As I write this, less than two weeks before Christmas, the nation is stunned again by the slaughter of innocents by yet another self-deluded gunman. The news tonight is dominated by another horror; dozens of Connecticut families shattered in the time it takes to walk down a hallway and open a classroom door. The epidemic continues unabated as innocent people are gunned down where they work, pray, study, shop, eat, and relax. While our government spends billions of dollars a year to try to protect us from outside threats, we are not safe from each other.
Even as we try to digest today's events, we ask ourselves the same questions and we come up with the same dearth of answers. "How," we ask, "do we stop the madness?" How did we become a people for whom spraying bullets in a classroom or a theater or a workshop is a viable solution to our problems? It is not even all that rare any more; in a continuing litany of tragedy, Mother Jones magazine has chronicled now 61 mass shootings since 1982. That's more than two a year. How, indeed, do we stop the madness?
The first answer that pops into people's minds is always gun control. There is no reason, we will say, to own the kinds of guns used to unleash death in a school or a restaurant. That road is always a dead end, and not just because of the obstructionist bullying of a lobbyist group devoted to its own perpetuation, but because gun control simply does not work. I proved this to myself when I set out in the mid 1990s to prove that reasonable, rational, and strictly-enforced gun laws could prevent most of the senseless murder taking place then. What I ended up doing was proving myself wrong. A single incident - the Dec. 7, 1993, rampage of Colin Ferguson through a Long Island rail car - wiped away all of the evidence I'd gathered. Earlier that year, Ferguson had moved to California, satisfied the residency requirements, legally bought the handgun he would later use to kill six people and wound 19 others, and moved back to New York. It was clear to me that if the toughest gun laws in the nation couldn't save lives, nothing short of revocation of the Second Amendment was going to work. That was not something I wanted to consider
In fact, even if it were possible to repeal the right to bear arms - a right that is unique in the world - it would fail to staunch the blood. Just as booze flowed freely throughout Prohibition and drugs permeate our society despite an ever-intensifying war on them, illegal guns would be just as plentiful as legal ones are now. And the repeal of not just a Constitutional amendment but of one of the Bill of Rights, a member of the decalogue that defines American style freedom, is simply unthinkable.
So, are we doomed to suffer repeated tragedies as the cost of freedom? I don't think so. We have to find the answer to the original question - how to end, or at least minimize, mass killings in public - within the context of our liberties, and that won't be easy. But then, to paraphrase one of my favorite screenwriters, America isn't easy.
America's style of civil rights is hard because it is unique among nations; never before had the freedoms we enjoy been accorded. Before the dawn of the 19th century, government and society in general consisted of those few with absolute power oppressing the masses without power. There may have been the occasional benevolent ruler, but building and maintaining a kingdom, a nation, an empire, was a brutal and cruel business. The American republic was the first attempt in the history of humankind to establish a nation in which the power resided entirely in the people's hands, the transition from one government to the next was entirely peaceful, and the laws of the land applied to everyone equally. Never before had the common individual been trusted with so much freedom. It was so different from what had been that it was called a great experiment. It is still called an experiment, and it is still not perfect and it is still not entirely successful. It was supposed to offer more than just freedom; it was supposed to offer safety and prosperity and respect for all if its citizens, and after almost two and a half centuries we still haven't gotten it completely right.
Because America is still an experiment, we do not yet know how we will evolve. We are only now beginning to learn the unintended consequences of such sweeping freedom. Politics in the United States is a constant struggle to keep base human desire from running amok without reverting to the darkness of the past. Add to that the American mythology of rugged individualism, manifest destiny, and world preeminence, and it's no wonder we think we can solve our problems with firearms. In a nation where liberty and opportunity are so celebrated, it's easy for a disappointment to become an oppression, for a failure to become a bloody cause.
If mass shootings are a consequence of the American tradition and mythos, then we still have a lot of work to do. It may be necessary to start re-imagining America as the land of the safe and the home of the conciliatory. Instead of battling tooth and claw over our differences, maybe it's time to start celebrating, not our violent, genocidal, enslaved past, but our tradition of justice, diversity, and equality.
