This Time Feels Different

This Time Feels Different

by Ted Miller

(originally published March 2018 in Tumbleweird)

When I heard the news on February 14^th of yet another school shooting, this time at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, I predicted we would see the same tired divisive arguments in the news, on social media, and from our politicians. There would be much outrage, grief, denial, calls for gun control, and “thoughts and prayers.” 

The same script played out like clockwork. And I figured that, as has happened with every mass shooting, the attention of the public would shift after a few days and absolutely nothing would change. I reminded myself that if the December 2012 murder of twenty children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut wouldn’t drive change, if the mass murder of concert goers in Las Vegas last year couldn’t even convince Congress to ban bump-stocks, then surely another mass shooting wasn’t going to be any different.

As I listened to interviews with lawmakers on the news the next day, I heard a congressman repeatedly pivot the discussion to argue about the precise definition of an assault weapon instead of focusing on the problem or propose any sort of solution to reduce gun violence in our nation. I was so frustrated I actually screamed at my radio.

When I saw the same tired, baseless arguments all over social media, I called it “Political Polarization Paralysis” in a social media post. That’s what we seem to have become: Too paralyzed to make any difference whatsoever. I felt helpless. I felt hopeless. I cried.

Then I heard that some of the surviving high school students were speaking up. In the midst of their grief and anger, they were making passionate arguments for change. I read Cameron Kasky’s op-ed published by CNN. I heard David Hogg’s media interviews. I listened to Delaney Tarr address the Florida legislature. I watched Emma Gonzalez’s passionate speech at a gun-control rally a mere three days after the shooting. These teenagers are not taking “no” for an answer. Emma Gonzalez spoke for her peers when she said:

Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this, we call BS. They say tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS. They say guns are just tools like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call BS. They say no laws could have prevented the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. That us kids don't know what we're talking about, that we're too young to understand how the government works. We call BS.

These media-savvy young people know how to get their message out. The news corporations and the public have taken notice. Their message is consistent, pointed, and effective.

And right on cue, the backlash from the extreme right has been severe, attacking the students with conspiracy theories in an attempt to undermine their credibility, claiming they have no right to speak up, and bullying them in an attempt to silence them. Death threats began almost immediately. The rabid mob mentality in our society to attack people for speaking up is shameful. But these young people, who demonstrate more maturity and resolve than the leaders who are supposed to protect them, will not be deterred.

Gun rights extremists are quick to blame gun violence on video games, lack of religion, mental illness, broken families, illegal immigration, or any number of other things. But they will never admit that largely unregulated and easy access to firearms has an irrefutable relationship to the number of mass shootings in the United States. And while other countries have the same violence in video games and movies, the same mental health problems, similar divorce rates, and declining participation in religion, mass shootings are extremely rare.

What is the difference? The number of guns, the lethality of assault-style weapons, and the ease of obtaining them. That is what has to change. We must regulate guns the way we regulate everything else that poses a risk to the public.

Heroes don’t ask to be heroes.  Last month these young activists were worried about mid-terms, proms and their next issue of the school newspaper. Today they are leading a national movement. They aren’t old enough to vote, but they are old enough to make a difference. They are prepared, they are organized, and they are passionate. They are tireless. They are speaking out for their dead classmates and the hundreds of other murdered students who can no longer speak for themselves.

Maybe, just maybe, this time is different. What lawmakers, pundits, leaders, and other gun violence survivors have been unable to do, these young leaders are now doing. Republican Congressman and Army veteran Brian Mast has called for a ban on assault weapons, major companies are cutting their ties to the NRA, and students across the nation are joining forces to bring about change.

I no longer feel helpless and hopeless. I feel hope and optimism for change. The future is in good hands.

#NeverAgain

Racism Isn’t About Race

Racism Isn’t About Race

by Ted Miller

(originally published February 2018 in Tumbleweird)

“The travel ban isn’t racist because Muslim isn’t a race.”

“Saying all Mexicans are rapists isn’t racist because Mexican isn’t a race.”

“Referring to some countries as shitholes isn’t racist because a country isn’t a race.”

