Claritas Moralis

You know when I finally got racism in America?

I read something, I think it was a piece by James Baldwin, which said to be a black man (yeah, black man, grrr) in America was to feel unending humiliation and rage, to see all those around you having an actually good life and to know yourself forever locked out of it simply because you were born different from them.

And I, a poor white woman, said, "Hey, I know that feeling!"

But that's why Baldwin reached me: I knew that feeling. What do you do with people who have never known that feeling and think it's a reflection of "moral failings"? That's why I don't post here more often than I do. The frustration at trying to make people with means see that piling up yet more pelf is starving their fellows who are struggling as hard as they can to survive and getting nowhere is fundamentally enraging, and you only hear rage if you already share it.

It goes like this:

If you have a nickle, a Democrat will steal it from you, and a Republican will kill you for it.

So . . . both are thieves, but the Republican's also a murderer.

And Americans seriously think that somehow makes Republicans more moral?

I will return to the horror of neoconservatism in America, but first, a small step in a long journey.

Like a minor pain that becomes unendurable if it goes on long enough, the cruelest question I know gets its impact from the sheer inescapableness of it. I've studied several languages, and it appears in all, with the same formula. There's even a poem (I believe, but could not confirm, by Ogden Nash):

Don't tell them about your indigestion
"How are you?" is a greeting, not a question.

But that's just the point. The person asks how I am, but I must, regardless of language or culture, respond, "Fine" (or "Gut" or "Khorosho" or whatever). My Russian instructor was shocked when I asked how to say "Badly"; she finally lied to me and said "Nichevo," which means "nothing." I did a little research. She was quite upset when in a future class I responded, "Plokho." The Japanese take it a step further. The question is "You're well?" (Genki desu ka?), or even "You're well, right?" (Genki desu ne?), and of course the only acceptable answer is "Hai, genki. X-san wa?" (Yes, I'm well. And you?).

I have been told many times that to say anything else is rude. I've also been told many times that to refuse to ask the question is also rude because asking demonstrates caring about others. Caring? Excuse me? What it demonstrates is not caring, that the person whose welfare is supposedly being asked after damn well better keep their place in the herd or else. The question pretends to care about how a person feels, but if the person gives anything but the answer that makes the questioner feel good, the respondent is punished severely. It would be more caring not to underscore the person's lack of value in the questioner's eyes.

It seems a small thing, but in my quest to reintroduce compassion into American culture, I would ask you to consider how this question grates on those who are struggling, who are not well, have not been well for a long time, and may never, in fact, be well, no matter how hard they try. Find some other phrase to use for a greeting, and save "How are you?" for when you genuinely care about the answer.

Genuinely caring every time you meet someone will be later in the program.

I am sure Martin Niemöller would approve.

First They Came for the Muslims

First they came for the Muslims
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Muslim.
Then they came for the GLBT folks
and I did not speak out
because I was not GLBT.
Then they came for the liberals
and I did not speak out
because I was not a liberal.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Every time you see a woman's bra patted down in public as part of a "security check"; every time someone implies that it's not important to know which candidate got each vote; every time you see nonviolent dissenters hidden from the eyes of power; every time you see someone suffer for merely holding a belief or express an opinion or being part of a particular nonviolent group--especially if you *don't* agree with them--that is the time to speak. Look for swaggers and smirks in agents of the state: they are signs of enjoying one's power, symptoms of abusing it. Remember that their supposed power is really yours as a citizen of a democracy.

As I've said before, the neocons are playing from the Nazi playbook; read the "rising" parts of William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich if you don't believe me. They've already started coming for people. That's what the whole "enemy combatant" nonsense is about.

The time is now, my fellow Americans. We still have the ability to speak out without it costing us our lives. If we don't do it now, we'll lose it, and then there will be nothing for it but to follow my advice about how to deal with a tyrant.

It's truly speak now or forever hold your peace.

It looks like Americans may have to find a way to survive the rule of a tyrant. The possibility that evidence of vote fraud may overturn the election results still exists, and there is some question how far Mr. Bush will be able to indulge his tyrannical bent, but he's done amazingly well at it so far, and a presidential election has never been overturned. For some Americans, flight is possible, but for many more, it isn't. Let's face our worst-case scenario.

Everyone experiences tyranny at school or in the workplace at least occasionally, but surviving a tyrant is one area in which I can claim some expertise. I was raised by one. Like a national tyranny, it was a very long-term, continuous experience. I can at least offer you what I learned from it, in the hope that it will be of some assistance.

