WINGNUTTV 8

In September I began tutoring, once a week, a Central American teen living at Bethany Christian Services. This teen, as do the others in Bethany's ESL program, have refugee status.  That is, they have legal status according to federal law.  But you wouldn't know that if you had watched our local WOODTV 8's hysterical dreck  "A Secret School for Illegal Immigrants."

I never watch local TV news (I let my mother-in-law fill me on local news--typically stories of crime and other lurid happenings), but a friend told me about this news story from a year ago September.  I accessed it a couple of weeks ago, but evidently WOODTV has since then taken it down from its Youtube site, though you can still see the trailer for the story here.

This "Target 8 Investigating" story was bad in so many ways, I'm not sure where to begin.  So I'll begin with this.  I talked with a Bethany employee about this news story, and she told me the reporters came under false pretenses.  Ostensibly, Channel 8 wanted to know about Bethany's work with what are known under federal law as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC).  Actually, Channel 8 was after a story that would sensationalize the issue of undocumented immigrants.  So strike one, WOODTV, for irresponsible journalism.

Strike two? The title of the story. Bethany Christian Services is not a "secret school." It does not hide its work with refugee minors.  It just doesn't advertise it given that some of its minors are leery of the gangs that scared them out of their Central American country, or of the smugglers that helped them escape.  Moreover, they are not illegal as I noted earlier.  These students have legal status as refugees (under the title Unaccompanied Minor Refugees--a step up from UAC), and some even have green cards (Legal Permanent Residents--LPRs). The news story's title to my mind is libel.

Strike three. The voice-over narration. The male voice sounded like some reality show about undercover cops rather than a story about refugee minors. Melodrama and innuendo aren't journalism.

Strike four.  The claim that the Obama administration is secretly moving UACs into Michigan unbeknownst to Michiganders and its lawmakers. Apparently, it's only a secret to Michiganders and lawmakers that make no effort to do any research on the matter.  They may want to check out the Department of Homeland Security's website that explains the process regarding UACs, here (this took me a nanosecond to locate).

Strike five isn't really about WOODTV, but my district's congressional Representative, Justin Amash (who appears in the trailer).  He claims he's a libertarian, but why then would he argue against the free movement of people?  No doubt he's playing to the nativists in Michigan.

President Obama has said if Congress doesn't move on comprehensive immigration reform, he will issue another round of executive orders to give the eleven million or so undocumented immigrants a route to legal status, and to fix this problem:

We're deporting people that shouldn't be deported. We're not deporting folks that are dangerous and need to be deported.

No doubt, should he do this, there will be another round of hysteria about "amnesty." I wonder what the hallowed Ronald Reagan would say about all this? This is the president who signed the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act that granted amnesty to around three million, and, given family reunification policies, drew in many more immigrants.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to work with this not-so-secret school, tutoring a very legal immigrant minor. A fine young man that has fled gang violence that, in part, my compatriots have encouraged--with their voracious demand for illicit drugs. A young man who suffers from migraines due to the stress of adjusting to life here, and missing his family. A young man who dreams of going to college for an engineering degree. I am happy to help him.

War! Huh...Why bother declare it, yeah...

Thanksgiving, 1993 (I think), in our
Astoria, Queens apartment.

A colleague and friend of mine, Andy Grossman, had an interesting take on Representative Doug Lamborn's (R-CO) suggestion that generals who disagree with Obama's response to ISIS (or ISIL) should resign en masse.

Before I relate what Grossman said, a word about him.  And this will be quite a digression.  I first met Andy in grad school, in a survey course on International Relations.  We soon got the nickname "reactionary corner," apparently because we took realist positions among students who tended to be far left, and for whom realism is anathema (I should add that this label was given and received with good humor, and I'll say that we both shared, and share, the most unrealist concern with the impact of warmaking on democratic practices).  Anyway, Andy and I became friends, and we and a cluster of others began doing Thanksgiving together and summer croquet parties.

