This will not be a particularly insightful post. It is a visceral reaction, a recognition of something that perhaps is obvious to others, but is something that was not yet a fully formed thought in my limited brain. It is, as is often the case, the result of reading words by someone else.
In this case the words are those of two men. The first is Scot Lehigh, the very much centrist columnist in The Boston Globe, writing Jay Severin, a punk posing as a pundit, and the second in Bob Herbert of The New York Times, whose piece today, entitled Out of Touch, describe how removed from the reality of most of the American people the ideas, attitudes and expressions of many major Republican figures are.
The visceral reaction - why still so many in this country could vote for a man like Bush, could support torture, could demonize those who differ from them in any way. So many - including at times most of us here, even if only in reaction.
Let me back up. I grew up in a family in which the ability to offer the sharp insult was valued: it was my mother's stock in trade. She was a brilliant woman who had never fully grown up, having graduated from Hunter College High School at 14, Cornell at 18 and Columbia Law at 21, 2nd in her class. In conversations in our household one learned as a matter of survival to dish out verbal insults. I became somewhat skilled at it, albeit not in my mother's class, so skilled that it has taken the better part of the last 4 decades to begin unlearning the skill, a task I took on because whatever temporary satisfaction I gained from applying the skill was more than offset by two things: the horror at the pain I caused, and the loneliness and isolation for myself that inevitably accompanied my most vicious applications: after all, who wants to stick around and be insulted and injured time and again?
So perhaps I am sensitive to the impact of language and emotion, perhaps I am merely being rationale in assessing that the cost of such an achievement is far outweighed by the pain it causes, perhaps I am just being selfish in not wanting to alienate people when I already feel somewhat isolated my my shyness.
Lehigh is quite pointed in his surprise that WTKK suspend Severin for his latest escapade. As he puts it bluntly,
Has WTKK suddenly adopted elementary standards of civility?
Is it now applying an IQ test to its talk-show hosts?
Lehigh has long been a critic of Severin's rants. He offers some examples that I think will explain why his piece, when connected with the words of Herbert, had the impact they did on me. These were some of Severin's political rantings:
But my larger point is that anyone who listens to Severin with any regularity knows these latest comments are no particular aberration. It's what he does. Just like, say, calling Hillary Clinton "a lying bitch," and a fat communist this-or-that. Or labeling her husband "a traitor." Or saying that Mike Dukakis should be "executed" and that Al Gore "would murder his daughter" to become president.
And he's sounded positively deranged as he's ranted about how President Obama must be stopped.
It's all par for the course - and it's been going on for as long as he's been polluting the airwaves.
He compares these kinds of rants to thoughtful conservatives, such as several he heard on another show recently, remarking also that the callers on that show were thoughtful, their questions being fair even if at times somewhat pointed.
He writes that regular listeners had to know Severin for what he was, which leads to his concluding words:
And that returns us to the brass at WTKK.
Unless they are as dense as the elements that inhabit the upper ranges of the periodic table, the folks at 96.9 must have seen Severin for what he is years ago.
So tell us, guys, what took you so long?
The brass at WTKK must have seen Severin for what he is years ago. So why take him off the air, even temporarily, now? What was so much more egregious about his most recent outbursts, summarized here:
Severin reportedly called illegal immigrants from Mexico "criminaliens," "primitives," and "leeches." Yes, he said that Mexico's leading exports were "venereal disease," "women with mustaches," and "swine flu."
The only possible explanation is that the management feared that somehow, in the current environment, those words could cost them financially. In other words, having not only tolerated but profited from the man's previous racist, sexist, homophobic and other intolerant rants, their concern could only be financial, not moral. That is, unless they suddenly discovered a conscience not previously evident in their willingness to profit by his previous rants.
How does this connect with Herbert? He begins his column noting
The incredibly clueless stewards of the incredibly shrinking Republican Party would do well to recall that it was supposedly Abe Lincoln, a Republican, who said you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
He notes the serious issues facing most Americans, then writes that the Republican response is
To build a wall of obstruction in front of efforts to get the economy moving again, and then to stand in front of that wall chanting gibberish about smaller government, lower taxes, spending cuts and Ronald Reagan.
