politics

We Are Not Descended from Monsters: the Illusion of Moral Clarity

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At one point not too long ago, I had to ask myself: Why are so many dramas that examine social evils set a generation (approximately) before they were made? From Auntie Mame to Mississippi Burning to comedies like Ruggles of Red Gap, the easiest way to talk about systemic social problems is by looking at the ones you can see in your rear view mirror. Criticizing your parents (or grandparents) is way easier than taking a careful look at your own flaws.

We’re all familiar with people who imagine themselves heroes of the past, saying exactly the sort of thing this comic mocks. (I encourage you to click that link. It’s great.) But would we have been paragons of progressive virtue? Or would we have accepted the status quo with a shrug and an unconvincing rationalization?

We all like to imagine ourselves to be good people, and to be on the right side of history. Of course, when we look back we see that the ones on the right side were often killed for the cause. For people who think they would have joined the righteous protest back then, it’s important to ask if you’re doing it now. Getting tear gassed by NYC cops after they stick you in an enclosure? Getting shot with rubber bullets for marching in the street? Getting arrested at a demonstration because you flinched when a police officer reached for you? No? Hmm.

And, as mentioned above, the people on the wrong side of history were not monsters. They loved. They did charity. They worshiped with sincerity. They had strong ideas about good and evil. They acted with honor and kindness.

But they also bought into a corrupt system that was so pervasive they couldn’t even recognize another way to be. That doesn’t make them monsters, and it doesn’t make them mustache-twirling villains.

It doesn’t help that the narratives we tell are full of Evil Baddies of Evilness, who are irredeemable assholes rewarded with a bullet at the denouement. Hell, right now I’m reading Tom Shippey’s J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century and I plan to reread a one-volume edition of Lord of the Rings right after, to see if I can get through it without skimming.

That book is the archetype of othering your enemies and making monsters of them, and I’m going to read it again (right after I rewatch the movies).

Obviously, there are real villains in this world, just as there are real heroes, but everyone thinks they’re one or the other. Most aren’t. Most are caught up in the cultural assumptions around them, and are living their lives the best way they know how.

To make note of the “fossil fuel” comment by Ta Nehisi-Coates, I want to tell a brief story: Earlier this week I took my family to see INSIDE OUT. Not having a car, we walked six blocks to the bus stop. On the way, a neighbor who lives in our building drove by and parked right beside the stop. He and his girlfriend (both young and healthy) were running an errand and instead of walking on a hot June day, he drove. Six blocks. And it’s not like he was picking up a mattress or something huge.

I don’t want to seem like I’m picking on the guy; if I sold more books, I’d have a car, too. But driving six blocks? Hey, maybe he was in a hurry. Maybe he didn’t want to get all sweaty. Maybe he had another errand to run across town (it’s possible!) But getting into your car and going is how Americans live. We know the damage it does, not just to the environment but to our bodies, too, and yet we still build cities to accommodate them. Those cities that predate the car get retrofitted for them. That’s how our world is designed, from getting to work to shopping to school to everything. Going against that is hard. I know, because we’re doing it. I waste a shitload of time, comparatively, just to go to the library. I walk for an hour to take a trip that is less than 15 minutes in a car. It’s good for me, but I know the time I’m giving up is writing time, and that sucks.

But I’m not an anti-climate change hero. I’m not fighting for a better world, or setting a good example. I’m just poor. When future generations look back on our wasteful choices, I hope my descendants don’t try to defend me by saying I’m not a monster. I hope they know better.

It’s easy to look back at the moral failings of past generations and pretend that we’re different. We aren’t. The fact that they did awful things, or fought to sustain evil institutions, or turned a blind eye to injustice doesn’t make them any different from us. Most of us do the same.

Activism. It works.

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Per this morning’s Supreme Court ruling, same sex couples can be married in all fifty states in the US. It’s a great victory for justice and equal treatment under the law, and it was accomplished through the hard work of activists all over the country.

But I want to disagree with this quote by Theodore Parker:

We cannot understand the moral Universe. The arc is a long one, and our eyes reach but a little way; we cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; but we can divine it by conscience, and we surely know that it bends toward justice.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. offered this punchier version:

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

I think that’s wrong. There is no moral universe, and there’s no reason that human beings will continue to accept more human beings into their in-groups, granting them rights and laws. We know that’s the just thing, but the passive construction of that cliche disguises the fact that justice comes about because people fight for it.

Activists fought to have the Confederate flag taken down from government buildings, and that’s beginning to happen. Activists fought to legalize same sex marriage, and they have succeeded. They have a won a hard-fought victory. Congratulations, and good luck in the next fight.

