drive, that chutzpah, that underdog-to-the-top dream of living comfortably simply by being who you are and doing what you do best and enjoy…that is America. Every last bit of it. Not one single man, woman, or child among us would be here – would even exist as we are – if it wasn’t for the long-haired, the socially unacceptable, the ones who refused to let others think for them, and this blue-nosed attempt to turn children into little automatons is child abuse on it’s face, and absolutely un-American at it’s heart.
I will not stoop to speculating on the personal psychological defects that drive the individuals responsible for writing and enforcing this policy; I don’t know what individuals are personally responsible, and if I did know their names I know nothing about them personally. The individuals involved should not be attacked personally by word or deed; they are merely the mindless yeast-like propagators of the failed system that spawned them. Anything directed at them other than genuine pity is about as useful and meaningful as spanking a dog dropping because it’s on the living room rug.
(They SHOULD, of course, be immediately removed from their positions, along with all their friends, family, college roommates, and so forth whom they have hired, and replaced with competent personnel. That’s not a personal issue; it’s a functional one.)
But I know that they are wrong. Wrongest, even. This whole situation is a perfect encapsulation of the nature and scope of our failures in education over multiple generations.
Dearest School Board, and all the School Boards like you: Your job is to teach children to THINK, not to OBEY. Children who can think, will obey any rule that makes sense to them…and if you are incapable of explaining the rules to them without falling back on “because I said so,” then you are a miserable failure as an educator and should retire immediately. If you and everyone like you clears the system, those of us who believe that teaching should be among the highest-paid, best-rewarded, and most-respected positions in any developed society can begin making our case credibly.
My forever longhaired, unacceptable, inappropriate, and unconstructive thanks in advance for your collective compliance.
Is health care a right, a privilege, or a commodity? This began as a quite different post back in 2009. In 2023, I’ve reworked it to generalize elements that were personalized. It’s a little startling how little has changed about the steadfast position of the right that human beings somehow have a right to live but not a right to the things that keep them alive.
The refrain is now almost cliché: “health care is a right, not a privilege.”
Inevitably this observation draws out right-wing trolls, usually calling themselves “libertarians,” to insist that the idea that health care is a right somehow means that we’re all entitled to the services of medical professionals without those medical professionals being compensated, which is just nonsense and has nothing to do with the argument, but makes for a great little chest-thumping FREEDOM! scream for those whose idea of “freedom” begins and ends with their freedom to obstruct the freedom of everyone they don’t like.
Typically, those arguments look a bit like this (and to be clear: these are all statements made in the course of the original conversation from which the 2009 version of this article was taken…and repeated constantly before and since.
Rights are things that one has access to without another person giving up their own rights to Life, Liberty, or Property. Unless you are a doctor or surgeon and can diagnose and/or fix yourself, then you do not have a right to health care.
Should the federal government provide your food for you? Should we all get free college through the government? Should HUD provide homes fr every person who decides they want to own one? And if you believe any of those things to be true, where does it end?
I’m not making any argument for or against any sort of health care reform; I’m simply stating a fact: health care is not a right, it’s a commodity.
Nobody seems to be interested in socializing health care on a local level, just the Federal.
The idea of a free society in and of itself prohibits the concept of things such as “a right to health care”.
The argument that a right to health care entails by necessity the violation of the rights of others to make a living is at best specious and at worst servile and self-destructive. This has always been one of the manipulative, dishonest, and underhanded tactics employed by the “libertarians” and right wingers: as soon as you start talking about people not having to pay out of pocket for health care, they start talking about health care providers being expected to work for free, which is simply not the argument being made.
The entire framing also overlooks the basic fact that the government is of, by, and for us. Yes, it is precisely the government’s job to ensure we all have food, shelter, clothing, health care, and all the other things necessary to protect and empower those rights we love to talk so much about. That is the purpose of a democratic government (including the form of democratic government we call a constitutional republic).
Then they’ll discuss all these other “rights,” like the “right to obtain and choose my own food,” but entirely ignore the reality that this isn’t a right; if it was, food would be free. I have the right to choose which food I’ll exercise the privilege of my material wealth to acquire, and that’s all.
Even if I did have a “right to obtain food,” what good does that do if I don’t have any teeth to eat it with because I can’t afford dental care, or I can’t digest it because I can’t get treatment for the ulcers that are slowly metastasizing in my gut because I can’t afford to have them treated?