He then dismisses them in one sentence:
It’s not a party; it’s a cult.
To show out of touch the Republicans are, he offers a number of statements dismissive of the reality of many Americans, such as Phil Gramm's remarks about "a mental recession" or Richard Shelby's comments that the problems of the Big Three auto makers are their problems, not the nations (and remember, Shelby represents a state which offered all kinds of sweeteners to get a foreign auto plant located therein, and which is as hostile to union protections as is the Republican party). He references Gingrich's bloviations about moves to right the financial crisis giving Democrats "the potential to basically create the equivalent of a dictatorship." And then there is this paragraph:
Senator Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, described President Obama as "the world’s best salesman of socialism." And Mike Huckabee, a former Republican governor of Arkansas and presidential candidate, said of the administration’s economic policies: "Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff."
We should not be surprised that our political opponents will attempt to smear us with charges of communism and socialism when advocates for our side are willing to smear those opposing them with charges of being Christian Taliban or Nazis. That debases the political discourse. We have a choice to make in our society, and it is whether or not we value any kind of civility, whether we believe there are any limits in what is acceptable.
Yes, I am aware, that some on the other side have no shame. They see no contradiction between the hateful rhetoric some of them use and demanding public apologies from the likes of Richard Durbin for far less demeaning remarks. I suggest that we do not wish to debase our own arguments by resorting to their tactics. It is a parallel, however weak, to destroying any sense of moral superiority by resorting to torture of our military opponents. Far better to skewer with biting wit a la Stewart and Colbert.
But I am still not speaking to the point I really think matters. Nor have I yet justified in the words I have offered the title I used for this post. Let me try.
It is a combination of things. Insofar as we elevate wealth and power to the highest goals to be sought, we run the risk of diminishing the value of everything else. We thereby create a situation where the measures applied, the tactics used, are justified by the emphasis we put on the final goal. We are accepting at least implicitly the Machiavellian notion that the end justifies the means. The notion of law and limits becomes diminished to the concept that if you can get away with it you have done nothing wrong. And it is such a concept that undermines any sense of civility, any notion of a higher value, any idea of meaningful limits: all that matters is whether one can find a sufficient rationalization for the actions one wishes to do or has already done to allow oneself to sleep at night. And my last sentence presumes that one still has some semblance of a conscience that recognizes the existence and hence the rights of others. After all, one can become completely solipsistic an view oneself and the goals to which one dedicates oneself as how the universe is defined. One can be or attempt to become a sociopath or a psychopath.
Think of the many abuses that have been so much a part of our recent history. Enron manipulating energy prices in California. Waterboarding and worse in dealing with presumed terrorists. Lying about intelligence. As gross as these are, they are totally understandable in an environment where we worship accumulators of great wealth without regard to how they achieve it or who they hurt along the way. They are part of a landscape in which we glorify violence in many forms, playing over and over the greatest hits in football games, or demanding ever more violent and graphic video games and movies. It should not surprise when we glorify the statement originated by Red Saunders and often attributed to Vince Lombardi, that winning isn't everything, it is the only thing. Once we start down that path, whether in sports, politics, business, personal relations, or war, we have taken a step in the direction where rules do not matter provide you win.
And if that is the attitude, then our attempts at placing restrictions on actions and words as being beyond the pale are foolish, because as long as one does not get caught one has really done nothing wrong - not if winning is the only thing. And that is also why when a tactic works for your side you will do all in your power not only to protect and validate that tactic for yourself, but also scream like bloody hell to deny it to your opponents, and thus the "outrage" at the words of Dick Durbin.
Hobbes warned us that without limits, there was little productive that could occur, because we would have the war of every man against every other, ending that passage by noting in such a situation the life of man would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." But we do not consider that. After all, if we have the wealth we can purchase the power. If we have the power, we can crush our opponents. So what if the life of others might be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short? We eat our caviar, drive our Hummers or in our Rolls, wear out two thousand dollar suits, and have gold-plated bathroom fixtures in our offices because we can - because we are going to show that we are top dogs, that rules and laws are for fools. After all, as Richard Nixon told us, if the president does it, it is not against the law. Presidents and titans should be above the law? And if we aspire to such positions, if we wish to emulate them, why not start in our own behavior, in our own words and actions and attitudes.