Things move quickly because we’re aching for change, stars and bars edition

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It didn’t take long for a groundswell of public opinion to start pushing against the Confederate battle flag. Walmart, Sears, eBay, and Amazon have stepped forward to say they are not going to continue selling the stars and bars. Also:

Next we should get rid of Jefferson Davis Highway, and rename the last high school in the country named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the founders of the KKK.

It seems like it’s coming very quickly, doesn’t it? Public opinion is shifting decisively. All my life I’ve heard people saying that the Civil War was not really about slavery, and blah blah blah, but those old stories don’t stand up any more. They’re too easily disproven.

If you’re the jerk I recently unfriended on Facebook, you might think this is all reactionary bullshit that accomplishes nothing, but I have to lay a giant NOPE on that. There’s no serious argument to be made that the stars and bars belongs on US government buildings. It’s a flag of treason. US soldiers were shot by rebels marching under it. There’s no serious argument to be made that the flag has nothing to do with white supremacy. It was flown in a rebellion fought over the keeping of slaves, and it has been resurgent since the fifties as a giant fuck you to the civil rights movement.

Taking down one flag, changing the name of a school or highway, or moving a statue into a museum isn’t going to solve all of our problems with racism. They don’t have to. These victories are cumulative.

And they matter. They may seem like petty things on their own, but taken together they form the gigantic foundation I was talking about last week.

There’s change to be made in communities far from us and in our own neighborhoods. Make your voice heard.

This is not the floor

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It will be difficult to keep this short. There is so much to talk about, and it’s all important, that the temptation to digress is powerful, and I’m easily distracted. But I want to keep this short and to the point.

On Wednesday, Dylann Roof, a 21yo white man, walked into a black church in Charleston and murdered nine people. You can read more about the victims here and you should.

Right now, as I write this, it’s late in the day on Thursday. I’m sure there is a lot of misinformation floating around, but one thing that seems clear is that he shot those people because he is a racist.

And there are ten thousand things to say here: from the prevalence of gun violence to the friends who said nothing when Roof made racist jokes, from Roof’s claim that he was defending white women to the Confederate flag still flying all over this country.

But what I want to point out is that, for too many white people, Dylann Roof is the face of racism in this country, and that’s a problem.

When yet another white guy freaks out because he’s been called on something racist he’s done or said, it’s because he thinks he’s being compared to people like Roof. Or Bull Connor. Or James Earl Ray. He’s outraged because that’s what he things racism means.

That’s too easy, though. That’s describing the problem by it’s most extreme manifestations, while ignoring the rest. These people want to define racism by its most egregious actions, then put a floor under it. Everything below that doesn’t count. Unfair hiring practices? Police profiling? Unequal education? Refusal to cast any black actors in shows set in racially diverse cities? None of those things, the argument goes, are as important as a mass shooting. None of those things, the argument continues, deserve such a heinous label as “racist”.

Except those things are racist. Absolutely so. And being called on racist behavior is not equivalent to being called another Dylann Roof. There’s a whole range of behaviors and assumptions that make up a racist society that don’t approach the level of mass murder. And those assumptions and behaviors–and worse, the complacency in the face of continued injustice–are what makes Roof possible. He may be the highest expression of the murderous contempt that makes up white supremacy, but he stands so high because we have given a gigantic foundation.

Now is the time to mourn the victims and to speak out against racism. Now is also the time to accept that Dylann Roof is not the face of racism. He’s just the far end of the bell curve. The rest of us–me included–need to do better.

Lendable library wifi hotspots

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File this under “Things that are cool”: thanks to a grant from Google, the Seattle Public Library is going to be lending people wifi hotspots that they can take home for three weeks, just like books. You can also renew them if no one else has a hold, just like books. Did you know that some 15% of the households in the Seattle area don’t have internet service? I didn’t.

Later this summer, they expect to have lendable laptops, too.

It makes me feel like an old fogey to say it, but I remember looking at the earliest laptops and thinking WTF is the point of THAT? Now I write all my fiction on one.

Anyway, this isn’t the first program in the country, but it’s a welcome addition. For people who are looking for a job or a place to live, the internet is vital. In fact, it’s so important for the public to be able to utilize it, it ought to be a public utility.

I hope it goes well.

Novelist given psych exam, locked away by police for work of fiction he published at 20

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[UPDATE: According to the L.A.Times, McLaw was not removed from his job and taken for treatment because of the novels. Apparently, he wrote a four-page letter that alarmed authorities, and they’ve known about the novels for a couple of years.