In the world described by these folks, people fall into three categories: the plutocracy, the avaricious marks who support the actions of the plutocracy because they think they too will someday be greedy and selfish enough to become a plutocrat if only they wear their brown lipstick thick enough (this group is nearly always the one making these arguments), and the poor, who don’t deserve to be healthy because if they wanted to be healthy they shouldn’t have chosen to be poor.
Self-governance and deregulation are not the solution to our current problems, in health care and in so many other areas of life in the twenty-first century: they are the cause.
This particular brand of “libertarianism” is marked mostly by freedom of industry from regulation and a callous, selfish, and frankly heartless disregard for the well-being of other people masquerading as a stoic and perverse sort of social Darwinism, i.e. “only the strong survive, so long as I am allowed to define what constitutes strength in terms that are most advantageous to me in my current situation.”
The reality is that universal health care is not “taking from” the medical industry, but rather spreading the burden of cost among all of us collectively, consistently, across time, rather than the current reactive system that relies on treatment at the greatest expense to individuals in response to acute health issues. Rather than trying to come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars at once in response to a disease or injury, universal health care allows us all to pay a little bit at a time perpetually into a system that ensures we all get health care when we need it. This also neutralizes the constant demand of capitalism that everything be constantly more expensive in order to ensure profit margins.
(Sidebar: don’t believe the hype regarding long waits, death panels, etc.; while it’s true that various socialized models have various flaws, and that one of those flaws is that sometimes care is delayed, the idea that everyone will suddenly be on years-long waiting lists for acute life-saving treatment is a myth; a scare tactic, a boogeyman waved in the face of the frightened, credulous, and uniformed, in much the same way that “socialism” and “Islam” and “the terrorists win” have been. The only truth to the assertion is that truth which is deliberately created post hoc by those working to dismantle socialized health care systems, putting up roadblocks, preventing access to education to ensure there are sufficient professional to staff such a system, and then blaming the system they’ve broken because it’s not perfect.)
Our constitution guarantees the “right” to life and liberty.
Can you have either of these, if you don’t have your health?
If the answer to the above question is “no,” then health care must, by derivation of the enumerated rights, also be a right itself.
If one has the right to liberty, then one has the right to everything that enables that liberty. While it is true that these derived rights may sometimes clash irreconcilably with reality – no matter what rights I have, if I’m born without eyeballs or optic nerves the current state of medical technology can’t make me see, even though from a legal standpoint I have the right to see – this does not invalidate the derived rights as rights per se; it only demonstrates that our rights are limited in fact by the caprice of fate. I have the right to be an auto mechanic; I don’t have the skills, nor the inclination. My eyeball-less self has the right to see; I just don’t have the tools to see, and in the extreme case I gave, there exists no substitute tool that could be made available to me by society. Even so, we as a society have agreed to provide our best available substitutes, from alternate languages to guide dogs to audible signals at crosswalks.
QED: Health care is a right; we as a society have consistently agreed in many situations to provide health care or a working alternative in any number of situations. Ergo health care is not only a right, it is a right that is almost universally acknowledged when framed in a friendly context like helping the blind people by putting in audible crossing signals, rather than a less “sexy” context like helping the poor keep their teeth and bodies, and thus their minds, in the best working order that is attainable by the consensual application of medical technology, and in doing so ensuring that they have the ability and inclination – even if gently coerced by a sense of debt to society – to be productive citizens.
The bottom line is this: regardless of whether you define it as a right, a privilege, or a ‘commodity,’ universal health care – including birth control and comprehensive sex education free of factual distortion by religious institutions pushing agendas of abstinence and strict heterosexuality, among many other health care needs – is a critical necessity to the survival of our species.
The reality remains that we are all in this together, and if we don’t get together and work to keep the people we have alive while working to control population growth and the abuse of finite resources through comprehensive reproductive health education and care, this argument will be moot…because sooner rather than later, there won’t be anyone to argue about it anyway.
Curated post, originally published Feb 23, 2009. I’ve made some edits to make the reading of it less tied to the original publication date.
William Melvin “Bill” Hicks was not always the most moderate fella.
“If you’re in advertising and marketing…kill yourself. You are fucked and you are fucking us, you are Satan’s spawn, kill yourself. There’s no joke here…I know you advertising folks are like ‘Oh I see what he’s doing, he’s going for that righteous indignation dollar that’s very clever,’ no…STOP PUTTING A GODDAMNED DOLLAR SIGN ON EVERYTHING ON THIS FUCKING PLANET!”
