Day 310, January 19, 2020

 "The Question is Whether Our Nation Has the Will..."

Tonight's soundtrack: The Ray Brown Trio and Friends, Germany, 2001 (check out at 1:08:56 George Fludas' super slick transition from brushes to sticks on the drum kit)

A Frozen Cranberry Pond

It is quiet out. Only a few cars out on the roads. After a busy day meeting with students and various other people on Zoom, it is easy to imagine that I have been aware of all that has been going on, but I haven't. I'm mostly off of social media during the workday, and I don't see what's happening on the New York Times unless a particularly noteworthy headline appears in my inbox. Like almost all of us in this pandemic moment, all I know is what I read and watch a mere 24 inches from my face, and what I sometimes see and smell when I walk the dog. So, admittedly, my own view is narrow.

Life is in many ways an experiment in parsing out causation and correlation. In recent years as I've struggled with ulcerative colitis, I've tried to figure out what things set off rebellion in my guts. Today, perhaps it was eating two clementines after lunch... maybe two is too many. Or maybe it was eating leftover Chinese food from Sunday's takeout. Perhaps General Tso was unhappy to marinate in its juices. Or maybe it is because my body is so acclimated to eating a chocolate or two after lunch every day since Christmas, that today, my first day devoid of chocolates has created a withdrawal reaction from missing such pleasures. Maybe that means I should go find a cookie now. Maybe, I shouldn't have had an egg and cheese sandwiched between two flat biscuits (my failed attempt at recreating Brass Buckle style biscuits this weekend) for breakfast. Or... maybe it was all these things in combination.

I was thinking about that a lot this weekend as I finished reading Angela Saini's Superior, and as I read Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "America's Chief Moral Dilemma" where he spells out the confluence of racism/white supremacy, poverty/class/capitalism, and war/militancy. Of course having a few more slices of a clementine is not going to subvert a 6 foot tall man's entire digestive system. But, add that to a series of similarly ill informed, or outright bad choices, and all of a sudden you have an insurrection happening in the Capitol, and for the next several days or weeks you need to eat gentle things like oatmeal, bananas, and house the National Guard in the rotunda. 

The core of Saini's argument against linking biology to human intellectual capacity is that it is impossible to separate the impact of history, culture, and individual experience on the impact of each and every one of us. The most marvelous aspect of humanity is our ability to transcend circumstance, to do amazing feats of physical, mental, and artistic prowess. We do this amidst caste systems, histories of slavery and apartheid, institutionalized racism, despicably unequal distribution of resources, and educational systems that are designed with a specific kind of student in mind. How can you claim to have isolated human intelligence or capacity to a certain set of genes within a certain social construct of race, or geographic continents? It can not be just one of these things in as much as it is all these things that shape us. 

As Dr. King so clearly states, one cannot segregate one's moral concerns. These things are all interrelated. The issues of racism, from the rates of incarceration for Black men in America, to the police response to Black Lives Matter protesters compared to the Capitol Building insurrectionists, to the disparate outcomes for people of color who die from COVID. These things are intrinsically tied to money, wealth, power, the demonstration of power and control, and the militarization of our police, the public performance of militias, and the proliferation of guns in our society. Make no mistake about it, we have been at war, not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but upon our own shores. Our war has been one of those quiet wars that consume a nation so silently that it is only in history that we will be able to look back upon our days and wonder how it was possible that we did not notice what was happening. 

Over the weekend, I also watched Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods. It is an intense film. And one of the things that it makes very clear is the terrible, terrible cost of war on people's lives and bodies. How can anyone who sees the reality (or the imagined reality) voluntarily enter into such an endeavor? And how can anyone, who sees the reality (or the imagined reality) choose to send young men and women into such an endeavor? It defies logic. It is the worst use of resources. And yet, despots and presidents alike, pour those resources into the destruction of life. 

And to look at how money has corrupted the foundations of democracy, one only need to look at the cost of a presidential pardon (apparently, Clinton also took contributions ((why are these not bribes?)) for pardons). How outrageous is that? For only $2 million dollars, you too can have your personal turkey forgiven and set free. 

So, where does that leave us? I think Saini and King and maybe Lee, too are saying the same thing. That underneath, we are all suffering, we are all experiencing pain, we are all capable of love, we are all capable of generosity. We are all innately capable of seeking out that which is not racist, not about capitalocentrism, that which does not privilege the militarization of our populace. All those things are interrelated and understanding how they shape our experience on this planet is crucial to understanding how we can create a more just, a more equitable, and more peaceful nation and Earth. Maybe that is what they are saying, or that is what I am seeing from my narrow, isolated, pandemic perspective.

Take care and stay safe,

Leo