The Courage to be an American

              

We the people find ourselves in a period of tangible fear – a collective state of mind that seems disorienting to us.  It is not wholly unfamiliar - we’ve been through this before and so have our ancestors.  We as a nation have been attacked and shaken and knocked down in the past by actions that defy our understanding, but it is always our response that defines us.  When we are at our best, we triumph by drawing from the values and essence of what it means to be an American, and once in a while, we need a refresher.

Despite our prosperity, there is one truism that we can trace back to our national origins and affirm as common ground with our founding fathers: 

It is not easy to be an American. 

America doesn’t guarantee success, but it does guarantee a chance to succeed – that, at least, is the principle we strive to uphold.  The freedom to take that chance is the driving force behind our values and prosperity.  It’s a simple promise that we offer to the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.  It never has been.  As a result, we have within our collective DNA an element of fearlessness – a strength common to both those who boarded a ship and those who survived being shackled to it.  We have within us the ability to confront terror with strength and oppression with a passionate demand for freedom.

This is why our greatest threat is not some other country, caliphate or entity coming to our shores and physically taking away our freedom.  The real threat is ourselves, and whether or not we succumb to it will be determined by a simple question:  can our empathy as a nation overcome our fear?

Consider the attributes of fear and empathy – two poles in a spectrum that are inversely related.  In each of us there is some fear-to-empathy ratio that determines how we react, whether it’s to world events like a terrorist attack, or to each other, as a police officer might at a traffic stop.  Where there is great fear, there is no empathy; our survival mode takes over and our judgment is often the first casualty.  Our inability to embrace the diversity and commonality of humanity – to see the world through the eyes of people of races or religions different from our own - is a weakness that is always rooted in fear.

Conversely, where there is great empathy, there is no fear.  In the extreme, empathy is the force that drove people toward the victims rather than away from the bombs at the end of the Boston Marathon; it is the doctor who goes off to fight Ebola when the fearful want to shut down all inbound flights from an entire continent.  It is the Dallas police officers who protected protestors in the face of gunfire directed at them.  And it is Captain Humayun Khan, whose split-second decision saved many lives in exchange for his own.  These are extraordinary examples that call upon us to at least aspire to empathize under far less threatening circumstances.  At its core, empathy is an affirmation of the universal nature of humanity – a consideration that underscores our obligation to take care of each other.  Empathy allows us to transcend fear and ultimately eliminate it.

But empathy is not as easy as fear.  It does take courage, but it is also a distinctive quality of being an American.  The courage to be American means acceptance of our principles of freedom and the belief in inalienable rights for all of humanity – a constitutional assertion that is courageously empathetic.

All of us fall somewhere on the fear-empathy spectrum, and where we fall determines our individual perspective on almost every major issue of our time:  terrorism, racism, sexism, gun control, immigration, health care, poverty, criminal justice, LGBT rights and even income inequality.

An example:  Imagine a boat of 100 refugees fleeing persecution and desperate to reach American shores.  While the empathetically-driven are motivated to help all of them out of a sense of humanitarian obligation, the fear-driven are inclined to turn them all away because even one of them might be a terrorist. And because judgment is a casualty of fear, justification of that fear can often take the form of presuming they are all terrorists.

Dehumanization is a common strategy of the fearful – to proclaim that those who scare us are criminals, rapists, terrorists or some other threat to our being.  These acts of discrimination and generalization are not based in fact, but because fear impairs judgment, there need not be any factual basis for these beliefs to be embellished and sustained.  The question then becomes: do we have it within us to overcome this fear?  Do we have the courage to be American?

As a nation, when America has fallen short of its ideals, it is because we have succumbed to the reflex of fear at the expense of empathy.  We were afraid of Japanese Americans during World War II, so we imprisoned many thousands of innocent people.  We were afraid of communists in the 1950’s and so we persecuted hundreds indiscriminately.  We had laws that segregated blacks and whites for fear of “mixing”.  Today we are afraid of Muslims, and because of that, there are calls to discriminate against the entire religion.  There is plenty of historical precedent:  when fear triumphs, empathy is purged and innocent people suffer.

