Me and Membership

(Blah blah social justice wyt lady personal journey, blah blah.)

I wrote about the end of my library career waaay back in 2012, and I'll leave the details there, but the gist is that a seriously disturbed library volunteer waged an inexplicable, literally baseless, hate campaign against one of my employees.

A trustee told me to begin the firing process for this employee.  It was unethical, illegal, and unearned and I wouldn’t do it.   He then began a Machiavellian campaign to get rid of me.

And then another trustee — we had two who represented our area — took me to lunch. She diplomatically expressed her lack of support for Other Trustee and for Library Boss, and said she'd like to see me stay.

So, there in 1994, I'm sitting across the table, touched and grateful for the first show of support by anyone with power in this situation. But also wondering why it hadn't come soon enough.  I was worn out and I'd already burned my bridges. Figuring out whether I was handling it right, or I was a failure seemed irrelevant.

What this 1994 event has to do with 2021 is this:

This was the event that made me look at how caring about my reputation was making my life impossible.   I’d gotten a total witches' brew of messages all my life, from a bunch of different sources. Summer camp said I was crappy, my 4th grade teacher thought I was great, etc. etc.

Leaving the job didn’t resolve it, in the face of years of contradictory messages.  Was I a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?

 

Forming a sense of self starts with input — family first, but also society and culture. All these, though, are opinions of people with their own damage, needs, agendas both good and bad, their own wisdom or ignorance or love of wielding power, or their simple stupidity.  

So the next step was realizing that life required a sorting process, to at least try to know myself.  I’m still lousy at it, yet no one but me could do it accurately at all.

And yeah, you're maybe liking this, up to this point, but here's what a lot of people won't like.

I’ve never called myself an ally.

It’s not a term anybody should award herself anyway, it’s about standards determined by others, and I think claiming or seeking it is unhealthy.  I’ve tried, awarding myself a summer camp “G” because I thought I deserved it, and realizing that it was the acceptance, not the ornament, that I really both craved and needed to let go of. 

Even if my basic values are strong for equality, democracy, voting rights, ending racism and discrimination on religion, ethnicity, gender-anything, ending economic injustice, and line up 90% with everyone else, I can’t agree to follow an agenda set by others  ; and that’s pretty much the dictionary definition of being an ally. 

Liberal is a label I get to give myself without seeking approval. There’s debate about what earns people the Liberal label too, but there’s no authority making those decisions. Being an ally, though, does mean stepping back and letting those with whom we’re allying take the lead and determine what we should support and oppose. I can’t commit to that. 

I do know that belonging doesn’t require lockstep thinking, debate is ok.  But. There are things that are considered too essential to argue with, and that pretty much get my membership rescinded.  And they baffle me.

Sweeping statements like “politically correct just means being a decent person” are a Thing that I’m supposed to believe, only I think that statement is bullshit.

If I say that some campaign that I think is absurd is political correctness run amuck, I’m told that it means “I support treating people like crap.”  No.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that and I don’t support that. 

You may think Snow White reinforces rape culture.  I think that’s absurd.

No, some white kid wearing dreds is not doing a damn thing wrong. I’m very wary of the campaign against “cultural appropriation” at all, yeah, really, which makes me poor ally material.

No, Horton Hears a Who is not a story of White Saviorism.

Here’s an exact quote I am unapologetically not going to identify or attribute :

You might be wondering what [Game of Thrones] has to do with a radical qtpoc politics. Much of the GoT fandom probably cannot feel with and for people in the real world who face structural violence on a daily basis, the most vulnerable to everyday systems of exploitation.

Maybe some readers agree with me that that’s loony, but I guarantee that an unbroken stream of “So insightful!” and “Thank you for enlightening me!” was the response it got.

Yes, social media lets us cocoon with those who are like-minded, which explains some of the apparent unanimity that’s, in truth, not unanimous at all.  But the craving for acceptance that the sheer quantity of it represents is a real deal. 

I have trouble being polite about such lunacy but I’m ok with bypassing the GoT  type conversations altogether.  Other things, though, seem too important for that.

If you’re tempted to explain to me why I’m wrong on these issues, please know that it has been explained to me thoroughly, and you’re welcome to disagree but the reason for this post isn’t to engage about single issues.  I didn’t offer them to try to convince y’all to agree, and it’s fine if you don’t.  They’re here as illustrations of why “ally” isn’t a good fit for me.

I understand I’m disqualified to be an ally, not because of a particular opinion, but because I can’t agree with having standards set for me, not when they’re about about right and wrong.

