No Church Bombings Today

Final thoughts on MN

I confess. I fell into the hell of social justice media.

In between the toppling of a dictator in South America and the massacre of thousands in East Asia, I got into bitchfights over one dead motorist. And guess what, I even used the term FAFO, which for the uninitiated means, fuck around and find out.

I have no excuses for taking social media so seriously that I go down it’s rabbit hole of reductive abstraction. Here is something exemplifying just that kind of flattening.

In recent days, I’ve watched people argue that simply by disobeying the law, Renee Nicole Good deserved what happened to her — that her refusal to comply, to move, to submit to commands in that moment, and fast enough, justified her being shot. Some advance the false claims about an imminent threat to the ICE agent, but others do not even bother with that. They argue instead that her illegality alone was enough; that by being “unlawful,” she forfeited her right to live. Many reduce this thinking down to a most simple rebuke: “F.A.F.O.” - “fuck around and find out”.

We know that this reasoning collapses even under its own terms. Law-enforcement policy on this is clear: officers are trained not to fire into moving vehicles, because doing so endangers bystanders and escalates risk. They are instructed instead to step out of the vehicle’s path, create distance, and seek alternatives to lethal force, reserving gunfire for situations where an immediate, unavoidable threat exists and no way of moving out of the way is possible. But even this is not the heart of the matter. The deeper claim being made — that her unlawful presence itself rendered lethal force morally acceptable — is something far more dangerous that asks us to abandon a core strand of the American story.

That strand is Civil Disobedience

This is taken from the repost of a friend, of something written by someone named Hillary Jones. It boxes out its enemies with an air of condescention. Let’s identify its strawman as the American who says lethal force is morally acceptable as soon as someone crosses the line of legality. I’ve heard far too many of those arguments, and I was immediately clued in when I keyed in on the word ‘justify’. I had to mention it twice that I wouldn’t use that word, because even in the dungeons of the interwebz I try to behave consistently. By the way, it took two days for Facebook to give me exactly what Stubstack gives me immediately - a complete and readable record of what I said in comments. Here’s what I said.

“I will not use the term ‘justified’ which means something that would just be handled administratively within the ICE organization. I expect criminal and civil charges, just like with George Floyd. But I would never call it a murder until that is the result of a court conviction. So far, nobody has told me that any attorney has filed murder charges....

I more inclined to believe that the driver and her partner were there to antagonize and interfere with ICE officers, and I am more inclined to believe that the second ICE vehicle were called as backup.

I am also more inclined to believe that the shooter was highly skilled and deliberate, just by looking at his video. He got off three shots in about .75 sec.”,

Now all of this takes place in the context of my dislike of the preponderance of people taking apart what police and citizens do, rather than what happens in court. I want courts to be more transparent. But even beyond that is the matter of citizenship and what we should expect of it. What does it take to be a good citizen? Well one thing would be to be wise rather than foolish. Nevertheless, I was foolish for spending so much time on Facebook. Yes, I got 132 comments, so what?

Alexander Pope

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.

Such shameless bards we have; and yet 'tis true,  
There are as mad, abandon'd critics too.  
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,  
With loads of learned lumber in his head,  
With his own tongue still edifies his ears,  
And always list'ning to himself appears.  
All books he reads, and all he reads assails,  
From Dryden's Fables down to Durfey's Tales.  
With him, most authors steal their works, or buy;  
Garth did not write his own *Dispensary*.  
Name a new play, and he's the poet's friend,  
Nay show'd his faults—but when would poets mend?  
No place so sacred from such fops is barr'd,  
Nor is Paul's church more safe than Paul's churchyard:  
Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead:  
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.  
Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks;  
It still looks home, and short excursions makes;  
But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks;  
And never shock'd, and never turn'd aside,  
Bursts out, resistless, with a thund'ring tide.  
  
