To my Republican friends, a note on race

Too often, I end up in conversations about race and politics that end up a free-for-all about which of the two major parties does more to appeal to modern racism. It's a circular argument, and I think it does more to block progress on the topic than it does to help.

So, here's my own small and meager attempt to break through.

I acknowledge that, for much of its history, the Democratic Party has been the party of white racism.

I believe that white racism is probably the single most destructive force in American history.

I acknowledge that it was Democrats who kept anti-lynching bills at bay for much of the 20th century.

I acknowledge that it was Democrats who kept civil rights bills at bay for much of the 20th century.

I acknowledge that LBJ said and did racist things, and sometimes voted for racist legislation.

I acknowledge the Dixiecrats were an offshoot of the Democrats.

I acknowledge that Robert Byrd was at one time a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

I acknowledge that on occasion, there are those in the Democratic Party who exploit racial solidarity in cynical ways, for personal or political gain. I acknowledge that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have sometimes earned the cynicism they're offered as a result.

In short, I acknowledge that the left side of the political spectrum has a problem, historically, with racism — and that this is true because America, historically, has a problem with racism.

And I acknowledge that I (and many on my side) are quick to see racism on your side and much more forgiving when we detect it among our putative allies.

To whatever extent I am party to these sins: I repent.

I cannot control or even influence how you discuss and approach race. But do not let my own approach harden your heart so that a productive conversation is impossible. I acknowledge my errors, and those I am heir to.

And I hope someday, the conversations we have on this topic can be productive, full of reflection, instead of never-ending attempts to assign blame to somebody else. Wisdom begins with humility — knowing how little we know, knowing that we, and those who came before us, have often fallen short.

Penn State and Paterno Truthers: "It's All About the Student-Athletes" Edition

Following up on my column today at PhillyMag, I'd like to address one issue that keeps coming up from critics of the NCAA sanctions against Penn State:

I'll quote a Penn State friend: "None of the student athletes who are currently at Penn State were involved with the Sandusky mess, very few of the coaches who are currently there were around during that time, heck- some of the students weren't even BORN yet. So why are they the ones being punished by the NCAA's overreaching?"

That is, to my mind a bit of a canard. There's not a single person on the team, at this point, who didn't choose to be there knowing the sanctions in place. Penn State is on its second coach since then; every player who was on the team at the time was allowed to transfer without penalty; every player who remains on the team or who has joined since knew what they were getting into . They are not victims.

(This argument, incidentally, means that there should never be NCAA sanctions, because every punishment ends up affecting student athletes who weren't present at the time of an offense. That effectively means institutions can't be held accountable for breaking the rules by their employees.)

It's also why I'm skeptical about the "it's for the student athletes" stance that so many Penn Staters present. The student athletes made their choices, eyes open. The institution, however, is still paying a price. I think, all told, that's appropriate.

A reminder: The surge failed.

With Iraq suddenly embroiled in a Sunni-Shia civil war that risks leaving the country in the hands of the "worse than Al Qaeda" comic book name of ISIS — Hydra was already taken — one thing is worth remembering: We knew this was going to happen years ago. It was just a matter of time.

Lots of people — conservative hawks, particularly — feel like the Iraq War was won with the "surge*" that came as a last-ditch gamble in the final two years of the Bush Administration. And in fact, the surge — combined with the so-called Anbar Awakening— did reduce the violence in Iraq quite a bit. But the surge was designed to accomplish a number of strategic goals that never got accomplished: A reduction in violence was supposed to give Iraqis the space for crucial reconciliation and institution-building achievements that never occurred. Which is why we're here today.

*It's insane how quickly all of this has receded from "current events" to "history." Damn.

In June 2008, Foreign Affairs offered this assessment of the surge:

The surge has changed the situation not by itself but only in conjunction with several other developments: the grim successes of ethnic cleansing, the tactical quiescence of the Shiite militias, and a series of deals between U.S. forces and Sunni tribes that constitute a new bottom-up approach to pacifying Iraq. The problem is that this strategy to reduce violence is not linked to any sustainable plan for building a viable Iraqi state. If anything, it has made such an outcome less likely, by stoking the revanchist fantasies of Sunni Arab tribes and pitting them against the central government and against one another. In other words, the recent short-term gains have come at the expense of the long-term goal of a stable, unitary Iraq.

Yup.

In response to all of this, conservative hawks replied: "Shut up." The surge didn't achieve its goals, they said, but it succeeded because Iraq had found a new bottoms-up approach to creating peace that nobody anticipated.

It's clear now they were wrong. Again.

The result of all these errors is that it's been a long time since American officials could make a "right" call in Iraq. Stay? You'll just keep getting Americans killed in a war that had already dangerously weakened the country and its credibility. Leave: You set the stage for extremists, massacres, and strongmen to fill the vacuum. There was never any good way to stay; there was never any good way to get out. We're seeing proof of the latter, now, but both propositions are true. What a tragedy. What a terrible, awful tragedy.

#RIPCommunity

In May 2011, I entered the hospital with constipation, found out I was on the verge of dying, went into surgery and had my guts opened up. I woke up in extreme pain and deep humiliation from the colostomy bag I was suddenly, unexpectedly (though temporarily) forced to wear. The combination of events sent me into a fairly deep — and, I think, understandable — depression.

I remember the first time I laughed. It was that Thursday in the hospital; I was to leave the next day. I was resting with a TV that didn't actually offer audio for all the channels it showed — NBC was among the silent offerings. Still, I tuned into Community that night, which was ending its second season.

And that night, I laughed for the first time since the surgery. It had everything to do with this moment:

That's the character Troy, popping up out of a garbage can and seeing his friend Abed for the first time this episode, set during an Old West-themed paintball game. There was something about the look on Donald Glover's face, the pure joy of recognition, that elicited deep and involuntary laughs from me.

