A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

The Slacktivist has, I believe, a compelling post about the disconnect between words and action in political rhetoric. He ties together the shootings in Arizona with something very similar to what I’ve said in the past about abortion. (I don’t think I picked up that theme from him originally, but who knows? I read a lot and don’t always know how ideas creep into my brain.)

He’s not saying that the violent rhetoric caused the shooting of Rep. Giffords or that the comparisons of abortions to the Holocaust caused abortion clinic shootings. Rather, he’s saying that you have to be crazy to take such rhetoric at face value. Because, if you compare such speech to the speaker’s actions, the two don’t match up.

They do not believe their own nonsense. We know that they do not believe it because they “don’t behave” in accordance with what such beliefs would entail — what such beliefs must entail.
. . .
The substance of what they say demands “a radicalized citizenry.” If we are in the midst of a “Holocaust,” then we are obliged to respond more vigorously than simply waiting four years for the next opportunity to cast a vote for a candidate who tells us he sympathizes with our opposition to this “Holocaust.”
. . .
They do not behave as if they believe what they say. We are thus forced to choose between believing their words or believing their actions. We cannot believe that both are true. We cannot believe that both are honest. If their actions, their very lives, are sincere, then their words are dishonest. If their words are sincere, then their lives are monstrous.

Neither alternative is pleasant, but these are the only options allowed to us.

The same goes with Palin and “death panels.” “If you really believed that some kind of government Gestapo was being sent to euthanize your elderly neighbors, then opposing these forces would not be a matter of choice. It would be a moral obligation.”

I have no time to develop this thought, but I was chewing on it a bit as I was shoveling the driveway this morning. It seems to me a lot of heated rhetoric takes the form of apocalyptic or revolutionary narratives. The listeners are asked to view themselves as special people in special times. I wonder if some of the effectiveness has to do with the trouble folks have in coming to grips with the vast scope of time and space. In the grand scheme of things, we are trivial. And this is daunting. (Alluded to by Douglas Adams’ Total Perspective Vortex). As Jon Stewart put it in his Rally for Sanity Speech, “We live in hard times, not end times.”

John Carney, in a CNBC column, paints a plausible scenario about why it could be tough for banks to foreclose in Massachusetts in the wake of a couple of state law decisions about the documentation necessary to proceed with the foreclosure. I haven’t read the decisions, but apparently the Massachusetts state courts have decided to be a little more picky about the documentation necessary to foreclose – not unduly so, but given the sloppiness that apparently took hold of the home loan financing industry, possibly more than they can accommodate. (And, Matt Taibbi has pointed out that the sloppiness was probably more of a feature than a bug for some of the upstream parts of the home finance casino).

At the state level, the originating lender probably recorded their interest then assigned it to a purchaser who also probably recorded the interest. Beyond that, things get fuzzy. At some point in the chain, there was probably a purchaser who was part of MERS or some system where there was only a nominal recording – the real party in interest kept changing as the loan was bundled, securitized, and sold hither & yon. The court wants the foreclosing bank to be able to prove a chain of title that keeps the note of indebtedness with the mortgage. (Without the mortgage, the note is an unsecured IOU with no special attachment to the real estate.)

So, anyway, getting proof of that assignment could present practical difficulties with folks back down the chain two or three links or more: a) not knowing if the person making the claim is really the true owner; and b) more importantly, not wanting the hassle or liability associated with verifying and executing an assignment.

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.

This is a line from Wilhelm Stekel quoted in The Catcher in the Rye. I wish I had held on to it, but when I was a freshman in college, I recall reacting fiercely to this in an essay. I recall feeling at the time like it robbed me of something essential, something having to do with the right to go out in a blaze of glory if I chose. Forty has a hard time of remembering twenty, so I can’t explain, let alone justify, that feeling; but I do remember that it was strong, and it was visceral.

I am reminded of that feeling when I’ve been reading online the reaction of some people to the notion that, particularly in the wake of the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords they should abstain from gun and violence laden metaphors in their political rhetoric.

Now, before anyone gets the vapors at the suggestion that violent rhetoric is connected to this incident of violence, I will stipulate that I know nothing of the motives of the shooter, and I will further stipulate that her political opponents called only for metaphorical violence and not real violence. When Sarah Palin used crosshair imagery and “targeted” Congresswoman Gifford, she did not have a particular desire for actual bullets to be used. And when teapartiers talk about “Second Amendment solutions,” they are just being blowhards. And when they talked about political opponents being traitors, dictators and agents of tyranny, they were just talking out of their asses.

