on discourse and friendship

I remember the moments when my opinions on healthcare changed. There were two.

The first was early on in my teaching career. I avoided talking politics with my students - certainly current politics - but for some reason I was sitting at my desk and a student asked me what my opinion was on universal healthcare. I was slightly distracted, checking grades or something, and as she was right there and the class was doing something else, I answered honestly (and mostly parroting what my father believed): that I didn't know, that I was worried about what it would do to taxes and that I didn't trust the government to do a better job than what we currently have. My student, sharp as could be, said, "Miss, that's because you've never had to go without health insurance."

The other moment was not much longer later, when I was talking online to a friend that lives in Canada. He pointed out what I didn't know at the time, that the US is the only first world country that doesn't have universal health care.

These things gave me pause. They were major contributing factors to my changing my mind and the way I thought about the issue.

I have spent the last eight years teaching students how to think critically: how to take evidence as a whole and build a rational, logical argument based on that evidence, and how to determine what counts as quality evidence to begin with. I am routinely appalled by how many adults seem to have zero understanding of this process.

It used to be that when I disagreed with someone, particularly in the areas of religion or politics, I said nothing. Public conflict tends to make me deeply uncomfortable, and I told myself that there was no use discussing these topics - no one would change their minds and it would only succeed in making people angry.

Teaching taught me otherwise. (It is remarkable how much one learns by teaching. Sometimes I think my students taught me more than I ever managed to teach them.) Most people have never had their thought processes challenged. Most people don't automatically check to see how valid a source is. Most people don't stop to ask themselves how much bias they have on a topic, and they don't stop to consider how their privilege or social standing is affecting their beliefs. Most people can't point out logical fallacies, and even if they can, they don't seem to understand that a logical fallacy means an argument is objectively invalid. And the only way to get most people thinking rationally is by pointing out when they are not, and hope that, in return, someone will do the same for you. (The way to fix this is by systemic, high-quality public education, but that's a topic for another post.)

Put more simply: teaching taught me that if stupidity and ignorance isn't pointed out and something done to correct it, it grows exponentially.

There is a balance, though. It works best when the topic discussed is one that neither person is deeply emotionally connected to, as emotion essentially cancels out the rational thought processes of the frontal cortex. The problem is that the biggest social issues and the greatest founts of stupidity tend to be in places where people are deeply emotional. So you have a choice: you can either attempt to engage logically anyway, and hope that the logic triumphs once emotions have cooled, or you can not say anything on the big emotional topics and only start discourse on smaller issues. Sometimes thinking logically about something you're not emotional about can transfer over to things you are emotional about. And regardless, often the people who are watching the exchange benefit from it more than the ones involved.

I believe, strongly, in public discourse. I believe that, for us to move forward as a species, we have to have discussions on topics that affect us deeply, or we are doomed. I believe that refusing to engage or sequestering yourself so that you only hear opinions that mirror your own is a sign of weakness - an inescapable tragic flaw.

And yet there are times when I choose not to say anything, because the person has expressed something so horrifyingly ignorant (and usually hateful) that I cannot trust myself to avoid the ad hominem attack. Sometimes I have enough history with a person that I am not willing to risk our entire relationship just to make a point. Sometimes I know the topic is so entrenched in personal identity that there is almost no hope of change, and I let it slide. Sometimes I hope that someone else will have the courage to say what I don't.

I agonize over those moments. When a cis-male spews hate about a MTF transperson, or when a missionary says that adults should pay for their own food and health care, I cringe. I write out possible responses. Sometimes I hit delete, and I wonder if the point where discourse seems impossible is the point when it is no longer worth remaining friends.

still dreaming

On the southeast corner of Stone and Wetmore is a moveable sign of the sort often employed by churches and small businesses. It sits at the corner of what looks to be an office building, but seems to exist only to subject passerby to an often aggressive viewpoint, like an overgrown bumper sticker.

