Just Do It

It has become fashionable, in some circles, to point at some or another situation and ask: "Why can't the United States do anything about that?" And there are many such situations, even if the current topic is mass shootings. In my opinion, the answer is simple: many Americans don't see particular problems as theirs to solve, and the people who have to take action and/or commit resources to whatever solutions are put forward aren't interested.

And in many situations, this is understandable. There isn't much that the average citizen can directly do about pollution, inflation or any number of large-scale problems. But I think that it trickles down to a form of learned helplessness that often blinds people to indirect actions they can take. Consider politics. A lot of the things that people complain about in politics are driven by the general voting behavior of the public at large; things like moderate voters tending to skip primaries, or partisans tending to vote for whichever candidate their party puts forth in general elections, or not voting at all. In some places, choices are constrained; here in Washington, a lot of elections work on a "top-two" primary system, where all of the candidates run in a single primary, and the first and second-place finishers face off again in the general election. A setup like this tends to preclude "third parties" (of which their can be several) from making it to the general election; so if the candidate comes down to a single Democrat versus a single Republican, one can understand a partisan's dilemma. But even then, there's no real reason why independent candidates can't have a better showing in the primaries; which one can see resulting in more nuanced platforms from the "mainstream" candidates. (Not to mention a higher quality of independent candidates.) Given this, it doesn't need legislatively-mandated voting reform to change things. A change in people's behavior would suffice. But since many people who are worked up about the need to change the way politics work are also perfectly happy with their own behavior, that change is unlikely to come.

Granted, I'm not usually one for "people power." I find it trite and often used in scenarios that imply that simply showing up or speaking out can result in painless changes. But I do think that people who are willing to work to see changes, rather than simply wishing for change to happen, can have a measurable impact on things.

Assume a Can

There is an saying in philosophy that "ought implies can." It's ascribed to Immanuel Kant, who put it this way:

For if the moral law commands that we ought to be better human beings now, it inescapably follows that we must be capable of being better human beings.

Which is reasonable. After all, it doesn't make much sense for the moral law to command the impossible. (Actually, let me not make that last statement. Christianity, at least as far as I understand it from many people both commands people to always obey the will of the Abrahamic god, yet concedes that everyone will, sooner or later (usually sooner) will fall short of that. And I know a number of Christians for whom this makes perfect sense. Although, there are those who claim the moral law is to aspire to a life without sin; but now we're starting to get into the weeds.) In any event, the formulation of "ought implies can" is a common one because it avoids the trap of a moral imperative to do the impossible.

In practice, however, there is a problem, and that problem can be summed up with a slight change to the formula: "ought implies a belief that one can." Or, to paraphrase Immanuel Kant more completely: For if the moral law commands that we ought to be better human beings now, it inescapably follows that we must believe ourselves be capable of being better human beings. While people do surprise themselves with their ability to do what they'd believed impossible, the tendency of reality to mold itself to perceptions is not to be underestimated.

Which is why I tend to look askance at the stereotypical conservative exhortation to "hard work" as the answer to everything. To wit:

Nevertheless, there have always been Black conservatives who embrace an anti-racialist perspective. For example, when asked if Black Americans should work their way up without special favors the same way the Irish, Italians, and Jews did, a statement that would be considered beyond the pale in many elite media and academic institutions, the 2020 American National Election Survey found that about 20 percent of Black respondents agreed or strongly agreed with that statement; another 20 percent said they neither agreed nor disagreed.
Reihan Salam "America Needs Anti-Racialism"

Which is all fine and good, but what about the remaining 60 percent? It's one thing to tell them that "they should work their way up." (As an aside, this a statement that ignores the reality of social ordering, Not everyone can "work their way up" in a society that exhibits any sort of inequality, because any ranking of some number of people is, by necessity, zero-sum, in order for someone to rise from 100th place to 50th place, someone else {or several someones} must see their rankings decline.) It's another thing for them to believe that it's possible.

It's also another thing for people to believe that an apples-to-apples comparison is being made. I'm not sure when one would say that the Black population of the United States was in the same situation as the Irish, Italians or Jews. Mainly because any such date would be a fairly arbitrary comparison of two very different points in history. What point in Black history lines up with the situation of the Irish in 1850? Certainly not 1850; the Irish weren't legally subject to hereditary involuntary labor at that time, or considered less than a full human being for determining the voting population. There may be a time when there was an equivalent of Jim Crow for the Irish, but the lack of widespread coding into law means that there isn't a date of the repeal of those laws that one can point to.

The Black population of the United States tends to skew liberal because they understand themselves to be at a disadvantage relative to White Americans. Sure, the formal legal structures and widely-understood social mores that openly acted in them are largely gone, but that's not really the same thing as saying that the old preferences and prejudices have completely faded away.

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.

Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.

This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.
Lyndon Johnson, Howard University Commencement Address (1965)

Where I think that the conservative understanding of freedom of competition falls short is in the belief that a sufficiently motivated person has no need of coaches. Sure, there are many self-taught runners, some who are remarkably good at it. That doesn't make them the rule. They're simply more visible than those who gave up the sport due to injury or the simple realization that they'd never be able to win against people with more formal training.