Bill Hicks, “Revelations”
As of the time I’m dragging this (now fifteen year old) post out of the archive, in a few months it will be fully thirty years since the passing of of one of the world’s greatest socio-political analysts, ever.
Consequently, the guy’s been on my mind a lot lately. But then, Bill Hicks has a way of always being on my mind, even when I don’t know it. As I look back through my own writing over the years – I’m allowed, I’m an egomaniac just like almost everyone else – it strikes me sometimes how often what I’ve said unintentionally reflects back to an idea that germinated with or was reinforced or articulated or enhanced by something I heard Hicks say. In much the same way Chris Cornell’s lyrics have followed, almost eerily, the track of my life, so Hicks’ opinions on everything from drugs to God to willful ignorance have, but usually without the melody.
Hicks was a man of contradictions; a walking hypocrisy. I can relate to that as well; on the one hand I really do believe that, fundamentally, whatever nickname our Creator might prefer to be called the ultimate purpose of human life is beauty, love, peace, and hope. I want to spread that love, add to that beauty, give that hope, bring that peace. On the other hand, like Hicks, I often find myself experiencing explosive anger, withering contempt and a heartfelt and passionate disdain for those who choose to live in deliberate ignorance, afraid to consider ideas that fall outside the scope of beliefs that many of them formed or had pushed on to them before they reached puberty. Why don’t people ask questions? Why do people refuse to see reality when it’s standing right there? How can people be so arrogant as to consistently confuse the Will Of The Almighty Creator And Shaper Of Universes with their desire for a Porsche?
I don’t think that Mr. Hicks would be real thrilled about the state of America today; in that, I believe him to be among the greatest of Americans. A friend does not allow you to walk around a party with a feather on your chin; someone who loves you does not leave your errors uncorrected. A friend, a lover, wants the best for you, and I believe that Bill wanted the best for us, and for this country, and for the world…even if it meant kicking our asses and hurting our feelings to get it.
Younger people, for whom Hicks is at best a relic of a previous generation, often underestimate his impact. A very good friend of mine, in her early twenties, remarked to me yesterday that she wasn’t as “in love” with Hicks as I was. I suppose that’s understandable – after all, you’ve got everyone from Denis “Pancreatic Cancer Saved My Career” Leary to Keith Olbermann channelling Hicks on a regular basis all over the place now…not to mention, of course, millions of blogs just like this one written by people who believe themselves to be every bit as witty and insightful as I am. But back then…back then you could count on two hands the number of non-musical performers who had even attempted to say these things. You know how many comedians there were in 1989 who would freely and openly admit to having not only done illegal drugs, but enjoyed them? Five. Carlin, Pryor, Williams, Hicks, and Kinison. Even today, how many comedians could get away with this bit:
“‘We have nothing against America, we just want to see George Bush beheaded and his head kicked down the road like a soccer ball.’ Gee, thats what I want to see, who’d’a thunk it, me and Saddam, we’re like this! *crosses his fingers*…”
Bill Hicks, “Me and Saddam”
If any comedian had said something like that on a stage between 2002 and 2006 or so he or she would be living in legitimate fear for their life. Hicks was the guy who said he was “for the war…but against the troops.” These days that kind of sentiment could get you shot. As it was, Hicks dodged at least one pissed-off redneck with a loaded gun, and had his leg broken by a pair of others, for routines like this and his scathing takes on Christianity. Then he turned the broken leg incident into one of his best bits…
“I did that routine about Jesus at some club in Fyffe, Alabama…after the show these two guys come up to me back stage:
‘Hey buddy – come here (shoves Bill away – beautiful subtlety there)! Hey Mr. Comedian, Come here (another shove)! Hey, buddy, we’re Christians and we dont like what you said about Jesus!’
‘Yeah?’ I said, ‘Well, then…forgive me.’”
Bill Hicks, “One Night Stand” and other recordings
Hicks never flinched from putting himself under the same microscope as he did everyone else. Although he cloaked himself in the trappings of stand-up comedy, he was much more akin to a motivational speaker or the ancient Greek philosophers; observing and reporting the world as he understood it, in the hopes that those listening would understand, learn, grow, and propagate.
