A Progressive Time Warp

It has become a science fiction cliché.  Sooner or later the plot is apt to boast an excursion into the past or the distant future.  As it happens, my wife and I recently experienced an episode of the former when we attended the annual conference of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) in New York City.

Virtually all of the attendees would happily have described themselves as “progressive,” or maybe “radical,” in their political orientations.  An odd collection of aging hippies and earnest young disciples, their principal objective was to develop exciting new ways to cure the ills of our society.

And yet, if a visitor from outer space paid attention to what was said in many of the sessions, she could not avoid feeling caught in a time warp.  Here were the 1960’s (and sometimes earlier) brought back to life with gusto.  Nuggets of “wisdom,” I heard as a young man, were breathlessly re-uttered as if freshly discovered.

One of the favorite topics was “victimhood.”  Thus in a session devoted to drug use, we were told that women addicted to methamphetamines were losing their identities because of misguided government programs.  Instead of having their status as mothers affirmed, this was undermined by taking their children away.

These women were therefore double victims; victims of a frightful drug and of professional insensitivity.  Even though they loved their children and found comfort in their roles as mothers, the officials did not care and callously separated families that should be kept intact.

While this exposition was well received by the audience, it was a bit too much for me to bear and so I rose to tell two stories from when I worked as a methadone counselor.  The first concerned a woman I helped get her children back after they had been placed in protective services.

My heart had gone out to her when she tearfully explained how her children were all she lived for.  Then when she subsequently came to see me with her youngsters in tow, almost the first thing that happened was that she rapped her little girl across the face with the back of her hand when the child plaintively expressed a desire for candy.

This woman was sincere in expressing her love, but that did not mean she was a good parent.  Nor were the social workers that sought to protect her children entirely mistaken in their concern for their welfare.

In another instance, a woman whose children had been removed from her care bore a fourth baby by a different man and then moved in with a third.  Soon thereafter, he, in a fit of pique, threw this infant against the wall when he could not get it to cease crying.  The child in question shortly died.

Upon concluding these tales, I made the point that morality mattered.  These women were not merely victims; they were agents who needed to be held accountable for their actions.  To do less was to invite dire consequences.

To this an audience member responded by suggesting that my comments were ill-advised.  I was told that I should not be invoking “morality” because the concept was too contentious.  We needed to find another word that would not invite the authorities to act as self-righteous busybodies.

So here we were with tired relativistic platitudes being used to justify failing to protect the innocent from abuse.  The alleged victimhood of the mothers was to prevent us from intervening for the sake of their children.  Because the investigator felt sympathy for the women she interviewed, we were to ignore the plight of sufferers she never meet.

All of this is defended in the name of compassion.  Somehow it is supposed to be “progressive” to jettison moral standards.  Social discipline is to be thrown out the window because those forced to behave in ways they do not like might be offended.

Were this to become the conventional attitude, chaos would surely reign.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

It Isn't a Game

In his recent book This Town, Mark Leibovich reports on the behind the scenes doings in Washington, DC.  Thus he describes a party put on by the New Yorker magazine in which drinks were served accompanied by napkins embossed with politically oriented cartoons.

One of these napkins depicted a “sinner” pleading with Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates.  The reprobate says, “Wait, those weren’t lies.  That was spin.”

The joke is that those were lies, but those telling them did not consider them such.  Although they knew full well they were spreading untruths in order to influence others, they perceived this as their job.  These fabrications were deemed legitimate because they were part of the political “game.”

Leibovich makes it perfectly plain that for Washington insiders what matters most is getting a leg up on the competition.  The objective is to improve one’s status so that eventually one can cash in on the money machine our nation’s capital has become.

The players evidently also love power, and attention, and fawn all over each other in order to get it.  They will therefore play the sycophant, and the lifelong buddy, then stab each other in the back for an ephemeral advantage.  What is more, many enjoy what they regard as an indoor sport.

In short, if but a quarter of what Leibovich writes is true, it is eloquent testimony as to why the federal establishment deserves to be cut back.  No doubt many of the people who gravitate toward government service begin with noble intentions, but it is also quite clear that many who stay to ride the gravy train have been thoroughly corrupted.

