10th anniversary post: Still sillypants

In contrast to 2013, Washington's Stanton Park remains open

DISCLAIMER: Also in contrast to 2013, I now have a son who works for a federal contractor. So this has become personal!

Ten years ago, I wrote two posts about the U.S. government shutdown, one about the difficulty of knowing when essential conversations about our common life are open and fair to all, and the other a pictorial reflection about being in Washington during the early days of the shutdown. "Some people," said a mother to her daughter explaining why there was a wee fence around Stanton Park, "are being sillypants."

That little girl must be 12 or 13 now, and presumably maturing in an age-appropriate way. That is less clear for congressional Republicans. This week I returned to Washington during another game of congressional chicken over federal budgeting. (I'm not ambulance chasing--really! Both years I was representing Coe College at the October meeting of Capitol Hill Internship Program advisers.) As it happened, the threat of a shutdown seems to have been averted Saturday, or at least postponed for 45 days, and anyhow my trip this year would have occurred too early for another round of shutdown pictures.

Still, as close as we got to a shutdown, with the demolition derby that our national politics has become, occupied the thoughts of all of us who take government people. To paraphrase Lincoln, ours is a government of people, by people, for people--so it will never get things exactly right, it will always leave some if not everyone unsatisfied, and yet it matters a lot to the quality of our lives together. Government is not meant to be a plaything, or a weapon.

After our meeting, I went up to U Street NW clutching the invaluable Frommer's 24 Great Walks in Washington, D.C. [Wiley, 2009... this is walk #15]. Jazz great Duke Ellington (1899-1974 grew up here, and for decades it was a center of black culture, even after suffering much from the 1968 riots.

"Community Rhythms" mural by Alfred J. Smith, U Street station

13th St NW: Young Duke Ellington lived here

13th and T: Adult Duke Ellington stayed here

 

11th and U: This club hosted the greats of 50s/60s jazz

There are other landmarks here as well, including a memorial to African-Americans who served in the Civil War that lists every known participant. There also was (on this day, anyway) a young man in a Civil War uniform, expounding considerably about the war and the memorial.

10th and U: African-American Civil War Memorial

Names on the memorial

11th and U: Oldest black-owned bank in DC

12th and S: Wax Abraham Lincoln with wicks for lighting

U Street has gentrified a lot in recent years.

Some of the multitude of new construction

While I'm normally rather sanguine about gentrification, which does bring wealth and racial integration to places, it's jarring to see it to such a degree in a neighborhood so closely identified with black history. At least that history is being preserved.

U Street, too, is Washington--a place that embodies America's ongoing efforts to build and rebuild the good life. Washington is more than the cartoonish caricature presented by so many politicians, like former U.S. Representative Rod Blum, who served Iowa for two terns in Congress, and who is probably best remembered for wanting to inflict a recession on Washington. 

Once you get away from the Capitol and into the neighborhoods, though, you find Washington is full of people, a lot of whom work for or with the federal government, and who are trying, as we all are, to do their jobs.

10th and U: This too is Washington

Violence, fear, guns and our common life

"Chi-Raq," Spike Lee's new movie, begins with a map of the United States outlined in guns. Its release poignantly coincides with last week's shootings at a community center in San Bernardino, California. Following so quickly on the Planned Parenthood clinic shootings in Colorado Springs, not to mention the terror attacks in Paris, the latest killings appear to have rekindled anxieties about violence in America. How will we respond? Early indications are that the American political system remains mired in old rhetoric and rigidly defined positions. Can we even respond at all?

President Obama addressed the country Sunday night, in an effort to assuage public fears of terrorism and gun violence. He promised to "destroy ISIL," which is what one might expect him to say despite the elusiveness of the goal, and provided details of military, diplomatic and intelligence efforts to counter terrorism. On guns he called for barring purchases by people on no-fly lists, as well as an assault weapons ban; not unreasonable, but not much impact.

