Today I learned that an oil change for a Lamborghini costs $1600

The definition of class standing is often a moment of awkwardness in discussions among Americans. Few people want to admit to being "wealthy" because that involves an inherent conflict of perspective when associating with those who aren't. Likewise, most people aren't eager to announce themselves as "poor", because of the similar social stigma. Back in the Old Country, it was simply accepted that those who were of the noble class were simply superior humans (Star-bellied Sneetches) to others and both sides were more or less comfortable with that arrangement (or had to be.) This kind of division had been handed down in many ways from the Roman Republic's patrician and plebeian divide, where the former class, even if its members weren't wealthy, had certain rights that placed them above the "commoners". That system, like that of later Europe, eventually became fuzzy around the edges, as wealthy New Men, like Gaius Marius and Marcus Licinius Crassus, later demonstrated just how foolish the idea of genetic superiority was (Yes, we still have a problem with that...) It was, of course, later revived in the Dark Ages like so many other things that had been dismissed.

In the US, there has nominally never been a "noble" class... unless you were White. And male. And a landowner. But aside from all of that, the ideal of the American experiment was that social mobility was key and anyone could be whatever they wanted, so long as they worked hard enough. This is The American Dream. As the US was founded as a moneymaking venture and has never departed that classification, the idea of social divisions was based solely upon that more practical divide that people like Crassus once used to their advantage: money. The "highest" social class in the modern American perspective is that of "middle class", since one can access pretty much everything that one wants (and certainly everything one needs) and not be seen by the bulk of the population as being part of the ownership class, who are the ones properly reviled for making/writing/altering the rules to their own advantage; typically to the misery of the rest of us. As part of the middle class, one can be comfortable and still qualify as Average Joe. It's a conceit and a pretty obvious one, but it's a tiny part of the vast illusion that so many carry about the success of that American experiment.

That's what makes the Robert Frank article yesterday on CNBC's site, spotlighting the ruffled feathers of the ownership class about Joe Biden's proposed new tax plan, so funny. First off, let's start with the idea that an income of $400,000/year defines one as "middle-class." (Why the hyphen? I don't know.) This ludicrous concept is solidly refuted within the article itself, as it points out that said income places one in the top 2% of income earners in the nation. Given a scale from 1 to 100, I'm willing to bet that most people would define the "middle" of that as somewhere within shouting distance of 50; such that "middle class" would be, say, the middle third, roughly 36 to 75% or so. That, of course, would plunge a number of people into those labels that they're eager to avoid: "upper class", "wealthy", "rich", and so on. This is, again, mirrored by those not wanting to define themselves as "lower class", since the shine of being a blue-collar worker on the lower end of the income scale has been rapidly rubbed off over the past half-century. It's not so much that people are doing "honest" or "necessary" work for lower pay (we can talk about the societal morality of that some other time), as much as it is that being perceived as "lower class" is part of being among those who have "failed" in America. Thus, everyone aspires to be "middle class" so that everyone can be the same and, of course, be treated the same just like all Americans are treated, right? Right? Tell it to a woman when the topic of salary comparisons comes up. Tell it to a Black person when the topic of treatment by police comes up.

This is from the Wall Street Journal, the last time Obama was seriously talking taxes (2013.) Extremely tough going for that single person making a quarter mil and needing to drop another $3K.

But let's get back to why Robert Frank has decided to take the ownership class' perspective on the concept of being "middle class". Let's start with the obvious: The real target of Biden's prospective plan is the super wealthy (i.e. the top .1% of income earners.) But that doesn't mean it stops only there. Thus, the acknowledgment that those who make $400K or more are, in fact, wealthy. CNBC attempts to refute this by suggesting that, since those "middle class" earners aren't driving a Lamborghini, they don't deserve to be labeled as such. (A friend pointing out this farce also informed me of the cost of an oil change for that line of cars. Life is rough.) He follows swiftly by citing the fact that less than 2% of the nation's population earns 25% of its gross income. If one is trying to make the point that the "middle class" is already burdened enough, this is hardly the way to start. And, as always, let's be sure to keep in mind the difference between income and wealth; the latter of which is often more difficult to quantify but which represents a significant factor in the difference between the wealthy(!) and everyone else. He reinforces this rake-stepping assessment of the obvious by pointing out that $400K is six times the national median (hardly "middle class", then, right?) and even three times the median in high-cost locales like New York and San Francisco.

This is immediately followed by the disclaimer that living in one of those high-cost cities means that $400K doesn't really go as far as you'd think (still 2 to 3 times the median!) when under the following definition of "middle class":

“Based on the expenses, a $400,000 household income provides for a relatively middle-class lifestyle,” Dogen said. “A middle-class lifestyle is defined as: owning a home, having two kids, saving for retirement, saving for college, going on modest vacations several weeks a year, and retiring in one’s early 60s.”

