Power and History

History may be written by the victors, but in any age power confers the ability to manipulate history to achieve its ends. It does so in three related but distinct ways.  

  1. Mobilizing chosen traumas (collective myths)
  2. Appealing to recent (or “ongoing”) existential threats
  3. Promoting organized forgetting

Our world is one in which the “virtuous” powerful invoke a “rules-based order” designed to act as a check on aggression. But they transgress that order routinely in search of the talisman of the total defeat of their enemies. They accomplish this by manipulating history to remove the shackles of the “rules,” in order to engage in revenge, or to wage unlimited and endless war.

Chosen Trauma

In Transgenerational Transmissions and Chosen Traumas, Volkan provides an excellent recent example of the mobilization of chosen traumas in the case of the conflicts in Central Europe in the late 1990s.  In discussing the Serbian march to war, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes against Muslims, he describes how a historical event from the 1300s when the Ottoman Empire Turks (Muslims) in the Battle of Kosovo assassinated Prince Lazar. He notes how the mythologized tales of the battle were “translated from generation to generation” until “(w)ith the awakening of nationalism in Europe in the 19th century, Lazar’s image was transformed from that of martyr, victim and tragic figure to hero and then ultimately to avenger” (emphasis added). Lazar, as avenger, provided a foundation for the violence that was unleashed over 600 years after his death. 

Volkan notes: “Leaders intuitively seem to know how to reactivate a chosen trauma, especially when their large group is in conflict or has gone through a drastic change and needs to reconfirm or enhance its identity.”

He goes on to say: 

But when a chosen trauma is fully reactivated within a large group by stressful and anxiety-inducing circumstances, a time collapse typically occurs. This term refers to the fears, expectations, fantasies and defenses associated with a chosen trauma that reappear when both conscious and unconscious connections are made between the mental representation of the past trauma and a contemporary threat. This process magnifies the image of current enemies and current conflicts, and an event that occurred centuries ago will be felt as if it happened yesterday. An ancient enemy will be perceived in a new enemy, and the sense of entitlement to regain what was lost, or to seek revenge against the contemporary enemy, become exaggerated.

According to Volkan, history is manipulated, and those in power do it deliberately—intuitively.

Existential Threat

In addition to chosen traumas, the powerful use more recent traumas (not yet entirely historical) to maintain a sense of existential threat.  My son turned 33 this year, and I am reminded that throughout his entire life, leaders in the US have used perceived threats to maintain not only a global military footprint but also a global war.  

Perhaps that sounds like hyperbole, but long before the global war on terror (GWOT), the US was involved in various global policing exercises in the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The year my son was born found us in Iraq—well before the better-known Iraq war. I point to those years because those were the years when global communism crumbled, and the US was left as the sole superpower. It did not use that role for peace but to create and maintain global crises. 

The GWOT, however, was the epitome of appealing to an existential threat to compel acquiescence to continued military action. In the post 9.11 world, a visit to Washington was a visit to a city under siege—but the symbolism of the concrete barriers surrounding government buildings was not limited to that town.  In my small Northern CA city, we had the same visual reminder of the threat outside a local USDA field office.

It was the audacity of the GW Bush administration to maintain the existential threat and extend it to Iraq that was the hallmark of that historical manipulation.  Even as the color-coded warnings began to wane, we were reminded that 

America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. (George Bush in a speech calling for military action against Saddam Hussein in October 2002).

It was all bullshit, of course, as we now know.  But revenge was needed against a former ally turned enemy, so…

Organized Forgetting

Of course, the entire GWOT (which continues in Southwest Asia and various parts of Africa to this day) also drew on the third form of historical manipulation: “organized forgetting.”

I first came across the concept of organized forgetting in listening to Philosopher Nathan Cartagena discuss it concerning critical race theory.  Cartagena attributed the idea to legal scholar Kendall Thomas, but Thomas traces it back to Roger Bromley in “Lost Narratives.” Thomas writes: 

Bromley describes the contested terrain of history as a dialectical unity of anamnesis and amnesia in which “[f]orgetting is as important as remembering. Part of the struggle against cultural power is the challenge to forgetting posed by memory. What is “forgotten” may represent more threatening aspects of popular ‘memory’ and have been carefully and consciously, not casually and unconsciously, omitted from the narrative economy of remembering.”

Most US citizens viewed the attacks of 9.11 as both unprecedented and unprovoked, and the leaders in DC did nothing to disabuse them of the idea that they were both.  By ignoring the role that the US played in creating the Taliban and Osama bin Ladin during the Cold War, they promoted organized forgetting.  They were successful in creating the narrative that far from the attacks being “payback” for US aggression around the world, they  were carried out by extremists who did it because (to quote the then-president) “they hated our freedom.”  

Later, there was a successful effort to promote organized forgetting about the support the US had provided to Saddam Hussein to wage war on the archenemy of the US—Iran during the 80s. In the aftermath of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and a decade later in the lead-up to the Iraq war, the US’s role in supporting this brutal dictator when it suited their purposes was rarely discussed.

The carefully curated, organized forgetting of the history of the US CIA in creating the Taliban to fight a proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, or the substantial support to Saddam Hussein to assist him in prosecuting his war against Iran, led the popular press—print and visual—to largely ignore these histories as merely posthoc arguments against a just war proposed by the (usual) anti-war (anti-American) suspects. 

 Organized forgetting meant that, in a real sense, history started on 9.11 when a nation committed to justice at home and peace abroad was attacked without reason by nihilists whose religion was described as a death cult. There could be no historical reason why the hijackers might take these horrific actions, and any suggestion that there was bordered on a justification for their actions and was, therefore, treasonous. 

But there was a history, and it was not a pretty one. It rolled out in far-off places ignored by most Americans. But it did occur, and the intrepid employed words like blowback to describe how the death-dealing of the US “over there” brought the chickens home to roost here.  

Still, there was no place for this history in the rapid reaction to 9.11 in Afghanistan or the much longer march to war in Iraq. Historical analysis would have required a clear-eyed look at what we had wrought. But for those in power, such a clear-eyed look would have stalled the actions necessary to exact swift and destructive revenge on those responsible. 

Revenge (the Goal of Historical Manipulation)

It is hard to argue that despite all our “progress” as a species, we have left revenge behind and that we only wage war to achieve just outcomes.

And so, a word about revenge.

World War II—a few observations (see references for sources about the following):

  1. The United States imprisoned approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II following the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942. 
  2. The United States did not imprison German Americans during this war.
  3. The United States opposed the “area bombing” of Germany in the early days of the war. It limited its bombing campaigns to strategic bombing of sites of military significance.
  4. Great Britain, on the other hand, practiced area bombing and experimented with firebombing in Hamburg in 1943 (calling the effort “Operation Gomorrah”). The US participated in the Hamburg bombings but focused on strategic targets. British bombing killed 40,000 citizens of Hamburg. 
  5. Germany bombed British cities—first by accident and later with purpose.
  6. Churchill used the German bombings of British cities to justify the area bombing of Germany.
  7. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, which, while not a state, was a territory held by the US. 
  8. The US firebombed Tokyo in 1945—killing over 100,000 civilians.
  9. The US used atomic weapons in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, killing over 210,000 innocent people.

These are simply facts, and they do not prove that revenge on a population is the goal.  Indeed, if you read the official justifications for the area, and specifically, the firebombing of these cities, it was to damage citizen morale (thereby weakening support for the wars being waged by their governments) and to remove vital workers from the war effort. But it is hard not to see collective punishment as the actual goal—revenge for actions taken against the US and Great Britain by Japan and Germany respectively.

Further, the intentionality of these realities demonstrates the will to avenge the attacks against the US and Britain. In an exchange with Keith Lowe, author of Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg, 1943, he stated that the bombing of Hamburg over ten days was a “trial and error” approach to learning how to use incendiary bombs to maximum effect to destroy a city. This trial and error approach gave way to a much more deliberate approach to ensuring that hundreds of thousands would die in city firebombing.

In his book Dead Cities, and Other Tales, Mike Davis describes a visit to a restricted military site in Utah where the US built a replica German city and firebombed it, rebuilding it over and over to perfect the bombings’ effects.  The British built a similar “city” in the UK. The rigor with which the engineers and architects built housing structures and added typical German furnishings to maximize fire destruction is stunning. No expense was spared to ensure the creation of massive firestorms (see Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World, by John Vaillant for a full description of what a firestorm truly is—it is devastating.)

