Campaign Finance—The Government We Deserve, and Why It Won’t Reform
“New friends pourthrough the revolving door,maybe there’s one that’s moreif you find one, that’ll do.But us, Old Friend, what’s to discuss, Old Friend?Here’s to us!Who’s like us?Damn few!”—Old Friends; Merilly We Roll Along; Stephen Sondheim
Antipathy towards, and contempt of, political leaders has always existed but rarely, it seems, to the degree we are currently experiencing. But this is unsurprising—we have lousy representatives, terrible representation, and you know what? We deserve it.
Campaign finance reform has always been an issue in American politics from its inception, but it seems especially pertinent today. Many people agree that there is too much money in politics, that power and speech are disproportionately bought and sold by the monetary movers and shakers in the upper echelons of society, whose interests are seen to while the rest of us flounder and flail about in useless, impotent rage. The general solution to the problem that seems to be most often proposed is to limit the ability of individuals and collectives to donate to given campaigns and candidates, to reduce the amount of money any one politician can receive from a single donor. The proponents of these reforms frequently attempt to structure them in such a way as to limit only the abilities of their political opposition’s potential contributions while simultaneously preserving their own. The creation of Super PACs as a method of circumventing this current reality only further compounds and confuses the issue.
The problems with top-down attempts to control and curtail the influence of money on politicians and their campaigns are varied and many but most people seem to agree that the largest issue is one of interest; the people who could level the political landscape most effectively are the very people whose interests would be harmed as a result. That no one ever proposes to limit the discretionary limits of Government largess, or the ability of government agents to distribute such, seems proof enough of this. So platitudes are said, speeches are made, and nothing gets done.
Increasingly, many feel that we are limited to one of two avenues of action: to organize into collectives large enough to challenge these interests, which historically has only ever had the sort of success where, at the end of the day, the heroes of justice and equality look in the mirror to find that they have become the beasts they meant to slay; or, to await the coming of a political maverick—a messiah!—to lead us forward and overwhelm the corporate bureaucrats, part the sea of red tape, and push through the necessary legislation that will magically prevent the masters of capital from ever again wielding the influence they always have.
These opinions, regardless of their validity, miss the larger point. People declare that money is the root of our problems, that too much money in our politics is why our political system is (supposedly) broken. This viewpoint, aside from being overwhelmingly Christian in nature, confuses cause for effect. Money is not the reason for our broken political system; rather, our broken system is what enables money to have such a perceived influence.
Political campaigns are studies in incentives. In order for a politician to get elected (or re-elected) the politician must connect with as many people as possible and convince or persuade them to vote for him. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, some more effective than others, and all of these cost money. Good campaigners will seek to maximize the potential return on their advertising investments. The cheapest methods—print media, books, pamphleteering—are the methods that require active engagement from the intended recipients, and are by their nature the least effective, the least likely to reach undecided or persuadable voters.
The average American has a reputation for laziness when it comes to anything outside their work or personal pleasure, and while this is not an entirely unfair assumption the simple truth is that most people, after a full day of work, do not have the time or energy to make the effort necessary to thoroughly inform themselves of the issues and people on the ballot, all of whom seem so removed from their daily realities. Thus, the most effective means of communicating with—or rather, to—the average voter are media advertisements; television, radio, and so on, which are disengaged, passive methods of absorption. These avenues of communication take less energy than active engagement but also result in weak understanding. Reading, discussion, dialogue—these methods of engagement are the respiration of political thought, breathing life into the process and energizing the participants.
But while visual media are far and away the most effective methods of reaching voters they are also the most expensive. Politicians, by existential necessity, are incentivized to spend most of their week seeking contributions to fund their next campaign, rather than working primarily on solving the problems for which they were elected. The result is that we elect a class of politicians whose primary skills lie in extracting money from people and firms, rather than solving their problems—and we wonder why there is so much money in politics while nothing gets done!
