People are running scared after the recent attacks in both Paris, where 130 lives were lost, and in San Bernadino, which resulted in the loss of 14 lives. It's not hard to imagine why either. The very nature of a terrorist attack is to instill terror and what better way to instill terror than to attack when and where we least expect it. It is the most paranoia inducing form of warfare against another nation that specifically targets what would traditionally be viewed as "non-combatants". Basically, you and I. You or I could be standing in line at the grocery check out or sitting in a theater--doing perfectly normal, average things--when a bomb goes off or gunfire erupts. How is that not frightening to imagine one's life being snuffed out when one least expects it? That's how terrorism works and because those who do these things could be living in a house down the street from you or I, it's very easy to start casting an eye of suspicion on any neighbor that would be of Middle Eastern descent or, worse yet, you know for a fact that they are a Muslim. However, to cast that eye of suspicion and distrust onto your neighbor because of these facts is simply wrong. How can I say that with such confidence? Easily--because of numbers.
According to data from the Pew Research Center, the worldwide Muslim population was between 1.6-1.7 billion in 2011 and Islam represented the second largest religious group in the world at 23.2% of the total global population. If the belief that any adherent to Islam could be a terrorist were to be held, that would be akin to viewing nearly 1 out of every 4 people as a potential terrorist anywhere that you go in the world. Additionally, with those kind of numbers, if they collectively agreed with the fanatical idealism of terrorists, we would be seeing far more terrorist attacks worldwide than what we actually are seeing at this time. Obviously, nearly 1 out of every 4 people being a terrorist is highly improbable. On top of it, just like in Christianity with its history of conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism, Islam has several different offshoots, many of whom are in conflict with each other and may even make your Islamic neighbor more of a higher priority target than even you. After all, your Islamic neighbor moved to the US for a reason and the odds are infinitely more likely that it was to escape religious persecution just like how my own Catholic great-great grandparents came to N. America from Ireland to do the same than immigrating here with the intention of killing some of us.
Even viewing those of Middle Eastern descent as being potential terrorists also makes the
erroneous assumption that your Arabic neighbor is Muslim when he could be
Christian, Agnostic or even an Atheist. Up to an estimated 10% of those of Middle Eastern descent worldwide are actually
Christian, which would make it highly improbable that they would be
associated with IS. Even making the assumption that only your neighbor of Middle Eastern descent could be a terrorist would be a false assumption as Islam is not specific to any single regional descent or race in the US. Converts to Islam here are African American, White, Hispanic and more. Trying to figure out how to tell if your neighbor is a terrorist keeps getting trickier and trickier, doesn't it?
If your neighbor whose wife wears a hijab may be of a group that IS wants to see exterminated from existence, then obviously, they're not likely to be a terrorist. They're here wanting to live a better life with safety and security in mind for their family just like you or I want. That would also very likely include your Middle Eastern neighbor whose wife doesn't wear a hijab as they could very well be Christian or an atheist--also highly despised groups by IS. And if your white neighbor down the street could actually be a convert to Islam, well that means that they could be a terrorist for all you know though the odds are still that they aren't. After all, one of the most notorious white converts to Islam in the US was John Walker Lindh, who was captured as a combatant in Afghanistan, fighting against allied forces. So really, that terrorist could be any one of us. When we really step back and look at all of this information, it starts looking like trying to figure out if your neighbor is a terrorist or not is a next to impossible task because it could be anybody and it could be nobody even remotely in your vicinity.
How can you tell if your neighbor is a terrorist if they could theoretically be anyone? Well, I'd say that, at this point, you probably wouldn't be able to tell until they are walking out their door with a bomb strapped to their chest and an AK-47 in their hand. That is how you can tell the difference between your neighbor and a terrorist. In the meantime, instead of casting the eye of suspicion or even hate towards your neighbors that you know are Muslim, try instead to treat them with respect. After all, once upon a time, the US was viewed as a melting pot, where people whose ancestries from around the world could come in the hopes of seeking a better life for themselves and their families. Even our most formidable enemy fell before us and not because of war--it was because of our bounty and quality of life that made Boris Yeltsin weep in a grocery store in 1989, signalling the dissolution and end of Communist rule within the USSR.
If we can make a formidable foreign leader weep and feel inspired at our nation's existence and our qualities that make this nation great, then what better way to fight IS here in the US than by doing the same? IS feeds and grows its army off of hate, despair, and disenfranchisement. If IS's recruits feel that they have nothing more to live for so that they are willing to commit suicide in order to harm us, then we fight IS on US soil using what we do best--by being that symbol of hope for a better life in a a far kinder world. Casting that eye of suspicion and hate on our Muslim neighbors is precisely what IS wants us to do so that they can grow their army and it is why they strike in the way that they do so that we begin to view our neighbors with hate and fear. Instead of acting precisely in the way that IS desires us to, we give our neighbors something to live for by showing them kindness, hope, and the opportunity for prosperity in a far kinder world than that which they left. It's hard to want to die when you really do have something to live for.
Sources:
Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures
America's Changing Religious Landscape, Pew Research
Islam in the United States, Wikipedia
Monday, December 7, 2015
Thursday, July 9, 2015
So I Hear Pope Francis is a Communist. Really?
Today I was poking through the news and spotted this article on the BBC, Is the Pope a communist?. I about spat out my coffee in laughter. Of course, it wouldn't be the first time that I'd seen the allegations of being a communist get launched at the Pope. In fact, that seems to be the primary insult thrown at the man and Ed Stourton, the author of the article, makes sure to peg one of those source of the diatribe as being Rush Limbaugh. What a surprise. What I find interesting though is that does seem like a lot of people, based on comments left on news articles, Youtube videos and more, immediately jump to the conclusion that the Pope is, in fact, a communist. It was just so surprising to see it on the BBC's own website as an article posing that question and maybe all that commentary is precisely why they chose to open up a dialogue about that question. Stourton does a pretty good and fair assessment of the question, coming to the eventual conclusion that no, the Pope isn't a communist. However, he's a Roman Catholic. Is he really going to speak out against the Pope?
As an atheist, I don't see the Pope as being a dirty Marxist either. I see him pretty much saying things like they are in his recent encyclical. Do I agree with everything he wrote in it? For the most part though there are some points that I do disagree with as is to be expected considering I'm an atheist and the Pope is clearly not. What Pope Francis did, however, to encourage the wrath of the likes of individuals such as Rush Limbaugh, was to dare criticize capitalism, itself. My goodness, what a grievous sin.
Here's the thing though--even in capitalism's greatest bastion, the United States, we've acknowledged time and time again where capitalism has failed. We acknowledged it way back when it was decided that the Department of Education should be formed. We realized that maybe capitalism when applied to roads wasn't such a good idea and centralized the creation and maintenance of those as public services. In fact, almost every one of the public services that we have today came about simply because capitalism wasn't quite cutting it for those things. Some of these things are controlled by local city governments, counties, states, and yet others are federalized. Our history is peppered with times that capitalism didn't work.
Now, I'm sure that some reading at this point might say "OMG She's a communist!" but they'd be about as correct as anyone saying that Pope Francis is because he made observations and criticisms about the plight that many across the globe are in as a consequence of consumerism and, well, capitalism. The big issue, as I see it, is that we have this extraordinary penchant in this country to view anyone who criticizes--even correctly--capitalism as being a communist. That kind of sounds like having a belief or behavior involving uncritical zeal or with an obsessive enthusiasm and that's the definition of fanaticism. (Thanks, Wiki)
Usually when one thinks of fanatics, the first things that may jump to mind are religious fanatics or those crazy Apple consumers who may very well eventually change their names to having an "i" before it to express their adoration of the company's products even more clearly to the general public at large. (Just kidding, Apple lovers--maybe! ;) ) The less frequently considered form of fanaticism is probably the most common though--political ideology. Why it's so prevalent isn't that hard to figure. A country requires some degree of agreement amongst its populace as to what they view as the general "best practices" for the country itself and that can easily lead to fanaticism about that ideology and a lot of allegations that aren't necessarily true when more thoroughly examined. You can find ideological or political fanatics in any group anywhere. We're just as guilty of that here in the US as the guy who believes in the unfailing excellence of Communism in China. It goes both ways and both really are bad.
