Nasty, Poor, Solitary, Brutish, and Short

I’ve avoided chiming in on the post-Charlottesville discussion about whether or not it is appropriate to respond to Nazi and white supremacist violence with violence.  I think no one wants to hear what I have to say about this.  Conservatives are trying to make claims of moral equivalence stick.  Liberals and progressives are on about how we must unite, insisting that only love can conquer hate.  There’s certainly a lot of BS on both sides of this issue.  And I just can’t resist stepping in it.

    As is usual when I come to think about political matters, the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes is an important point of reference for me.  Hobbes reminds us that unless we find some way to escape the causes of human conflict—greed, fear, and glory—we will be in a war of all against all, and our lives will be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  Thus, according to Hobbes, our first and most pressing concern should be to seek peace with our fellows, insofar as this is possible.  A look around the world, at almost any point in history, provides ample empirical confirmation of Hobbes’s claims.  Where people cannot live peaceably together, they cannot prosper.

     Hobbes argues that where peace is impossible, we may do whatever we think fit for our own defense.  Perhaps Hobbes goes a bit far here; some sort of restraint in one’s dealings with others might well be a necessary precondition for seeking peace.  But even if one rejects Hobbes’s dismal view of the human condition, it would seem that everyone can legitimately claim a right of self-defense.  If others are not willing to recognize my right to defend myself against attacks, I have very little incentive to seek peace with them.

     Indeed, I am inclined to think that we have at least a prima facie duty to defend ourselves.  To allow evil when there is something we can do about it, even evil done to ourselves, is morally questionable.  Peaceful resistance may, in particular cases, be tactically or strategically superior to a violent response, but it is not necessarily morally superior.  And despite all the prattle from preachers and progressives, simply standing together won’t stop those who are quite willing to resort to violence, and love doesn’t always (or, perhaps, even usually) trump hate.

     The clear truth, articulated by the protest leaders themselves, is this:  whoever threw the first punch in Charlottesville, it was the Nazis and white supremacists who initiated the violence.  When you march down the street in military garb, carrying shields and weapons (both clubs and firearms), chanting threats, and waving Nazi and Confederate flags, you have already crossed the line from expression to violence.  The leaders of the right wing protest in Charlottesville may insist that they were simply there to bring up ideas and provoke discussion, but this is entirely disingenuous.  They were clearly prepared for violence, and they behaved in ways calculated to incite it.  

     In legal terms, there is at least a prima facie case that the leaders, and perhaps the participants, are guilty of assault.  Contrary to popular understanding, an assault does not always require any sort of physical contact; threats or other behavior that puts a reasonable person in fear for their life or safety can be an assault.  Everyone knows what the flags and the chants mean.  Everyone knows what the Nazis and white supremacists want.  Any reasonable person would be afraid.  And some reasonable persons might well decide that the only way to protect themselves against this threat is to meet violence with violence.

     There are many reasons why one might not respond violently, apart from any commitment to nonviolence.  The law of assault varies from state to state, and, in any case, the law is not likely to accept claims of self-defense if the person making them threw the first punch.  Nonviolent resistance might be more politically efficacious in the short or long term.  The bastards might have you outnumbered, or outgunned.  And so on.  

     But it is not at all clear that non-violence is morally superior to violence in the current situation.  To return to Hobbes, the Nazis and the white supremacists have made it quite clear that they do not wish to seek peace.  They have, in fact, made it quite clear that they wish to make life nasty, poor, solitary, brutish, and short for a great many people.  We are at war with them, whether or not the shooting has started.  In war, morality inevitably becomes more complex and more elastic.

     It behooves us all to reflect on this matter.  Those of us who live in cities, or frequent college and university campuses, are quite likely to be faced with the choice of how to respond to Nazis and white supremacists in the near future, if we haven’t already.

     Meanwhile, here is some information about Nazis that you might find useful in making this decision.

Mirror, Mirror

Hypocrisy flourishes.  Pundits who support Trump, the greatest narcissist ever (really, the greatest ever), assure us that his critics are just narcissists. This post by Ed Morrissey illustrates the weak foundation (and utter hypocrisy) of this charge nicely, and it links to several others that add spin of various sorts.  One in particular is a post by Glenn Reynolds that Morrissey quotes:

Well, it’s not so much that they think Trump is a Nazi, as that they want to think of themselves as the bold resistance. The absence of actual brownshirts — well, except for the ones from the Left who were smashing windows, and Trump supporters, in DC last night — only makes it easier and more appealing to strike that pose.

