The World Isn't Getting Too "Woke"

 

 

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

 

 

 

 

 

Every once in a while you'll see someone some where complaining about a wave of woke culture. Matt Taibbi did so in response to the controversy surrounding Dave Chappelle's latest Netflix special, where he wrote on Twitter that Chappelle is "subject to social rules he had no hand in writing." You'll also see it tied to things like the Virginia race, where TV pundits go off about how the Democrats devotion to "woke" policies cost them the election. What's missing from any of this is any definition of what "woke" even means, let alone why it's such a bad thing to be concerned about.

Of course, there's always some idiot who takes things too far. There's always someone, usually white, tripping over themselves to throw all the terms they've learned about white privilege and centering the narrative yadda yadda yadda. Basically, the stereotype of a kid using too many words they learned in college without any wisdom,experience, or self-reflection to make those words meaningful. I'm not arguing that those people don't exist because of course they do. What's more important in this broader conversation is that when people talk about things getting too "woke," what they usually mean is that they have to give basic respect to people they flat out don't want to.

Let's take the nonsense over pronouns as an example. So many people throw an absolute fit over using "they/them" pronouns. They usually make some argument that it mangles the English language, that it's exclusively for plural use only. Except, we use "they" as a singular all the damn time. How many times have you asked your friend after they go to the doctor "Oh, well, what did they tell you?" That's a perfectly reasonable, understandable sentence. Everyone knows who we're talking about, who we're referring to, no problem. The best part is, the first recorded instance of us doing this goes as far back as 1375. Given the fact that if the usage of a singular "they" was common enough to find use in a poem, there's good reason to believe that it was in common usage for years beforehand. Far from being a new trend to bend the language to a small minority, the singular 'they' then is something that's been part of our linguistic framework for almost a thousand years.

But you know what? Who fucking cares about any of that. Why would I need to go digging around the dictionary websites researching the use of a single word in the English language to prove that non-binary people fit comfortably into our linguistic traditions? Why would their identity only be valid if it could be backed up by scholarship? Why is the fact that they exist and wish to express their identity in those terms not enough?

This also brings up another aspect to this argument in that the so-called academic reasons for opposing it are so lazy it should embarrass everyone who lets such idiotic statements fall out of their mouths. You know how long it took me to find out these things? Ten minutes, including the reading time. That's how easy it is to dismiss this attitude, how flimsy it is, how it isn't supported by even the faintest hint of facts or legitimacy? It's almost as if it's just a smoke screen so people who don't want to respect something they don't understand can tell themselves that they just have a logical hangup about it, yeah, they're not keeping themselves ignorant or judgemental, nope.

The laziness of these arguments is ultimately what gets me the most. Framing the issue "Trans people want to control our thoughts" instead "Trans people want to be referred to by their names," hypes up the reaction of people who can't get with the program and treats them as if they have as legitimate a claim on trans or non-binary people's identities as they do. Can you imagine if we did this in any other situation? Can you imagine your reaction if you introduced yourself only for the other person to go "I don't agree with that, so instead of Manny I'm gonna call you Hilary," then refused to alter their behavior. Who, when called on it, defended themselves by saying that "It's just their opinion" and they have a right to express it has much as anyone else does. So they just kept doing that, all the time. Would you feel respected by them? Or would you feel belittled, just that something that stings in the back of your mind because every time he does that he reminds you that he doesn't have to treat you like a human being and there ain't shit you can do about it.

That's ultimately what this fight is about. There are elements of society who, for a variety of reasons, don't want to have respect trans and non-binary people, and they're upset that they get punished if they don't. Well, punished is a relative term here. Yes, some lose their job, some, like J.K Rowling, have people say mean things about online which they equate to real-life harassment and bigotry. These people usually complain that they have lost their freedom or their freedom of expression is being unfairly curtailed, you know the drill. It's true that they've lost something, but it isn't their freedom, it's their power.

What they've lost is the power to denigrate, to dismiss, to demonize without consequence. This is a real struggle for people used to doing so because the ability to ruin other people's lives without penalty is, sadly, a strong emotional metric for how people value themselves. If there's nobody beneath us, we don't feel quite as good because that means we're the ones everyone gets to treat like shit. There's no reason to cry about this loss, because this sort of power is toxic, it corrodes the soul of the people who rely on it until they become nothing more than dried up husks- instead of vibrant, they're brittle, scattered into the wind where all the trappings of their position become moot should anyone even think to question them.

Why would you want this? Why would you want a life so meaningless, so pitiful that the only thing you could do to find any semblance of relevance is permanently press a boot onto someone's neck?