In my blog post From Russia With Love, I talked about my experiences when I was given an unexpected and unbeknownst to the Russian government tour of Moscow to see the contrasting lifestyles of the officials and the average Russian, the long toilet paper lines, and more before the fall of the Iron Curtain.. In exchange for her time, I gave the girl, Maria, two rolls of toilet paper and she regarded them like I had just dropped $1000 in her lap. It was that bad but did people complain? No. Maria admitted that she felt uneasy and at risk by stating her complaints about the failings of her government and its favored ideology because she didn't know who was going to hear her say such negative things and turn her in. While we don't do that here in the US, we still cushion our criticisms of capitalism and other entities that may have earned (or not) our ire for fear of societal condemnation. We may not get a physical Gulag like Maria but boy, we can get a social gulag for saying that capitalism is failing. That's bad because we need to be able to objectively examine, converse and feel free to criticize prevailing ideologies that may not be working and worse yet, bringing us into dire straits. When we don't do that, we are not seeking out ways to correct those problems and make a better system. Doing such things worked in the past with our roads and more but then again, it's only been the last 167 years of this nation's history that we've had a formidable opponent to our own prevailing ideology.
The greatest irony of them all is that I openly criticize the failings of capitalism and did so all throughout earning my degree at PSU's School of Business Administration. In fact, when it came time for me to write my final paper ever for the School of Business, I chose not to sing the praises of capitalism in order to please my prof but instead, launched a tirade of well researched condemnations at those in my own field and went so far as to say this:
If capitalism as a system appears to the general public to be drunk on greed, as protesters frequently state, then it is the accounting professionals who act as the enablers by providing the bottle from which capitalism drinks. Professionalism and Accounting in the 21st Century
My professor, though this was his field that he'd been working in for 30+ years, didn't call me a dirty Marxist or a communist because I had the gall to criticize everything. Instead, he gave me an A+. Not every dirty capitalist thinks Pope Francis is a communist. Not even an atheist one. He's just stating the obvious. We're screwing up.
As an atheist, I don't see the Pope as being a dirty Marxist either. I see him pretty much saying things like they are in his recent encyclical. Do I agree with everything he wrote in it? For the most part though there are some points that I do disagree with as is to be expected considering I'm an atheist and the Pope is clearly not. What Pope Francis did, however, to encourage the wrath of the likes of individuals such as Rush Limbaugh, was to dare criticize capitalism, itself. My goodness, what a grievous sin.
Here's the thing though--even in capitalism's greatest bastion, the United States, we've acknowledged time and time again where capitalism has failed. We acknowledged it way back when it was decided that the Department of Education should be formed. We realized that maybe capitalism when applied to roads wasn't such a good idea and centralized the creation and maintenance of those as public services. In fact, almost every one of the public services that we have today came about simply because capitalism wasn't quite cutting it for those things. Some of these things are controlled by local city governments, counties, states, and yet others are federalized. Our history is peppered with times that capitalism didn't work.
Now, I'm sure that some reading at this point might say "OMG She's a communist!" but they'd be about as correct as anyone saying that Pope Francis is because he made observations and criticisms about the plight that many across the globe are in as a consequence of consumerism and, well, capitalism. The big issue, as I see it, is that we have this extraordinary penchant in this country to view anyone who criticizes--even correctly--capitalism as being a communist. That kind of sounds like having a belief or behavior involving uncritical zeal or with an obsessive enthusiasm and that's the definition of fanaticism. (Thanks, Wiki)
Usually when one thinks of fanatics, the first things that may jump to mind are religious fanatics or those crazy Apple consumers who may very well eventually change their names to having an "i" before it to express their adoration of the company's products even more clearly to the general public at large. (Just kidding, Apple lovers--maybe! ;) ) The less frequently considered form of fanaticism is probably the most common though--political ideology. Why it's so prevalent isn't that hard to figure. A country requires some degree of agreement amongst its populace as to what they view as the general "best practices" for the country itself and that can easily lead to fanaticism about that ideology and a lot of allegations that aren't necessarily true when more thoroughly examined. You can find ideological or political fanatics in any group anywhere. We're just as guilty of that here in the US as the guy who believes in the unfailing excellence of Communism in China. It goes both ways and both really are bad.
In my blog post From Russia With Love, I talked about my experiences when I was given an unexpected and unbeknownst to the Russian government tour of Moscow to see the contrasting lifestyles of the officials and the average Russian, the long toilet paper lines, and more before the fall of the Iron Curtain.. In exchange for her time, I gave the girl, Maria, two rolls of toilet paper and she regarded them like I had just dropped $1000 in her lap. It was that bad but did people complain? No. Maria admitted that she felt uneasy and at risk by stating her complaints about the failings of her government and its favored ideology because she didn't know who was going to hear her say such negative things and turn her in. While we don't do that here in the US, we still cushion our criticisms of capitalism and other entities that may have earned (or not) our ire for fear of societal condemnation. We may not get a physical Gulag like Maria but boy, we can get a social gulag for saying that capitalism is failing. That's bad because we need to be able to objectively examine, converse and feel free to criticize prevailing ideologies that may not be working and worse yet, bringing us into dire straits. When we don't do that, we are not seeking out ways to correct those problems and make a better system. Doing such things worked in the past with our roads and more but then again, it's only been the last 167 years of this nation's history that we've had a formidable opponent to our own prevailing ideology.
The greatest irony of them all is that I openly criticize the failings of capitalism and did so all throughout earning my degree at PSU's School of Business Administration. In fact, when it came time for me to write my final paper ever for the School of Business, I chose not to sing the praises of capitalism in order to please my prof but instead, launched a tirade of well researched condemnations at those in my own field and went so far as to say this:
If capitalism as a system appears to the general public to be drunk on greed, as protesters frequently state, then it is the accounting professionals who act as the enablers by providing the bottle from which capitalism drinks. Professionalism and Accounting in the 21st Century
My professor, though this was his field that he'd been working in for 30+ years, didn't call me a dirty Marxist or a communist because I had the gall to criticize everything. Instead, he gave me an A+. Not every dirty capitalist thinks Pope Francis is a communist. Not even an atheist one. He's just stating the obvious. We're screwing up.
Kids and Identity Crises: One Parent's View
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| My Godzilla Princess playing with dinosaurs |
As a little contrast, I was born just a few days after Woodstock, which my mother always reminded me about because that meant that she couldn't go. If there was anyone who was gay in my high school back in the 80's, I sure as heck didn't know at the time. In fact, the idea of a transgender or gay classmate didn't even cross my mind until I went to a gay nightclub as a straight girl (greatest nightclub ever) in 1995. That night, I ran into an old classmate and recognized them right away through the make up, the great dress and wig. This old friend of mine from high school? "He" (actually she) was gay and transgender and she was absolutely petrified that I recognized her. I just gave her the biggest hug that I could with tears in my eyes and told her that she looked gorgeous. It crushed me to see her distress at the thought of somebody from school knowing these things about her. All I could think about was how long she'd kept it hidden and, in doing so, kept herself at arm's length from all of her peers the entire time she knew them. That's tragic. Men's style clothing can be fashionable for women--but god forbid a man wears female style clothing. That's hypocrisy really when one thinks about it.