The first message I remember seeing on it was

NO INCUMBENTS
THROW THEM ALL OUT

Another memorable one - which stayed up for some time - was

PHX BRICKYARD SELLS 3RD QUALITY BRICKS
DON'T BUY EM

 

When I drove by this Monday, it read

MLK AUG 28 1963
50 YEARS AND WE'RE STILL DREAMING

 

Although the sign's rants often come off as paranoid and angry, this particular message resonated with me. I'm still dreaming, too, and I worry that fifty years is not half the time it'll take to rid this country of the prejudice that infects it.

this is pretty much how I feel about everything.

Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes" When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].

- Abraham Lincoln, Letter, 1855 (via my friend Steve's fb)

endeavour flyover

The shuttle Endeavour did a low flyover of Tucson this morning on its way to museum status in LA. They did it to honor Gabby Giffords and her husband, Mark, who was the shuttle's last pilot. 

With a friend's reminder text and a stroke of luck, I ran outside just in time to see it go past my school.

I had no idea how low 1,500 feet actually is (absurdly low!) and how exciting it would be to see it so close.

I didn't get my camera functioning in time to capture it, but one of my students did: 

And this much better quality shot was taken from just over the mountain you see in the picture above, by a friend of a friend whose name I don't know:

It's nice, when I so often feel fed up with the way our country functions, to see something so awe-inspiring and so positive.

nevar

We get a lot of reminiscing about 9/11, and at some point, the noise and the static get to be so much that I stop paying attention. It's been turned into a political playing piece, which I find both disgusting and typical.

It's possible that it always was just a political playing piece.

And yet, playing piece or not, real people were affected. Real people died. On this day, instead of the overblown and dramatic reminiscences offered by so many, I prefer the simple and not even so-very-tragic memories of someone just living in the city at the time:

I remember going into the nearby grocery store. It was packed with people and absolutely silent. No one was talking and no cell phones ringing because all phones were down. No carts or hand baskets were available; people were packing groceries into empty shipping boxes and pushing them around the store with their feet because they were so overloaded with essentials. Someone dropped a jar of spaghetti sauce and it exploded with a loud, glass crunching boom….and everyone froze like deer in the headlights. I remember seeing one guy buying only fresh fruit and yogurt; that seemed like an odd strategy to me. When I got home one of my neighbors asked why I was buying so many groceries. I said, “because we are on an island.” That changed the look on his face and he walked away.

You can find the entire blog post here.

on human trafficking

We heard on the news the other day, in something we didn't pay much attention to, that a family in Arizona was coming up against slavery charges. At the time, Colin scoffed, thinking that it was probably an over-zealous prosecutor.

And then I read this article this morning (read it before you read the rest of this post). It doesn't sound at all like an over-zealous prosecutor to me. In fact, it seems frighteningly accurate, and strikes way too close to home.

I went to school in Flagstaff. The I Do I Do/Sweet Nothings store is right on the main road in town. It is a large, grey brick building, with a painted sign split between the two store names, despite being clearly one store. (That link is to a store review--creepy as hell now that the allegations have been made.)

I went in a few times while I was a student. It was half bridal boutique, half lingerie/sex shop. The bridal boutique wass sort of cheap and ordinary; the lingerie was racier than what else could be found in Flag, and there was a selection of sex toys. I remember thinking it was oddly juxtaposed with the bridal stuff (a virgin/whore complex if ever there was one), but chalked that up to a cultural difference or just typical Flag store eccentricity.

I only ever saw Asian women in the store, you see. I guess now they must've been Vietnamese, but I wasn't saavy enough then to be able to identify their nationality. I remember specifically the woman who sold me a pair of shoes--she was middle aged, incredibly sweet, tiny, attentive. I remember less well the woman who sold some friends and I a lingerie set for a bridal shower, but recall that she was pleasant, too.

When the article got posted to my newsfeed today, a friend said something about the vibes in that store always being weird. She's right. When I closely examine my memory, it was uncomfortably low-ceilinged, and the florescents were sort of dim, and there were no windows. And there were always so few customers. There was an air of desperation about it. I took it to be the desperation of a store that might go out of business, but who knows what happened to those women if they didn't make a sale . . .