Worst of all, when these do-nothing politicians finally retire, are defeated, or otherwise leave office, they are quickly hired by various firms and organizations that use their access and connections to lobby their replacements on their behalf, creating revolving door of influence peddlers and an aristocracy of political pull. In such an environment, where the decision-makers are divorced from the consequences of their actions and never have to leave their protective political bubble or face the vulgar subjects of their policy decisions, is it any wonder that moral hazard predominates in Washington?
The most pathetic aspect of this demented dance is that various economic studies suggest that this mad scramble for political cash, at least for campaign purposes, is largely a waste of everyone’s time—and money. Large volumes of campaign spending have, at best, a marginal effect on electoral outcomes, and money has a tendency to find its way into the hands of political candidates that were already more attractive to voters from the beginning. Thus, the correlation between greater campaign dollars and political victory is not a causal relationship, but an expensive coincidence, resulting in the raising and spending of lots of superfluous campaign cash could have been put to more productive use.
So who is to blame for this situation? What is wrong with our system? As implied earlier, it’s us, the voters—we are what’s wrong. We are unwilling or unable to meet our politicians and office seekers halfway, to challenge them, to engage them in dialogue rather than be engaged by advertisements; to push back, rather than be pushed, or “nudged” as it is now termed by behavioral economists. And until we voters change our habits and priorities we will continue to get the politicians we deserve.
Ally — The Word That Makes Everyone Worse
“France has no friends, only interests.”
-Charles de Gaulle
De Gaulle’s famous rejoinder to Clementine Churchill, who implored him not to hate his friends more than his enemies, is a characteristic feature of politics (and crime, for that matter); the situation is always fluid. Goals and priorities shift, alliances form and dissolve, and the map of the world is rewritten.
Much the same can be said of social justice, broadly; the landscape of identities and factions perpetually balkanizes into ever more fractious inter-sectional sub-groups, and the broken pieces coalesce into new alliances and confederacies, only to fall apart again from the inevitable internecine conflicts, mirroring our political topography with alarming accuracy. In this environment, close comrades can become hated enemies almost overnight. It’s a marvelous social sandbox that could probably teach us a lot about the nature of loyalty, faith, and group psychology, for those who can stomach the unremittingly pathetic show.
This Boschian tableaux is having a Orwellian effect on the very language that we use, and our attitudes toward it. An expanding set of discrete words and phrases are increasingly becoming the proprietary property of specific groups of people, and the usage of such verbiage by non-members has become an action worthy of censure. The result? The lexicon of available words with which to communicate our thoughts with clarity and precision (not to mention, creativity and joy) is narrowing and approaching a precipice. Soon, we won’t be able to talk in any way but in the anodyne, corporate, HR-compliant manner, with approved, proper, and exclusively permitted diction and syntax denuded of all meaning, content, interest, or personality—all packaged in the cowardly, evasive, and inoffensive passive-voice, of course.
No, the irony of that last phrase is not lost on me—I am a product of my environment, after all.
Even worse is the exclusive associations certain words and phrases now have with specific groups and factions; words such as problematic, or degenerate, for example, words that I adore for their evocative nature, can be taken by some as implicit confession to membership of, or sympathy with, the social justice or white supremacist causes, respectively.
Newspeak is looking less and less novel.
But there is one word whose current usage I find more insidious than most, and that cuts to the heart, lies at the root, of the problem.
Ally.
The term is ubiquitous in social justice circles. Article after article can be found discussing the importance of being a good ally, instructing how to be a better ally, advising acceptable diction for allies, and explaining to potential allies which privileges they need to check if they wish to claim the coveted mantle. It is a mark of distinction that many are eager to receive as recognition of their efforts towards their cause of choice, and as proof against accusations of impropriety—allyship is seen as a social prophylactic, however imperfect.
