An Opinionated Potpourri

This blog, because I have too many tidbits to mull over to condense into one coherent topic, comes to you a la Nerdfighter: in 5 parts.

1) Immigration
It's been pretty effectively overshadowed by yesterday's ACA ruling, but a few days previous, the Supreme Court upheld Arizona's demagogic immigration law, that effectively gave police the power to harass anyone walking on the street if they happen to look, let's be frank, "un-American". What's so fucking unbelievable to me is that a party claiming to reduce the size and power of government and champion individual liberties would be so wholeheartedly behind gutting the rights of a individual to walk unharassed in public space...so long as that individual's not white. It's disgusting. Not to mention unbelievably hypocritical, given that A) it's a trope, but we all hate immigrants once WE got here, and B) America is integrally responsible, from outright stealing Mexican land to ratcheting up the price and violence of an illegal drug was through creating a black market to C) crippling industry via NAFTA.
I really, really think America is going to need to have a racial reckoning at some point, really look in the mirror and say, yes: we commited atrocities, and, between chattel slavery, forced relocation, and "battles" against civilian Native American villages, probably killed at least as many civilians as any genocidier, though perhaps over a great period of time. I'm not advocating some kind of huge national penance, but just a reconciliation, a sober recognition of what power and racial bigotry can do when they meld together.


2) "Occupation": Semiotics and Politics
When I came across this article, one of many illustrating in garish, fluorescent colors the banal, everyday oppression perpetuated by the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, it struck me how loaded a word "Occupy" must have been, from the Palestinian perspective, when it was taken up as a rallying cry. It really does signify two, if not opposite, then definitely distinct poles: space being controlled by citizenry vs. space being controlled by enforcers of an effectively martial law.

On the off chance some of you aren't familiar with the unbelievably far-right policies currently implemented by Netanyahu's Likud government, and, more to the point, because this article makes me angry, I'd like to share a few quotes, and this fantastic picture, with you. (Though I strongly, strongly encourage you to read the whole thing)

In 1949, shortly after Israel’s War of Independence, S. Yizhar—the doyen of modern Hebrew prose writers—published a story that became an instant classic. “Khirbet Khizeh” is a fictionalized account of the destruction of a Palestinian village and the expulsion of all its inhabitants by Israeli soldiers in the course of the war. The narrator, a soldier in the unit that carries out the order, is sickened by what is being done to the innocent villagers.... 

Sixty-three years have passed since Yizhar wrote “Khirbet Khizeh.” I wish I could say that what he described was an ugly exception and that such actions don’t happen any more. It is not, and they do. This week I find myself in Susya, in the South Hebron hills, near the southern corner of the West Bank. Like their counterparts in many other Palestinian villages, Susya‘s approximately 300 inhabitants are impoverished, badly scarred, terrified, and defenseless. The week before last the officers of the Civil Administration, that is, the Israeli occupation authority, turned up with new demolition orders in their hands; these orders apply to nearly all the standing structures in the village—mostly tents, ramshackle huts, sheep-pens, latrines, and the wind-and-sun-powered turbine that Israeli activists put up some three years back to generate electricity on this stony, thirsty hilltop in the desert. If the orders are carried out—this could happen at any moment—then it means the nearly complete destruction of an entire village and the violent expulsion of its people...

Earlier this year, in February, a settlers’ NGO called “Regavim” (literally “clods of soil”—the name aptly represents the romantic fantasy of belonging that settlers typically cultivate), petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court, demanding that demolition orders issued years ago by the Civil Administration for Palestinian Susya be carried out immediately. The petitioners, many of whom live on stolen land, had the temerity to refer to Palestinian Susya, the last remnant of the ancient village, as an “illegal outpost.”...

  [Describing a demonstration of Palestinian citizens against the demolition of their homes]

Of course, the army was waiting for us, and the soldiers, too, lost no time in doing what soldiers do. There were stun grenades, which can make you deaf for a few days if they go off close to you, and tear gas, and the usual threats and shouts and orders barked at us by senior officers. ...As in other Palestinian villages I’ve seen in this mode of non-violent protest, at Susya the women had a leading part, fearlessly engaging the soldiers, taunting them, dancing and singing before them, insouciant. Alongside these women was a troupe of five brightly costumed clowns, no less daring and inventive. Imagine a soldier, laden down with helmet and cartridges and grenades and boots and all the other foolish bits of metal and plastic, pouring sweat in the midday sun. What, exactly, is this soldier to do when a clown with a bright red nose, cackling and giggling, sticks a peacock’s feather down the muzzle of his sub-machine gun and then proceeds to tickle his nose? 

Whatever you think of Israel's history, this everyday grinding down of a powerful military machine on a people whose lives, in my opinion, they want to make so miserable that they will give up agitating for freedom (a freedom which, given the indefensible antics of settlers in slowly and illegally eroding Palestinian land, becomes more ephemeral by the day), is tragic, morally decrepit, and outright sad. As this article references, the Jewish community has moved from a position of being on the forefront of social change and social justice to - at least among those who support the occupation - being the agents of injustice. I recognize the precursers of Israel's right-wing militant policies, and I recognize they are born of fear. But this occupation helps nothing. As far as I (and Peter Beinart, who you should read) can tell, any self-conception of Israel as a democratic state is undermined and made to strain credulity when one sees and reads of the policies in the Occupied Territories. The most apt summation I can give is that dehumanizing also dehumanizes the perpetrator, and that if Israel is to maintain any shred of moral high ground, not to say any hope of security, this. occupation. must. end. Gathering more and more weapons and becoming more and more militarized, retreating behind Jabotinsky's proverbial "Iron Wall" is only going to erode democracy within that wall.