Anyone selling you a version of freedom that depends on your ability to crush someone else under your heel doesn't care about your freedom. They don't care about anyone's, really. All they care about is selling you the idea that it is right and natural for you exploit those below you so will accept your exploitation in turn. 

It's interesting to examine too why this culture fight is reaching such a flashpoint over trans rights. This isn't to say that the fight over gay rights was easy or that cis gay people don't face discrimination anymore, it wasn't and they still do. 

What cis gay couples have though is a way for straight people to paper over the differences their queer identities presented. By misunderstanding things like tops, bottoms, femmes, and butches, straight people found a way to imagine gay relationships in the same men/women gender norms as they were comfortable with. Again, this isn't how any of that works, but it gave people the ability to paper over the differences enough to let it go. 

Trans and non-binary people however, don't really have this option. Their very existence forces people to acknowledge that there's more to sex and gender than false binaries. Trans people also present a policy problem in that, if the point of government is to enable its citizens to live their lives with dignity, what then are they supposed to about trans people therapy? Should the government fund their transition treatments, up to and including their gender affirming surgeries? Obviously the answer is yes, but for governments like ours or the Tories in the U.K., this presents a problem because letting people live their lives with dignity is anathema to both. After all, if trans people are able to get their medical needs addressed by the government, why shouldn't everyone? 

There are some people on the Left too that take issue with focusing on these issues, seeing as unnecessary culture war distractions to economic policy. This is another false dichotomy however, because the same policy goals of ending racial discrimination, enacting single payer healthcare, enacting a jobs guarantee program, all of these have direct consequences on the quality of life of everyone, trans and non-binary people included. 

When these arguments get made, one of their cornerstones is that the world is irrevocably changing, that something tangible is being lost, never to return. As always there's some truth to that but consider, what's so worth protecting about the world that's getting lost? Why is it that when people say "No, you don't get to treat me that way," that the reaction is such spite, such anger? What entitles any of us to have those lesser than ourselves be available so we can pile the scorn and bitterness of our lives on them? 

Clichéd as it is, we're all just people. Rather than thinking of the phrase flattening us all into a blob of sameness, we need to see it as everyone, no matter how different, is entitled to the same level of respect the we treat ourselves. Humanity is a diamond, all one element but with so many facets that catch the light in its own unique way. Our differences shouldn't divide us, they should enlighten us, because each one shows us a different way our world is experienced. 

Funny thing is, this sentiment gets treated as if it's some radical practice of empathy close to godliness when it gets taught in religions and philosophy. Except, it's not that at all, not even a little bit. Ask anyone that knows me to describe in three words and if any of them says "empathy" I'll give you $200. I can comfortably make that bet even though I'm broke because none of the people I know are liar enough to say so. So if I figure this out with my garbage sense of empathy, it's honestly not that hard.

Because honestly, thinking this way is just the baseline. Artificial differences like skin color, sexual orientation, gender identity, nationality, have become the most important thing to us. In order to free ourselves from these things, we have to acknowledge the world obsessing over these things has built and tear it down brick by brick. 

The world is choking on these limitations, I'm sure you can feel it. Everything feels much more tense, more paralyzed, like we're all sinking into a tar pit. Because the internet has made it possible to see into the intimate details of other people's daily lives, the illusions that we're all fundamentally different have started cracking, along with the power structures built up to maintain those illusions. The mad dash top keep everything as it was even as the justifications for them crumble around us is why the world feels like existing in a tangible sickness. 

Will working to solve those problems get us out of the mess we're in? I don't know. More likely than not, it'll solve some problems, bring up unexpected complications in others, and generate entirely unforeseen problems of its own. 

But if the choice is between doing what we've been doing or building a world where every one gets to live their lives in whatever manner they see fit then, well, I'd rather down swimming for shore than drown on clinging to a sinking ship. 

Yes, But Also

 

 

 

 Pieces like this one at Naked Capitalism bring out... conflicting isn't the word so let's say split feelings in me. The article is about how communication strategies for getting people vaccinated can backfire, basically for some segments of the population, more aggressive messaging can harden their reluctance to get the vaccine rather than ease it. What I'm split on is that yes, it is important to know how your messaging is effecting people, how it can be better, and to correct mistakes so you can achieve the goal. But on the other hand, I'm tired of pretending that if we tailor our messages in just the right way, then opposition to the vaccine will just melt away.

