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ng_moonmothI am not a rapid writer. Even more so when I am trying to say something that feels important to me, and want to make sure I represent my thoughts accurately. So this has been a bit delayed from three weeks ago, when I first felt like sharing my feelings in the aftermath of the contentious shouting match that was styled as the first presidential debate.
I started out writing this after the first face-to-face encounter between the major-party candidates in this year's presidential election. I was not inclined to post anything while the health, and indeed even the life, of one candidate was in the balance. That matter supposedly having been sufficiently resolved, and another encounter scheduled, I no longer feel that it would be out of place to share my thoughts on what that first encounter revealed to the voting public.
I will repeat my earlier caution: that this is much less about the candidates' respective positions and how someone might feel about them than about what the candidates revealed in their meetings about their fitness to hold the office of president. Here is how I feel about that.
Three things stood out to me in what limited time I was able to stand watching. The first of these concerns the phrase "Law And Order", where both candidates exchanged shots about their own and the other's support of the concept.
This phrase most often appears to be framed as "Law" being punitive measures to motivate compliance with cultural norms, and "Order" as violent enforcement of those measures. We supposedly have a structure in place whereby those who are injured by those measures can effect change in the measures or the cultural norms they support, but this structure is applied very unevenly and inaccessible to many affected people.
I have a great deal of difficulty with the negative nature of this approach to establishing an expectation in a culture that its norms will be generally observed. One significant consequence of creating and enforcing punishments for not conforming to cultural norms is that the violation must be noticed for those punishments to be invoked. This makes secrecy an effective countermeasure against that punishment, and creates a population of people unwilling to conform to those norms, yet doing so unnoticed.
How might things change if the focus shifted from using punishment to using rewards as motivation? From threatening violence and punishment for noncompliance to highlighting the benefits compliance brings? By changing from saying, "If you knock someone over the head and take their stuff, you will go to jail" to saying, "You can go around in public with nice stuff if we can all expect as a culture that you will not be knocked over the head and have it taken. If everyone understands that not knocking people over the head and taking their stuff is what people are expected to do, and acts according to that expectation, people can actually expect that. And it only works if you do your part. So don't knock people over the head and take their stuff."
Now I recognize this is wildly idealistic right now. But part of what makes it idealistic is that there are far too many people who can barely survive -- if that -- within the constraints of the laws they live under. The fewer people whose circumstances make it impossible for them to survive without breaking the law, the more laws which can be maintained by encouraging compliance rather than punishing disobedience. Anyone who thinks differently is welcome to share their thoughts when being Black in the US is not treated as a crime by those who have been empowered to enforce the law, either because the laws themselves criminalize being Black, or because those who enforce the law believe all Black people are criminals and deal with them accordingly.
Meanwhile, it is still possible to start on this path by seeing how many laws can be reframed in this fashion. It's probably more than we realize. And this would neatly reconcile the differences between those who believe that a lawful and orderly society can only be created by negative coercion, and those who would achieve the same end by emphasizing the reasons to be lawful and orderly, and ensuring that the benefits that should accrue to such behavior are realized in our culture.
As for "order", one relevant dictionary definition describes it as "the state of peace, freedom from confused or unruly behavior, and respect for law or proper authority". This definition highlights issues that are the source of much strife these days.
Many people in this country constantly are faced with laws and authorities that offer them very little respect. Attempting to address this issue by meeting with the people designated as having authority, or being responsible for, the laws, is far too often met with a similar dearth of respect. It is understandable to me that people who are so little respected find it very difficult to offer very much respect in return.
