Religion and Atheism Abound in Bollywood's PK

 

When the alien known as PK arrives on Earth, the first thing that happens is a man in the desert steals his device for phoning home, leaving him stranded. Hearing that god is the answer to all troubles, PK goes on a search for god. He encounters the people and practices of many faiths and makes friends and enemies along the way.

So goes the plot of the 2014 Bollywood hit film PK, which turns out to be--at least on one level--a surprising statement of atheism from an industry known for strict conventions and from a country known for religious conservatism.

 

(Sorry, this trailer is in Hindi, but you can find a trailer and the movie in English on iTunes.)

 

The plot hearkens back to any number of stories in which an extraterrestrial comes to Earth and, baffled by our curious Earthling ways, teaches us about ourselves and reveals new ways of being. I think of Robert Heinlein’s most influential novel Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), in which Valentine Michael Smith, a human being raised by Martians, encounters terrestrial estrangement and teaches us to grok love. And consider David Bowie’s classic album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), in which a rock-and-roller serves as the conduit for messages from alien beings to humanity five years before the world is to end due to human excess.

With its critique of religion, PK is more in the vein of Heinlein. The titular alien’s encounters with con men as well as believers rarely end well, for the religious always seem to be concerned with decidedly unholy concerns: power, money and exceptionalism. Their methods are also questionable: blind faith, trickery and violence. These aspects of religion are familiar to all of us, whether through reports of Islamist terror in the daily news or through passing the collection plate each Sunday in church. In PK’s words:

“The god you made up is just like you: petty, takes bribes, makes false promises, readily meets the rich, keeps the poor waiting, thrives on flattery, makes you live in fear [. . .] The god you believe in, abolish him.“

On the surface, PK’s message is that old distinction between religion versus spirituality. Its proponents assert the superiority of vague spirituality and decry stuffy religious dogma while almost always subscribing to the traditional superstitions that make up the latter. This position sounds genial, open-minded and subversive, which is why people like it, but actually it subverts nothing, which is, I suspect, why the makers of PK chose it as the superficial message of their film. They could appear to criticize organized religion and avoid offending the masses while on another level also advancing . . .

. . . atheism.

The film makes several arguments against religion that are regularly employed by atheists in debates against Christian apologists--such as how the truth claims of competing religions contradict each other--but the key argument in the film appears during a standoff on national television between PK and the guru Tapasvi. The guru adopts a typical apology for religion:

“What do you want, huh? A world without God? Do you have any clue how people suffer? No food to eat, no place to live, no friend to talk to . . .  People kill themselves, slit their wrists, jump off buildings . . .  Why? Because they have no hope. If bowing before God, smearing holy ash, and wearing amulets gives them hope to live, then who are you to snatch away that hope? And if you snatch away their God, how will you fill that void?”

PK’s answer is oddly indirect--and even endorses Enlightenment-style Deism--but viewers are sure to think of a more direct response to the guru’s challenge. Throughout the film, we have watched PK suffer, and it was real people, often strangers, who gave him food and shelter and became his friends. He himself at one point gives the only money he has to a poor man who needs it to pay for a meal on his wife’s birthday. The film is bursting with religion, but not once does it depict any supernatural event large or small--not so much as a holy glow or miraculous chance turn of events. Instead, what it shows is human goodness without the need for gods or their self-proclaimed mediators on Earth.

In other words, secular humanism.

This is one answer to which many like myself have turned in response to the death of God. As a life stance, it has the benefit of being an observable practice with tangible results. People can help people, and indeed they often do--no god necessary. Why is it that the religious must do good in the name of God instead of just doing good?

I’ve watched very little Bollywood and I only watched PK because most of the other offerings on board a long flight didn’t look interesting, but it turned out to be laugh-out-loud funny, romantic and thought-provoking. PK criticizes religion and shows that real acts of human kindness can fill the void left by an imaginary god’s disappearance.

 

 

Return of the Living Eighties

Popular music has a case of the Eighties, and nothing exemplifies this more than the phenomenal success of Taylor Swift’s album 1989. As I write this, the digital download continues to sit in Amazon’s top ten best-selling albums exactly a full year after its release. The vanguard of this trend recasts Eighties music through the sensibilities of twentysomethings and markets it for teens today, which to my mind raises a question: What is someone who lived through the year 1989 to think?