Obviously, the goal is get as many people vaccinated as we possibly can. So we need to make sure that the messaging is as effective as it can be. Whatever it takes to get people lining up for that jab, right? But at the same time, fuck these people. When we keep  almost weekly news stories about right wing personalities dying because they weren't vaccinated, I honestly struggle to see how it's very news worthy. "Man who refused to get treatment for highly infectious disease dies from that disease," isn't exactly a surprising turn of events. 

Then again, mocking these people's audience and dancing on their hosts grave isn't exactly the best way to make them believe you're on their side. Or that your primary concern is their continued well being. There's a long history of propaganda on the right that their political opponents see them as a mass of sub-human swine who, if they can't be corralled, are only fit for the slaughter. Which, yes, it doesn't help to reinforce this, but the idea that conservatives are under siege from the rest of society is the only story conservatism has about itself. If that hasn't changed over the course of centuries, I doubt a more even tone from newscasters on CNN will sway things very much.

Still, its wrong to treat people, especially ones you don't like, as a monolith. It's hard to convince someone you want them to take an opportunity to change when you're dancing on the grave of their loved one, telling the survivors that they deserved everything they because they believed people like Tucker Carlson. Shoving their family members death in their faces, if nothing else, is not a very good rhetorical strategy which, if your goal is to get as many people vaccinated as possible, you need to be careful about how you act because everything finds its way online these days. Someone is going to see you being a dick about their dead mom, so just keep that in mind.

However, it's bullshit that in this setup the "just get the vaccine already," crowd has to keep their emotions in check, or at least as neutral as possible, while the anti-vax crowd gets license to do whatever they want. On twitter the other day, I came across this screen shot of some one asking for legal advice and I think it's good for you to read it in full:

This woman lost her child because her boss not only refused to get vaccinated but refused to protect anyone from catching it once she knew she was diagnosed with COVID. When we talk about people getting mad at others for refusing to get the vaccine, this is what we're talking about. it's easy to frame this conversation in terms of elitist libs mocking homespun conservatives as ignorant hicks because that's a trope we use for everything, all the time. It makes the debate feel familiar, as just one more extension of a never ending culture war that consumes every aspect of our lives. Sure, there are elements of that trope, no doubt, but the prime driver of this rage is the bodies. The thousands of dead or infected who will possibly carry the effects of the disease for the rest of their lives. Why are those seeking to get people vaccinated told that they cannot react on their emotions, that they must keep them in check in order to extend every possible grace and fairness towards those who dismiss them at every turn?

There's also the the problem that vaccines are just the latest front of denial during the pandemic. At first, the disease didn't even exist. Then, it was just the flu. Then, it was nothing to worry about because it only had a 1% mortality rate. Now, it's that vaccines and vaccine mandates are fascist, authoritarian measures anathema to the very idea of American freedom. All these policy stances were ones that conservatives adopted and championed to protect their own political positions, no one on MSNBC or The New York Times made them say these things because they called them names.

The conservative fight against vaccines has nothing to do with science or freedom or anything else that comes out of their mouths. Their opposition comes from the fact that having to wear a mask or get a vaccine violates the one true principle of conservatism. If you're not familiar with it, the one principle of conservatism is that there must be an in group which the law protects but does not bind, along side out groups which the law binds but does not protect. Public health measures shatter this principle because they require conservatives to do things for people who are inherently (in their mind) inferior and imposes consequences for failing to do so. All the talking points, all the lies about the vaccine come from this central violation which means that no amount of messaging or coddling will change the conservative outlook completely.

Even so, it's important to still try. I have no sympathy for those who refuse to get the vaccine and die, but that doesn't mean I want them to. No one should have to experience begging for a vaccine (or really, their lives) before they get intubated a few days before they're dead. It's a pointless, horrific way to die, even if they brought it upon themselves, it still isn't anything to celebrate. Also, and a bit more cynically I will admit, the more people who go unvaccinated, the more it puts everyone at risk as more variants evolve to become vaccine resistant, spreading from those who got their shot and those who didn't with little distinction. Even if you can't empathize or sympathize, which to be clear, I have incredible difficultly with both, paying attention to how vaccine messaging is used is important even if the only compelling reason you can find is self-preservation.

Clay, Not Cornerstone

We have this idea that the law is inherent and immutable. It exists to protect us, to create order in what would otherwise be a chaotic, brutal world. But like every other aspect of society, the law is merely an invention, something we created along the way to make things run as we believed they should. As with any other invention, the law can be tinkered with, abused, or just outright ignored as needed. 