3) Corporatism in Insurance
Although I'm cautiously pleased at the healthcare ruling, I nonetheless am frustrated that we're still mired down in a corporate-driven insurance market, where we pay middlemen obscene amounts of money to produce paperwork, try at every turn to deny us coverage, and often make us pay anyway. From my point of view, having a corporate middleman facilitating insurance is completely useless: they themselves are responsible for no innovation or technical development (as they aren't actually practicing medicine) and they very infrequently actually face the kind of competition that gives the buyer any kind of market power. Their only benefit is the efficiency boost given by economies of scale, but that could be just as easily achieved via a public option - my ideal healthcare paradigm. Throw out the insurance vampires, who we're feeding money for essentially no unique or innovative service, and give people a choice that empowers rather than disempowers them.


4) Defense vs. Healthcare
What always strikes me as absurd is that we think it perfectly within the government's purview to spend a mind-blowing amount of money, and perform a troubling amount of governmental power consolidation, in order to build a military, given the relatively small number of deaths violent conflict is responsible for (drug wars not included) in our society. Whereas disease, and the PREVENTATIVE HEALTHCARE that is the easiest way to ward it off, and which our system discourages people form using, kills far, far more Americans, but somehow, saving people's lives THAT way is a horrendous evil breach of liberty.

As an aside, it's amuses me that the right is so adamant about their "right to bear arms" and racheting up defense to the point where the ostensible purpose of those arms (defense against a potentially tyrannical government) is utterly laughable. If the U.S.  gov't wanted to control its own people, it easily could. Even if you had all the machine guns in the world, if the military wanted to be tyrannical, it could, because we feed it so much power. Your guns will be peastickers. This is why, in my opinion, it is so, so vital to keep armies under CITIZEN control, rather than letting control slip to Blackwater types, and hand over control of what are essentially private armies to shareholders and contractors.Who has the military has the country, plain and simple, and allowing clearance and military technology to be used by  private entities is, in my view, a sickening step closer to corporations having armies of their own, corporations that have no concern for individual liberties, and see individuals only as labor, or as consumers. America's great innovation was to place the military under accountable civilian rule: don't let that slip away. 

5) Corporatism in School Lunches
I've been watching Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, of late, and it's been making me progressively angrier over the way children are being nutritionally abused in our schools - served "pizza as a vegetable," given all kinds of cheap processed foods, to the utter detriment of their future health, for no reason I can see beyond lining the pockets of big-budget food companies, who would be hurt by a shift to more natural, unprocessed, cooked-not-reheated food. Don't believe me? Look at who lobbied for that nauseating "pizza" ruling. The fact that the American political system is SO broken that even the lives, future diseases, future obesity, future shortened lives of our children can't induce it to prioritize health over corporate profits is DESPICABLE, is not a joke, and is a trend that absolutely must be reversed. 

6) Future systems: Corporate vs. National?
All of this has seemed to reach an eventual theme: the role of corporate power vs. national power, especially when the former gains military control and can reduce its own competition to become monopolistic. It makes me wonder what direction we're going in. Will we still have nation-states in 100 years? Or will that innovation have been usurped by corporate states, where power, money, and military, the essential components of control, have been passed over to an exorbitantly wealthy corporate class, where people self-identify via brand loyalty and, a la Brave New World, are controlled not by outright oppression but by consumerism. I know I come off sounding a bit apocalyptic and "the sky is falling!" but I'm genuinely concerned that multinational corporations are increasingly becoming more and more powerful, and, while that may be a boon for their shareholders and for innovation, are we willing to potentially sacrifice liberty to buy that innovation?

Hopefully tomorrow/when I post next, I'll be more upbeat.

Just keep swimming,
Cody
Quote of the Day, pulled fortuitously from Tumblr: "But I don't want comfort. I want poetry. I want danger. I want freedom. I want goodness. I want sin" - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World


Second Quote of the Day: "Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in" - unattributed Greek proverb

Of Geeks, Greeks, and Narratives of Oppression

In case it hadn't become patently obvious to whichever generous souls have been checking this page over the past week or so, the whole idea of updating this daily seems a tad unrealistic, or at least a pattern that has to be eased into rather than initiated...what's the opposite of cold turkey? Boiling turkey? Anyhow, I'm juggling too many other things, logistically and Big Picture-wise, to beat myself up over it, so I'll just say three figurative Hail Mary's (in my book...maybe read three new poems? Really liking the idea of poetry as an alternative way of accessing Things Bigger Than Us) and get on with life, until I have something that strikes me as so interesting and worthy of dissection that I can't help but write (and, in all likelihood, mildly rant) about it. Which, surprise surprise, is what brings me here today.

This morning, I was minding my own business, waiting for the new Crash Course to load on my atrociously slow connection while reading through a few blog posts I'd pulled up before I drifted off last night. If you're not already in the habit of it, I'd definitely suggest getting *in* the habit of reading internet comments whenever you get a chance. I tend to find that they're a much more immediate, unfiltered tap into the dynamic of conversation around whatever issue happens to be raised, and though they can range from the mind-numbingly terrifying (Any major news site, most celebrity sites, 98% of Youtube; a la Bartlet, "These people don't vote....do they?") to the quirky and genuinely engaging (Vlogbrothers videos of the non-Giraffe-sex variety, niche online news magazines, etc) they always tend to be a good show. The article in question addressed a problem with which I was very much familiar, both in practice and in theory: the particularly brand of misogyny that infests certain corners of "Geek Culture".

All in all, the article itself was rather rote - not because it wasn't well-written or intelligently argued, but simply because I was familiar with the debate, and had heard the perspectives before. When I scrolled into the comments, however, I opened the door onto a fascinating discussion of the psychology of geek culture, and the way that a particular (intelligent male) experience of real or perceived oppression created a virulently defensive and often highly insular subculture. Thanks the perspectives of a few comments in particular I began linking some of the very convincing analyses of geek culture to a set of discussions I'd been mentally considering as a topic for some time: the ways that binary stereotypes of smart/popular, isolated/engaged, oppressed/oppressor, etc - especially when it came to female role models - really warped my thinking growing up.