Today's kids are growing up in a different world that accepts diversity in all of its forms, including sexuality and gender--very unlike the world that I grew up in. While some might scream that we're going to descend into Sodom and Gomorrah, I wholeheartedly disagree. There have always been gay and transgender people in various societies around the world. Whether they were apparent or not simply depended on the majority of society's view of them. Secondly, I think that what many of these kids are actually questioning is the very stereotypes that make up a small portion of the fabric of our society. If you're a girl, you can only like boys and not think another girl is attractive or vice versa. If you're a boy, you can't cry or be emotional because, well, then you're a girl (and that is somehow bad). We have so many stereotypes about what boys do and what girls do that at the end of the day, it's hard to imagine that anybody really fits into the sum total of those stereotypes. When are we going to learn as a society that, unlike physiological sex most of the time, "masculinity" and "femininity" are, well, full of crap?
For example, my daughter loves her pink bedroom which we have decorated with bunches of flowers, faux feathered birds and more to make it a girly girl paradise. She also loves video games, was a dinosaur junky, ate up more Godzilla movies as a 4 year old than you could possibly imagine (hearing her sing the Mothra song was really adorable), and, oh...did I mention that she loves bugs? Yep, she identified every bug that she encountered and can name almost every species of bug (I mean, "insect", as she would correct me) indigenous to the Willamette Valley. These things aren't anything that I ever pushed her into. She simply ignored the dolls and grabbed at the dinosaurs early on. I even bought her plenty of dolls and what did she do? She took their accoutrements and applied them to animal toys. Her dollhouse? Filled with toy snakes, spiders, dragonflies, and other critters like a permanent haunted house sitting in that pretty pink and soft green room of her choosing. Some days she'd dress in a dino t-shirt. Other days, it was all about big bows in the hair. Sometimes, it was dino t-shirts with big bows in her hair (kind of loved that look, truth be told). I've called her my little "Godzilla Princess" for years and she never quite got it until that day that she brought up her friends and their personal quests to comprehend their identities, both of gender and sexuality.
Gender, I told her, is not being just one thing or the other. She is neither stereotypically feminine or riddled with aberrant masculinity. She's just the girl who loves what she loves, no more and no less, without being judged or confined to any label of what she can enjoy and can't. In my mind, I explained, gender is a spectrum like so many other things in nature. Nature loves diversity and if it made all of us be girly girls and macho boys, then we would be going against our very own natures and robbing nature of its diversity. And the sexual preferences? They're 12. Their hormones and emotions are running amok. As my own beloved put it, he'd get stimulated by a breeze passing by when he was in middle school.
Are her friends gay? Who knows--that's certainly not for me to decide as that is the flushing out of a personal truth for themselves about themselves. It could be that they think someone of the same sex is attractive, they think that must mean that they are gay but instead, they're really just appreciating beauty where it's found. That kid was me and I'd be lying if I didn't have a few panicked nights that worried that I was gay because I thought some girl was so amazing and pretty. The ultimate truth for me was that I didn't want to date them. I wanted to be them. Or it could be that they really are gay. Or perhaps that even sexuality and attraction are, like gender, yet another spectrum and things that a lot of people ponder at some point in their adolescence. I've lost count of how many times I've had talks with close friends who admitted about wondering about themselves at some point in their youth. We cannot be that strange of a bunch (okay, maybe we can be). Maybe all of this is not as clear cut as we think but at least kids today feel safe enough to broach these questions unlike my many high school friends who have since come out of the closet after so many years of hiding who they truly are. Isn't that worth some openly questioning?
Whatever it is that these kids decide for themselves as they grow older, I can only hope that they are given the space and freedom to ponder and explore those questions. The last thing that I told my daughter is that no matter what it is that her friends decide about themselves in the end, it doesn't matter. They're still the same people as they were the day before but just that much truer to themselves without fear of not being accepted for who they are by their peers. If such questioning shakes the pinnacles of our society, then perhaps they needed to be shaken so that we all can have the ability to embrace our unique differences that nature granted us without fear or feeling like we have to conform to outdated and perhaps erroneous labels.
Thursday, May 7, 2015
The Debate on Civil Liberties and National Security: Where should the government’s compelling interest lie?
There have been a number of
times throughout our nation’s history where the question of whether our
civil liberties that we prize so dearly should be impinged upon in the
name of national security. Civil liberty was so paramount in the
Framers of our constitution’s minds that the wish to secure our liberty
is within the very first line of its preamble. When we go to war with
other countries, it is in the hopes of protecting our liberty (or
freedom) or to attempt to secure the same liberties that we enjoy for
others to whom we feel are oppressed by fascist or tyrannical
governments. Yet, it seems ironic that it is within those times of war
that we also put our civil liberties upon the firing line. As our young
men and women risk their lives to protect liberty, we, safe in our
homes, seemingly throw it away. If the compelling interest of the state
is capable of overriding civil liberties and civil liberties are the
most at risk during wartimes, I argue, instead, that it is during
wartimes where the protection of civil liberties should be the
government’s compelling interest and legislative acts and executive
orders that limit civil liberty for the sake of national security should
be regarded as potentially irrational, suspect, and subject to logical
review.
With the advent of the attacks on the Pentagon in Washington D.C. and the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, the gap between the risks that our soldiers take on the front lines and we, at home, take proceeding in our daily lives began to narrow. On that day, 2977 people perished within minutes in a highly televised, heart wrenching, and horrifying display. These people weren’t combatants at war: they were children, women, accountants, lawyers, businessmen, office clerks, janitors, and much, much more. These were people, like ourselves, by simply going to work or boarding a plane, lost their lives in the act of living their lives. When news of the attacks began to spread, I felt in my heart that these were no mere accidents but the work of terrorists and I, myself, felt terror and outrage. What these terrorists did was a direct attack on our liberty—our freedom to live our lives and the terror I felt was not that my own life was now in peril. Instead, I felt a deep fear in what my own nation’s response would be. The attack at the hand of terrorists was a two-fold attack, one on our liberties to travel freely and proceed about our lives without intervention and, the second, the creation of the scenario in which our liberties would be further impinged on by our government to prevent further attacks.
This second attack on our civil liberties came swiftly after the September 11th in the form of the nearly unanimously passed and broad ranging legislation called the Patriot Act. Simply viewed, the intent of the Patriot Act was to assist our nation’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies in preventing further attacks upon our nation. The question of the constitutionality of some of the provisions of the Patriot Act has been hit upon over and over again throughout the years since its passing. Senator Russ Feingold (D) of Wisconsin was the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act’s in October of 2001. In a statement of his opposition to the act, Feingold wrote, “As the chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, I recognize this is a different world with different technologies, different issues, and different threats. Yet we must examine every item that is proposed in response to these events to be sure we are not rewarding these terrorists and weakening ourselves by giving up the cherished freedoms that they seek to destroy.”
The need to protect our citizens from further terrorist attack was made clear in the failings of our intelligence agencies to stop the attacks on September 11, 2001 and the perceived threat of further attack was very high in the minds of Americans. In a Gallup poll taken on the day of the September 11th attacks, it was found that 58% of Americans were somewhat or very worried that they or a member of their immediate family "will become the victim of a terrorist attack” (Huddy et al 488) and in a CBS News national poll taken in October of 2001, 88% of respondents ” were somewhat or very concerned that there would be another attack on the U.S. in the next few months” (Huddy et al 494). These concerns combined with the passage of the Patriot Act renewed the debate on the delicate balance between civil liberties and national security. The majority opinion over the last several years has been that we, or some of us, should expect to give up some of our civil liberties to protect ourselves from terrorism. In his "Civil Liberties in the Era of Mass Terrorism", Russell Hardin proposes the argument that very substantially hassling 50 people to find one terrorist is not likely to sound offensive to many citizens. We are entering a new era in which civil liberties will be stereotypical (81). On one hand, Hardin acknowledges that the detainment and interrogation of a few Arab-Americans would be a breach in civil liberties; however, it would lessen the inconvenience to the majority who would remain unaffected.