I have never owned a gun, and have no plans to purchase one. So I have at best an outsider's perspective on the role they play in American life and culture. I also don't spend much time worrying about being the victim of an armed assault. At the same time, I recognize the risks that people face are real, and that fear can be as destructive as an actual attack. I'm pained by the high surliness-to-logic ratio of a lot of the discussion. I'm skeptical that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution addresses individual gun ownership at all, much less protects it to such a degree that precludes regulation (see Spitzer for what details there are on the amendment's murky history).

This much I do understand:

• Fear, of the other, or of random violence, is a natural human reaction. Fear is also political currency, and can be exploited if people are willing to have their buttons pushed (as too many are, alas). But the physical and fiscal realities of the 21st century continue to thrust us together. We can't afford to build walls high enough, or roads long enough, to keep us in our respective safe spaces. And while hoping that "a good person with a gun" would pop up and stop a bad guy is understandable, it amounts to nothing more than wishing for a less awful outcome, while overlooking the risks that gun entails at the times when it's not interrupting an assault. (The Cedar Rapids Gazette today reports a rising number of firearm thefts from vehicles.)
• Some Americans own a lot of guns. There are by some estimates more guns in American than people. But despite occasional reports that gun purchases are increasing, driven by fear (of violent attack, or of governmental gun control), the proportion of gun-owning household holds consistently at about 35-40 percent (Morin, "Gun Ownership"). Most Americans own no guns. All those American guns are in relatively few hands.
• The level of gun violence in the United States is exceptional, and not in a good way. New York Times analysis of American news databases found over 300 mass shootings--defined as shootings that left four or more people injured or dead--so far in 2015. Some get a lot of attention, like the ones in San Bernardino, Colorado Springs, and Chattanooga, but a lot goes on outside the media spotlight. But here's the thing: 462 killed by mass shootings in 2015 is barely 1.5 percent of our annual total of gun deaths. According to the National Safety Council, there were 31672 deaths in the U.S. from firearms in 2010, a typical year, more than half by suicide, with a substantial minority by homicide. (The enemies aren't all without.) No other developed country, including Switzerland with its high rates of gun ownership, is even close to this level of gun violence (Lemieux). What are we doing wrong?
• The National Rifle Association isn't helping. Neither are the Republicans, nor for that matter are the Democrats. The NRA is in a fix, albeit one other interest groups can only envy. Since adopting its absolutist interpretation of the Second Amendment in 1977, it has emerged as a political force so powerful it has swept all before it. Like other interest groups, it is in essence a business, which can't sustain itself in a world that has all the gun rights it will ever need (Godwin). Hence the overblown, perpetual crisis rhetoric, with "confiscation" always right around the corner unless we keep up the fight. Because of the political universe the NRA has helped create, the Republicans are offering no helpful policy solutions, while the Democrats offer only tiny incremental policies--barring gun sales to those on terrorist watch lists, for example--that seem mostly oriented to finally getting a victory over the NRA, however small.
• We can only address this problem in conversation. The solutions aren't going to be easy, and they're likely to be complex. They need to take account of the fact that guns are small and easily transported, making municipal regulations impracticable and even state regulations difficult to enforce. They need to take account of a variety of interests: concerns for self-protection; access to materials for hunting or collection; fears generated by openly armed individuals; the dangers of proliferation. Most of all, to accomplish any of this, we need to learn how to listen, how to exchange ideas, and how to work towards solutions that advance our complimentary interests (Fisher et al). Non-negotiable demands are not conversation. Calling people nuts or ignorant is not conversation.
• Gun policy needs to evolve. A perfect comprehensive policy is unlikely to emerge all at once. We need to be able to respond to research on approaches to gun violence--which means there needs to be research on gun violence. The federal ban on research by the Centers for Disease Control is absurd, not to mention paranoid, and should be lifted at once. Then, as in any other policy areas, policy needs to change in response to what is and isn't working.

The vast majority of guns in the U.S. are owned by men.
Men are also somewhat less likely to support gun control.