It’s frustrating, because I heard about this story a week ago when it first broke, and I was waiting to see what would shake out before writing a post. If I’d waited until this afternoon instead of this morning, I wouldn’t have relied on the ridiculous early news report, which was disseminated widely and which explicitly linked his books to administrative action.

I’ll leave the original post below, for the obvious reasons.]

You may have heard about Patrick McLaw, a twenty-three year old teacher in Maryland who has been kicked out of his job, is being investigated by the county sheriff, has had his home searched, had the school where he taught searched, has been forbidden to go onto county property at all, is being given a psychological exam in a location that the police will not name, and is not free to leave, according to the cops. Has he been arrested? Authorities will not say. Try not to be surprised when I say he’s black.

His crime? Three years ago he self-published a science fiction novel, set 900 years in the future, about the race to stop a school shooter.

You can read about his story at The Atlantic. I encourage everyone to read it; it’s short and it matters. If you’re curious about the book, not only is it still on Amazon, but the publicity has bumped it quite high in the sales rankings.

I guess it’s possible that there’s something else going on here beyond administrative freak out, but I would be surprised. This sort of over reaction from a school administration is all about the fear and power of petty bureaucrats who are terrified of being seen to have done too little. Any possibility, however slim, that they might be dissected in the media, post-catastrophy, about what they knew and why they didn’t act, drives them like fanatics.

It doesn’t help that so many school officials seem ready to accommodate the most paranoid parents in their district. It all feeds the little voice inside them that says thinking up the plot of a book is the same thing as fantasizing about it.

Based on the news reports we’ve had so far, Patrick McLaw has broken no law. It’s possible he’s being told that he has to do everything he’s told to keep his job, but I can’t understand how a sensible member of the judiciary thought publishing a novel three years earlier was probably cause for a search of the guy’s house.

It’s disgusting.

In which I invite another author to kiss my fat ass

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Usually, when I see a stupid thing on the internet, I laugh and maybe tweet about it. “Look! Someone spilled a pile of dumb on the internet!” Then we’ll all share a laugh together and I’d go back to blocking “Emergency Cat” accounts. If I think the source of this particular piece of blockheadery is a pernicious sort who is actively courting the attention, I won’t bother.

But some things are annoying enough that I feel moved to blog about it. Here’s the deal: When Guardians of the Galaxy came out, a lot of people were talking about how upbeat it was, as though it was this bright, cheerful thing. They were also contrasting it favorably with Man of Steel, an objectively terrible movie no matter how thrilling the special effects were.

Me, I didn’t think GotG was all that upbeat. In fact, I thought it was pretty dark (without being grimdark) and said so.

You don’t have to click through on that link. Basically, I embedded a Kameron Hurley tweet about the movie’s success being the “sound of grimdark being over”, then I talked about the actual darkness in GotG, why it was a welcome contrast with MoS, and the piece ended like this:

So, don’t expect GotG to be light, cheerful fare. It has more than its share of darkness. The difference is that it also has clever, dedicated protagonists who are capable of prevailing in the end.

That’s it. That’s the whole deal.

I don’t know how that got interpreted as As fantasy authors Kameron Hurley and Harry J. Connolly observed, the success of Guardians of the Galaxy heralds “the sound of grimdark being over. over on io9. If I’d agreed with Hurley’s tweet, I would have just retweeted it, not written a fucking blog post. Anyway, I tried to clarify this in a comment over there, but it didn’t go and I’m too busy to fuss with blog comment systems.

And now I have this shit, in which Richard K. Morgan links to my post (and only my post) and responds to it as thought I’m personally calling for the end of the grimdark subgenre.

As anyone who’s read the actual post (rather than the io9 summary) would know, I’m not. Maybe Kameron Hurley would like it to go away forever; I’m not her so I wouldn’t know. Personally, I’m happy to see grimdark on the shelves, because I read it. Not only that, but anyone who’s picked up my short fiction collection knows I write it, too.

In fact, I have never felt the urge to call for the end of any genre. Some I read. Some I don’t. It’s no big deal. When I go into the supermarket, I see vanilla AND chocolate ice cream in the freezer. I get to choose the one I like and leave the other for someone else to buy, maybe. I don’t require everyone to want what I want. In fact, I don’t really care what you like (unless it’s my books, in which case why not buy some, please).

But all I have to do is point out that MoS was deeply muddle-headed in its attempt to be serious and grim, and suddenly I want to take away people’s favorite ice cream.

What is it with that shit, anyway? Why do these guys reflexively read any criticism at all–even of something dumb like MoS–and interpret it as “You’re trying to ban something I love!”