From a personal perspective, I've always considered myself to be somewhere in the vicinity of middle class because even when I (or we) was struggling to make ends meet, I still had enough for things like cable TV and wasn't in crisis mode when it came to paying the rent or putting food on the table. That's how I define "middle class." I've owned a home once in my life. It was a net negative to our income, because it meant that our housing cost basically doubled over the amount of rent we'd been paying previously. Oh, but the tax benefits! was the answering refrain when I brought up that point. Yeah, those tax benefits occurred once a year, but I was paying that mortgage in the 11 other months. I've never worked a job that paid me enough to seriously consider the idea of substantially saving for a child's college expenses (this doesn't even consider the outrageous cost of 4-year universities, currently), to say nothing of two. I've also rarely had a job that let me save for more than roughly six months of "retirement" expenses. Most so-called "middle class" jobs start at one or two weeks of vacation. If you stay there for 10 years, maybe you'll climb up to three or four. None of those qualify as "several weeks a year", be they "modest vacations" or not. Am I, then, not "middle class"?

But Frank argues that middle class folks who clear $400K/year (aka more than I've made at most of my jobs in almost 10 years) aren't doing so well, considering the mortgage on their $2 million home... So, why does their home cost $2 million as a "middle class" person again? Is it because they live in San Francisco? Well, that's a luxury good/choice, right? According to CNBC, even if they do make that luxury choice, they're still making 3 times the median income there, right? And they're still dumping what was close to an entire year's salary for me into their 401K, right? That sounds pretty damn wealthy. The fact that you spend every dime you make (except for, you know, the $40K going into a retirement account every year) doesn't make you unable to live the high life. It just means that you've made choices that make you cash poor in order to subtly signal your status (home worth $2 million in NYC), while you can claim to be more affected than you could be. People enjoying this special CNBC status are what the Russian peasantry used to call kulaks, peasants that had become landowners themselves, although that term originally meant "tight-fisted", which is not what's happening here.

And, of course, the genuine irony here about CNBC's definition of "middle class" is that all of those assertions that they make about that status were what Average Joe used to be able to do. When the unions were strong from the 40s to the 70s, they actually could work blue collar jobs and still send their kids to college, own a home, take vacations, and so on. A lot of people working the "white collar" jobs like I've done could do the same. We could do these things because the power of collective action meant that the ownership class was forced to acknowledge the value of both our labor and our identity as human beings. Since the Reagan era, that has been less and less of a concern to the wealthy and most Americans have been indoctrinated into their religion, as well. The ownership class became disturbed that lesser people could enjoy that fabled American Dream and decided to reorient the public's perception of who deserved what. Instead, what we now have is this:

What that basically displays is the number of weeks the average male worker needs to work in order to afford major expenses (housing, health care, education, etc.) In 1985, it was 30 weeks. In 2018, it was 53. It hasn't gotten better. It is, of course, even worse for women: In 1985, it was 45 weeks (just barely enough for those "several" weeks of vacation!) In 2018, it was 66. This also doesn't include other necessary expenses like food, clothing, utilities, and maintenance of those major expenses. It also comes equipped with the assumption that emergencies will never occur and, of course, that retirement will never, ever happen.

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that those same kulaks in early 20th-century Russia were believed to be tentative allies of the revolution, because they recognized the vast gulf that remained between their life of relative comfort and the resplendence that the top of the pyramid enjoyed. That may be the case here, as well, since the central theme of control always employed by the ownership class is turning one segment of the population against another; whether it be by differences of income, skin tone, religion, or otherwise. It's useful to keep in mind the source of this article and the type of America that they're most interested in promoting.

Just a little rain on the parade

Rain is on my mind. Not like Harvey rain. This ain't Michigan State's impending debacle. (Tangent: I've seen people on the Web blaming Houston's zoning regulations, or lack thereof, for the flooding. These people apparently haven't registered the concept of 50 inches of rain falling in a few days. 50 inches! 50! I don't care if your zoning regulations say: "Only one building, wetlands, and a dirt road per 10 acres." 50(!) inches of rain is going to flood ANYWHERE. /tangent) But some small rain on Michigan's latest gridiron campaign, beginning tomorrow, is clouding my thoughts.