Specifically, this business of people casually accepting deceit as a tool of the trade rankles some of us who still believe honesty is a virtue.  Perhaps we are quaint relics of a bygone era, but winking, nodding, and revering those who tell the glossiest whoppers strikes us as immoral.

The biggest problem, however, is that this dishonesty bug seems to have infected the nation at large.  Not just a handful of politicians, lobbyists, and reporters cooped up in what literally used to be a vile swamp on the Potomac have been laid low by this malady.

Consider some of the lies Americans have been told only to have a majority shrug their shoulders; then reward the dissembler.  Thus, weren’t people warned that our president was being dishonest when he promised they could keep their medical insurance after ObamaCare went into effect?

Weren’t voters likewise told their premiums would rise, not fall; despite projections to the contrary?  Didn’t it sink in it when cautioned they would lose their doctors and/or be subject to “death panels?”  Now all this is coming true and demonstrating the voters were deceived.  Nevertheless, there is no wave of revulsion sweeping the land.

So numbed have people become to being manipulated, many don’t even notice they have been taken to the cleaners.  So egregious is their acceptance of deceit that when Obama and his minions called the IRS scandal phony just weeks after condemning it as disgraceful, they continued to tell pollsters how much they like the president.

Yet this isn’t a game!  It shouldn’t be one in the nation’s capital and even less on the nation’s main streets.  We are told that people are not paying attention and therefore do not realize they have been deceived.  Still, it is their pockets that are being fleeced, their health that is being put in jeopardy, and their freedoms that are being compromised.

The truth is that liars are thieves!  Liars are also tyrants!  They rob us of our souls and our happiness, even as we grin uncomprehendingly at their shenanigans. 

So where is the outrage?  Why haven’t we thrown the rascals out and demanded that their mischief be undone?  Or do we too actually believe this is all merely fun and games; a playground for the Anthony Weiners of the world, if you will.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Dissent Is The Highest Form of Patriotism?

There it was—out for all to see on the bumper of a faculty automobile at Kennesaw State University.  No doubt intended as a statement of profound wisdom, it demonstrated little more than evidence of arrested intellectual development.

I first encountered this slogan when I was a high school student in Brooklyn, New York.  I then ran into it again as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  And here it was once more being used to justify a trendy political policy.

“Dissent Is the Highest Form of Patriotism.”  That is what the bumper sticker read.  Pithy, to the point, and ridiculously absurd, it can only be considered insightful by those who have not reflected on its implications.

Back in Brooklyn, it was meant to vindicate the socialist inclinations of a majority of my neighbors.  Out in Madison, it celebrated the anti-Viet Nam War sentiments of many demonstrators.  Today, it serves to endorse the treachery of a Bradley Manning or an Edward Snowden.

But let us take a step back.  Isn’t sacrificing one’s life in war a higher form of patriotism than stealing national secrets and posting them on the Internet?  Similarly, isn’t helping the poor or disabled live fulfilling lives more worthwhile than badmouthing our nation’s history?

Some dissent is surely noble.  I am reminded of a colleague who passed on a few years ago.  He served our country proudly battling the Nazis, then came home to march for racial integration in Atlanta when it was unfashionable for a white person to do so.

Are we to lump him together with the likes of Benedict Arnold or Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg?  Is becoming a turncoat and/or delivering atomic secrets to the Soviets supposed to rank up there with fighting for racial justice?

Dissent can be honorable, but it is not always honorable.  Dissent can also serve patriotic purposes, but it is not the only sort of behavior that serves patriotic purposes.  People who support what the United States stands for can also be patriots.  Indeed, some are more patriotic than the self-righteous dissenters.

What also about those who love our democracy and put themselves on the line to defend it?  What, for instance, about the ones who stood up to the IRS and condemned its discriminatory tactics as a violation the principles upon which our nation was founded?