Note the imperious tone of condescension and superiority that pervades every word of the above pieces. The title of ‘ally’ is used interchangeably as both carrot and cudgel to motivate desperate people, fearing for their reputations, to conform to the entitled demands of resentful activists, to massage their fragile psyches in a perverse public display of ego validation.
But why do such people desire allies? And who desires to become one?
Ally is a political term, used to denote a person or faction with whom we share common cause, at least for the moment. This shift in usage from the political to the social context is implicitly divisive, in a multitude of ways. Requisite declarations of a common enemy aside, the most destructive aspect of its increasing usage is the encroaching redefining of our interpersonal relationships. Such relationships, once predicated on friendship, are increasingly devolving to mere alliances, to everyone’s detriment.
Friendship is a recognition of goodwill and the common humanity between two individuals. Such acknowledgment obliges us to respect the individual rights of others and to deal with them as we would ourselves—it is the basis of the golden rule. Allies have no such obligations; all they require is a common cause, and, more importantly, a common enemy. It is a pragmatic relationship of political convenience, requiring no particular bonds of loyalty, decency, or respect.
And so the desire to both create and beomce an ally reveals itself; becoming an ally, though a more precarious position subject to the control and judgment of others, is easier than establishing friendship, and can substitute for same in the minds of the weak and the insecure. It’s pathetic, but such cultivated weakness has become a characteristic of our culture, a society dominated by tech and finance companies whose primary profit centers are best expanded by encouraging social and financial behavior that nurtures and enables the most self-destructive habits of the socially inept and misanthropic, creating more such people in the process (the subject of another article).
And we all understand this as a society on a fundamental level. There is a reason why children’s programming and media—books, comics, video games, cartoons, and beyond—overwhelmingly stress the value, desirability, and positive enduring power of friendship, of love, of the utility and necessity of social connections and bonds.
Allies do not need to be friends, and that is dangerous outside the realm of politics (and even within, if we are being honest).
Alliances are as dangerous for the allied as they are for the enemy, possibly more so, for at least the declared enemy knows where to watch for threats. A relationship based on political expedience is a mutually distrustful one-way street, capable of being unilaterally discarded the moment it is no longer politically useful.
The individual nature of friendship is not an accident—groups cannot become friends, as that relationship requires individual identities; identity groups, ironically, do not, and cannot, have this characteristic. It should come as no surprise that as society brings greater focus on identity groups and focuses more of its conversation through that lens, the emphasis on alliance over friendship becomes more pronounced. The result: people, rightly or wrongly, are coming to view politics and ideas as greater threats to their relationships than religion, race, or class.
The increasing usage of ally as a position of status, and the insistence on the expansion of this paradigm by the self-styled trend setters, taste-makers, and thought leaders who most benefit from possessing throngs of thralls clamoring for their nuggets of approval, motivates people to view and use each other as stepping-stones on the paths of their ambitions, with a concomitant tendency to view relationships as primarily political, rather than personal.
And to make all things personal, political.
The more we trend this way as a society, and individually, the more we will see each other as tools for our personal use, rather than as people deserving of, if not respect, then common, basic human decency.
In Memoriam: Gilda
I was driving home late on a Saturday night when I got the news—my great aunt Gilda had just died. Her death was comparatively sudden; she wasn't exactly in ill-health before the cancer was discovered but deteriorated quickly once diagnosed. I spent the days since then reflecting on what my great aunt meant to me, fragments of thoughts and memories flitting through my mind but never quite settling.
My first instinct was to lament how intermittently I visited her, but I knew that I would feel this way even if I had gone to Las Vegas every other weekend. Such thoughts brought me back to my bubbie's funeral. There was a moment in that service when anyone who wished to relate their memories, feelings and anecdotes about Bubbie were invited to do so, and I, to my shame, could not. I know that, at the time, my own emotional turmoil made everything a murky haze, but I can't help regretting that at the critical moment, my words and thoughts failed me.
Not this time.
