"The Culture of Cruelty"

This is what David Brookes of the NY Times said about American culture on a talk show after the tragedy of the VT shootings, and I've been ruminating over this for the last week or so, and I must agree. We, obviously by how highly they are rated, love watching the humiliation of people on reality shows, the Simon Crowells of the world making snide and outright devastating remarks to contestants that are willing to be bashed in front of millions for their thirty seconds of infamy. This humiliation is forgotten in an equal amount of seconds by the audience, but probably is never forgotten by the unfortunate victim (of course, as we see it, he or she "deserved it" because "no one is on the show against his or her will"). We tolerate the Don Imus's and the Howard Sterns—we love the way they taunt and belittle people; we love violent films, the gorier the better; we embrace the business culture that says you have to be a bastard to get ahead, or "You're Fired" by some side-combed egocrat that is just that much more Machiavellian than you are.

The NRA has one thing right. It's not the guns that kill people; it's the downright ugliness of our blatant disregard for our fellow countrymen, let alone the entire world. We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.

What causes this penchant for violence and vulgarity? I can offer one possible reason. Education, or lack thereof. We don't teach history, so our children don't learn from our, let alone ancient, mistakes. We don't teach them anything about foreign cultures. As I noted in another post, most of my students, in high school, didn't study any history other than American history, and a bland, dessicated version of American history at that. We have stripped the arts from our schools' curricula because our schools are underfunded. Towns won't pass millages, states won't raise taxes, and the federal government—well, if you have a president who brags about being a "C" student, then that sets a precedent. Crassness rules, art is liberal sissy stuff. And history? Who needs it when you make it. If we read history, we would understand all too well what happens to civilizations who acted and thought as we do presently. They became irrelevant, and self-destructed, as T.S. Eliot put it, with a whimper not a bang.

I'm tired of the culture of ignorance, of cruelty, of crassness. This is not JFK's New Frontier, or Johnson's Great Society. It's not Reagan's City on the Hill. It is madness. Self-centered and ultimately self-destructive.

Glad I'm Not The Only One

This is an interesting OP-ED piece from a professor who has had encounters like I documented below (but more intimidating than mine). She also wonders where personal rights end and the university community rights begin. Good reading from the NYT.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/opinion/19oakley.html

This has definitely started a discussion that has been long overdue: personal rights, personal safety, the downsides of a gun culture. Canada has more guns per capita than the U.S., but far, far less gun violence per capita. But Canada doesn't have the huge amount of hand guns that we have. As one student pointed out in class (and he is a hunter and a gun owner) "Cho would have had a harder time not being stopped/detected if he had been carrying a thirty-ought-six." Polls show that most U.S. citizens want better gun control, but it has been presented as the fallacious "either/or" argument by the lobbyists: "Either you allow 50 mm guns, or you are taking away all our gun rights." There has to be some sort of sane compromise. The fact that Cho had been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric institution within the past 48 months is reason enough to deny him a gun, but this sort of mental health material is not taken into consideration in the majority (if not all) states when one applies for a gun permit, unless the psychiatric episode involved a felony. I wonder if most people know this? I used to work in community mental health and know this fact too well; I remember the suicides of at least two clients who had legally purchased guns.

In Memoriam

First, I would like to give my condolences to the students, faculty and parents of Virginia Tech. This is such a horrifying event, and one that few parents envision will take place on the campus where they send their children to study. It's beyond comprehension, this act of violence, as most acts of supreme violence are. And you think the worst thing that might happen to your child on an American campus (and I note "American" because a campus such as the University of Baghdad has faced incredible carnage due to sectarian conflict) is that his or she might receive a "minor in possession" charge or a failing grade. You never think he or she might be randomly shot four times in a German class or an Engineering class.

As a professor at a Division I school, I cannot say that this scenario has never crossed my mind. But I can say it hadn't crossed my mind until about five years ago, which is when I started noticing a subtle and disturbing trend in a small minority of students: unfettered anger. In the last five years, I have had a student block my way out of a classroom because of a perceived poor grade (a "C"), several students yell at me, and a few who have written emails that were just short of threats. These encounters were all over the matter of grades. For many students, it's not enough to receive a "B" anymore; it must be an "A" for the purposes of being competitive. But of course, the vast majority of students deal with their disappointment with grades, or with college in general, gracefully. But those that don't can be very scary—not only for the instructor, but also for fellow students if an outburst occurs in class (which has, thankfully, only happened once to me and my students, but I hear other faculty report incidents more frequently than I can remember).