Here is Lowe, citing civil and medical workers who entered Hamburg after the firebombing:

On a little open square near Boonsweg – I shall never forget the sight – there lay hundreds of men and women, soldiers in uniform, children, old people. Many had torn the clothes from their bodies shortly before their death. They were naked, their bodies seemed unmarked, the faces showed peaceful expressions, like in deep sleep. Other bodies could hardly be recognized; they were charred, torn to pieces, and had shattered skulls . .. There an old woman lay. Her face was peaceful, soft, and tired 

… And there, a mother with a child on each hand. They were all three lying on their faces in an almost gracefully relaxed position . . . And there a soldier, with charred stumps for legs. There a woman with a torn body, on whose bulging-out intestines the flies were feeding. And there a child, clutching a birdcage in his hand. And there, detached from the body, a boy’s foot with a black boot; a small, brown girl’s hand with a blue ring . .. The heart almost stops beating at such sights.

In Lowe’s telling, Britain maintained a pretense of bombing strategically but sought justification for area bombing—which it found.  Few in Great Britain rallied against this destruction of human life—most cheered it on, and the cheerleaders used the ongoing existential threat posed by Germany long after Germany had effectively lost the war to continue the practice.

In the US, the voices opposed to the area bombing of Japanese cities existed within the US military, but they were systematically sidelined (see Searle, 2002).

I have taken this excursion into World War II for two reasons. 

First, to make a case that the ends to which the powerful use chosen trauma, existential threat, and organized forgetting are bent on punishing their enemies—not merely to obtain a military victory. A close reading of Inferno reveals a chilling resolve to destroy and punish.

Second, the devastation of Japanese and German cities during the Second World War was so great and so visible that it led to the development of international accords about the treatment of civilian populations in times of war.  

This so-called “rules-based order” stands as a self-congratulatory but largely empty standard that the powerful use to condemn others but conveniently ignore when it comes to their own wars.

When Hamas launched its attacks on Israel in October 2023, all three forms of historical manipulation were on display, and even as the global south pointed to the vacuousness of talk of a rules-based international order, the US and most European leaders provided cover drawing on these historical manipulations.

To be clear, what Hamas has done to Palestinians over the years and what it did on October 7, 2023, deserves unreserved condemnation.  It was a crime against humanity.  

But Israel’s response has proven every bit as destructive in terms of infrastructure and housing decimated as any of the area bombing campaigns during World War II.  The global south is well within reason to point out the hypocrisy of the “West.”

And the manipulation of history?  Let’s examine them.

Chosen trauma – Probably the most fascinating historical manipulation in this war is the trauma that Israel (and the US media) chose.  Immediately after the attacks, the media was filled with statements such as “This is Israel’s 9.11.”  

This choice would seem to be deliberate in that 9.11 was carried out by a “death cult” bent on the destruction of the US due to their hatred of our culture and freedoms.  A chosen trauma that draws on the tropes of radical Islam is purposeful and powerful.

Existential threat – Israel’s Prime Minister has been a master at holding the Israeli population in thrall to a multitude of existential threats—with Iran as the source of most regional actors bent on the destruction of the state of Israel.  Hamas’ attack, though relatively limited and “low tech” compared to the destruction Israel itself has been shown to unleash on Gaza, has been portrayed—even now after the overwhelming destruction—as an ongoing existential threat, calling for unlimited war to destroy the enemy.

Organized forgetting – In reality, the organized forgetting surrounding this event has a long history that stretches throughout the entire history of the Israel/Palestine conflict.  I can think of no other conflict in my lifetime in which the forgetting has been so organized, ongoing, and supported by media as this conflict.

Each time there is a Palestinian attack, the clear message is that it was unprovoked, unforeseeable, and unprecedented.  Even as settlers use violence to displace West Bank Palestinians and the effective land “controlled” by Palestinians shrinks year by year, there is still no reckoning with a history of violence against these people. It is organized forgetting on a massive scale.

Conclusion

If there is one, it is this: as our weapons of war have become ever more “efficient,” precise, and destructive, those in power have attempted to convince us that we can have war with limited loss of innocent life. They seek to curate an image of war that is cleaner and only used in the most dire of exigencies. 

But they know that we know it is a lie because the images that live stream onto our devices show us it is merely the same old civilian massacres carried out in the newest ways. 

And because they know we know, they must manipulate history to assure us it is proper, necessary, and unavoidable.

It is time we reject this manipulation by refusing to be bound by the myths of the past, by telling the truth about history, and by refusing to be made afraid by the latest existential threat scare tactics.  

References:

Bromley, Roger. Lost Narratives: Popular Fictions, Politics and Recent History. Popular Fiction Series. London New York: Routledge, 1988.

Cartagena, Nathan. “Whiteness,” June 30, 2021. https://www.nathancartagena.com/blog/whiteness.

Davis, Mike. Dead Cities, and Other Tales. New York: New Press : Distributed by W.W. Norton, 2002.

Giroux, Henry A. The Violence of Organized Forgetting: Thinking beyond America’s Disimagination Machine. City Lights Open Media. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2014.

Lowe, Keith. Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg, 1943. London: Viking, 2007.

Searle, Thomas R. “‘It Made a Lot of Sense to Kill Skilled Workers’: The Firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945.” The Journal of Military History 66, no. 1 (January 2002): 103. https://doi.org/10.2307/2677346.

Thomas, Kendall. “Rouge Et Noir Reread: A Popular Constitutional History Of The Angelo Herndon Case.” Southern California Law Review 65, no. 2599 (September 1992). https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2177.

Vaillant, John. Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World. First edition. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2023

Yilmaz, Ruveday Celenk. “Srebrenica: The Result of a Chosen Trauma,” July 11, 2018. https://ruveydacelenk.medium.com/srebrenica-the-result-of-a-chosen-trauma-a2c3ea24326a.

Volkan, Vamik D. “Transgenerational Transmissions and Chosen Traumas: An Aspect of Large-Group Identity.” Group Analysis 34, no. 1 (March 2001): 79–97. https://doi.org/10.1177/05333160122077730.

Power was the Point

But really, to what end?

I never worried too much about the pastors and other “Christian” leaders of my youth gaining broad political power. They were insular, incurious, and paranoid. They derived their power, in part, from all three of these and by nurturing the same in their followers.

But their power was wielded in small fiefdoms. That is not to say they were harmless. Far from it. For the people—especially the girls and women—of their realms they caused real harms.

A word on those harms—from someone still seeking escape from them. The church in which I was raised taught that one could not lose one’s “salvation.” Once you said the “sinner’s prayer” you were saved and nothing could snatch you out of God’s hand. That was the good news.

But… power…

How do you maintain control of your flock if they suddenly believe that there is no sin that cannot be forgiven? How do you retain them in your reign, if they understand that their eternal destiny is secure?

You rig the game. You move the goalposts. You tweak the rules.

And this is where the harms begin. Oh, they JUST begin.

It goes something like this: “Yes, you cannot lose your salvation! Once saved always saved. God is faithful to his promises… But, if you sin—or maintain a sinful lifestyle (the footnote on what this constitutes would be longer than this brief reflection but includes things like card playing, and dancing, and drinking, and ‘running down the pastor’—you get the point)

“…If you maintain a sinful lifestyle or just keep sinning then it is fair to ask, ‘Were you ever saved at all?’”

And if you don’t think that little trick works, then you never spent sleepless nights hugging your blankets, crying, and begging eternal God not to leave you behind when Jesus comes to take the saved to heaven and leave you behind to face the tribulation and the lake of fire that appears sometime at its end. Because, after all, you were never saved to begin with.

And that’s pretty much how they ruled their little estates. And while it became clear at some point that they coveted the true power of the State, it just did not seem they could figure out how to break out of the smallness of their world to grab for the golden ring of their wet dream theocracies. But those dreams clearly existed.

Side note, it was not just power that was the point—power to control (my sisters couldn’t wear make up and were publicly shamed for square dancing at school), power to manipulate (“Do you really think it’s right to play baseball on prayer meeting night?”), power to abuse (“Just one little kiss,” the pastor begged my mom).

Power alone was not the point. Cruelty was the point. Abuse was the point. A lack of accountability was the point. Autonomy—the child of the lack of accountability—was absolutely the point.

(For all the talk of Christ’s love for humankind, I will never forget the sneering hatred for “others” (others include just about everyone who is not a virile white male) and the unhidden glee of an “enemy” dying and going to hell: “He got what he had coming”—so Clint Eastwoodian. So Christian.)

Like I said, I never worried…

Oh dammit, why don’t I just say it? They just weren’t very smart! And at a certain point we all saw through it and we just got out. For some of us it took a long time (fear of eternal death was, after all, a wonderful tool in their power-building arsenal).

I never worried…

But somehow. Now. After years of refining the tools of shame, manipulation, and abuse at a local level—and still fronting insulation, incuriosity, and paranoia—they hold some gavels and they control increasing parts of our national power infrastructure.