I was raised to despise synthesizers, drum machines and studio effects in favor of real people playing real instruments, and there were plenty such musicians in 1989. The three biggies in my circle of friends were Violent Femmes, R.E.M. and U2. Singles from R.E.M.’s Green (1988, video) were all over the radio and 3 (1989, video) was the most mature work from Violent Femmes yet, but it was U2’s 1988 release Rattle and Hum (previous post, video) that most electrified us. We wore out the cassettes in our Walkmans, passed around bootleg VHS copies of the documentary, and strove in vain to have holey jeans as cool as The Edge’s.

In short, I would not have touched music like Taylor Swift’s with a ten-foot pole.

But while Taylor Swift’s haters are legion (and decisively losing the battle), she engenders no such dislike in me. The alternative music boom in the early to mid-Nineties was bliss, but as an adult I’ve branched out. I recently wrote a series of posts on hip-hop music (here), the only live performances I’ve attended in recent years have been either opera or heavy metal, and the only music on my Amazon Wishlist at the moment is Selena Gomez’s Revival. The truth is, with such eclectic taste, I’m more inclined to enjoy bubblegum pop now than ever before.

I first noticed the return of the Eighties sound when my son, who was three at the time, began enjoying what he called “the banana song” on the radio. This was Charlie XCX’s “Boom Clap.” (The lyrics “on and on and on and on and” sounded like “banana-nana-nana” to him.) It’s not a hard song to enjoy, and we also enjoyed her follow-up single “Break the Rules.” (My son asked why she doesn’t want to go to school, because to a kindergartner “School is fun!”) The songs on Swift’s 1989 are similarly catchy and the videos showcase retro fashion:

 

 Hipsters have long considered the Eighties anathema, but now certain hipsters--interestingly, those too young to remember the Eighties--are mining the pop side of that decade for inspiration. For some, however, the Eighties never went away. Duran Duran, a staple of MTV in its glory years, never disbanded despite music trends turning against their style. Nonetheless, 2010’s All You Need Is Now showed the masters of the actual Eighties can still write like it’s 1986, and their recent single “Pressure Off” shows they can also write like it’s 2015, and there’s little daylight between:

 

If the pop idols of today’s youth can reach back to the New Wave for inspiration--or remakes, as with Lorde’s rendition of the Tears for Fears hit “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” (1985)--then I hope their fans will do some exploring of pop/rock history as well. And, just as importantly, I hope those of us who actually lived through 1989 can reach forward from our roots in the past to seek value in today’s vogue.

A Casual Review of Queensrÿche’s Condition Hüman

Note: Condition Hüman is scheduled for release October 2, 2015. For whatever reason, I was able to download the whole album from Amazon.com a couple weeks ago. That download is not currently available.


For almost two decades, Queensrÿche fans have had to worry about whether the next album from “the thinking man’s metal band” will suck, but with the release of Condition Hüman this month, they need worry no longer. The new lineup’s second album shows La Torre and company have command of the sound that made Queensrÿche great.

A quick primer: In the mid-1980s Queensrÿche was an influential band in the rise of progressive metal. In 1988 they released Operation: Mindcrime, widely considered one of the greatest concept albums ever, and their next album, Empire (1990), dominated the airwaves. Its follow-up, Promised Land (1994), was also successful, but Hear in the Now Frontier (1997) was . . . trying for all involved and marked the beginning of a period of changes in lineup and style that divided fans. By Dedicated to Chaos in 2012, the music so little resembled Queensrÿche that for many fans it was the last straw--as it was for most of the band members. Soon after, the rest of the guys booted lead singer Geoff Tate, citing him for the band’s problems. A legal squabble ensued and the rest of the band won the rights to the name Queensrÿche.