"Respect" can be compelled, but true respect must be earned. Those in authority who earn the respect of people who come to them and talk of the issues they face due to that authority, by listening to them and offering them avenues by which those issues can be resolved, will not drive those people into the streets because their voices have not been heard, and thus create the disorder they do not care for by their very actions. Those in authority who recognize that people gathering in the streets are doing so to have their voices heard, and earn their respect by listening and acting, will often find that the protestors no longer feel the need to draw attention to their cause in that manner, and disperse. Those in authority who ignore or dismiss those voices should not be surprised when the gatherings become more vocal and energetic -- again creating disorder by their actions. Those who are gathering to draw attention to their cause, who show respect for others by not acting violently are more likely to earn the respect and response of those in authority, and enable an orderly resolution of the situation. Those in authority who do not grant this respect, and oppose such gathering by force, must expect resistance from those who will not be silenced in this manner. And history has far too many examples of this response and its escalation to "establish order" leading to the demolition of their authority, and a goodly portion of their often-treasured belongings in the process -- most commonly followed by a great deal of instability as new mechanisms of authority come into existence.
As long as the phrase "Law and Order" centers the means, rather than the ends, this argument will continue with the same fervor and animosity that was revealed on stage, and the current state of minimal, halting progress on the matter will continue.
Another place that is significant to me, where the stark difference between earned respect and enforced respect is made quite clear, is in the respective candidates' attitude toward the military, and military service. The sitting president's demonstrated attitude to those who volunteer for military service was epitomized by his reprehensible attack on his opponent's son, who most likely died as a consequence of having served where and when he did.
The sitting president's statements during the program are consistent with his apparent view that the essential characteristic of the military is that it represents our country's martial might, and as such should command respect for our country, and thus for him. At the same time as he glorifies the military, he is derisive of its members, being apparently unaware of their motivations for volunteering for service and derisive of those who no longer serve.
The military members most deserving of my respect are the ones who are well aware of what they risk by volunteering, yet do so anyway in the belief that their country benefits by their representing it in this manner. These are the people who understand best that their being trained and equipped for combat is not solely because they might be sent into combat, but instead to increase the cost of engaging our military in combat to the point where it does not happen. The public display of military might does not display this strength of purpose. Shielding the public from display of the possible cost of military service, or denigrating or erasing those whose service has permanently injured or killed them, fails to filter out those who seek glory from those who value service, and thus overrides the respect for a powerful force to protect a nation and its citizens, with fear of its use against those who do not care to defer to the nation's might.
The sitting president has made many claims about honoring those who have completed their service. Unfortunately, as with his statements and actions regarding the active-duty military, they seem to be overwhelmingly about the image, and have very little substance backing it up. The comment that seems most at odds with reality is his statement that the Veterans Administration offers high-quality medical care to former service members. I would be delighted if this were the case, but I believe I have a number of readers who use the VA for a good portion of their health care and seem to have different opinions. Commentary from those people would be very welcome here.
The current state of affairs also continues the lamentable trend, probably from as long as there have been armies, of indoctrinating their recruits into the habit patterns of effective soldiers who are more likely to survive combat, and then providing no support for deprogramming them from the aspects of this, and further effects from their battlefield experience, that are at odds with civilian life, before returning them to society at large. Managing this transition is challenging without help, and the effects of lack of support show up in many unfortunate ways for the veterans and our culture. Can anyone claim to support veterans while neglecting them in this manner?
Finally, the event once again confirmed something I have been aware of since the sitting president first announced his candidacy. This is a person who has apparently not in a long time been told "no" in ways that make it stick -- as in get him to understand that what he wishes either has consequences he might not wish to bear or be able to buy his way out of, or actually cannot be accomplished. Children with this attitude are commonly designated "spoiled brat", but he is long past childhood, and it would be astonishing to me that he has not matured past this attitude were it not that I have crossed paths with too many other such people during my life.
Very often, when someone tells such a person "no, you cannot do that," this is taken as a challenge to be met with a response such as, "Oh, yeah? Watch me!", followed by an intense dedication to doing so by whatever means will do the job. And then, upon accomplishing the task, bragging about and taking pleasure from having accomplished this thing that one supposedly cannot do.