The Texas abortion law is one of a few recent examples of this practice. Under the law, all abortions are banned - including pregnancies that result from incest and rape - after six weeks. If any woman gets an abortion after that time, the law allows any U.S. citizen to sue not only the woman but the doctor who performed the abortion, anyone who gave her money to pay for it, anyone who gave her a ride, along with anyone else who could conceivably said to have "aided and abetted" in acquiring the abortion. Should the plaintiffs win their civil suit, the law requires judges to impose at least a $10,000 fine on the defendants, payable to the plaintiffs.

There are a litany of problems with this law. For one, abortion is a federally guaranteed constitutional right, up until the point of fetal viability. Banning abortions at 6 weeks on its own makes the Texas law inherently unconstitutional but, like I said, there are other problems, too. The whole point of the bounty system is for Texas to try to avoid an official state punishment against women who seek or get abortions. Its supposed to be an end run around the law, basically the official version of "You can't blame me for the things I let other people do." 

Obviously, I don't have the legal background to say definitively whether or not Texas declaring open season on women and their support networks while awarding bounties to pro-lifer vigilantes amounts to those vigilantes qualifying as state actors but, still. It's an incredibly obvious question to bring up, one which I expect will be argued at length as the challenges to the law make their way to the Supreme Court. 

The other, other problem the Texas law has is that it makes an absolute mockery of standing. In the legal world, standing is basically the concept that if you have suffered a specific harm, you have the right to sue to repair that harm in court. Larger point being, standing isn't exactly something you can just grant to people willy-nilly, there still has to be some form of active harm done to people bringing the lawsuit, especially when it comes to civil actions.

Part of why I think the bounty system won't survive contact (at least at first) with the court system is that there is no compelling argument in favor of it that doesn't involve the pursuit of state interests. What specific harm, for example, does anyone in Dallas suffer if a woman in El Paso gets an abortion? What possible injury could they cite as reason for the lawsuit? The state can claim this harm because it represents the whole of the community, so it can take action to protect what it sees as public interest. Except, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey have slammed this door closed. These cases established and defined abortion as a constitutional right under the 14th amendment which limited the options states could use to directly crackdown on abortion. Even with a Supreme Court willing to indulge Texas' nonsense (we'll deal with this in a minute) required Texas had to invent this bounty scheme in the first place. But, like I said, standing isn't something you can conjure out of thin air, some part of it has to be conferred in order for it to work. 

Push against this feature of the law even just a little and it quickly falls apart. There is no basis for any random citizen to sue another for pursuing medical treatment they don't like. The only possible justification I can think of is that these suits are in the public interest but, again, private individuals don't have this because they cannot prove they've suffered a distinct or palpable injury which is a constitutional requirement for any lawsuit to work. These vigilante cases only legal authority then would have to come from the fact that these private individuals are acting as proxies for the state which, brings us right back to constitutional hard stop set up by Roe and Casey.

Whether any of this matters is an open question. With a 6-3 majority, the conservative wing can lose Roberts but still sit comfortably with a 5-4 ruling in favor of Texas. I've made a big deal about how flagrantly unconstitutional the Texas law is but, if the Supreme Court wants to, it can change the definition of "unconstitutional" whenever they want. Move to limit corporate spending in elections? Well, by our own doctrines, corporations are people, money is speech, therefore, campaign finance restrictions are unconstitutional. It's incredibly easy to alter the bedrock legal principles that our whole system is built on so, the next year will be somewhat nerve wracking as we wait to see whether or not women's bodily autonomy is something the Supreme Court is interested in protecting. 

Because for all the muddling the pro-life movement does, abortion is a bodily autonomy issue. Yes, a fetus is involved, but that does not make it the central issue. In order for the fetus to survive, it must use the the food, blood, and oxygen among many, many other things, of its mother. Here's the important thing- nothing and no one is allowed to use your body against your will. If you are in the hospital and another patient needs a blood transfusion to live, the hospital cannot take your blood because, bodily autonomy. Even when we die, our organs cannot be harvested to save others is we did not consent to do so when we were alive. It is a irony of their position that the so called pro-lifers dream world is one where a corpse has greater dignity and sanctity than a living woman.

There are no fundamental differences between a pregnancy or the above situations. The main objections against lumping all these things together usually bring out nonsensical arguments or religious ones about how, in the case of abortion, because sex was involved, that was the woman's choice so pregnancy is just her avoiding responsibility for her decisions. Which, honestly, your religious beliefs are your own but are ultimately irrelevant. If you believe that life begins at conception, that every fetus has a soul, and that every abortion is ending all the potential of a human life, fine, I'm not saying you can't believe that. What I am saying you can't do is turn around so that everyone has to live your creed, because that isn't caring or loving.

