Burdened by the bullshit of Thomas Jefferson

 "When the public fears their government, there is tyranny. When the government fears its people, there is liberty." 

Snappy, right? Punchy. Memorable. And so true. What a genius.

The first premise is true. A government that rules by fear must back it up with violence and repression. But the second part oversimplifies the relationship and validates anarchy and lawlessness in which the people end up fearing each other. Unity is lost. Democracy is lost. Faith in government is lost. The nation defaults to tyranny as the void is filled by ambitious, opportunistic leaders.

The mess we are in now is the direct result of the 1980 Reagan campaign undermining the legitimacy of government. Generations since have been trained to be contemptuous of government.

The Reagan administration was full of shit, using their anti-tax, anti-government rhetoric to round up voters disillusioned by the mistakes of the Vietnam era and constantly paranoid from decades of the Cold War. All they really wanted was to make rich people richer. And they had no strong objection to racism and homophobia as long as those sentiments continued to bring them a reliable voting base. But the main objective was always wealth concentration.

Government that served the people broadly cost too much money that the rich could spend more wisely on more real estate, and whatever gratified them personally. This includes high profile philanthropy as well as gaudy, shameful ostentation like gold toilets. The underlying premise was that rich people were the elite. They deserved all the money they could attract and were free to spend it as they wished. Their expenditures would magically create jobs and prosperity as the money dripped from their fingers with every wave of the hand.

Every young person who gets their first job learns about taxes. They sign on for X-amount per hour, and then their check is a lot smaller than the product of simple multiplication. Stuff gets taken out. Once a year, you have to take a math test to get some or all of what was withheld refunded to you. Often, they get this first job while they're still in school, perhaps struggling with math, as I did. It doesn't seem fair, especially when you learn that the more you earn, the higher percentage of your income goes to taxes. Whaaat? The more I make the more you get? Fuck you! The concept of progressive taxation takes too many words. What do you mean when you say that the businesses that generate income also burden the public and should pay for services? Huh?

Then there are the other deductions. To a young worker, Social Security seems remote. The money deducted for that doesn't get refunded the way overpaid taxes do. The return on it sits too far off to seem justifiable when you could use that money now. It's easy to believe various charlatans who assure you that you could make far more playing the market with private retirement investments. Forget volatility and untimely market corrections. Don't ask how the brokerages make their cut. You'll do great! Just keep the government off of everyone's back. The great Thomas Jefferson said that the government is supposed to fear the people. Keep them on the back foot! They're the enemy.

Bumper sticker philosophy rules public opinion. A popular one says, "Become ungovernable." This glorification of immature oppositional defiance strikes at the foundation of our constitutional system, but it sounds so damn cool. Yeah! Ungovernable! Don't tread on me! I'm a badass!

Jefferson is also credited with saying that the roots of the Tree of Liberty need to be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants from time to time. This was written at a time when the meat on your plate at supper might have been walking around your farm that morning, and you might have slit its throat yourself. Human history is drenched in blood. At least the cause of liberty is a worthy use of the violent death in conflict that you might face anyway at the whim of a king or emperor. It was also written when war on a global scale was held back by the transportation and weapon technology of the time.

After World War II, the survivors of that conflict all seemed to agree that we didn't want to do that again. We've had almost constant warfare since then, but on a smaller scale. Hard to say how the score sits between the tyrants and the patriots. But we do know a lot more about post traumatic stress disorder and how to reconstruct physically maimed people. So there's that.

Regardless of the political labels, elected representatives have to deal with the details when they enact policies that will affect the entire operation of the country. They put lives at risk in the military and intelligence services. They kill or save millions inside and outside of our borders. Every two years, the voters kick the table and open the door to strong winds that blow the papers around. They base their decisions on whatever they can hold in mind about the people they're voting for and the beliefs they represent. A lot of them skip it altogether and hope for the best.

If fear is valued, fear will be cultivated. If the choice is only between a government fearing its people or a people fearing their government, we will only live in a constant climate of fear. That doesn't lead to good decisions.

"Daddy's home"

Trump's highest profile supporters are likening his return to "Daddy" coming home. The implication is that now butts that deserve it will be whipped soundly.

I already theorized that the majority of supporters of the current regime were from abusive family situations. There's corporal punishment and then there's ruling by fear. Corporal punishment is debatable because it reinforces the idea of the right answer for the wrong reason, but a family ruled by fear is just a bunch of hostages.

