Outrage Over Gun Violence: ADDENDUM

Media discussion compelled me to more thoughts on the mass shooting at The Pulse in Orlando Florida:

Interestingly, the very highest statistical percentages of homicides fall into these two categories: white male on white male and black male on black male. This is about power and control; mostly about which alpha (or wannabe alpha) male has power over another. I would really like to see more specific research findings on this. A friend calls this alpha male aspect “toxic masculinity.”

The specious lie is that black men, "radical Muslims," or indeed members of any minority group, in possession of guns is “the greatest danger to our society.” This is completely incorrect and always has been.

White men with guns are the greatest danger to American society, by sheer demographic numbers, not to mention the stats on gun ownership. Research from 2014 found that while black men were more likely to be homicide victims, they are half as likely to have a gun in the home as non-Hispanic whites. (http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/chapter-2-firearm-deaths/#racial-and-ethnic-groups)

In 2010, black members of our nation represented 13% of our total population; black men represented 55% of homicide by gun. Much can be inferred from this simple data.

Shockingly, 2004 national firearms survey (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17296683) reported 48% of individual gun owners have four or more guns, and suggested about two-thirds of all guns are owned by just 20% of all gun owners. Over 6 million Americans own 10 or more guns. (https://www.thetrace.org/2015/10/gun-ownership-america-hemenway-survey-harvard/)

Guess which demographic is most likely to own an arsenal? What a surprise: White men are more likely own guns, and also to amass an arsenal because of societal entitlements that allow greater access.

Does all this ownership of guns constitute a well-regulated militia? Only if the “enthusiasts” are members of the police, military or National Guard. A woman retired from active military service suggested that everyone who wants to own and operate an arsenal really just needs get over themselves, needs to enlist and serve. Like that will ever happen…

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The greatest challenge to our world is finding an equitable balance in which all people can have a decent life, where they needn't fear others and where anger is a rare occurrence. The anger and rage that is allowed to billow like wildfire must be checked.

I believe capitalism is greatly responsible for all of this -- or, to say it in another way, I think this is a primary failing of capitalism. If you don't tend the garden of consumers wisely—providing jobs that enable them to live and buy another day—they’ll eventually morph into a raging mob you can't control unless you have a well-regulated militia. Of course, this is just precisely how the NRA likes it; the “garrison state” butters their bread.

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One of my readers expressed this in response to my blog of ___ : “… the attack on the LGBTQI community, particularly at a Latinx drag night, is an attack on alternative genders as well as the right of Latinx, people of color and whites of all genders to live or express an alternative gender. Given the shooter was not white but was American it is unclear what the racial / political dynamics of this incident were. We may never know but based on the questionable coverage it seems like a massive conflict between internal struggle with sexual orientation and external machismo and militancy.”

By way of response, I must emphatically agree.

However, most to the point for me is that people of multiple race, ethnicity, gender (alt, queer, straight, trad) and even nationality are the likely to have been the complete demographic makeup of those celebrating in The Pulse on the night of the shootings.

PEOPLE were killed or critically injured: mothers, fathers, children were killed or critically injured. I think this mass shooting attack is best defined as a crime against humanity. Really, it was our entire collective, culturally diverse and ever-evolving, beautiful society that was attacked by this shooter, who ultimately did not know or care about the humanity of any of those individuals, having (for whatever reason) objectified them all—or at least having abandoned his own humanity.  

While we can and should continue lobby with and through our identity constituencies, we must also lobby as a united front of American Citizens. Identity politics is fractured politics; equal rights and justice must be for all, no matter the demographic. To quote the old left wing anthem (from the 1880s!): “The international ideal / Unites the human race.” We need all our fragments, all our identities and cultural perspectives  to come together for this to be true.

On the main, our politics has become overly fragmented and polarized, rather than holistic. Our party system is antiquated and does not serve the collective or even the constituent voice. Suffrage has been eroded by legal dirty tricks, state by state. Party conventions used to be a forum during which a policy and program platform was built from among the delegate voices representing all various constituencies (this is how we used to be represented*); now they are merely rah-rah rallies for the nominees. Votes and consensus are socially engineered by a political elite (using the divide and conquer method) and receive plebiscitary endorsement at the polls.