If your goal is to make sure every baby comes into the world with a family who loves and care about them, banning abortion won't do that. Because instead of love, this law uses the power of the state to make every woman afraid, afraid to go to their doctor, afraid to ask for help, afraid to do anything other than keep her head down and just try to figure it out however she can. This law is designed to cut pregnant women off from any and all decisions other than having their child and, much more insidious than that, place any one who helps them do anything else in legal peril. What love is to be found in fear, desperation, and isolation? 

This is why so much work is done by pro-life groups to make the whole abortion argument about the life of the fetus. Yes, it does function to muddle the discussion as a whole and wastes an inordinate amount of time not only trying to refute subjective moral and religious questions but also trying to move the argument to the actual issues abortion deals with. All that said, the rhetoric is primarily for their own internal consumption so they feel galvanized to pursue the goal. It also serves as a soothing mental balm as the contradictions of your stated goals about the sanctity of life being achieved by the reality of grinding an entire segment of the population under heel. Something has to square that circle, so in comes the pursuit of life itself above all else to trump the concerns of robbing women of their independence and dignity.

Another interesting aspect to notice here is that while Texas is flagrantly breaking the law, any prospective punishment is largely theoretical at this point. Which, again, shows that the law is largely a social construction that is unevenly applied. If you has an individual did something that so blatantly violated the constitutional rights, you'd be screwed. But a state does it? Not only do they get away with it, they get the chance to rewrite things so their illegality becomes the law itself.

One of the most common flexes of supposed first world countries like the United States is that we are a nation of laws. The idea is that we have risen above the barbarity of simply ruling by force of violence, that we have evolved into a system based on reasoned laws, applied equitably and dispassionately with only the occasional lapse brought about by individual bad actors. Except, laws are

tools. We wield them as we will to make the world a better place or to wrap people in chains. We use the law to put distance between us and the consequences of what we want. If something terrible is legal or the law does evil work we throw our hands up, say "what are you gonna do, it's the law," and move on. 

But the law, and its consequences, are only what we want them to be. It's never been anything more or anything less.

What Else Was Supposed To Happen?

Earlier this week, the Taliban retook Kabul, negating a near twenty-year occupation in a little over 90 days. Naturally, Biden is facing intense criticism over this as we haven't had an embarrassment like this since the Fall of Saigon in 1975. So amidst all this embarrassment and humiliation I ask just a simple question:

What else was supposed to happen?

If your answer is an orderly retreat then what you need for that is a continued U.S. troop presence working alongside Afghan forces putting up a coordinated defense against the Taliban offensive. At the time of our withdrawal, we had 2500 troops in country. That all the major cities surrendered almost immediately shows that the Taliban laid the groundwork to accept them. Also, if you want an orderly surrender from an advancing enemy, you have to work that out with them beforehand. Tell me, what do you think would go over better: what's happening now, or Biden submitting a formal U.S. surrender asking the Taliban for terms for it to withdraw in an orderly fashion.

 

"But we should get people who helped us out of the country," I hear people say as if the last year of the government leaving its own citizens out in the cold wasn't indicative of anything. If the government is willing to watch over 600,000 of its own people die without lifting a finger, it isn't going prioritize poor people on the other side of the world either. Never mind the fact that getting people out of Afghanistan brings up the other question of where are they going to go. Tucker Carlson is already pushing the propaganda that bringing Afghan refugees here is a existential threat to the United States, so. This country isn't exactly fond of refugees, especially ones we created.It makes us look  bad, which we hate more than anything else.

 

If your answer is that we should've stayed until the job was done, then show me one time in world history, let alone our own, where one country under military occupation developed the political and social structures to exist under its own self-determination. Japan, West Germany, and South Korea are the only examples that come to mind but even then they don't readout apply here. Japan and West Germany didn't have coordinated armed resistance movements led by their deposed governments for the entirety of our occupation. South Korea doesn't apply either since most of its progress came after they overthrew the military dictatorship we installed to rule over them. 

But let's say that the whole nation building thing is possible, what does that look like? Seriously, how do you know the job is finished? Leaving out the Taliban, the Afghan national government is riddled with hilarious levels of corruption, leaving it lethally incapable of providing public services to its population. So if the mission was to create a government in our own image, we succeeded.