They have always ruled as a cruel minority—mocking those who are different, using myth and straight up lies and dissimulation to maintain a pliant flock. But now they have the tools to scale it all up. To lead a quasi-national flock of timid followers through manipulation and fear.

It would be hilarious, if it were not so deadly serious.

In hindsight, I always knew they would sell their souls to a master manipulator because they had sold their souls so many times before. I knew they would be able to point to the sin in others only because they knew is SO well in themselves.

So here we are.

The nightmares of my childhood are now out in the open for everyone to see. They always wanted the power, I never understood why. I still don’t. I just know they have it now and they will wield it in all the old ways. To control. To manipulate. To abuse.

And it’s always women, and brown people, and those without a voice who will pay the price.

On NOT “Moving On”

Time moves on from the incomprehensible murders that ripped two beloved people (sons, brothers) from our community.  

We grieve.

We desperately want the memories of their remarkable lives to endure.  We don’t want them to leave us. 

We also want the words we speak about them to represent who they were—we want to be faithful to them and for our collective memories to dwell on what their lives were and promised to be.

This is, perhaps, especially true for David Breaux, who had a very public face and message.  Compassion.  We deeply desire to honor his memory by challenging one another to be the kind of people David challenged us to be.  

I have struggled with this myself in every interview I have given and every speech I have been asked to give about him.  My question: “Have I been faithful to what David would have wanted—what David did want—for this community?”  I am left to wonder, but I press on to try to get it “right.”

Perhaps this is why some have focused on David’s words to his sister concerning forgiveness.  By invoking David’s exhortation to her to forgive if something should happen to him for which he could not respond, they are, perhaps,  merely trying to remain faithful to the man they loved—a man who changed their lives. 

And yet…

And yet, that word “forgiveness” is a word that we dare not speak lightly.  It is a word that contains a universe of meaning and nuance.  It may be a word that is too big for us to grasp fully.

Pope’s aphorism “to err is human, to forgive, divine” captures the difficulty of this word for all of humanity.  The great world religions either relegate the capacity to forgive to the deity itself or to humans exercising godlike forbearance.  

Those of us who have been harmed in personal relationships know that it is one thing to say “I forgive you” and quite another to live lives characterized by what true forgiveness would yield. We harbor an absence of forgiveness in practice even as we claim to have forgiven. Our hearts overrule our words.

And this brings us back to David’s admonition to his sister.  There are many victims in this series of crimes—crimes that we fear we will never understand.  The deepest wounds are in those closest to those who died.  The wounds of losing a son or a brother are deep and to organs vital to making sense in the world.  Their healing may never be complete.

Other victims—more distant in relationship—are likely to bear scars only after a long healing process.

For some, forgiveness might be something we believe we should strive for, if for no other reason than David asked us to.  For others, forgiveness is a destination beyond a very far horizon.  We cannot see it.  It may exist.  But we do not know if we can or should go there.  And for still others, forgiveness is a category error—a word that can’t possibly mean what those using it seem to mean. It is not a destination.  We cannot go there, and we should not try.

The problem with normalizing the idea that forgiveness is something we should strive for—to honor David—is that it negates the perspective that many who are deeply wounded have.  In suggesting it is our collective destination, it seems to say, “Get with the program; it’s time to move on.”  That may sound harsh.  But to those who do not view forgiveness as the “destination,” it feels like they are being asked to abandon their grief, get over their pain, and leave their deep wounds as if those wounds should have healed by now.

I know the temptation to push us to “move on.”  How many times when I was a public leader did I say some variation of “How can we help this community move on?” But what if it’s not time to move on?  What if the wounds will not allow it?  What if we cannot shortcut grief?  What if we can’t heal? What if there is no destination but grief itself?

What would David want? 

I think we know.  David would have said: “Have compassion for those who continue to suffer—to grieve. Act towards them with patience, love, and a commitment to their wellbeing.”

Some in our community are ready to take a step that they believe David would want them to take.  Others can never take that step. David would, I believe, want us to walk patiently with those who grieve.  He would want us to invite them to the bench, to offer whatever they need, to patiently mourn with them, and to never suggest to them that it is time to “move on.”

Liturgies of the Bench: Compassion and Lament

Compassion Bench, Davis, CA

Ibram Kendi, in his book Stamped from the Beginning, makes a bold assertion: people don’t start with racist ideas (beliefs) and then engage in behavior driven by those beliefs. Instead, people begin with racist acts and then find beliefs and ideas that justify or match those acts.

Philosopher James K.A. Smith develops an entire book–Desiring the Kingdom–around a similar notion. For Smith, humans do not begin with a “worldview”–a set of guiding principles that they use to structure their lives. Instead, people engage in acts that form them to be certain kinds of people.

Smith’s is a broad philosophical review of what makes us human. He concludes that we are not primarily “thinking” beings but beings who “love”–who desire. Our love and desire point to what we believe human thriving requires, but we do not start with the idea of what thriving is. Instead, we live into that understanding. Our actions form us to be certain kinds of people–they form us to love and desire. We do not “think” our way into our values; we “act” our way into them.

He discusses our identities as formed by rituals, many of which have lost meaning, but some of which are critical to understanding who we are. The latter, a subset of cultural rituals or practices he refers to as “liturgies.” A liturgy is a “formative practice”–a repeated act that forms us into certain kinds of people. While liturgy is a religious term, Smith describes secular liturgies that shape us in specific ways:

  • The liturgy of the mall (or, if he were writing today “Amazon), forms us to love instant gratification of our every desire–a kind of healing for our yearning for meaning;
  • The liturgy of the military-entertainment complex forms us to a deep allegiance to the nation as protector and savior; and
  • The liturgy of the university forms us to be productive consumers who will lead society to be faithful consumers.

The Compassion Bench in Davis, CA is a place of liturgies—over time and in recent days, it is a place where we have engaged in practices that have formed us to be certain kinds of people.

At the bench we have engaged in a liturgy of compassion—a practice that has formed us to be people of compassion. At the bench (and elsewhere) we have engaged in a liturgy of lament—a practice that has formed us to be people who mourn the brokenness in the world, and express a yearning for healing.

Liturgy of Compassion

David Breaux led us in a liturgy. He did not ask us to think about compassion. Rather, he asked us to write about it, and in the writing to own our ideas in a different way. He fully expected that the act of writing would lead to acts of compassion—and, in fact, for David, compassion meant action.

But beyond the act of writing, in which many of us participated over the years, David sitting at the bench created a daily liturgy. Every time we passed by the bench, we were required to think about our commitments to compassion.

His very presence prompted us to engage in an ongoing formative practice: Have I loved as I should? Have I forgiven? Have I sought forgiveness? Have I been reconciled? Have I pursued reconciliation?

His question “how do you define compassion?” and his presence formed us to be people of compassion.

Liturgy of Lament

David’s death brought many of us back to the bench to engage in another formative practice—another liturgy—that we, as a community, have practiced far too many times in recent years.

This is the liturgy of lament.

As our community has faced devastating events—either directly or in solidarity with others—we have engaged in the formative practice of coming together to express our pain, support one another, and commit to action in the face of our sense of loss.

Whether the event was a murder, a mass killing, a hate crime, or the coming to power of people who dehumanize and destroy, we have come together to lament. We have gathered again, and again, and again to participate in a liturgy of mourning. But our mourning has always been accompanied by a commitment to stand against the hate that we lament.

We have come together to seek and offer solidarity: a hug, a smile of recognition, a communal song, a shared promise, a commitment. This formative practice has had a profound effect on all of us who join in the liturgy of lament. We have left our shared time prepared to not just “carry on,” but to live lives characterized by love and support of our neighbors.

The compassion bench is a place where our community has and will engage in liturgies—formative practices: practices that form us to be people who will face the challenges of our time with grace, compassion, and a will to seek change.

Two Davids

In the space of just a few months, two dear friends, both unhoused, both named David, died in my hometown. My relationship with each one was complex. But I loved them both, and both of them taught me lessons I could not have learned anywhere else.

Because both were named David, if you search online you can find them. I sit here tonight sad that I was not a better friend to David—both Davids.

Two Davids

Two Davids taken this year

One by train

The other by knife.

Bodies riven. Life

Driven from them

(We cannot pause too long, to consider the violence that renders flesh inert)

Oh David

Oh David

Two Davids

There was no place for them, for

We made no place for them.

They slept in “locations not meant for human habitation”

A definition.

And we allowed that because

They might inconvenience us, or

They made choices, or

We lack the fiscal resources, or

It’s not our problem, or

I just don’t have any fucking time for this right now.

Two Davids

David behind a jailhouse glass, stable

We speak of Ellul, and Keizer, and Help and what it takes to succeed in the world—what would it take?