Ever since I can remember, the main notable thing about me was precocity: I read early, spoke early (and, unsurprisingly, profusely), loved to write, and genuinely loved the challenge of school subjects, whatever they might be. I was a genuine Hermione, which I say not to brag, but just to crystallize the way that the world saw me, and the way that I, in turn, saw myself. I was also, at least until about 10 or so, very self-confident: I would protect those in my group, stand up for myself, position myself as the leader of groups, etc. Throughout this whole time, I was what you might call a proto-hipster. Since I'd been reassured since birth that my role in this world was as a Smart Girl, I had come -with a now-embarrassing degree of self-righteousness - to view anything mainstream or  "pretty" or "popular" as intrinsically antithetical to anything Smart, and, as every well-meaning piece of kids TV and children's novels had told me, in the end, the Smart ones would win. I recognize now that just as some other kids might have picked up on that dichotomy and gravitated towards the "popular" end through mimicry, I did the same thing, except in a different direction, since it seemed closer to my initial starting point. I may have been playing the more "desirable" role from an adult's perspective, but I was buying into that stereotypical dichotomy just as wholeheartedly as those I looked down on had.

Unfortunately, around the age of 12, some inscrutable combination of stressors led my self-esteem to plummet, and led me into a self-destructive spiral where I controlled my world via my weight. Even as I still thought of myself as a "smart" kid, I subconsciously thought everything would be perfect if I looked a certain way, and I was determined to get there. By the time I hit the other end of that roadbump, around 13, I was in a new town, without close friends, and stuck with a devilishly untreatable metabolic disorder that made looking like the "ideal" of beauty pretty damn impossible. I say all this not to load you down with TMI, but just to give you an idea of how I started out my teenage years: frustrated with the world, resentful, lonely. It was here that the poisonous stereotype that I'd previously embraced in endearing, but ultimately not-too-damaging ways really took its toll. Just as popular culture emits, on so many wavelengths, that the way to happiness is through money, fame, beauty, friends etc, the stereotype of "popular," the signals emitted by geek culture offered a counternarrative, one that said, to those who weren't "popular," that they were, instead, smart, isolated, oppressed, but ultimately righteous and Better Than all those people who found dates to prom and liked going to football games.

Even though geek culture thrives on its self-image as a haven for the outcasts, I think that its own self-conception of that to which being "cursed" with intelligence in high school inevitably leads is just as limiting as its counterpart. Looking back, I can recognize that even as I felt frustrated and insecure, I turned that into some warped sense of validation, and, worse still, was so resentful of those who seemed to magically form the relationships that I lacked, that I eschewed forging close relationships "IRL", or becoming deeply involved in social circles, and every time I failed socially, rather than trying again, I would just go back to my own little world and justify it through my weird sense of social martyrdom, "Yes, you're lonely now, and it's Their Fault, but one day you will Conquer the World!". This is what linked me in from the initial misogyny article. Geek culture seems to me to existentially thrive on its perception of its own oppression -sometimes actual, sometimes fictive - and, therefore, has trouble recognizing when it's doing some oppression of its own: to recognize itself as the perpetrator of harmful and misogynistic stereotypes/modes of behavior (girls as sexy toys with guns, women as victims, women as marginalized in the narratives of some of the Founding Texts of geekdom, with Tolkein a good example) would fundamentally challenge its raison d'etre.

As an aside, and an explanation of this title, it fascinates me the way intelligence is "coded" (i.e. molded into easily digestible stereotypes) by society. On one end, you have "geek smart," (computers, socially awkward, a smidge obsessive, adorkable, often typed as not upper-class) and on the other, you have what I'm calling "Greek smart," (smug, intelligent, generally well-off, popular, suave, less science-focused). Being someone who tries to avoid pretension as much as I can (in myself and in others) I'm inclined to lean away from Greek Smart, but for a variety of reasons - my never having been into comic books, my crippling lack of gaming skills, that pesky extra X chromosome- Geek culture never fit either.

One significant counterweight to this was Harry Potter fandom, which I think, in the long run, helped me recognize that friends aren't just the spoils of evil popularity, but can be the fruits of genuine, emotionally-satisfying, and, yes, intelligent interaction, but not when intelligence is held up as some kind of sainthood. Also, it recognizes literary, analytic, and conceptual intelligence in ways beyond 1s, 0s, and XBoxs. Another was Nerdfightaria, an incredible community that, even though I still haven't engaged with it was completely as I should, really introduced to me the value of community, and the ways that being a self-rightous isolated "Smart Person," really sucked, and very rarely made you happy (which, in the end, is sort of the whole point).


What I've learned since coming to Tulane, and, more generally, since I grew up quite a bit is
A) That being judgmental makes no one, leastwise you, happy.
B) That girls, contrary to popular conception, can be beautiful, sexy, popular, engaged, smart, geeky, and compassionate, all at once, with none of those things being mutually exclusive.
C) Intelligence is not an end in itself. Forging connections, understanding the universe, perpetuating kindness, solving problems, advocating to end social ills, those are ends. Intelligence is only a means. Hermione knew this, but I guess it took time and maturity for it to sink in with me.