I speak of tyrants in general and not George Bush in particular because although the über-tyrant in tyrannical societies is the most dangerous and adds greatly to the power of all the tyrants lower down in the structure, the vast majority of the citizens of a tyranny only come into contact with the local tyrant. Analyzing George Bush in particular would be of limited value when you are faced with John Tyrannus of Yourtown, USA.

Two thing to keep in mind as you read this list: first, it isn't about courage or morality or any of those things. It's about survival. If you want to be a member of the Resistance, that's fine, it's even commendable, but this isn't the list for that. This one still may be of use to you--organized resistance is generally an underground phenomenon, so you'll still need to survive the tyrant in your public persona--but the rules are not about how to defeat the tyrant other than by outlasting them.

Second, I am giving these rules straight. I'm not being touch-in-cheek or exaggerating for any sort of effect. Yes, the discussion sounds melodramatic, but that's the world the tyrant builds around themselves. In the tyrant's own mind, they are the central figure in a contest between Good and Evil, and so everything is invested with that urgency. If they didn't hold power of some sort, they'd just be delusional, but the tyrant does hold power and uses it to uphold their melodramatic world image. You play their game or they punish you. These are pointers on how to play their game successfully enough that you may still be standing when they eventually fall.

Clari's Rules for Surviving a Tyrant

1. Get Away from the Tyrant If You Can

   If leaving the US is at all an option for you, take it. I know it's an unfashionable opinion, but I cannot emphasize the need to secure your own position enough. Read the accounts of rising Nazi power in Germany. If you can't get out of the country, don't read those accounts; the similarities to today's America will only give you nightmares. People's reasons for staying were even the same. Think of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay--these places are always worse than popular wisdom has it--and get out.

   After all, what are the reasons for staying: that someone must carry on the fight and that all liberals leaving are what the neocons want? Nazi Germany was toppled by outside force; the Resistance did marvelous work and saved many lives, but they did not, in the final analysis, destroy the Third Reich. The Allies' military power did. As for our leaving being what the neocons want, so what? A corpse can't enjoy having denied a tyrant, and it's only a matter of time until the neocons start executing their enemies as "terrorists." The people of Germany in the thirties didn't think such horrors could happen in their enlightened country, but we have the film footage and paperwork to prove that they did. Don't even think about trying to prove you're bigger and badder than they are; you're not even close, and you should be proud of that and want to go on being so as long as you can.

   There is the issue of where to go that's far enough away from the United States' power. Keep in mind that you can always move again. In the thirties, some refugees moved from Germany to France and then to England, the United States, or Canada. Unattach yourself to hampering baggage both physical and mental, hug those you love close, and the lot of you head for the hills as many times as it takes.

   Of course, you may not be able to get away for real reasons. Read the rest of the list and take it to heart. You're not doomed, but you do have the biggest task of your life ahead of you.

2. Know Your Tyrant

   It may look like a truism, but I found it to be the single most important survival skill. The purpose of people other than themselves, from the tyrant's point of view, is to confirm the tyrant's preferred view of the universe. I would hazard the guess that this is because they know on some level that their preferred view is not true--they are not nearly so wonderful or important as they want to believe they are--so they need constant reassurance of the reality of their imagination and respond viciously to the slightest hint otherwise. Confirming your tyrant's worldview is not as easy as it sounds. Although there are a few standards in tyrannical opinions and behavior (see rule 3), tyrants are not as consistent among themselves as those without extensive experience of them expect. There are many tyrants, like George Bush, who wish to be seen as strong and decisive, but others wish to be seen as long-suffering, self-sacrificing, helpless victims, and it is not wise to point out the misery the latter can and do inflict as evidence to the contrary. It generally leads to a demonstration without the tyrant having absorbed your point.

   Another reason you need to know your tyrant well is that their own worldview will not be consistent. They will be most consistent about themselves, but sometimes the strong leader will want to be seen as a helpless victim, and sometimes the victim tyrant will resent being treated as powerless. There will be a few constants in their thinking--George Bush, for instance, will remain a fundamentalist Christian--but everything else is usually very inconsistent: people rise in favor and then are suddenly and dramatically shoved from it; opinions of many kinds, ditto; and you have to like or dislike everyone and everything exactly to the same degree the tyrant does. Add to this the tyrant's propensity to test those around them for support, and you are playing a very scary game of Russian roulette. Tyrants are usually wise to evasive tactics such as "Whatever you think, sir" and "Gee, I've never considered it. What do you think?" The tyrant believes that the rightness of all their own opinions is so self-evident that anyone with the most minimal intelligence will see them so; the only ones who do not are Enemies. You're supposed to know, and your honest opinion must concur with theirs, or you are not fulfilling your purpose. If you do not fulfill your purpose, you are Evil, and the tyrant is right and Good to punish you, even to the point of disposing of you, if that is within their power. If it isn't, they'll search for ways to make you wish it was, and they are very good at this. Tyrants are usually excellent psychologists, even if they have no training as such.