Anyway, that’s the stupid thing, what I would normally just tweet about for a laugh. This is the annoying bit.

Is this a constituency so totally bombproof resistant to cultural shift that they want to go back to a fictionscape dreamed up in the middle of the last century, back when women and coloured folks still knew their place, the cop on the beat was a lovely cuddly (white) guy, war was a glorious endeavour undertaken against dastardly foreign foes, and real men walked like John Wayne?

Hey, Mr. Morgan, you can kiss my fat ass for this. And if this wasn’t meant to be addressed to me directly, you should have linked to someone else at the start of your post.

Anyway, I’m sure regular readers (both of you) will be startled to discover that grimdark is totes progressive. You know those olden days, when everyone’s art was all about capital G good and capital E evil, no nuance need apply!

Please.

For the record, the only work of Mr. Morgan’s that I have read was a trade collection of a Black Widow comic, which I thought was excellent. In fact, I thought it should be the basis of the character’s first movie. The blog post he wrote is still as dumb as a sack of ice cubes.

Also, the short fiction piece of my own I consider grimdark is the title story in my collection: “Bad Little Girls Die Horrible Deaths” even though no girls (bad or otherwise) die in the story. #spoilers

Yes, I realize that last link is basically an invitation for punitive one-star reviews. So be it.

Helicopter parent? We mock you. Not a helicopter parent? Handcuffs.

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One of the trends the media has been enjoying for *years* is making fun of so-called helicopter parents–parents who constantly hover around their kids, standing guard over everything they do. What worry-worts, right?

And yet, what happens when a parent lets their kid play outside in the park without a helicopter? They get arrested.

Is there any other developed country that hates its working poor as much at the U.S.A.?

What if the government provided your vehicle?

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I saw this tweet from Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) a few days ago, then read the linked blog:

Recommended. The LA Times follows up here, pointing out that we’ve reached “Peak Freakonomics” where our two authors seem to have run out of innovative ways at looking at subjects and should probably try to find a new niche to market.

But I was thinking about Yglesias’s proposition: What if the government bought your cars for you? How would that work? So here’s a thought experiment for that:

First, no frills. No leather seats, no iPhone dock, no super-quiet engine. There’s nothing wrong with those sorts of luxuries, but taxpayers won’t swing for them, so they’re out. If you want a DVD player for your kids to watch a movie, you have to spring for that yourself.

Second, how much will you be using your vehicle? Look, the government will be happy to give you a car to transport you places, but does it need to be idle all night while you sleep? Do you need to have it sit on your corporate campus for nine hours while you’re at work?

It would probably be cheaper for the government to pay for a chauffeur who would drive you to work, then go drive other people who needed rides, then pick you up after your shift. In fact, it doesn’t even need to be the same chauffeur!

Third, what if it’s not a one-person vehicle? Why should the chauffeur drive you and you alone to your destination when there are probably quite a few people who work where you work, or who would like to shop at that mall? Single-occupancy vehicles are wasteful and cause traffic jams. The government could streamline things by carrying several people at once.

Larger vehicles would be called for, ones with the capacity to move lots of people around. Perhaps some sort of schedule could be devised (and routes established) to maximize the movement of users.

Fourth, what about free-loaders? Obviously, there are those who want a car just for the thrill of driving. Would the American taxpayer be willing to subsidize that sort of purely-pleasurable but unproductive pastime? Considering how they act when food-stamp recipients buy soda, I doubt it.

Perhaps some sort of small co-pay could be required to discourage joy riding. We could call it a “fare.”

And you know where that takes us? To public transportation, which is certainly not perfect but is still used by millions of people every day. How would the Freakonomics guys feel if we increased its funding? I wish my transit system had more dollars.

Because the government is never going to allow people to walk into a car dealership and pick out any car they like. It’s ridiculous to even offer that as a thought experiment. But if the government thinks it’s important for people to have access to a minimum standard of health care, they will work that out. And if the government thinks people should be able to move around a community without driving a car of their own, they’ll work that out, too.

It won’t be extravagant, but it might make your society run better.

Randomness for 2/21

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1) Classic movies painted as Ottoman miniatures.

2) The six male characters women never get to see in movies. so many story ideas here.

3) Credit card company’s new terms and conditions allow them to show up at your home or workplace, or disguise their identity when they call.

4) Facial expressions of Olympic figure skaters. G forces take quite a toll.

5) Using two colors, this map shows where 50% of the GDP of the USA comes from.

6) A comic about economics and trade agreements. TW: mixed in with a lot of good information is some shitty treatment of Tea Partiers.

7) Ten Travel Tips for Japanese People Visiting the USA.