But when the lapses in courage come to an end:  as when Joseph Welch asked Joseph McCarthy “Have you no sense of decency?”, we can begin to put our fears to rest. 

America is at its best when empathy trumps fear and the doors are open to the huddled masses of the world – when an immigrant is not an “alien”, but simply a fellow human on the well-worn path to becoming one of us.  That is the essence of America.

 

We are the home of the brave – a bravery that we rightly attribute to those who we send abroad to protect our freedom.  But today we don’t have that luxury because freedom requires courage both at home and abroad.  As a result, we are now faced with another once-in-a-generation opportunity to define what it means to be Americans.  Our forefathers showed the required courage and so did our ancestors. 

Now it’s our turn. 

The New Power of Example

What exactly should the United States do about places like Syria, North Korea, or Mali?  What about Egypt, Afghanistan and Iran, or the Israelis and Palestinians?  How should we respond to all the other countries in various states of turmoil?  What is in store for us in the years ahead and how can we best influence the world in a way that facilitates peace and prosperity?

There is so much we don’t know, which means we must resort to what we do know.

First, we live in a world of unprecedented complexity.  Many of the conflicts occurring in the Middle East and Africa are seemingly unresolvable, and for the United States, the past 30 years have brought home to us the costs and consequences of oversimplified approaches.   Now we know that any political or military intervention on our part is likely to be far more divisive than it is unifying, altering relationships and adding layers to the complexity.  When we choose our allies, we also choose our enemies, and a ripple effect of polarization ensues.

Second, we know that our world has become hyper-connected.  Never before has so much information been so easily available and accessible.  While in the past, information would flow as if in a canal through clearly defined and controlled channels, today that flow is more akin to the Everglades, spreading in all directions and nurturing growth.  Information is flooding societies with the credible and the incredible.  But the sheer volume of it means that both control of it and the assignment of credibility have shifted irreversibly from those who generate the information to those who receive it.  Social media has made the world social in a way that we could never have imagined. 

Yes, the level of connectivity and complexity has increased dramatically in recent years, and while technology has changed the means of communication, the methods of influencing behavior have remained basically the same for centuries.

History tells us that great leadership is both measured and defined by one’s ability to get people to do what they want them to do.  There is a broad range of tactics to influence behavior, but all of them can be distilled down to three basic methods, each with varying levels of effectiveness.

The first method is Force, which includes not only the tip of a bayonet, the implementation of regime change, or the water boarded illusion of suffocation, but the threat of these as well, including all other physical, political or economic levers to generate the desired outcome.  At its simplest, Force applies the principle of negative reinforcement, better known as the “stick”. 

The second method is Persuasion, in which the leader does not need to resort to force because they are able to communicate the intimate connection between the desired behavior and the resulting reward with such clarity that their audience is compelled to follow.  This is positive reinforcement, also known as the “carrot”. 

And finally there is Example, in which the audience simply observes and reacts in response to model behavior that is visibly beneficial.  Through their observation, they are inspired and motivated to follow without any need for either force or persuasion.  The motivating factor is neither stick nor carrot, but the individual act of will to behave in a way that will achieve a similar outcome.

What distinguishes Example from the other two methods of influence is its ability to fully respect and rely upon the will of the follower.  This very human element is completely ignored when force is being used, and subject to various communication barriers in the case of persuasion.  It is only by following an example that the will is fully empowered and exercised through the unconstrained choices of the follower.  For this reason, Example is the most powerful and sustainable means of influencing behavior.  There is no threat of a violent backlash in the case of force, and no risk of being misled in the case of persuasion.  The power of Example is enduring because the resulting behavior is entirely consensual, both individually and collectively.

Because it is dependent upon the free flow of information, Example as a means of influence has gained extraordinary power with the advent of a hyper-connected world, and perhaps the best case in point is the Arab Spring of 2011. 