   Therefore no detail about your tyrant is too trivial: favorite color, favorite wine, favorite childhood pet, most hated elementary school teacher. You never know what might tip you off to how the tyrant will react in a given situation. Keep physical notes if you have to; you can always write them up so that it looks like you're studying the Great One's wisdom so that if they find them, they feel flattered rather than threatened. You'll find that the threat the tyrant represents will sharpen your memory for these details, though.

3. Your Tyrant Is Good and Important

   These are the two constants of tyrants.

   The tyrant is Good. The tyrant has a right to demand love because they are Good. Only an Evil person would not love them deeply, above all else on earth. Never express anything less than utter contentment with the tyrant; even a fleeting frown or faint sigh of frustration or even merely one of exhaustion will cost you dearly. To please them is not only a moral duty, it must seem to be your deepest personal pleasure. Those tyrants who believe in a deity believe that they are specially beloved of that deity, and that you cannot love the deity without loving them equally and you cannot love them if you don't also love their deity. Those who do not believe in a deity will be very hostile toward religion because all religions would then be in competition with the tyrant for the adherents' affections. Don't admit to any heroes other than the tyrant or the tyrant's stated heroes.

   Also, as part of being Good, the tyrant is not a tyrant. This is a very important point. Avoid being excessive in flattery or gift-giving unless you've noted that your tyrant responds well to one of them; most tyrants' suspicions are aroused by it. After all, they reason, why would someone resort to such methods? The only answer is to control them, and any attempt to control the tyrant is, of course, Evil. They are Good, remember, and any deviation from Good can only be Evil. You should not seek to protect yourself from their anger via flattery or gifts because, being so very Good, their anger is Good, too, no matter how destructive it gets. At the very least, such fear makes them look Evil to others and the tyrant is not going to let you get away with that! Appearances are of prime importance to tyrants, and you must be careful to protect their image with the wider world.

   Everything is about the tyrant. Nothing that is not all about them has any reality for them, and they don't think it does for anyone else either. Everything anyone thinks or says or does, the tyrant believes is primarily concerned with the tyrant in either a Good or Evil fashion. This is one aspect of their thinking that helps greatly in predicting them: when anything happens, try to find some way to make the event tyrant-centered. The tyrant is continuously doing that at a subconscious level, and so such exercises will help you keep up with their shifting expectations.

   Because the tyrant is so very Good, they are under continuous threat from Evil. Their Enemies, whoever the tyrant has so labeled, want nothing more than to utterly destroy the tyrant, and because the tyrant is Good, the success of their Enemies would be catastrophic on a grand scale. The tyrant must seek out and destroy all threats to themselves. It isn't just a desire; it's a duty.

   Pretty much everything else is up for grabs, even from moment to moment. See rule 2.

4. Keep a Safe Distance

   With all the foregoing, it is probably obvious that you should attempt to keep as much distance between yourself and the tyrant as you can. Of course, you must not seem to be avoiding the tyrant. A good way to do accomplish the first without the second is to keep very busy with approved activities. I don't mean assisting the tyrant in their tyranny; that's collaboration, not survival. Approved activities are things that the tyrant considers "proper" pursuits for well-behaved minions. The list of approved activities varies with the tyrant, but fortunately they are usually easy to discover; the tyrant will underscore them for you in the course of their normal functioning, and you just pick the one most suited to your personality. I would suspect that, in the tyranny we find ourselves in, charitable work, especially if religious and not related to peace, would be a good device, but excessive studying would probably do for students and excessive work for those fortunate enough to be employed. The keys are that the activity be something that the tyrant thinks is important and that the tyrant recognizes the activity to be very time consuming.

   Be careful, though, not to allow yourself to get overtired. You must always look happy because all emotions are about the tyrant. If you're looking cranky, it doesn't matter what you're really cranky about. Also, if you are overtired, you're more likely to act cranky, and that's even worse!

5. Minor Disagreement with the Tyrant Is Impossible

   Loyalty to the tyrant is, in their view, the same as Goodness. You cannot hope to disagree with the tyrant slightly. Their worldview has only Good and Evil settings: you agree with them entirely because you, too, are Good, or you are Evil. Seeming to be against them even once, even slightly, usually is catastrophic.