David on the corner, purpose-driven

We speak of sympathy, empathy, compassion and the potential to heal all of mankind—what would it take?

Two Davids

I see David on the curb between two cops—they will beat him

I see David on the bench—they will confide in him (and reveal their lostness)

I see David, sitting in a circle with a homeless crowd too impaired to speak—he shares pizza with them and binds up their many wounds. Oh, they are wanderers on the planet and they will never find peace, but David feeds them.

I see David, standing on the corner with a housed crowd too privileged to identify the source of their angst—he shares a space with them and binds up all their many wounds. Oh, they are wanderers on the planet and they refuse to find peace, but David feeds them.

Two Davids

Oh, god. They left too soon.

They were the best of us—without portfolio

We simply could not see.

In other times or places, maybe

Maybe we would have made a place for them

A space for them

But we are not in that space/time—that universe

Out here and now in this place—in this space

We are poorer

They are gone.

Two Davids

If there were fairness

If there were just a tiny space for justice that restores

If there were an economy that valued peacemaking, truth telling, and love offering.

If there were a world in which gifts of healing were honored

If there were a place for two Davids

Two Davids

Vignettes from the Domino Years

Robert Richards: Mr. President, would you mind commenting on the strategic importance of Indochina to the free world? I think there has been across the country some lack of understanding on just what it means to us. 

Eisenhower: You have the possibility that many human beings pass under a dictatorship that is inimical to the free world. You have broader considerations that might follow, of what you would call the falling domino principle. You have a row of dominoes set up. You knock over the first one and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. You could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.

(From an April 1954 United States president Dwight Eisenhower press conference where he was asked, among other things, about the communist victory in Indochina.)

Soviet Russia is expansively stabbing westward, knifing into nations left empty by war. Already, an iron curtain had dropped around Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria.

(Allegedly from a 1950’s newscast)

You cannot save me
You can’t even save yourself
I cannot save you
I can’t even save myself
Save yourself
So just save yourself

Lyrics from “Save Yourself” by the industrial rock band “Stabbing Westward”

The Domino Years

One

Chin in hands, I kneel by the hide-a-bed in the front room (where I am never allowed to play) and watch her, sleeping. I am four years old. I turn and there is my sister in the doorway.

“Is mommy going to die?”

“Come away and leave her alone now, she’s tired.”

I know what “die” means. Not too many months before, I sit on the lap of first this, then that, sister, aunt, or cousin while they take turns filing past his coffin. I am not allowed to go see, but I catch a glimpse of my grandpa (a scary man with a severe grin who is dead of a tumor, allegedly brought on by too many head beatings by cops who caught him stumbling drunk). His lips are pressed, his skin ashen. They all say “He’s not here, Robbie. He’s gone to heaven.” They hope.  

But I see them put him in the ground and I know I will never see him again. So, when I ask “Is mommy going to die?” What I mean is “Is mommy going to go away and never come back?” And they don’t know.

I am shunted here and there and eventually she leaves that bed… but changed. She can’t sing. She can’t use her right side. She can’t stand crowds—ever again. But she does not go away forever. Not yet.

Two

The phone rings and Cheryl answers. Mom’s at the top of the steps. Cheryl announces, upon hanging up: “Uncle Vernon died.” And mom sits down on the steps and cries and cries and cries. Her “retarded” brother (as we said back then), who was always fragile and whom she always protected. Gone now too, before things really got going.

And they hustle me off to school and her eyes are red when I get home at lunch. I don’t like to see her cry. It devastates her visage—her face just breaks apart. I am sad for a long time. 

Three

They stand in the kitchen—all of them are smoking as they always do—Rod, Larry, Darryl, Dave. And they decide not to wait. They aren’t going to be forced to do anything they don’t really want to do. If Uncle Sam might come for them, then they are going to go on their terms.  

So, they decide to go together to enlist. I am not sure exactly what it means, but I know it means they are all going away—a brother, two cousins, and a “near cousin.” This is before the pictures and numbers show up every night on the TV. I think my dad is proud. I know he went to the big war (the good war), and I know it defines him in some way he never talks about. 

My brother Rod goes Air Force, Dave and Daryl to the Army, and Larry (the smartest of the bunch) goes to the Marines. And soon they are gone. I don’t know when they will be home. I will miss them.

Four

Coletti answers the phone—it’s snowing, and school is delayed. She goes pale and turns the phone over to mom. It’s Terry—smarter than even Larry—with his long hair and “hippy” clothes. He’s gone. He took off for the border. He’s not going to let Uncle Sam come for him.  

I hear the shame in my mother’s voice—I will hear it years later, after the domino years—when my sister reveals that she is pregnant “out of wedlock.” These are things we do not talk about. These are our family’s shames.

For my dad, Terry is a traitor. No discussion.

Five

Sitting on the floor by the TV—evening news. Dad watches and the images of planes and bombs and jungle places mix to form a confusing story of something bad happening far away. And every evening, the numbers. Hard to imagine what they mean, but what they represent are dead people. People who “fight for us” far away.  

I can see dad is angry—every day he watches, and he blames Johnson. I know he hates him, but I don’t know why. And later the Smothers Brothers are on, and they make fun of Johnson and everyone laughs. Everyone knows “it” is all his fault. Coming out of the kitchen, mom dries her hands on the dish towel and says that they should not be so disrespectful to the President.  Dad says he’s a scoundrel.

Six

More bodies on TV and it finally hits me that one of them could be Larry, or Rod, or Daryl, or Dave. I don’t know where they are, but I know they are “over there” and now I know they might never come home. It seems so strange to hold that thought. Just like grandpa. Just like mom. They might go away, and I will never see them again. Except now I know that death is a thing that happens to everyone. It could happen to them. They could be a number on TV.

Seven

It’s Monday night and Bob Gibson is pitching. I know I can’t stay up to watch the whole thing but watch I will until I am forced to bed. His wind-up is merely the preliminary indication that a pitch will explode out of his hand and it is all controlled rage and he flings it home and they never seem to hit it—but he hits them sometimes.  

And… I. Love. Bob. Gibson.  

I ache when I think about him. And he and Lou Brock (his teammate) are the only black people I “know.”  

Eight

I am a lefty (Bob’s a righty), but I take the “mound” out by the barn door, and I hold that ball just like Bob. I wind up just like Bob. Every day is the 7th game of the World Series, and it’s always the bottom of the 9th, and there are always three batters who I (Bob) strike out every time. I sleep with my glove and more than anything else I want to be—I mean I want to really BE—Bob Gibson.

Nine

And now he IS coming home. Rod, my brother. Dar and I are in Diane’s room and we want to speak some words in another language. We don’t know much, but we know Rod is coming from a place where they do not speak English. We don’t know what they speak, but all of a sudden, I know that there are places where people speak words that I cannot understand. Diane knows a bit of Spanish, so we try that out and then Dad adds some German and we are in heaven.

He’s coming home! It has been a while.

And dad pulls out a chewing tobacco pouch (where did he get THAT? It turns out he has lots of “hidden things” from his war, but we only ever see bits and pieces) and pulls out some money from other places. There is so much and it looks so strange.  

Rod is coming home tonight! And we have new words and new money to welcome him home from a place we cannot imagine. Mom says it is only “leave” and it won’t last long. But at least he is coming home.

And it’s about 2:00 am and Cheryl wakes me up and says “he’s here!” I head to the kitchen and mom is there, and Diane is there, and Coletti is there, and Dar and I are there and there he is in UNIFORM! And he looks fine. And mom is hugging and crying (but not the bad kind).  

But it’s 2:00 am and Rod has on sunglasses…

His body is here but he isn’t. He hugs me but says little. So many questions. So few answers.

He stays for about five days. He talks about how green it is here (yeah, so what?), he talks about the food (oh my, THIS is home), but he doesn’t talk about where he’s been and what he’s seen. He doesn’t speak foreign words.  

Most of the time he sits outside and smokes. And then he’s gone.

And he never once takes off those sunglasses.  

Ten

I read the book over and over and over. “My Life” (as I recall), by Bob Gibson. It’s a “Scholastic Book” that I beg my mom to buy from the school book sale and I can hardly believe my luck. Bob Gibson! A whole book.

And I read it again.

Shock. Born in Omaha, Bob was sick with asthma. I ask mom what that means and am surprised that he overcame it to be the man he is.  

But the shock comes from elsewhere. Bob Gibson, my hero and one of the greatest men to walk the planet was not allowed to stay in the same hotel as his teammates when he was in the minors. 

Why? 

Because he was black.

I ask my mom. And I ask my dad. And I ask my teacher. How is that possible? And they all answer that this is how it was (and my teacher wonders absently if it still is). And the reality explodes in my mind and for the first time ever I wonder at what justice means (though I do not have that word yet—I think of “fair”). If Bob Gibson could be treated this way, then truly awful things are possible.  