A change like this won't be easy, of course, and it won't happen in one or two generations. But it can start with each one of us asking ourselves a different question from the one we've been asking all along. Instead of asking, "Am I right?" we need to start asking, "Am I good?" And then we need to answer honestly. The deaths of the children in Connecticut, and the deaths of the victims of "mass shooters" for the past thirty years, must at some point become a rallying point for change, and that change needs to be in the way we see ourselves. We need to understand, as disappointing as it must be, that what we're doing now just isn't working. It's time to quit being right and start being good.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Republican hopefuls wage class warfare on poor
If you had any doubt that the Republican Party is the party of the wealthy, the recent spate of suggested "federal spending cuts" from the presidential front-runners ought to dispel that for you. In an attempt to out-crazy each other, GOP presidential hopefuls have suggested de-funding NPR and PBS (two of the smallest expenditures Uncle Sam makes these days), de-funding the First Lady's activities, making the President fly commercial, and a host of other silly mumblings. None of these are really serious, of course, and the ones aimed personally at the Obamas are plain old white racism disguised as right wingnut bombast.
The fact is, there is a huge segment of conservative America that is just flat pissed off that there's a nigger in the White House, and he ain't serving dinner. Most egregious is the tea-baggers' characterization of Michelle Obama's trip to Africa as a "vacation." Clearly, the First Lady was on a policy mission on behalf of her husband, a tradition of Democratic First Ladies going back to Eleanor Roosevelt, who traveled over 40,000 miles in one three-month period in 1934 while her husband wrestled with dire domestic and international economic problems (sound familiar?) Nobody ever made a peep when Jackie Kennedy, Pat Nixon, or Hillary Clinton made similar trips. Clearly, there is nothing more than racism behind the attacks.
Even worse than the racist attacks on the Obamas, however, are the foaming-at-the-mouth attacks on the poor for not paying any income taxes. I first heard of this newest Republican knee-slapper on "The Daily Show" and so dismissed it as another one of Jon Stewart's send-ups of "See how mean the Republicans are?" There is a bruise on the bottom of my chin from my jaw hitting the top of my desk when I Googled the issue and found out that more than one Republican presidential candidate, goaded on by GOP sideliners and just plain conservative goofballs, actually suggested thet poor people pay more taxes. John Huntsman, Rick Perry, and Michelle Bachmann all have made numerous claims to the effect that if the federal government leaned on the people who are excused from paying taxes because they're unemployed or otherwise poverty-stricken, we wouldn't have to take Warren Buffet up on his clearly empty claim that he wishes he could pay more income tax. (Hey, Warren, have your accountants decline some of those huge tax breaks you're getting -- really, you can do that!) Slate.com's David Weigel had the most comprehensive report on it so far.
This "new Republican orthodoxy," as Weigel calls it, originates with the house organ of the ultra-rich, the Wall Street Journal. As a lifelong journalist, I'll be the first to praise the WSJ for its standards in writing and editing, which it has for generations emphasized at the expense of a decent focus-and-brace layout. The Journal stresses close vetting of what facts it chooses to print. But the Journal doesn't exist and has never existed in the reality of the working man and woman. The Wall Street Journal has always reported from the gilt-edged world of ... well, Wall Street, where America's money is gambled, won, and lost. Weigel even attributes the phrase "new Republican orthodoxy" to to the WSJ and points out that the Journal first sniffed at the tax-exempt poor as "luckie duckies" in 2002 and 2003. I'm especially tickled by Weigel's characterization of the Journal's "outrage" at taxation: "Tax cuts for the rich—tax cuts for anyone, really, but the Journal has always been concerned about tax cuts for the rich—require a broad base of outrage."
Of course, the Wall Street Journal can't be blamed for carrying water for the handful of Americans who hold and trade in the vast majority of America's wealth. I was one journalist who shrugged at Rupert Murdoch's purchase of Dow Jones and, thus, the WSJ. The only difference between the pre-Murdoch Journal and Fox News was that, as I've mentioned already, the Journal tended to research its facts, while Fox News wouldn't know a fact if it waltzed into the studio and plunked its inconvenient ass on the news desk. But just because the WSJ vets the facts it chooses to print doesn't mean it is in any way balanced. It has never been balanced, it has always been avidly pro-wealthy (it was founded by Dow Jones in 1874, for heaven's sake!) and the editorials nearly a decade ago grumping about the "lucky duckies" were probably nothing more than the airing of a rich man's gripe via the editorial board, a flight of fancy that edit boards occasionally allow their members, to be consumed by high-dollar investors and then forgotten. I don't read the Journal daily, but I keep up on the industry, and to my knowledge the Wall Street Journal has never actually waged a class war on the poor.