P.S. One reason I so much admire the work and message of Parker J. Palmer is his enduring belief that the conversations we need to have can occur, that obstacles to having them can be overcome with persistence. I aspire to that level of optimism. Given the rut this issue is stuck in, and how well surliness has worked for the N.R.A., it's hard to imagine getting from here to there. But what's the alternative?

EARLIER POSTS: "Rights and Our Common Life," 26 August 2015; "A Gathering of Spirits in Cedar Rapids," 28 July 2013

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
 Stephen J. Dubner and Steve Levitt, "How to Think about Guns: Full Transcript," Freakonomics, 14 February 2013, http://freakonomics.com/2013/02/14/how-to-think-about-guns-full-transcript/
 Roger Fisher, William Ury and Bruce Patton, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In (Penguin, 2nd ed, 1991)
 R. Kenneth Godwin, One Billion Dollars of Influence: The Direct Marketing of Politics (Chatham House, 1988)
 "Gun Ownership in US on Decline," RT.com, 11 March 2013, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/15/the-demographics-and-politics-of-gun-owning-households/ [citing data from 2012 General Social Survey]
 Sharon LaFraniere, Sarah Cohen and Richard J. Oppel Jr., "How Often Do Mass Shootings Occur? On Average, Every Day, Records Show," New York Times, 3 December 2015, A1, A23
 Frederick Lemieux, "Six Things Americans Should Know About Mass Shootings," IFL Science, 5 December 2015, http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/six-things-americans-should-know-about-mass-shootings [author is a criminologist at George Washington University]
 Rich Morin, "The Demographics and Politics of Gun-Owning Households," Pew Research Center, 14 July 2015, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/15/the-demographics-and-politics-of-gun-owning-households/
 Robert L. Spitzer, The Politics of Gun Control (Chatham House, 1995)

Deliberation and the shutdown

Last Tuesday night I moderated a discussion among first-year students at Coe College on "Getting American Politics Back on Track." It was fortuitously timed, given the shutdown of the federal government that began with the start of the new fiscal year that very day. (The organizers insisted it was mere coincidence.)

The discussion format was based on James Fishkin's book Democracy and Deliberation (Yale University Press, 1993). After the organizers introduced the format, and I said a little about the issue, the students divided into groups of six-to-eight and discussed the options presented on the two-page issue brief. As a student of political theory as well as American politics, I was as interested in their reactions to the process as much as their thoughts on how to overcome polarization-based governmental dysfunction.

Well, they liked the format just fine, or so they said, though some groups were unable to reach a consensus and fell back on majority rule, and some groups' results felt like lowest-common-denominator compromises instead of creative products of multiple competing perspectives. But since they are required to attend a certain number of these during their first year at Coe, we didn't confront what to me is the biggest obstacle to ideas like Fishkin's or Benjamin Barber's: time. We were there more than two hours after all, counting dinner provided by the school, and that's not insignificant for most adults.

I came to see a couple more obstacles, ways that the system of deliberation could be gamed by those seeking an advantage. I want to be clear that I didn't see manipulation happening Tuesday night. The Coe students mostly knew each other, and for the most part didn't have immediate personal stakes in the issue. But at a town meeting, dealing with issues on which people had strong feelings, you'd really need to trust the people you were deliberating with.

First, without an objective standard of fairness, we are reliant on the perceptions of the participants. While ideally deliberation would take into account all interests and weight them equally, that's unlikely to happen in practice, and even if it did not everyone would see it that way. A comment at the Tuesday forum illustrated this problem as it relates to the current shutdown of the federal government. One young man suggested the shutdown was occurring because of congressional Democrats' unwillingness to compromise. House Republicans keep passing continuing resolutions, he noted, and they keep getting shot down in the Democratically-controlled Senate. "That's the Republicans' story," I laughed, "and they're sticking with it." There certainly are reasons to question whether the House Republicans are negotiating in good faith. For one thing, the continuing resolutions they keep passing have all been variations of the same approach: continuing resolutions for short periods while delaying and/or defunding implementation of the health care reforms. For another, the health care reform law on which the House Republicans have been fixated is a side issue. Democrats can argue, with some justification, that a "clean CR"--a continuing resolution funding the government at current levels, without amendments--is itself a compromise, albeit a lowest-common-denominator one, because it reflects no new legislative priorities from neither side.