And I see the picture of the naked girl running far away (and I see her in my nightmares) and wonder if she is like Bob Gibson. 

Eleven

He comes for the weekend. We don’t know him, but my sister Diane says he is far from home, so she offered to have him stay with a family as part of his “leave.” It is some special thing they do to provide a home for those who can’t make it all the way home.

I like him. Like Larry, he is a Marine. He catches me while I pitch in the back yard. I tell him about Bob Gibson. He’s nice. His eyes always look towards the fields. 

On Sunday we go to church, and I wonder. Is he a Christian? Is he saved? My mom asks him afterward and he smiles. She presses on. I feel embarrassed. And he says that he is okay.

We sit in the backyard after “dinner” (noon meal on Sunday), and he smokes. I think my sister likes him and wonder if he might stay and then marry her. I like him.

He says he needs to go for a drive. He leaves, and never returns. I feel a little sick. I cry.

I wonder if it was church that scared him away. Or didn’t he like my sister? Or didn’t he like me? Or was there something about being in a normal family doing normal things that was just too hard to bear. I don’t know. But for the first time I hate my church. I hate it for how it sends people to hell. These are nice people. Why do they have to go to hell.

I wish there was something I could do to make him come back and play with me. Later, I wonder if he will be a number on the news. 

Twelve

Bobby gets shot and all my sisters cry. 

Martin gets shot and my dad says “good.”

Dad goes to cheer Wallace in Hershey. The bumper sticker follows soon after.

Thirteen

And then they are all coming home. For good. And they stand in the kitchen and smoke. Then they head to the basement, and they fight. They wrestle and then Dave and Daryl box. No gloves. And they laugh a laugh of crazy men and there is blood, and it smells funny and I get scared, so I leave and go upstairs to watch Mod Squad.  

Mom yells down the steps saying, “You boys need to stop it.” But they just laugh and they sound crazy and I am still scared. A tooth comes out and there are deep cuts. They just laugh until they are rolling on the ground crying.

We all support Lt Calley—we even have signs “Justice for Lt. Calley” in our front yard. But I am confused, because it seems clear that lots of women and children WERE killed over there. Maybe that is just the way war is, but this time it seems like it was on purpose. But we stand by the country and the military because they keep us safe from communism. If we don’t support him they will know we are weak.

Fourteen

I am in the backseat of a Cobra Mustang. Dave is there and people I don’t know. We are taking a drive out north of Bowmansville and I feel lucky to be along with these big guys. And on that straight stretch just before we leave Lancaster and head into Berks on 625, they press the pedal to the floor and for the first time (but not the last) I am in a car on a back road going 100 miles per hour. And they laugh the same laugh as in the basement when they fought, and I get scared, again.

They don’t have to tell me not to tell my mom, but I know I can’t, and I won’t. But I never go with them again.

Afterward they stand outside and smoke and they drive away into the night. And later they crash that car (or another) and run away. No one gets hurt (how?) but the cops nab them, and Dave spends a little time in jail.

But they keep getting fast cars and they drive fast. Somehow I know they need speed like some people need a drug. 

And now when Dave, and Daryl, and Larry come around, I just stay away. They are all home, but they are not the people who left. And they never will be. Blood and speed and fighting and violence mark their days. Maybe until they die.

Rod is in California by now, and I know he may never come back.

No one talks about what happened over there.

Fifteen

I run as fast as I can from the house along the garden towards the end of the yard where the fields start, singing “California Here I Come.” I don’t know most of the lyrics, but if I could fly I would go to that place that may or may not exist—but it must, because Rod is there. And the idea of the place fills me with a yearning that I sometimes feel when I think about Bob Gibson.

Sixteen

I am in my bed, and it’s late. I beg Jesus to save me, to not let me go to hell; to let me be taken when all the other Christians (like my mom) are taken. I hear the radio preacher: “the goal of the Soviet Union is to plant the Soviet flag on Independence Square in Philadelphia by July 4, 1976.” And neither Philadelphia nor 1976 are that far away.  

The end of the world is coming, and I cry into my blanket begging Jesus to forgive my sins—of which there are so many, all of them secret. Like how I say bad words when no one is around, or how I think about drinking “liquor” and wonder what that would be like. No doubt, I will be left behind and then what? I don’t know.

All I know is that what is happening over there—and things are not going well—is the beginning of this end. It’s all going to fall down.

Seventeen

Then the Smothers Brothers sign off—apologizing to Johnson on the way out.

Then Rod comes home for a bit and argues with dad about Nixon. He laughs in dad’s face and says the man is a criminal while dad calls the Democrats communists. And Rod says the whole thing—the war—is just a joke. And when he leaves, I know he won’t come back this time. I wonder if dad and Rod hate each other because dad’s war was good and Rod’s war was bad.

Then the violence is everywhere—cities, campuses (they killed some people in Ohio), and in places I do not know—and I am afraid of black people (except Bob Gibson and Lou Brock) and hippies (except the Jesus People), and Dar says the fires in California are a sign of the end. I pray every night to be saved. Most nights I cry.

Then, mom and dad are going off to a reunion of all the sailors that were on dad’s ship. He comes home talking non-stop about all they did in the war. It’s like a flood gate has opened and now we know it was a good war. And we know that, unlike this one, everyone knew it was just and right and noble. Mom says the reunion involved a lot of drinking and lot of storytelling that she couldn’t follow. But she is glad dad went. He didn’t drink—and for some reason it is then that she tells me he used to. Drink that is. A lot. And she tells me that she told him, long before I was born, that he had to stop, or she would leave. And he did. And apparently Jesus and the Bible Fellowship Church helped.

Then mom sits me down after I do not get into a special program that allows 6th graders to go to the high school for special programs once per week. Ross and Bill got to go. I didn’t—though I took some tests to see if I should. And she tells me that “people like us” don’t get to do those things because they are for “well off” people. And we are not that. And she warns me, as she holds me by the shoulders that the world is not fair and that people like us—people like me—will have to work extra hard because the world is set up to benefit the “well off.” But, in my heart, I know Ross and Bill are just smarter than me (though I am not dumb).

And then they are all coming home, and I watch on TV as they arrive in California, at an air base. And everyone seems angry about the whole thing.

And we can’t save them and that they can’t save themselves. And they wander the streets for years, or they end up beating their wives (like Dave) or failing at marriage (like Rod and Larry). Or they drink themselves back to the hills from where my mom and dad migrated because, as my Uncle Ronnie says (some years later), the womenfolk had to get their men out of there or they would “die of drink.” 

Eighteen

The dominos never fall—but someone pounds the table and the dominos scatter all over the world. And every place they land there is devastation. Not always the devastation of a hot war, but myriad proxies that ALWAYS lay waste to villages where women and children die first.  

Dominos land first in South America, then spread to Africa—places like the Horn, Angola, Zaire. Then they circle back to Central America. And in every single place they land people die because that’s what happens with the dominos. They never “fall” one way or the other, they just get scattered around and the weak people die first, in large numbers. And all I see are dead children and their moms. And I wonder who does all the killing and maiming, and how they get the weapons to carry out those massacres. 

Epilogue: After the Domino Years

One

In a Land Rover traveling the 600 km between Kiffa and Nouakchott, along the “Road of Hope” (such a cruel name). It is just us two. Carla and me—”aid workers” dealing with malnutrition, high infant and child mortality rates, anemic moms, and lack of food and water in a place where the desert never ceases to advance.

We are children of the domino years and so we spend a long portion of that trek across the dunes asking ourselves: “How did those years affect us? What does it all mean to who we have become?” She has her father, I have my cousins and brothers, so it was all pretty close at hand.

Try as we might, we cannot put our finger on what those years did to us, what they made us become. In the end, we wonder if the guilt of it all is what has driven us to this place. We fight the urge to be saviors, but we wonder why we feel a burden to be just that.  

In the end, we just grow quiet as the brown haze dims the landscape of one more place the domino years touched in complex—if not direct—ways.

Two

I push him through the halls of the Vets Hospital in Lebanon. It’s Saturday and we are literally (literally!) all alone in the corridors and the walkways outdoors. Dad is in hospice. I come from California to be with him in these final days.

I arrive on Thursday to a nascent spring in late May and drive out from Philly to see him. He is upright and lucid, and we talk about where he is, but not why.  

On Friday he is on his back, breathing difficult, clearly in discomfort. The doc comes in (a Colonel?) and I try to find a way to ask if they practice any form of euthanasia, because dad is going to die, and he is in so much pain now. And, of course, the doc will not answer that question. Oh, I don’t ask him straight out, but we all know what we are talking about here. He takes me aside and asks: 

“When are you going back to California?”  