The problem with this is that not all who might be considered terrorists are Arab-American or Arab at all. John Walker Lindh, a man who was certainly not of Arabic descent, was an American citizen captured as an enemy combatant in Afghanistan in 2001 and had received training at military camps funded by Osama bin Laden. Relinquishing civil liberties and participating in racial profiling based on ethnic background when the terrorists who attacked us were from that ethnic background makes sense until one considers the case of John Walker Lindh. Under Hardin’s argument, a person with possible terrorist connections like Lindh or domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh (a veteran) and Michael Scarpetti (an environmental extremist) may escape detainment and interrogation on the basis of ethnic background alone. The general consensus for the restriction of civil liberties during wartimes has been thus, historically, the American public has expressed generic support for civil liberties principles while at the same time backing restrictions against a clearly identified or understood “other”—particularly a group that is reviled (Gould 75). In the case of terrorism, there is no clearly identified “other”. It can be any one of us and that is the full force of the Patriot Act.
Although the actual risk of an American or their immediate family becoming a victim of terrorist attack was decidedly low, the perceived threat of such a thing happening was quite high at the time and in the months following September 11th. The reason behind this heightened perception of threat is found within the effects of threat, itself, and why the compelling interest of government should be civil liberties. Threat “reduces the efficiency of memory processes and promotes both threat-related thought content and perceptual hypersensitivity to information concerning threat” (Huddy et al 486). For our legislators, these effects of perceived threat are compounded by the need of our citizens to have swift assurance of security. Huddy also notes that “threat accompanied by time pressure has been found to heighten group conformity pressures and to reduce consideration of policy alternatives” (Huddy et al 486). Although the Patriot Act was intended to correct the failings of our intelligence agencies and strengthen law enforcement, both the speed in which it was written and passed following the September 11th attacks and the effects of a heightened perceived threat of further imminent attack should make the legislation suspect of potential irrationality.
Our congress was constructed in such a way that would assure the deliberative process through debate, thereby making it difficult for bills to be made into law—let alone pass unanimously. For example, in 1999, 5,514 bills were introduced in Congress (not counting procedural and internal Congress housekeeping bills) with less than 300 becoming law (http://berkeley.house.gov). This makes for a 5% probability of any given bill becoming a law. Comparatively, the single nay vote in regards to the passing of the Patriot Act within the Senate with so little time spent on deliberation should be viewed as nothing short of extraordinary. Another influencing factor had to be at work for such a swift passing and it is here that we can recall Huddy’s statement in regards to the influences of perceived threat and its effect on elites in regards to policy deliberation.
The question that then logically follows is: In what ways do the effects of perceived threat directly influence our regard of civil liberties within legislation itself? In a study measuring people’s willingness to exchange civil liberties for the sake of national security, Darren Davis and Brian Silver found that “whatever their ideological position, people’s willingness to exchange liberties for securities increases as their perception of threat increases” (Davis and Silver 43). In short, even a liberal, who normally would support the protection of civil liberties, will allay that support if they believe that there is high risk of an attack. Applying this to the swift passage of the Patriot Act again points to the power of perceived threat of personal and national security transcending prior ideological differences. Conservative and liberal politician, alike, actively chose to pass legislation that threatened our civil liberties in the aim to assure greater national security.
Yet another troublesome feature of the enactment of legislation and executive orders made during periods of perceived threat to national security is the tendency for increased ethnocentrism and xenophobia (Huddy 486). An example of how ethnocentrism and xenophobia may influence the enforcement of legislation and executive orders would be the exclusion of people in military areas via Executive Order 9066 during World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in December of 1941. Schildkraut writes that despite the ethnic neutrality of the order, Japanese residents and Japanese Americans were the only ones excluded from these military areas and subsequently interned –an estimated total of 120,000 people in all (512). The attack by the Japanese on U.S. soil created a heightened perception of threat within the United States, which resulted in executive actions that were quickly deemed unconstitutional after the feeling of perceived threat was removed. In Federalist No. 51, James Madison wrote, “If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure” (1). These words were never truer than in the case of the internment of Japanese and Japanese-Americans. Simply put into Madison’s terms, the majority’s common interest was national security for which many had little issue with forgoing the rights of a particular minority (Japanese and Japanese-Americans) to secure.
Although internments on the scale of World War II did not occur after September 11th, the effects of threat driven ethnocentrism and xenophobia still have had its influence. Seemingly ridiculous stories of racial profiling occurring in particular at U.S. airports against people with darker complexions abound. My own experience was being pulled aside for additional search by airport security and bemusedly watching my then 5 years old half Native American daughter’s shoes be singled out for testing for explosive powders. The question remains for me as to whether my dark complexioned daughter was a victim of racial profiling at the tender age of 5 or whether the actions of the airport security were based on random search. Racial profiling during wartimes, especially after a direct attack on U.S. soil, is a symptom of perceived threat and subject to fear based irrationality and potentially unconstitutional action.
If the role of fear in the form of perceived personal and national threat can so greatly influence our actions and viewpoints on civil liberties and minority groups, then it is essential that, during times of heightened perceived threat, our legislators should attempt to retain rationality in the formation of new laws. If civil liberties, especially for an “other”, are the most easily discarded when the perceived threat level is high, then it is the upmost importance that civil liberties should be the compelling interest of the government to assure that the actions of those legislators maintain both rationality and constitutionality. Hardin writes, “a sort of grain of truth—solely pragmatic—in the absolutist position on civil liberties is that we should probably give greater force to civil liberties than we might suppose just because it is easy to weaken them and very hard to strengthen them; and the moments when we think to weaken them are almost always going to be moments of crisis when the longer run interest in civil liberties gets over-shadowed by the urgency of the moment” (88).
One could argue that the impingement that our government has taken on our civil liberties since the September 11th attacks have been successful in preventing further terrorist attacks from happening. However, there is sufficient evidence that showed that the Central Intelligence Agency had information regarding the September 11th attacks prior to their occurrence and failed to act upon it (NY Times). The sheer atrocity of the events of September 11th, in itself, assures that any whispers of a potential terrorist threat to our country will be taken with much more gravity in the future. Actively choosing to make civil liberties the compelling interest of our government during times where our national security is threatened is still not without risk. In 2002, one of the Patriot Act’s most anti-civil liberties provisions that were noted at the time is the requirement that financial institutions “closely monitor daily financial transactions and share information with government intelligence services” (Gould 74). Such a provision would never be allowed if the protection of civil liberties was the compelling interest over national security. However, the tracking of particular types of financial transactions such as the purchase of large numbers of guns or items used to create an explosive device could feasibly prevent a terrorist attack from happening.
Today, we have become poignantly aware, through disclosures via Edward Snowden, that the data collection provisions that have promulgated under Section 215 of the Patriot Act are far more encompassing than what Gould noted in regards to financial transactions in 2002. Furthermore, revelations and questions of the constitutionality of "sneak and peek" warrant tactics as well as "stop and frisk" in our cities have further shown the erosion of our civil liberties in this post September 11th era. Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security, formed in November of 2002, has accelerated the militarization of the domestic police force, which was already long occurring through the Department of Defense's 1033 program, by issuing out hundreds of millions of dollars in grants each year to police departments across the nation for the purpose of fighting terrorism. The end result of the Patriot Act and its ambiguity has been quite painfully clear as tanks have rolled out onto our city streets in manners which, frequently with hindsight, are reflected upon with questioning horror. In response to the Boston Marathon Bombing, the entire city was shut down in the hunt for a single 19 year old young man, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, as 19,000 National Guard troops rolled through the city's streets in armored vehicles (The Washington Post). Likewise, in Ferguson, Missouri, armored vehicles once again rolled out onto yet another city's streets in response to protests that were ironically against the police department, itself.
