Later!

President Trump's decision to allow Turkey to invade Syria, and in so doing, effectively throw the Kurds to the wolves, is simply another instance of the axiom that nation-states don't have allies, they have interests. Now, it can be argued that this is not 100% true in the case of the United States; Israel is effectively an ally in a way that other nations are not. (The case could be made that Washington policymakers are more concerned with Israel's well-being than they are with Puerto Rico's, as odd as that may seem.) In any event, President Trump's stated rationale for no longer protecting the Kurds speaks to this: In effect, there was once mutual interest, now there isn't. The Kurds were working with the United States not out of goodwill towards the US and it's people, but because the Islamic State was a threat to them.

But the problem with the no allies, only interests calculus at present is that with President Trump, it's really hard to understand what our interests actually are from one week to the next. It has been interesting watching the world attempting to respond to that.

'Sup?

A North American River Otter, wondering what the thing I'm pointing at it is.

Once Upon a Time

With November approaching, I'd been toying with the idea of participating in National Novel Writing Month. Not that I'm sure where I'd find the time. It's hard enough, sometimes, to make sure that I keep this blog updated on the schedule that I'd like. Adding in another 1,700 words a day to fill out a novel over the course of a month likely wouldn't work out all that well. That said, like just about everybody, I suppose, I do have an idea for a novel kicking around inside my head.

The general plotline comes from a discussion I was having with a roommate of mine, some 25 years ago. We'd been watching some or another movie, and the villain's overall goal was to destroy the world. Because they were the villain apparently; there was nothing in the movie that gave any hint as to why destroying the world was a reasonable thing for this character to do. That random act of nihilism rubbed me the wrong way, and I said so. My roommate then challenged me to come up with the sort of character I would like to see.

This started a continuing, if occasional, project to detail out a belief system that would make ending the world understandable, if not exactly rational. It became a religion that believed that the world was an Imperfect place, but that if it were destroyed, it, and everyone on it, would be remade into a Perfect form. As of this point, the document is about 8,000 words. Not terribly long, but it does a pretty decent job of explaining the belief system. Sure, it's a fairly bog-standard "Doomsday Cult" at the end of the day, but I like to think that I've fleshed this one out a bit more completely than is often the case.

In any event, I've been considering taking up the rest of my former roommate's challenge, and writing up an entire story around the idea. When I first came up with the idea, I'd envisioned a story that works somewhat in the reverse of the way such fiction usually does. Rather than the villain putting some dastardly plot in motion, and the heroes attempting to stop them, in this case, the end of the world was already on track to happen, and the heroes were setting out to stop it; so it would be the villain in the reactive role, attempting to preserve the status quo.

The big problem that I would have with such an undertaking is that I lack endurance as a writer. The idea of banging out 50,000 words makes me tired just thinking about it. Of course, I've likely managed more than that with this blog, but it's coming up on thirteen years this December. But then again, 1,700 words a day isn't really that much. Maybe one of these days, I'll get it into my head to space it out over the course of a year; a day or two of writing a week could be manageable.

In the mean time, I'll stick to quietly envying those people who can actually come up with a whole book during NaNoWriMo.

Land of the Blind

I will admit that I find the case of former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger to be interesting. Ms. Guyger was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison for the murder of Botham Jean, who lived in the same apartment complex as Officer Guyger. Part of me is curious as to why Ms. Guyger was convicted of murder, rather than manslaughter, given that it's pretty much understood that the incident was triggered by Ms. Guyger not realizing that she was on the wrong floor, and thus, not in her own apartment.

And now a new controversy has appeared; one that wouldn't otherwise have occurred to me. At the end of the trial, Brandt Jean, Botham Jean's younger brother, offered Mr. Guyger a hug, which she accepted. The presiding judge, Tammy Kemp, also gave Ms. Guyger a hug. She also gave Ms. Guyger a Bible and took some time to pray with her before she was taken away. This prompted internet commentors to opine on the nature, and the appropriateness, of Black compassion and forgiveness. And the BBC article showcased a few of the likely many Twitter responses to the situation.

This one in particular stood out for me:

The problem is less Amber Guyger's tears than the fact that similar tears from black mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters count for so little. Comforting white pain is a reflex. Rationalizing black pain is too. Until the latter stops the former will deserve condemnation.

If you've been reading Nobody In Particular for any length of time, you likely already know where I'm going with this, so I'll cut to the chase: What good does responding to the comforting of White people with condemnation do? If anything deserves condemnation (and I'm unsure that anything actually does here), I would think that it's the rationalization of Black pain. Is scolding the younger Mr. Jean or Judge Kemp, both of whom are Black, really going to make White people any less likely to rationalize in the future?

True, one can view Mr. Jean as reflexively succumbing to the American cultural norm of condemning overt displays of anger in Black people. And a case can be made that Judge Kemp's actions reflect on a criminal justice system that has been noticeably more lenient on Whites who kill Black people than the reverse. But what will leaning on either of them do to alter those factors? Would withholding hugs from Ms.Guyger make it any more likely that the United States would find "angry Black people" any less threatening, or hold Black people convicted of crimes to the same level of accountability as Whites? I'm dubious about that.

So I don't really see the point of attempting to lever people into a "compassion strike" by smacking them down for the crime of taking "the moral high ground." Although I suppose that it's more likely to be successful than attempting to get everyone else up onto the high ground with them. Which, in the end, may be the problem. The executive director of the Howard Law Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center, Justin Hansford, notes that White America doesn't grant the Black community the right to be angry with them for past or current injustices, real and perceived. It's difficult to see why this will change anytime soon, given that accepting Black anger as justified, rather than as acts of aggression, doesn't earn them anything. Casting Black compassion as equally unjustified won't change that calculus.

On the Hook

Mike Pesca has an interesting article in Slate about the outrage-baiting that was prompted by a MarketWatch article that portrayed a hypothetical family of four as struggling on a pre-tax income of $350,000.

Personally, to describe the situation as outrage-baiting seems too tame. "Hate-baiting" would perhaps be a more apt description.

At the conclusion of the piece, Mr. Pesca notes: "Our (manipulated) outrage is unempathetic, adding to the anger in the world while doing nothing to achieve a solution."

Adding to the anger in the world, though, is what generates click-through rates. Empathy doesn't raise advertising revenue.

But perhaps where things go wrong is when giving people the opportunity to add to the anger in the world not only allows themselves to express themselves (and virtue signal), but also to feel as if they're doing something constructive. I know a number of people who feel that the first step in solving a problem is to become emotional about it, and if the emotion needed is a burning class resentment, then so be it.

In my experience, though, our resentments are less effective at inspiring people to solve problems than they are at stoking further resentments. People come to resent what they perceive to be unfair resentment, and it starts to become a vicious cycle.

But the most interesting thing about this is that it isn't new. Sam Dogen, who put together the budget that had people so up in arms, had done the same thing back in 2015 or thereabouts (judging from dates on the comments). At that time, the income being looked at was $200,000 dollars and a lot of the same outrage was generated (it popped up on Google+, which was still active at the time). I recall being a but dubious about the idea that the family in question was "just getting by." After all, from where I sat, they seemed to be doing pretty well for themselves, considering. But I could understand how they felt that they were more precarious than it may have first appeared; a stance that cut no ice with a number of people.

Of course, it's unlikely that it's all the same people commenting now who were commenting then. After all, the initial piece didn't seem to have that broad a reach.

In the end, it doesn't make sense to expect societies to learn from past experiences. That simply isn't way the world works. But I'm curious to see, if Mr. Dogen repeats this exercise again in 2023, if a new, fresh round of outrage is triggered. Or, rather, what that round of resentment will look like.