Or, maybe "staying until the job is done" means we stay until the Taliban is militarily defeated. What makes that complicated is that Pakistan gives the Taliban money and a place of refuge. So even if they lose battles in Afghanistan, the Taliban has a safe haven to go and regroup to which is exactly what they've been doing since we abandoned the war when we invaded Iraq. What then, is the plan for Pakistan? Do we invade it, sanction them, what? Keep in mind that Pakistan is also (ostensibly) one of our allies so anything we do there comes at the cost of making any agreements between the Taliban and Pakistani government even stronger which is why no president has done anything about the situation. 

So what we have is an enemy we can't afford to defeat on one side and a puppet government that's as self-sufficient as a ventriloquist dummy on the other. There can't be any negotiation between the two because for negotiations to work, it has to happen between equal participants. The Afghan national government never brought anything to the table because any legitimacy it had came from our military. Why would the Taliban honor any agreement in this situation? Why would they allow an enemy to hold onto territory and power when they could just take everything once we walked out the door?

Leaving aside all these questions, how is any of this surprising when for the last ten years we've told ourselves we had to stay in Afghanistan is because if we left, the Taliban would take over the country in less than a month. This was the message from both the Obama and Trump administrations so why is everyone acting like this is the first time we're hearing how what happened could happen. We don't have to live up to the stereotype of the ignorant American loudmouth every single time. 

What's happening in Afghanistan is happening because there was never any plan for what we were gonna do once we got there. We knew we were going to blow people up but aside from that, there was never a grand strategy from the Bush (or Obama, or Trump) administration defining what the goal of the war was or what victory even looked like. We've spent the last twenty years doing the equivalent of spinning our wheels while we tried to figure out what it was all those people were dying for. 

It's important to understand this because it tells us that we lost Afghanistan decades ago. The Taliban taking control of the country was inevitable as far back as 2007-2008. Nothing we did changed this reality which is perhaps the hardest thing for us to come to grips with because it's an ingrained truth of culture that because we have the most expensive military in the world that means we have the best military in the world. But the only thing that money does is generate mountains of hardware doesn't need and can't use. So it's no surprise that the people putting this equipment to its most effective use are the Taliban fighters posing in American military gear to rub their victory in our faces. 

So what now? CNN is running articles about how Afghanistan is home to literal trillions of dollars worth of minerals to power new technologies. This isn't new information, of course, and one of the many frustrations of our occupation was our complete inability to effectively extract Afghanistan's natural resources that weren't poppy seeds for the global heroin trade. There are others who are worried  the fallout of our retreat will embolden China to invade Taiwan or Russia doing evil Russia things. There's a huge fear that the retreat is making us look weak on the world stage which is something we can't afford. 

Except we look weak because we are weak. But it's not the retreat that makes us that way. What makes us weak is our suicidal refusal to recognize let alone admit what our limits are. This causes us to engage in not one but two decades-long wars that left nothing but failure in their wake. It leaves us with a military whose main concern is being a public trough for defense companies to feed at than an organization concerned with national defense. 

We can't accept that the utter collapse of the Afghan government isn't so much a reflection of our complete failures, it has to be the Afghan people's fault for being so weak that they wouldn't defend themselves or their country. It's out of the question that all the time we spent there left the Afghan people with a government so actively hostile to its people that it wasn't a government anyone would risk dying for. We have to push the failure of Afghanistan as far away from us as possible because we refuse to process that we can fail so completely. The thing about that though, is that the world exists outside what we tell ourselves. And maybe, just once, it'd be good for us to recognize that the world where we do everything right and have the best intentions when we get it wrong isn't the world we actually live in.

It's About More Than Being Nice

 I realize that I have the tendency to get too worked up about things. I know it's not sensible for me to get mad at articles like these which compare the fall of the Roman Republic to the United States, especially when they're three years old. But the ideas presented here aren't limited to this article alone, so it's worth spending some time examining why they fall short and why we shouldn't be so eager to map the past completely unto our present, no matter how tempting it looks.

Part of why we should be careful about people telling us how well we mirror the past is that the story is never really about the past, it's always, with no exceptions, about the  problems of our present. So it is with this article from the Smithsonian, which tells us, in all its studied breathlessness, that what doomed the Roman Republic was the instability brought about from violent rhetoric and the disruption of political norms. The article quotes from historian Edward Watts then new book, who says that Rome teaches "its modern descendants the incredible dangers that come along with condoning political obstruction and courting political violence... Roman history could not more clearly show that, when citizens look away as their leaders engage in these corrosive behaviors, their republic is in mortal danger.” 