My personal suspicion is that this shooting does not happen in an environment where political debates are fact based, policy oriented, and lacking in violent rhetoric. But, again, I can’t prove this. Demonizing your opponent as an intolerable Other is more emotionally potent than boring old debates about the relatively modest distinctions between mainstream politicians. But, I also think it’s dangerous. Creating a narrative in which the very soul of a country beset by evil is at stake is probably useful in motivating your supporters; but it also tends to give license to other, potentially darker, political fantasies.

Giving up these narratives is emotionally difficult. When you suggest that people give up spinning those fantastic narratives and abstain from violent metaphors in political rhetoric, I’ve seen a very strong reaction in some quarters, as if you’re asking them to castrate themselves. As if such rhetoric is so vital to self esteem (or, I suppose political viability) that it’s worth the attendant risks. There is vehement denial that there is even the potential for attendant risks. It’s absolutely fair that, for example, Palin and her supporters should react strongly to the suggestion that her rhetorical crosshairs had anything whatsoever to do with the subsequent literal crosshairs. There isn’t any proof. But, there’s something more. You didn’t see the meticulous concern for factual accuracy when allegations about Obama’s “death panels” were the talk of the day.

There is visceral, emotional attachment to violent rhetoric and these political narratives invoking battles between Good and Evil that reminds me of whatever it was that so offended me as a young man by the suggestion that a mature man should be more concerned about living humbly than dying nobly. It’s probably time for us and our political discourse to grow up. However, I doubt there are many votes in that, and, again, it’s emotionally difficult; so pigs will undoubtedly start flying before that happens.

This incident, as well as (more locally), the overturned conviction of grandmother-stabbing Gary Galloway based on insanity concerns (pdf) and, I’m sure, plenty of other incidents; should really be leading to a discussion of how we handle mental illness in our society. But, that won’t happen either. Dealing with mental illness is complicated, expensive, and, again, interferes with a cherished narrative. In this case, the narrative is that we all rise and fall pretty much solely through exercise of our individual will. Recognition of mental illness seriously muddies the waters of our perception of free will and, consequently, issues pertaining to personal control, blame, and even our relationship to good and evil.

I had a legal writing teacher who was warning us about how tough it was to be vigilant when proofreading things we had written. “The brain is a wonderful thing, it just wants you to be happy.” In doing so, the brain creates blind spots to issues that might make you unhappy. In legal writing, that can make you glaze over weaknesses in your arguments. I think the same applies when cherished myths have an uncomfortable relationship to reality.

My recent trip to South Carolina has made me resolve to be more gentle in my treatment of Southerners. In particular, while staying over night in Ashville, NC, I met a nice gentleman and his daughter from Atlanta. (I was a bit amused as my children introduced themselves to these folks as “Lincoln” (his full name) and “Harper Lee.” If I’d had a third child named “Sherman,” it would have been even better.)

Contributing even further to the improvement of my estimation of Southerners was an encounter with a guy named Mike at a bar in South Carolina. I was at a table watching the Colts game against the Raiders. Mike walked in and had a Colts hat on. There were only a couple of TVs showing the Indy game and the seats near those televisions were scarce. I was the only one at my table, so I invited him to have a seat if he wanted. Turns out he was a huge Tennessee Volunteers fan and followed the Colts because of Peyton. Anyway, he shared his onion rings and, unexpectedly, picked up the tab for one of my beers as he left. Very few things are better calculated to improve my disposition than onion rings and beer.

Still, the decency of modern day Southerners notwithstanding, I think it’s important to push back against myths about the Civil War that might tend to soften our views of that dark period in our country’s history. James Loewen has a column in the Washington Post deconstructing five myths about the Civil War: 1) The South did not secede for State’s Rights – if anything, they were against State’s Rights before Lincoln’s election when they were pushing for federal intervention on issues like being allowed to travel in the North with their slaves; 2) Secession was not about tariffs and taxes – those may have been an issue 30 years prior, but just before the Civil War, tariffs and taxes were pretty much set by the South and the Southern states were silent about them when explaining their reasons for secession; 3) while most Southerners didn’t own slaves, that doesn’t mean they weren’t fighting for its continuance – people too poor to own slaves aspired to some day become wealthy enough, and, with slavery, poor whites at least knew they were better than someone; 4) Lincoln did not go to war to end slavery – his personal hope was to have slavery end, but as an official matter, he was clear that if he could preserve the Union by not freeing any slaves, that’s the course he would take; and 5) Slavery would have died out on its own – it’s tough to prove a negative, but the entrenchment of slavery and the wealth it provided to the Southern elite makes it difficult to believe it would have died out on its own accord.