The new lineup, now with frontman Todd La Torre, promised a return to the band’s heavier early sound and delivered just that on tour and with their first release, the self-titled Queensrÿche (2013). This was promising, and Condition Hüman continues in the same vein with even more polish on the characteristic Queensrÿche sound. A good example is the song “Guardian”:

 

I like this song. On first listen, the opening barrage of drums from Scott Rockenfield was a jaw-dropping moment that said, “Stop what you’re doing and listen.” In the video, guitarist Parker Lundgren shows off some overhand fretting, Michael Wilton’s guitar solo hearkens back to the original Operation: Mindcrime and ends with something too fast for hüman ears. I’m less able to pick out the bass, but reviewers have mentioned Eddie Jackson’s renewed vigor.

The musicians of Queensrÿche are flexing their muscles and showing off. Bill and Ted of cinematic fame might not be “thinking men,” but I suspect they would dub this “Excellent!”

If anything is missing from Condition Hüman, it is the experimentalism bordering on unhinged vision that crops up throughout much of the band’s discography. This is a crucial ingredient of what has made the best of Queensrÿche so great and it may very well have come from Tate. Without it, whether the new Queensrÿche can fully live up to the old remains to be seen. However, Tate--whom the other founding members claim became increasingly domineering over the years--brought a slewing, erratic vision that made the worst of Queensrÿche unlistenable for many who had been hardcore fans.

The new group appears determined to stay the course set in its early years but to also be a whole band again. Parker Lundgren, who first joined Queensrÿche toward the end of The Great Iffy years, was given the option of staying or leaving at the time of Tate’s firing, but if he stayed, he was going to be a fully participating member of the band rather than just a hired hand, and both he and La Torre have participated in the songwriting ever since. Perhaps this new cohesion and new input will lead Queensrÿche to new heights.

If by booting Tate the rest of the guys intended to take back their band, Condition Hüman makes it clear that they did just that, at least for those fans who always wondered what went wrong in the late 90s. I learned to like much that Queensrÿche released during the controversial years, but I also knew the fear, the fear that half the songs on the next album might be strange shit out of left field. Thankfully, this fear is now gone. We no longer need to ask if the next Queensrÿche album will be good--only how good it will be.

 

A previous post on Queensrÿche:

A Casual Review of the Todd La Torre-fronted Queensrÿche’s Debut Album

To Stephen King’s Dark Tower Came I

*There are spoilers ahead.*

 

I’m not surprised that shortly after declaring a blog slowdown, I’m back with another post. Having just finished reading Stephen King’s magnum opus, the Dark Tower series, I feel moved to post a retrospective.

I was in middle school or junior high when I first stumbled across a hardback copy of The Gunslinger (1982), the first book in the series, on display in the dusty old public library of Tipton, Iowa. The novel’s blend of dark fantasy, science fiction and Western appealed to my boyish imagination, and scenes like Roland’s slaughter of an entire town and copulation with a succubus were more graphic than anything else I had read. The illustrations by Michael Whelan were also captivating. The one on the cover of the first edition shows the moment before Roland, in his single-minded pursuit of the Dark Tower, lets the boy Jake drop to his death.

 

After a move to another small town in the Midwest, I ran across the next book in the series, The Drawing of the Three (1987), in a different public library, and spent hours there, tucked back in the stacks, reading the B-format paperback illustrated by Phil Hale. Despite publishing other books at a good clip, King spaced out much of the Dark Tower series, going as long as seven years between volumes, before releasing the last three in quick succession from 2003 to 2004. By then, I was a working stiff undergoing some early mid-life tumult, so I never made it to the final volume until now.

Stephen King long ago established his place as a master storyteller, but I simply didn’t enjoy Song of Susannah (2004) either time I read it, and I felt the earlier sections of The Dark Tower (2004) labored under the same problems--clunky plotting, too much of the made-up High Speech, a digressive writing style, and a lack of forward thrust. Nonetheless, the novel finds its groove partway through--and the results are unforgettable.

One highlight of the book was the new character Irene Tassenbaum. Character is one of King’s greatest strengths as a writer--novel-length psychological portraits by other writers rarely come close to what he can accomplish in a few pages--and it doesn’t take long to feel like you know Irene. She’s a bored and pampered housewife excited by Roland and possessed of grit equal to the challenges of her adventure with him.