Anyway. I am sort of shocked, and feel horribly guilty, that I on two occasions appear to have directly funded human trafficking. The phrase "dead Chinese" and all its awful connotations have been haunting me ever since I watched Biutiful; I have for a long time simultaneously worried about people being exploited to bring me cheap goods and attempted to push it out of my mind. Who has time to research the business practices--usually overseas--of every company for every product they buy? Who has the money to only buy things labelled "fair trade?" And yet I never dreamed I had bought something from the hands of someone who had literally been enslaved.

And the net of my mind pulls in other experiences: the first time I got a pedicure, for instance, at one of those prolific, oddly-named nail shops in a strip mall. There was one man, very bossy, presumably Vietnamese, scolding a herd of women as they attended to customers; and I remember distinctly the phrase "white privilege" floating indelibly up to the surface of my consciousness. Here I was, white, sitting in something very like a throne, with a tiny Asian woman, head bowed, washing and pruning my feet. I didn't like the man in charge. I didn't like the vibe in that place. And now I wonder how well anyone keeps an eye on those sorts of businesses. Was that vibe I got just one unpleasant man? Are those women being treated perfectly well and legally? Or were there other people being illegally and horrifically exploited just under my nose? What about the countless businesses I've patronized without getting any bad vibes at all?

We tend to forget, in this part of the world, that Mexicans aren't our only illegal immigrants. We also forget that that phrase doesn't only mean that they're exploiting our country's benefits, as so many of the pundits and down-home whitefolk would have us believe. It is far more horrifying that "illegal immigrant" very easily means that we are exploiting them.

dear kate

It's been a few hours since your wedding. With the time difference, you're probably asleep by now.

I haven't paid much attention to you, or to your nuptials. I remember a few years ago hearing that you and William had broken up, at least for awhile. I think that was substantiated, not some absurd rumor. It makes me wonder, now, what it was about, if you think those issues have been resolved.

I looked up pictures of your dress online this morning. Since I'd heard the woman who took over McQueen's empire--she of the butterfly dresses and the intricate towering shoes--was the designer, I hoped your dress might be something remarkable. Instead, it was almost boring, so stifled by convention and what I imagine to be the Queen's ideas of decency that it seemed to have no character.

What did strike me, though, was your face. You seemed genuine, your smiles and waves a true expression, though not one of what I might call love--though it was nearer that than William's big-lipped grimaces.

I wondered, thinking about those pictures afterward, if you knew the family you were getting into. I thought about the way Charles was said to have treated Diana, about how those boys must have grown up. I wondered if one could ever win an argument against the Duke of Cambridge. I thought of the repetition of the headlines, "Prince William to Marry Commoner Kate Middleton," the "commoner" tolling over and over again like the distant sound of a funeral bell. One could never hope for any sort of equality in a relationship with that "commoner" forever ringing in the background.

I wonder, too, about the breach in your thought that must have allowed you to walk down that aisle today. I wonder how much of it might have been a political move on the part of the Royal Family, since so much of the British population seemed to find you charming. I wonder if you had fallen victim to the golden cup of poison that is our childhood fairy-tale, as so many of the people obsessed with your wedding seem to be.

You looked so fragile, in those photos, tiny breasts smoothed over with white satin, an infinitesimal waist, that bright smile. You seemed destined to break under the weight of your marriage, dragging along behind you like your absurd train. I wanted to tell you, like a friend, "Don't do this. This is not going to be the life you want."

on the verge of méxico

On Thursday, a friend and I drove down to Nogales to go to a used clothing outlet.

I could have sworn that I've been through Nogales before, but the scenery was completely unfamiliar. As you approach the town, the highway runs among hills and comes out parallel to the border, so that you can see down the length of the wall and across it to the country on the other side.

It was a glorious day, mid-eighties, a bright sun. It made clear the one huge visual distinction between this side of the wall and the other: over there, the houses look nearly the same (close together, boxy, betraying signs of age and poverty), but they're painted bright fuchsia, blue, yellow and orange, instead of dingy grey. Some of the hills on the other side are so high and steep that one could, hypothetically, hang glide off the top of one and land easily on this side of the wall.