We'll come back to this idea of how the idea of a passive Roman citizenry is, but we need to sidetrack a little bit to call out the dangers of projecting our own image backward. The article quotes a 2005 book written by historian Cullen Murphy, who takes a more direct approach in comparing Rome and the United States. His argument is that Rome, after defeating Carthage in the Second Punic War, was in the same situation we found ourselves in after the end of World War II. Murphy says that we, like the Romans, found ourselves with "the world on our shoulders; and the implications of that responsibility have skewed things in every part of our society and economy, and put our old political (and other) structures under enormous strain." This wildly conflates the self-dealing fairy tales we've told ourselves in the post-war era with what the Romans got up to once they were the unrivaled power of their time. When Rome looked out at the world, they saw an opportunity for riches and wealth beyond anything they'd ever dreamed of, so they took it. 

It's hard to put into words the scale of plundering the Romans did, but suffice to say when they showed up to your neck of the woods, they were leaving with everything valuable they could find. Gold, silver, fancy furniture, and, most especially, people. The Romans saw the world as their spoils and wasted no time taking whatever they could from who ever they wanted.

What's worse is that the article engages in some of the sloppiest history work I've ever seen. The author, Jason Daley, calls out how Rome's hegemony led to social upheavals like the introduction of secret ballots - which Daley argues led to politicians developing political brands to appeal to the masses - and Rome's move away from civilian conscription armies loyal to Rome to semi-private ones who were dependent on their generals for their pay. These conditions, Daley says, led to a political situation where "whipping up the resentments of the lower classes and threatening political enemies with semi-private armies became the norm."

 Where the sloppy history work comes in is that Daley argues that these trends converged with the political career of Tiberius Gracchus in 134 B.C.The issue here is that the professionalization of Rome's armies, when the land owning requirement to be in the army was dropped, wouldn't happen until Gaius Marius became Counsel in 104 B.C., almost thirty years after Tiberius Gracchus died. Daley is right, sort of, that the flashpoint around Tiberius' actions as Tribune of the Plebs was the land reform bill, but Daley leaves out so much context that it's almost impossible to understand why it was such a big deal in the first place.

To start us off, we need a better understanding of how Roman society, specifically its armies, functioned. Rather than having a professional, standing army under the direct management of the state, the Roman army was drawn from levies of land owning citizens (they would also take conscripts from the other ethnic Italian communities, which Rome had, for the most part, already conquered). Each citizen would be responsible for providing their own weapons and armor, while the state would provide the food and other logistical support. Military service was required for Romans looking to get elected to the Senate or hold any sort of public office which, to the Romans, was incredibly important in their families prestige. This method of warfare worked really well when Rome fought traditional seasonal campaigns, but started to fall apart in the wake of the three Punic Wars.

The big reason why was there was no leave in the Roman army. Meaning, once you got called off to war, you stayed at war, no matter how long it took to finish. Men who left on campaign would leave their farms in the hands of their wives and children which works well enough if you're gone for a few months. But when these wars started lasting for years at a time, it wasn't uncommon for these farms to fall fallow, forcing the families to sell it off to other, richer families. Once all the wars were over, the soldiers who fought them came back to find their families destitute and homeless, their homes part of massive private estates called latifundium.

You may take this moment to ask yourself why couldn't these men couldn't just work their old land under its new owners and the answer to that is well, slaves. The rich who bought up all these failing farms staffed them with the slaves the soldiers brought back with them from their campaigns. So it's in this Rome, filled with conquering heroes with no roofs above their head, that Tiberius Gracchus introduces his land reform bill.

Officially known as the Lex Sempronia Agraria, Tiberius' land reform bill would parcel out land owned by the Roman state to the homeless and the poor so they could be self-sufficient. This bill sought to solve two problems, the first, obviously, was reducing the amount of homeless citizens. It's generally not a good idea to leave men who have spent years fighting for the state with nothing to do but get angry about all the things they no longer have because of the years they spent fighting. The second was that reducing the amount of land-owning citizens directly impacts Rome's ability to create an army. If the only eligible people to fight are landowners and you allow the amount of landowners to significantly decrease, then what you're doing is drastically reducing your martial capacity which, for a Republic suddenly needing to control exponentially more territory than it did before, is a recipe for disaster.