 

While Irene was a pleasant surprise, I was reading from page one in expectation of what would pass between Roland and Jake. They’re linked by fate rather than blood, but there are heavy father-son issues there. I would never forgive King if he let Roland kill Jake again. In the end, King handles this deftly and with little fanfare. I won’t give away what happens, but I will say that as I read the epilogue, I had tears in my eyes like I haven’t when reading a book for a long time.

And of course there is always the Dark Tower itself, the nexus of all worlds. Roland Deschain of Gilead does indeed reach it and climb to the room at the top of the stairs. Having read some whining by readers online, I was prepared to be disappointed, but no, King delivers admirably on the promise contained in the The Gunslinger. It is truly epic in the sense of “very great or large and usually difficult or impressive” as wells as in the sense of “relating to, or having the characteristics of an epic <an epic poem>” (Merriam-Webster)--and indeed, the series was inspired by the poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” by Robert Browning.

Apparently talks have been going on for years regarding possible television and film series--and the graphic novels are impressive--but as nice as those things might be, are they that nice? I began the series in libraries whose books were an important part of their character, and I still believe books are one of the best ways for people to acquire character, too. Today, our world has “moved on” much like All-World in the Dark Tower series, leaving us hungry for the sustenance books can provide but all too often seeking it in flimsier, easier media.

The Dark Tower books are entertaining and inspiring, impressive and sometimes frustrating, genre-blending and mind-bending, and, ultimately, rewarding. I would recommend the series to anyone who loves imaginative fiction and strongly encourage also reading the standalone novel The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012). I may be skeptical about the value of bringing the series to the silver or small screens, but I would gladly read more Dark Tower from Stephen King.

 

Other retrospectives:

The Trials of Dune
A Look Back at Me and U2

Oh, the Blog Posts I’ll Never Write!

The Gleaming Sword has been going for roughly four years now, and the last couple years have been particularly productive, but I’ve decided it’s time for a break, or at least a significant slowdown, so I can focus on other projects. Nonetheless, I’ve had a number of ideas on the back burners for months now, and rather than leave them unvoiced, I thought I’d present them all together here in abbreviated form. They’re still only halfway thought out, researched and fact-checked, but here they are nonetheless.

Lana Del Rey: In Praise of No Context

This post was nearing completion when I decided to apply the brakes to my blogging.  The post was to discuss how encountering Lana Del Rey’s music without knowing anything about her personal life and how she is perceived by others enhanced my appreciation for her art. I was particularly excited about making a connection to the Kazuo Ishiguro novel Never Let Me Go (2005) and the character Kathy’s deeply subjective enjoyment of a cassette she purchases at school.

From the post that never was:

“Most people have probably had a similar experience: certain lyrics in a song will jump out, taking on a meaning for the listener that the artist never intended or one that is different from what others experience, but what criteria exist for calling wrong someone else’s innermost experience of  a work of art? The experience of art is a meeting of subject and object that is often better without third parties.”

The context-free experience of art is rapidly becoming scarce as we are constantly bombarded with minutiae about every topic imaginable, reading reviews on iTunes before downloading an album, looking up movies on IMDb even as we live-tweet them. Today, we come to art and entertainment through a haze of chatter, a cacophony of others’ voices, but we might be much happier tuning it out.

From Ultraviolence: 

 

 

Cecil the Lion and the Will to Power

I also intended to crank out a piece about the reaction to the news that a dentist from Minnesota had hunted and shot Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe, but that was nixed early in inception. I found it interesting how every side of the issue illustrated Nietzsche’s concept of the will to power. Killing big game, raging against big-game hunters, pointing out the piety of those who decry big-game hunters, and blogging analysis of the debate (as I’m doing here) all serve to make the self feel superior to others. In Freudian terms, they all feed the ego.

So what could one say that wouldn’t be an expression of the will to power? Probably nothing. As I understand it from my days of heavy Nietzsche reading, the will to power underlies all, or nearly all, human behavior. Taking a clue from a maxim by La Rochefoucauld (previous post), Nietzsche pointed out that even saying “Thank you” is a way of raising oneself above the person who has done you a good turn.

