Thwarted Decency

See This Anger Isn't Just In Black And White by Jim Sleeper (The Washington Post)

This may be the most intelligent paragraph I've read regarding the fear and rage that otherwise decent folks are expressing through screaming and other forms of incivility.

Yet it would be a mistake to feel disdain for these guys [young folks screaming 'USA' at John McCain's acceptance speech], for their buffoonish chanting was only one side of them, and not necessarily the dominant one. They haven't curdled into fascists, as some on the left seemed to think. More likely, the thwarted decency in them is trying to find a political home, a sense of civic standing that is slipping away.

I see it in the anti-choice protesters at the Allentown Womens' Center. I see it in Rep. Wilson's shout-out at the President of the United States addressing a joint session of Congress. I see it in the anger expressed during the Town Halls and I saw it in the crowds Sarah Palin was drawing during the presidential compaign.

I see it in my friends and family, many of whom are glued to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Fox News.

I see it in one conservative micronationalist friend who is supporting the state sovereignty initiative in Tennessee and I see it in a liberal Scouting friend who has recently been singing the praises of fascism.

It reminds me of the prescient film, Network, and the deranged anchor, Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch), who has an on-camera nervous breakdown.

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.

We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'

Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

[shouting] You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,

[shouting]'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:

[screaming at the top of his lungs] "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

These people are all decent people (including the anti-choice protesters and I'm giving some of them the benefit of the doubt on that :-).

There is a fear in all of us... the fear that the (more or less) comfortable lives in a comfortable America (which is the situation most of my friends and family share, though many others do not) are passing away; they are transitioning into something new, particularly if one is white, male and middle class.

And as fear will do what fear, from the standpoint of evolution, is “designed” to do, we are pushed into fight or flight mode.

Well, unless we plan to leave these fair shores to go to another (equally transitional world), that leaves us with fight mode.

It starts with verbal agression and can escalate to physical aggression.

I am convinced there are two triggers to verbal and physical aggression.

The first is the simple matter of not getting our own way.

I don't believe that is all that significant. Most of us, since childhood, have learned that we don't get our own way much of the time.

And that's okay – so long as our “non-negotiable” needs are met and so long as we believe the process is fair that that we (the minority) have been heard.

And that's the anger I'm hearing now... that the needs denied are “non-negotiable”, that the process is not fair and that I'm not even being heard. (And, of course, if I'm not even being heard, what recourse do I have other than violence?)

Most (not all) of the people I know are Christians and Americans.

For those of us that fall into both of those categories, we live within something that the late lawyer and theologian William Stringfellow called, The Constantinian Arrangement.

Christians were persecuted in Rome until the Emperor Constantine “cut a deal” with the Church: respect and live within the laws of my regime and I will tolerate (and even allow as a monopoly) the practice of your religion.

Some sixteen hundred years later, it is still a matter of dispute as to whether or not that was such a good idea :-)

But for those of us who believe it was a good deal (or who are willing to live with it nonetheless – see “on not getting one's own way” above :-), this is my take on the American situation.

In America, we live according to a social contract whose penultimate authority is the Constitution and whose ultimate authority is God (or, for my secular friends, conscience, not that I believe the two are identical, but they are close enough for government work :-).

The constitution was (wisely) designed in such a way that competing interests (whether of individuals or collectives such as companies, industries, non-profit groups, etc.) could battle it out to a victory in a three branch system with checks and balances all along the way – all of which occurs in the context of a Bill of Rights which protects the rights of the minority).

I must admit that I believe the Founders of America did a bang-up job on this (with the notable exception of their tolerance of slavery and the subjegation of women and other non-propertied peoples).

In the world today, America has the “longest-lived” and briefest constitution of any other nation.

My friends on the right would (I believe) declare that we do not, at this time, live under the Constitution. They might argue that life under the Constitution as that was understood by the Framers ended with United States vs. Butler in 1936:

The general welfare clause of article 1, section 8, was also intended as a shield, to ensure that Congress, in the exercise of any of its enumerated powers, would act for the general rather than for any particular welfare. Here, however, Hamilton stood opposite Madison, Jefferson, and others in thinking that the clause amounted to an independent, enumerated power--albeit limited to serving the general welfare. But as Congressman William Drayton noted in 1828, if Hamilton were right, then whatever Congress is barred from doing because there is no power with which to do it, it could accomplish by simply appropriating the money with which to do it. That, of course, is precisely what happened, and what the Court sanctioned when it came down on Hamilton's side in 1936 (United States v. Butler), then a year later went Hamilton one better by saying that although the distinction between general and particular welfare must be maintained, the Court would not itself police that distinction (Helvering v. Davis). Congress, the very branch that was redistributing with ever-greater particularity, would be left to police itself. On the First Principles of Federalism by Roger Pilon

I don't buy this.

The Framers understood that the government would, at times, get it wrong. (See “on not getting one's own way” above :-).

When it's wrong, we have to suck it up and live with it (as I did for eight years with Bush vs. Gore and as slaves did for decades – under slavery – and Blacks did for decades under Jim Crow, and as women did until the early part of the 20^th century).

And as Republicans need to do now. At least for 4 – 8 years.

Why?

Because I have free speech. Because I have freedom of the press. Because I have the right to assemble with like-minded people.

Because there is no power of government, whether Executive, Legislative or Judicial that, in the long term (if not always the short), is beyond the reach of the people through either legal means or through non-violent civil disobedience.

So what we really need to do, as liberals and conservatives, as Democrats and Republicans, as Hamiltonians and Madisons, as pro-choice and pro-life, as etc., etc....

...is listen to each other.

We need to listen to each other and get political and, if we cannot come to an agreement, at the end of the day, use our political power to force our will.

Because if we get it wrong it will not, in the long run, endure.

Obama can possibly force health care reform through a simple majority vote if he can get enough votes to fight a filibuster. Then the issues will be resolved under conference.

But if what comes out of it is not good, it will not last – because laws can be changed or repealed (see Prohibition :-)

As Benjamin Franklin said, we must all hang together or we shall assuredly all hang separately.

And while it may not play well in Tennessee (at least WESTERN Tenassee ( :-) ), I cannot help but recall the words from Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory will swell when again touched as surely they will be by the better angels of our nature.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA