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?

Ferguson

Something about Ferguson is long overdue, and yet I find myself wondering what to say.  My facebook feed has died down of late, but most of the posts seemed to fit with the world view of whoever posted it.  That, as one example, the officer who shot Michael Brown was severely injured, or wasn't. 

I didn't immediately write anything, because after Iraq I distrust the news.  The first, second, and even third story is probably not accurate.  And I dislike claiming to know what is going on when I don't really know any better than anyone else that wasn't there.

But I don't like how divisive the responses are.  In particular, I know the statistics.  I know how many black men wind up incarcerated.  How the police, in some neighborhoods, act more like an occupying army then the servants of society that we normally see them as.  I know the problems with "driving while black", and that the world I live in and the experiences I have with the police are not the same sorts of experiences that black people do.

So I've been quiet, for a while, and notice a few things that disturb me.  First - that after being in the news cycle for as long as this has, we still seem to be short of real facts.  The dispute over whether the officer was injured or not being the primary example.  Even the autopsy report is used to bolster whatever side the reader wants.  (Exit wounds, or the lack thereof, were mentioned in at least one post...but since I'm not a forensic expert I don't claim to know what the autopsy means.  For all I know, the bullet was lodged in his bone and that's why there's no exit wound.  Apparently, it may take a while for a credible analysis to be done.) 

It also seems strange that the news can dig up that Michael Brown robbed a store, but can't say whether or not the officer who shot him was seriously injured?!? 

This is a high profile, highly emotional situation and the official response is either pathetically unconcerned with clearing up matters, or is more concerned with trying to cover their butts and justify what happened.  Either way, it's not good.  No- I'm not saying they should rush to conclusions.  But there are definitely facts that we are not being given, like how severely injured the officer was.

And so I conclude by saying - I want justice.  I want an honest, fair and impartial investigation.  I don't want black people to feel like white people are more concerned with the ALS ice bucket challenge than with their very real anger and fear at how little society seems to care about their lives.

And I wonder, as with other topics, what we can do to actually make a difference.  For me, rioting and looting isn't the answer.  I know people who point at the riots and shake their heads in disgust, and almost appear to use that to justify the way things are.  Perhaps not that specific shooting, but to justify the poor community relationship with the police.  Okay, Ferguson may be a dangerous area with a lot of crime and a large number of gangs. That may or may not be true, but that doesn't mean that the police are automatically right.  (Or wrong, for that matter). 

What matters, in this particular case, is whether or not the police officer responded in a reasonable manner to the situation as it developed, with the knowledge he had at the time of the incident.

What also matters is communicating that clearly, if only to head off rumours and conspiracy theories.  And...to admit that this situation got out of hand because there is a serious divide between the police force and the local community.  (If this were Iraq, and the police were the US Army, we'd be trying to find an influential shiekh and local leaders to take the lead in policing themselves.)

I can't really point fingers and judge Ferguson for rioting, but at the end of the day it's not something I'm going to go out and do myself.


I don't like what's going on, but I also don't really know what I can do about it either.

Horror, Zombies, and Decision Making

I just finished re-reading World War Z.  I had seen the movie, and when a friend (sockschan) realized that I hadn't read the book she insisted I should.  Said it was right up my alley.

She was right.

See, I'm not actually into zombies.  Or horror, for that matter.  But I do enjoy some of the movies/books/stories when friends recommend I see them.  World War Z is kind of a geopolitical zombie book, so it fit well with my interests.

While reading it again, I realized that the true horror in the story wasn't the zombies.  It was the poor decision-making that let the zombie threat practically destroy humanity.  The zombies, once  they were understood, were something people could fight.  And win.  But the resistance to acknowledging the threat allowed the 'virus' to spread too far, too fast.  Initial attempts to maintain control and fight the zombies conventionally failed.  (The book did an excellent job of pointing out why trying to attack zombies with bombs and kill zones of massed fire didn't work, not when you had to take out the brain of every zombie.  Not when any casualty could become a zombie, too.)

That is, in a nutshell, why I care about decision making.  Good decision making matters.  Poor decision making gets people killed.  Or, at a minimum, makes life more miserable and difficult than it has to be.

In a way, it also points out how little we trust the Powers That Be.  We don't trust them to make the best decisions, or even keep us informed enough that we can tell if they are or aren't making sound decisions.

Which is all well and good, but doesn't say much about how we can make things better.  Different.

Does it really require a major disaster to get people to consider alternatives?

How sad is that?

Science Fiction, Frontiers and Second Sons

I love reading science fiction, and much of the genre deals with 'frontier' issues.  That is, people moving out into uninhabited planets.  In science fiction, often for reasons people came to the US: Opportunity, religious freedom, etc.

I know I've heard, peripherally, some discussion of what it meant when we were a frontier society.  And how that has changed as we expanded to the limit, and the frontiers closed.  A frontier was a place where people could have opportunities unavailable back home.  In our own history, that's part of what the second sons of Europe did...the ones who were never going to inherit (what with the law of primogeniture and all that.  It's different in societies, like Afghanistan, where the sons are expected to split the inheritance entirely.  Causes problems all its own, as the land they inherit keeps getting smaller.)

Anyways.  I wonder, sometimes, if the class wars of today are related to that.  Talented people don't have as many opportunities, because they have to advance within an already established system.  One where they start out disadvantaged to begin with.

The American dream is tied to that notion - the idea that hard work and talent can get you somewhere, regardless of who you were back in the Old World.