This is the definitive problem of the War on Terror and its primary legislation, the Patriot Act, that promotes the perceptions of an ambiguous threat that can arise from anywhere, at any time, and from any source. The chance that there will be another attack on U.S. soil is most likely inevitable but Rusell Hardin also makes a well grounded point in stating that the scale of annual harms from SUVs (sport utility vehicles) in the U.S. is reputedly greater than all terrorist actions together. I think we should do something about the dangers of SUVs and about possible future terrorism, but we should keep the actions in proportion to the dangers (79). The War on Terror that our country is in is a war without end. Terrorism will always be a threat to our way of life and that the United States will be a target of future attack is certain. It could happen today, tomorrow or 10 years from now. The question that remains is whether or not we will deprive ourselves of the civil liberties found within our U.S. Constitution for an indefinite length of time or if we will come to understand what our founders and soldiers have long understood in regards to liberty:
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. --Benjamin Franklin
References
Official Website of Rep. Shirley Berkeley, FAQ’s http://berkley.house.gov/GovInfo/FAQ.html
CNN. The Case of the Taliban American. Retrieved from: http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/people/shows/walker/profile.htm
Feingold, Senator Russell “On Opposing the U.S.A. Patriot Act”, retrieved from http://www.archipelago.org/vol6-2/feingold.htm
Franklin, Benjamin. Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor, November 11, 1755.—The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree, vol. 6, p. 242 (1963).
Davis, Darren W. and Silver, Brian D. “Civil Liberties vs. Security: Public Opinion in the Context of the Terrorist Attacks on America” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Jan 2004), pp. 28-46.
Gould, Jon B. “Playing with Fire: The Civil Liberties Implications of September 11th” Public Administration Review, Vol. 62, Special Issue: Democratic Governance in the Aftermath of September 11, 2001 (Sep. 2002), pp. 74-79.
Balko, Radley "Was the police response to the Boston Bombing really appropriate?" The Washington Post (April 22, 2014) Retrieved from: The Washington Post
Hardin, Russell “Civil Liberties in the Era of Mass Terrorism” The Journal of Ethics, Vol. 8,
No. 1, Terrorism (2004), pp. 77-95, retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25115782
Huddy, Leonie et al. “The Consequences of Terrorism: Disentangling the Effects of Personal and National Threat” Political Psychology, Vol. 28, No. 3 Special Issue: 9/11 and Its Aftermath: Perspectives from Political Psychology (Sept. 2002) pp. 485-509.
Madison, James. Federalist No. 51, Independent Journal (Feb. 1788). Retrieved from:
http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa51.htm
Mazetti, Mark. “C.I.A. Lays Out Errors It Made Before Sept. 11” New York Times (August 22, 2007). Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/22/washington/22cia.html
Schildkraut, Deborah J. “The More Things Change… American Identity and Mass and Elite Responses to 9/11” Political Psychology, Vol. 23, No. 3, Special Issue: 9/11 and Its Aftermath: Perspectives from Political Psychology (Sept. 2002), pp. 511-535.
With the advent of the attacks on the Pentagon in Washington D.C. and the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, the gap between the risks that our soldiers take on the front lines and we, at home, take proceeding in our daily lives began to narrow. On that day, 2977 people perished within minutes in a highly televised, heart wrenching, and horrifying display. These people weren’t combatants at war: they were children, women, accountants, lawyers, businessmen, office clerks, janitors, and much, much more. These were people, like ourselves, by simply going to work or boarding a plane, lost their lives in the act of living their lives. When news of the attacks began to spread, I felt in my heart that these were no mere accidents but the work of terrorists and I, myself, felt terror and outrage. What these terrorists did was a direct attack on our liberty—our freedom to live our lives and the terror I felt was not that my own life was now in peril. Instead, I felt a deep fear in what my own nation’s response would be. The attack at the hand of terrorists was a two-fold attack, one on our liberties to travel freely and proceed about our lives without intervention and, the second, the creation of the scenario in which our liberties would be further impinged on by our government to prevent further attacks.
This second attack on our civil liberties came swiftly after the September 11th in the form of the nearly unanimously passed and broad ranging legislation called the Patriot Act. Simply viewed, the intent of the Patriot Act was to assist our nation’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies in preventing further attacks upon our nation. The question of the constitutionality of some of the provisions of the Patriot Act has been hit upon over and over again throughout the years since its passing. Senator Russ Feingold (D) of Wisconsin was the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act’s in October of 2001. In a statement of his opposition to the act, Feingold wrote, “As the chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, I recognize this is a different world with different technologies, different issues, and different threats. Yet we must examine every item that is proposed in response to these events to be sure we are not rewarding these terrorists and weakening ourselves by giving up the cherished freedoms that they seek to destroy.”
The need to protect our citizens from further terrorist attack was made clear in the failings of our intelligence agencies to stop the attacks on September 11, 2001 and the perceived threat of further attack was very high in the minds of Americans. In a Gallup poll taken on the day of the September 11th attacks, it was found that 58% of Americans were somewhat or very worried that they or a member of their immediate family "will become the victim of a terrorist attack” (Huddy et al 488) and in a CBS News national poll taken in October of 2001, 88% of respondents ” were somewhat or very concerned that there would be another attack on the U.S. in the next few months” (Huddy et al 494). These concerns combined with the passage of the Patriot Act renewed the debate on the delicate balance between civil liberties and national security. The majority opinion over the last several years has been that we, or some of us, should expect to give up some of our civil liberties to protect ourselves from terrorism. In his "Civil Liberties in the Era of Mass Terrorism", Russell Hardin proposes the argument that very substantially hassling 50 people to find one terrorist is not likely to sound offensive to many citizens. We are entering a new era in which civil liberties will be stereotypical (81). On one hand, Hardin acknowledges that the detainment and interrogation of a few Arab-Americans would be a breach in civil liberties; however, it would lessen the inconvenience to the majority who would remain unaffected.
The problem with this is that not all who might be considered terrorists are Arab-American or Arab at all. John Walker Lindh, a man who was certainly not of Arabic descent, was an American citizen captured as an enemy combatant in Afghanistan in 2001 and had received training at military camps funded by Osama bin Laden. Relinquishing civil liberties and participating in racial profiling based on ethnic background when the terrorists who attacked us were from that ethnic background makes sense until one considers the case of John Walker Lindh. Under Hardin’s argument, a person with possible terrorist connections like Lindh or domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh (a veteran) and Michael Scarpetti (an environmental extremist) may escape detainment and interrogation on the basis of ethnic background alone. The general consensus for the restriction of civil liberties during wartimes has been thus, historically, the American public has expressed generic support for civil liberties principles while at the same time backing restrictions against a clearly identified or understood “other”—particularly a group that is reviled (Gould 75). In the case of terrorism, there is no clearly identified “other”. It can be any one of us and that is the full force of the Patriot Act.
Although the actual risk of an American or their immediate family becoming a victim of terrorist attack was decidedly low, the perceived threat of such a thing happening was quite high at the time and in the months following September 11th. The reason behind this heightened perception of threat is found within the effects of threat, itself, and why the compelling interest of government should be civil liberties. Threat “reduces the efficiency of memory processes and promotes both threat-related thought content and perceptual hypersensitivity to information concerning threat” (Huddy et al 486). For our legislators, these effects of perceived threat are compounded by the need of our citizens to have swift assurance of security. Huddy also notes that “threat accompanied by time pressure has been found to heighten group conformity pressures and to reduce consideration of policy alternatives” (Huddy et al 486). Although the Patriot Act was intended to correct the failings of our intelligence agencies and strengthen law enforcement, both the speed in which it was written and passed following the September 11th attacks and the effects of a heightened perceived threat of further imminent attack should make the legislation suspect of potential irrationality.