And I say, “I have to leave Monday, early” (the election in which I will win a seat on the City Council in my hometown is next week). 

He says: “Your dad is not going to make it to Monday. We will make him comfortable.” 

And that is all I need to know.

On Saturday he seems a bit better, and they let me wrap him up on a white sheet (like a death shroud), and wheel him around the hospital grounds and hallways. We spend most of the afternoon—just us two—we have never done this, ever. He drifts in and out. Not much to say.

I reminisce about Bowmansville—not too far from where we are now. The people we knew. The place it was—the foundation of all those years. I mention Roy Wise, dad’s former boss, and wonder what happened to him. Suddenly dad is talking—a lot. Roy died just weeks ago; he tells me. I doubt this, figuring that dad is confused (I later learn it is true). And then he is off talking about random bits from life in those years.

And then he says, without reference to anything I can discern: “They all lied to us, you know.”

“They lied to us?” I prompt.

“Vietnam and all the rest. It was a lie, always lies. I hated that war so much. That is the way it always was.”

And that’s it. He stops as abruptly as he began. I push him around and then head back to his room without much more to say. He’s done talking.

Sunday I am with him mid-morning. He never wakes up. Rod came east and we are meeting at Dar’s house for one final gathering before we fly home. I leave the hospital and drive thirty minutes to Dar’s. I walk in and Dar puts a hand on my arm. “Dad just passed away.” And all I think is “The doctor really nailed it.” 

“They lied to us…” goes home to California with me.

Three

Chin in hands, I sit on the end of her bed. A nursing home where she can rest. Decades have passed since she lost her singing voice, the use of her right side, and the ability to be in even small crowds. Now, over these past five years, she has lost everything else. Alzheimer’s. The end is near.

Except for not quite everything. Some memories stored in a part of her brain that Alzheimer’s has not touched remain. And they are vivid and detailed—and, at times, shocking. 

(Yes, she was “molested” by an uncle where she was sent to live in the depths of the Depression years. Yes, she was propositioned by the fundamentalist pastor who held so much sway over our lives—”just a little kiss” he begged.)

I sit there, minutes from leaving to head back to California, and I know she is going away and not coming back. She is not sure who I am or why I am there, but her memories wander to my birth—the birth of her “baby” Robbie—the last of her six. She describes a glorious spring day and the exhilaration of knowing this is her last child. The beauty of that moment when they gave me to her.

I say, “Mom, that’s me. I’m Robbie.”

She gives me that conspiratorial grin I have seen from time to time throughout my life. Her way of winking, though she is unable to wink. She is in on the joke.

“No, you’re not”, she chuckles. “He’s just a baby.”

Just a baby. Always a baby. Always her baby, born into a world that would change everything for everyone in such a short time.

At the very beginning of the domino years. 

Literacy encourages a culture to place more value on documentation and less on subjective experience… (T)he details we choose to remember are a reflection of our personalities.

Ted Chiang in Exhalation

Quick Thoughts: Mission and Brand

Mission>Brand>Logo.

These concepts are distinct though connected, but they may be confused in some people’s minds. More specifically, many people use logo and brand interchangeably. The two are linked, but a brand is an attribute that organizations nurture, while a logo is a mere visual representation used to evoke the brand rapidly.

And even though a mission is, ostensibly, what they should place at the center of their work, many organizations spend significant time and money constructing, promoting, and protecting their brand.

Brands can be largely divorced from the mission or only nominally connected to it. Though most organizations would say they are focused on their mission, many are more focused on their brand. So it is essential to understand what brands are.

Brands are about allegiance. 

Missions are about ends. Organizations can use missions to construct brands, but brands are not necessarily connected to the actual accomplishment of an organization’s mission. 

See this page for some interesting thoughts on brands: https://www.ignytebrands.com/what-is-a-brand/

“(B)rands live in the mind. They live in the minds of everyone who experiences them: employees, investors, the media, and, perhaps most importantly, customers.

Simply put, brands are perceptions.”

Brands are not logos, products, goods, or services. Organizations design and nurture brands to encourage people to feel a certain way about the organization; perceive it in a certain way; to grow attached to it as an extension of an individual’s identity. A good brand will add itself to a person’s identity (“I am an Apple user,” “Patagonia is my kind of company,” “The ACLU represents what I stand for”).

Two additional thoughts on brands:

1. Marketing and communications departments focus much of their attention on brand mobilization, promotion, and protection. Communication is rarely merely neutral “fact provision.” Instead, communication strategies use facts (hopefully) and narratives about those facts to support and promote the brand. The facts are subservient to the story, which in turn supports brand identification, leading to allegiance to the brand and organization. 

2. CEOs or Executive Directors are melded with the brand and may function as a kind of logo of their own. The careful curation of a leader’s image can be an essential additive element of an organizational brand. So, a university may promote its president/chancellor as a scientist with appropriate gravitas AND endearing father-like qualities. A non-profit might portray its leader as driven to achieve results with many images of them “in the field” with those the organization seeks to serve. 

These two things result in organizations spending significant resources “telling their story” in the most compelling and favorable light possible. Descriptions of the challenges to achieving the mission, the limits of an organization’s effectiveness, or the complexity of the issues give way to stories of success and changed lives. Images of or meaningful quotes from the leader–whose depth of understanding of the issues and challenges–accompany the stories and prove the seriousness of the organization’s attention to achieving its mission.

There is nothing inherently wrong with these efforts. Still, they can and do lead away from an attention to the actual work of achieving the mission and consume significant staff and financial resources. In addition, when the proper “ends” of the organization become the creation of allegiance to the organization, the organization can go astray. It can dissemble, fail to assess progress towards its mission (especially if evidence of impact is difficult to obtain or evidence of change is lacking), promote the leader rather than the organization’s ends, and end up misleading its supporters about what it is doing.

Privilege Means Never Having To Accept “No”

(Note: This is another “chapter” in a book I am (slowly) writing about my experience as a member of the City Council in my small city. This is a “foundational” part of the book)

Those least likely to want to talk about privilege, let alone acknowledge they benefit from it, are those who have the most of it.  Privilege does not derive from one thing but is a multi-layered reality, with some having many layers and others none at all.  

As a white, educated male, in the US, in 2022, the layers of my privilege are apparent.  These “ layers “ provide me with various advantages and life options that others do not have.  And I am not merely thinking in abstract, “macro-level” terms. For example, on a day-to-day basis, I see how my voice is privileged in certain situations simply because I am a man who also happens to be a former mayor.  I have many layers of privilege. 

And, I have met people without a single layer—a former slave woman in a West African nation who lives without choices, swept along by the choices of others who determine everything—down to the daily routine of her life—for her.  Think of a decision you are able (privileged) to make.  There are people in this world without the right to make that or any decision.  Yes, they exist.

Therefore, that we have choices, that we can say “yes” or “no” in a given situation, is a sign of at least some privilege.  For many, the ability to say “yes”—or, as the title of this chapter suggests, never having to accept “no”—extends to many aspects of life.  

The domains over which we exercise control are, in this analogy, the layers of our privilege.  And you can take this analogy pretty far.  Just as layers of clothing or armament protect us against the elements of the world and its conflicts, so too, privilege protects and coddles us, keeping us separated from the harshness of our world. 

But like our skin or the clothes we slide into each day, we barely give our privilege much thought. The layers of clothes serve a function, and we do not consider that function to be anything special.  The layers are a “given” of our lives.  Of course, we have them.  Of course, we need them.  Of course.

And so, when someone points out one or more of the “privilege-layers,” we are likely to grow indignant.  Indignant because they seem so inevitable to us—so natural, so rightfully ours. 

We might also grow indignant because of confusion over another term that, while related to privilege, is quite distinct from it. That word is “merit.” How often have you seen (or experienced yourself) the sentiment like this: “Well, I am not sure if it is privilege; I mean, I worked for what I have.  Nothing has been handed to me. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth.”

There are two things wrong with this.  The first is simple: the privilege you have may have developed because of your hard work—no debate there.  But that does not mean it is not privilege.  You still have that “layer.”  No matter how you came by it. But, second, most of us, including you if you are reading this, probably did not derive all our privilege (all those layers) simply because we worked hard. 

A friend reminded me recently: what matters most in life is where you were born, when you were born, and who your parents were.  All of that predates your hard work and is arguably true.

Suppose you grew up in the US, in the post-war years of rapid economic growth, with parents who did not abuse you. In that case, those realities provide you with privileges that the vast majority of humans who have ever lived—including many alive today—could never have dreamed of.  Those three realities position you to have things, do things, make choices, and have personal autonomy and security that most people will never know. 

