Consider these words
... the modern era, replacing the arbitrary rule of men with the impartial rule of law, has not brought any fundamental changes in the facts of unequal wealth and unequal power.
Or these:
If law and order are the only ways of making injustice legitimate, then the "order" on the surface of everyday life may conceal deep mental and emotional disorder among the victims of injustice. This is also true for the powerful beneficiaries of the system, in the way that slavery distorts the psyches of both slave and master. In such a case, the order will only be temporary; when it is broken, it may be accompanied by a bloodbath of disorder - as in the United States, when the tightly controlled order of slavery ended in a civil war and 600,000 men died in a country of 35 million people.
Or these:
When our history books get to the 1920s, they dwell on the Teapot Dome scandals of the Harding administration, while ignoring the far greater reallocations of wealth that took place legally, through tax laws proposed by Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Melow (a very rich man, through oil and aluminum, and passed by Congress in the Coolidge Administration.
Parts of one more to consider
The modern system of law is something like roulette. sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. No one can predict in any one instance whether the little ball will fall into the red or the black, and no one is really responsible. You win, you lose. But as in roulette, in the end you almost always lose. In roulette the results are fixed by the mechanics of the wehll, the lasw of mathematical probability, and the rules of "the house." In society, the rich and the strong get what they want by the laws of contract, the rules of the market, and the power of the authorities to change the rules or violate them at will. . . .
In this system, the occasional victories may ease some of the pain of economic injustice. They also reveal the usefulness of protest and pressure, suggesting even greater possibilities for the future. And they keep you in the game, giving you the feeling of fairness, preventing you from getting angry and upsetting the wheel. It is a system ingeniously devised for maintaining things as they are, while allowing for limited reform.
I have been thinking long, hard and deeply about our society and our nation, where we are, where we seem to be heading. I have been pondering what my responsibilities are and will be for the injustice I see around me. I have been rereading the words of a man who pondered those same questions, examining our history, distant and recent. His life overlapped mine, so it helps to read his perspective. He was an important historian whose work can be used to inform our thinking. His name was Howard Zinn, and all of what I have quoted is from one chapter, titled "Law and Order," of his book Passionate Declarations: Essays on War and Justice.
I have been considering these - and other words, and have some words of my own.
Time Magazine chose to recognize protestors around the world. It is but a bit more than a year since a man in Tunisia offered his own life and sparked a movement of protest against a regime that prized law and order as a means of maintaining itself and a social order that benefited the few and the powerful and repressed many. That movement has spread to many nations. The victories are incomplete: they will always be incomplete so long as the powerful maintain the mechanisms of enforcements. Sometimes those mechanisms will be raw force through police and military - and it is important to note that in our own nation police forces are becoming increasingly militarized. Far more often the mechanisms of enforcement - which are the mechanisms of repression - will be the power to make and enforce laws, first in the legislatures, then through the executive by bringing people before the final mechanism of the courts. The fear of loss of home, employment, freedom serve as powerful means of suppressing protest, and can be used against those who dare to challenge the social and economic order that benefits those in control.
If some can be identified as possible leaders of an effective pushback, first attempt to coopt them by bringing them into partial control of the system, giving them personal enrichment which can then be used as a lever by proposing to take it away and return them to their former status.
Or perhaps make some cosmetic changes, perhaps in the names of some people in certain positions, or perhaps by sacrificing a little as a means of defusing the demand for fundamental reform: offer to pay a fraction of gains obtained at the expense of the masses by means legal or illegal - but definitely immoral - while hanging on to the rest and not fundamentally changing the operation of the system.
At least not permanently.
All of these lessons, and more, have been playing out before us, abroad and here at home.
In Egypt we see the military cracking down with brutality.
At home the gains that had been made during the New Deal and the Great Society have long been opposed; in recent decades we have seen the mechanisms that attempted to change or at least control the forces that led to the Great Depression and our seriously unequal society be rolled back. Greed is now not only "good" - it is considered by some desirable. So long as those on the outside of the power structure and the wealth want in, want to share in such bounty, it becomes possible to use that desire and their fear of powerlessness and being destitute as a means of defusing the real power they hold.
What is that real power?
To some degree it is political. After all, right now most of what is wrong in this nation is legal. It cannot be changed merely by one election, if for no other reason than we cannot change the interpretation of law and constitution until we can replace substantial portions of the judiciary, starting with the nation's highest Court.