From Daybreak:

“Even when he who strives after distinction makes and wants to make a joyful, elevating or cheering impression, he nonetheless enjoys this success not inasmuch as he has given joy to the next man or elevated or cheered him, but inasmuch as he has impressed himself on the soul of the other, changed its shape and ruled over it at his own sweet will.”

Why Reverse Racism Does Exist

The most potentially controversial of my plans was a post arguing that reverse racism does indeed exist, an opinion very unpopular in certain circles. The argument usually starts with redefinitions of words like racism and discrimination (usually to include power) that conveniently lead, through simple logic, to the conclusion that reverse racism does not even make sense, cannot exist, or is just a misnomer for what is in reality plain old racism. It's a bit of sleight-of-hand the likes of which is increasingly common among the perpetually outraged but which never fools their opponents.

My argument was to be philosophical. In the 20th Century, philosophers began to spend a great deal of time examining language, and one of their favorite preoccupations was regular, everyday speech, which functions in a staggering variety of ways. The reality is that people use the words “reverse racism” to point to behaviors and attitudes based on race that are perpetuated by members of a group that is usually seen as the oppressed against members of the group that is usually seen as the oppressor, and everyone who hears these words knows that. By that right, the phrase is legit and what it describes does happen.

You may find the existence of what is called “reverse discrimination” uncomfortable, you may find it to be negligible compared to the atrocities committed by the usual suspects, you may not like the phrase, you may hate the way it is used to combat any efforts calling for attention to race problems, and you may find it more economical to just call it “racism,” but you can’t just wish it away.

 

How an Atheist Can Enjoy Darren Aronofsky’s Noah

I refused to watch Ridley Scott’s Exodus, because as an atheist (previous post) I see a return of big-budget Biblical epics as exactly the kind of religion-stroking the world is better off without, but I was intrigued enough by Darren Aronofsky’s past films like The Fountain and Black Swan to check out Noah (2014), and I’m glad I did. I loved fantasy elements like the Watchers, savored the way it toyed with orthodoxy, admired Emma Watson’s performance, was moved by the human relationships, and was gripped by the plot. Scenes like the one in which Noah tries to kill Ila’s twins always used to leave me unmoved--I sensed screenwriters trying too hard to get a response from their audience--but now that I’m a father, I was like, “Oh no you don’t, motherfo!”

This is how we interact with stories. Aronofsky said he never intended Noah to be a traditional Biblical epic espousing an exclusively Judeo-Christian worldview, and his film did turn out to have much to offer aside from whatever lessons the religious may find in it. No doubt some atheists would adopt a harder stance, but many atheists such as myself remain open to inspiration--strictly humanist--from religious art.

 

Joseph Conrad’s Use of Irony in Heart of Darkness to Critique Colonialism

The meatiest of my planned projects, one which ill health derailed last spring, was a series of posts focusing on Joseph Conrad’s use of irony in Heart of Darkness (1899) to criticize colonialism. While Heart of Darkness is devoid of sermonizing, I noticed that Conrad often uses officious and grandiloquent language when describing functionaries of the British Empire, precisely when he means to scorn them. And his portrayal of the effects of colonialism on the colonialized is damning--whether the colonialization is military, commercial or in the name of civilization.

And is American imperialism any different? I don’t have a simple answer for that, but I intended to address the question via a look at Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, which sets Conrad’s novel against the Vietnam War, and also to examine colonialism as a racist endeavor. My primary text for this last topic would be a chapter from Darkwater (1920) by W.E.B. Du Bois. In  “The Souls of White Folk,” Du Bois presents a condemnation of white supremacy that I highly recommend reading:

“How many of us today fully realize the current theory of colonial expansion, of the relation of Europe, which is white, to the world which is black and brown and yellow? Bluntly put, that theory is this: It is the duty of white Europe to divide up the darker world and administer it for Europe’s good.”

Possibly Fruitless Pursuits

A few other ideas were on burners even further back. I was hoping to continue exploring my idea of the thin graphite line, a conception of artists, writers and thinkers as a bulwark against barbarism, in light of Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. Another idea that may not have panned out was investigating des choses in Jean-Luc Godard’s Film Socialisme (2010) as examples of das Ding in Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. A lighter post was to be a look at the variety of pop styles exhibited by Kylie Minogue’s discography from Light Years (2000) to Kiss Me Once (2014).

