Ferguson, Racial America, Hopefully-Never-To-Happen Fears

Note: For some reason this didn't get posted when I thought it would.  I just now realized it has been in draft stage for about week.  I debated posting it now.  I had moved on and wasn't really thinking about it since.  Still, seems a shame to waste all that writing.


I scared myself a bit this morning.  I saw an article on Facebook discussing the news analysis on Ferguson.  Since it touched on my previous concerns (i.e. reporting that can't even agree on basic facts, like whether the cop was injured or not).

I shared it to my friends, and added a few comments on why I found this disturbing.  Aside from the racial issues, the grief of Michael Brown's family, and all the other Ferguson issues.

In addition to the incident itself, the way the news is being handled disturbs me because we're not able to agree on basic facts.

In Iraq, I remember reading a a couple of conflicting accounts of what happened on a street in Baghdad.  I remember thinking to myself "this is a sign of how bad it is.  These reports are clearly contradictory.  Either a fight happened, or it didn't."

When you can't agree on basic facts, there is no middle ground, and someone is lying.

When you can't even agree on the basic facts of the event, all you have is spin and the power to create whatever reality you want.

I thought to myself, 'at least our news has to have SOME basis in reality!!!  Reporters are supposed to investigate, and find credible sources, and check their facts.  We can argue about interpreting the events, argue about how we frame things, but the basic checkable facts should be there.'

And here, today, in 2014, we see a major news agency presenting the facts they want to believe, without truly fact-checking any of it.

That's where I left off.  The scary part was when I remembered a paper I wrote as an undergrad over a decade ago...I don't remember the entire point, but I was looking at our involvement in 'military operations other than war'.  Yugoslavia.  Bosnia.  Somalia.  Haiti.

One quote has always stuck with me - "You Americans would become nationalists and racists too if your media were totally in the hands of the Ku Klux Klan." (I'm not entirely sure if it was from this article, but a lot of what is in here captures what I remembered reading.)  Actually, this whole paragraph is worth quoting in it's entirety:

The breakup of Yugoslavia is a classic example of nationalism from the top down -- a manipulated nationalism in a region where peace has historically prevailed more than war and in which a quarter of the population were in mixed marriages. The manipulators condoned and even provoked local ethnic violence in order to engender animosities that could then be magnified by the press, leading to further violence. Milošević l gave prime television time to fanatic nationalists like Vojislav Šešelj, who once said that the way to deal with the Kosovo Albanians was to kill them all. Tudjman also used his control of the media to sow hate. Nationalist "intellectuals," wrapped in the mantle of august academies of sciences, expounded their pseudo-history of the victimization of Serbs (or Croats) through the ages. One of them seriously asserted to me that Serbs had committed no crimes or moral transgressions at any point in their long history. Worst of all, the media, under the thumb of most republican regimes, spewed an endless daily torrent of violence and enmity. As a reporter for Vreme, one of the few independent magazines left in the former Yugoslavia, said, "You Americans would become nationalists and racists too if your media were totally in the hands of the Ku Klux Klan."

Are we there yet?  No.  Will we ever get there?  I sure hope not.  Five years ago I would have said no.  Al Qaeda supposedly was trying to ignite a race war in the US and assumes that we will eventually have one, and I thought them laughably ignorant about how our nation works.

But when I see the reporting on Ferguson, the increasingly divided news, the way people segregate what they see and hear and only read what they already agree with, it kind of scares me.

What Can We Do?

Ferguson, in a way, brings home to me how emasculated we are as a nation. 

I grew up in the post-boomer era, where it seemed as though our parents had been there and done that.  They did the large protests, they had movements, there were so many organizations you could be involved with that it has since degenerated into a mass of confusion. 

We appeared to reach the limits of mass protests, and even though things aren't perfect it doesn't seem worth it to take a day off work and go to a rally somewhere.  Heck, most people can't afford to do that anyway - that sort of thing is for young and idealistic college students, the sorts of people who have that kind of time.

There are big issues going on in the world today.  In the United States, as well.  Rising inequality, the doors of opportunity slamming in some people's faces.  Technology.  Terrorism.  Degrading infrastructure.  The growth of bureaucracy and the loss of control/influence within the faceless forces of our day. Polarization. Centrifugal and centripetal forces tugging us this way and that.  Multi-culturalism.  Loss of identity.  The war on drugs.  The growth of the prison industry.  Racism, still.  People feeling threatened and scared and afraid.

But what can we do about it?  What rallying force is there?

Most of the movements that try to capitalize on this fall somewhat - flat.  They may start out promising, but eventually lose their way.  Occupy Wall Street.  The Tea Party.  Our news is a joke.  Focusing more on stupid things, irrelevant things.  Things that don't really matter and don't really address these issues.

It's hard to get people fired up enough to do more than click 'Like' on Facebook, or sign some sort of online petition. 

We live in a democracy.  We are able to vote for our leaders.  Yet we have horrible participation rates, and even when we do vote it seems like the game is rigged against us. 

I don't like the cynicism I see today.  Yet it's hard not to feel it myself.  Especially when there is so much good advice out there.  Articles like this, if you want to discuss national security and foreign involvement.

So why does it seem like all the good ideas fail to gain traction?  Why do we consistently seem forced to choose between horrible ideas?

I know, intellectually, some of the reasons why.  I was a political science student.  Got a master's degree in Public Affairs.  I can point to the systemic factors.  The reasons it's so hard for a third party to gain credibility.  The reasons why parties are forced to cater to their (more extreme) base.  The nature of human fallacy, and the insidious way that self-interest can appear justified and in keeping with national interest.  The way people choose information that is in keeping with their worldview, and reject that which isn't.

I know all this.  And I still feel - disappointed.  Sad.  Upset. 

It's a bit like watching the steps that will lead to a train wreck, and not being able to stop it.  I don't know when the train wreck will come.  Heck, given the natural lifespan of nations it's probably inevitable.  Eventually. (Though I'd like to see us make the sorts of choices that will postpone it a few centuries.)

So what can we do to make a difference?  Really?