The roads of the town are narrow and vertiginous, such as I've rarely seen in this state, and the shops were somehow more decrepit looking than even the roughest parts of Tucson. We shopped for awhile, and once we were back in the car, I suddenly realized why the shopgirl had asked me, with a studied casualness, if I were from around there. The whole time we were inside--which was close to an hour and a half--I hadn't seen anyone besides ourselves that wasn't Hispanic. I didn't even notice, until that moment, but she must have.

The one narrow road very clearly marked "BORDER CROSSING" in the familiar green highway signs was filled with cars and at a complete standstill. I wondered at the patience it would take to sit in that line, waiting to be looked over before going through.

There's a checkpoint several miles north of Nogales, where a large white metal canopy bridges the northbound I-19 like some overarching insect. The border patrol vehicles are lined up on either side of the road, shiny white sentiels, noses toward the highway for quick calls to action. We waited in line for a few minutes, and when I rolled up to the officer, my window down, an overly-cheery "hi" escaping my lips, he waved us on without hardly giving us a glance.

I'm white, driving an SUV, with a four year old in my backseat. I could've had anything in my trunk, under my seats, along the floorboards, and they never would have known.

I'm not the sort they're looking for.

memorial, pt 2: the safeway

I ended up going by the Safeway where the shooting took place for the first time 9 days ago. It's funny: I saw pictures of the one at UMC all the time, but nothing of the Safeway. I was a little anxious--afraid I was going to see bloodstains on the pavement, or something--but it looked just like it always did, except for the memorial.

They put these metal gates up on the street side, so that people could look at it with less risk of getting swiped by a car, but these ladies seemed to think it was a barrier.


There were two of these, draped in streamers with what looked like prayers written on them.

A bumper sticker; no idea if it was printed before or after the shooting.



Lennon's "Imagine" lyrics printed on a slab of rock. Took this picture just for Kate.


Some of those metal gates had been incorporated into the memorial. Not sure what purpose they originally served. This one had been wrapped in ribbon.


Water. As an offering? A humane gesture for those who came to visit?

Balloons, everywhere. Almost merry, especially blowing in the breeze.

There was a note that said that the employees of Safeway would routinely come out to collect items to keep safe for the family members. There was a table with a petition for more reasonable, rational political discourse. Someone had made a binder full of people's reminiscences of one of the victims. I saw several letters and cards, many from people who appeared to have personally known those who died.

There's another small collection of candles and things on the corner of the intersection, with a large "God Bless Tucson" sign presiding over it. It's been there since long before the tape was removed.

memorial is not the right word.

I ended up unintentionally driving past UMC today, and decided on impulse to stop and see the memorial. Of course I didn't have my camera with me, so these were all taken on my awful cell phone camera. I thought those of you who haven't gotten the chance to see it in person might wish to see what I saw.

The biggest surprise, for me, is that there were very few messages of grief, fewer still of anger or hostility. They were almost entirely messages of love, of a desire for positive change. I had heard, I thought, that much of it was in honor of Christina Green, but I saw her name about as often as I did the other six who died. I am glad that they all were honored.

The front of the hospital. The flags at half-mast are a fitting backdrop to the memorial, I think.


"We were targeted, we were hit, but we will NOT be destroyed!!! Arizonans coming together." I feel like, in a lot of ways, this was the theme of the entire thing.


"Together we, our town, state, and nation, can get throgh this."


"I hopp ewe buttay gets better in the hosbdoy." So cute.


I can't read all of it, but "May the Great Spirit bless them" is part of it. I saw several different faiths represented, which made me happy.





Something about this note felt particularly heartfelt. There were hundreds if not thousands of the tall, thin candles of the kind with pictures of the Virgin Mary on them, such as the one holding down this note.


A large metal sculpture of what I took to be a butterfly. The butterfly image was repeated quite often, in balloons and drawings and photographs; the symbolism is, I think, particularly nice: the hope of Gabby emerging from her cocoon.

When people had not brought signs or papers or other things, they resorted to what was there. This message and several others was written in crayon on the slab of concrete over the gutter, with the crayons left so others could write there too.

A fabric daisy chain had been used to make a barrier.


The candles, while gorgeous at night, appear to be quite hard to maintain. Someone thought for permanence and left solar-powered lamps.