My cousins gave a loving and heartfelt eulogy that reinforced what I already knew about Gilda—she was glamorous, kind, generous with her time, and utterly irrepressible. I knew she once went on a date with Elvis, but never knew that she had also dated Jackie Mason; small details that filled in some of the gaps in my knowledge, but still couldn't paint the full picture that was Auntie Gilda.
Gilda was the sort of person who seemed ageless, whose vitality made time seem to slip by quietly, barely touching her. She lived so well for so long she seemed almost immortal. But real immortality is more than just timeless beauty. It is found in memory, in the period after we die, when everyone who knew us carries their memories of us with them long after we are gone. Then they too die, and we are truly gone. It's a limited sort of immortality, but it's all we have, and we owe it to those who go before us if we are to expect it of those who follow after us.
Here then, are some of my most vivid memories involving Gilda. They may seem silly or trite or unimportant to some, but to me they are significant.
I remember her jewely chest. As a little kid I would sneak into her bedroom during one of her infamous parties, open her drawers full of gaudy Leven jewelry and run a tactile exploration of the treasures. I would pick a double-handful of the massive necklaces, bangles and earrings, raise them just above eye-level, and let them fall, watching as they would smoothly slip through my little fingers, dangle from my little hands, and land with a happy clickety-clack back in the drawer.
I remember the piano at her Encino house (of course I would remember her piano) and how she would let me play and bang and hammer away at the poor instrument even in the midst of the most lovely of parties. For reasons I will never know, she always had the same book of sheet music sitting on the music stand and it was always turned to the Blue Danube, a perennial favorite of the Leven sisters, as though she were waiting for someone to learn to play it for her.
I remember her jacuzzi, in both houses. I know that I nearly drowned in the one at her Encino house—and I actually somewhat remember this—but for me this just adds to the adventure and exoticism that is auntie Gilda; something exciting was always happening in Gildaville.
I remember her catching me chip-handed, double-dunking in the spinach-artichoke dip—which is especially embarrasing since now both sides of my family have caught me in the act, and made a public spectacle of it when it happened. Gilda was a lot like my dad's family that way; she never let anything slide. But like Dad's family, it all came from a place of love. Maybe some people can't appreciate such distinctions, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to appreciate who Gilda was without being able to recognize the subtle difference between the loving critic and the spiteful killjoy. The more time you spent with Gilda, the better you learned the difference.
I remember how my music was never good enough. Gilda had a fantastic musical ear. Whenever she was in town I would play her one of my latest compositions, and she always told me what was wrong with it. Even when there was nothing wrong. But I could always count on Gilda to give me a real opinion, honest and blunt. No punches pulled. No prisoners taken.
I remember how, when my bubbie got sick, Gilda came to Los Angeles almost monthly to visit and help take care of her. Despite how hard it was to see her ailing sister in such a state, she faithfully spent the vast majority of her time during these visits tending to her until the very end.
I remember my visits to her Las Vegas house. They usually resulted in a distinctly un-Vegas-like experience. The city of neon magic was just a short drive away and yet I always found myself never wanting to leave the house; no one could spoil you the way Auntie Gilda could.
There are other memories, but these are the ones I felt like sharing. My great aunt Gilda was a vivacious and impressive woman. The world is a little less bright without her.
Posted with BlogsyThe Nature of the Economy
Note: Edited, retitled and re-posted from October 21, 2013
Lately, I have been making the most of my work commute by getting a subscription to audible so as to catch up on the reading I would otherwise rather be doing in place of the 1-2 hours daily I spend on the road.
I was listening to the audible edition of Basic Economics, by Thomas Sowell, when a thought occurred to me: The economic environment is a not so surprising parallel to the natural environment. (To be fair, thoughts occur to me all the time while reading/listening to books, which is often highly distracting). This may not come as much of a revelation to most, and in truth I had made this connection before; but, for some reason this time I saw it in a way I hadn’t really understood before; The economy cares about individual businesses, their successes and failures, to the exact same degree that nature cares about individual species—not at all. Species thrive; species die. Businesses thrive; businesses die. The world keeps turning and the market keeps moving.