Also notably, the satisfaction of such accomplishments lies more in the accomplishing than the result. What they have already acquired provides such people no satisfaction; their satisfaction comes from acquiring more. And their desire to do so is so often unbounded and insatiable, until (in some cases) that lack of satisfaction leads them to reassess their drive, and sometimes, belatedly, gain the perspective they previously lacked.
So much of politics, and of leadership, particularly at the highest level, consists of dealing with "no" by means other than abruptly dismissing or otherwise silencing the person saying "no" before heedlessly plunging ahead on one's intended course. And when someone in a position of power -- especially great power such as that which is invested in the presidency -- further silences people who tell him "no" by removing them from their positions and replacing them with people who will tell him "yes", the inevitable consequences of his willful disregard of those warnings will propagate everywhere his power reaches, with great effect.
The current federal administration has looted the resources of the people, which were vested in the government with the understanding that all in the country might benefit from them. This I certainly expected, was prepared for, and recognize that it will take the same decades it took us to first secure these resources for us to undo the damage of a few years and once again have them available to all. What I did not fully realize was that the resources to be plundered would include the very foundations of our system of government, in the name of consolidating and increasing power. Restoring these resources to the vigor required to remain a functioning nation is a daunting task, but one that brooks no delay and requires action at all levels of government.
Please keep in mind that when I say "all", I am doing it in the most inclusive sense. An individual person, or a group of people, who lay exclusive claim to or damage a resource vested in the government thereby deny its benefit to others -- and that is contrary to the spirit of sharing in which governmental control of the resource was affirmed.
Medieval Christian theologians came up with a list of "seven deadly sins" whose exhibition was to be taken as indication that someone might be likely to fall out of favor with their God: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. This is the same god that both candidates profess to believe in, and by whose rules they claim to live. I believe that someone seeking more information as to which candidate to vote for would do well to consider to what extent each exhibits those traits, and carefully weigh what they might gain from each candidate's announced agenda against what they, and the country, might lose by the candidates further expressing their self-serving traits in the process.
I started out writing this after the first face-to-face encounter between the major-party candidates in this year's presidential election. I was not inclined to post anything while the health, and indeed even the life, of one candidate was in the balance. That matter supposedly having been sufficiently resolved, and another encounter scheduled, I no longer feel that it would be out of place to share my thoughts on what that first encounter revealed to the voting public.
I will repeat my earlier caution: that this is much less about the candidates' respective positions and how someone might feel about them than about what the candidates revealed in their meetings about their fitness to hold the office of president. Here is how I feel about that.
Three things stood out to me in what limited time I was able to stand watching. The first of these concerns the phrase "Law And Order", where both candidates exchanged shots about their own and the other's support of the concept.
This phrase most often appears to be framed as "Law" being punitive measures to motivate compliance with cultural norms, and "Order" as violent enforcement of those measures. We supposedly have a structure in place whereby those who are injured by those measures can effect change in the measures or the cultural norms they support, but this structure is applied very unevenly and inaccessible to many affected people.
I have a great deal of difficulty with the negative nature of this approach to establishing an expectation in a culture that its norms will be generally observed. One significant consequence of creating and enforcing punishments for not conforming to cultural norms is that the violation must be noticed for those punishments to be invoked. This makes secrecy an effective countermeasure against that punishment, and creates a population of people unwilling to conform to those norms, yet doing so unnoticed.
How might things change if the focus shifted from using punishment to using rewards as motivation? From threatening violence and punishment for noncompliance to highlighting the benefits compliance brings? By changing from saying, "If you knock someone over the head and take their stuff, you will go to jail" to saying, "You can go around in public with nice stuff if we can all expect as a culture that you will not be knocked over the head and have it taken. If everyone understands that not knocking people over the head and taking their stuff is what people are expected to do, and acts according to that expectation, people can actually expect that. And it only works if you do your part. So don't knock people over the head and take their stuff."