It is also economic - it might be illegal to have a general strike or a widespread rent strike or refusal to pay mortgages imposed in some cases illegally, but were the resistance wide spread enough, and were it to include many of those whose efforts are needed for enforcement of the current system, how could that enforcement of immoral contracts and social order be sustained?
I write these words from the living room of a comfortable, albeit messy and not particularly ornate, house located in a safe, desirable neighborhood in a well-run local community. In an emergency I can walk 2 blocks to the hospital. We have two hybrid cars, each now with more than 100,000 miles on them, sitting in our driveway. But wee, too, are somewhat controlled by our possessions, which in our case tend more towards books and recorded music rather than jewelry or securities. We both are employed by government, which to some degree makes us complicit in the wrongs of society, even if we do not directly oppress others - and certainly in my teaching I do not merely recapitulate the received wisdom, but try to empower my students to think more deeply, to be willing to challenge conventional thinking.
There is a passage from the chapter from which I have been quoting that I have often considered using to begin my classes at the start of the year. Allow me to share it:
In the 1960s. a student at Harvard Law School addressed parents and alumni with these words:
The streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might. And the republic is in danger. Yes! danger from within and without. We need law and order! Without law and order our nation cannot survive.
There was prolonged applause. When the applause died down, the student quietly told his listeners: "These words were spoken in 1933 by Adolph Hitler."
I do not claim to have answers to the problem of how one should act and think now. I struggle with that problem constantly. I think more about it because I am considering how I should spend what is left of my productive time. In some ways having no biological children I have greater freedom to act and to think: I do not have to worry about providing for them while they are young or leaving something material to them.
In the Jewish tradition from which both I and Zinn come, there is the tradition of ethical wills, of leaving behind a moral statement to guide one's progeny. In a sense, the words one might put into such a document would be empty unless they are supported by how one chooses to live. It is that recognition that is behind much of the reflection I do, why I ponder not merely the big issues about which Zinn was writing, but the more basic issues of day to day living.
I am not inclined to physically "occupy" at this stage in my life, but I absolutely support those who feel called to do so. I know I walk a fine line. For better or worse on some issues I am "on the inside" - I am able to speak bluntly with policy makers ranging from my local elected officials in Arlington to Members and Senators I have gotten to know, in part by on occasion helping them to get elected.
Should I do more than i do? I don't know. I wonder about that.
I have been offered jobs in government and politics where I might be able to make a difference. But then I would lose my voice. Many whose insight I value have told me they do not want my voice to go silent. It is not that I offer such unique or original insights, it is that I offer insights, points of view, that seem to prod others into offering theirs, or sometimes to take actions they might not otherwise have done.
I am not so arrogant to think the world could not survive without what I write. After all, at some point I will pass from this physical life. Even now, of the billions of people in the world, or even the hundreds of millions in the US, perhaps at most some thousands will ever read my words.
What is important is that NO voices be silenced, that the voices of ALL be part of our discussions about our society, our government, our legal and economic system.
I am on break from school. Last night I set no alarms. For the first time since school began I had a period of 6 hours of unbroken sleep, despite sinuses that usually waken me several times during the night.
I have obligations to fulfill. These are writing commitments, about books I have already read, and two more I must read and reflect thereupon, offering my perceptions to help others decide whether they should read those volumes. Words about words. I must consider the words of others, then consider which of my words are appropriate to the task at hand.
I write because as musical and emotional and intuitive as I may be, I still need the clarity of words to understand, I feel an obligation to be able to explain at least in part how and what i do so that i am not disconnected from others.
We can connect sometimes with no words - sometimes a look, a touch, an embrace, a gesture of generosity communicates and connects even more powerfully than any words we offer. Sometimes being willing to sit in silence - to listen, to share space and time, or in a different direction to chastise by refusing to affirm, thereby giving the person the space and time to self-correct?
As a teacher my classes are most effective when the vast majority of the words come not from my mouth but from those of my students.
It is also why I read far more than I either write or speak, although I probably do far too much of both.
Words to consider. Allow me to end this by offering one more selection from that same chapter, words very appropriate to our time and our nation even as you read this posting. They are words that perhaps some in power ought to consider before they respond as too many have done. Consider these words:
Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it. It is a corrective to the sluggishness of "the proper channels," a way of breaking through passages blocked by tradition and prejudice. It is disruptive and troublesome, but it is a necessary disruption, a healthy troublesomeness.
a necessary disruption, a healthy troublesomeness
May your day bring you a sense that you have used your time well, that in some way you have done something to make life better for someone else.
Peace?