Here we run into a good example:

This is the point at which I’m expected to add a line about how, of course, I’m asserting my right to agency and to choose my battles, while vulnerable people live their lives with this agency too often denied them.

It’s true.  But my neglecting to type it in doesn’t mean I really forgot my privilege, and typing it makes no difference in changing a thing on earth for these vulnerable people.

Typing it serves exactly one purpose : to flash my Hall Pass to maintain my membership in acceptable standing.  Seriously.   

There are a lot of us, people of privilege who heavily support justice and equality while enjoying safe and quiet housing, free exercise of their rights, well-stocked pantries, generally a nice personal comfort level.   

If we place the required acknowledgment where it’s called-for, we don’t get called out for trying to have both privilege and acceptance as an ally.  No one expects me to relinquish my safety and comfort, only to voice awareness of it.   My objection to trying for ally status is that it’s based on the properly placed disclaimers, not on the values I live.

It’s not based on having awareness, it’s based on demonstrating awareness.  

To whom?  Who stamps my hall pass, but more importantly, what does that do for any of the victims of violence and injustice?

Liberals berating — if done gently, it’s “reminding” — other liberals has not, in several years of social media politics, made the real problems of, and deadly dangers to, BIPOC and LGBTQ people get even slightly better.  Things are getting worse.  Violence and injustice come down on the vulnerable harder than ever, while Liberalism is being identified with rigid and sometimes irrational political correctness, hurting our winning elections or changing anything.

Did it matter if supporters were posting solid black squares as their Insta profile pictures for BLM, and one celeb had a thin white border around all her pix including that one?

The absurdity there is not that hers was the right way to do it.  That’s another one I’m not going to address, because it’s separate debate from the debate we need to have, which is:  

Let’s say it was the wrong way.  Did it do one single thing to weaken the fight for racial justice?   Lots ranted about it, but does that mean it wasn’t adequate support for BLM, or are we just desperately in need of something to blow off a shitload of steam about?  I call it the latter.

Maybe a bunch of us really believe that statements like “Due process is a basic right that still applies in sex crime cases” or “Friends wasn’t ‘problematic’ for being about a group of white people” cause actual harm.

The beratings and debates happen in liberal bubbles nowhere near the violence and injustice.  They happen between people who are on the same side against violence and injustice.  That we can solve anything by creating an Allowed position on And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street or whether Al Franken should have a hearing — not be exonerated, just have a bleeding hearing(!) —  is a delusion.

It’s a wasteful fight against at best, soft targets, at worst, unimportant ones.  We need to feel we’ve made some small difference somewhere.  People are being slaughtered.  We’re horribly helpless against atrocity, but we can go after Scrambled Eggs Super.  We’ll debate whether a Black actor cast to portray a real life historic Black person is dark enough. We’ll berate a social justice activist for not including the disclaimer line.

I haven’t totally lost faith in sanity prevailing.  The flap about the biographical movie faded pretty well.  The outrage about “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” did die down, corrected when it was established that it’s a female empowerment song, not a rape culture song. Good, but too many did not.

No, supporting what I believe is right, is not “centering myself,” it’s centering a position that I sincerely believe supports justice on an issue.

Yes, I’m “staying in my lane.”

Trying, however imperfectly, to uphold justice IS my lane.

Mundanity

Just trivial news of the moment:

Afghan finished!

A much easier "pattern" than the huge one I made before.  My concession to planning was to make the same three stripes on each end, but from there in, it's random! It's a much more reasonable size.  Those stripes that look white are actually light blue.  My camera's white-balance needs adjusting which I might get around to....

We're going on the Mediterranean diet.  Our first two meals were happily excellent!

Day One, and leftovers for another day, consisted of

Cinnamon Scented Chicken

and

Balsamic Roasted Vegetables.

My Opinion - Great!  And the two dishes were a nice complementary pairing.  The chicken was indeed mostly scented. It smelled but did not taste particularly cinnamon-y, but had a tart lemon/curry/herb sauce, while the veggies, despite the balsamic vinegar, were savory-sweet, possibly because of the vegetables we picked: butternut squash, beets, carrots.  Other choices might be more balsamic.

The chicken recipe came from this cookbook which we had on hand. It's older and out of print, though used copies are out there and I can recommend the healthiness and the tastiness of the recipes -- but not the "Quick" part.  Delicious recipes but the title lies about prep time!  Takes a lot longer.

 Roasted Vegetables found here.

Day Two -- also from our single Mediterranean cookbook, above, and also with generous leftovers -- was turkey cutlets and sauteed pears over couscous.

My Opinion -- Next time we will double the sauce.  But even with too little, it had an appealing flavor that seemed very mild at first, but still made me want more and more of it!