The current crop of Republican presidential candidates, however, seem to have no qualms about doing just that. Their stump speeches about the priveleged poor put the number of Americans who don't pay any taxes at somewhere between 47 percent and 51 percent. Surely, they crow in high conservative dudgeon, everybody in America can afford to pay one dollar or even ten dollars a year for federal services! Well, for the truth (and I flinch at using that word because I was so routinely flogged in graduate school for using it) one turns to the Christian Science Monitor. While I differ philosophically with CSM on matters of human spirituality, the newspaper is a pillar of rectitude when it comes to balancing its reportage. And the Monitor's July 28 blog, by tax expert Donald Marron, puts into perspective the reality of why so many American families pay no income taxes. That reality is a truly inconvenient truth for the rich man's Republican Party: Half of Americans pay no income tax because they're too poor. That's right, too poor. When the necessities of life are subtracted from their incomes (as they are from mine) they are left with not enough money to pay taxes. I'm proud to say my household (the lovely but fiscally conservative Mrs. Rice, Cocoa the Shi Tsu, Daisy the big yeller dawg, Ebony the cat, and I) paid a fistful of dollars to the federal government last year after all of our deductions were taken into account. The last time I got a tax refund, I paid nearly $14,000 in tuition and fees to further my education in hopes of dramatically increasing my income so I could pay my income taxes without dunning savings. So far the increased income hasn't happened, but we hit the savings account to pay income tax back in April, and I'm not complaining. (Daisy's miffed, but she never really understood about taxes.)
My father, however, struggles to live a life worth living on Social Security, a shamefully inadequate pension, and a modest inheritance left behind by my late mother. And when I say "modest," I mean somewhere south of the $5,000 range. Should this man pay income tax? Well, let me tote up the balance sheet: He wrestled drunks, braved tornadoes, faced guns wielded by desperate people, and otherwise risked his life for the security of people in my town for more than 25 years. In thanks for that, We The People have awarded him a pension that doesn't even pay his mortgage. Social Security buys the groceries and pays the utility bills. The rest he must earn by writing a local newspaper column, occasionally picking up a substitute teaching gig, and whatever he can make selling the pieces of art he's created over the years. Oh, and he's 82 years old and in constantly ill health. His decision to serve and protect the citizens of this ultra-conservative town have left him with two artificial hips, steel rods in his back, low-grade hepatitis, and chronic shoulder problems. Michelle Bachmann thinks he should pay income taxes. Pardon me if I politely disagree.
The irony of my father's situation is that he's a lifelong Republican. He's always hated the patronage that seems to attach to federal service, and being the dreamer he is, he's always believed that keeping government small was the best way to encourage business investment. So the "class warfare" being perpetrated by the current crop of GOP presidential wannabes is more than just a disappointment to him. It's a betrayal. If they have their way, the Republicans would turn Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty into a war on the poor.
Actually, according to the Wall Street Journal, they've already done it.
The fact is, there is a huge segment of conservative America that is just flat pissed off that there's a nigger in the White House, and he ain't serving dinner. Most egregious is the tea-baggers' characterization of Michelle Obama's trip to Africa as a "vacation." Clearly, the First Lady was on a policy mission on behalf of her husband, a tradition of Democratic First Ladies going back to Eleanor Roosevelt, who traveled over 40,000 miles in one three-month period in 1934 while her husband wrestled with dire domestic and international economic problems (sound familiar?) Nobody ever made a peep when Jackie Kennedy, Pat Nixon, or Hillary Clinton made similar trips. Clearly, there is nothing more than racism behind the attacks.
Even worse than the racist attacks on the Obamas, however, are the foaming-at-the-mouth attacks on the poor for not paying any income taxes. I first heard of this newest Republican knee-slapper on "The Daily Show" and so dismissed it as another one of Jon Stewart's send-ups of "See how mean the Republicans are?" There is a bruise on the bottom of my chin from my jaw hitting the top of my desk when I Googled the issue and found out that more than one Republican presidential candidate, goaded on by GOP sideliners and just plain conservative goofballs, actually suggested thet poor people pay more taxes. John Huntsman, Rick Perry, and Michelle Bachmann all have made numerous claims to the effect that if the federal government leaned on the people who are excused from paying taxes because they're unemployed or otherwise poverty-stricken, we wouldn't have to take Warren Buffet up on his clearly empty claim that he wishes he could pay more income tax. (Hey, Warren, have your accountants decline some of those huge tax breaks you're getting -- really, you can do that!) Slate.com's David Weigel had the most comprehensive report on it so far.