Now I recognize this is wildly idealistic right now. But part of what makes it idealistic is that there are far too many people who can barely survive -- if that -- within the constraints of the laws they live under. The fewer people whose circumstances make it impossible for them to survive without breaking the law, the more laws which can be maintained by encouraging compliance rather than punishing disobedience. Anyone who thinks differently is welcome to share their thoughts when being Black in the US is not treated as a crime by those who have been empowered to enforce the law, either because the laws themselves criminalize being Black, or because those who enforce the law believe all Black people are criminals and deal with them accordingly.
Meanwhile, it is still possible to start on this path by seeing how many laws can be reframed in this fashion. It's probably more than we realize. And this would neatly reconcile the differences between those who believe that a lawful and orderly society can only be created by negative coercion, and those who would achieve the same end by emphasizing the reasons to be lawful and orderly, and ensuring that the benefits that should accrue to such behavior are realized in our culture.
As for "order", one relevant dictionary definition describes it as "the state of peace, freedom from confused or unruly behavior, and respect for law or proper authority". This definition highlights issues that are the source of much strife these days.
Many people in this country constantly are faced with laws and authorities that offer them very little respect. Attempting to address this issue by meeting with the people designated as having authority, or being responsible for, the laws, is far too often met with a similar dearth of respect. It is understandable to me that people who are so little respected find it very difficult to offer very much respect in return.
"Respect" can be compelled, but true respect must be earned. Those in authority who earn the respect of people who come to them and talk of the issues they face due to that authority, by listening to them and offering them avenues by which those issues can be resolved, will not drive those people into the streets because their voices have not been heard, and thus create the disorder they do not care for by their very actions. Those in authority who recognize that people gathering in the streets are doing so to have their voices heard, and earn their respect by listening and acting, will often find that the protestors no longer feel the need to draw attention to their cause in that manner, and disperse. Those in authority who ignore or dismiss those voices should not be surprised when the gatherings become more vocal and energetic -- again creating disorder by their actions. Those who are gathering to draw attention to their cause, who show respect for others by not acting violently are more likely to earn the respect and response of those in authority, and enable an orderly resolution of the situation. Those in authority who do not grant this respect, and oppose such gathering by force, must expect resistance from those who will not be silenced in this manner. And history has far too many examples of this response and its escalation to "establish order" leading to the demolition of their authority, and a goodly portion of their often-treasured belongings in the process -- most commonly followed by a great deal of instability as new mechanisms of authority come into existence.
As long as the phrase "Law and Order" centers the means, rather than the ends, this argument will continue with the same fervor and animosity that was revealed on stage, and the current state of minimal, halting progress on the matter will continue.
Another place that is significant to me, where the stark difference between earned respect and enforced respect is made quite clear, is in the respective candidates' attitude toward the military, and military service. The sitting president's demonstrated attitude to those who volunteer for military service was epitomized by his reprehensible attack on his opponent's son, who most likely died as a consequence of having served where and when he did.
The sitting president's statements during the program are consistent with his apparent view that the essential characteristic of the military is that it represents our country's martial might, and as such should command respect for our country, and thus for him. At the same time as he glorifies the military, he is derisive of its members, being apparently unaware of their motivations for volunteering for service and derisive of those who no longer serve.
The military members most deserving of my respect are the ones who are well aware of what they risk by volunteering, yet do so anyway in the belief that their country benefits by their representing it in this manner. These are the people who understand best that their being trained and equipped for combat is not solely because they might be sent into combat, but instead to increase the cost of engaging our military in combat to the point where it does not happen. The public display of military might does not display this strength of purpose. Shielding the public from display of the possible cost of military service, or denigrating or erasing those whose service has permanently injured or killed them, fails to filter out those who seek glory from those who value service, and thus overrides the respect for a powerful force to protect a nation and its citizens, with fear of its use against those who do not care to defer to the nation's might.
The sitting president has made many claims about honoring those who have completed their service. Unfortunately, as with his statements and actions regarding the active-duty military, they seem to be overwhelmingly about the image, and have very little substance backing it up. The comment that seems most at odds with reality is his statement that the Veterans Administration offers high-quality medical care to former service members. I would be delighted if this were the case, but I believe I have a number of readers who use the VA for a good portion of their health care and seem to have different opinions. Commentary from those people would be very welcome here.