It is not enough to say that both environments run on the Darwinian principle—survival of the fittest. While true, this statement does not go deep enough. Most people do not understand the exact degree to which this is the case.
For example: When Arnold Schwarzenegger announced c.2003 that he was considering making Warren Buffett his economic advisor to help California through it’s financial crisis, many people were quite excited at the prospect. Even some of Schwarzenegger’s harshest critics had little to criticize about such a possibility. In fact, whenever Buffett makes comments about matters relating to business, people attend his words as to Moses at Sinai. And why wouldn’t they? The man is the most successful individual investor in the world; clearly he knows what he is doing. If he can run such a successful business, then he must know everything there is to know about how to manage an economy! Predicting the economy is what he does for a living—and he wins!
Nevermind that no one can possibly know everything, and even Buffett makes mistakes, this sort of logic is what allows for brigands like Donald Trump, (whose entire existence is built on plying money from his investors and then filing bankruptcy in his corporations, leaving them in the lurch after absconding with the profits—and I use the term ‘profits’ loosely; these companies never make a dime in profit, but his corporate salary is nevertheless his from the outset) to constantly threaten to run for president on an economic platform based entirely on their reputation for business acumen, expecting that people will believe such an attribute to be applicable to the economy at large.
The truth is that Buffett—and Trump, in his own way—is a businessman, not an economist. These two things are not the same. The purpose of a business is to make a profit, and a businessman does his best to steer the business in such a way that it is most likely to succeed in this task; an economy—increasingly The Economy—is the environment in which this happens. But the environment owes nothing to its denizens and operates under its own set of rules, independent of what the businesses under its aegis might desire. Outside factors—the government, for example—can try to affect The Economy to its own ends, but ultimately it is simply outside of anyone’s ability to command; to command it one must command the trillions of individual transactions that occur daily as the result of the interactions between the millions of active participants within it, as well as control their needs and desires to a degree of exactitude impossible outside of an Orwellian nightmare-state, and maybe not even then.
The economic environment is indifferent to the concerns of business, or rather, individual businesses. Whether they succeed or fail, so long as activity continues, the economy thrives—and activity always continues.
The parallels with the natural environment are so obvious that any concrete examples risk belaboring the already extended point. You need only notice the stunning biodiversity of your immediate location, expand that to the entirety our little blue marble, and then realize that the vast majority of these species are relatively young, and have little to nothing in common with their ancestors. The species that exist today are nothing like the species that once were, and for good reason; 99% of everything that has ever lived is dead. Gone. Extinct. Several times over. Extinction events have happened multiple times in the course of terrestrial history. And each time, nearly everything was wiped out. I suppose we could retroactively blame the mass extinction of very nearly everything that has ever lived on the malfeasance of human activity echoing backward into the distant past (since there is simply not enough room in our current era to contain all of our combined environmental evil), but that seems like a bit of a stretch (though a great premise for a sci-fi novel). The simple truth, as George Carlin said, is “we didn’t kill them all.”
We are not the culprit; Nature is.
Nature does not care about individual species, if it can even be said to possess such a human quality. It simply is. It grows and changes, and the species that can adapt to these environmental changes survive; those that cannot, die. And nature goes on, uncaring and unending, until the stars burn out.
Attempts to command nature or control an economy invariably meet with embarrassing results, as Xerxes and the various communists discovered. Examples of the consequences of this sort of folly are found everywhere, from real life to the wildest science fiction: killer robots, inefficient factories, mad scientists, pervasive poverty, overwhelmed dikes, sunken ships, rampant AIs, the zombie apocalypse—all of these examples of the catastrophic failure, real or imagined, of human ingenuity serve to underscore a fundamental truth; some things are just too big to fuck with.
