Precious

The movie, "Precious" has gotten a range of reactions in the African-American community, from praise for the way it calls attention to some real and widespread problems associated with poverty and neglect, to condemnation for a one-sided, negative, portrayal of African-American life. This latter reaction seems to me to reflect shame about the severe dysfunction, abuse and neglect, portrayed in Precious' family.
The early psychoanalyst Sandor Ferenczi wrote about how when there is sexual abuse in a family, the victim will often feel the shame and guilt that the perpetrator disavows, in one way or another does not feel. The child-victim takes on, becomes the receptacle for, the perpetrators shame.
When and if African-Americans feel shame about a film like Precious, I suggest that they are taking on the disavowed shame and guilt of white people for the oppression of African-Americans, or collusion with such oppression, or failure to take action to stop such oppression, from slavery onwards. Why do we not hear about white people feeling shame and guilt for the conditions of life on view in the film?
As I mentioned in an earlier blog posting, negative reactions, like that of Jesse Jackson's, toward Barack Obama's call on black men to take responsibility for their children, speak to a similar shame that is taken on by black people, when whites might very well be thought to have at least as much cause for shame.

US opposition to big government

Its interesting to me that some people in the US are so opposed to government interference in their lives, while subordinating themselves to corporate control of their lives. So whatever the problem is, its not that people want to be free of control by large or impersonal or insensitive external entities. Maybe its that corporations are more subtle: they convince you through advertising to part with your money voluntarily, rather than taking it coercively through taxes. Also, corporations redistribute your money to already affluent executives and stockholders (whom you may want to identify with) rather than to poor people (with whom you may want to disidentify). Maybe there's a need to subordinate ourselves to a powerful external entity, and corporations have done a brilliant job of channeling that need in their direction, to the point that they can lay you off, deny you benefits including health coverage, and generally mistreat you, and you'll take it. Meanwhile, your outrage gets channeled toward the government, even when its trying to protect you from corporate abuse.

The Folly of Belligerence

History is full of examples of how two belligerent parties, by engaging in an escalating cycle of belligerence, keep playing into each others hands. Strategists on both sides hope to capitalize on the others' entrapment in belligerence and violence to provoke him to a violent response that will be self-defeating. A recent example is how Al Qaeda's attack on the US on 9/11/01 succeeded in provoking the US to attack Iraq, thus discrediting the US throughout the Muslim world, not to mention the rest of the world. The US did Al Qaeda's work for it. On the other hand, the Bush Administration seized on 9/11 as an opportunity to invade Iraq, which it wanted to do anyway. So Al Qaeda equally played into the neo-cons hands. It did the neo-cons work for it. So both sides have gotten their way. And where are we as a result of such a rampant fulfillment of strategic goals?
Similarly, Hamas provoked Israel to a violent reaction in Gaza, as a result of which Israel lost friends and credibility throughout the world, while ensuring the production of more terrorists with nothing to lose in Gaza. But when those terrorists strike, that will justify more actions designed to consolidate control over the West Bank and block the formation of a viable Palestinian state--just what the Israeli right wing wants. And where will that leave us?
Gandhi and other practitioners of non-violence like King, Mandela, Walesa, and others understood that to be provoked to violence plays into the hands of those who want to oppress you. The discipline of non-violence can break that cycle, saving the oppressor from himself, and you from the self you would become if you gave in to the cycle of violence.

Reaction to Obama, part 2: someone has to sit at the back of the bus

The NY Times of August 25, on the front page, reports that Bob Collier, age 62, who had never been politically active before in his life, drove over an hour to attend a town hall meeting on health care and, to his wife's amazement, spoke up. He described how his wife had had breast cancer, received treatment, and was now in remission. He expressed anxiety that her care might be "rationed" is there were a recurrence and if health reform were enacted. He went on to say that health care reform may mean "the end of our country as we know it".
What a leap! I can certainly resonate with Mr. Collier's fear of any development that might threaten his or his wife's health or life. A chord has certainly been struck with him that any of us can resonate with. But what makes him think that health care reform makes it more, rather than less, likely that he or his wife would be unable to receive treatment? Why is he more afraid of rationed treatment under health reform as currently proposed, than he would be of his insurance company denying reimbursement? In fact, his insurance company denied coverage of his wife's radiation treatment. (the cost was written off by the medical provider). Mr. Collier acknowledges that some reform is needed, including a safety net, but he doesn't want the safety net to "catch too many people"!
This raises the question of the rationing of people to be caught in the safety net. Mr. Collier, a senior citizen, is concerned that elderly people will be at the end of the line. One wonders who he imagines would be at the front of the line, and how he would feel about the situation of those people who would be at the end of the line if elderly people weren't. He has reason to believe that there isn't enough affordable health care to go around, so someone is going to have to be at the end of the line. Are our religious leaders offering any input here about compassion and charity? Or is this just dog eat dog, musical chairs, and may the strongest and loudest voices win?
Mr. Collier goes on to explain his feeling that health reform may mean the end of the country as we know it. He refers to government involvement in the auto industry, the banking industry, worrying that government involvement will yield the "efficiency of the postal service" combined with the "compassion of the IRS".
I can resonate with that too, although I'm pretty impressed with what the postal service accomplishes day in and day out, if not with the courtesy of their employees. And I do see a difference between the mission of the IRS, and that of a health care service, (plus I haven't been impressed with the compassion of private sector insurance companies and hospitals), but point taken. So I guess we're talking about that good old American mistrust of government.
So what does Mr. Collier thinks would have happened to the privately run auto industry and banks without government "interference"? Why doesn't this point occur to him?
Might this have something to do with the government being led by a person "of color" at the moment, and with the fact that the people with whom he imagines himself competing for health care are likely to be poor people, and people of color.
Someone has to sit at the back of the bus.