One significant corollary to all this (linked enough to justify inclusion, but disparate enough to baffle my powers of transition):
I've always been frustrated by the It Gets Better movement, and I've recently become able to coherently explain why. When the movement became popularized by Dan Savage and others, I was going through a period of depression: I felt isolated, incompetent, etc. It was tough, painful, and not particularly easy to solve. I hadn't been bullied, but at the same time, I had few truly close friends, and I always ended up on the edges of whatever social circle I was near. It was no one's fault, no one targeted me, but I always  seemed ended up excluded. Although in its own right, and in context of the purpose for which it originated, It Gets Better was admirable, I think its popularity highlights a divergence in the way we treat modes of social agression primarily directed at males (outright bullying), and those directed at females (subtle exclusion, inability to meet cultural standards). The victims of bullying championed/memorialized by It Gets Better were primarily gay males, who had been pushed into their decision by atrocious and indefensible taunts, threats, and insults. These problems are real, and they deserve attention and empathy. But, troublingly, by focusing simply on bullying - an external, individualized threat to young people's self-image and emotional stability - and marginalizing the other, similarly real and troubling routes that lead a person to depression and self-harm, routes that are far more psychological, with your own worst instincts beating yourself up for not meeting some standard of beauty, or intelligence or popularity, set by culture and ingrained to become a vicious internal weapon, I think we dangerously marginalize a group - primarily female - for whom depression cannot be easily tracked to an external threat, and risk further reinforcing the impression that those who self-harm for less comprehensible reasons are weak, are the agents of their own suffering. Though you do see groups addressing these issues - the most well-known being "To Write Love on Their Arms," they never got the kind of attention and widespread appeal that did It Gets Better (Come on, can you imagine the President filming a video for a cause as stigmatized as drug abuse and self-harm, similarly destructive as they are?). While I think the gender dynamics of these problems are part of the issue, I also think they speak to a larger discomfort with blaming a endemic cultural virus rather than an easily individualized, targeted, and eliminated (at least in our perception) threat.


I should probably stop Soapboxing and get some work done, or, at the very least, stop reading analyses of the healthcare verdict. If anyone's still reading this, I'd really love to hear any comments you have on anything I brought up: like I said, I have a soft spot for them!

Quote of the Day: "Damn truth, always resisting simplicity!" - John Green
Arabic Word of the Day: "Sabaahah" - Morning, from the root Sa Ba Ha, "to become", "the becoming".

Stay cool, everyone (particularly if anyone's reading from Colorado!),
Cody

Blog Resurrection and Musings on Heritage

Well, that was a hell of a (now two) week(s). Taken partially to just mean a whirlwind, but partially to imply periods of outright hellishness. Between being introduced to DC, decamping back to State College for the surprisingly affecting nostalgic/regretful 2012 State High graduation, and being diagnosed with early-stage Lyme disease (initially debilitating, but fine once knocked out with antibiotics) I haven't gotten much writing done. But rather than fall into the old pattern, and leave another bare-bones blog to languish on some distant server, I'm pushing myself to come back while it's still fresh, while a hiatus can still be salvaged from becoming outright desertion. In the nearly two weeks since I've been living in and around the Metro DC area - and particularly since my aunt, whose apartment I've thus far shared, is in Tennessee for a week - I've become acutely and poignantly aware of the potential for loneliness in a city like this, and, moreover, the absolute necessity of keeping some social self alive, if only to remember how to communicate in something other than laser-focus research memos and terse cafe orders - the logistical jargon necessary to get through the day. On those days when I don't manage to connect much outside of my internship, when I Metro in, walk, talk, do my job, Metro out, it's as if the circuits in my head that keep me connected and dynamic, keep me from just getting caught up in my books and my own head, get rusty. My own variation on cogito ergo sum, I suppose: scrivo ergo sum, I write, therefore, I am, a statement that's resonated all the more as I settle into my Facebook withdrawal, and recognize how integral words, particularly online, are to the bare project of existing, now that distance relationships mean physical existence doesn't quite cut it.

These few weeks weren't my first time in D.C., but it was certainly my first encounter of the city – as, on some level, a single dynamic organism – where I assessed it through the lens of one of it’s current and possibly future denizens – that ubiquitous mass of be-blazered, purposeful striders slipping through the SmartCard turnstyles and sliding through the glass doors of Commerce, or OAS, or any of hundreds of non-profits or low-level agencies. Riding the Metro, there’s a strange combination of unity and completely alienation: fellow passengers likely share your fatigue, your high-heel scars, your preoccupation with the election, or with global news, but at the same time, D.C. is most certainly not New Orleans: everyone moves, comfortably and politely, but firmly, in their own little bubble, floating throughout downtown to wherever their destination might be.

Most of you probably know or would be unsurprised to learn that I’m an avid fan of West Wing, a political drama spearheaded by Aaron Sorkin in the late 90s and early 00s (do we have a name for those yet? Zero-ies? Two-Thousands?) chronicling the ins and outs of White House life, from press detail to speechwriting to political crises to actual crises to Oval Office humor to simple camaraderie among impossibly smart (fictional) people. I think what I loved most about West Wing, and what I appreciate most now about actually being submerged in the working culture of D.C., is the sense of moving towards some future, of being able to fix in my minds eye some work to which I could conceivably imagine dedicating myself once I - if I - ever "grow up". Not to dive too deep into the abyss of TMI, but for me, the biggest curse of adolescence was a constant sense of needing to repair past mistakes, to do-over moments and relationships and experiences, a Gatsby-esque drive to recreate some pre-divorce sense of identity. Sure, I was interested in academics, and school, but entirely in the abstract: it was a game to play, to keep myself busy, not a practical set of means to an end. I'm certainly not going to pull an Avenue Q and claim that i've miraculously "found my purpose" on the vulgar, brusque streets of DC, but it did have the effect of reorienting me to where I'll be two years from now, when Tulane spits me out with a shiny degree, and I run out of pre-formed steps on the "what's next" ladder. I don't have a definite answer yet, but, who knows, maybe this summer will serve as an incubator. 