Then the pain took over. And I wept.

The first two years of Community's run — long thought by many observers to be the show's finest — coincided with two of the toughest years of my adult life. My illness occurred during the second year; I lost my job the first. I felt haunted by failure. Community was one of rare pleasures I knew during that time. Among the best? My then-toddler son slipping into bed with me on Friday mornings when I was still in too much pain to do anything but recover, so that we could watch the latest episode together on the iPad. He can still sing the theme song.

It's just a show. And what Community meant to me is probably not what Community meant to you, if you watched it at all. We all encounter art —even silly, disposable, pop art —with the baggage we bring to it. I brought a little extra to this show; and I'm sad to see it go.

Donald Sterling Doesn't Just Have a Race Problem. He Has a Class Problem.

A lot has been made about the comments (allegedly) made by Clippers owner Donald Sterling about race. But I think his comments about class are also kind of interesting. Here he (allegedly) is, talking about Clippers' players:

The woman reminded him that the Clippers roster is primarily black. 

“I support them and give them food and clothes and cars and houses,” said the man alleged to be Sterling. “Who gives it to them? Does someone else give it to them?” 

“Who makes the game?” he continued. “Do I make the game, or do they make the game? Is there 30 owners, that created the league?”

And hey, has there ever been a more perfect example of capital's view of labor?

Me? I'm pretty sure the league doesn't exist at all without the efforts of its workers. People buy tickets to watch the players. People buy the jerseys of players. Networks pay hundreds of millions of dollars to show players playing on TV. The owner, when he's seen during these broadcasts, is seen for a few moments if at all.

In other words: The players, the workers, generate whatever monetary value the team has to Sterling. Yet he sees himself as the provider! He gives them food and clothes and cars and houses. He makes the game.

I'm not being Marxist here: The NBA isn't a global phenomenon without owners to organize teams and an administrative office that exploits the game for maximum exposure and popularity. But the product, at the end of the day, isn't just the fruit of the players' labors — it is the players labors.

Thing is: Donald Sterling appears to be an exceptional racist. I don't think he's an exceptional captalist. He really thinks he makes the league. That should probably offend the player almost as much as his (alleged) racism.

Another Round on Self-Evident Truths

At Power Line, friend (and nemesis!) Steve Hayward replies to my suggestion that he reads rather too much into President Obama's second inaugural by using rather too little of it. Steve originally used just a few words from this line of that speech—

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth. 

—to suggest that Obama's belief system is (ahem) less than fully American. "May be self-evident" suggests residual disbelief in the proposition. I suggest the fuller passage indicates the president's unmitigated acceptance of said proposition.

Steve replies:

No sensible person disputes that we work out our ideas in space and time with great difficulty, but Obama’s use of “may” is extremely telling, like the academics I meet who unfailingly say “Lincoln was right—for his time.”  What about our time, today?  What about Lincoln’s view that the self-evident truths of the Declaration were true everywhere and always, as Jefferson put it?  I’d bet a lot of money that Obama does not believe that.  Does Joel really believe differently about Obama’s deepest philosophical views?  Why would Obama believe differently? 

Since my original critique of Steve's post was founded on the idea that getting inside the president's head—any president—is a fool's errand, I'm going to try to decline speculation about "Obama's deepest philosophical views." I don't know what they are; I can only know what he says and what he does.

Getting Inside Obama's Head: Steven Hayward Edition.

I think most pundits do their worst work when they play armchair psychologist; instead of assessing what (say) a president is doing on its own terms, they try to guess at the man's motivations and hidden beliefs—often in venal terms, if they disagree with that president's acts.

My friend and occasional nemesis Steven Hayward, I think, gets caught in this trap in his latest column for Forbes, in which he speculates about why the president isn't showing up for this week's anniversary commemorations of the Battle of Gettysburg, decides that the president just doesn't believe in America the way the rest of us do.

One reason may be that Obama has to carefully avoid associating himself fully with Lincoln’s view about the centrality of what Lincoln called, at Gettysburg, “the proposition” that “all men are created equal.” Obama omitted this famous line from the Declaration of Independence in his famous Philadelphia speech about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy in 2008. He did finally quote the Declaration’s “self-evident truth” in his second inaugural address earlier this year, but then added in a revealing line, “while these truths may be self-evident. . .” 

May be self-evident? This is what intellectual poker players would call a revealing “tell.” If hooked up to a polygraph, Obama would likely have to confess to the modern liberal view that individual rights come not from our natural equality as human beings, but from a positive grant from government. The redistributive welfare state depends on this principle for its legitimacy, as does today’s “progressive” insistence on dividing people into groups according to skin color or gender or sexual preference, and assigning hierarchies of legal rights accordingly. Much of modern liberal philosophy depends on turgid obfuscation to disguise the fact that it is at odds with Lincoln’s understanding of equal rights.

I can argue another time with Steve about the foundations of the legitimacy of the welfare state. But the problem here is that he truncates the president's inaugural speech—by a punishing amount—in order to get it to "reveal" what he sees in it. Here's what the president actually said:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth. The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob. They gave to us a Republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.

For a black man born before the Civil Rights Act, before the marriage of his parents would have even been considered legal, it must be "self-evident" that it has taken the work of many people to secure the promises that the Founders said were owed to all of us.

More to the point, one only has to read Obama's entire sentence to realize that he explicitly affirmed what Steve says he didn't.  Steve's a skilled polemicist, and I realize that much of the writing he does (at least in blog form) often amounts to playing "got your nose" with liberals. Still, I think his attempt to psychoanalyze the president drifted into actual (and because I like him, I'm sure inadvertent) misrepresentation of the president's words.