With the dramatic increase in access to information, the people of Tunisia, Egypt. Libya, Bahrain and Syria, to name a few, experienced a mass recognition of a universal fact:  the extent to which a society is free determines that society’s level of opportunity, justice, respect and dignity.  The flow of rich and resonating examples – among them, the election of a black U.S. President with a Muslim name, a seminal event regardless of one’s political beliefs - overwhelmed the barriers of conventional information control and solidified the convictions of many Arab peoples that they were entitled to nothing less than the same freedoms as other countries. 

No act of force or persuasion could have sparked the Arab Spring, and only the most brutal acts of force can impede it (as we are seeing in Syria), but not forever.  The lesson for the United States is clear and reassuring:  our greatest weapon for making the world a better place is neither sword nor sanction nor coercion.    

Our greatest weapon is our Example.

This is not a new concept.  We call it the American Dream because it is tangible proof of how our values connect with happiness and prosperity, and it continues to come true every day.  Social media has given the light of Liberty the equivalent of a new million-watt bulb, and from that, the virtues of freedom and opportunity – the Example of the United States - are reaching the world’s citizens with an ever-increasing degree of impact. 

Of course, every dream does not come true and we are far from perfect.  Deficiencies like torture, decreasing educational standards and Jersey Shore are not American points of pride, and we certainly have an unacceptable share of poverty and gun violence, but no nation in the world better exemplifies the universal value of freedom and opportunity than ours. 

In contrast, when we employ force or persuasion to change behavior – as in the case of drones and sanctions that hurt the innocent, or nation-building through extended occupations – the power of Example is obscured and the resulting polarization has the unintended consequence of strengthening our enemies.  The collateral damage of a drone attack includes not just the innocent who are killed, but the suddenly indoctrinated youth who survive and vow revenge.  Our culture and values are unable to penetrate the modern day medieval societies that become increasingly isolated and fortified as a result of our use of force. 

Through Example, we can instead lay the groundwork for many of the world’s conflicts to ultimately resolve themselves.  It won’t work everywhere and it won’t work overnight, but those who cling to barbaric ways of life will inevitably be displaced by a new generation that will seek, if not demand, the basic human rights of freedom and opportunity.

This is not a pacifist strategy, but in fact an upgrade of our weapons of war to match the times.   We must recognize that the conventional methods of force and persuasion are ineffective at influencing large numbers of people.  Our global connectivity demands artillery more suited to the conquest of hearts and minds rather than land and resources, and in a complex world with intricate layers of conflict, our Example is still the best weapon the world has ever known. 

It's Time for a New NRA

Let’s call it the AFA – The American Firearms Association.  

American as a testament to American values that are embodied in the entire Constitution, not just the Second Amendment.

Firearms, rather than “Rifle” – a term that better describes the organization’s scope of responsibility. 

And as an association, the AFA would be a well-regulated non-governmental organization that is financially unaffiliated with any gun manufacturers or political parties. 

The primary purpose of the AFA would be to represent the many millions of moderate and reasonable gun owners – people whose beliefs and interests are no longer aligned with those of the NRA.  The AFA, like its predecessor, would still be a strong advocate for the right to bear arms, but with equally strong support for the types of gun control laws and limitations that promote the general welfare of the nation and ensure domestic tranquility. 

By balancing the principles of individual rights with the common good, the AFA would become the true vanguard of safe, civilized and knowledgeable ownership of guns in our country and exemplify the personal and shared responsibility that is at the heart of the Second Amendment.

Safety and responsibility would be the governing core values of the AFA, but unlike the NRA, the application of those values would extend beyond the individual gun owner to the community as a whole.  While the NRA has chosen to serve as the political proxy for the gun industry, the AFA would instead serve members and non-members alike, as a responsible stakeholder in the shared mission to reduce gun violence.  By declining donations from gun and ammunition manufacturers, the public interest of reducing violence would take precedence over the private interests of these corporations..

All gun control legislation has the potential for overreach and ineffectiveness.  Ironically, the NRA disqualifies itself from participating in the legislative process through its absolutist position – it has concluded that any and all gun control is unacceptable.  As the rational alternative, the AFA would fill this seat at the table and represent the spirit and intent of the Second Amendment on behalf of its membership throughout the process.  A moderate, reasonable and collaborative participating body is essential, and because gun owners are a broad cross section of America, the AFA’s input should be welcomed.