Alas, these posts will never come to full fruition. However, while The Gleaming Sword is slowing, I am still here. I welcome comments at the bottom of the page or through Twitter (my profile). Now I leave you--only temporarily!--with some music:

 

 

Voting and the Engine of History

 

Marxists speak of permanent revolution, so it’s only natural that in capitalist America we should have something different: permanent election. The two major parties never cease spouting empty rhetoric and smearing the other side, and what is simply sad the day after one election increases to a farcical fervor as the next approaches. We can understand then if sensible folk--regular folk whose lives are increasingly dominated by labor for diminishing returns--should turn away from the system in exhaustion and cynicism and refuse to vote. In this post, I want to examine this in light of two philosophical concepts.

I just finished reading the novel Seeing by Jose Saramago. It’s election day in the capital, but hardly anyone shows up at the polling stations. When the populace finally does appear, more than 70% of the voters leave their ballots blank. A recall leads to an even higher percentage of blank votes, throwing the government into confusion. The powers that be resort to various dishonest maneuvers and draconian measures, but the people, at least at first, outwit them at every step by refusing the play the government’s game.

In his book In Defense of Lost Causes, philosopher Slavoj Zizek designates the refusal to vote in Seeing as an instance of subtraction. He makes the point that not just any failure to vote equals a political action--laziness or mere cynicism will not suffice--and suggests that the action is fruitless if it doesn’t reach critical mass: 

“So when is subtraction really creative of a new space? The only appropriate answer: when it undermines the coordinates of the very system from which it subtracts itself . . . Imagine the proverbial house of cards or a pile of wooden pieces which rely on one another in such a complex way that, if one single card or piece of wood is pulled out--subtracted--the whole edifice collapses: this is the true art of subtraction." 

The other concept comes to us from the Frankfurt School, which was particularly influential in the mid-20th Century. The philosophers of this group were often skeptical of the very possibility of concrete means of resistance. Critical theory was heavily influenced by Marxism, so capitalism serves as an apt illustration due to its uncanny ability to swallow everything, even opposition, and turn it to its benefit. To take an example from the trends of our own day, capitalism is a driving force behind environmental destruction, so your eco-friendly start-up is only part of the problem.

From Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction:

“If the totally administered society is truly total, and capable of integrating and domesticating all critical undertakings, then the prospects for political action are dim. Resistance as political practice is a worthless enterprise. The negation is the only available option, and negative dialectics must define the critical enterprise.”

Philosophers before the Frankfurt School envisioned history much the way Hegel did: as a march forward driven by opposing forces. As Hegel is usually summarized, thesis gives rise to an antithesis, which results in a synthesis. This synthesis becomes a new thesis that invites a new antithesis, and so on. This process was seen as the engine of progress leading us all to an ever better world. Thus, in The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels speak of the conflict between feudal lords and serfs as giving rise to the bourgeoisie, which was in turn opposed by the proletariat, preparing the way for a communist utopia--which they saw as the end point of history’s development.

That’s all forward-looking and follows an agenda, but critical theorist Theodor Adorno proposed a negative dialectics that sought to further the negative (the antithesis) for a break with current realities even if the result isn’t positive and doesn’t lead to some synthesis preordained by the existing paradigm. This opens new possibilities that could never have arisen out of the old order. For Adorno and others of the Frankfurt School, that meant greater freedom--not just the freedom to do this or that (e.g., to marry whomever you please, to own a semi-automatic firearm), but freedom that begins in an individual’s consciousness.

Call it deep liberation.

Apply the basic idea of negative dialectics to American politics. If the main dueling forces are the Republicans and Democrats, then a vote for either party is a vote for the status quo that is the synthesis they generate. To break the cycle and be free of the system’s constraints, you must undercut the whole triad, the whole power structure. You might attempt this by refusing to vote.