[When I originally wrote this article in 2009] 15 years after his death, as I look around this country and this world, I question how successful he was in that regard. After all, we had to elect another Bush – TWICE! – before we clued in to the game of hate and fear that the hardcore conservative contingent in this country represents and embraces. But then, you know, there’s this whole Obama election thing, which on the one hand definitely has a tinge of that “cult of personality” and mindless groupthink that has worked against us before, but also has an aftertaste of Joe Public being sick of the status quo. I think that Nancy Pelosi and other hard-core left-wing politicians may be surprised to find that they didn’t actually win in November of last year; I think there’s finally a substantial portion of the populace who actually voted the “I have had enough of this shit” ticket. maybe not a majority, maybe not even a majority of those who voted for the eventual victor…but it’s there.
And it’s building, and getting bigger, and more cohesive, and the radical fringe is being moved out of the way and dismissed while those with more carefully-considered opinions seem to finally be stepping up to the plate.
Maybe it’s too much to hope for…but this week, a decade and a half after the death of Bill Hicks…maybe someone finally gets it.
Bill Hicks 1961-1994
[2023: All things considered…it was definitely too much to hope for. Indeed, reading this back fifteen years later it seems almost hopelessly naïve and starry-eyed. After the uplift of the Obama years, the Trump presidency dragged all the cockroaches and scum out into the light and made them the mainstream, and we probably won’t get back to even the pitiful level of social progress we’d reached in 1993 before my grandkids are my age.
Then we have the problem of the people who have attached themselves to Hicks over the last fifteen years. Rather than a group of people deeply into spirituality and the turning of disappointed idealism into raging, scathing, razor-sharp wit that pushes boundaries, expanding the mind beyond its usual, culturally imposed boundaries and seeking new truth, most of the people I run into these days who claim an affinity for Hicks are raging little incels, gibbering conspiracy theorists, misogynist dough-faced egomaniacs falling short of being career domestic abusers only because they can’t get close enough to having a partner to become abusive toward them.
They’ve taken the shadiest bits of Hicks’ routines – some of which frankly don’t hold up well three decades later – and make it a personality, while ignoring the fundamental, abiding love and concern for humanity that fueled all of it…which retroactively makes Hicks start looking like the pasty, bitter, anaerobic losers who have begun attaching themselves to him, rather than simply someone who was incredibly funny in his time and whose humor often carried perspectives that we have – and he undoubtedly would have – grown out of and rejected
In the end they’ve largely reduced him to “do drugs, Elmer Dinkley, conspiracy theories.”
Like so many of the people who informed and elevated my own perspective as a teenager and young man in the 80s and 90s, I really wish he’d have stayed obscure after he died. Not like he’s getting anything out of the attention now, and most of the people giving it to him clearly weren’t listening to anything he said other than the little bits that gratified their own frail and unwarranted egos.
They’ve taken a complex and beautiful set of philosophies and turned it into an hour of dick jokes, and I pretty much hate them for that. I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity over the years to end up getting to know, a little bit, over the internet, so many of the ‘Texas Outlaw Comics’ who were Hicks’ friends and colleagues. It helps mitigate the sting of watching him and his work be co-opted by the same losers he was trying to make take a look at themselves by dragging his own least flattering thoughts and impulses out onto a stage. Pisses me off.]
Over the years much has been written in defense of waving and displaying the “Confederate Flag.” We’ll forego the silly pedantic arguments about what the “Stars and Bars” really flew over, and all that nonsense – it’s diversionary argumentation without relevant meaning to the core questions we’ll address here.
Back in 2019, the city of Wake Forest, NC, had to cancel their annual Christmas parade because they intended to allow a float from a group called the Sons and Daughters Of The Confederacy. In response, several people indicated plans to protest and potentially even incite violence, so the city decided to cancel the parade.
This generated all the hand-wringing outrage you might expect, and of course brought to the forefront this old, tired argument about southern pride and so forth.
In the intervening period, we’ve had the violent coup attempt in Washington where multiple violent traitors paraded through the halls of Congress…carrying the Confederate flag. States have passed resolutions to stop flying it on government grounds, along with significant effort to remove statues of Confederate “heroes,” rename public facilities named in honor of traitors, and so forth.
Naturally all of this has the “Southern Pride” and “Heritage Not Hate” contingent – who, let’s be clear, have never been anything but bad-faith goobers making arguments the know have no merit – to raising all manner of hew and cry declaiming these actions
These arguments tend to break down into three key points: My family was involved and I have a right to be proud of my family; the soldiers of the Confederacy fought valiantly for their cause and deserve to be honored and respected for that; you’re trying to “erase history” by interfering with my celebration of the Confederacy.
So let’s go ahead and address these one by one, shall we?