When people of privilege surround one, privilege itself becomes the water in which one swims and, like culture, it becomes invisible. Easy to ignore, easy to deny. 

And that describes the city in which I served.  The denial (or minimization) of privilege was the source of much of the frustration that people expressed to me.  It was the cause of endless arguments that led to no meaningful outcome.  It was the underlying cause of our inability to celebrate anything we had accomplished together. 

Because, after all, privilege means never having to accept “no.”  So even when there is a “yes,” it probably is not the exact “yes” I had in mind.  And my experiences suggest that privilege means not only never having to accept “no,” but also never having to compromise at all.

So what does this look like locally?  Why does privilege have such a privileged place in this work? In each of the chapters that follow, we will return to the question of privilege because, in one sense, it is part of every decision in a town where so many have so many layers of privilege.  But here are a few examples.  If you live in California, none of the following will strike you as unique or odd.  But my point is that they illustrate how I experienced privilege in the day-to-day and week-to-week work I did as a Council member and Mayor.

A street redesign to make it safer for bicyclists (especially kids) and pedestrians (children and elderly) to safely use a busy street segment faces loud opposition from over 200 residents at a public meeting.  They point to the change (wrongly) as the cause of traffic back-ups.  They demand the street be returned to its initial design, which is safe for neither of the other user groups but autos only.  They threaten elected officials and demean and accuse staff of wrongdoing.  They are angry, and they fully expect to be heard. They succeed in convincing the Council to spend 4.5 million dollars on adding an automobile lane that will not solve the traffic backup problem. 

A neighborhood opposes a new housing project as too dense and too high.  They mobilize their neighbors (though some quietly come forward to support the project but admit they cannot do so publicly for fear of backlash from their neighbors).  At issue is the number of stories.  The community demands no more than three; the project calls for four.  But, the community does not realize that three stories could mean 15 feet each, and four stories could mean 10 feet each.  You do the math.  When local government approves the project, the well-financed project “neighbors” sue.  The project is on a bus line and a two-minute walk from regional rail.

(Note: lawsuits related to land-use issues are ubiquitous across the state.  Many of them rely on the California Environmental Quality Act or CEQA, a 1970s law that requires an analysis of the environmental impact of many housing, commercial, and transportation projects. While CEQA has utility in protecting fragile ecosystems and preventing sprawl, it is increasingly mobilized to push housing development away from denser urban settings, requiring residents in those areas to commute longer distances and emit more carbon.  CEQA lawsuits are also used increasingly to strangle transit and even biking infrastructure improvements)

The City proposes a “bike park” (dirt track with small hills and bumps to build biking skills and have fun!) for children.  Three sites are examined.  Homeowners near one park demand that “their park” be removed from consideration.  After all, they bought their homes near the park with the clear understanding that it would be green space and “quiet” (it is a public park).  A bike park would disturb their calm and reduce the value of their houses.  They accuse the city of disregarding commitments they claimed it made to them when they purchased their homes that the park would remain as it is (I have seen this kind of argument a LOT, but could never identify any covenants or commitments promising this kind of thing—trust me, I looked).

A narrow commercial strip between the freeway and homes is proposed to be developed into a high-end hotel.  Neighbors object, claiming that it would disrupt their privacy, that patrons would be a danger to their children (as in “hotel guests would engage in sexual predation”—I am completely serious), and that traffic would increase on arterials and destroy the calm of their neighborhood. Despite significant outreach by the developer, the community demanded that the project be scrapped.  They claimed that the city was “dumping” risky projects in their neighborhood.

And, I could go on.  People would acknowledge that more dense housing is needed but ask it be placed “somewhere else.”  When asked where they would indicate that that was my responsibility.  Others flooded my inbox with staunch opposition to paid parking downtown, for which ample evidence exists that it helps manage scarce spaces.  The same people would complain bitterly about the lack of open parking spaces downtown. And rather than accept a senior affordable housing project on a vacant city lot, “open space” advocates convinced Council to turn it into an empty lot with a few trees and walking paths. 

Over time, I saw that privilege suffused most critical decisions I was called upon to make.  My observation is that privilege is related to what Joan Didion called “the dream we no longer admit.”  That dream, which comes from our secret admiration for a Howard Hughes life, is a dream of complete autonomy, the ability to live our lives as we want without needing to engage the other. When I saw privilege, I saw people telling me: just leave me alone, as I am RIGHT NOW to live my life free of change, free of inconvenience, free of needing to alter anything in my life.

In this sense, the ultimate “end” of privilege is “freedom from”—the ability to never have to accept “no.”

Tropes

A trope is a rhetorical device that “establishes a predictable or stereotypical representation of a character[1].” A dog whistle is, perhaps, a particular type of trope intended for specific audiences who understand its meaning and significance. In a literary sense, “tropes become popular because they work. Tropes get used again and again because they speak to us on some deep level and connect with our experiences, fears, and hopes[2].”

Tropes may be grounded in a historical stereotype that becomes a shorthand for a group characteristic that demonstrates their inferiority or danger. Stereotypes that evolve into tropes, and in some cases, dog whistles, can be long-lasting and represent durable representations of entire groups. 

They can be used and mobilized to categorize and create us/them distinctions.  Indeed, given their presumably occult content, dog whistles specifically appeal to an in-group to build solidarity among members.  Dog whistles draw on terms that speak at a deep level and connect to fears. 

Anti-Semitic and anti-black tropes are so common that extensive lists have been compiled to alert people to their use. See, for example, the American Jewish Committee’s Glossary of antisemitic terms, phrases, conspiracies, cartoons, themes, and memes. And though the focus here is on rhetorical tropes, visual tropes are used in media that elicit specific expected responses or behaviors.  See familiar racialized TV tropes here.

Typical contemporary anti-Semitic tropes include accusations of receiving “Soros’ money” (in my childhood, it was Rothchild’s money) or belonging to a cosmopolitan elite—a concept that Stalin utilized and was used recently by Putin concerning oligarchs. In Putin’s case, he is NOT saying they are Jews; he merely says they are dangerous like the “rootless cosmopolitans” of the Stalinist era.

There are tropes related to unhoused individuals, the most common and enduring being the use of “transient” to describe them.  This indicates that unhoused individuals are not from “here”; they are not one of us; they are aliens. 

And, of course, Lee Atwater’s entire Southern Strategy was a series of tropes that evolved as the N-word became unutterable in public.  As Atwater made clear, that led to using other words that meant the same thing. Terms like busing, state’s rights (making a comeback in recent weeks), and later, economic issues related to welfare and the lazy poor.

Lately, a trope of seemingly recent origin has shown up nationally and locally in the news.  This trope combines some elements of being soft on pedophiles, accepting child pornography, or, more insidiously, engaging in “grooming” children to be sexually abused by gay people.

I say seemingly recent origin because most of us relate these tropes to the rise of Q-Anon and the accusation that Democratic Party leaders and members are engaged in a global conspiracy to enslave and sexually abuse children. 

While laughable in one sense, the Q-Anon conspiracy led to potentially serious consequences when a Q-Anon believer showed up armed at a pizza restaurant in Washington, DC. It is interesting how far into the mainstream this conspiracy has, since then, come in the form of a trope or several related tropes. 

But this trope is not new.  In an excellent Mother Jones article: Why Are Right-Wing Conspiracies so Obsessed With Pedophilia? Ali Breland traces the historical durability of not just the conspiracy but the tropes that have flowed from it.  Indeed, this particular trope is one of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes—the trope of the blood libel.  It has been around since the Middle Ages and accuses Jews of using children in human sacrifice.

The trope mobilizes our fear about protecting the most vulnerable members of our families and communities. It is bound up in our evolution and is always visceral—leaving a feeling of revulsion. 

Perhaps, therefore, we should not have been surprised to see this trope rolled out during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings of Ketanji Brown Jackson.  Notice that no one had to say she had cozied up to pedophiles; they merely had to question her sentencing record.  Once the trope was unleashed, it mattered little that the record shows that she has dealt with this category of crime in ways that are the norm.  The doubt is sown; the trope has established Judge Jackson as a certain kind of character.  In her case, this character is someone who will, if given a chance, endanger our children.  She is a danger.

When District Attorney Jeff Reisig used a similar trope in a campaign advertisement (alert?) attacking Cynthia Rodriguez, he did the same thing.  The trope is designed to place Ms. Rodriguez beyond the pale—not just someone who is likely to coddle criminals, but the worst kind of predators.  She is a danger.

I will also note that the image in the Reisig ad also added a half-page of money images, which raises the question of whether statements about Soros’ support for so-called progressive DA candidates might be on the horizon.  Reisig supporters in the last campaign used that trope. 