And a good coach doesn't just push someone to perform to a certain level. They start with making sure that their charge has an understanding that they're capable of doing it. (Of course, this leaves aside those coaches who operate by daring their students to prove them wrong when they say they'll never amount to anything, but they are the exception.)

Coaching, mentoring and support should not be seen as a "special favor." It's what gives people the understanding that they can take risks. Which is important in a nation that has had such a visible history of punishing those who attempted to "rise above their station" and/or stealing the proceeds of those who succeeded.

Hard work, in and of itself, has never been a ticket to success. After all, the slaves worked very hard. There was very little in the way of a payoff for them. And this wasn't because of strangely racially-specific bad luck; it was nationwide policy. Policies that persisted even after emancipation. If conservatives really want to combat anti-racism with anti-racialism, they're going to have to demonstrate that they're invested in the success of everyone around them, not just those people whose exploits appeal to their sense of ideology. It's not enough to tell people that they "should work their way up." There has to be a message that they can, and that it's important to people that they do so.

Here We Go Again

Every time there is a "mass shooting" (which really just means a multiple homicide committed with a firearm that the media takes an interest in), the question of "Will this be the incident that brings about change?" comes up. But what sort of change? The expectation that any given mass shooting will be the straw that breaks the back of pro-gun and second-amendment absolutist "single-issue voters" is a fantasy. The subset of the American public for whom access to firearms is their number one priority aren't frightened that the next mass shooting might be in their neighborhood. They're afraid of crime and/or some version of a police state coming to their neighborhood. And that's fear motivates them to demand that anyone who wants their vote hold to their views.

So will the reaction of the broader public to mass shootings change? I don't have an answer for that, mainly because it would take more study than I have time for. I am, after all, simply a random blogger and not a working social scientist. What I do perceive is that the media coverage doesn't change. It's the same mix of story after story, with personal anecdotes thrown in; here and there someone seeks to make a name for themselves with some sort of political grandstanding. Experts are consulted and officeholders are recorded making solemn proclamations. It all may as well be scripted. The Onion simply runs the same headline every time. It's a habit that others might as well emulate.

For my own part, I think what needs to change is the idea that the nation is entitled to a solution, and therefore, one should be forthcoming. The idea that the arc of history bends towards justice, I suspect, leads people to think that they don't need to put any effort into bending it in the way they want it to curve. The idea that "The United States can do something about this" has to, at some point, actually mean some significant number of the people of the United States working together, rather than simply hoping that politicians will one day get around to imposing a solution on people who are adamantly opposed to it.

Democracies, whether direct or representative, or terrible vehicles for answer questions of right and wrong. They're much better as deciding on an implementation of agreed-upon goals. And the reason why there's no consensus in the United States is that there is no agreed-upon goal. There's just a few days of recriminations.

It's possible that, as a society, the United States has allowed the issue to become too partisan. Where someone stands on the question of "gun control" is a fairly good indicator or political identity, which is never a good thing. Partisans have a difficult time in ever seeing themselves as unreasonable, let alone wrong, and tend to see their opposite numbers as openly evil. Which is, generally, a poor basis on which to attempt compromise.

American culture when it comes to guns, or, more broadly, violence as a solution to problems, can absolutely be changed. But it's at the end of a long road of other changes, rather than the beginning.

Blooming

One of the interesting side effects of my owning a camera (or several) has been an appreciation of flowers. Before I owned a camera, I paid no attention to flowers. They were just kind of there, like sidewalks or mailboxes. But now, I find them intensely interesting. Enough so that while stopping to smell the flowers still isn't my thing, stopping to snap a photo or two of them is. I keep telling myself that I'm going to buckle down and learn how to properly take pictures one day, and maybe I should just start with flowers. They're common, they're colorful and they don't move around that much unless it's windy. But I suspect that I'll be content for some time to just take a snapshot here or there when something catches my attention. It's served well enough thus far.
 

The Blind Spy

I've encountered a decent number of  people who come across as afraid of surveillance capitalism. And I understand the sentiment; if one sees advertising as being highly persuasive, the idea that marketers with large amounts of personalized data could get almost to the point of mind control is rational.

But I've never really seen the problem. Mainly because in my own experience, even with information, the sorts of things that are suggested seem unconvincing. Even leaving aside the idea that targeted advertising can't tell when a purchase has been made, and so continues to pitch things even after one had bought what they need, what the algorithms seem to think people are about can be nonsensical.

Back in the Google+ days (and it seems remarkable that the service shut down only three years ago), the network would suggest things to me based on what it knew of the people in my circles, as if the idea that I could communicate with people who had different interests than my own was a new concept. And recently, Google podcasts has started adding  suggestions like Gaana Music, Jokes in Hindi and Evergreen Hits of Bollywood to my suggested podcasts, along with Voice of America's Learning English podcast. Where they came up with the idea that these things were the least bit relevant to me is a mystery.

I'm completely on board with the idea that a corporate-owned surveillance system designed to come up with a constant stream of reasons to spend money isn't an ideal situation. But I think the idea that it's already here is a little premature.