Our congress was constructed in such a way that would assure the deliberative process through debate, thereby making it difficult for bills to be made into law—let alone pass unanimously. For example, in 1999, 5,514 bills were introduced in Congress (not counting procedural and internal Congress housekeeping bills) with less than 300 becoming law (http://berkeley.house.gov). This makes for a 5% probability of any given bill becoming a law. Comparatively, the single nay vote in regards to the passing of the Patriot Act within the Senate with so little time spent on deliberation should be viewed as nothing short of extraordinary. Another influencing factor had to be at work for such a swift passing and it is here that we can recall Huddy’s statement in regards to the influences of perceived threat and its effect on elites in regards to policy deliberation.
The question that then logically follows is: In what ways do the effects of perceived threat directly influence our regard of civil liberties within legislation itself? In a study measuring people’s willingness to exchange civil liberties for the sake of national security, Darren Davis and Brian Silver found that “whatever their ideological position, people’s willingness to exchange liberties for securities increases as their perception of threat increases” (Davis and Silver 43). In short, even a liberal, who normally would support the protection of civil liberties, will allay that support if they believe that there is high risk of an attack. Applying this to the swift passage of the Patriot Act again points to the power of perceived threat of personal and national security transcending prior ideological differences. Conservative and liberal politician, alike, actively chose to pass legislation that threatened our civil liberties in the aim to assure greater national security.
Yet another troublesome feature of the enactment of legislation and executive orders made during periods of perceived threat to national security is the tendency for increased ethnocentrism and xenophobia (Huddy 486). An example of how ethnocentrism and xenophobia may influence the enforcement of legislation and executive orders would be the exclusion of people in military areas via Executive Order 9066 during World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in December of 1941. Schildkraut writes that despite the ethnic neutrality of the order, Japanese residents and Japanese Americans were the only ones excluded from these military areas and subsequently interned –an estimated total of 120,000 people in all (512). The attack by the Japanese on U.S. soil created a heightened perception of threat within the United States, which resulted in executive actions that were quickly deemed unconstitutional after the feeling of perceived threat was removed. In Federalist No. 51, James Madison wrote, “If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure” (1). These words were never truer than in the case of the internment of Japanese and Japanese-Americans. Simply put into Madison’s terms, the majority’s common interest was national security for which many had little issue with forgoing the rights of a particular minority (Japanese and Japanese-Americans) to secure.
Although internments on the scale of World War II did not occur after September 11th, the effects of threat driven ethnocentrism and xenophobia still have had its influence. Seemingly ridiculous stories of racial profiling occurring in particular at U.S. airports against people with darker complexions abound. My own experience was being pulled aside for additional search by airport security and bemusedly watching my then 5 years old half Native American daughter’s shoes be singled out for testing for explosive powders. The question remains for me as to whether my dark complexioned daughter was a victim of racial profiling at the tender age of 5 or whether the actions of the airport security were based on random search. Racial profiling during wartimes, especially after a direct attack on U.S. soil, is a symptom of perceived threat and subject to fear based irrationality and potentially unconstitutional action.
If the role of fear in the form of perceived personal and national threat can so greatly influence our actions and viewpoints on civil liberties and minority groups, then it is essential that, during times of heightened perceived threat, our legislators should attempt to retain rationality in the formation of new laws. If civil liberties, especially for an “other”, are the most easily discarded when the perceived threat level is high, then it is the upmost importance that civil liberties should be the compelling interest of the government to assure that the actions of those legislators maintain both rationality and constitutionality. Hardin writes, “a sort of grain of truth—solely pragmatic—in the absolutist position on civil liberties is that we should probably give greater force to civil liberties than we might suppose just because it is easy to weaken them and very hard to strengthen them; and the moments when we think to weaken them are almost always going to be moments of crisis when the longer run interest in civil liberties gets over-shadowed by the urgency of the moment” (88).
One could argue that the impingement that our government has taken on our civil liberties since the September 11th attacks have been successful in preventing further terrorist attacks from happening. However, there is sufficient evidence that showed that the Central Intelligence Agency had information regarding the September 11th attacks prior to their occurrence and failed to act upon it (NY Times). The sheer atrocity of the events of September 11th, in itself, assures that any whispers of a potential terrorist threat to our country will be taken with much more gravity in the future. Actively choosing to make civil liberties the compelling interest of our government during times where our national security is threatened is still not without risk. In 2002, one of the Patriot Act’s most anti-civil liberties provisions that were noted at the time is the requirement that financial institutions “closely monitor daily financial transactions and share information with government intelligence services” (Gould 74). Such a provision would never be allowed if the protection of civil liberties was the compelling interest over national security. However, the tracking of particular types of financial transactions such as the purchase of large numbers of guns or items used to create an explosive device could feasibly prevent a terrorist attack from happening.
Today, we have become poignantly aware, through disclosures via Edward Snowden, that the data collection provisions that have promulgated under Section 215 of the Patriot Act are far more encompassing than what Gould noted in regards to financial transactions in 2002. Furthermore, revelations and questions of the constitutionality of "sneak and peek" warrant tactics as well as "stop and frisk" in our cities have further shown the erosion of our civil liberties in this post September 11th era. Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security, formed in November of 2002, has accelerated the militarization of the domestic police force, which was already long occurring through the Department of Defense's 1033 program, by issuing out hundreds of millions of dollars in grants each year to police departments across the nation for the purpose of fighting terrorism. The end result of the Patriot Act and its ambiguity has been quite painfully clear as tanks have rolled out onto our city streets in manners which, frequently with hindsight, are reflected upon with questioning horror. In response to the Boston Marathon Bombing, the entire city was shut down in the hunt for a single 19 year old young man, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, as 19,000 National Guard troops rolled through the city's streets in armored vehicles (The Washington Post). Likewise, in Ferguson, Missouri, armored vehicles once again rolled out onto yet another city's streets in response to protests that were ironically against the police department, itself.
This is the definitive problem of the War on Terror and its primary legislation, the Patriot Act, that promotes the perceptions of an ambiguous threat that can arise from anywhere, at any time, and from any source. The chance that there will be another attack on U.S. soil is most likely inevitable but Rusell Hardin also makes a well grounded point in stating that the scale of annual harms from SUVs (sport utility vehicles) in the U.S. is reputedly greater than all terrorist actions together. I think we should do something about the dangers of SUVs and about possible future terrorism, but we should keep the actions in proportion to the dangers (79). The War on Terror that our country is in is a war without end. Terrorism will always be a threat to our way of life and that the United States will be a target of future attack is certain. It could happen today, tomorrow or 10 years from now. The question that remains is whether or not we will deprive ourselves of the civil liberties found within our U.S. Constitution for an indefinite length of time or if we will come to understand what our founders and soldiers have long understood in regards to liberty:
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. --Benjamin Franklin
References
Official Website of Rep. Shirley Berkeley, FAQ’s http://berkley.house.gov/GovInfo/FAQ.html
CNN. The Case of the Taliban American. Retrieved from: http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/people/shows/walker/profile.htm
Feingold, Senator Russell “On Opposing the U.S.A. Patriot Act”, retrieved from http://www.archipelago.org/vol6-2/feingold.htm
Franklin, Benjamin. Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor, November 11, 1755.—The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree, vol. 6, p. 242 (1963).
Davis, Darren W. and Silver, Brian D. “Civil Liberties vs. Security: Public Opinion in the Context of the Terrorist Attacks on America” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Jan 2004), pp. 28-46.
Gould, Jon B. “Playing with Fire: The Civil Liberties Implications of September 11th” Public Administration Review, Vol. 62, Special Issue: Democratic Governance in the Aftermath of September 11, 2001 (Sep. 2002), pp. 74-79.