Shooting the Hostage
Another funny thing about our already hilarious shutdown: the longer it goes on, the easier it gets to start blaming it, at least initially, for unrelated failures. Case-in-point: the water-pressure was pitifully low when I took my shower this morning, akin to standing under an overflowing gutter in the rain. My initial thought? ‘Oh great, now they’re using our water to squeeze us.’
This was of course a silly idea, as was proven later when I stepped outside and saw the busted water pipe that had flooded the entire street, but the fact that I even went there is suggestive of something sinister; minor paranoia is already starting to affect my thinking.
The administration is calling the Republican’s tactics ‘hostage-taking’ and ‘terrorism.’ The purpose of terrorism is to achieve political outcomes by way of instilling the sense of fear and paranoia in its intended targets, and manipulating those emotions through means nefarious and foul.
Certainly, hostage-taking of any sort falls under this definition.
But if terrorist-related action can be measured by results, then the administrations very public demonstrations of the results of calling the Republican bluff can be taken as the executive equivalent of shooting the hostage; it causes just as much fear and uncertainty, particularly since the shooter is, according to his own narrative, supposed to be the good guy.
I imagine our perception of things will continue to get more distorted the longer this continues. And isn’t that what this fight is ultimately about?
Tactical Closures
Much has been made of the various closures and suspensions of government facilities and services: Yellowstone, Yosemite, The Washington Monument. Some of these are particularly hysterical, such as officials blacking out the windows of Liberty Hall through which the Liberty Bell can be seen. Apparently, the bell is like a googleAd—it costs the owner for every view. Other hilarious closures include the National Mall and the WWII and Vietnam Memorials, which makes one wonder at how public “public” space truly is, since these memorials are not enclosed and presumably require more money to close—and keep under excessive guard—than to leave unattended, free for the vulgar masses to vandalize and venerate at their leisure—leisure being a commodity with a current excess of supply among certain groups.
Washington Monument Syndrome—which is a concept that, prior to last friday, I never knew had a name (thanks Oren)—seems to be at the heart of this patently silly game of political chicken. Both sides seem to be intent on making a public display of government dysfunction so as to, when the dust settles, pin as much blame upon the other side as possible. The american people, generally, are smarter than this, but the sad thing is, it almost doesn't matter&mdashthe current players are the only game in town; as Kang and Kodos would say “You have to vote for one of us!” As such, a third option seems ever less likely to present itself.
The political game in general, and in this situation in particular, can be as deceptive to the politicians as they can be to their constituents. When situations are set up in such a way that there must always be a clear winner and loser, the merits of victory can become tenuous. Because it is easier to destroy (or ignore) opposing ideas than it is to build, expand and fortify your own, it is tempting to focus on the former to the exclusion of the latter. As such, it can start to seem in the eyes of many that the failure of one set of ideas is proof of the validity of the opposing set. In this way, arguments can start to resemble wars, and positions become armies whose individual members must be supported at all times, regardless of their individual validity. As a result, whoever wins will, in all likelihood, believe that they prevailed because they were right, and that America at large agrees with them, not because their position was just slightly less intolerable than the opposing one. Thus, the politicians are using as a barometer of their success a metric that is not entirely reliable. Vince Lombardi was wrong; winning isn't everything. How victory is achieved is just as important if not moreso. Such a disconnect with reality can only encourage more of the same problematic behavior in the future.
This seems to be what is going on in Washington. It is almost as though the politicians, tired of the general deadlock (which is itself manufactured), have constructed (or fabricated) a situation that will have to end in someone's favor in a big way; big enough to command an implicit mandate allowing for a complete and one-sided de-corking of the current legislative bottleneck. As such it almost doesn't matter who wins, since this sort of free and instantaneous political capital, combined with politicians mired in the beltway echo-chamber, guarantees that no matter who wins, everybody loses.
Contraband
Funny thought of the day: My employer–with his family–has been out of the country for the last few months and is scheduled to return sometime in the middle of August. Interesting wrinkle though; his wife’s visa has expired. Since she is a foreign national, they might not let her back into the country and turn her away at the gate.