Andy finished his PhD long before I did, and secured a position at Albion College (Albion, Michigan), where he still teaches today.  He soon turned his dissertation into a book, Neither Dead nor Red, a very fine account of the origins of Civil Defense, framed as a strand of US political development.

I finally finished in 2000 and took a visiting position at Wabash College (Crawfordsville, IN). This one-year position turned into an extended one, and there was talk of converting my position to tenure-track.  In my fourth year, it became clear this wasn't going to happen.  I wasn't cut out for an institution with the unspoken rule that if you can't cheerlead for all male education, then keep your trap shut (its laughable slogan back then was "Boys go to college, men go to Wabash).  That said, I learned a great deal from fellow faculty there about teaching, the college fully supported my efforts to develop innovative curriculum, and I got to work with many fine students.  Still, I was out of work in the summer of 2005.  I'd been on market for a tenure-track position almost every year while there, had landed some interviews, but no luck.

2012.  A little party at Kim Geiger's home to
celebrate AG's promotion to full professor and
my successful bid for tenure.

This is where Andy Grossman comes back into the story.  He basically saved my academic ass.  One of the faculty in his department--political science--was moving to another institution, and he was able to offer me a visiting position.  That turned into a three year stint.  They were three great years of almost daily chats with Andy and others in the department about teaching and our research interests.  Still, it wasn't tenure-track.  So I was back on the market for three more years (a grueling process, let me tell you).  When I finally got an offer from Grand Valley State University (GVSU), Albion College countered with its own offer.  What a conundrum.  Take a position that allows me to be a Latin Americanist again, or stay with colleagues I really enjoyed?  After much deliberation, I accepted the GVSU offer.  Serendipitously, this turned out to be the right move.  Albion College, struggling financially, soon thereafter released numerous tenure-track faculty.

So, a shout out to Andy Grossman for resuscitating my professional life.  And now back to the topics of this posting: War, the US military, the Commander-in-Chief.

Another friend from grad school days, Kim Geiger, sent Andy Grossman a short piece titled "GOP congressman says he's urging American generals to resign rather than follow president's orders" (see also Tom Ricks' relevant commentary here). Here's what Grossman had to say in response.

I had not heard about this. A nice spin on this would be as follows. If generals disagree with the commander in chief, they should first resign. After said resignation, these now retired generals then can do as they please since they are now a citizens. They cannot disobey the President (in most cases--an order to commit genocide or other "crimes against humanity" would be grounds for disobeying the President) in uniform.

So here is what I think this Congressman and others are saying: if you are given an order or mission to "degrade and destroy" X--and if you deeply believe as a member of the military that this cannot be done in the fashion or within the guidance of the civilian leadership's parameters, you must resign. To carry out a policy you do not believe in is dangerous for a number of tactical and strategic reasons. From what I hear and read, almost nobody among officer corps believes it is possible to carry out the President's goals (as he enumerated them a few weeks ago) without actually using a lot of US military forces in Syria on the ground. So in this sense, generals that do NOT agree with the President must resign. What they cannot do--and if they do they should be relieved of duty and subjected to courts martial ASAP--is to disagree IN UNIFORM or to engage in the subversion of the civilian leadership's orders.

So a benign reading of the congressman's claims can actually be made, and I would support them. But is the Congressman thinking along these line of civil-military relations in a liberal democracy? I have no idea. I think to go war based on AUMF [Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists] passed on October 12, 2001 is illegal. I support the goal of destroying ISIL militarily and with brutal force, and no apologies, but as of now we are, in my view, in an extra-constitutional war that has two parties responsible: The President of the United States and the Congress of the United States. I care more about the Constitution being followed than a supposed existential threat to national security when we go to war. I also believe in a draft, higher taxes to fight such wars, and most important, an official declaration of war. Absent that, no war.