Balko, Radley "Was the police response to the Boston Bombing really appropriate?" The Washington Post (April 22, 2014) Retrieved from: The Washington Post
Hardin, Russell “Civil Liberties in the Era of Mass Terrorism” The Journal of Ethics, Vol. 8,
No. 1, Terrorism (2004), pp. 77-95, retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25115782
Huddy, Leonie et al. “The Consequences of Terrorism: Disentangling the Effects of Personal and National Threat” Political Psychology, Vol. 28, No. 3 Special Issue: 9/11 and Its Aftermath: Perspectives from Political Psychology (Sept. 2002) pp. 485-509.
Madison, James. Federalist No. 51, Independent Journal (Feb. 1788). Retrieved from:
http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa51.htm
Mazetti, Mark. “C.I.A. Lays Out Errors It Made Before Sept. 11” New York Times (August 22, 2007). Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/22/washington/22cia.html
Schildkraut, Deborah J. “The More Things Change… American Identity and Mass and Elite Responses to 9/11” Political Psychology, Vol. 23, No. 3, Special Issue: 9/11 and Its Aftermath: Perspectives from Political Psychology (Sept. 2002), pp. 511-535.
Friday, March 6, 2015
Love, Obsession, and Their 50 Shades of Grey
There's been a lot of controversy surrounding "50 Shades of Grey" on numerous levels of what it actually depicts. Some say it's just a kinky romance novel. Others argue that it's a novel that romanticizes domestic abuse, obsession, and stalking. The level of difference in perception of what the book itself depicts is pretty telling that it very much hits on what may be a perceptual "grey zone" of how people view what love is or should be.
Oddly enough, "50 Shades of Grey" isn't the first time that a piece of written word has been perceived as being so subjectively different. Probably one of the most well known songs of the 80's was The Police's "Every Breath You Take" and it was largely viewed as a song about Sting's undying love for someone. In it, he croons,
Now, if the same lyrics were written down on a note and left on a woman's windshield wiper on her car, then, the words would have a much different effect to the recipient. They'd probably contemplate picking up some pepper spray or maybe even a gun. It would not nearly have the same effect. However, Sting wasn't some random guy on the street. Instead, like the character Christian Grey, Sting was a good looking, successful man that both teens and adult women alike adored. The difference between "50 Shades of Grey" and The Police's "Every Breath You Take" was that the latter was never claimed to be about romance by its author:
Oh no, say isn't so, Sting... You mean to say that that love song that so many young couples once romantically danced to at their high school proms or at their weddings was actually..."sinister and ugly". Yikes. In fact, the song is actually about stalking someone and obsession. How did we get it so wrong?
Unfortunately, we don't have the best track record at being very good at identifying unhealthy obsession and stalking behaviors vs. healthy love. Another song that was perceived by many as being intensely romantic was "Possession" by Sarah McLachlan. The title of the song could have been a tip off that this isn't good but instead, people heard what sounded like love while ignoring key elements. Like that title or even these lyrics:
There's plenty of other songs that could border on being laden with obsessive forms of love from "Creep" by Radiohead to "One Way or Another" by Blondie. Our culture is actually pretty laden with the grey depictions of what love is. Even looking at Merriam-Webster's definitions of love and obsession highlights that issue:
Normal is defined, in this context, as being "mentally and physically healthy" While I think that being the target of such regard by some unknown stranger would be fairly scary for many and roundly considered unhealthy, what about when it's coming from a person that you yourself are attracted to and/or love? Love is one of the most heady emotions when it is coming from someone that we desire ourselves. It is both one of the greatest feelings one can have when it's requited and one of the most perilous emotional attachments that a person can have with another human being. There's always that risk of heart break.
Perhaps, when we hear a song being crooned about deeply obsessive love that is all consuming, in a way, that's almost comforting. The thought that someone could be so in love with you that you are their world to an extreme takes away that peril of having one's heart broken. We all want to be loved by the object of our own desire unflinchingly and without risk. After all, how often have we ever heard (or even were lucky enough to say ourselves) that we're "madly in love" with someone?
The idea is intoxicating and empowering and this could be precisely why such stories of obsessive love bordering on madness have stood the testimony of time. Is not the story of Echo and Narcissus the story of unrequited and obsessive love? Or the story of Van Gogh going to the residence of a girl named Rachel and handing her his ear, admonishing her to keep it like a treasure? He was declared a madman and yet, so many recall it as a story of strange love. When we think of Helen of Troy, do we recollect her as being a part of the tragedy of two young lovers? No, instead she is the "face that launched a thousand ships". An icon of the obsessive love of her husband and the destruction that followed. Face it, we have long as a society somewhat idolized and romanticized even the most disturbing forms of love since the recording of time.
The problem is that, despite romanticism, the reality is that obsessive "love" is wholly unhealthy and destructive.
Troy was laid to waste by it and thousands slain. Echo wastes away to nothing, cursed. Van Gogh nearly died from his wound and that's not even taking into consideration the horror the object of his obsession, that Rachel, must have felt when he laid his bloody ear in her hand. Yet, with these tales at least, they became cautionary tales of taking the love of another too far. We're not so good at that today if the elements of obsession within our books and songs go largely without notice or are simply viewed as being "madly in love".
Instead of preserving the value of the cautionary tale, today, we create a hypocrisy where the questionable activities of a handsome and successful character in a requited relationship is pinioned as being romantic against the stuff of psychological thrillers when it is unrequited. The lines of what is the madness of obsession and what is love have been thoroughly blurred and this should be troubling to an extent. As shown above, it's not the first time we've confused love with obsessive behavior; however, what we're starting to traipse into is a territory where Van Gogh gets his Rachel and its happily ever after.
The realities of being the target of obsessive love in a relationship are not romantic.
It's suffocating, demoralizing, maddening and destructive as hell. Every step you take holds a whole new meaning when you can't even go to the bathroom without being watched. Surveillance cameras covering the front and back and having to check in every 15 minutes is not romantic. Being threatened with harm or threat of losing your children is not romantic. The following is a snippet of what just one such individual wrote:
Some might mistake that for being very romantic. It wasn't when I found it inexplicably in my bedroom behind my nightstand as the person who wrote it lived several states away. It certainly wasn't because I made it extraordinarily clear that I hated him for all that he did to me (and trust me, even he called himself a monster). He was the one who followed me every step I took, even straight on into the bathroom. His obsessiveness grew so terrible that he eventually made it so that I never left home at all and when I told him that I wanted to leave, well, that wasn't made possible til nearly two years later. And he wrote the above sometime after we had finally been set free. Romantic? Oh hell no. Obsessive love is not romantic. It's terrifying.
Christian Grey is the stuff of many women's fantasies and that's okay as long as they recall that the reality is not nearly as titillating.
Women fantasize about all sorts of things that they really would not actually like to experience in reality. There's a huge distinction between fantasy and reality and the majority of women know that. They're not stupid. However, in other cases where obsession has been confused with love like The Police's "Every Breath You Take" and Sarah McLachlan's "Possession", neither were ever packaged to be a song about romance. "50 Shades of Grey" was from its release date on Valentine's Day to the calling it a Drama/Romance when it would probably be more to simply call it a drama and let the viewer determine whether it qualified as a psychological thriller or a romance. It's doubly troubling when, if one recalls the snippet of the letter above from my obsessive and controlling abuser, the real monsters already package what they do under the guise of romance and love when it is anything but those things. Will it empower them more? Probably but they were already broken to begin with and maybe it'll just make it easier for them.
Oddly enough, "50 Shades of Grey" isn't the first time that a piece of written word has been perceived as being so subjectively different. Probably one of the most well known songs of the 80's was The Police's "Every Breath You Take" and it was largely viewed as a song about Sting's undying love for someone. In it, he croons,
Every breath you make.