But where's the man, who counsel can bestow,  
Still pleas'd to teach, and yet not proud to know?  
Unbias'd, or by favour or by spite;  
Not dully prepossess'd, nor blindly right;  
Though learn'd, well-bred; and though well-bred, sincere;  
Modestly bold, and humanly severe?  
Who to a friend his faults can freely show,  
And gladly praise the merit of a foe?  
Blest with a taste exact, yet unconfin'd;  
A knowledge both of books and human kind;  
Gen'rous converse; a soul exempt from pride;  
And love to praise, with reason on his side?  

---

So I’ve crawled up into a little ball and covered myself with ancient wisdom, picked at random from the library of the earth. Why? Because my friends and partners are ghosts on the web, stuck in their homes, living far far away.

I’ve spent too much time at war with myself.
Doctor has told me it’s no good for my health.
The search for perfection is all very well
But to look for heaven is to live here in hell.

Cognitive Bias
I have recently found relief in the form of a game - a very primitive game by today’s standards. What I reckoned is that we spent too much time ingesting video. There is the danger. This is what got so many millions hung up on making judgements frame by millisecond frame. It’s the hole that sucked me in. So I’m doing penance for my incorrect focus, and the corrective is a program called Nethack.

It’s slow, methodical, mysterious and challenging. It’s a classic whose origins I recall from days unknown. I can recall going to a cafe on Main St. in Santa Monica in the vague mists of memory, and there was a man playing it by himself and I remembered I had seen it somewhere. Since then I have installed it and uninstalled it telling myself, that despite my missing out on the original D&D years of my life, at least I had Skyrim.

Yet to a certain extent, I was only kidding myself. With my rediscovery of Nethack, I suddenly like turn-based gaming, something that the first-person sandbox kinetic games made me hate. I had become twitchy, all, methinks, because of my video addiction. Playing Nethack is calming and delivers me into a realm of focus I didn’t realize I needed. It calms me. It allows me to consider what might be in the dark.

The 80/20 Lifestyle
I’m trying to figure out what leads us to these rabbit holes, knowing that we need calm and yet we engage drama. Everything points to us being spoiled. Our ability to demand more and more and still be unsatisfied, until we bind ourselves at the hip to life and death circumstances is a startling revelation. I’m not talking about stupid people, I’m talking about studious, sharp and articulate people. I’m talking about audiophiles like me who have generated and honed sensitivities that require intricate white papers to explain. I’m talking about our requirements to count pinpoint dancing angels. I’m talking about our ability to specialize ourselves into our public debates and private institutions into arcane corners of mind-numbing complexity.

It gives me yet more reasons to fear my own geek addictions, as I am beginning to fear them in general. The other day I watched Babish taste test over 30 different types of salsa. What lengths do we go to get ‘the best’?

Perfect seems ever more the enemy of good, especially the kind of perfect it takes huge amounts of capital and marketing and geekdom to sustain. Why can we get so deep into subjects and concepts that matter so little. Why do we have a fear of being merely slightly above average? What’s wrong with a B+?

We’re spoiled.

Awareness
Awareness gives us the confidence to navigate through our complex urban and corporate environments which are design, more or less, to accomodate us. But it’s not enough to walk the sidewalks of New York City, you have to know how to be properly angry in behalf of the black male who misses a cab. We are drilled with the awareness of optics and their social significance. It’s not enough just to get from Point A to Point B. We can sit on the curb and offer critiques all day. Because we are aware.

Awareness is like what the wise man said about knowing the terminology without understanding the process. It’s means very little. So long as no churches are being bombed, our operas of outrage generate currency. But what are we actually doing to keep churches safe from bombers?

I have been devastated by the smallest of insults over the most hyped of occurrences in a place I don’t really care about. So I’m just throwing some random sprinkles on this last melting sundae. Finally I have some bigger fish to fry.

The Final Aphorism
Every man’s death diminishes me, but like gravity its effect is reduced by the square of the distance.

The physical, political and psychological distance is what I need to keep in mind. I will endeavor to remind myself not to go out on a limb with the expectation that a significant polity will be rational and not hostile. This is the social justice war too many Americans want. I want no part of it.