The reaction to Obama's health care proposal

The right wing is inflamed in the US, with a focus on Obama's health care proposal. The proposal is attacked as a violation of fundamental American values in the form of creeping socialism and government control of the lives, and deaths, of citizens. At the same time, Obama himself is portrayed as not truly "American", in concrete terms as not having been born in the US and thus an illegitimate President and Commander in Chief.
I believe these issues camouflage a deeper source of anxiety for right wing Americans, who tend to be of European lineage: the feeling that they are losing their country, that the European character of the country is being lost as the population moves inexorably toward an African-American and Latino majority. In this sense, the election of Obama symbolizes this historic shift in the US population, and makes clear that a shift in the locus of power is well under way. Once people defined as "other" having taken over, who knows what changes they will put in place? The security and predictability of life for many Euro-Americans seems to be profoundly threatened.
I think there may be a still deeper reason for this fear, even panic. This land, of course, was once inhabited by non-Europeans. It was taken from them by force of violence by people of European origin. There may be a subliminal guilt that leads to fear of retaliation, of redressing of the injury by those who were killed and disenfranchised.

The Army wants to believe that "faulty" beliefs, rather than war itself, cause depression, anxiety, suicide and homicide among soldiers

Today's New York Times reports on the front page that the Army is instituting "classes" for all soldiers to help them identify false beliefs that are believed to cause anxiety, depression, suicide and homicide among soldiers. In my view, this is the extreme application of cognitive-behavioral thinking that reveals the basic fallacy in the approach.
To my mind, anxiety and depression, if not suicide, are very understandable reactions to the conditions of war. War, of course, creates conditions in which the line between justified killing and homicide can get very blurry. War generates unthinkable experiences: killing and the ever present risk of being killed, seeing one's fellows blown to bits. The senseless discontinuity between life in the war zone and back at home in the malls and on the freeways, while one's buddies are back in Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam or France killing and being killed. Telling people that their breakdowns are due to their faulty beliefs is mystification and pathologization that can only generate further confusion and despair, or a false and brittle adaptation to the official expectation.
In my view, what this application of cognitive-behavioral thinking exposes is its basic grandiosity: the belief that emotions, human responses to the conditions of life, are controllable through manipulation of thoughts. The Army wants to believe that war-generated anxiety, depression, suicidal and homicidal feelings are controllable by manipulation of thought in 90 minute classes. I wish those classes were devoted to validating the sense of confusion, horror and helplessness that these soldiers feel, making room for a sense of betrayal by those who sent them to war, without undermining the feeling others may have that they have served their country, if not all of humanity, by going to war.

On my return from Israel to the United States

My impression is that those Jews who want a Jewish state have concluded that Jews and Palestinians cannot live together. Thus, the separation wall, harassment and humiliation of Arabs on the West Bank and in Israel proper, killing and starvation in Gaza---all in an effort to create a space for Jews in which Jews will not be threatened by Arab resistance, violence, or population growth. There are laws in process that will make it illegal to portray Israel in negative ways, and that will make it impossible to join the Knesset if one is not willing to swear allegiance to Zionism.
I conclude that there are only two options going forward: two states, or a continuation of violent conflict. I suppose we could also have both.
My reaction to Zionist supremacism has been revulsion and shame as a Jew, but I have further concluded that as a citizen of the US, I have plenty to be ashamed about as well. I can't imagine where I could live where there wouldn't be plenty to be ashamed of and revolted by. The difference is that in Israel the ethnic cleansing is happening now, before our eyes, the blood is running in the streets. I returned to the US yesterday morning, came home in the subway. I saw no Native Americans. They are mostly dead or on reservations. I saw plenty of African-Americans, but one has to remember that their ancestors were brought here as slaves and forced to give up all things African---even their names and family members, often their lives. The end of slavery brought the kind of harassment and humiliation that Arabs are suffering now in Israel, as the price for a "one state solution" in the US. The ghettos and prisons bear witness to the continuation of this situation for many. Other Americans of African descent have bought into the capitalist dream and thus integrated themselves more or less, as some Arabs have within Israel (as long as they don't challenge Zionism).
I also remember that one state solutions haven't worked very well for Jews elsewhere: certainly not in Europe. Evidently one state solutions worked for a while in the Arab world, but not indefinitely. Post holocaust, I can understand the insistence on a place to try to feel safe. Elsa First said at the conference which I just attended: "Can we hold Warsaw and Gaza in mind together?"
The Bush administration set in motion the events that create an acute sense of danger in Israel now---leading to the ascendancy of the forces for ethnic cleansing. By simultaneously alienating Iran (by constructing an axis of evil) and empowering it (by empowering their Shiite allies in Iraq) the neo-cons set the stage for Ahmadinejad and his support for Hezbollah and Hamas (even bringing about Shiite-Sunni alliances against Israel and the US).
I believe Obama understands all this. It will be fascinating to observe how he proceeds in the effort to create two states in which Jews and Arabs, the ancient half siblings and potential allies (see Sari Nusseibeh's Once Upon a Country) can all feel safe enough.