Are we only to count those individuals as patriotic who persistently perceive Americans as racists and who never applaud the progress we have jointly made toward providing justice for all?  Surely we must be allowed to commend some of the good things we and our forebears have accomplished.

A bumper sticker mentality is only for those who do not wish to contemplate the complexities of this world.  These are the same folks who tell us “war never settled anything,” even though the American Revolution, the American Civil War, and World War II manifestly did.

Whether dissent is patriotic clearly depends upon what it is about and how it is implemented.  Thus, objecting to constitutional safeguards regarding free speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion does not rise to my idea of praiseworthy opposition.

Nor does divulging a host of national secrets, especially after one has taken an oath to defend them.  This is cowardly, anti-American, and decidedly not patriotic.  It ought, therefore, not be depicted as plucky whistleblowing.

Sadly, genuine patriotism seems to have gone into eclipse.  Among the cognoscenti it is actually derided as vulgar flag-waving.  Substituted instead are cynical diatribes concerning our alleged barbarism.  What is more, these gibes are held to be clever, compassionate, and “progressive.”

They are, in fact, nothing of the sort.  Manning, Snowden, and their ilk are merely vile worms pretending to be heroic paladins.  Were they the stuff upon which our nation must depend in order to maintain its greatness, we would be in serious trouble.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

More About Stereotyping

Let’s continue our conversation about race and stereotyping.  Not long ago the president of the United States told us that thirty –five years ago he could have been Trayvon Martin.  Did he mean that if people looked at him suspiciously back then, he would have assaulted them?

Somehow I doubt it.  What Barack Obama probably meant was that his experience as a young black man paralleled that of Martin in many respects.  The president then went on to explain something about what it is like to be a black male in the United States.

Thus, he talked about how when a black man enters an elevator with a white woman, she clutches her handbag.  He also described how people locked their car doors when he came by—that is, before he became a senator.

Did our president mean that all white women are terrified of all black men whenever they meet?  Did he intend to suggest that white people, anywhere in America, upon spotting an African-American man in the street, immediately press their car’s door-lock?

Somehow I doubt this too.  Obama was essentially stereotyping.  He was drawing upon his experience—and that of many other African-Americans—to generalize about whites.  Most of the time what he said does not apply, but it does often enough to make it worth noticing.

Incidentally, when Trayvon Martin told his friend that a “creepy-ass cracker” was following him, he too was stereotyping.  He didn’t even get Zimmerman’s race right, but aware this person was not black he jumped to a conclusion—probably because he knew that his presence had previously made whites nervous.

So here comes another of my stories.  Back when I was in college, I got a temporary job selling encyclopedias door-to-door.  The way it worked was that the publisher provided us with a script we were to repeat verbatim with every potential customer.  This spiel concluded with the statement that if the man of the house was absent, I would come back later.

At the time a compliant young man, I followed this scenario to the letter in the South Bronx neighborhood to which I had been delivered.  So imagine my surprise when I came back to an apartment house where I had a number of re-appointments to find a police officer waiting in the lobby.

It seemed that one of the women in the building had been terrified by a strange bearded man knocking on her door.  Needless to say, that was me.  I was naturally startled by this news because I knew what a harmless fellow I was.

The woman, however, did not know me.  This was a time when beards were just coming into fashion and so she associated them with social deviants.  Only later would facial hair be so common as to be taken for granted.  In the meantime, she drew upon a stereotype she then shared with many of her neighbors.

I could have been insulted by her supposition, but I was not.  After I got over my initial surprise, I realized her reaction was understandable given the world in which we both lived.

The same is true about the relationship between young black men and crime.  Given the world in which we live, it is understandable that strangers should be suspicious of young black men they do not know—especially if they are in unexpected places.  Blacks too should realize this and factor it into their responses.

Nor is this situation liable to change in the immediate future.  Given the sort of species we are, and the astronomical crime rates among young black men, we humans (irrespective of our race) will continue to reach this conclusion.  Only a change in the crime rates, or our personal knowledge of individuals, will alter this.

Just ask the president.  It was only after he became a senator, and more people knew him, that they stopped locking their car doors when he walked by.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University