Family Pride
I understand the idea of family pride and heritage. Often these things are very positive; I’m quite proud of my family history on my dad’s side working against the Nazi’s in the Netherlands during WWII, for example
In this case, the agrument simply doesn’t hold up, and I reject it.
The Confederacy was a collective act of treason against the United States, an attempt at creating a breakaway republic predicated on the idea that owning other people was a negotiable and acceptable proposition, and they prosecuted a war to defend that position with all the costs that entails.
Fortunately for conscience and decency in the world, they lost and the “state’s right” to decide that some human beings weren’t human was denied in this ostensibly free country once and for all, as it should have been from the outset.
However, as we’re seeing play out once again perhaps as a direct result of our reluctance to address this issue head-on in the first place, the simple fact of the matter is you don’t celebrate traitors. There are no flags of the third reich flying in German. The people of Romania don’t celebrate the heritage of Ceaușescu. Lithuania does not celebrate the “heritage” of the Polish government who tried to overthrow them. Germans do not honor the “heritage” of the Beer Hall Putsch. The city of Milwaukee doesn’t have a “Jeffrey Dahmer Culinary Appreciation Day.” The state of Illinois has not named its high school mentoring program for boys after John Wayne Gacy.
In my family there is a tragic incident in which a woman and her boyfriend murdered their four year old daughter in the early 1980s. If I were to apply the “family pride” argument, rather than taking punitive measures against her because she did a horrible, unforgivable thing that cause an innocent life to be lost…I would say let’s have a Christmas parade float for all the infanticide perpetrators! I mean, I know it’s not really cool and all, of course it used to happen more often but we’re a better people now, but she’s family so I have an emotional attachment and my ego’s involved. Not only that, although it’s less common than it used to be people say things like “If those kids don’t stop raising cain I’ll kill ’em” all the time, so it’s pretty clear some people – quite a few of them – are perfectly okay with the idea of murdering children. I bet if you’ve got kids you’ve said it yourself! “If they don’t stop that racket I’ll kill ’em!”
So you’ll just be okay with that, right? Even though some of you may have lost children to violence yourselves and even the suggestion is so outrageous as to deserve nothing more than a punch in the mouth…I mean, let’s be civil. Don’t be rude. Don’t be impolite. Can’t we have some unity here? It’s the Christmas season, where’s your holiday spirit? Where’s that forgiveness and all-encompassing Christian love we like to talk about so much this time of year? Let the baby murderers in. Heck, Susan Smith gets out right before Thanksgiving in a couple years, maybe we can get her to be Marshall!
Right. That’s how every single person who defends confederate flag worship sounds to anyone who was not born and raised in the south. The only people I’ve ever met outside the “Old South” who parrot the point of view on the confederacy I hear as the mainstream there (at least outside the major cities) are open white supremacists.
Nobody else, outside of that region of the country where it’s taught as gospel, buys in to the romanticism and whitewashing that’s been brought to the history of the Confederacy since its fall. And yes, I’ve seen a fair part of it and talked to a whole lot of people in my time, including time spent in community non-profit work right there in Wake Forest, North Carolina not that many moons ago.
So that addresses this whole “my daddy fought hard for the south and that was honorable” thing. The cause wasn’t honorable, nor was fighting for it. AT BEST many uneducated people motivated by a firm conviction that some human beings should rightly be considered property *believed* they were fighting for an honorable cause, and so one must allow a sort of grudging subjective “honor” to attach in the sense of following and fighting for your beliefs, but c’mon. The most honorable position in the Confederate military was serving as a patsy to oligarchs; at least in that role you could disingenuously plead ignorance, and that’s the best argument to be made. There’s no honor or glory in stupidity.
That brings us to…
The Valiant And Honorable Sacrifice
Pol Pot’s soldiers fought valiantly for a cause. So did Stalin’s, and Hitler’s, and Tojo’s, and Minh’s, and Mao’s, and Mussolini’s, and bin Laden’s. Back in 2001 19 men from the middle east made a “valiantly and honorably” sacriviced their lives for the cause they believed was just and righteous.
Sure, YOU might not think so, because they’re the Bad Guys, but THEY sure thought so. They died to prove it, didn’t they? Just like your great-grandpappy at Second Bull Run.
Pictured: The ultimate participation trophy, symbol of losers since 1865 (far left of the image), shows up at another lost cause: the January 6, 2021 attempt to overthrow the US Government by violent coup in Washington DC at the behest of President Donald Trump
Fighting valiantly for a cause means less than nothing until you know what the cause is. If I die fighting valiantly for the cause of my asserted right to have sexual congress with ducks, I sure hope you don’t use that as a reason to give me a parade float and I would reasonably expect the ducks to be pretty angry if you did.
