On Populist Rage

Many people in the US are evidently enraged to hear about huge bonuses paid to financial industry executives held responsible for the recent economic collapse. In some quarters, as in this last Sunday's New York Times' Week in Review Section, this rage is held to be a "distraction" from the work of rebuilding the world economy. Thomas Friedman, among others, believes that while this anger is understandable, the job at hand is to recapitalize banks and financial firms so they can once again begin lend money to businesses and get the wheels of capitalism moving again.
There is a way of looking at the populist anger as more than a distraction, a venting of frustration in vengeful rage at people held responsible for peoples' economic suffering. What if we saw this rage as the leading edge of discontent with the inequities that characterize unregulated capitalism. During the last two elections, liberals often wondered why working class Americans would vote for an administration that had a track record of favoring policies that increased inequity, making the rich richer. It seemed to me that working class Americans often tend to identify with the rich, regarding taxes and "big government" as the source of oppression, rather than a system that leaves the spoils to the winners. This is a moment when President Obama could educate people about systemic inequity, thus putting the bonuses in a larger perspective that would validate people's rage while taking the focus off individuals and onto a system that urgently requires reform and regulation to address the inequities that flourished under recent decades of Republican government.

On privilege

Discussions of "white privilege", it seems to me, often do not reflect on the nature of privilege. It is often taken for granted that "privilege" means economic and political privilege, power and money.
Obviously, it is true that there is value to having power and money. Or, perhaps it would be better to say that there are disadvantages to not having power and money, or to being systematically deprived of power and money. But I think it is often overlooked that there are other forms of privilege besides the economic and political, spiritual and emotional privilege, for example, and that these forms of privilege can be at variance with economic and political privilege. Indeed, I think that the unreflective equation of privilege with money and power may be one of the more subtle and insidious forms in which the values of colonialism and capitalism get internalized.
The word "power" itself needs to be unpacked. In the most basic sense (as in Spanish "poder") power means the ability to do things. In English, the word has gotten to imply a dominating sort of power, the ability to impose one's will on others, as if power were a zero sum game. When the context of power is domination and submission, violence and power become close cousins. But if we go back to the basic sense of being able to do things, perhaps we can imagine my power and your power not being in conflict, or even being mutually enabling. Power in a dominant-submissive context is the kind of power that corrupts, ultimately absolutely, and thus is at variance with spiritual privilege and the privilege of being emotionally connected with others.
Some of this was brought home to me recently when I realized that the people who contributed to the current economic collapse by over-reaching for profits from subprime mortgages, securities derivatives, etc. were people who already had unimaginable sums of money. This was not a case of a system being brought down by poor people stealing from the rich, or poor people killing the rich, but by rich people trying to get richer. Ultimately, they may make off like bandits (many already have) as essential bail outs go into their pockets. In which case, the downfall of the system will be only more prolonged.
But what kind of privilege is it when having money leads to the need for more of it (even when one already has more than one could possibly spend), ultimately at the cost of more deprivation and suffering for those who were already poor at home and abroad. I suggest that the pursuit of ever more money and power is in response to a sense of deprivation and loss that accompanies a rupture with our fellow human beings, with their experience and their suffering. But that gap cannot be filled with more money and power, to the contrary. In that sense, power and money in a zero sum context lead to a treadmill of running after illusory substitutes for the true privilege of love and caring.