There are easy paths in life. One can live rigidly by rules, hoping that there is a rule that makes every decision for one, or a dictatorial system that will make those decisions for us. Insofar as we do not have to think about actions, there is an apparent element of freedom, because making decisions takes times, takes energy. Or we can presume that there are no limits on our actions as long as we can get away with them. Want a better view from your window, feel free to cut down trees on public land, as did Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskin. So what if you get caught, the size of the fine is miniscule to you.
We see this far too often in sports. Some coaches started with some level of integrity, but the lure of an ultimate prize became too great. Without idolizing either man, I here think of Bobby Knight and John Thompson Jr. The former for years forswore taking junior college transfers, but finally succumbed and won a national title over Syracuse with the addition of juco transfer Keith Smart, someone he never previously would have recruited because of his poor academics. The later won only one national championship despite the presence of Patrick Ewing in three consecutive national finals. And he won that title with a thug, Michael Graham, who had no interest in academics, and was at Georgetown for only that year. Both men violated their own principles in order to achieve a goal they desperately sought.
How then is it our fault, in any sense? I am not arguing for collective guilt. I am saying that insofar as we acquiesce we contribute to the environment in which this all occurs. To actions there are consequences, to inactions there are also consequences. We may choose by action or word to affirm something we should not. Or we might by inaction or silence allow something inappropriate or worse to go unchallenged, emboldening the actor and influencing those who observe the transaction to believe that what is unchallenged is thereby at least acceptable if not something more, something to be emulated because it works.
Edmund Burke probably never said or wrote the aphorism so often attributed to him, that all that was necessary for evil to triumph was for good men to remain silent in its presence. And one can argue that refusal to object is not the same as affirming by silence. After all, there are circumstance in which to challenge might be rude and/or ineffective - far better to correct the inappropriate behavior or words in private, so that the person neither resents nor resists - that is, if the person is willing to listen.
We have a strong tendency to want to focus on what matters to us and ours, to those we hold dear, or the causes we support. It is easy either to narrow one's own focus to these important things: after all, life is relatively short, and I may tell myself I cannot take on every battle, every indignity I perceive. We may feel that in some circumstances by speaking out or acting in opposition we may jeopardize our own safety or that of those dear to us. All of these are rational and understandable human responses.
They are also possible rationalizations that allow us to close our eyes to the first steps of injustice, intolerance and cruelty, and thereby to let it flourish. And insofar as each of us goes beyond the rational and understandable human response to begin to rationalize it IS all our fault when such wrong things are able to take root, to flourish, to demean our culture and our society.
I do not intend this as a screed. It is, as noted at the beginning, a visceral reaction to reading several pieces by others. It is a reflection, however hasty and unformed, to something that has gnawed at me for some time. And it is still an area of difficulty, because I have no easy answers of what to do. Too often simple answers are overly simplistic - we want rules so we do not have to reflect, we do not have to make a choice and thereby live with the consequences of that choice.
I would argue that to make no choice, to choose to turn away, or to deliberately ignore, IS to choose, and thus to have to accept the consequences of that (non-)choice.
I offer these words not in criticism as much as in challenge - are we willing to step back enough to see ourselves and those with whom we affiliate and examine the impact of the words and deeds - and the silences and inactions - of us and ours? If we are not, then we are to some degree as complicit as those who actively seek to profit, in money, power or prestige, from the abusive language and actions of people like Jay Severin, or of politicians who seek to manipulate peoples fears and emotions for their own benefit.
And if in any sense it is our responsibility, then we have - at least to some degree - the ability to make a difference. So perhaps I am wrong to entitle this with the word "fault" - it is that only if we abdicate the responsibility that is before us.
That was my visceral reaction this morning.
Peace