But the Senate did not like Tiberius' plan. Roman politics worked on elaborate client systems, run largely on personal reputations, family ties, and favors. If Tiberius' bill went through, he would have thousands of supporters dependent on his patronage who could be relied on to back his political agenda. Obviously, this could not be allowed. So the Senate did everything it could to stop him. Daley makes a big deal over Tiberius not asking for the Senate's permission to introduce his bill but the thing is, he didn't have to. As Tribune of the Plebs, he could introduce legislation in either the Senate or the Plebeian Assembly whenever he wanted to. It's true the Tribunes usually gave the Senate the heads up, but, given the open hostility to his bill in the Senate, Tiberius did the smart thing and just introduced it on his own terms.

Which brings us to the incident with Marcus Octavius. Octavius was the other Tribune of the Plebs, who the Senate paid to ensure that Tiberius' bill could not pass. So even though Tiberius had the votes, Octavius vetoed the bill. The most common story about what happened next is that Tiberius called for a vote to remove Octavius from office. When people voted to do so, he simply vetoed them as was is power as Tribune. When he wouldn't yield, Tiberius had Octavius physically removed from the Assembly, so the land reform bill could be introduced and passed 1without interference. Now, Tribune's in ancient Rome were sacrosanct, it was literally against the law to touch them. Tiberius went too far when he did this and his supporters got cold feet, so he resorted to basically shutting down the city by refusing to participate in any of his official duties until his bill was passed by the Assembly and the Senate.

Even then, this isn't what got him killed. When the Senate passed the bill, they gave the bare minimum of funds to the commission that was to split up the land so it couldn't function. What ended being the end of Tiberius was the death of King Attalus, ruler of the Greek kingdom of Pergamum. Attalus died without any heirs, so he left the entirety of his fortune, and the kingdom itself, to Rome. Seizing the opportunity to fund his commission, Tiberius claimed control of the money on the grounds that he was the representative of the people it was left to. Naturally, this pissed the Senate off something awful, since foreign affairs were exclusively their domain. In frustration, the Senate began spreading rumors around that Tiberius was out to make himself king. The tension around these rumors built to such a pitch that they are what ultimately led to Tiberius, along with 300 of his supporters,  getting beaten to death in public by his political opponents.

Yet, you would never know those were the stakes just by reading Daley's article. He sweeps every bit of this under the rug, reducing it to "Tiberius went outside political procedures, which is just the worst thing he could do, then some other stuff happened and then he died."

To top off this ridiculous argument, Daley returns again to Watts, who he quotes with the following: "People who are politically engaged are not killing each other and they’re not threatening to kill each other. When they disagree with each other they use political means that were created by the republic for dealing with political conflict." The absurdity of this statement is almost mind-boggling. To classify the Roman citizens who beat an elected official to death at the behest of the political institution in Rome as not politically engaged is the kind of tap dancing routine you don't see outside of Fred Astaire movies. The whole point of all this violence was, and would remain, so the Senate could protect its privilege and powers in the wake of ever increasing demands from the citizenry below that they, too, be included in the benefits of Rome's burgeoning empire.

Harsh language didn't kill the Roman Republic. If anything, the zero-sum nature of Roman politics mixed with powerful interests refusal to compromise on anything that would infringe on their position led to a situation where the only possible way to enforce anything was through violence. The breaking of political norms are superficial, polite things to be upset about but, in Rome and currently, they are merely symptoms of much greater, much more threatening fractures in the political system. If you want to avoid the really bad stuff, like the civil wars that would plague Rome for close to 50 years, you have to deal with the underlying power imbalances that drive political systems to become so irrevocably broken.

There's a reason Daley leaves out all this context. Without it, he can reshape the complicated political situation of the late Roman Republic, which then allows him to recast the political stakes into whatever he wants them to be. This ultimately allows him to focus on the most meaningless aspect of the end of the Roman republic, that people stopped caring about the rules. No where does he stop to consider that there are bigger problems in society than whether politicians play nice with each other. Flouting norms without consequence is important because it tells you that people believe they are no longer obligated to follow them. The thing is though, and I can't stress this enough, the reasons why people don't feel that obligation are more important than the rules themselves. Trying to game out whether Tiberius is more responsible than the Senate for fracturing political norms misses the point that both of them felt they had the power to do so. 

Like I said, I know I get too worked about things. Especially bad takes on history and what they tell us about the present. At the same time, how we view the past, and what went wrong in it, can't help but shape how we view what the problems of our world even are. If the best we can do is say that we should all be nice to each other and let everyone speak, we're doomed. If we can't learn enough about the past to question the important things in our society like who has power, what are they using it for, and how are they keeping it, then we'll just be stuck in these useless cycles until the world collapses around us while we're all standing around looking stupid with or mouths hanging open, wondering how any of this could have ever happened.