Having watched Shoah, Sophie's Choice, The Counterfeiters

My goal was to have some contact with the experience of the holocaust, since my family was not in Europe during the Nazi era, although going back a couple of generations, my ancestors undoubtedly had experience of pogroms in Russian and Eastern Europe. I worried that it was too easy for me to attribute the cycle of violence in the Middle East to a vicious circle, to which Israelis contribute at least as much as Palestinians. I worried that I was dismissively psychologizing Israeli actions, attributing Israeli violence against Palestinians to “post traumatic” reactions in the wake of the holocaust, perhaps missing aspects of the experience of those with roots in the holocaust that might make them more, rather than less, attuned to current realities. I did not expect to stop feeling critical of Israeli government violence, but I hoped to earn my opposition with a respectful recognition of the experiences people have had that form a backdrop to violence. I felt that I accorded that kind of recognition to Palestinian experiences leading to Palestinian violence against Israelis, while somehow failing to accord that recognition to Jewish and Israeli experiences. I had thought that this imbalance reflected my sense of shame as a Jew about Israeli government violence against innocent people, and about what seemed to me to be disproportionate violence considering the nature of the provocation in some cases---shame that I did not feel, as a non-Palestinian, about Palestinian actions. I also seemed to be expecting more of Jews than of Palestinians, perhaps in a way that is denigrating of Palestinians. I had always of thought of the Jewish people as especially committed to ethical action, to sympathy with the oppressed, I thought that an understandable commitment to “never again” be helplessly victimized had led to a rigid and misguided equation of violence with power. I did not expect to change these understandings in a fundamental way, and I will not give up being horrified by violence and its justification, but I did want to take seriously the possibility that I had defensively avoided an awareness of Jewish suffering that might make me more understanding of how Israelis, and many of my fellow American Jews, see the world. My strategy seemed to be to take equal account of experiences of victimization suffered by those who perpetrate violence on both sides. The choice of this strategy now seems perhaps revealing in itself:
Perpetrator-victim-perpetrator-victim-------victim?- Perpetrator?- Victim?-----victim! -Perpetrator! -Victim!
Each moment in the cycle seems sufficient unto itself, yet each seems inexorably (but for Gandhi, who really struggled with this problem) to lead into the other. (Gandhi’s struggle seems the prerogative of the “powerless”).
Trying to get out of being trapped by each term of the cycle, in terms of a cycle, is an effort to escape the confine of each term as sufficient unto itself, yet ultimately the cycle itself seems confining.
So what would it be like not to be confined by this cycle, at least in thought?
So here is one reaction to watching these three movies: some people who lived through the holocaust, having witnessed an unthinkable human capacity (unfeelingly to destroy feeling beings) sometimes can’t stop seeing that side of humanity somewhere, out there. While those of us who have not suffered this fate can’t stop hoping that side of humanity can be avoided, if not mastered.
I’ll stop, for the moment.

Israel and Gaza

In this posting, I will restrict myself to raising some questions growing out of Israel's attacks on Gaza, without attempting to answer them. This is not because I don't have strong feelings on the subject, but because I have so many, and mixed, feelings, and because conversations on this topic so rapidly degenerate into heated impasses. Of course, my own views will be manifest in the way I pose questions, but the format may nonetheless promote thoughtfulness, in myself and others, better than a point-counterpoint format. I also believe that there is value in disentangling some of these questions from each other, because I believe they get conflated in many discussions/arguments. In future postings I will set forth some of my views more explicitly.
1. Does Israel have a right to exist? Subsidiary questions: in what form and at what cost? Does Israel have a right to exist as a Jewish state, even if Jews were to be outnumbered by non-Jews? What does Israel have a right to do to ensure that Jews are the majority within its boundaries? What, if any, are the limits to Israel's right to use violence to address immediate or long term threats to its existence?
2. Do the Jewish people have a right to exist? Is the existence of a Jewish state the best or only way to ensure the survival of the Jewish people?
3. Do the Palestinian people exist? Do they have a right to exist? Is a Palestinian state the best or only way to ensure the survival of the Palestinian people?
4. How does one reconcile the commandment not to murder, with war? Is there an exception for self-defense? Who decides what is self-defense, and what is unjustifiable murder? Can these always be distinguished? What if they can't be?
5. How does one value a Jewish life in relation to the value of a Palestinian life, and vice versa? 6. Is it ever justified to respond to the murder of a single person, or a small group of people, by killing a large number of people? Is it ever justifiable to kill innocent people as "collateral damage"?
7. Do Jews in the diaspora have the right to criticize, or second guess, the Israeli government?
8. Is it desirable to make public space to think about such questions? Does thinking about such questions disable the capacity to take action as needed?