There you have it.  Needlework and cooking.  If they try to shoehorn me into the Proverbs 31 Woman Club, I will scream obscenities and declare my love for female leadership, sleeping late, and gay rights, and make sure they eject me. Oh, and I will fink on Larry, too, who did plenty of the cooking.

 Speaking of not toeing the gender-role line, people are changing their Facebook icons to support gay marriage, and I decided to participate in my own snarky way, though I am not entirely happy with my lopsided symbol drawing:

Can capital punishment be justice?

You might not expect me to be undecided, but I am.

I've jumped from side to side on this issue.  My first stand was pro-death penalty.  I was a teenager, and encountered -- in a brochure about fighting child abuse, not about criminal justice -- a story of a little boy's death after abuse so horrible that it seemed that such criminals have forfeited their right to live, in the sight of the community, God, in every way.

Later, I changed my mind, then still later, changed it back.  Altogether, I've re-thought it probably half a dozen times and ever since the execution of the OK City bomber, I've been stuck in a muddy, uncertain middle.  I thought that one was the right thing.  I still do.

Here's my thing.

When I read that laws have been written to say that the burden of proof no longer falls on the prosecution at a late stage in appeals, even when the evidence and testimony that is now available would have brought acquittal if it had appeared at the original trial;

when I see that some states fight to execute people who are asking for DNA testing of their evidence, which didn't exist years ago at conviction, and the state takes the unconscionable stand that procedure has been fully carried out and that this makes execution "right";

when I encounter these things, I know that, if capital punishment can be just, it is not now. 

And my own endless heart-changes indicate that, like the people who crafted the system, my stand had been based on primitive emotion.  Not reason, or justice, but pre-verbal, primitive gut reaction.

I think we're hardwired to react with fear, rage and revulsion against the deeds of some, and that we write up loads of procedural legal convolution and spin reasonable arguments, to feel OK about claiming the right to kill.

I think this because, if we really wanted simple justice, deterrence, and safety for the community, we would write laws that never, ever tolerated anything less than going to the utmost length to make sure that only the undoubtedly guilty are executed.

Whenever we can do that, then I will revisit the issue of whether the death penalty can possibly be right or just.  Maybe it can.  I can't even imagine it now because all I see is barbarism cloaked in robes and business suits.

Yet another spew about juries and verdicts

Since justice isn't a topic I've written much about, I don't mean that this is another spew about it from me, but another in the massive stream of reaction to a recent case that dominated the news.

I did not keep up with the case and haven't clue one about it. This is about being a juror. Already, in this morning's paper, a microcephalic rant appeared from someone with the phrase that we hear, over and over and over and over and over......

"Everybody knows....." A phrase for and by the unthinking and ineducable, a phrase that has shored up a million wrongful accusations, reputation-destructions and wrongful deaths.

That particular proto-hominid insists that "everybody knows" the child was smothered. He obviously has no concept of evidence, proof, legality. And as for understanding that belief and knowledge are not the same thing - I doubt he's capable.

I was on a jury once and it's one of my most miserable memories, and not because it was any life or death matter, but because I was incapable of doing the job, and because the other jurors were too. My faith in the jury system went completely to hell after it.

It was a drunk driving case. We were a jury of six.

I was newly sober and as stupid as the arrogant, crusading, newly sober can possibly be. The other 5 jurors -- all 5 -- were ready to acquit.

I was a shy, follower type. But I was full of self-righteous condemnation of all who weren't as Marvelous, Special and So-oh-oh-ber as Superior Me, and was practically drunk on my rarely-felt power to persuade. I convinced all 5 of them to convict.

No need to tell me how many people drunk drivers kill and how the conviction might have been the wake-up call the accused needed.

No need to tell me that however bad my judgment was, I was judging to the best of my pathetic ability and that was what they chose me to do.

No need to tell me that, to reiterate, I did not volunteer for duty or for the case, but was chosen, coerced by law to do it at every step.

No need to tell me that if the others disagreed, their failure to stand up and say No, I will not convict is on them, not on me.

I get all of that.

The guy could have been guilty, but it was a borderline case with no proof and no real evidence except a timetable of what he ate and drank in the previous few hours. I had no business Saving the World with a conviction that was inadequately supported. Maybe I stumbled into an accurate verdict and maybe the Anthony jury did too, but in both cases it had to be about what was adequately proven, not what was likely or what "felt" right.

I was a crusading jerk, and the other 5 were spineless and uncaring jerks who just wanted a consensus so they could go home. It was a Perfect Storm of Category 5 Jerk, and something desperately needs to change about the jury system.