Some individuals intend to do just that in the upcoming presidential election.  On Twitter, I have seen the hashtag #NoVote2016. Those who use it say they will not vote because none of the candidates represent what in their minds would constitute a substantive change. Even a candidate like democratic socialist Bernie Sanders (running as a Democrat), whose platform is further left than we’re accustomed to seeing from a major candidate, is unfit in their eyes because on some issues he holds close to the status quo. For example, they say he does not address race issues satisfactorily and that he sides with Israel in its occupation of Palestine. They also do not like the way he would continue America’s military presence around the world, including the use of drones, albeit in a more judicious manner.

When sticking points are at stake, I can understand and respect why someone would choose not to participate in the system, but I would strongly encourage them to rethink this.

I would feel better about not voting in 2016 if it would make a statement, but it won’t. For most of my life, voter turnout in federal elections has been in the 30-50% range. In the 2014 midterm elections, it was 36.3%. In Japan, voter turnout in the same decades has been around 50%-70%. A presidential election in France can hit 80%. Suppose #NoVote2016 catches on spectacularly and drops the percentage of voters to 18%, half the rate in 2014. The powers that be will not care. They don’t want to hear from you anyway. Hell, the GOP has been pushing voter suppression measures for years. Our legislators are a class all their own and the less they have to worry about what the riffraff in the street has to say, the better for their interests.

Thus, this subtraction will not constitute a positive act. And it remains highly questionable as negative dialectics, because negative dialectics itself is highly questionable. Even the philosophers of the Frankfurt School were unsure of its efficacy--and critics were even more skeptical. Can doing nothing really have much of an effect, and if not, what is the point?

Can we, then, imagine a positive difference within the dynamics of the election? Considering that many of the people promoting #NoVote2016 are somewhere on the left, the answer is no. By refusing to cast their votes for candidates on the left, they play into the hands of the right--which tends to pull together better. You think things are bad for progressive causes now, give the country to the next Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush and see how you like things then. That’s setting America back another decade, which equals more suffering for more people. Historically, a common failing of the radical left has been that its methods for helping people often involve hurting more people in the meantime until its final objectives are reached, until the perfect order arrives.

And how often does that happen?

I guess that makes me a proponent of the “lesser of two evils” approach, which some view as spineless and naïve. Whereas the Frankfurt School was often intensely skeptical of the possibility of change and the #NoVote2016 crowd is in my opinion driven by idealism, I have come to value the gradualism of American pragmatism, which doesn't demand sweeping changes to the social order overnight--much less the initiation of an ideal order--but rather struggles to make continuous smaller changes. Surely this is what the word progressive originally meant.

If the GOP’s vision of America is yours, by all means vote for Republican candidates, but otherwise find others to vote for so they can support your aims. My own choice is to support Bernie Sanders now--despite not finding him perfect--because of his commitment to the working class, and later I will grit my teeth and support Hillary Clinton as a strategic maneuver to prevent a Jeb Bush presidency--but there are other candidates out there. No candidate is flawless, but some can deliver, if not perfection in our time, then at least progress in our time.

The powers that be can control the airwaves, ignore your tweets, crack down on your protest, and try to influence your vote, but they still have to count your vote. Don’t miss your opportunity to cast it.

 

Fighting with Each Other in the Age of Confusion

This post isn’t about the death of Sandra Bland so much as the online debate regarding contentious issues and an experience I had on social media last week. How I feel about Sandra Bland’s treatment by Texas police will be obvious, but there are better places to find information and commentary about it. I suggest starting with the police vehicle dashcam video of her arrest.

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone magazine has published a piece titled “Sandra Bland Was Murdered,” which states that whatever events unfolded within the Waller County jail, the police’s treatment of Bland caused her death. The article discusses how right-wing media has been curiously restrained in its commentary, as if even the RWNJs have an inkling, and even a sense of shame, that assault, arrest, confinement and death are a bit much for, we are told, failing to signal a lane change:

“It's been interesting following conservative news outlets after the Bland case. They've been conspicuously quiet this week, holstering the usual gloating backlash of the 'He'd be alive today, if he'd just obeyed the law' variety.”

I ran across the article in a tweet by prominent activist DeRay McKesson. I retweeted it and included a quote from the article that I thought summarized the ridiculous victim-blaming that is common in these cases, a quote that would also fit within the 140-character limit:

“But nobody yet has dared to say Sandra Bland would still be alive today, if only she'd used her blinker.”