I so agree.  And I'm reminded of President Johnson's presidency.  Of course Barack Obama's presidency won't end like Lyndon Johnson's--a one-term residency due to the justly vilified Vietnam war.  But I truly, truly hope we won't end up with the same tragedy.  As the GOP Eisenhower administration initiated our involvement in Vietnam, with the Demorats Kennedy and Johnson deepening it, so has GOP George W. Bush planted us in a Middle East quagmire, with the Democrat Obama unable or unwilling to extricate us.  Where is Congress on this?  Where are ordinary Americans? Shopping, partying, etc.

Protest Thyself

Demonstrators picketing against the arrival of undocumented migrants scheduled
to be processed at the Murrieta Border Patrol Station in Murrieta, Calif., on July 1, 2014.
(REUTERS/Sam Hodgson, Washington Post, July 2)

Protesters yesterday blocked a bus attempting to deliver a large group of undocumented Central American women and children to a detention and processing center in Murrieta, California.  Protester anger is understandable.  As many have said, the US immigration system is broken.  Still, it's odd that the protest stopped a federal effort to actually do something about the problem of overwhelmed immigrant detention centers in Texas.  And though not surprising given our nation's history of nativism, it's sad that the NIMBY attitude (we're not a "dumping ground," said one protester) trumped the recognition that the US government is obliged to care for these detainees--many of them kids, for god's sake (listen to this NPR story Why are kids from Central America risking solo travel to the US?)

Undocumented children in a detention center
(From CBSTV Videos at Yahoo News)

Instead of stopping buses, I suggest that people protest any or all of the following:

Waiting for work in LA
(Southern California Public Radio, Getty Images)

1) Protest employers that have long had a voracious appetite for cheap and pliant undocumented immigrant labor.  Start with Tyson, or other meat-packers.

2) Protest consumers who have benefited from the lower prices that undocumented labor affords. March through Beverly Hills, and berate all those wealthy residents who have enjoyed lower cost housecleaning, landscaping, and construction.

3) Crash a coke-laden party and protest all those providing the demand that sustains drug cartels, which in turn contribute to violent conditions that drive people to risk migration to the US (see, for example, this story about an inter-fraternity drug ring at San Diego State)

President Reagan with Guatemalan dictator, Rios Montt,
recently indicted for genocide
(From Democracynow.org)

4. Why not go to the Ronald Reagan Library and protest an administration that fed civil wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua (in violation of law, mind you)--wars that kicked off a surge of Central American migration to the US in the 1980s, and established a permanent migratory chain.

5. And for all you protesters that voted for Representatives or Senators that have blocked comprehensive immigration reform--go to a mirror, and shout at yourselves.

What's Class Got to Do, Got to Do with It?

More and more talk these days about growing socioeconomic inequality.  For example, according to the Pew Research Center:

In 1982, the highest-earning 1% of families received 10.8% of all pretax income, while the bottom 90% received 64.7%, according to research by UC-Berkeley professor Emmanuel Saez. Three decades later, according to Saez’ preliminary estimates for 2012, the top 1% received 22.5% of pretax income, while the bottom 90%’s share had fallen to 49.6% — the lowest level since at least 1917.

Inequality is higher in the US in comparison to other developed economies (2nd highest income inequality, after taxes and transfers, out of 31 OECD countries).  The income gap between whites and blacks and Hispanics has grown.  Inequality of wealth is even more skewed.  And notably, says Pew, "Americans are relatively unconcerned about the wide income gap between rich and poor" (see 2013 global attitudes survey here).

Why not?  Maybe because we're so good at rationalizing it?  Matthew Hutson suggests this in his piece for Slate, Social Darwinism Isn't Dead.

New research indicates that in order to justify your lifestyle, you might even adjust your ideas about the power of genes. The lower classes are not merely unfortunate, according to the upper classes; they are genetically inferior.

Hutson summarizes this research, and gives some examples of social darwinist talk, such as that of former Lt. Governor of South Carolina, Andre Bauer.  During a 2010 town hall meeting, he said this in response to a question about school lunch programs:

My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. . .You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better.