   Of course, you want to avoid collaboration, but this is where the morality issue gets its cloudiest. If you are pushed beyond mere opinion, if your choice is collaboration or death, what do you do? I can't tell you. Everyone must decide that for themselves. Anyone who tells you that this is a simple and obvious case of right and wrong does not appreciate the situation. You have a right to survive. You also must not help the tyrant harm others. You have to decide how to balance these issues. All I can tell you is what the choice is. You can't disagree with the tyrant, however respectfully and slightly, and hope to avoid their wrath.

   It is for this reason that "Get away from the tyrant if you can" is rule 1.

6. Accept That You Will Get Hurt

   I once saw a TV program that had a self-defense expert who said that one of the reasons people get killed in confrontations with attackers is that they try too hard not to get hurt. He said that if people accept from the beginning that they will get hurt, they are much more likely to get merely hurt rather than killed.

   You will be hurt while in the tyrant's sphere of influence. Tyrants are violent people who broadcast their violence. In addition to direct harm by the tyrant, there is indirect harm in the tense environment, other people will hurt you to avoid being hurt by the tyrant, and you will do violence to yourself and others in attempting to avoid suffering or doing gross harm. That's just the way it is. If you are ready to accept the pain as part of the situation, it's easier to cope with and get on with surviving. Don't let yourself dwell on the injustice of it. Yes, it's unjust, but thinking about that will only put you in danger of an outburst that will destroy you.

7. Find Some Way to Express Your Resistance

   This one is the most difficult, but if you don't find some way to release some of the emotional pressure, you may lose control at some time and in some way that is disastrous. If you're actually a member of the organized Resistance, then that problem is solved for you; if not, remember that resistance takes many forms. A good place to get ideas is the history of African American culture; African Americans have had need of resistance strategies since they were brought to this continent, and often it has been literally a matter of life and death that their resistance not appear to be such. Learn from their wisdom.

8. This Too Shall Pass

   The tyrant will fall. Granted, you may not live long enough to see it, even if the tyrant doesn't have the power to kill you, but no one holds power forever. The tyrant knows this; that's the force behind their constant search for threats to crush. They're doomed to eventual failure; only one challenger has to be successful, and death is the final inescapable challenger.

   I was lucky growing up: I knew the term and the extent of my tyrant's power, and I kept my eye forever at that point on the horizon, watching it come closer and closer. We're not so lucky now. It could be one year, it could be four years, it could be fifty years before America is anything close to a democracy again. It will happen, however. Hold that knowledge to you in the times when your tyrant or the Bush administration seems most powerful.

If I think of more, I'll add them.

Keep in mind that following these rules is anything but easy. In my own case, it took me several years to figure out these rules, so I was already carrying an onus of past Evil when I did get them figured out and started managing my tyrant. I also did not understand at the time the importance of finding a quiet way to express resistance, and the situation devolved to open warfare between myself and my tyrant for the last couple years I was home. My tyrant wasn't in a position to kill me, but at least some of the ones we soon will have in America certainly will be.

Good luck. Here's hoping we're both still standing when fundamentalism falls.

I wasn't going to double up, but given the election is only a day away, I thought I'd post a link to the article I published at Dissident Voice.

Just on the off chance someone is paying attention. ^_^

One of my problems with Christianity is that so few Christians pay much heed to the words attributed to Jesus in the bible. It's a shame: they are some of the most enlightened, compassionate words in Western literature. Red-letter bibles are even published, and still numerous modern Christians seem to skip right over those words. I grant that there are grounds to question whether there was a historical person who actually uttered them in the way that the bible depicts, but Christians are supposed to believe that there was and that he did. Surely his words should be the foundation of their religion, but the more I look at modern Christianity, the less it seems to have to do with what even they claim the man from Nazareth said.

Of course, they do face the problem that the words were not framed for world in which modern Christians live. The situations used to clarify complex philosophical issues are now as opaque as the philosophical issues themselves. The bible shows Jesus skillfully framing great truths in first-century Jews' life experience, but with a different life experience, a different frame is needed. Jesus' parables need to be told with modern equivalents that resonate with modern people for today's Christians--and the rest of us--to appreciate their true import.

To that end, I offer this modernization of a parable I think particularly crucial to today's world. (Yes, I take a few liberties with the story, but only the same ones as the children's book with which I was first introduced to this story. The authors of that book attributed the same motivations to the same characters that I do; the only differences are of culture and technology.)

A Protestant American man set out one day to drive from New York to Washington. Unfortunately, at one stop along the way, he was carjacked, beaten, robbed, and left for dead on the shoulder of the road.