Of course, extremists equate “collaboration” with conspiracy, as if there isn’t already a profit-driven collaboration between the NRA and the gun industry.  The AFA is certainly at risk of corruption – particularly with the government - and managing this risk will be the job of the membership.  The association will have its best chance of becoming an effective and uncorrupted organization by relying entirely on membership fees and donations, and strictly prohibiting any financial affiliations with corporate, political or government entities. 

A consequence of this purity:  the AFA will not have enough money to spend on ads that attack the President and other gun control advocates.  But as a pragmatic representative of a major voting bloc, it won’t need to because it will already be part of the conversation.

The AFA could also serve as the facilitator and monitor of valid, meaningful research on gun usage and gun control.  With the introduction of new gun control laws, it is essential that we understand the impact of legislation through data that is unfiltered and actionable.  Unlike the NRA, the AFA would be better positioned to provide objective oversight of research that is free from the influence of companies who have a stake in how the results are presented (or whether it is presented at all). 

Could the NRA and AFA co-exist?  Of course, because the AFA would have a different mandate than the NRA.  The AFA would serve as the true guardian of the rights and principles of the Second Amendment as envisioned by our founding fathers, while the NRA will likely remain the guardian of a multi-million dollar industry. 

It is telling that the NRA had a great opportunity to provide leadership on the issues of gun control, but they chose not to.  Through cowardice, they have attributed gun violence to everything but guns, with solutions that are inevitably (and financially) tied to more guns.  Through courage, the AFA would join us in confronting gun violence with rational, meaningful advocacy and comprehensive solutions.

In this capacity, the AFA would strengthen our Constitutional right to bear arms and affirm this fundamental value – one that is and will continue to be an integral part of our history and culture.

President Obama Should Hire Newt

In the wake of the latest national cliff hanger, our shared relief is tinged with a good amount of exasperation.   We have again been caught in the crossfire of politics and endured yet another close call with impending disaster, or so we have been told. 

Either way, the dysfunction of our governing process, characterized by sometimes rabid and destructive partisanship, should serve to unite all of us in at least one belief:  we can’t go on like this.  Whether the political class can ever respond to this bipartisan sentiment is an unknown, but it is up to President Obama to lead us toward some version of a functioning government.

How to do this?  Radical change is called for, and it must begin with the elevation of pragmatism over politics.  Bringing a moderate Republican like Chuck Hagel into the inner circle is a start, but Obama should push the limits further.  He should assemble a modern-day team of rivals that challenges all conventional wisdom and diffuses the partisanship that has poisoned Washington.

He should hire Newt Gingrich

Before my fellow liberals disown me, let us first remind ourselves that we on the Left like to claim the moral high ground because we believe in placing the collective good of the country ahead of our own self-interests.  Pragmatism takes precedence over partisanship, and with that in mind, we have an obligation to consider whatever options are available to shatter the most formidable obstacle to national progress:  government inertia. 

To put it mildly, I am one of many who have been viscerally displeased with the actions and beliefs of Speaker Gingrich through the decades, but that is now irrelevant.  We are, after all, a nation of diverse perspectives and one in which no party has a monopoly on moral behavior.  The pragmatic and realistic approach dictates that we put the best minds to work on the biggest problems.  As a world-class wonk, Gingrich is poised to serve his country like never before, both in the public eye and behind the scenes.

As a special advisor to the President, Newt Gingrich could resume the work he began through his Center for Health Transformation by overseeing the nationwide standardization and migration of health records to digital formats.  His network of public-private relationships is formidable and his vision for the future of health care on several fronts is worth serious consideration by all sides.  With no political battles to wage, he can return to the policies that he has advocated in the past - those of developing comparative effectiveness research and implementing the health care mandate – approaches that are well-aligned with the current administration.