People-watching around the Jefferson pier - a point in alignment with White House, Capital, Lincoln and Jefferson memorials - never fails to amuse, but sometimes it gets me to thinking about and inevitably waxing poetic about the symbolic power of a city like this, a conscious, intentional capital where notions of Americanness - were hammered and molded and erected in a time of utter uncertainty. What appeals to me about DC is the fact that it is what came next, after the revolution, after the war, it was the foundation of a new social order that the colonists had won the right to form. As everything from the French Revolution to the Egyptian one to the Hunger Games has taught us, the high human drama of conflict is all well and good as spectacle, but legacies are formed from what people do with the political capital war brings. Rather than an organic city, steeped with the haphazard tides of history, DC was a city planned, calibrated, and built to be a center of government, built by a hubristic cohort of men and women who wanted a national identity that wasn't simply geography or heritage, but something they created. You see it flickering out in the absurd statue of Washington a la Zeus, in the much worked-over homages to reason and symmetry. I'm not going to go into the whole separation of church and state business, but I do think there's power in people - at least officially - making a conscious choice of what they would worship, what they would weave into their streets and marble, and daring to create those objects of worship and respect from scratch, rather than tradition. It shouldn't be *over*romanticized, and that worship of the ingenuity of man has, at points gone horribly wrong, has led to arrogance and selfishness and stultifying loneliness, but as an experiment, I still find it pretty damn compelling. 

Don't worry - there'll be no more National Treasure style babbling about the symbolic wealths of DC, but I couldn't help myself just this once, especially as I get ready to go visit the Mall. I left religion behind years ago, but on gorgeous Sundays like this, turning over the transcendental - whether through poetry, contemplation of science, of philosophy - in your minds' eye is too tempting to resist.

Through rusty, creaking writer's block, 

Cody

Arabic Word of the Day/Weel: Wasaatiyya, the middle way, moderate. A title adopted by certain anti-colonial Islamist intellectuals in the late 20th century, advocating a dialog-based Middle Way between Westernization and radical extremism.

Quote of the Day/Week:"Absolute peace is an unattainable goal...but it is one towards which we must continue to journey, our eyes fixed upon it as a traveler in a desert fixes his eyes on the one guiding star that will lead him to salvation" Aung San Suu Kyi  

Taxation Without Representation: Fertile Crescent Style

Fair warning: this one's gonna piss some people off, because I'm more than a little pissed off. But if you didn't expect that, you probably shouldn't be reading this blog to begin with.



$3.075 Billion. With a "B".  $3,075,000,000. That's $23 a year, on average, from every American taxpayer, going directly to funding foreign aid to the state of Israel. If there were a way of quantifying the in-kind value of US international lobbying on Israel's behalf, not to mention the US Security Council veto, which has made Israel effectively immune from any repercussions resulting from their dozens of breaches of international law - from refusal of right of return to unending occupation - that number would likely rise.

Ostensibly, this funding is supporting "the only democracy in the region," a necessity for "fighting the war on terror" and preserving our regional interests. Despite the fact that the middle one seems a bit circular, given how much regional animosity stems from our policy inseparability from Israel on key issues.

Today, I came across an article that sparked again the unspeakable frustration I, as one of those American taxpayers, feel when I see what my money is, at least partially, paying for.


A forty-year illegal occupation, wherein messianically-minded religious radicals have been allowed to illegally settle in walled fortresses, thus changing "facts on the ground" to the point where a two-state solution is increasingly unlikely, given that current Palestinian territory is more and more resembling a block of swiss cheese. The  The prisoners, like Mahmoud Sarsak, a Palestinian football player, held in Israeli jail for three years with neither trial nor charge, on the basis of supposed "secret information". The 2009 Gaza War, where - despite a Hamas ceasefire that that had led to a dramatic reduction in rocket attacks in the four months preceding invasion - a people already barricaded, sanctioned and cut off from humanitarian aid were bombarded with exponentially more advanced military technology, all while the civilians were not allowed to leave. CAT Bulldozers that demolish Palestianian homes and electrical lines because they were built without the permits Israel next to never gives to anyone but Settlers - a policy most Palestinians see as a war of attrition, an attempt to make their daily life within the territory theirs by international law so miserable and unpredictable that they just leave, giving Israel access to the whole block of territory, and utterly demolishing any two-state solution. An Oslo peace process premised on land-for-peace, after which illegal settlement rates skyrocketed. A current peace process that refuses to deal on basic issues - right of return, right of reclaiming of occupied legally Palestinian territory, dismantling of settlements, access to Jerusalem - and constantly chides the Palestinians for not taking the 1948 deal, a deal that brashly gave 56% of land to the Jewish 33% of the population, and that furthermore split the Arab population, with a goodly number of Arab populations becoming the minority within a Jewish state, the very thing the Jews themselves did NOT want to be in any other state.

And this, which I came across today. In scale, minor, but in sheer banality of evil terms, infuriating.The arrogant, intrusive, demeaning Ben-Gurion airport security procedures enacted on two UNITED STATES CITIZENS flying to Israel as tourists, because they happened to be Arab American. I'd encourage you to read the story Sasha al-Sarabi and Najwa Doughman's in its entirety here, but here are a few choice excerpts:



"Do you feel more Arab or more American?” she asked. I had answered the ten previous questions very calmly, but with this question I looked back at the security official confused and irritated. She couldn’t have been much older than me—her business attire and stern facial expressions did not mask her youth.


“I don’t know, I feel both. Why? Does this affect my ability to get in?”


She ignored my question. “Surely you must feel a little more Arab, you’ve lived in many Middle Eastern countries.”


I did not see the correlation. I have never felt the need to choose. “Yes I have but I also lived in the US for the past seven years, and was born there, so I feel both.” My response did nothing to convince her.
...


But you have been here two times already. Why are you coming now for the third time? You can go to Venezuela, to Mexico, to Canada. It is much closer to New York, and much less expensive!”


I realized the conversation was going nowhere. “Right, but I wanted to come back here again. Don’t you have tourists who come back more than once?”


“I’m asking the questions here,” she replied disgruntled.


“Okay, we are going to do something very interesting now!” Her face transformed from a harsh stare to a slight smirk. She proceeded to type “www.gmail.com” on her computer and then turned the keyboard toward me. “Log in,” she demanded.


“What? Really?” I was shocked.


“Log in.”


I typed in my username and password in complete disbelief. She began her invasive search: “Israel,” “Palestine,” “West Bank,” “International Solidarity Movement.”