So, I don't think we can just write this shooting off to a "nutter": we must look at ourselves, at our culture, and at what could be behind the rage. I am not trying to make excuses for the perpetrator of this massacare; I have a vested interest in trying to understand why shootings like this, and the recent one at the University of Montreal, happen. These incidents, with the exception of Charles Whitman who killed 16 people and wounded 31 at the University of Texas in 1966, did not occur thirty years ago. (The Whitman murderous rage may have been a lethal combination of amphetamines for finals, and a brain tumor that was found during an autopsy—his behavior had markedly changed in the last weeks of his life). Why did these incidents begin to occur in the late 70s and have accelerated since then? I really am at a loss for an answer. My students think it is technology: the inability to cope with vast amounts of stimuli and information, and instant access to nearly anybody. As one student put it, "technology radically changes every 18 months, and we as students bear the brunt and stress of keeping on top of it." I don't know if this a valid answer, but at least it is an answer.

I have none.

The Long Gaze of the Realist

I had the privilege of seeing retired four-star General Wesley Clark speak last week to an enthusiastic crowd of about 900. The program board scheduled his talk on the night of the NCAA basketball final: brilliant. I expected to see few students there, but I was pleasantly surprised when hundreds showed up—there obviously were more important events than getting drunk and watching Florida pound Ohio State.

Clark started with a brief history of the cold war with the former USSR,(pre many students' conception) and the ramifications of it ending, which nobody in the U.S. had anticipated. He claims we lost our way at that moment. We no longer could define ourselves by what we were and were not in contrast to the Soviets.
We had values.
We had capitalism.
We had no plan.
And when you don't have a plan, there are always forces willing to impose their own antiquated world view because of their inability to grow. Hence someone like Cheney, who didn't believe that the Soviets would crumble, and who was alarmed at the fall of the Berlin wall, had to shift his world axis and focus upon another "enemy." The "axis of evil" even has a familiar ring to it. Reagan called the former USSR something very similar, "The Evil Empire," in the early 1980s. It's Soviet speak, only tweaked a bit so it is now "Islamofascists" instead of "the Reds."

Clark stated that the only way we, as a country, would survive is if we negotiate--talk to people, "even bad people" as he put it. He said we cannot go "cowboy on the world" and expect to win hearts and minds. He also said that the military should always be the last option. The very last option.

Of course, he is disgusted with the mishandling of Iraq, but doesn't think we should abandon the Iraqis by unilaterally pulling out. He stated that we need to talk to Iran, to the Saudis, to the Jordanians and Syrians—all those that have something to gain and lose if Iraq continues as a failed state. He said in the last eight years, the "fine art of negotiations" had been abandoned for a "my way or the highway" stance that has only weakened us as even NATO is having second thoughts about the U.S. and its current foreign policy (or lack thereof). Clark would know of what he speaks since he was in command of NATO forces in Bosnia during the bombing of Serbia. Clark also is a veteran of Vietnam. He took four rounds of an AK47, and this changed his world view; he said it took nine years for him to look into a mirror and realize he was still deeply angry about being shot, that he hadn't killed the man that had shot him, that the war itself had been such a disaster.

One of the most interesting moments came during the Q & A that followed the speech. He was very generous with his time. But an awkward moment arose when Clark had to reiterate his belief that military action is an action of last resort during an exchange with a student who had escaped southern Sudan as a teenager, leading a pack of children out of the country during Khartoum's war with South Sudan. The student asked "Shoudn't the United States intevene militarily in Darfur?" And Clark answered "No. We have to negotiate with Khartoum and the rebels: they both have blood on their hands." He then spoke awhile about the disaster and genocide that was taking place in the Sudan, but stated that this was not something the U.S. military could solve. It must have been hard to say this to the Sudanese student, knowing full well what horrors this young man had seen, and that Africa is neglected (as he noted in his speech as well).

Overall, I was very impressed. If you can catch him speaking somewhere, do so. It's worth your time.