Abused people seem to react in one of two basic ways. Either they come out of it determined never to do it to anyone else or they accept it as the norm and perpetuate it. Among the latter, they develop a pride in their ability to withstand it. It made them stronger and better people who deserve now to hold the belt rather than receive its lashes. In their worldview you toe the line or take your lumps. If you want to be the one who makes the rules and enforces them, fight your way up. Stomp on whoever will fall before you.

Reveling in the idea that an angry, abusive father has returned to punish the disobedient is the opposite of freedom. Because the supporters of this regime are themselves pretty clearly veterans of abuse, they may squeal when it is turned on them, but they will revert t0 their old roles, cowering before their capricious overlord.

Safety depends on consent

A piece on NPR this morning about Squirrel Hill and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting mentioned that it was a "safe" neighborhood.

The devotees of armed force like to remind the rest of us that no place is safe. And they are right. Unless you are in some super-fortified safe room -- in which you are a prisoner of fear -- you may encounter an evil person any time, anywhere. But the odds are better in some places than in others.

I lived in a safe neighborhood in West Annapolis in the 1980s. Just a few doors up the street, someone was murdered in their home. As I recall, that was a spousal murder. It was still a murder. A couple of years later, on a slightly sketchier residential street in Edgewater, the guy next door wigged out on PCP and fired off a few rounds at something imaginary before sprinting up the street stripping his clothes off. Years before that, in Coral Gables, Florida, I found a .32 slug from our crazy neighbor flattened against the wall of our house. She was a drinker, who kept the pistol at the head of her bed. Good thing the houses in that neighborhood had thick masonry walls. We never heard a shot. She could have done it any time, even before we moved in. Just another day.

Mass shootings and ideologically motivated murder have increased in this country since the mid 20th Century, adding to the ongoing death toll that merely stems from the ugly side of human nature. Our own citizens subscribe to enough homicidal ideologies to supply us with atrocities that require no invaders or sneaky terrorists from abroad. We rate the safety of a neighborhood on its record of crime and violence. But ideological violence leaps over the local customs between neighbors, the consensual agreement to live and let live.

Safety depends on consent. The residents of a place agree that they will work with and around each other without resorting to forceful confrontation. They will respect each other's boundaries. In the best cases, they will enjoy the experience and expanded point of view brought to them by a diverse population. But even lacking a diverse population of residents, people can cultivate a peaceful attitude if enough of them choose to do so.

All this is for nothing, the armed and dangerous crowd tells us. The only path to peace is through the threat of mutually assured destruction or by eradicating everyone who holds an opposing viewpoint. Anything less is cowardly.

For decades now, the promoters of an armed society have been telling us that anyone must be prepared for a gunfight. As the rhetoric creates an ever more paranoid and volatile population, their prophecy fulfills itself. I see armed men all the time, just going about their lives: shopping, gassing up the truck, serving on town boards, with at least one gun visible. With permitless concealed carry, they could have a couple more tucked in various crevices on their person. A couple of weeks ago it was a scrawny young dude with a 12-pack of beer under one arm, and a handgun bigger than his skinny thigh almost pulling his jeans down as he climbed into his truck.

The Second Amendment cancels out the First, if the threat of armed response is what makes people shut up and ignore each other's behavior. Flip the bird at someone who drives like a sociopath and you may find out just how much of a sociopath he is. It was always true. Anyone might have a gun, regardless of the laws. But the more we enable and encourage the idea that deadly force is normal, the more of it we will see. Deadly force may be a last resort, but feel free to hop right to it with only the briefest glance at other options on your way by. Homicidal ideology plus an arsenal of firearms leads you right to Squirrel Hill, or a grocery store in Kentucky. It breaches the agreement of safety wherever it arrives.

Every time I've considered carrying a gun I've decided that it would probably make a situation worse rather than better. Because we do not yet live in an actual war zone, by the time you know that deadly force is justified you have probably already lost that battle. Our stereotypical movie cowboys of the mythical old west weren't fighting off muggers. They were calling each other out in duels. Or the sodbusters were engaged in guerrilla warfare with the ranchers. Or the gang of outlaws would sweep down on the town, where the brave sheriff and his deputies would pick them off. In every case, the participants knew that they were in a defined conflict. It was right there in the fictional script.