When you take out the spin and misdirection, there isn’t much left of this claim.

     First, many millions of Americans clearly do think Trump is a fascist (which is not exactly the same as a Nazi, but close enough for government work).  And this belief is not unreasonable.  He talks like a fascist.  He has promised to act like one when he takes power.  He has appointed a cabinet uniquely well suited to implementing the various elements of a fascist regime—representatives of the corporate sector who will ensure that government is firmly in the hands of the economic elite, war mongers who will ensure that permanent war supports ever-increasing government power, and various bigots to keep the population distracted.  Not to mention his inauguration speech.

     Beyond this, women and minorities (racial, cultural, religious, sexual) have very specific reasons to fear Trump, and to be very angry.  Throughout his campaign, Trump has advocated violent bigotry; and he is a vulgar sexist pig.  Women and minorities have every reason to fear that he will help the Republicans role back the gains they have made in recent decades.  And they have every reason to be angry, not just at Trump, but at the nearly 63 million Americans who voted to put this racist, sexist demagogue in the White House.

     Second, it is not at all clear that brownshirts are absent.  Reynolds’ snarky reference to brownshirts from the Left is just misdirection and spin.  For those who didn’t pay attention to the media coverage of the Inauguration, he is referring to the “anarchists” who got out of hand on the 20th.  These people routinely show up at large political gatherings and stir up whatever trouble they can; what they typically do not do is prey on vulnerable groups who cannot protect themselves.  (I suppose Trump supporters could claim that they are a vulnerable minority, but this would rather undermine their hero’s legitimacy.)  They have been around for awhile, and they have nothing to do with the Women’s March. 

     On the other hand, it seems clear that there has been a substantial increase in crimes of violence and vandalism targeting women and blacks and Latinos and Muslims.  (A simple Google search will provide a wealth of data on this matter.)  And often the perpetrators reference Trump explicitly.  Trump’s campaign and election have emboldened the worst elements of our political culture.  And if there is significant resistance to his administration, he will likely try to embolden them further.

     Of course, America’s slide into fascism didn’t begin with Trump.  We can trace it at least as far back as Reagan’s efforts to make corporate stoogery the primary business of government, or perhaps even to Nixon’s war on drugs, which launched the militarization of our domestic police forces.  But the elements of a fascist government are all in place now—constant and pervasive surveillance, a militarized police force, a corporatist economy, perpetual war, and a deep resistance to facts.  The time is ripe for a third-rate Mussolini like Trump to take us the rest of the way to fascism.

          Narcissists?  Or just people waking up to the reality of their situation?  

The First Black President

During the coming weeks and months, we are bound to have much blabber and bloviating about  Obama’s legacy, about his standing in the hierarchy of presidential greatness, about what he did for race relations in the US, and so on.  This is an important discussion for us to have, even if much of what is said will be drivel.  The perception of Obama’s presidency that takes root in our political culture will have much to do with the politics of race in the future.

    I have been rather harshly critical of Obama during his tenure in office.  I have written here concerning the health care program on which he wasted so much political capital.  I have criticized his militaristic foreign policy, his corporatist economic policies, and his rank hypocrisy on the drug war.  I don’t have much use for his political style, which I think isn’t very effective (although I am not sure any political style could be effective in a political system as dysfunctional as ours has become).  

     But none of this really matters very much when it comes to his legacy.  How history will treat Obama, the place he will occupy in the pantheon of past presidents, will depend largely on how he navigated the challenges of being the first black POTUS.  And in this regard, Obama’s legacy is looking pretty…unsettled.  