I've been having a tough time getting excited for this season. My fandom has been slipping away for the last decade, mostly because I can't justify the existence of the NCAA any longer. Even if I was aware of the issue when the Fab 5 were complaining about it in 1992, the fact that an increasing number of billions of dollars is being made on major college sports and none of it is going to the athletes is something that just hangs over me when I watch the game. Nowhere else in society do you have adults be expected to put their skills to use and be explicitly forbidden from being compensated for them. At a minimum, you call that exploitation. At a maximum, there are much darker parallels to be drawn, especially given that the majority of those athletes are African-American. The fact that the only professional outlets for those skills in the US collude with the NCAA to deny those athletes access to those paying jobs for three years (in the case of football, 1 in basketball) past the age when most of them have legal standing as adults just makes the crime, and the associated hypocrisy, even worse.

You can add to that the issue of concussions. American football is a violent game, full stop. It's why so much protective gear is worn. Even sports that are considered contenders for the title holder of violence, like rugby, don't require so much gear because the game isn't predicated on extremely powerful collisions. Those collisions lead to concussions and I find that when I'm watching a game these days, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about what those kids are doing to themselves in the name of getting permission to be paid for what they're already really good at.

These feelings are in stark contrast to those of Michigan's current coach, who feels that football embodies everything that's good about life. In truth, no one else that I recall can so accurately be said to "live football." Every day, during almost every waking moment (he does have a family), one could make a fair argument that Jim Harbaugh is thinking about football and how to be better at it than he was the day before. My slow alienation from the game has reached its pinnacle right around the time that most around me, energized by the dynamo of his personality and the success that Harbaugh has maintained throughout his career, are more enthusiastic than ever about what Michigan could accomplish on the field. But I try to blot out the stain that is the NCAA and the scourge that is the threat of CTE and think in similarly positive terms and realize that I just don't share the faith anymore.

Brian did his usual excellent review (I can't call anything that exceeds 50K words a "summary") of the team and his expectations for the season and came down at the 9-3/10-2 mark. You know how many of those I've seen in my life? 12. Two more at 9-4, a 9-2-1, a 10-1-1, 5 10-3s (including the last two years), and 3 11-2s. There were a couple 10-1s, an 11-1, and a 10-0-1 in my lifetime but I was too young to know what was going on. I've seen a lot of apparently successful seasons for Michigan that, in many ways, don't really add up to a whole lot. I mean, yeah, a lot of Rutgers fans would kill to have the program that Michigan has, but their first problem is that they're Rutgers fans, so I don't really care about that. I just imagine sitting in front of a game, mildly irritated that these kids are sacrificing their health and bodies to make millions of dollars for someone else, and think about the impending 10-3 season and... I just get bored.

Do I really want to see Michigan slaughter Rutgers again? Do I really want to see the ritual sacrifice of Cincinnati or the slugfest with Wisconsin or the inevitable loss to Ohio State again? Do I really want to be implicitly supporting a system that denies these kids the opportunity to make a living off of their natural talent and developed skills, unlike 99% of the rest of humanity? Make no mistake. These guys are professional athletes. The only thing not professional about it is that they're not getting paid. Having recently been looking for jobs in a sphere where my only experience is of a volunteer or self-employed nature, I can tell you what most employers think about the "professional" standing of someone who's never received a paycheck. These kids are basically modern corporate America's favorite class: unpaid interns, who are supposed to be eternally grateful to the monolith that tells them that their time and effort aren't worth a dime without the guidance that the monolith provides. Insert Kubrick's giant black slab conveying the thought of tool use (violent tool use, incidentally) and it's kind of hard to deny the imagery.

I still enjoy the game, to a certain degree. I was watching Indiana and Ohio State play last night with an appreciation for what was happening on the field (and utter amazement at the modernity of about half of Mike Debord's offense; I'll never forgive 1999.) And despite a similar appreciation for Harbaugh's gung-ho personality and the dynamism that he brings to some parts of the offense, I find myself unable to join the Harbaughdyssey because I don't see the breakthrough that so many friends and others I respect insist is taking place. I don't see Michigan contending for national prominence on a regular basis because I don't see Michigan getting past OSU to win the division or go to the conference title game, which means 10-2/9-3 and some irrelevant bowl in Florida on an annual basis. Incidentally, the last irrelevant bowl game that Michigan participated in cost TE Jake Butt millions of dollars as his draft stock plummeted when he injured his knee during said game. "Come to Michigan! Do lasting damage to your body for free, because it's the only way to (hopefully) get paid for what you can do with that body!"

I look at that last paragraph and I feel mildly ashamed that I'm even contextualizing my apathy toward the record that Michigan might achieve, given the other concerns that I can't shake. I mean, certainly my interest in the game is grounded in what Michigan can achieve in it. I'm a fan. I have been since I was six years old. I could go on being just like all the other fans who love the game and all the kids who play it for that same, simple love. But I wonder. I wonder if that new coach who's supposedly the greatest thing to ever grace the sideline of Michigan Stadium (I've lived through six now; admittedly a ridiculously low number compared to many programs) is really enough to make me think that being a fan for one more 10-3 season is worth supporting the economic injustice or watching people risk the rest of their lives on a game that was probably a bad idea taken to extremes in the first place. I remain a fan, but I struggle with the idea of continuing to be a fan. Do I step out of the rain or keep walking to where I'm going?