This "new Republican orthodoxy," as Weigel calls it, originates with the house organ of the ultra-rich, the Wall Street Journal. As a lifelong journalist, I'll be the first to praise the WSJ for its standards in writing and editing, which it has for generations emphasized at the expense of a decent focus-and-brace layout. The Journal stresses close vetting of what facts it chooses to print. But the Journal doesn't exist and has never existed in the reality of the working man and woman. The Wall Street Journal has always reported from the gilt-edged world of ... well, Wall Street, where America's money is gambled, won, and lost. Weigel even attributes the phrase "new Republican orthodoxy" to to the WSJ and points out that the Journal first sniffed at the tax-exempt poor as "luckie duckies" in 2002 and 2003. I'm especially tickled by Weigel's characterization of the Journal's "outrage" at taxation: "Tax cuts for the rich—tax cuts for anyone, really, but the Journal has always been concerned about tax cuts for the rich—require a broad base of outrage."
Of course, the Wall Street Journal can't be blamed for carrying water for the handful of Americans who hold and trade in the vast majority of America's wealth. I was one journalist who shrugged at Rupert Murdoch's purchase of Dow Jones and, thus, the WSJ. The only difference between the pre-Murdoch Journal and Fox News was that, as I've mentioned already, the Journal tended to research its facts, while Fox News wouldn't know a fact if it waltzed into the studio and plunked its inconvenient ass on the news desk. But just because the WSJ vets the facts it chooses to print doesn't mean it is in any way balanced. It has never been balanced, it has always been avidly pro-wealthy (it was founded by Dow Jones in 1874, for heaven's sake!) and the editorials nearly a decade ago grumping about the "lucky duckies" were probably nothing more than the airing of a rich man's gripe via the editorial board, a flight of fancy that edit boards occasionally allow their members, to be consumed by high-dollar investors and then forgotten. I don't read the Journal daily, but I keep up on the industry, and to my knowledge the Wall Street Journal has never actually waged a class war on the poor.
The current crop of Republican presidential candidates, however, seem to have no qualms about doing just that. Their stump speeches about the priveleged poor put the number of Americans who don't pay any taxes at somewhere between 47 percent and 51 percent. Surely, they crow in high conservative dudgeon, everybody in America can afford to pay one dollar or even ten dollars a year for federal services! Well, for the truth (and I flinch at using that word because I was so routinely flogged in graduate school for using it) one turns to the Christian Science Monitor. While I differ philosophically with CSM on matters of human spirituality, the newspaper is a pillar of rectitude when it comes to balancing its reportage. And the Monitor's July 28 blog, by tax expert Donald Marron, puts into perspective the reality of why so many American families pay no income taxes. That reality is a truly inconvenient truth for the rich man's Republican Party: Half of Americans pay no income tax because they're too poor. That's right, too poor. When the necessities of life are subtracted from their incomes (as they are from mine) they are left with not enough money to pay taxes. I'm proud to say my household (the lovely but fiscally conservative Mrs. Rice, Cocoa the Shi Tsu, Daisy the big yeller dawg, Ebony the cat, and I) paid a fistful of dollars to the federal government last year after all of our deductions were taken into account. The last time I got a tax refund, I paid nearly $14,000 in tuition and fees to further my education in hopes of dramatically increasing my income so I could pay my income taxes without dunning savings. So far the increased income hasn't happened, but we hit the savings account to pay income tax back in April, and I'm not complaining. (Daisy's miffed, but she never really understood about taxes.)
My father, however, struggles to live a life worth living on Social Security, a shamefully inadequate pension, and a modest inheritance left behind by my late mother. And when I say "modest," I mean somewhere south of the $5,000 range. Should this man pay income tax? Well, let me tote up the balance sheet: He wrestled drunks, braved tornadoes, faced guns wielded by desperate people, and otherwise risked his life for the security of people in my town for more than 25 years. In thanks for that, We The People have awarded him a pension that doesn't even pay his mortgage. Social Security buys the groceries and pays the utility bills. The rest he must earn by writing a local newspaper column, occasionally picking up a substitute teaching gig, and whatever he can make selling the pieces of art he's created over the years. Oh, and he's 82 years old and in constantly ill health. His decision to serve and protect the citizens of this ultra-conservative town have left him with two artificial hips, steel rods in his back, low-grade hepatitis, and chronic shoulder problems. Michelle Bachmann thinks he should pay income taxes. Pardon me if I politely disagree.
The irony of my father's situation is that he's a lifelong Republican. He's always hated the patronage that seems to attach to federal service, and being the dreamer he is, he's always believed that keeping government small was the best way to encourage business investment. So the "class warfare" being perpetrated by the current crop of GOP presidential wannabes is more than just a disappointment to him. It's a betrayal. If they have their way, the Republicans would turn Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty into a war on the poor.
Actually, according to the Wall Street Journal, they've already done it.
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