     Jim Nelson, the white editor of GQ, offers what I expect will be fairly common—effusive praise for all of Obama’s wonderful accomplishments.  It is mostly over the top; Nelson seems overly impressed with Obama’s rhetorical skills, and gives him way more credit than he (or any President) deserves for the economic recovery (such as it is).  But on one point, I think, he captures the sense of a great many people:

That character came across every time haters or Trumpers or birthers tried to pull him down into the mud or question his American-ness. He just flew above it all. And, luckily, he took most of us with him. He was the Leader not only of our country but of our mood and disposition, which is harder to rule. At a time when we became more polarized, our discourse pettier and more poisoned, Obama always came across as the Adult in the Room….

President Obama (and his wife) confronted the crude racism, the obstructionism, and the relentless effort to turn Bush’s mistakes into Obama’s failures with enormous grace and dignity.  He behaved much better than his critics.

     On the other hand, Cornell West, a black intellectual writing in The Guardian, offers a scathing critique of Obama’s policies, his handling of various matters, and his character:

The reign of Obama did not produce the nightmare of Donald Trump – but it did contribute to it. And those Obama cheerleaders who refused to make him accountable bear some responsibility. 

      

West follows this with a detailed and harsh critique of Obama’s policies and missed opportunities that captures much of my own dissatisfaction, even though West brings to the matter a political perspective very different from mine.  

     My own view of this matter is as unsettled as that of the political culture at large.  I feel like I ought to be optimistic.  The first black President certainly didn’t do anything to give white people cause to get upset.  He didn’t confiscate anyone’s guns, he didn’t put all his black friends on welfare, he didn’t put white people in FEMA camps.  In a more serious vein, his policies were largely a continuation of his predecessor’s.  They weren’t very good, but, then, we haven’t had a good President for awhile.  

     And he certainly didn’t do anything to embarrass black people, even if he didn’t do much to improve their situation.  The Obamas were both highly intelligent and highly educated. They and their children were the very picture of a loving family, and they represented the United States to the rest of the world as a place that is decent and hopeful.

     But despite this, 62,979,879 people voted for Donald Trump, whose campaign was grounded on an explicit appeal to the worst racist impulses in American culture.  It will be very sad, indeed, if Obama is remembered most as a President whose ineffectiveness paved the way for the election of a racist, sexist demagogue.

Moral Equivalency

The argument is making the rounds that the folks protesting Trump’s victory and Clinton’s defeat are no different from the people who protested Obama’s election and refused to accept him as President.  This is generally understood to be not just a factual description, but rather a claim of some sort of moral equivalence.  Since it seems likely that the protests are going to go on for awhile, it seems worthwhile to examine this argument.

This sort of moral equivalency argument is not uncommon; for example, critics of US foreign policy will sometimes argue that our imprisoning and torturing and murdering and bombing and such are no better than that of our opponents.  Many people see a practical implication in this equivalence:  we should stop, lest we be simply hypocrites, or worse.  

This sort of argument can be quite persuasive.  Hypocrisy is a common, perhaps even universal political vice; for example, our last three presidents, potheads all, have seen fit to continue and even escalate the war on pot smokers.  And a central purpose of terrorism is to make people and nations behave in ways that make them no better than the terrorists.  It is not entirely implausible to argue that this strategy is working out pretty nicely for the terrorists these days. 

So, what about the moral equivalence of the protests against Obama and those against Trump?  That depends, I think, on how you view the following.  Obama and Clinton both put forth positive visions for the country, along with plans to achieve those visions.  Obama might have had secret plans to put white people in FEMA camps and take all their guns, but he didn’t campaign on this.  Clinton was certainly a corrupt politician, but she didn’t put this forward as a qualification.  (Full disclosure:  I didn’t agree with Clinton on most policy issues, and I was rather surprised that Obama apparently had no notion how actually to get anything done.)

Trump also presented a vision of the country’s future, one in which racism and sexism and religious intolerance figured prominently, and that he apparently planned to achieve by exhorting his followers to violence.  

Does this mean that the protests against Trump are (morally) different from those against Obama?  Does it mean that a vote for Clinton is not a vote for corruption, while a vote for Trump is a vote for racism, sexism, and violence?

I do not know what is in the hearts of protestors and Trump voters.  I do not know who is a racist or sexist, or who is just a sore loser.  But I do know that 50 million Americans voted for a candidate who openly and in the most vulgar manner offered his racism and sexism and religious intolerance as a reason to vote for him.  And having said that, I am not sure what else to say.