Some blue lives are more equal than others.

As I watched the House’s January 6th hearing this morning, I also kept Twitter open, and found myself wandering into MAGA Twitter, where right wingers are trying to rewrite history in real time. And I’m disgusted, and I don’t want to spend my whole day arguing with people, so I’m going to rattle off my thoughts on what these hacks had to say because I just need to vent. Thanks.

Based on the statements from US Capital police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell and Officer Harry Dunn, it’s clear that the people who have spent the past 4+ years chanting, “blue lives matter” only care about the white lives in the blue uniforms. The same people who had a cow over Colin Kapernick peacefully taking a knee in protest against police brutality targeting Black Americans are MIA when it comes time defend cops of color from racist thugs. I can only conclude that some blue lives are more equal than others.

I also saw some MAGA sociopaths trying to make the case that these cops are “crisis actors,” a term I first heard used in the conspiracy theories arguing that the Sandy Hook tragedy was a hoax. The fact that one DC metro cop was singled out for having tattoos as “proof” that he isn’t trustworthy is a garbage argument. I know that different police departments have different rules on cops having visible tattoos, and as rules change, cops with seniority often get grandfathered in. In addition, tattooing has never been a measure of one’s trustworthiness. But I guess when a cop isn’t telling you what you want to hear, his blue life matters less to you, even if he’s white.

In a grand act of “whataboutism,” I’ve seen so many right wingers try to make the case that the Black Lives Matter protests of the past year were just as bad, or worse, as the attack on the Capitol. It is simply a false equivalence, beginning with the basic goals. The BLM protests began against the disproportionate amount of police brutality faced by Black Americans, in addition to other extenuating prejudices. The attempted coup on January 6th was based on a very big lie: that Donald Trump was re-elected to the presidency. The fact is, Donald Trump lost the popular vote twice. Facts don’t care about your feelings.

To be clear, I’m not defending violent protests, and I’m certainly not defending attacks on cops. I’m aware of the low morale facing local cops nationwide, how it has lead to a decline in recruiting and an escalation in retirements. I see the relationship between this and the escalation in violent crime. But unlike the MAGA crowd, I’m not willfully oblivious to the history of racist policing and how that history has persisted, and continues to have consequences in our present society. I also don’t ignore the relationship between poverty and crime, or the role racism plays in plays in perpetuating both. My view is this: policing is necessary to maintain a civilized society, and policing must be done without prejudice.

And here in lies my complaint about the MAGA crowd refusing to take the January 6th cops at their word: it’s wildly inconsistent with the “blue lives matter”/“law and order” rhetoric I’ve been listening to for half a decade. If MAGA has always been an exposition of naked hypocrisy, they’re now giving us full frontal.

In addition to trying to tarnish the reputations of the cops who defended the Capitol, the Republicans would like us to forget how they have fought against a legitimate investigation. It was Senate Republicans that blocked the proposed independent commission to investigate the events of January 6th. Their whining over the committee created by Nancy Pelosi rings hollow when they destroyed a legitimately nonpartisan option. Kevin McCarthy trying to place Jim Jordan on the committee was a troll move. I take no pleasure in saying this, but I’ve come to the conclusion that Republicans have something to hide. Or at the very least, they like making the investigation hyperpolitical because they thrive on the doubt it can create, which means it’s easier to wiggle out of responsibility.

I hate semantic arguments, but sometimes they’re unavoidable. I saw some people taking issue with the characterization of the January 6th mob as domestic terrorists. This is the most generosity I can give this argument: it looks like there were some people who were there to attend Trump’s rally and not much else, and got caught up on the ensuing mayhem of the day. I won’t call them domestic terrorists, but I won’t refrain from considering them fellow travelers. The people that built a gallows to hang the Vice President, who actively hunted the Speaker, who had murder on their to-do list—they’re domestic terrorists. Having their goals thwarted only means they are failed domestic terrorists. And failed domestic terrorists are not political prisoners.

Sebastian Junger’s PTSD Hypothesis

Sebastian Junger’s work as an author and documentary filmmaker has been, for the last 10 years, been largely centered on the War on Terror, often going into the field in Afghanistan with the US military. His newest book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, is on the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) of returning soldiers. His very direct, hands-on experience has given him some very unique insights into the warrior psyche, including what becomes of these fighters when they come home.

Junger describes PTSD as a “disorder of transition,” explaining in a recent TED Talk that “maybe what determines long-term PTSD isn’t what happened out there, but the kind of society you come back to. In close, cohesive, tribal society, you can get over trauma pretty quickly. If you come back to an alienating, modern society, you might remain traumatized your entire life. Maybe the problem isn’t the vets, maybe it’s us.”