Looking back, I realize I shouldn’t have logged in. I should have known that nothing I did at this point would change my circumstances, and that this was an invasion of my privacy. Yet all the questions, the feeling that I had to defend myself for simply wanting to enter the country, and the unwavering eye contact of the security officers left me feeling like I had no choice. I was worried I would let Sasha down if I refused and that it would be the reason for both of our denials into the country.


She sifted through my inbox, reading every single email with those keywords. She read sentences out loud to her colleague, sarcastically reenacting and mocking old Google Chat conversations between Sasha and me about our future trip to Jerusalem. I squirmed in my seat.
....

After they had gone through every one of our belongings, they proceeded to the body search. I was taken to the back of the room with one male and two female security officers. The room was smaller and closed off with a curtain. The older woman seemed to be training the younger one. She would murmur directions in Hebrew as the younger officer patted me in different places. The man stood right outside the half-open curtain. They scanned my body with a metal detector, and it beeped at the button on my jeans. “Take off your pants,” said the older officer immediately.

I lost my last nerve. “NO,” I responded. “We’ve already been denied. You searched everything. Why do I need to take my pants off after you’ve denied me? I will not take my pants off.”

“This is how we do things in Israel,” the woman snapped back. “You have to take them off.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then someone will make you.” They all walked out of the room.

I began crying and shaking as my mind went through a million different nightmares. Were they going to get more people to hold me down? What the hell is going to happen to us? I wanted to see Sasha and not be alone for a minute longer, but was too afraid of the consequences of leaving the room.

The guards returned a few minutes later with shorts taken from my luggage. “Fine,” they said. “Wear these.”

I struggled into them with tears streaming down my face. I stood ashamed and mortified as she patted me down all over again. I had never felt so humiliated, so degraded, and so violated.

...

“Does this happen often?” Sasha asked.

“Every day,” replied the officer."

I don't know about you, but I'd like my $23 back.

Except, as you may know, despite being financial and politically joined at the hip, we don't actually have any say in the Israeli policy, far-right-wing policies that are not only abrogating basic humanitarian principles but are furthermore destroying the American image in the Middle East. Seeing how much we bankroll the country, maybe we should get a few votes in the Knesset. Or, at the very least, maybe we should make clear to our own representatives that paying for occupation, martial law, and degrading military practices towards Palestinians is *not* what we signed up for when we see our taxes deducted from every pay check.

And, frankly, I don't think Israel needs more bosom buddies. It needs more well-meaning critics: those who say "yes, we agree you should exist, but we will unequivocally *not* hold back in telling you you're driving yourself to the point of alienation from all those who value social justice, and if you want to live up to your ideals of a genuinely democratic society, you will no longer be allowed to act with impunity (one of the aspects that makes Israel so hated in the region); you will be forced to reform just like any rogue state". Because what you get when a state is effectively blocked from forceful and action-backed criticism is a state so used to making policy with no expectation of consequence is a state incapable of self-correcting, shielded from the consequences of even its most radical actions, externalities shifted onto those with much less international sway. Not to mention the fact that it completely undermines any role we, the US, might play as a credible peacemaking intermediary.

I have nothing against my Jewish friends; I am the farthest thing from anti-Semitic. I have the deepest respect for the many Jewish leaders, who,  throughout history, who have been on the cutting edge of social reform, from womens rights to anti-fascism to socialism to anti-war protests to civil rights to gay rights. I have nothing in principle against the idea of a Jewish state. What I have a problem with is a state so desperate for security that it is willing to sacrifice anything to attain it. Believing Israel should be allowed to exist is one thing. Swallowing the line that anything and everything should be tolerated in the name of national security, and furthermore, the line that the security of Israeli citizens is one iota more sacrosanct than the security of Palestinian residents and refugees, is absolute nonsense.

With this blog, I've probably sacrificed my ability to ever visit Israel, sacrificed my ability, in many districts, to ever attain public office, unless policy shifts radically in the interim (and, you know, the atheism thing stops being an issue). But  I fervently believe that accepting injustice - be it in Israel or anywhere else - simply because it's the status quo is despicable, and believe even more fervently that the security of one shouldn't be built on the oppression of another. Just as our economic security eventually had to shift from being built on the backs of slaves, American must begin to conceive of national security which does not rely on the political suppression of Arabs under client police states or Israeli occupation. The entire point of the democracy is that we can, in theory, shift the status quo, if we make it clear to our representatives that Israel better shape up if it wants the continued support of the American people, and more particularly, of the American taxpayers.

Salaam, Shalom, and Peace,
Cody


Arabic Word of the Day: النكبة - the Nakba. "The Catastrophe" colloquially used among Palestinian populations to refer to events of 1948, when, from their perspective, Israeli military strikes and the concomitant war drove them out of their ancestral homes. Putting aside the question of whether the claims are factually accurate, this word reminds me that it's important to recognize the historical memories of disenfranchisement and marginalization within the Palestinian community, memories and sufferings which are often shunted side in discussions of the conflict's roots. 

Quote of the Day:

"In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential, than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular Nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated.
The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests.

The Nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the Government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The Government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of Nations has been the victim.

So likewise, a passionate attachment of one Nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite Nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest, in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite Nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the Nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained; and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld." - George Washington, Presidential Farewell Address, 1796.

Zombies, Packing, and Hyphens

As the title might suggest to you, this entry is going to jump around a little bit. Fair warning. See, initially, I had this fabulous plan to deconstruct/contextualize/update notions of religious liberty...and then it dawned on me that I had four hours of graduation party to chat through, and that I was shipping off for DC tomorrow afternoon. So that one will have to wait.