Perhaps more important are the behind-the-scenes benefits of a Gingrich-Obama collaboration.  Many of us recall the days of mutual respect across party lines, whether it be between Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan, or, to a lesser degree, Bill Clinton and Speaker Gingrich.  In both cases, progress was made, compromise was reached, and legislation passed.  Government, whether you liked it or not, worked, and the relatively collegial tone between sometimes bitter political rivals was one of the things that made our country great and powerful.  Somehow, that statesmanship must be restored, and although the irony of it is historic, Newt Gingrich, with the direct personal experience of an opposition Speaker, may be just the person to help wind down the dynamic that elevated him to national prominence.

We also can’t underestimate the symbolism and example that will be set by such a dramatic breach of partisan barriers.  President Obama would be laying claim to the moderate middle and establishing the groundwork to build alliances with other Republicans, many of whom are silently fed up with toeing an orthodox party line that has no tolerance for compromise. 

For the Speaker, the inevitable price of serving his country by going to the “other side” would mean banishment from the Tea Party and other right wing orthodoxy.  But the truth is, when it comes to our universal dissatisfaction with the workings of our government, there is no “other side”.  At least on this issue, we are all on the same side, and this is exactly the type of bold move – one that is both pragmatic and symbolic - that can shift the conversation and begin the restoration of a functioning, competent government.    

We Are All Responsible for Newtown

If a civilization willingly rejects the constraints that prevent its individuals from killing each other, does it still qualify as a civilization?   What separates it from the barbarians of pre-history, in which extreme individualism took precedence over any form of civilized societal cooperation intended to preserve life and stability?

For those of us who believe that America is the greatest land in the world, it is no surprise that the events of Newtown have triggered a disturbing realization that our country is running off the rails.  Still, we have had exponentially higher gun-related death rates than other developed countries for many years. so what is it about Newtown that may have finally changed the conversation?

For the many who have long opposed gun control, there is a plethora of strained arguments and obfuscations that have both altered the political calculus and numbed those of us at the other end of the debate.  Fear creates its own empathy-free logic, in which no rational acknowledgement of statistics and their causal relationship is possible.  In the face of pointless arguments dripping with emotion, there is usually no point in continuing the discussion.

A common tactic is the “If they had a gun” argument, which deftly shifts the blame onto those who support gun control while citing some now-debunked research.  This argument also points a faint arrow of responsibility for one’s death to those who have died, because “if they had a gun” they might still be alive.  It is a comforting worldview for the gun lobby because it implies that our gun culture has no responsibility for the consequences of guns.  All responsibility resides with the individual (or the gun control laws that presumably allowed this to happen).

What Newtown did was lay bare the absurdity of this argument.  The now conceivable contentions that elementary schools must arm our teachers and equip 6 and 7 year olds with body-armor backpacks call into question not only our state of civilization, but whether it still even exists.  It compels us to ask ourselves, what are we? Who are we, if we have now reached a point in our history in which these “precautions” must be taken in America while being completely unnecessary in every other civilized country in the world?

Our shared pain from Newtown is so searing because it involves such innocence.  While the NRA might have managed to deflect guilt and diminish the innocence of massacred adults – because all of them could have supposedly had their own gun – they can’t do that with children.  They also can’t divert blame entirely to our mental health system; all countries have mental health issues and all of them have individuals who want to do harm to themselves and others.  The difference is that America puts the most devastating means to carry out that harm within their relatively easy reach.

This leads us to the real reason that Newtown has so affected us with sadness and outrage.  It is because we know, with varying levels of acceptance and awareness, that we are all responsible. 

We are all responsible for the state of our civilization and the standards of our society, and we have – for whatever reason you choose – let the unique parameters under which we have chosen to live take the lives of the most innocent among us.  No one is completely free of guilt and that is our starting point.  We must embrace this collective responsibility rather than point fingers at any one individual or entity (including the NRA) because it is the only way forward, and our only path back toward what might be universally defined as a civilization.

 

The Rise of Misogyno-fascism

A troubling pattern of offensive behavior has captured headlines on our side of the world, a behavior we recognize as misogyny - the actions and beliefs characterized by the hatred of females.  Why, we must ask, is this state of mind still so prevalent in a so-called civilization as advanced as ours? 