The racists and antisemites in this country who want to eliminate people they deem undesirable are eager to define the conflict and declare war. They have no use for conventions of safety. Perhaps they would feel differently if they were immersed in a lengthy conflict that destroyed a lot of property and killed a lot of their friends, but you'll never convince them of that by imagination alone. They imagine glorious victory and rivers of blood from their enemies. The same optimism has ushered in every war since the first pre-human picked up a stick and showed his tribe-mates how great it was to bust heads.

That first war led to the proliferation of sticks. A secret weapon is only a secret until you use it. Then everybody wants one. And no one imagines themselves on the receiving end of it. That reality sets in later, when the glorious conflict turns into a quagmire. And people start to yearn for peace, rest, and safety.

Republican nominee Trump

If Donald Drumpf ends up as the Republican nominee, America will have a referendum on hatred. So, if you are afraid of a Drumpf candidacy, you have already given up on America. He IS rallying angry, bigoted people. He's bringing them out, not creating them. They need to be repudiated at the polls. If they can't be, then this country was lost a long time ago. The truth may turn out to be sad and scary. That will make it no less true. At least then it will be out in the open and we can prepare for the rest of the world to decide whether to appease the real America or eradicate it.

Conservative conceit

It's been almost a year since a relative of mine used the conservative assertion that some person or persons we were discussing "isn't old enough to be conservative yet." It still bothers me coming from a family member, when I might have brushed it off from some idiot on the street, the television or in an opinion column.

I first ran across this snotty put-down back in the 1990s. I'm sure it's older than that, but that's how long I've had to be aware of it. It's one more subtle way to turn a discussion of issues into an exchange of insults. By all means, be patronizing.

As further proof that I'm living my life backwards, I have steadily grown less conservative as I have gained life experience and listened to the stories of more and more people. I have my limits, but anyone to my right would surely say I am and have been headed in the wrong direction.

Over the years I have steadily scoured out remnants of racism, sexism and homoanxiety I had acquired simply by growing up privileged and white in the 1960s and '70s. Sure, lots of white people were braver and more noble in support of the advancement of all the repressed and downtrodden, and others were far worse in continuing the oppression, but in the middle were doofuses like me who laughed at certain jokes without thinking hard about them, who treated women at least ever so slightly like a prey species and worried about whether we might be homosexual because male classmates were questioning our manhood. Even referring to heterosexual orientation as manhood, as if it was the only form of it, is a holdover from a more simple-minded past.

Fiscal conservatism can be sensible. I don't like to waste money, even if I do get along with all sorts of freaks and weirdos and believe that no one should make 700 times as much money as someone else who has a job and tries to be useful. I happen to believe that the government established by the US Constitution is basically a good model for addressing a bad situation, namely the need to have a government to take care of the routine details of running a society that allows for ample citizen input. The channels of input have been bought out by financially powerful interests masquerading as "the Private Sector." If they can be reclaimed, the big old rickety ship of state might actually start working for the benefit of all once again.

Conservatism in its worst form tends to reject ideas based on their source and to act on the basis of fear. While the conservative may brandish weapons and say warlike things, it is the emotional first line of defense against a world perceived as inherently hostile. If they are correct, and the human race is incorrigibly violent and duplicitous, I'm even happier not to join anyone's hate club and not to have subjected any offspring to the Planet of the Assholes.

I know my relative's fear springs from a time he was very small and still innocent, and had the very bad fortune to be thrust into the middle of desegregation in the schools in a city that was only just recovering from a period of racial violence. Oops. He's not a swastika-wearing skinhead, but he's one of those people who still keeps the N-word available in his vocabulary to describe dark persons who do things of which he does not approve.

Other influences have contributed to solidifying his position. I never argue about it. There's no point. Everyone has to try to find methods that get them successfully through one day and the next for as long as they keep getting more days. While I believe that many -- if not most - of the positions strongly held by today's conservatives are bad for the future of humanity, I know that no one can change this by acts of force. And if it can't be changed by persistent spread of knowledge and a gentle insistence on productive discussion and action, it won't be changed at all. So back we come to the self-fulfilling prophecy of conservative dystopia. They'll have been right because their intransigence brought about the culture of violence and distrust they feared existed all along. The only freedom comes through the skillful use of weapons against whoever tries to muscle in on you.

Bummer.