The current state of affairs also continues the lamentable trend, probably from as long as there have been armies, of indoctrinating their recruits into the habit patterns of effective soldiers who are more likely to survive combat, and then providing no support for deprogramming them from the aspects of this, and further effects from their battlefield experience, that are at odds with civilian life, before returning them to society at large. Managing this transition is challenging without help, and the effects of lack of support show up in many unfortunate ways for the veterans and our culture. Can anyone claim to support veterans while neglecting them in this manner?
Finally, the event once again confirmed something I have been aware of since the sitting president first announced his candidacy. This is a person who has apparently not in a long time been told "no" in ways that make it stick -- as in get him to understand that what he wishes either has consequences he might not wish to bear or be able to buy his way out of, or actually cannot be accomplished. Children with this attitude are commonly designated "spoiled brat", but he is long past childhood, and it would be astonishing to me that he has not matured past this attitude were it not that I have crossed paths with too many other such people during my life.
Very often, when someone tells such a person "no, you cannot do that," this is taken as a challenge to be met with a response such as, "Oh, yeah? Watch me!", followed by an intense dedication to doing so by whatever means will do the job. And then, upon accomplishing the task, bragging about and taking pleasure from having accomplished this thing that one supposedly cannot do.
Also notably, the satisfaction of such accomplishments lies more in the accomplishing than the result. What they have already acquired provides such people no satisfaction; their satisfaction comes from acquiring more. And their desire to do so is so often unbounded and insatiable, until (in some cases) that lack of satisfaction leads them to reassess their drive, and sometimes, belatedly, gain the perspective they previously lacked.
So much of politics, and of leadership, particularly at the highest level, consists of dealing with "no" by means other than abruptly dismissing or otherwise silencing the person saying "no" before heedlessly plunging ahead on one's intended course. And when someone in a position of power -- especially great power such as that which is invested in the presidency -- further silences people who tell him "no" by removing them from their positions and replacing them with people who will tell him "yes", the inevitable consequences of his willful disregard of those warnings will propagate everywhere his power reaches, with great effect.
The current federal administration has looted the resources of the people, which were vested in the government with the understanding that all in the country might benefit from them. This I certainly expected, was prepared for, and recognize that it will take the same decades it took us to first secure these resources for us to undo the damage of a few years and once again have them available to all. What I did not fully realize was that the resources to be plundered would include the very foundations of our system of government, in the name of consolidating and increasing power. Restoring these resources to the vigor required to remain a functioning nation is a daunting task, but one that brooks no delay and requires action at all levels of government.
Please keep in mind that when I say "all", I am doing it in the most inclusive sense. An individual person, or a group of people, who lay exclusive claim to or damage a resource vested in the government thereby deny its benefit to others -- and that is contrary to the spirit of sharing in which governmental control of the resource was affirmed.
Medieval Christian theologians came up with a list of "seven deadly sins" whose exhibition was to be taken as indication that someone might be likely to fall out of favor with their God: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. This is the same god that both candidates profess to believe in, and by whose rules they claim to live. I believe that someone seeking more information as to which candidate to vote for would do well to consider to what extent each exhibits those traits, and carefully weigh what they might gain from each candidate's announced agenda against what they, and the country, might lose by the candidates further expressing their self-serving traits in the process.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-26 06:24 pm (UTC)Why I'm sticking it out
Date: 2020-10-27 12:23 am (UTC)My opinion about him hasn't gotten any more favorable in the five years since the candidate who has appeared in both subsequent elections first announced his candidacy. And even though he wants to shove me back in the closet, and as far as I can tell his running mate wants me dead, I'm still going to have to live under his administration (or go elsewhere -- but that's not especially easy right now) should he win. So I feel it benefits me to have some understanding that I may be able to use to my advantage.