I firmly believe there can be no stronger coalition for freedom of speech and expression, freedom of association, equal rights, equal justice, equal protections (such as gun control) than a united movement of diverse citizens. I think our lobby will be strongest and most fully represented from that position.

© 2016 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

*See Walter F, Mondale’s essay: “Atlantic City Revisited; The Mississipi Freedom Democratic Party and the 1964 Democratic National Convention.” This is a very important read; you find out, first hand, the convention dynamics that contributed to the Civil Rights Act and LBJ’s reelection. I contend that the kinds of compromise toward political change that took place at the 1964 and 1968 conventions can no longer happen in the party conventions of today. This link leads you to a version that includes interesting commentary in italics: http://www.crmvet.org/comm/miller-mondale.htm

Free the Arts

A few weekends ago, Cal Performances offered a Sunday "Free For All" of music, dance and performance art, at venues all over the UC Berkeley campus. It was a beautifully warm afternoon, and I was one of the many people scheduled to perform that day.

My husband drove the family to the campus, dropping me off near the venue, so that I could make the call time before the concert. He then parked and took the kids to wander about, seeing and hearing other performances before getting in line to see my concert. They got in line 20 minutes before concert time. When concert time came, they were among the more than 200 people who were turned away.

This was not an isolated incident. Hundreds of people were turned away from many performances. There were thousands of people milling through the campus on that warm summer day. All of them wanting to hear music, see dance, people watch, picnic or any number of other possible activities.

What does this say?

Living, as we do, in the wake of free-market free fall, perhaps the only affordable art experience for the average person is the free experience.

But, here is the rub: art has its costs. Being a singer and a writer, I know this all too well. Everyone involved in art personally invests so much more time (and even money), than any professional person with a 9-5 job could ever understand, to the art. Seasoned professionals are expected to continue "paying their dues" by donating their time to give free performances or showings all the time. The cliche argument is: "for the love of your art." The people who use that cliche don't really know what that actually means for the person who participates in a life of art, what is truly sacrificed. And, no, that kind of thing really isn't useful on your resume.

Once we realize we (and what we do) are commodities in a world that only understands buying and selling and value judgement, the love of our art shifts in imperceptible ways. The public desires an endless stream of entertainment to dull the blunt horrors of wage slavery. And so, there it is, an endless, even mindless, stream of entertainment sent out to meet the endless needs of the public. Some of this entertainment does entertain; much of it does not. Think about the hundreds of television channels that deliver 24 hours of dubious content, when the technology is capable of delivering on-demand content, tailored to the taste of the client. This endless stream of noise is very difficult to compete with, and who wants to?

What am I trying to say? There is a lot of money being spent to produce a lot of crap content, forcing "art" to be all about buying and selling products, most of which are not necessary for living a good life, many of which will be soon added to the pile of junk that, in many ways, looms over the future health of our planet.

But the minute a musician, actor, dancer, artist wants to receive professional recognition in the form of a decent paycheck and benefits, the buck stops. I find this interesting, psychologically and philosophically. To some extent, I find this to be evidence of a sick society.

People really cannot do without art in their lives. Art is what keeps us sane in a world crusted by layers and layers of political illogic and common denominator frustration, from which no reasonable sense of order can be derived. So many people are not or , at least, do not believe themselves capable of opening themselves up to creating their own artistic experience; this is why artistic individuals are so special and so necessary. The creative thought behind art has done as much to develop industry and technology as mathematics and science.

Singers, dancers, instrumentalists, thespians invest their bodies and psyches in the stream of artistic continuity in a way that no other set of professionals can. Fine artists and writers often sacrifice a social existence in order to have the time and solitude required to develop their art. Yes, time spent in this way is personally rewarding and edifying, but it comes at great personal cost, that even a steady paycheck can never truly repay. The personal angst (and even attendant therapy) that frequently informs an artist's work provides someone else a therapeutic experience. "Poetic Justice" would allow this exchange to have full circle closure back to the artist(s) in the form of remunerative therapy.

This leads me to my radical thought for today: The only way to truly Free the Arts is for society to earnestly invest in them. If a fraction of the money spent on crap commercial product junk were invested in arts organizations to the extent that artists could earn a decent living wage, we might be able to deliver more of what we love to do to a public that is obviously starving for it, as well as open the artistic frontier to explore and evolve beyond the mainstream of public consciousness.

Obviously, there is so much more to say. Discussion, anyone?