The scope of the memorial is amazing--too big to fit in the frame of my camera phone. This is the portion in front, by the road.


A message to Gabby's husband, supporting him.


L'chaim, a traditional Jewish toast that means "to life," seemed to me a particularly appropriate sentiment. (At least, I assume that's what it says, given that it looks to be translated underneath.)


This box was stuffed. I wrote something on a halfsheet from the clipboards next to it and shoved my wish in as well.


Someone had tied a flag to the "fire lane" sign on the right side of the memorial.


An attempt to get a shot of the whole thing. It borders the entire rectangle of the grassy area, with undulating sections in the middle, including a path on one side. People are setting up the stuff so as much of the well-wishing can be seen as possible.


It's hard to read, now, but it's something like, "We will miss you Bean (?), more than you know." This one struck me because it seemed so much more personal than many of the others. I think the top of the paper was addressed to Gabe Zimmerman.


"We have seen too many stars to let the darkness overwhelm us. Keep shining Gabby." The stars attached to the wings have the names of all of the victims, both surviving and deceased. I loved this one especially.


You can see in this shot that the grass is worn down around the places where people have left things, and where others have walked by to see it.


"Thank you for teaching us to love again, laugh, and believe. We love you all." The messages were often along these lines: incredibly hopeful and positive.


Another shot of the front portion of the memorial.


The line of cans reads "DONATE IN GABBY'S NAME!" She is, apparently, a big supporter of the food banks. There was a box for donations that I didn't get a shot of that was completely stuffed with food. People had piled grocery bags up around it, too.


A statue of Buddha.





"Hate is easy. Love takes courage." Many of the messages were written on tiles like this, implying the wish for permanence.





A wreath with a sash reading "U.S. House of Representatives." I was amused that the officials had contributed to this sort of grassroots expression, and glad for the smiley heart balloon in the middle--it made it look less like a funeral wreath.


"Heal the world," spelled out in tealights.


A rock garden of well wishes. When the breeze came, they fluttered like birds.


Something poignant about the fact that this person used the rock itself for their message--and I think it's written using a match or burnt stick.


There were many, many messages from children. I particularly liked this poster. "I hope you ful bettr" is about how I feel, too.


I hope so.


A view of about half of it from farther back. I overheard someone saying that the wind took away many of the balloons recently, and that people from the hospital had come out and started taking away any of the flowers not in pots in an attempt to "clean up." I saw a ton of flowers and balloons; if this is the diminished version, I am even more impressed.

I overheard someone else saying that every day it gets significantly bigger. Now that Gabby is getting transferred to Houston for treatment, I wonder what will happen to it--it will break my heart if it is simply thrown away. So much goodness deserves to be kept around.


The sea of news vans. The various cameras and crews were spaced out around the memorial so they could use it as a background. Their fake lighting and crisp suits and makeup-ed faces contrasted quite oddly with the sincerity of the memorial.

I hope that people, especially those not from Tucson or Arizona, see these pictures and realize that, despite this horrific event, there is much that is good and hopeful here, too.

a plea

The US Representative for my District, Gabby Giffords, was shot in the head this morning outside a Safeway that is four miles away from my house. I drive through that intersection every day. I have shopped at that Safeway hundreds of times. Miraculously, at the time of this posting, she is still alive and is responsive, though still in critical condition.

In one way, it was not unexpected to me. Our country has been split along party lines so deeply of late, and people have been spouting such obscene amounts of hate and violence, that something like this was bound to happen eventually. And yet, I did not expect it to happen--to begin, it feels like--so very very close to my home.

As the day went on, things began to feel more and more unreal, and this passage from Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby kept floating to the surface of my mind:

He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about . . .

Please, no matter what your politics are, please take this opportunity to reevaluate the way you speak and think about the people whose views are different than your own. It is one thing to say you disagree. It is an entirely different thing to say that people deserve death because they disagree with you. Additionally, perhaps it is time to thoroughly examine the accuracy and the source of the information--and especially, the validity of the opinions--on which you base your worldview. Please, let's bring some intelligent, rational thought back to a country that has been without it for far too long.

don't ask, don't tell

The repeal failed.