As I said, I didn't follow the Anthony case and don't feel entitled to any statements like "I think" she did or didn't do it.

But I did learn something in the past, about the huge honking difference between

"maybe,"
"probably,"
"most likely,"
"she's a horrible human being"

and

hard factual evidence
that answers the questions
beyond reasonable doubt.

I have no solution to stupid juries, and I'm not convinced that this was one. The little that has come out sounds like they were conscientious and serious about their legal responsibility. If the system fails, the jury gets blamed and I'd want to stay anonymous too if I'd been on this one. The system failed when I was juror, and I still feel the weight of the responsibility. But I do know juries of carefully chosen morons are too frequent, and that something oughta be done.

I wouldn't call it my "solution," more like my vague thoughts, but I'd like to see much bigger juries, selected more randomly, but from trained -- trained -- people, and verdicts that do not have to be unanimous. Which does not mean convicting on 51% votes. Two-thirds or even 90% to convict could be required.

Or not. Could it be worse than this system? Yeah, my smart readers will probably think of scenarios in which it could, scenarios I haven't even thought of, but my experience instilled in me a horror of the system as it "works" now.

Unringing a bell

You can't.

There's plenty on the too-early death of Centennial Park bombing hero Richard Jewell, who apparently succumbed to diabetes and renal failure this morning at 44. Why add to it?

Just to rant. The injustice done to Jewell has burned me for years.

Don't get me wrong. The FBI had to look into every potential suspect. It's irresponsible not to. It was their leak to the media of their suspicions that led to Jewell's villification. This article in Vanity Fair blames the media, which certainly lived to regret what it had done to Jewell. But what can a network or paper do with a leak? Ignore it? Say "We'll wait for confirmation"? I'd guess that such a decision rests on the authority wielded by the source. This was the FBI. If they say it and if they give it to the media, they must be pretty damn sure.

So if the FBI has to investigate this suspect, and the media has to be able to judge a leak worthy of publication, based on the quality of the source, then what's wrong with the picture?

I can't even pick which soapbox to get on, here. The media is trapped in profit-making, and profit comes from keeping the hot story alive even when it's in preliminary process. Even when an investigation is in the hypothesis, evidence-gathering stage. And the viewers/readers don't see it as prelimnary, but as The Truth unfolding before their zombified eyes.

Then again, a better education system could train our minds to see a process as being a process, and not a final answer. You could illustrate this in a classrrom with a simple damn coin toss -- toss it a hundred times and show that it will turn up heads or tails about 50-50. But that if you tried to decide which would turn up more often based only on the first ten tosses, you'd get a skewed result. Gather all the evidence before you judge, kids! The early evidence might just tell the opposite of the truth.

And politics. Damnable politics that pressures a federal agency to make it look like they know something we don't. Your government wants you to know that you're in good hands, folks. You silly masses might be fooled by this guy's heroics, but we know, like, psychology stuff, so he won't fool us. We'll protect you from his kind.

Profit, politics, and public emotion-based unthinking stupidity all came together to prevent the truth from getting heard. In a nice blog entry, ronnie recounts "a miscarriage of justice" of a whole different kind, yet not so much. It demonstrates the essential wrongness of the death penalty. You gotta wonder why there is a death penalty, and the only possible answer, to me, is emotion. The desire for a "justice" that really cannot bring justice about, that couches rage, fury, desire for revenge in the too-polite term "justice." If somebody killed my loved one wouldn't I want to see him fry? Sure. Your point? My point is that justice, for Stephen Truscott, Richard Jewell, or anyone else, can never be achieved while we have an emotion-based society that devalues thought and reason. It will insist on hot sensational news stories. It will insist on premature closure. It will insist on white-hot revenge instead of coolheaded reason. And while the job of the justice system is to detach from victim emotion and stay evidence-based and cold (Yes. Cold.), that system is selected and pressured to respond to emotion, and gradually becomes emotion-based.

The Jewell case shows how that bell is never unrung. Once cleared he never got back what he'd lost. That's how it works. He got money. He sued all over the place. Michael Moore gave him a cameo, Saturday Night Live gave him a walk-on. He had a little fun. But his hero status never returned.

Jewell had dreamed of a law enforcement career. He'd been turned down by the local police department, but you could say that some kind of Plan put him where he was needed. Because in his role as a private security guard at Olympic Park, he saved 50-100 lives that day in 1996 when Eric Rudolph set off a bomb. So the good news is that we can't unring that bell either. A lot of people are alive because of Richard Jewell.

So it's a life well-lived. Rest in peace.