I don't think the closing of the frontier, in and of itself, means that the dream is dead.  But...

Well, it's kind of like a discussion I had with someone in Afghanistan about water usage.  Water is pretty scarce over there, and some of the so-called 'squatters' were basically the disadvantaged (i.e. people with little access to the crucial water necessary for farming) finding creative ways to succeed.  Creative, and perhaps not quite legal, of course.  Anyways.  I was talking with a hydrologist, working with USAID, and he insisted that there really was enough water to go around.  It's just that the Afghans had to cooperate and work together to portion it out appropriately.  The people up river couldn't be planting crops that required a lot of water, since it didn't leave as much for those downstream.  Management was important - and practically impossible in a society with little reason to cooperate. 

They had a history of zero-sum games w/regards to water, and the ones who 'won' and had access had no reason to limit themselves for the sake of the losers who didn't.

To bring this back to America, and class warfare - the winners of our system see no reason to limit themselves for the sake of everyone else.  (And, with the set of beliefs allowing them to feel like they earned and deserve their status, they feel unfairly put upon when others argue they should.) 

Yet, at the end of the day, there are still a LOT of disadvantaged people who just don't have the opportunities that used to be available. 

It's hard to address the problem when the winners aren't even willing to admit that there IS a problem.

This.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/07/10/people_power_human_security_iraq

Background, Musings, Career, Etc.

When I was first starting out in the Army, a young lieutenant getting ready to take her first platoon, I was given a lot of advice.  I discovered that you have to sort it all out, and figure out what advice really applies to you.

I know it's cliche to say "the older I grow, the less I know"...but in many ways its true.  I feel like I can find all sorts of advice on what to do next, where to go, but I have to sort it out for myself to figure out what applies.

Since it's been years since I blogged, and who knows who is reading this, a bit of background information is in order.

I completed ROTC, earned a Bachelor's in Political Science, and joined the Army back in 2000.  I started out in Air Defense Artillery, with the Patriot Missile System down in Ft. Bliss, Texas.  I switched to Military Intelligence, and worked in Ft. Huachuca, Arizona.  I deployed to Iraq from about Oct 2004 to Nov 2005, then left the Army.  Went back to Iraq as a contractor from 2006 to May 2007.  Spent a couple of years earning my Master's in Public Affairs, while staying close to home when my mother was diagnosed with cancer.  She passed away my final semester of college, and when I graduated I took a job with the Human Terrain Team in Afghanistan.

When I made it home the last time, I decided it was time to find a stateside career.  About two years ago I took a job at a distribution center for a large multi-national company.  It's been - interesting.  Warehouse management was more intricate than I expected.  We are in the midst of changing our warehouse management system (hence all the long hours) and it's been keeping me busy.

However.

Now that we're figuring out the last few kinks to the new system, my current job seems a little...

Dull.

I think it's time to move on.  I'm beginning to get itchy feet, to feel like I've learned about as much as I can in my current role.  I've been managing about 40 employees (full time associates and contract labor from temp agencies) responsible for picking and packing our shipments on a daily basis.  The last few months, I've been involved with testing out and developing our new warehouse management system.  It's actually kind of interesting, to see what all goes into it.  How many things can go wrong, if it's not configured right.  But the project is winding down, we're beginning to get back to our daily routine, and it no longer feels like enough.

So what next?

I feel a bit at loose ends.  I'm doing well here, I can probably find another job within the same company.  A step up, maybe.  (Of course, then I would have to sell the house I just bought.  Or rent it out or something.  And I kind of like it here, so I'm not entirely happy at the thought of moving again.)

I could wait it out, until the Operations Manager and/or Plant Manager move on, and try to find a job here.  (Though who knows when that will happen, or whether I would get the job in the first place.)

I could apply for other jobs locally, though I rather like my company and don't really want to leave.

Or...

Or what?  I earned a degree in Public Affairs for a reason.  I care, deeply, about policy and the decisions we make.  It matters.  Serving in Iraq, especially, convinced me that having good policies matters.  When policies are bad, it's awful.

Sometimes I think I should make yet another career change, really focus on getting a job with some sort of think tank in DC.  Or try getting involved with a political party.

But...

I don't want to.  It doesn't quite feel right.  I mentioned the book Hope for the Flowers before, and it feels too much like I'm trying to climb the caterpillar pillar.  I don't want to pretend I agree with a political party just to work my way up within its ranks - and frankly, I couldn't support and participate with either party without such a pretence.

And as for think tanks - I would have to spend a heckuva lot of time networking, to get there.  Or do an internship, and I'm getting a bit too old and require a bit more stability than that.  (Besides, I don't think I want to go to a DC think tank.  That just perpetuates the DC bubble.  Why DON'T we have think tanks located in the heart of Americana?  I know, I know.  They all want to be near the source of power.  Decision making.  And they can network with all the other agencies drawn to the same thing. To get that, you need to be in places like DC.  Or New York.  But then you get so focused on that singular location that you miss out on everything else.)

Meh.  I find myself praying for a miracle.  Then resent feeling dependent on some sort of Deus Ex Machina.

(Why? - Any story that relies on one is sloppy.  Even though this is the real world, it still feels wrong to rely on one.  Besides, I like to believe I control my destiny, and magical thinking doesn't help.

On the other hand, I know the world is a strange and crazy place, where the most logical conclusion doesn't always happen.  All you have to do is read a few military histories to realize that sometimes world history depends on little coincidental things.)