I want to stress again that none of this is personal. There’s not some individual or group whose feelings I’m trying to hurt here. We’ve evolved now, that’s all. We don’t sacrifice virgins anymore either, and we don’t really have parade floats honoring The Great Virgin Sacrificers (sic) of History either.
And history brings us to that last Great Pillar Of Confederate Apologia
Erasing History
This is frankly nothing but cheap gaslighting. Maniplative bad-faith argumentation constructed of the highest-quality bovine excreta.
Erasing history is talking about “states’ rights” and leaving out what specific right was at issue – the right to own human beings based on the color of their skin.
“Erasing history” is bandying about phrases like the “War of Northern Aggression,” which I was still hearing unironically when my daughter was attending a rural North Carolina high school, just about fifteen miles up the road from Wake Forest, in the oughts…and I was hearing it from her teachers.
Erasing history what happens when you STILL get dirty looks in Granville County, NC if you ask an old-timer (or most of their descendants) about why Bob Teel and his boys never did time for killing Dickie Marrow.
(Sidebar for those who don’t understand this reference: Dickie Marrow was a black veteran who was beaten and shot in Oxford, North Carolina (where my parents lived for the last twenty years or so of their lives) by two white bigots who claimed he said something untoward to a white woman. The white attackers were exonerated by an all-white jury at trial.
In 1970.
This event catalyzed the activist career of Benjamin Chavis, who eventually led a fifty-mile march from Oxford to Raleigh in protest. Chavis eventually became head of the NAACP, I believe.
To this day, you’ll get the kind of look that will encourage you to be out of town by sunset if you ask the wrong people the wrong questions about this event. The book about the event, “Blood Done Sign My Name,” (disclosure: affiliate link) is routinely stolen or vandalized at the Oxford, NC Public Library to this day.)
THAT is “erasing history,” Orwell style.
In the end, I’ve had and seen this basic conversation a million times. I’m not particularly passionate about it because honestly I think it’s a settled issue and anyone who continues to act as though there’s really anything to debate about it is likely kind of dull-witted, usually motivated by emotion and ego, and often motivated by uglier things – no accusation against you personally intended, of course, dear reader.
I’ve no deep interest in hating on people or whatever, this isn’t some “you dumb hicks” rant. I lived in NC for 15 years, met and continue to maintain deep friendship with and great respect for many fine people there. Some of them even maintain this confederate pride attitude, and I don’t fault them for it. I get it, my dad was a marine, I understand that pride.
But it’s time to accept reality.
Continuing to celebrate the Confederacy as though it were a noble cause, as though the “sacrifices” made in the name of keeping human beings enslaved were “valiant,” or as though there’s any reasonable basis for exalting and celebrating those who served the failed and unethical cause of slavery with their lives as though they’re heroes for doing it, just doesn’t hold up to reasoned scrutiny anymore.
Those people weren’t heroes for fighting on the side of the losing team.
I’m sorry, they’re not.
The cause of the confederacy was not noble, the fight was not valiant, and the fighters were not heroes. They were at best useful idiots, and at worst seething, treasonous, bigots willing to die for the “right” to treat other human beings as property.
I was born in 1970 and grew up in a world where the Confederate flag was still honored and adored as a symbol of rebellion, of raging against the machine, of refusing to back down in the face of authoritarianism. Over time we’ve come to understand these arguments simply have no merit. The idea that “fighting for my country is noble and good even if what my country is doing is horrific and unconscionable” was much more prevalent then and you can see how this perspective took hold in the south after their defeat, but now?
No.
That’s the 19th century, man. This is the 21st.
Blind fealty to a geography because your g’g’granpappy originally cleared the land, I can even understand.
But loyalty to or pride in the cause and prosecution of the Confederate States and their open act of treason against the United States, just because you had family fighting on that side, and many of those fighting for “the lost cause” lost their lives?
No.
We think more clearly than that now, at least those of us who can separate our ethics from our egos. If I suggested you should allow a Nazi parade float because there may be post-WWII German immigrants whose ancestors “fought valiantly for their cause,” you’d likely never stop smacking me in the mouth, and rightly so.
And that’s how pretty much everyone outside the south who isn’t part of some alt right movement feels about confederate parade floats.
It’s time to burn those stars and bars and throw ’em in the trash like we should’ve in 1865, and have done with this ridiculous argument.