The problem with this example--aside from the grotesque lack of empathy--is that Bauer isn't a member of the elite, those one percenters, and probably not in even the top 5% in terms of wealth and income (check out this NY Times site where you can guestimate your class position).  This brings me to what I think is the cognitive obstacle to reducing socioeconomic inequality.  It's not so much the elite, who have always rationalized their disparate wealth (or never deigned to to explain it).  It's that swath of people constituting the amorphous middle class--from employed working class folks on up to the upper middle class (where Bauer probably sits).  These are the ones who live on various comfortable rationales for inequality.

This large group includes people who are happy with inequality, even revel in it, as long as they're on the winning side of the movement of capital, from the schmucks who have little to the dashing buccaneers who evidently deserve a lot.  Back in 2004, CBS News acquired the following from the Justice Department, a recording of two Enron employees gloating over all the money they made for their company by driving up energy rates under false pretenses, and joking about a California utility's effort to recover some of that money:

Employee 5: They f_ _ _in' takin' all the money back from you guys?  All the money you stole from those poor grandmothers in California?
Employee 6: [chuckling] Yeah, grandma Millie, man. . .
Employee 5: Yeah, now she wants her f_ _ _in' money back for all the money you charged, jammed right up her ass for f_ _ _in' $250 a megawatt hour. . .
[both chuckle a bit]

(You can learn more about this affair in the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room)

Or I could cite the more recent home mortgage crisis, where educated middle class people in the housing, mortgage, banking and financial industries--wittingly or not--colluded in screwing over other people and fomenting an economic crisis (listen to This American Life's excellent report on this in "Giant Pool of Money").

This large group includes managerial staff who think their paternalistic gesture towards underpaid employees is noble.  Even Forbes, hardly a bastion of liberalism, couldn't believe that Ohio Walmart managers last Thanksgiving ran a food drive for their employees.  "Associates?"  Orwell would roll his eyes.

Photo courtesy of Our Walmart
at http://www.today.com/news/wal-mart-defends-controversial-food-drive-employees-2D11618754

This large group includes all of us that consume media that routinely celebrate individualism and deny the effect of socioeconomic origins.  Bill Murray does a nice job of satirizing this in this clip from the 1979 movie, "Meatballs."  "It, meaning class, "just doesn't matter," he repeats, though the movie goes on to reward the lower class Camp North Star its first victory over the nearby upper class Camp Mohawk in the annual Olympiad.  That's the kind of story we tell ourselves over and over again.

And there's some truth to it, for sure.  There is more social mobility in the US than most countries in the world, though that mobility has declined in recent decades, in part because of growing inequality in our educational system (see this Brookings report).  But those of us who have not fallen down the class ladder tend to explain our success, and the failures of those on lower rungs, in individualistic terms.  We worked hard.  We earned what we have.  We acted responsibly.  They didn't.

Never mind that we probably went to better high schools, grew up in more stable communities, with families and sets of peers that socialized us to maneuver well in our economy.  But we didn't work hard for that.  We didn't earn it.  It came our way because we were born in a particular socioeconomic stratum (and in my case, I got more unearned entitlements because I'm white and male).

Am I arguing that economic outcomes for people are all structural?  No, clearly they're not because people from the same social class can go in different directions on the ladder (though the great majority stay in the same place), and people from the same social class can end up in very different economic niches (say, a political science professor compared to a bank manager or a chemist).  But I am saying that our staunch individualism, and our faith in the myth of 'pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps,' contributes to the widespread sentiment that socioeconomic inequality is nothing to worry about, or nothing we can can or should address, even as it continues to grow.

It's not the odd politician spouting silly social darwinist stuff who is really behind our inaction on inequality.  It's that "silent majority" Nixon loved so much who has turned a blind eye to the causes and consequences of inequality.