Before treading deeper into the basis of our current misogynistic state, it is instructive to first understand one of the fundamental reasons for hatred.  We are, undoubtedly, the only species that “hates”, and there are a set of characteristics that we commonly attribute to the objects of our hatred.  One of the most indelible is the propensity to hate that which we don’t understand.  This generic “unknown” is a deeply threatening adversary for those among us who are deficient in self-esteem, emotional security or some other basic benchmark of human mental health.  Among the necessary defense mechanisms to combat this threat, two have historically stood out:  Control, and Destruction.   When we are so deeply threatened by something because we don’t understand it, these are the actions to which we as a species will often resort.

There is significant overlap between control and destruction, and in many cases, the target of our hatred is effectively destroyed through the more socially acceptable and often legal exercising of control.   But the goal is always the same:  eliminate the threat.

Which brings us back to misogyny.  Although it is defined as hatred of women, it is more useful to consider it based on the behaviors it elicits than the emotion that is at its source.  Put simply, Misogyny is the reaction by those (men) who are threatened by those “others” (women) simply because they don’t fully understand them and are therefore completely ill-equipped to appropriately empathize with their circumstances.  The reactive behaviors are consistent and clear:  control and destruction.

Historically and presently, misogynistic customs and behaviors have been embedded in hundreds of cultures.  The control behaviors often deal with ways to cut off the mobility of women, whether it be yesterday’s foot-bound Chinese women or today’s Saudi Arabians who are prohibited from driving.  Men control the social mobility of women by forced marriage when they are children, or by preventing access to education, by keeping them from voting or holding a job, or even participating in sports.  Some societies require that their women be continually covered in public from head to toe, while others “circumcise” their women, perhaps believing that this will eliminate the sexual desire that could lead their (human) possessions astray.  Various rituals and assertions are used to give these abusive practices the illusion of social acceptability, some of which include the claim that these practices are a way of “honoring” or “protecting” women.

And then there is destruction, in which women are beheaded, stoned, tortured, burned, flogged, raped, disfigured, doused with acid, and victimized by numerous other unspeakable but astonishingly legal acts.  These are acts of gender hatred that are acculturated responses to the mystery that is “woman”.  The threat of that otherness is so viscerally intolerable all by itself that it must be destroyed.

Sadly, the threat of the unknown is a broad human condition and when the legal or societal constraints on certain behaviors are lifted or loosened, the acts of misogynistic control and destruction can bubble to the surface.  There is no difficulty identifying the telltale ignorance - the assertion that aspirin between the legs is a form of birth control (or if not, that the joke could be funny), the belief that contraception leads to abortions, the presumption that loving one’s country too much is a logical basis for extramarital affairs, that a panel dedicated to determining women’s reproductive rights should not include a woman – it is all indicative of the tightly bound relationships between ignorance, threat and denigration.

The full expression of denigration is control and destruction, leading ultimately to a form of fascism that, like any fascism, targets a threatening segment of society by imposing repressive control.  There is a clear continuum that stretches from the most destructive acts on one end to mild denigration on the other, but all fascists can trace their roots to the same feeble, frightened behavior of people whose underlying goal is to eliminate the threat of something that they just don’t understand.

And so when Rush Limbaugh throws the full weight of his destructive hatred behind a vulgar rant against a young woman who uses birth control, or laws are put in place to reverse the reproductive rights of women, or when a supposedly conservative governor promotes a bill that requires government to “intervene” into a woman’s vagina in a way that we could never have imagined, these are acts of control and destruction that are indicative of a society moving towards a state of Misogyno-fascism. 

Misogyno-fascists are weak and unenlightened men; men determined to exercise every control they can to destroy that which threatens them, men who can’t possibly empathize with women to the extent that they could recognize the absurdity, if not futility, of their behavior. 

They, of course, would vehemently disagree, pointing to their wives and mothers as proof of their love of women and their commitment to protect them.  But there are limits to their tolerance that mirror their ignorance and can be traced to their genuine (if unspoken) disbelief in the collective standing of women as their equal. 

In this respect, and as it relates to them in particular, perhaps they are right.  They are not the equal of women.