My sympathy equates to zero

A short article appeared in the Newspaper of Record today about the changes coming in the college athletics (mostly football) landscape as a result of both the O'Bannon ruling and the NCAA's change that gives the top 5 conferences (mostly football) more leeway to decide how they want to conduct business. As with many Times articles, the reaction to anything new or different is viewed through a prism of general distaste and trepidation for anything that might disturb The Way Things Have Been. The paper doesn't have the nickname "The Gray Lady" for nothing.

My reaction to the article is simple: Yeah, life is rough makin' millions, isn't it?

You want to pay your coach $1.4 million and another 3/4 of a million in bonuses? Pay your players for the money they generate that enables you to do that. You want an athletic center that costs $6.7 million? Pay the players that are spending more time there than they would at a full-time job, in addition to their schoolwork. You want to play with the big kids while a reporter says that your "relative isolation in California's vast Central Valley" gives you a big fanbase? Pay the players that attract that fanbase.

It's just like major companies bitching about raising the minimum wage. You say it's not worth it to do business in the area anymore? Fine. Seeya. I'm quite certain that a smaller, local business will gladly step into the shoes you left and do quite well for itself because you didn't feel like your employees were worth a living wage. The examples of that are prevalent.

If all of this is an extended whine about how you won't be able to attract the best players because of the costs involved, I'm afraid you'll have to remind me of the last time Fresno St. attracted the best players. Oh, right. That would be never. Also, there's only so much room on the rosters of Stanford, USC, and UCLA, so anyone that wants to play big-time ball that doesn't make those rosters will probably still come to Fresno St., providing that you're willing to do those things that the Times is currently bitching about on your behalf: like stipends so they can travel home or their families can travel to see them play, or health insurance post-college for injuries they incur while making you that money, or access to people who can represent their best economic interests, etc. You know, all of that stuff that means treating them like any other person in any normal economy who's trying to extract value from their talents and skills.

The galling thing is that people like (now former) FSU athletic director, Thomas Boeh, even refer to what they do as an "industry" and then somehow gloss over the fact that the workforce of that "industry" is about one step above indentured servitude (they get room and board and a degree that's worth less and less every day and are denied mobility and any access to the real value of their abilities, from their employer or anyone else.) But if you bring this topic up to most NCAA or university officials, they'll insist that it's about "education". So, which is it?

So, no, I have no sympathy for FSU's desire to keep up with the USCs and UCLAs of the world. The only reason that Fresno St. is even in the conversation is because of the millions that institutions like ESPN have been willing to throw at the school to show its students risking their bodies on the field for money that they won't see a cardinal red nickel of. Until now. It's a brave, new world out there, filled with rights and moneymaking opportunities that other workers claimed a long time ago. Feel free to start crying me a river anytime, Mr. Boeh. It may be the only way you can build a new aquatic center if you still want to pay your football coach more than most Americans will earn in 30 years...

Fantastic misogyny?

 
As expected, last week's Cersei and Jaime scene generated quite a bit of discussion around the Interwebs, most of it fueled by some degree of outrage and/or disgust... which one would hope for in a scene that was pretty clearly rape. However, I think some people are losing sight of a) what the story is; b) whom the characters involved are; and, c) what the scene was obviously trying to do. Sarah Kolb's piece at medium.com is an example of that.

Now, like usual, this is treading dangerous ground because here I am, a man, talking about a topic that's, uh, not from my perspective. Although the sexual assault of men does occur in our society, there's no question that it's far more prevalent against women. Therefore, it's very easy to slide back into the commonly patriarchal view of such activity, which often leads to blaming the victim for displays of initial desire ("She wanted it!") or a failure to act sternly enough ("I would have stopped if she really didn't want it!") Even more importantly here, this is a work of fiction, so there's no interview to be done afterward to get the reaction from the characters or determine whose intent was whose, etc. However, this being fiction, one would like to assume that we can go ahead and analyze this from a relatively secure foundation of complete and total speculation and assumption, which is what we'll try here.

First off you can't (ahem) lionize Cersei as one of Martin's most interesting characters (which she is) and then complain about how the show has trivialized her into a victim because the show, if anything, has made her more interesting. Cersei doesn't become a POV (point-of-view) character until well after this event took place in the books (she begins in Feast for Crows, not Storm of Swords as Kolb stated) so we're not privy to her thoughts when this happens, just as we're not privy to said thoughts from either the character or Lena Headey on the HBO series. That said, you get a different level of detail from watching a performance than you do from reading a book. Cersei is little more than vengeful manipulator through the first few thousand pages of the books. Only later do we learn her vulnerabilities. We've already seen those multiple times from Headey in the show's four seasons. We can already sympathize with and even love her, in Kolb's words. She's already complex and she's still a victim, simply on the basis of her sex. But suggesting that the latter condition is somehow indicative of an overall attitude of the show and its creators is a bit too far of a leap, IMO.