The first person to pass was a Protestant minister. He was in a hurry and figured that someone else, with the cell phone he lacked, would see the man and call for an ambulance.

The second was a deacon at the same minister's church. This driver was afraid that the attackers might still be around and zoomed quickly past.

The third was an Arab American Muslim. He stopped his car and rushed to the injured man's side. He got out his cell phone and called 911 while he ripped what clean cloth he had into bandages and started wrapping up the man's many wounds. When the ambulance arrived, its driver asked for the injured man's name, but with his wallet gone, there was no way to identify him. The Arab American gave the driver his own name, address, and phone numbers. "It doesn't matter whether he has insurance. Put the bills in my name," he urged the ambulance driver.

Yes, Samaritans were liked by first-century Jews just as much as Muslims are liked by fundamentalist Christians today. They, too, were despised unbelievers. Looking at the modern version of the story (and I have taken pains to find accurate equivalents), I see one point that many modern American Christians seem to have missed: faith in their religion alone is not enough. Yes, Jesus prefaces the tale with an admonition to love their deity, but clearly, if devoted members of his own religion were portrayed in his story as being less morally good than a member of a despised religion, Jesus thought that faith is not the be-all and end-all that so many modern Christians want to make it.

Jesus does not come out and say that the actively compassionate unbeliever will get into Heaven before the merely devout, but that reading is possible. American Christians eager to launch a cultural or literal war on those who do not share their beliefs should pause to consider how the central figure of their belief system would view such an endeavor.

Meanwhile, all of us should make sure we truly are actively compassionate, that we not only help others but do so without attempting to put constraints on their beliefs. I don't know that there is a heaven for us to get into, but if we follow the lesson of the Good Samaritan/Muslim, we won't need one. We'll already have a reasonable facsimile.

Can't you just hear Dick Cheney giving the following speech?

[snip]

When I jump over the past to look ahead, I do it intentionally. The hour is at hand! There is no time for fruitless debates. We must act, immediately and decisively, as has always been the American way.

The war on terror has from its beginning acted in that way to overcome the many crises it has faced and overcome. The American government also acted decisively when faced by a threat. We are not like the ostrich that sticks its head in the sand so as not to see danger. We are brave enough to look danger in the face, to coolly and ruthlessly take its measure, then act decisively with our heads held high. As a nation, we have always been at our best when we needed determined wills to overcome danger, or a strength of character sufficient to overcome every obstacle, or bitter determination to reach our goal, or a steel heart capable of withstanding every internal and external battle. So it will be today.

[snip]

The storm raging against our continent from terrorism overshadows all previous human and historical experience. The American army and its allies are the only possible defense. In his announcement on March 17, the president asked in a grave and compelling way what would have become of America and Europe if, on September 11, 2001, a Democratic government had been in power instead of the Republicans! What dangers would have followed, faster than we could then have suspected, and what powers of defense would we have had to meet them? Three years of Republican leadership in the war on terror have been enough to make plain to the American people the seriousness of the danger posed by terrorism. Now one can understand why we spoke so often of the fight against it. We raised our voices in warning to the American people and the world, hoping to awaken humanity from the paralysis of will and spirit into which it had fallen. We tried to open their eyes to the horrible danger of Saddam Hussein, who had subjected a nation of nearly 25 million people to state terrorism and was preparing an aggressive war against America.

When the president ordered the army to attack Iraq on March 20, 2003, we all knew that this would be the decisive battle of this great struggle. We knew the dangers and difficulties. But we also knew that dangers and difficulties always grow over time, they never diminish. It was two minutes before midnight. Waiting any longer could easily have led to the annihilation of the American nation and the spread of terrorism worldwide.

It is understandable that, as a result of broad concealment and misleading actions by the Saddam Hussein's government, we did not properly evaluate Iraq's war potential. Only now do we see its true scale. That is why the battle our soldiers face in Iraq exceeds in its hardness, dangers and difficulties all human imagining. It demands our full national energy. This is a threat to America and to the world that casts all previous dangers into the shadows. If we fail, we will have failed our historic mission. Everything we have built and done in the past pales in the face of this gigantic task that the American army directly and the American people less directly face.

I speak first to the world, and proclaim three theses regarding our fight against the terrorist danger in Iraq.

The first thesis: Were the American army not in a position to destroy the danger from Iraq, America would fall to terrorists, and all the world shortly afterward.

Second: The American army, the American people and their allies alone have the strength to save the world from this threat.

Third: Danger is a motivating force. We must act quickly and decisively, or it will be too late.

Click here to read the rest of this very important speech!