Does anyone think the House Republicans are seeking common ground? Well, maybe the Republicans do. House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, said during debate Tuesday, "All the Senate has to do is say 'yes' and the government is funded tomorrow." Thomas L. Friedman interpreted this as "Give me the money and nobody gets hurt." But the fact remains that there is no clear standard of objectivity. What looks to me like a reasonable compromise, even a patch, might look to you like complete disregard of your priorities. If you believe that the health care reform truly is a fiscal disaster-in-the-making that will create all manner of societal problems besides, then repeated efforts to roll it back are not only eminently reasonable but urgent.

A second problem with deliberation is that a process that relies on achieving consensus is vulnerable to who allege unfairness as a negotiating tactic. The instruction book I used Tuesday night calls for the moderator to solicit ideas from people who feel their voices were not heard in the small group discussions. (I didn't do this, though.) If some participants in a deliberative meeting complain that their voices were not heard, they may truly have been excluded, or they may just be trying to gain a bargaining advantage. I continue to hear, as state health care exchanges open this week, complaints from opponents that the 2010 health care law was passed with only Democratic votes--"rammed through," as some put it. While that is true, I don't know that Republicans can plausibly charge that their views were deliberately ignored. President Obama met repeatedly with people from both parties through the summer of 2009, including Iowa's Republican Senator Charles Grassley. It was Grassley and the other Republicans who withdrew from these talks, in the wake of Tea Party tantrums at local congressional appearances in August 2009. (And then there were those alleged "death panels," and Sarah Palin charging that she would have been forced to have an abortion under the law, ...) I'm certain that Obama would have loved to get Republican votes for the law, or any version of it--the optics would have been way better, not to mention it would have reduced the need for bargaining with provider interest groups. But there were simply no Republican votes to be had.

In spite of the potential pitfalls of deliberative democracy, though, one look at the mess the federal government is in this week is all it takes to know there has got to be a better way than what we're doing.

A gathering of spirits in Cedar Rapids

Author Parker Palmer commended community spirit to a large audience at First Presbyterian Church in Cedar Rapids last night. He urged the listeners to "imagine how we might live our political lives as people healing the whole," and not to become discouraged either by others' rage or the lack of tangible results.

Parker J. Palmer, from couragerenewal.org

Palmer is the founder of the Center for Courage and Renewal in Seattle, Washington. Joining him on the program singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer and pianist Gary Walters, making for an interesting mix in which Palmer's pithy observations were punctuated by Newcomer's songs (including "Better Angels," on which Palmer is credited as co-writer) and a couple instrumental improvisations by Walters. The evening concluded with Newcomer leading the crowd in two of her songs, "If Not Now" and "Peace Like a River." So we got the glow of a folk concert combined with the extended commentary of a lecturer who's clearly thought deeply about the problem of how we can all live together.

(Carrie Newcomer, from carrienewcomer.com)

For the record, the third song Carrie Newcomer sang was "Betty's Diner," which is included on this playlist of songs that evoke a spirit of urbanity.

Palmer focused his talk almost entirely on the audience, rather than on those unnamed persons who may not share our interests in building a civil community that approaches our aspirations.  He spoke of the importance of relationships, arguing "the more you  know about another person's story, the harder it is to dismiss or demonize them." Diversity, which the U.S. Constitution tends to encourage, means including all kinds of differences not just demographic. And by "including" Palmer stressed he meant more than "mere toleration." Differences are to be valued, because what we (Americans, humans) hold in common is more important. It is easy, maybe too easy, to see where others fall short of this appreciation; it is harder to see it in ourselves, but the more we try the easier it is to keep working for community and not get discouraged. One of the participants told the story of an Indian doctor running a vaccination project who said that if they vaccinated 10,000 people a day it would take 300 years to vaccinate the whole country. When asked "How do you do it?" he responded "One person at a time."