Secondly, saying that the scene in the books is "completely consensual" is pretty poor memory on Kolb's part. The circumstances are markedly different (it's the first time Jaime has seen her in months, rather than being home for weeks; Joffrey has been dead for some time; etc.), but she says "No." quite a bit during that scene, as well, before giving in. It's easy to read her "No" in the books into the idea that she's just worried about someone coming in and seeing them and the uproar that would result. But how do we know that? In the same way that we shouldn't make a determination about anyone's intent leading up to a rape, we shouldn't here, right? "No means no", right? Is it safe to say that she "wanted it" because at some point she seems to have mentally said "I don't care if someone comes in. Do me, Jaime!"? Likewise, in the same way that it's possible to view that scene as "without question consensual", it's also possible to note that Graves' scene also shows Cersei giving in, returning Jaime's kisses, and then clutching the altar dressing in a pretty clear display of passion. At what point do we determine that her desire does or does not make it rape?

In the end, was it rape? Yeah, I think so. That's what I thought from the moment it started to the moment we transitioned to somewhere else, even after she began returning Jaime's passion. That's what it was and I was certainly a bit put off by it, too, not just because of what was happening but also because it was a radical departure from the route that Jaime's character has taken in the show and the books. However, that's what happens in good dramatic works and it usually turns into something more interesting than otherwise. Furthermore, to extrapolate from that shock into discarding the entire show as an exercise in misogyny is a good way to get me to discard said opinion as an exercise in hyperbole. For that matter, how exactly are rape scenes to be shown in fiction if not as a moment of shock and, presumably, horror? How exactly should they be shown or told "correctly"? What better reaction for the audience to have than the one that the vast majority had precisely to this one?

Women are property in Westeros, just as they were in many societies in earlier times (and still are in many today, unfortunately.) That's precisely the focus of Cersei's character in that she has been one of the most powerful people in the Seven Kingdoms for quite some time and, in an instant, she's reduced to being a bargaining chip again. Consistency in storytelling is actually a strong point, so deviating from what has been firmly established is as much a fool's errand as rewriting history because it's too dark for today's tender sensibilities and more enlightened viewpoints. To be honest, Kolb's is the only opinion I've seen so far that's even speculated on the idea that part of the audience would react in a "bitch got what she deserved" manner. On the contrary, the reaction has been one of almost universal shock and confusion... which is exactly the reaction you would expect to get for a rape scene! Art works. Wonders never cease. Because, yeah, it is a lot like real life. Maybe that's the point?

Later, Kolb's argument turns to the fact that what seems to be really eating at her is that Jaime's upward return from the vile person that he was before has now been put on hold. In other words, he's still a self-centered guy who feels entitled to take what he wants, even from the person he loves most in the world. She's upset that the show "butchered the moral principles of one of [her] favorite male characters." Exactly how many "moral principles" does a child-killer and nobleman who regards most commoners as footstools to be used mounting his horse actually have? While it's a surprise to everyone (at least in some way because it is such a deviation from his path in the books), it's also no reason to dismiss the show and, to some extent, Martin's work as misogynistic (even aside from the seeming hypocrisy.)

That's almost the funny part, because there was an opinion for quite some time after 2000 and prior to the publication of Feast for Crows that A Song of Ice and Fire was a work of misogyny, primarily because even though Martin had multiple strong and interesting female characters, the vast majority of them were regarded as either despicable, weak to the point of contempt, or harridans (Cersei, Sansa, and Catelyn, respectively.) The only real exception was Daenerys, who is still widely regarded as the story's only genuinely heroic figure, and who is still one of those whom modern society would term "morally questionable" because of the casual way in which she's willing to execute thousands of Astapori, Yunkaii, and Meereenese. So, whose high horse is really being ridden here?

The scene wasn't funny. It wasn't titillating. It didn't even show any of the famed nudity that people seem to think is so overdone (oh, but not the brutal violence... no, there can never be enough of that for American audiences because that's OK for the children...) It was exactly what it was supposed to be: dark, and not just because the lighting was low. While many people, like Kolb, have had a visceral reaction to it, I think that was honestly intentional. Whether it was a good idea or not remains to be seen. I think it works within the scope of what the show has already portrayed and will continue to do.