(I must address the “accusation” briefly in the Reisig ad.  The Rodriguez campaign received donations from two people associated with individuals convicted of sex crimes—sex with underage people.  This is not under dispute.  But the rapid move to unleash the “support for pedophiles” trope obscures the question of why those donations were made and, more importantly, whether they say anything about how Rodriguez will handle accusations of criminal behavior related to sex with children or child pornography that might come before her as DA. First, we know about these donations because the donors (or family members of the donors, more correctly) had committed and been convicted in very public ways.  They are known offenders.  Second, there is no legal reason they cannot contribute to a campaign, whatever their crimes.  And third, perhaps their contributions say more about their treatment by the DA’s office than their support for the DA’s opponent.)

The ubiquity of media—social and informational—has multiplied appeals to stereotypes, led to the rapid proliferation of memes, and led to the recycling and repurposing of even ancient tropes.  It is incumbent upon us, the consumers of these media, to recognize the way terms, concepts, and images are used to connect, especially in these times, to our fears.

We claim to want elections and governmental processes to be about “the issues,” but we too often allow tropes and other rhetorical mechanisms to fashion and dictate our engagement. 

We do not need tropes in this race; we need substantive discussions and debate about such issues as AB 1928, the purpose of bail, appropriate and inappropriate uses of restorative justice, charging philosophies and plea bargaining, and mental health and criminality.  

[1] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/trope

[2] https://literaryterms.net/trope/

Apple Watch

I love my Apple Watch.  Sure, it tells the time, but it is also a mini-information center on my wrist.  If you don’t have one, I am not here to try to sell you one, and I will not write a fawning fanboy review.  

I am just saying, it is a tool that I use every day.  It shows me the temp, wind speed (important when deciding on a ride), runs my workout apps, and shows frivolous but fun things like the phase of the moon.

But it also helps me monitor my health, and since I have passed 60 and there is a history of high blood pressure, diabetes, and other chronic health conditions in my family, I watch my health indicators closely.  The watch doesn’t monitor everything, but if you synch it with a phone and a blood pressure monitor, it provides a dashboard to monitor changes in conditions.  Health monitoring is all about trends, so even if none of my devices measure perfectly, they help me spot changes over time, which is essential.

The watch does monitor heart rate, and that is important to make sure I do not over-train (risking injury), but it is also pretty good at telling me when I have a low-grade virus brewing in the background.  I check the rate regularly, and while I sleep, my watch just keeps on checking.  My sleeping heart rate can plunge into the mid-forties but never goes much above 65.

I guess I should not say “never” because it did, and it has, and that has led to lots of questions. Questions for which I do not yet have answers.

It started some months ago when I checked into my sleeping heart rate and saw that for about an hour the night before, it had shot up to 175—and stayed there for about an hour.  For someone my age, a sustained heart rate like that only happens when one is doing very strenuous exercise—like a hard run.  For runners, we know that a rate at that level is in the “anaerobic” zone—a place you can stay for a few minutes but not an hour.  I assumed some data anomaly and, because it did not repeat itself the following night, I let it go.  I felt a bit tired that day, and my morning run was a bit sluggish, but that happens, no big deal.  

But, I did wonder because of something that had happened about three months before that day.  So, I should go back…

The good news is they found the “pup”—I learned that is what they call a baby coyote.  That was important.  I was out for a bike ride in the wetlands north of town.  I run into coyotes a lot out there but always at a distance.  This time I came around a corner, and there was a mom (I assumed) with two little ones in tow, and I scared them.  They terrified me.  

One of the little ones almost got caught under my tire, and when I swerved by it, it stuck its head up and bit me in the ankle.  It barely broke the skin, but it leaked the whole way home.  I was shaken and immediately thought, “rabies.”  The weird and fortunate thing was, that pup was jet black.  It turns out that black coyotes do exist, but they are very rare.  So, in addition to calling my doc (antibiotics and possible rabies shots), I called County animal control.  They take stuff like that pretty seriously and sent out a wildlife specialist. He tracked the family down, trapped the lot, and checked them for rabies.  The hunt and testing all took about three weeks, and I was beyond anxious until the report came back: clean for rabies.  My peace of mind would not have been possible had that pup not been black.  

After I finished the antibiotic course, I had no further problems.  I have been bitten by dogs on runs several times (don’t get me started about leashing pets) and had never had any issues, though I hate what antibiotics do to my gut.

But, you know, when I had the spike in heart rate, it crossed my mind.  Was I having some infection that had escaped the antibiotics?  It entered and left my mind pretty quickly.

Until it happened again, about a month later.  This time my rate went to 175 and stayed for about two hours!  I started checking online to see about Apple Watch heart rate reading anomalies and, while it happens, I couldn’t find anything specific to what I had experienced.  Anomalies were never about spikes, just erroneous readings.

I was tired the entire day and considered calling my doc, but I demurred.  Again, that was the only spike, and it went away.  All my other Apple Watch indicators looked fantastic—all trending nicely, so I let it go.

And then about a month later, same thing but about three hours of the spike.  And THAT time, I woke up with a headache and deep aches in my shoulders and hips.  So now I’m thinking, “okay, what is going in here?  COVID-19 or do I have some crazy infection from that bite?”

I go for a COVID saliva test (thank you, Healthy Davis Together!), and the results come back within 18 hours: no indication of the virus that causes COVID-19.

So then, I am on a telehealth call with my doc and asking if she can order a blood panel.  She agrees though she is skeptical about any infection, and I schedule it for the next day.  When I get up, I feel good—excellent actually!  No lingering effects, and my heart rate is normal all night long.

I had a chronic infection some years ago, so I knew to keep an eye out for the white blood cell panel. The results were ready in about 8 hours and… nothing.  In fact, everything looked really good—I mean better than what I had seen in years.  So… no infection.

But, I was still anxious.  I mean, anomalous heart rate reading is one thing but the pain?  Something was definitely going on.

Then nothing for about a month.  And then “bam.”  I wake up with a splitting headache, deep muscle aches in my legs, hips, shoulders, and back.  The balls of my feet feel bruised, and my hands—my hands!—feel like I landed on them after a fall. And I have that metallic taste you get from blood in your mouth.  You know the one.  But nothing was bleeding. I felt awful.  So… I cycled back through all the tests.  And again, COVID, clean, blood test GREAT!  This time even my red blood count was way better than it had been in a long time (I suffer from borderline anemia). 

So, I screw up my courage and ask my doc if she can get me a COVID antibody test.  Because now I am thinking, this might be “long COVID.”  Maybe I had it, and all these heart rate spikes and pain issues are the result of the as-yet poorly understood phenomenon known as “long COVID.”  A series of searches online indicate a bevy of symptoms for long COVID, but joint and muscle aches are among them, and there is some evidence that these symptoms can come and go.  

She agrees to the test (she is a very responsive and helpful doc!), and within a day, I get the results: no antibodies.  In other words, no indication of COVID-19—ever.

Meanwhile, except for the “spike and pain” days, I am feeling great.  My speedwork day has me finally believing that I can crack 20 minutes in a 5K (something I have wanted to do for years), and I am barely fatigued after a 60-mile ride with 3000 feet of climbing.  In other words, I am in peak condition for a guy my age.

Well, that was about two months back… and then about a month ago… Hang on because this will get a little weird.  But I am just trying to tell it like I am living it.  I wake up with the (now) familiar effects.  Hands aching; feet aching; the taste of blood in my mouth; shoulders aching; hips aching; legs sore—and my heart rate?  Topping 180 for a full five hours.  I felt awful.  

But there’s more.  There is blood, but not in my mouth.  It’s under my nails, and it’s dry. 

And, okay I am not sure how to say this in a way that will not make you think I am nuts but, when I go downstairs, there is a track of mud—slight but visible—by the door and a little tiny collar, like for a cat, dropped right in the middle of the floor.  It’s got a name (not going to put it here!) and an address and phone number of an owner—they live over next to the arboretum.  

And, yeah, the pain goes away the next day, and I feel great.  I do not go for a COVID test; I do not ask for more blood work.  Why should I?  I am fine.

But I look at that collar (yes, I still have it), and I wonder.  Should I call these people to see if their cat is safe?  I haven’t decided…

As for my Apple Watch… I still ask myself if I should have a chat with a technician. They are surprisingly helpful, and I bet if I made a fuss about it and showed them my data, they would replace it.  Trust me, I have reset the thing dozens of times.  I have updated the OS.  I have tracked my heart rate religiously. This thing only malfunctions once a month?  How am I going to explain THAT to a technician?

I am looking at my watch now: 93 degrees, South wind at 3 (hope that picks up later), an unread message, killing it on my rings today!  Oh, and I would have forgotten, but my Apple Watch reminds me: tonight is a full moon!