As he spoke, I thought of the other large group of traumatized people in our society: rape victims. There’s no shortage of personal accounts to be found where rape victims have described their experiences in a similar way—that while being violated was terrible, trying to report the crime was even worse than the crime itself. Too often, rape victims report being met with indifference and/or disbelief when seeking out help from the law enforcement and healthcare professionals who are supposed to have their best interests in mind. In the Pulitzer Prize winning article, “An Unbelievable Story of Rape,” a woman who already has mental health issues is raped during a home invasion, and is so disbelieved by police and her own guardians, that she ends up being charged with filing a false report. Video evidence made by the rapist of that assault is eventually found when he’s caught continuing to rape women in another state.

That story, to me, is a good illustration of what Junger is talking about in regard to the relationship between alienation and trauma. In the intervening years between the woman’s assault and finally being vindicated, the agony of her situation must have been unbearable. While this may be an extreme example, it’s not terribly unusual. As much as everyone says rape is a terrible crime, and perpetrators need to be held accountable, we’re not very good at following through on those words.

Nowhere is that clearer than in regard to prison rape. American society is notoriously short on sympathy for criminals as it is, and that lack of sympathy gets in the way of our pragmatism. What I mean is this: nearly everyone who goes to prison will eventually get out. Whatever trauma they endure in prison stays with them. While going out into the world as a former prisoner is itself already alienating, I can see where society’s condoning attitude about prison rape can make it even more difficult to work past the trauma and work to rebuild one’s life. It’s likely an overlooked component as to why the recidivism rate is so high.

To bring this back to the military, rape still remains a complex problem. To focus on the nature of alienation, less than 1% of Americans have served since 9/11. When we talk about military rape victims, we’re talking about an even smaller group. Throw the trauma of war into that mix, and coming to home to feelings of isolation is inevitable.

That so many PTSD sufferers remain isolated and alienated, it’s on us. We remain beholden to bad ideas, and forget that ideas can be altered. New information and research breakthroughs are happening all the time. Our unwillingness to adapt to newer ideas is rooted in a fear of looking like we’re weak, or wrong. But putting our own stupid pride ahead of the legitimate needs of others is what makes us weak.

In an interview with MSNBC, Junger went off on the social and political polarity that impedes progress on veterans’ care: “To sustain a national conversation we have to see ourselves as a unity. We don’t. The political parties are at each others’ throats, we live in racially segregated communities, economically segregated communities. There are politicians and leaders in media who literally talk about some fellow citizens as if they are traitors…As if they are rivals who actively want to hurt the country. They talk about [the] president that way, they talk about members of Congress, elements of the population, as if they are actually trying to harm their own country. When you talk like that, you are talking non-tribally. When you use that about people inside your own camp, you are dividing a society. And interestingly, it is a very deeply unpatriotic thing to do. If that is the norm, if that is acceptable to voters, to have people talk like that, you are never going to have a national conversation about anything.”

How I learned to exile the Kardashians/Jenners from my Facebook feed (Well, mostly)

“Thumbs Down” by Jaz Jacobi

 

I hate the Kardashians. I hate all of the reality shows. I hate most of what’s on TV, on the radio, and at the multiplex. It’s not that I’m especially negative, I’m just a snob. I don’t just want art, I want good art. When I watch or read the news, I don’t just want to be informed, I want to be enlightened. In short, I’m a very demanding consumer. I demand more than the media wants to give me.

The Kardashian/Jenner clan makes the news a lot, so in my list of news sites on Facebook that I like to read, those people pop up a lot. More than I’d like to see. Far more than is ever relevant to most of my interests. So the question became: how can I read the news I want from sites I like without swimming through Kardashian/Jenner sludge?

With the shared links, there’s a little arrow to the side of them with a dropdown list. In that dropdown list, there is the option to “hide post.” When I found that, I started to “hide post” to every Kardashian/Jenner post in my feed. After a couple days of this, they started to disappear.

However, all is not well. Sometimes an article about pregnancy risks would feature a picture of a pregnant Kim Kardashian, or an article about transgender rights or health issues would use a picture of Caitlyn Jenner. Then the articles actually about the Kardashian/Jenner tribe would slowly start to creep back. So, it’s something of a cycle, but it is an interesting insight into how the Facebook feed functions.

What I’ve come to resent is that the algorithms Facebook uses to “feed” me articles act like they know what I want to read more than I do. I also dislike how most of what’s being pushed the hardest seems to be the most stupid, or maybe my taste isn’t as discriminating as I like to think. Either way, I’ve found that “hiding” the stuff* that I think is a waste of time has made my social media time more useful. I think if more people were to make use of this function in the same way, it would be interesting to see how the news is tailored in response.