(And, incidentally, Asha Greyjoy is Yara Greyjoy in the show because they thought people would be dumb enough to confuse 'Asha' and 'Osha', the Wildling. Asha, again, doesn't really come into her own until A Feast for Crows begins, so while I'd like to see more of her, that story is still being played out. Again, not because the producers hate women.)

The nail ladies and their lack of understanding

This is brilliant.

New York’s rich and super-rich convened in the Hamptons on Sunday for a trio of fundraisers for Mitt Romney, expected to bring in as much as $4 million. And the well-heeled donors did little to avoid looking like, well, moneyed attendees paying for exclusive access to the Republican candidate.

While a group of Occupy Wall Street protesters assembled in the area, the Porsches, Range Rovers and BMWs streamed in. Here are some of the best quotes from the events.
A gem from the Los Angeles Times:

A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. “I don’t think the common person is getting it,” she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. “Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them. “We’ve got the message,” she added. “But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies — everybody who’s got the right to vote — they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income — one, you’re not as educated, two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact.”

Peter Cohen, the former Shearson Lehman Bros. chief, told the Associated Press — while chewing on a cigar — that Romney is a “plain-talking guy.”
Ted Conklin, who owns the American Hotel in Sag Harbor, told the New York Times that Obama is a “socialist.”
“His idea is find a problem that doesn’t exist and get government to intervene,” Conklin added, his wife, Carol Simmons, nodding beside him in their gold Mercedes.
But wait, there’s more. From the Times:

Ms. Simmons paused to highlight what she said was her husband’s generous spirit: “Tell them who’s on your yacht this weekend! Tell him!” Over Mr. Conklin’s objections, Ms. Simmons disclosed that a major executive from Miramax, the movie company, was on the 75-foot yacht, because, she said, there were no rooms left at the hotel.

 It's not like most Obama fundraisers would be any different in terms of attitudes and ignorance, but they're typically smart enough to keep their mouths shut.

Ethical-type substances

Now that the big news has broken in the college football world that the good Senator Tressel may not be as lily-white as his books proclaim (First page in the Manual: Cheaters win. For a while.), I thought I'd revisit the topic of ethics that I brushed past a few weeks ago on the new national holiday now known as Osama Got His day. (Just for the record, I never believed Tressel was as spotless as his true believers like to think. After all, I knew his name from Youngstown State.)

What exactly are the ethics of an assassination? Under the traditional rules of war, anything goes with regard to figures of strategic importance. In World War II, often referenced by half-assed liberals as "the last good war" (I won't even get into the concept of 'good war' here), the US had broken the Japanese codes and knew which plane Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was going to be flying in and promptly ambushed it and shot it down; an assassination as sure as one from a single bullet but a wartime act against a soldier and, thus, more easily placed within the realm of 'ethical' combat.

Killing Osama bin Laden, in the midst of our perpetual war (cue Orwell) against an enemy that can come from anywhere and can be identified as anyone; whose status in life can change from "citizen" to "terrorist" to "combatant" to "enemy non-combatant" (my favorite) with the stroke of a key, ended up being just one more example of the plasticity of the ethical code that the US has long touted as what sets it apart from much of the rest of the world.

Big surprise, right? I mean, we're all cynics here. It just amuses me in the same way that watching people fervently believe in US presidential candidates does. After all, think about the killing of this man the next time that people are outraged when a US or allied VIP is killed in a random bombing. It's a horrible crime against humanity! But killing this unarmed guy is somehow 'justice'. On the contrary, a targeted assassination is just what it sounds like (and, incidentally, illegal under US law and multiple international treaties which the US is a signatory to, not least of them the Geneva Conventions), whether you use a SEAL team or and a gun or a block of plastique and a Honda. The phrase "don't stoop to their level" comes to mind.

"Oh, but it's not even the same!", you say. "After all, we just shot one guy who deserved it. They kill innocents with their bombs." In military parlance, innocents are often termed "collateral damage". I won't bore you with the endless stories about collateral damage that currently has the president (read: stooge) of Afghanistan making vague threats against the US as a consequence. Go find them.

Terrorists are often the neighbors of the collateral damage and it's said activity that frequently propels them into that life. Of course, there are still ethical questions even within the framework of terrorism. When the Baader-Meinhof/Red Faction group were active in Germany in the 70s, they committed a number of bombings; at least two that injured the very workers that they claimed to represent. There was, of course, outrage within the organization for having harmed the very people they were fighting for, even though the most notable occurrence was an attempt to assassinate the editor of a prominent German newspaper.