The thought of someone being stuck in an airport for an absurd amount of time a-la Tom Hanks in Terminal was the first image to spring into my mind, which tickled me to no end.
And after those images swam through my head, another humorous thought occurred to me; that’s a pretty effective way to get rid of your wife.
Sorry Honey–Customs says you’re contraband. Something about ‘hot cargo’. No, I don’t like it either, but the law’s the law. Say bye to mommy, son. I’m sure we’ll see her again…someday…and if not, we’ll just get you a new one. And a pony. See? You’re feeling better already. Bye Honey!
Hmm…maybe I should write that scene out in better detail…
Actively Passive
As a bookkeeper, you would think my job involves a lot of math–and I suppose, in a way, it does–but most of the job is detective work–noticing things; small things and minor details that don’t seem like much but, over time and taken in aggregate, can add up in surprising ways. This sort of situation can change your perspective on things you knew, or thought you knew. More than that, it can give you insight into things you never really noticed.
Today I caught a minor error in one of our deposits that required an immediate adjustment, not because it was a huge discrepancy but because it would be easier to take care of it while the item in question was still in the working memory of everyone involved.
Notice, that I said, ‘adjustment’, not ‘correction’. It never really occurred to me that there was any purpose to this use of diction beyond precision; accounts are often adjusted for reasons other than errors. But maybe there is an additional reason for this particular choice in terminology. The difference between ‘correction’ and ‘adjustment’ is one of implication. A mistake is corrected. An adjustment is simply…adjusted.
It’s like the difference between active and passive voice. A correction means someone made a mistake. An adjustment means–as Reagan might say–a mistake was made.
Passive voice, which emphasizes the object acted upon (the mistake that was made), is less accusatory than the active voice, which implies an actor (someone made a mistake). This is why the passive voice, along with sesquipedalian loquaciousness, is the favored refuge of the cornered or contrite politician.
Perhaps it is the result of the accounting trade being intrinsically linked to the office environment, where tempers flare at the slightest provocation. A more diplomatic way of telling someone they made a mistake has probably saved more than a few people’s careers.
The Mayor New York Deserves
A small part of me really wants Anthony Weiner to become mayor of New York City. Not for any of his political positions (does he actually have any?) but rather, for one simple fact: New York is the coolest city in America. It deserves the coolest mayor ever; the man with a plan; unassuming political dweeb by day, dynamo of awesome by night. That man’s middle name is Danger–Carlos Danger.
Imagine a world with a little less weiner and a little more Danger. The possibilities are endless…
A Moment of Empathy
A little over a year ago–back when I was enduring the vaguely kafka-esque purgatory of trying to move around in the greater Los Angeles area without a car–I had an encounter that shook me, birthing within me a sinister tendril of disquiet that has never quite released its grip on my heart. If that sounds overly dramatic it is simply a result of my continuing unease over what happened–or didn’t, as it were.
I was working downtown and was going to meet my girlfriend in the valley after she got off work. She is a much more responsible person than I am, and also happens to enjoy her work, so working late was a common occurrence for her. We planned to meet at the Universal City Red Line Station, where I would wait for her to pick me up, since she had a car. It was exceptionally hot that day in the valley, and I had an hour and a half to kill, so I found a shady spot, sat down, and opened a book. After about an hour the heat made reading uncomfortable even with the shade, so I closed my book (Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale; a fabulous book on style and grammar) and made to explore the immediate vicinity for the next half hour.
Anyone who has been to the Universal City station knows that there is basically next to nothing of interest there, with the possible exception of a hot dog cart. The only buildings nearby are a hotel and the NBC Universal Plaza. Everyone knows this.
Everyone except me, that is.