Over the past few hours, as I was trying (for the second time in way too short a time period) to shove my life unceremoniously into a bulbous purple suitcase, it struck me just how often I'll be doing this over the next few years, and just how cumbersome, in a literal, physical way, actual STUFF tends to be. It's great if you're going to be living a predictable, stable life, where you can just marinate day in and day out in a little self-created, stuff-filled comfort-reinforcing bath. But if economic globalization, employment uncertainty, and the general unplannedness of the next decade of my life are any indications, life is going to be neither predictable nor stable for quite a while. On a theoretical hipster level, that sounds exhilarating and invigorating, but superficial, petty me, used to having pretty much whatever it occurs to me I might need at hand, might need to let go of that neurosis and pack only what I absolutely need, while trusting self and common sense to fill in the blanks. Even though we as a species recognize, rationally enough, to be fair, that stability is something to be sought out and maintained at all costs, we still do recognize - in our legends, our history, our aspirations - that stories aren't things that typically happen while you're clinging to that stability. It's a small step, but I'm realizing that, generally speaking, stuff is something you accumulate after you find stories (or, in certain cases, fail to) but not something which usually coexists with the high-octane story-forming periods of life. Believe me, I'm far from an ascetic, but I am becoming more and more conscious of how a need for stuff weighs you down, and hopefully putting myself on a path towards relying on it quite a bit less.

Which brings me to, of course, the Zombie Apocalypse. Since, given recent news coverage of the face-eater and the roommate heart-and-brain eater, that Nerd's-worst-nightmare is apparently imminent. I heard a fascinating theory once (or read, more likely) that fears of Middle Class societies surrounding apocalypse are less an actual fear of death, and more a recognition that, despite all the wonders and advances specialization of labor has given us, it's also made us a lot less effective at the business of living, because instead of being a self-contained survival organism, we rely on the rest of the fabric: necessitating gadgets and things and stuff to fill in all the blanks we outsourced to other humans. If we were left living in an agricultural or nomadic setting, without the technology (even in a simple sense) to which we're accustomed, how would we survive? Would we be able to adapt outside our "domesticated" environment and fight for our lives? I think most people, myself included, would be a little hesitant to answer that question.

And, finally, a totally unrelated question. Should I and people who look like and have similar ethnic backgrounds to me start calling ourselves European-Americans? After all, if vernacular dictates that "African-Americans" and "Asian-Americans" and "Indian-Americans "are things, maybe an interesting subtle form of those qualifications would be to unhinge Caucasian/European from the "default" flavor of American, and put what were previously "white" Americans on a level with everyone else. Then, when it became expected for us to use it, maybe we'd just get sick of the whole hyphen system, and start calling everyone Americans, which is, you know, what they are. Since this is and has, at least since 1492, always been an immigrant country. As someone from a Irish/Italian community on her mother's side, there are experiences of those groups' marginalizations that go back only two generations, so we're all conscious of what it means to be folded into "Americans" and what it means to  be left on the outside.


With that, it's back to Crash Course World History, kitten-snuggling, reciting Arabic verbs, and trying not to hyperventilate over how freaking excited I am to be in Washington in 24 hours.

All by best, and, if the Zombies come, here's hoping you don't lose your head. In any sense of the word.

Cody

Arabic Word of the Day: شعر Sh'ay'ra - A song or poem, derived from the Arabic verb Sha'ay'ra, to feel. 

Quote of the Day, in honor of new challenges and possibilities:

"You'll look up and down streets.  Look 'em over with care.
About some you will say, "I don't choose to go there."
With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,
you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

And you may not find any
you'll want to go down.
In that case, of course,
you'll head straight out of town.

It's opener there
in the wide open air.

Out there things can happen
and frequently do
to people as brainy
and footsy as you.

And when things start to happen,
don't worry.  Don't stew.
Just go right along.
You'll start happening too."

-Oh, the Places You'll Go
Dr. Seuss

Homo Mutato: Modern Mythology and the Construct of "Creation"

Apologies to anyone reading this who might be in the mood for the condensed, professionalized, or deeply analytic. Some days, the nuts and bolts of everyday life are all-consuming, and a good thing, too, because they're slipping and creaking, and more than often need a tune-up, or at least an attempt at critical prognosis.  But sometimes - especially when you're on the cusp or something new, exhilarating, reorienting - the immediate blurs a bit, and you tug on a wide-angle lens. If all goes to plan - which, in fairness, it may well not - this post is going to be a little bit meditative, and more than a little bit freewheeling. It'll probably try to say too much, cover too much ground, make sweeping symbolic pronouncements. I'd blame it on the hazy summer thunderstorms, or on that nefarious Youtube bot that sent me into a sentimental West Wing spiral, but when I decided to sink into reading commencement speeches, I really did myself in. I appreciate those of you who indulge me. Your regularly scheduled rants will doubtless be back tomorrow.

This whole trajectory of thought came from an unlikely point of origin: a Slate article exploring a controversial reinvigoration of characters from the Watchmen canon by DC Comincs, and discussing more broadly the instances of original creators - like those of Superman and the Avengers - being ripped of by exploitative business deals, and seeing their characters torn from their control, catapulted into interpretation, reimagining, and collective memory. These accounts tell a story that is clearly one of unequal deals, of predatory partnerships, and I definitely don't want to applaud that, since they clearly were and felt victimized by the comic companies actions.  But what interests me isn't so much the mechanics of how it came to be, but rather the phenomenon of comic heroes - Spiderman, Superman, Wolverine, Xavier, The Hulk, Batman, Rorscharch - being moved into a space where, although they were legally controlled by one business interest or another, their detachment from a sole creator gave them the status of a sort of public mythology, a set of archetypes and backgrounds placed in varying situations, subjects of rampant fan fiction, often without one single "correct" canon in the public eye. They weren't That Guy's characters, they were comic characters, and even if one business technically owned them, creatively, they were paper dolls, and everyone licensed to sell their stories, and quite a few who weren't, got to move them into new positions, put them in new situations, drag out of them new truths or dimensions. In some ways, Doctor Who exists under similar rules. Not many people, even relatively ardent fans that I've met, could likely name the original architect of "Who". I know I can't, and while not yet an Old Who devotee, I'm passionately attached to the new series. The point being, in contrast to Star Trek, which, while reimagined, was always Roddenberry's story, his playground, Doctor Who was the story of a culture, a country, a time, a network: a character so flexible he could be a part of any number of different individuals' stories.