If the RAF or al-Qaeda had the ability to only kill their targets with their bombing attacks, one would think they would exercise said ability (which, incidentally, is not completely beyond the reach of many groups, since Hezbollah has proven to be very adept at this over the years.) After all, why kill or maim the very people you're trying to recruit/protect/serve/inspire? A reasonable person has to assume that some degree of ethical assessment goes into acts like this in the same way that the US government calculates what laws it's willing to break or principles it's willing to abandon to serve its masters' interests.

Of course, it's easier to simply assume that bin Laden and all of his associates are simply inhuman monsters because it's easier to fight and kill people when you dehumanize them. That's been a standard approach of warfare from time out of mind. So, did the inhuman monster deserve to die? Most people would insist that he did because of his supposed role as the planner of the World Trade Center attacks. After all, even though he was only indirectly responsible, the perspective of Nuremberg, that the planners are every bit as culpable as the doers, is still a popular and easily argued stance. It's only mildly hilarious to the historically obsessed among us that the very Conventions that the US has been serially violating for the past half century were written in response to the very acts that took place in the time period of the Good War and to which Nuremberg was the initial response. Irony is fun!

Again, did he deserve to die? I don't know. Does Larry Summers deserve to die for inflicting his economic ideology on the Baltic republics and Russia and indirectly (i.e. like bin Laden) causing what may be thousands of suicides and untold misery? (pleasesayyespleasesayyespleasesayyes) Where do personal ethics, national ethics, and the concept of justice meet? Do they meet? Does national interest trumps ethics or can it be one and the same, in the long-term? "Let every action aim solely for the common good..." Or is it simply impossible to be genuinely ethical in a "wartime" situation?

Let's back up a bit: When the Bill of Rights was first discussed and promoted by George Mason and later Madison and Jefferson, one of the key points that they referenced was "freedom from occupying armies", which became the third amendment that freed civilians from being forced to quarter troops in their homes. Part of that was motivated by people being tossed from their homes by the British in Boston during the revolution. But part of it was motivated by there being a distinction between wartime and peacetime. Most of the writers of the Constitution were very concerned about the concept of a standing army, as it not only represented a drain on resources, but also a government that always had the use of force within easy access. This concern (and confusion) was later eloquently expressed by Einstein, when he said: "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."

However, since the end of World War 2, the US has been on a wartime footing and wartime economy, with the "war on terror" only the latest manifestation of the national policy that someone is always out to get us so we'd better be ready to shoot back (cue MacArthur). Does that mean wartime ethics are perpetual, as well? And what defines them? We've already seen the willingness of the US to evade the accepted 'rules' of war., but there's a more pervasive aspect than simply outrageous acts of violence. It's yet another example of the militarization of US society that has created an outlook where nothing can be sufficiently 'solved' without the use of guns; most often in the interest of economic influence or control in other nations (at home, of course, we just use old-fashioned bribery.)

If one decides that we are permanently at war, then any ethical constraints on behavior become that much weaker (after all, "things happen" in war) and the concept of a civilized society becomes that much more distant. If one decides that the previously acknowledged 'rules' of war are no longer applicable because this war is different, it just gets that much worse. So, where do ethics and, for that matter, civility actually come into play, not just in the bin Laden assassination, but US foreign policy in general?

UnEgyptian

My assumption (a safe one, I think) is that you'll never hear the title word used except as satire: "That's unEgyptian, man."

By contrast, one can hear or read the word "unAmerican" on a regular basis here in the homeland. The offending action or opinion varies based on the speaker's homegrown determination of what does and does not qualify, but it's often employed to designate anything that doesn't conform to the "common man's" idea of national identity, firmly (and commercially) delivered to him as something along the lines of baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet.

Nowhere else in the world is national identity so twisted together with self-identity and, consequently, national government. Consequently? Yes. Because despite all the rantings of Tea Parties from every corner of the country, Americans tend to self-identify with their government moreso than almost any other nation. This is something that's been drilled into the collective head of the American public since the late 18th century. They've been told that they are the government and, since the government is them, it not only embodies them in dealing with other nations but also creates a peculiar stumbling block that other nations aren't burdened with.

No one would suggest that the course of events in Egypt (and Tunisia) over the past couple weeks was "unEgyptian"; as if some sacred principle of the Egyptian state were being violated by people demonstrating in the streets of Cairo and demanding the dissolution of state bodies and offices in order to create a brighter future for themselves. On the contrary, they tend to call it something between "democracy in action" and "chaos in the streets", often depending on their socioeconomic status. (As an aside, nothing is more entertaining than watching the US State department's dance over the past two weeks, always one step behind the music, as they attempt to keep up the facade of the scion of liberty and democracy, while not wanting to completely step away from the strongman they've contributed to keeping in power for 30 years. Both the hypocrisy and the US media's willingness to turn a blind eye to it are as hilarious as ever. A friend asked me at one point: "How does this make us look?" I replied: "Like Satan, but retarded.")