The hotel, as far as I could see, was located up a long and steep hill I wasn’t in the mood to climb, so I walked up the steps of the plaza instead to explore. There was little of interest there either; a small group of people walking to the parking lot; another group leaning against and sitting on the rails chatting; a gazebo next to a small pond with some ducks swimming through a maze of lily pads. Concluding that this was the single most boring place imaginable I decided to head back to the station, find a new shady spot, and keep reading my book. As I turned around I was approached by a sausage in a necktie–more commonly known as a security guard.
“Excuse me” he said, almost tentatively, in not-too-thickly-but-still-clearly-spanish-accented english, “…do you work here?” He was holding his radio in one hand and the other was behind his back. His posture was slightly off-center and forward tilted, giving his small but heavy-set frame (what is it with short, thickset latino security guards?) an even more aggressively mongoloid bearing–a classic readiness posture.
Understand my appearance at the time. I am fairly tall–about 5’10–but lightly built. At 160 lbs on average I possess neither the muscular frame of the classic hooligan, nor the malnourished, reedy, chronically sleep-deprived look of the Unabomber. I have a dark “jew-fro”, glasses, and some mild stubble at all times. My usual “style” consists of a black t-shirt, jeans, and a backpack (book-in-hand optional). I look, well, average. Like a student. Which I suppose I am. My forgettably innocuous appearance–an image carefully cultivated throughout my school years–was and is my practical distillation of the wisdom of Sun Tzu: the best policy for dealing with the enemy bigger kids is to simply not be there noticed by them.
To be blunt: this guy was ready to spring into action and save the day. For no discernible reason. Mildly annoyed, I answered “No, I’m done here” and proceeded to walk back to the stairs. As I walked, out of the corner of my eye I could see, to my astonishment, that no-neck was following me. He wasn’t even being subtle. He matched me step-for-step, always staying just slightly behind and a few paces to my left whether I sped up or slowed down, and maintained his aggressive dick-swinging stance. I stress that he wasn’t even pretending to not be casing me. Eventually, after reaching the bottom of the large staircase, I looked behind me to see the human sausage say something into his radio, stare at me for another few seconds, and then slowly walk off.
Despite the heat, I would have liked nothing better than to have one of my old, oversized snow jackets from high school to disappear in and escape the cold. I did not know what to think at first, or even what I was feeling beyond a chilly unease. Then, as I looked back at the NBC Universal building, I caught myself wondering which parts of the building were the weakest, the easiest places to hit it so that it would come crashing down.
I would like to stress that this was an extremely brief and completely idle fantasy–even had I the means and expertise, I would never do something so horrifying–but the surge of righteous fury that I felt in that moment conjured the vision in my mind, and that knowledge has sat with me ever since.
Is this what it feels like to be profiled?
It seems absurd that I would ever be subjected to this. In all likelihood I am misinterpreting the situation, and the fact that nothing actually happened makes me feel slightly ridiculous for caring enough to remember it at all, but the simple truth is that this does not matter: this is what I perceived in that moment, and how I reacted to it, how it made me feel. And that is the key detail about profiling, and its ugly uncle, prejudice–how the person who perceives himself to be under that cloud is being made to feel. The other people involved, their thoughts, their intentions don’t matter. The sense of unjust persecution is overwhelming in even the slightest doses.
The slightest doses. That bears repeating because anyone who has experienced, truly experienced, any kind of real oppression will laugh at this whole story even harder than you probably are now. And yet, if this is even a fraction of what it feels like to be oppressed in any fashion–profiling, racism, prejudice–then I begin to see why so many of those who feel themselves victims of such can have such visceral and unreasonable reactions when confronted with it; reasonability flees in the face of such injustice, real or imagined.
Was I imagining it? Does it matter? The fact that I felt this way–continue to feel this way–at all, suggests that something was going on, but what? Am I being neurotic for dwelling on this? Or did I, in some small way, experience a moment of empathy, connecting me, however tenuously, with people in situations I can never fully appreciate or understand?
Zurtlespace 