This is not a new thing, this phenomenon of characters living in the private domain, as half-sketched, partially realized archetypes ready to be swept up into some new adventure, some new variation, before being set back on the shelves until the next iterator came along. Going back to the Greeks, the Romans, to traditions of the Saints, characters were often the outgrowths of myths, stories and people and ideas that seemed to have grown up with a harvest, or blown in on a wind, rather than expertly and singularly crafted by one individual. They were collectively owned, and this pantheon of heroes and gods, of ideas to which we all had access but which no one in particular possessed, were brought to life in the Odyssey, the Iliad, the Aeneid. They were referenced by poets from the Renaissance to the Romantic Era, they are reinterpreted to the present day. Their tradition lives on in the hundreds of thousands of fan fiction authors, who openly disdain the idea of characters being off-limits. Throughout this procession, stories weren't woven from scratch, from genius and a pen. They were told and inculcated, and then an aspect was changed, a ending rewritten, an underlying trait explored in an unorthodox way.

You don't find typically find stories being pulled out of minds abandoned on a desert island with a dictionary, fertilized by singular human genius alone. As any English professor worth their salt would tell you, you don't find stories in an airless chamber, you find them within a historical and cultural texture, drawn from latent ideas, reimagined, reinterpreted, then passed on.

Some historians of literary history have argued that the idea of a character belonging to a lone creator, cordoned off from the shared creative well, is, in the scope of time, a relatively new invention, ushered in around the time of the Novel as a form, and, I think around the time individualism and liberal (in the classical sense) rights-based politics started to take hold. As we began to shift from focusing on communities as a whole to focusing on individuals stories as being divorced from and distinct from their communities, we started telling ourselves that this wasn't just another story, this was OUR story. Yes, we may have picked up that archetype somewhere, we might have pulled that personality, magpie-like, from a friend, who himself constructed it to fit an idea, we may have taken a traditional form and turned it's on its head, twisted a knob, stretched out a few things. But We. Made. It. Completely. End of discussion.

Believe me, as an agnostic woman with serious concerns about heteronormativity and repressive gender norms, I have plenty of praise to heap on liberal norms, and their recognition of those who deviate from the group will. But I nonetheless think the shift is interesting, and I think that it's important to remember that society is, as Weber said, a cage of our own creation. Very little of this is hard-wired. If we decide to say, against all historical evidence, that stories can be created by individuals, and aren't, in fact, iterations of shared consciousness, reimagined in any number of endlessly creative ways, that's fine. But I think we should remember it's a construct, and that we believe what it's convenient for our society to believe, just as earlier, more communally-focused societies did. Who knows? Maybe there's one Greek guy who's been fuming over his work being ripped away from him for thousands of years, and is now the anti-patron demon of Internet Pirates. Maybe individual ownership is The Truth, and myth was a deviation from that. The point is that what we see as irrevocably normal, in this or in any arena, should be held to some scrutiny.

In the end though, I don't really mean for this article to be an evisceration of current copyright norms, or  a public exaltation revealing to the world how much I geek out over Joseph Campbell. In the end, the reason this idea feels so powerful to me is that it points me to questioning a fundamental (I think) misconception: that we are the creators of our own reality. Creating has come to mean creating something totally new. Even though we know, on some level, that's not logically possible, even if we look to the literal roots of each word. Creation is something not initially attempted by humans: there was one Creator, the idea of humans Creating anything new in a literal sense was preposterous. Humans don't create. We build. We look around for spare pieces of wood and construct a lean-to. Find scraps of stone and build a spear. We combine, we reconfigure, we twist, turn, rotate, repurpose, on both a literal level and a symbolic one.

In the larger scheme of evolutionary biology, the metaphor of mutation strikes me as potent. Maybe we're not homo narrans, or homo econimus after all, maybe we're the mutating animal. Maybe we're the one (or one of the few) creatures able not to just live in its environment, and accept the traditions passed down, not to just be acted UPON by mutation and gradual change, but to ourselves BE an agent of mutation, doing what before, only the slow process of nature had done, intelligently recombining the raw materials around us to create words, stories, computers, civilizations. Creation is solitary, singular. Evolution is collaborative and dynamic, a much more powerful metaphor for the way we live human life, day to day. As I've said, I'm not much for transcendental gods, particularly the anthropomorphic and proselytizing variety, but I think myths can be valuable as truth beyond literal truth, and one line that's always struck me is that (in the Christian tradition), we as humans are created in God's image. Maybe that was true, but just not in the way the Hebrews or early Christians would have thought. Maybe evolution and mutation is and has always been the driving force of the universe, the "God," that both made and runs the watch. As animals able to take the engine of productive mutation and run with it, maybe we truly are made in the image of that abstract force: mutation and evolution and constant reimagination made manifest.


Wishing you starlight and lightning strikes,
Cody


Arabic Word of the Day: مُنافِق Munaafiq - Hypocrite. From the word "nafak" referring to the escape tunnel built in the burrows of certain species of rats. Some interpret the link as referencing the rat leaving through a back door, and thus shirking on some obligation. Some interpret its metaphor differently: as a tunnel which seems solid to the observer, is in fact hollow, a representation of being internally hollow despite outward convictions.

Quote of the Day: "Sometimes I long for a convent cell, with the sublime wisdom of centuries set out on bookshelves all along the wall and a view across the cornfield - there must be corn fields, and they must wave in the breeze - and there I would immerse myself in the wisdom of the ages and in myself. Then I might perhaps find peace and clarity. But that would be no great feat. It is right here, in this very place, in the here and the now, that I must find them" - Etty Hillesum