But it's not completely reviled in the way that it would be here, because it's not considered to be "unEgyptian." Egyptians are not tied to the state in the same way that Americans are. Egyptians are largely tied to each other moreso than to the bureaucracy that identifies the nation of Egypt. Consequently, when conditions deteriorate to the point that they have and people have reached a sufficient level of anger, they pour into the streets and demand redress from the government for the lack of basic freedoms, from the security apparatus that has kept many of them cowed for 3 decades, and from the rich that have helped keep a vast chunk of the population in dire poverty for just as long. No one will accuse them of violating some enshrined philosophy that says that the people (of whatever nation) simply do not do this because it's unEgyptian, unFrench, unRomanian, unMalaysian.

Why is that?

One answer might be ethnicity. With a largely Arabic and "Egyptian" population, it's more difficult to blame the neighbors for one's problems rather than the rich and government-supported persons that are really at issue. In the US, you can convince poor white people that poor black or Hispanic people are causing their problems, rather than the government which is owned by the wealthy and, thus, serves their interests. It's tougher to convince poor Egyptians that other poor Egyptians are the reason that wealthy people have all the opportunity and the rest of the population can simply suffer.

Another possible answer is that Egypt does not have a national identity based on sanctified statements from 230 years ago. The Egyptian state is a system that is imposed on the people. They have no philosophical attachment to it. But Americans... Americans are taught from birth that they are the state and the reason they embody the state is because a couple pieces of parchment say so, despite all evidence to the contrary. Consequently, to revolt against the state is to revolt against oneself, even in the face of one of the primary figures behind those pieces of sheepskin, Thomas Jefferson, stating thus:

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure." 

What he meant was that the people should never become too placid about the state; that the latter entity should always remain within their direct control and, if it were ever to escape it, "it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it". Somehow, people always seem to forget about that line in the Declaration. But Jefferson was largely alone in those sentiments (James Wilson of Pennsylvania being one of the few delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 who was of like mind.) Most of the other learned men with whom he associated to start the whole mad venture were convinced of the same thing in the thirteen colonies that the US government is convinced of now on the streets of Cairo: democracy is bad.

Democracy lets people actually make choices. If they can do that, they'll often make choices that the people who own them don't like. The US Constitution was written with the express intent of denying actual policy-making choice from the citizens of the United States. US culture has since perpetuated the idea that whatever the government, as an edifice, does is in the name of and to the benefit of the citizenry. That's why it's unAmerican to criticize US foreign policy. That's why it's unAmerican to consider trashing the whole construct and starting anew. That's why it's unAmerican to consider the idea that other nations may have made some improvements on the model (since, y'know, we did it first and, therefore, best.) That's why the TV told you that America's favorite cars were shitty Chevrolets and you believed them because there was a guy selling hot dogs in the stands at a baseball game somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania.

Despite all protestations to the contrary, most people swallow it whole. Check out the slogan of the majority of the Tea Party movement: Take back our government. They're not offended by the fact that the government serves only those people who've bought and paid for it (read: Goldman Sachs.) They're not offended by the idea that the government was designed to exclude them unless they fell in line with whomever the approved "representatives" were and are. They're offended that people inside said edifice aren't spewing the right platitudes and making life better for them by making it worse for the black people or the welfare queens or the atheists or whomever shouldn't be enjoying the American dream by dint of being "unAmerican".

The Egyptian poor revolt against the state and the rich people that benefit from it. The American poor (granted, relatively speaking in the face of the poverty that afflicts much of Egypt) revolt against particular figures within the state or the mythical beneficiaries of those bureaucratic criminals who are manipulating the perfect system that would otherwise make life a Caribbean cruise for the average Tea Partier. You know, if things were right and American with the world and all. Egyptians revolt against the sham government they've been under for 60 years? That's OK. Americans revolt against the sham government they've been under for 230 years? That's heresy.

And if America has been supporting that sham government since Sadat agreed to play ball? Well, that's OK. See, Egypt is sitting on top of (some of) our oil and protecting the western border of the satellite that keeps a US toehold in everything happening there, so if US foreign policy has helped deny basic liberties to Egyptians... maybe that's OK and maybe it should keep happening, too. After all, we wouldn't want the Muslim Brotherhood to come to power and create another overt enemy of the US in the Middle East. Consequently, it's a wise idea to perpetuate the torture and imprisonment of Egyptian citizens who dare to speak out against the state for the sake of preserving the American way of life, principle be damned. Such is the message that has occasionally spewed from CNN and Fox when the daily limit of fear and paranoia had not been reached and viewers were encouraged to apply good ol' American pragmatism to policy. This is how the population continues to embody the government and its associated hypocrisy. Anything else would be unAmerican.