 

*In addition to the Kardashian/Jenner family, I’ve also started to use the function on other corners of pop culture I despise as well—those awful Real Housewives of Bravo, or anything pertaining to Victoria’s Secret.

 

The Bros love David Foster Wallace. So what?

Recently, both Slate and Salon have run pieces discussing the newfound love that young white men seem to have for David Foster Wallace. Perhaps the attention is because of the upcoming movie about the late author, but I also think it speaks to the snobbery of the authors of those pieces. I think that Wallace’s appeal has transcended the inner circle of literary geeks should be cause for celebration, not squeamishness. I would much rather see an exploration of why these young guys have taken an interest in his work, and how they connect with it.

That is, if they’re actually reading it. Both articles argue that most copies of the 1,088 page Infinite Jest that are being sold to all the young dudes are for display purposes, as a kind of intellectual peacocking. I know I’m treading into some weird waters with this, but I haven’t read any of Wallace’s fiction, only some essays. In those essays, I found him to be an empathetic, sensitive, and passionate writer. Based on that alone, I’d like to see more young men actually reading his work, and cultivate a similar curiosity about the world around them–and a similar ability to see the world beyond their own noses.

Author’s note: This has been edited since the initial posting because I was too tired and cranky to do a second draft.

As a former barista, here’s why I think Starbucks’ #RaceTogether is a terrible idea

It’s eSpresso, not eXpresso

As I have mentioned before, I have spent the bulk of my adult life working in the food industry, most of it spent dealing directly with the public. The horrible, stupid, ignorant public…

When I first read about Starbucks wanting their baristas to engage their customers in talking about race relations, my first thought was, “How in the pragmatic hell is that going to work? When I wasn’t waiting on people, I was supposed to be stocking and cleaning. It was my job to caffeinate the customers, which meant that a lot of them weren’t ready for an involved conversation until after they finished their coffee. And frankly, I didn’t give a rat’s patootie about their thoughts on life as it was.”

And a lot of those customers were jerks anyway. Not all of them, not even most–the majority just wanted to get their coffee and go, and they did. But a significant proportion of which made the job feel like the store could be mistaken for a zone that straddles the Fourth and Fifth Circles of Hell. Occasionally, those terrible were customers were racist toward the few black people I’ve worked with, one of them being a drunken nutbag who was thrown out by the manager after his verbal abuse made a 17 year-old black girl break down in tears.

I did have some regular customers that I look back on fondly, mainly because they also worked in the mall, and we were united in our disgust with the general public. I know this sounds like an utterly bleak view, but the reality is, anyone who works with the public long enough will come to loathe them. This is largely because a lot of people lack empathy and can’t see the world beyond their noses. Also, a lot of customers don’t realize that we’re at work. We’re not being nice because we like you, or kissing your butt because we think you’re wonderful. We’re performing happiness to provide a comfortable atmosphere to make it easier to sell you stuff.

This Starbucks initiative is also very telling of something else: the disconnect between the suits in corporate’s ivory tower and the people who actually work in the stores. I first came to realize this disconnect because the layout of the particular store I worked in was incredibly poor–it was as though they anticipated all their baristas would be 6’5″ and weigh 120 pounds. (It’s worth noting that the store I worked in still exists and has been remodeled, and appears to be more functional.) But there’s also a disconnect between what Starbucks thinks it does and what it actually does.

The classic European coffeehouse has, historically, been the domain of thinkers and artists. In Lauren Stover’s Bohemian Manifesto, she writes, “In Vienna, writers took to coffeehouses like Beatniks to bongos. Cafés started stocking writing supplies. Out of coffee? Out of paper? Out of ink? No problem. Some writers even gave the café as their address and received mail there…The intellectual and creative activity sizzling inside coffeehouses led many political and religious leaders to believe them to be hotbeds of rebellion and decree them illegal.”

Café Central in Vienna

I can’t help wondering if this old school café lust for life is what Starbucks is trying to cultivate or emulate. If they are, it’s too little too late. Starbucks is responsible for turning a place that was once a haven for society’s free thinkers into a fast food empire. It’s no longer a viable place for conversations that require patience, nuance and empathy, which race certainly does.

If Starbucks wants to go out of their way to make sure their stores are safe havens for people of all races, and all other walks of life, then good for them. Forcing the issue isn’t, I think, the way to go. When I discussed this with a friend who worked in another (now defunct) chain, he said that if this initiative had been proposed in his store, he could see the more redneck element of their clientele lecturing him on the “evils” of political correctness.

The best thing Starbucks does is offer a good cup of  coffee and an occasional sanctuary in a world gone mad. Also, free wi-fi. So I would implore Starbucks to do what it does best. But as a writer, I certainly wouldn’t turn down free paper and pens.

Starbucks does Paris.