Every step you take
Every move you make
I'll be watching you.
The Police, Every Breath You Take
Now, if the same lyrics were written down on a note and left on a woman's windshield wiper on her car, then, the words would have a much different effect to the recipient. They'd probably contemplate picking up some pepper spray or maybe even a gun. It would not nearly have the same effect. However, Sting wasn't some random guy on the street. Instead, like the character Christian Grey, Sting was a good looking, successful man that both teens and adult women alike adored. The difference between "50 Shades of Grey" and The Police's "Every Breath You Take" was that the latter was never claimed to be about romance by its author:
"I think the song is very, very sinister and ugly and people have actually misinterpreted it as being a gentle little love song, when it's quite the opposite."--Sting, BBC Radio 2 Interview
Oh no, say isn't so, Sting... You mean to say that that love song that so many young couples once romantically danced to at their high school proms or at their weddings was actually..."sinister and ugly". Yikes. In fact, the song is actually about stalking someone and obsession. How did we get it so wrong?
Unfortunately, we don't have the best track record at being very good at identifying unhealthy obsession and stalking behaviors vs. healthy love. Another song that was perceived by many as being intensely romantic was "Possession" by Sarah McLachlan. The title of the song could have been a tip off that this isn't good but instead, people heard what sounded like love while ignoring key elements. Like that title or even these lyrics:
Oh, into the sea of waking dreams, I follow without pride
'Cause nothing stands between us here and I won't be denied
Sarah McLachlan--PossessionSo what does it mean to hold someone down, kissing them so their breath gets taken away and refusing their denials? No means no, right? Pretty sure that sounds like the prelude to a sexual assault. But hey, at least the creeper is going to be wiping away her tears at the end. For Ms. McLachlan, receiving these letters wasn't romantic in the slightest and in an interview with Rolling Stone on the subject, she outright called the letters "freaky". That makes sense considering they were pretty much being sent to her by some unknown fan who was clearly mentally unstable. That's pretty much the equivalent of the aforementioned woman finding the words to "Every Breath You Take" under her windshield wiper.
There's plenty of other songs that could border on being laden with obsessive forms of love from "Creep" by Radiohead to "One Way or Another" by Blondie. Our culture is actually pretty laden with the grey depictions of what love is. Even looking at Merriam-Webster's definitions of love and obsession highlights that issue:
So the top definition for love is a "feeling of strong or constant affection for a person". Now let's see how they define "obsession", shall we?love
noun \ˈləv\: a feeling of strong or constant affection for a person
: attraction that includes sexual desire : the strong affection felt by people who have a romantic relationship
: a person you love in a romantic way
--Merriam-Webster
In other words, the key difference between love and obsession is whether it is normal or not.obsession
noun ob·ses·sion \äb-ˈse-shən, əb-\: a state in which someone thinks about someone or something constantly or frequently especially in a way that is not normal--Merriam-Webster
: someone or something that a person thinks about constantly or frequently
: an activity that someone is very interested in or spends a lot of time doing
Normal is defined, in this context, as being "mentally and physically healthy" While I think that being the target of such regard by some unknown stranger would be fairly scary for many and roundly considered unhealthy, what about when it's coming from a person that you yourself are attracted to and/or love? Love is one of the most heady emotions when it is coming from someone that we desire ourselves. It is both one of the greatest feelings one can have when it's requited and one of the most perilous emotional attachments that a person can have with another human being. There's always that risk of heart break.
Perhaps, when we hear a song being crooned about deeply obsessive love that is all consuming, in a way, that's almost comforting. The thought that someone could be so in love with you that you are their world to an extreme takes away that peril of having one's heart broken. We all want to be loved by the object of our own desire unflinchingly and without risk. After all, how often have we ever heard (or even were lucky enough to say ourselves) that we're "madly in love" with someone?
The idea is intoxicating and empowering and this could be precisely why such stories of obsessive love bordering on madness have stood the testimony of time. Is not the story of Echo and Narcissus the story of unrequited and obsessive love? Or the story of Van Gogh going to the residence of a girl named Rachel and handing her his ear, admonishing her to keep it like a treasure? He was declared a madman and yet, so many recall it as a story of strange love. When we think of Helen of Troy, do we recollect her as being a part of the tragedy of two young lovers? No, instead she is the "face that launched a thousand ships". An icon of the obsessive love of her husband and the destruction that followed. Face it, we have long as a society somewhat idolized and romanticized even the most disturbing forms of love since the recording of time.
The problem is that, despite romanticism, the reality is that obsessive "love" is wholly unhealthy and destructive.
Troy was laid to waste by it and thousands slain. Echo wastes away to nothing, cursed. Van Gogh nearly died from his wound and that's not even taking into consideration the horror the object of his obsession, that Rachel, must have felt when he laid his bloody ear in her hand. Yet, with these tales at least, they became cautionary tales of taking the love of another too far. We're not so good at that today if the elements of obsession within our books and songs go largely without notice or are simply viewed as being "madly in love".
Instead of preserving the value of the cautionary tale, today, we create a hypocrisy where the questionable activities of a handsome and successful character in a requited relationship is pinioned as being romantic against the stuff of psychological thrillers when it is unrequited. The lines of what is the madness of obsession and what is love have been thoroughly blurred and this should be troubling to an extent. As shown above, it's not the first time we've confused love with obsessive behavior; however, what we're starting to traipse into is a territory where Van Gogh gets his Rachel and its happily ever after.
The realities of being the target of obsessive love in a relationship are not romantic.
It's suffocating, demoralizing, maddening and destructive as hell. Every step you take holds a whole new meaning when you can't even go to the bathroom without being watched. Surveillance cameras covering the front and back and having to check in every 15 minutes is not romantic. Being threatened with harm or threat of losing your children is not romantic. The following is a snippet of what just one such individual wrote:
Love:
Something everyone searches for but, possibly not everyone finds. Some find love in gifts or expressions, but I being blessed with the greatest form of love. Unconditional love. Agape. Many hurts and sorrows have been seen to establish such a love, but now I can see that they were grains of sand in the vast sea of life.
A future of love of romance. I love you. May that which we have established in our lives be roots of life, growing aimlessly touching those around us with peace and the desire to love others. That we may make a change in the world we live, to say that I care for you, I care for my world.
Some might mistake that for being very romantic. It wasn't when I found it inexplicably in my bedroom behind my nightstand as the person who wrote it lived several states away. It certainly wasn't because I made it extraordinarily clear that I hated him for all that he did to me (and trust me, even he called himself a monster). He was the one who followed me every step I took, even straight on into the bathroom. His obsessiveness grew so terrible that he eventually made it so that I never left home at all and when I told him that I wanted to leave, well, that wasn't made possible til nearly two years later. And he wrote the above sometime after we had finally been set free. Romantic? Oh hell no. Obsessive love is not romantic. It's terrifying.
Christian Grey is the stuff of many women's fantasies and that's okay as long as they recall that the reality is not nearly as titillating.
Women fantasize about all sorts of things that they really would not actually like to experience in reality. There's a huge distinction between fantasy and reality and the majority of women know that. They're not stupid. However, in other cases where obsession has been confused with love like The Police's "Every Breath You Take" and Sarah McLachlan's "Possession", neither were ever packaged to be a song about romance. "50 Shades of Grey" was from its release date on Valentine's Day to the calling it a Drama/Romance when it would probably be more to simply call it a drama and let the viewer determine whether it qualified as a psychological thriller or a romance. It's doubly troubling when, if one recalls the snippet of the letter above from my obsessive and controlling abuser, the real monsters already package what they do under the guise of romance and love when it is anything but those things. Will it empower them more? Probably but they were already broken to begin with and maybe it'll just make it easier for them.
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