The attacks in India

These attacks of November 26, 2008 hit home, occurring in places I know well and visited in the recent past with my family. I can vividly imagine the horror, as with 9/11. Also, like 9/11, this bears all the marks of Al Qaeda. The skillful exploitation of holes in security, the focus on U.S. (and British, in this case) citizens as well as Jews, the choice of target for dramatic effect and to exploit media attention. The choice of the Taj Mahal hotel as the centerpiece of the attacks, rather than an American-owned hotel, indicates that the focus is on the Indian elite, and Indian collaboration with the United States as evidenced in the recent U.S.-Indian nuclear deal. Although the killing is indiscriminate, the attack itself is a precisely condensed dramatic statement. These attacks also show the limits of Al Qaeda power at a particular moment. The attack was not on US or British soil, it did not involve weapons of mass destruction.

Barack Obama needs to go beyond expressions of outrage, horror, and sympathy for the victims to indicate quickly that he understands that this was an attack on the United States, on whomever else it may have also have been an attack. He needs to pre-empt a neo-conservative seizing on the attack to justify the fear mongering that has characterized the last eight years, and that the people of the United States so recently refused to be stampeded by.

What I'm still worrying about

I'm still worrying about poor people. Obama, like all politicians these days, talks about "working people", to signal he's concerned about people who aren't rich. But what about the unemployed, especially those who've been to prison, rightly or wrongly?
What about the backlash against gay and lesbian people? I'm troubled by the movement against gay marriage, and the outrageous proposition that passed in Arkansas to deny gay couples the right to adopt or take in foster children.
I'm sure there are other issues as well that we will need to keep on the front burner. There is a danger that Obama's election will lead to complacency among white, well off people, a feeling that race, especially as it intersects with poverty, is now no longer an issue. The successes of the Civil Rights movement, while real and valuable, had the same side effect of allowing some people to think that we no longer need to be vigilant or address racial discrimination and prejudice. I'm afraid that poverty as an issue in particular may suffer collateral damage from this election. I don't mean we shouldn't be celebrating, but that we must be realistic about the potential limitations of an Obama administration as well, and the need to keep advocating.

Now is this a post-racial society?

Well, yes and no. Did the election of Obama reflect an already-existing post-racial situation, or did the election itself create a new reality? I believe the reality is somewhere in the middle. The election of Obama, which we owe to some extent to non-racial factors like his intelligence and articulateness, the incompetence and arrogance of the Bush administration, and the timing of the economic meltdown, is one of those things that potentiates a situation that is latent and ready to crystallize given the right constellation of events. The election of Obama shows that in this country white people, at least a good number of them, are ready to be led by an upper middle class black person. It also shows that lower social class blacks will identify with, and have their hopes and aspirations stimulated by, an upper middle class black person. Finally, I think it shows that for younger white people, race may not be as salient in the choice of a leader as it is and has been for their elders.
I was in North Philadelphia over the weekend and on election day. This is almost entirely an impoverished African-American community. The volunteers were young white people from all over, and mostly local black people, including children and adolescents and whole families. I walked through the neighborhood canvassing, and here are some of the things I saw:
A group of three black men sitting on a stoop, all of them with the bloodshot eyes, I guessed, of alcoholism. one of them said "Its our turn now" with a big smile that revealed both pleasure and the fact that there were almost no teeth in his mouth.
Many people who said hello to me, wished me God's blessing, and so on. Numbers of people sitting on stoops or folding chairs on the sidewalk who volunteered that so and so was not home, had already voted, was too sick to answer the door, etc. Much more welcoming, and a much stronger feeling of community, than in the white or mixed suburban neighborhoods where I had done canvassing in the past.
Leaving North Philly last Friday, passing through Center City, where there were 2 million people, I'd say 99% white, who were celebrating the Philly's baseball championship. Drunk people were scattered around the sidewalks.
My first partner in canvassing said, when I noticed a beautiful mural on the wall of a school, that he had contributed to making the grid for the mural when he was in prison. Now he's an HIV counselor with Americorps.
Children answering the door. A parent responding from some back room to my shouted questions: "I'm from the Obama campaign. Have you voted?" One child, asked by his mother, "who is it?" said "Barack Obama"!