Then something happened. DeRay McKesson retweeted my retweet of his tweet, sending it out to his 189,000 followers, plus anyone else who glanced at his timeline, and my Notifications turned into a steady stream of favorites, retweets and replies that went on for hours. Having only recently approached 2,000 followers, I’m not accustomed to such activity and didn’t know how to react.

The majority of the attention came from people who agreed with the quote and article’s condemnation of the way the police treated Sandra Bland, the system that lets them get away with murder, the politicians and talking heads who work to ensure this system goes unchanged, and the riffraff that constitutes their base. I’m happy to have lent this modest support to those upset by Sandra Bland’s death.

A number of social justice tweeters who replied, however, appeared not to understand the tweet. They apparently didn’t read the linked article, see the quotes around the quote, or notice that the original tweet was from one of their most notable voices. Their comments were unkind, implying or outright stating that I was a racist, an idiot and a troll. They had taken me to be defending the police and blaming the victim by saying that none of this would have happened if Sandra Bland had only used her turn signal. That is the exact opposite, not of what I had said--because I hadn’t added any of my own words to the tweet--but of the article and the quote from it.

The situation was a perfect example of dialogue on social media, in that it was a complete cluster-debacle: a bitter contest of hot air occurring parallel to life offline (I was out shopping with my family), flippant about matters of life and death, arising between strangers whose tone is either casual or vicious, fast-paced and careless, with the most ignorant voices being the loudest, ambiguous to the point of incomprehensibility, with horrible spelling and grammar, hampered by character limits and online lingo, filled with snark and insult, rarely clever, and perhaps worst of all, broken into scattered threads that led nowhere. And it didn’t help my discomfort to realize that the quote, devoid of context, does contain some ambiguity.

That made it all partly my fault.

It was unsettling--after all, I have tweeted, blogged and donated money in support of the #BlackLivesMatter movement since August 9, 2014 when Darren Wilson murdered Mike Brown. I felt the need to run damage control, but family matters called. I could have gladly done without social media that day, but I couldn’t take my mind off it: There were all those voices, what felt like masses but in retrospect was only a handful, publicly saying horrible things about me.

I eventually realized I was being given a dose of what many outspoken people on social media experience on a much larger and wickeder scale on a daily basis. The first examples that popped into my head were DeRay McKesson and Feminist Frequency founder Anita Sarkeesian. Agree or disagree with them, they are prominent individuals who are on a daily basis the targets of vile slander and even death threats. How awful it must be to have that happening all the time--whether due to true disagreement or misunderstanding.

And, of course, the victims of online attack need not be famous. Given all the vitriol on social media, everyone is subjected to it at some point, perhaps frequently, and some people experience real mental trauma because of online attacks. My heart always breaks when I hear a news story about a teenager committing suicide due to bullying by peers on Facebook or other platforms, but now I understand a little better, by extrapolation from my own minor fracas, how intense their pain must have been. There has been a growing number of voices calling for efforts to save the Internet from trolls. Let us hope some measures are implemented that prove to be successful.

My response to the attacks was generally to favorite and retweet them, and to reply simply that the article and quote are critical of the police, not Sandra Bland. I detest bickering, so I played it flat in tone. I doubt any of you will be surprised when I add that I never received a simple, “Sorry, I misunderstood.” When it came to those who appeared to actually believe Sandra Bland was responsible for her own death, I ignored them, as I did those whose replies were literally nonsense. This, too, is a regularly occurring phenomenon online.

And I’m not complaining about what happened to me, because while this post’s focus is what I found to be an illustrative example of public debate in our time, the more important issue is the way the police harass, assault and kill the populace with immunity. Of all the ways Brian Encinia could have handled that traffic stop, he chose an extremely disturbing one that ultimately resulted in the loss of a woman who, as the video below shows, was a beautiful soul:

 

 

Previous related posts:

Why It’s Difficult to Talk About the Killing of Police Officers
When Is an Unarmed Teen Not Unarmed?
Don’t Look Away from Mike Brown
Identifying with Ferguson as Symptom
Ferguson: How Did We Get Here?