The ideal of community is challenged by individualism and outrage, which are everywhere abundant. Palmer suggested each of these are not forces in and of themselves, but symptoms of something else. He characterized individualism as an "illusion" given the reality of inter-dependence, jokingly suggesting that July 5 be designated Inter-Dependence Day. It's a place people retreat when the project of community becomes too challenging. (The same can be said for retreat into tribes of like-minded people. Parker said at one point, "You can learn a lot about people when you find out what they mean be the word 'we.'")

Outrage is a symptom of "broken-hearted" politics; across the political spectrum economic insecurity, cultural issues and war seem beyond our control. The key is not to react to the emotion or the illusion, but to recognize the pain that lies behind them. Telling our stories, especially if we can do it with humor and gentleness, creates bonds in a way that hurling our opinion cannot. Maybe someone's heart can be made "to break open" instead of in a million pieces.

Palmer did not discuss those who traffic in outrage, for surely it is quite an industry these days, maybe outgrossing some more traditional sectors of the economy. Maybe we can/should just ignore them?

In his concluding section Palmer listed a number of specific ways to work towards community: listening to children, exposing students to different beliefs, inquire instead of argue, if you're involved in a church ask if your congregation is truly safe for diversity, encourage workplace, and respond to hateful expression with gentleness and caring. We must, he concluded, live out our answer in the "tragic gap" between the harsh realities of this world and what we know to possible even--especially--when we know we won't see results in our lifetimes. But we should keep working anyway.

Some concluding thoughts from your humble author. Last week one of my Facebook friends posted, in response to vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial, "How can people do such things?" It put me in mind of a much-younger Robbie when we found some graffiti at our neighborhood park, asking me with a confused mix of emotions why someone had written "I hate --" on the equipment. I could come up with any number of answers, but perhaps it's best not to answer it at all. Perhaps it's best to leave the question hanging out there. We all know of the evils in this world, and the evil that people do, and over time we get more experience with it all. Maybe it would do us good not to try to understand it, to always be surprised by it, because we're spending our mental energies looking for the good in people. I believe I will try this, though it will require daily exertion to undo bad mental habits of many years' standing.

Thomas Merton wrote in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1966: 158): 

In Louisville, at the Corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.

Merton's enclave, where he had believed himself separate, was the monastery where he lived. For others it might be living in a large-lot suburb, enclosure in an ideological bubble, or being in the white middle-class. To build community we need to get out of our enclaves.

Reader, I too, even I, have at times felt the overwhelming feeling Merton describes. Palmer's essential argument is this feeling must be sustained, so that your love for humanity is not a momentary rush of passion but a long-term relationship. The challenge, that requires the daily exertion I mentioned in the last paragraph, is in time (sometimes not very much time) you realize that much of humanity does not want a long-term relationship with you. Some have no interest in developing community; some even think that ensuring economic opportunity, accommodating diversity, and environmental sustainability are foul ideas. Some people think that when your gay friends get married it is a body blow to our civilization. Others steal unguarded purses, abuse alcohol or drugs, or are mean to kids. They smile in your face, when all the time they want to take your place. Or they talk on and on, and on and on and on, always about themselves. The temptation to give up on the whole community thing is ever-present; faithfulness to community in the face of all this surely is strenuous.

I am reading The Duty of Delight by Dorothy Day (1897-1980). Page after page she records her self-doubts, her fears, her daily encounters with difficult people. And yet she persevered. She was a model of faithfulness.

P.S.--A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post entitled "Who Is My Neighbor?" that posed, though not very directly, the issue of whether the welfare of others is a practical problem or purely a moral (or religious) problem, either for individuals or communities. Palmer dealt with this question last night only in brief, so briefly in fact that I didn't catch what he said. I think it's a pertinent question, though, and will probably return to it in time.

SEE ALSO Emily Busse, "'Healing the Heart of Democracy' Emphasizes Community in Cedar Rapids," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 28 July 2013 [http://thegazette.com/2013/07/27/healing-the-heart-of-democracy-emphasizes-community-in-cedar-rapids/].