“That can’t be racist because <insert name of marginalized group here> isn’t a race.”

I’ve heard this logical fallacy repeated by people trying to defend a clearly racist statement or action. But this argument is nothing more than a red herring, a deflection from the very real issue of racism.

Debating the meaning of “race” to avoid acknowledging the evil of racism is, itself, racist.

Race is an arbitrary distinction that has no scientific basis. According to dictionary.com, race is “a socially constructed category of identification based on physical characteristics, ancestry, historical affiliation, or shared culture.” Arguing about whether a discriminatory action or statement is based on some narrow definition of race is irrelevant to whether it is racism.

I don’t mean to imply that race isn’t important. Race is a significant part of individual identity, like gender, culture, ancestry, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, eye color, body type, or any number of other factors that make us uniquely who we are. When race, or another facet of identity used as a proxy for race, is used to marginalize a group—dividing us instead of recognizing our common humanity—that divisiveness is racism.

In the United States we have no aristocracy, no birthright that gives any one citizen more rights than another. Our worth as a human being isn’t based on who our parents are, where our ancestors came from, or the color of our skin. The American ideal of human equality is captured in the opening words of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” In two and a half centuries, our society and our laws have come a long way toward that ideal, but we still have such a long way to go.

There are those among us who work to undermine these self-evident truths. In their view of the world, people are defined by their race and deserve to be treated differently. To them, racial diversity is somehow a threat to America’s greatness. In their divisive rhetoric, people are, to paraphrase Dr. King, judged by the color of their skin and not by their character. In their mind, it is justifiable to marginalize entire groups of people based solely on an arbitrary definition of race or some other characteristic that ignores our common humanity and inherent self-worth.

Racism feeds on the idea that some of us are less human than others. Whether that type of bigotry is based on skin color, cultural identity, religion, or national origin, it is ignorant and hateful. And whether it is racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, or any other term that places one group above another, treating someone differently because of who they are is wrong and un-American.

History teaches us that racism can lead a society to do abhorrent things that are unacceptable; the subjugation of millions of Africans through slavery, the murder of millions of Jews in the holocaust, the internment of our own citizens based only on their Japanese ancestry. Few would argue that we should allow such history to repeat itself.

But racism exists in our society in ways that those of us with privilege are unaware of or purposefully refuse to acknowledge. Systemic racism still exists in housing, healthcare, employment, education, and criminal justice. We need to acknowledge this and work to overcome it. We must face the fact that black and Hispanic men are 2.8 and 1.7 times more likely to be killed by police than whites¹. We must push for changes in laws that disenfranchise minorities through gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts. And we should continue to call out racism whenever and wherever it raises its ugly head.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. – Bishop Desmond Tutu

Maybe your definition of race is narrower than mine, but that doesn’t change the fact that racism exists. Maybe we need a new word to describe racism, but no matter what you call it or how you define it, treating someone as less than human ignores our common humanity and diminishes us all.

Anytime we allow someone to be treated differently based on their identity, rather than on their individual worth as a human being, we are complicit in racism.

¹ Source: “Racial/Ethnic Disparities in the use of Lethal Force by US Police, 2010-2014,” American Journal of Public Health, as reported by CNN, December 20, 2016).

Trickle Up or Trickle Down

Trickle Up or Trickle Down

by Ted Miller

(originally published January 2018 in Tumbleweird)

I recently read a quote from Will Rogers:

This election was lost four and six years ago, not this year. They didn’t start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue. –
Will Rogers, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932), as published in the Tulsa Daily World, 5 December 1932.

That commentary could have been written today.

The tax bill passed by Congress and signed into law in December claims to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. By almost any measure, the economy has continued to improve since the Great Recession of 2007. The unemployment rate has been reduced from a peak of 10% in 2009 to 4.1%, lower than it was just before the recession[1]. Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which measures overall economic activity, is growing at a healthy rate of 3%[2]. Corporate profits are soaring at over $1.8 trillion for the third quarter of 2017, the highest on record[3]. And the stock market indices are at record highs.

So why do we need to cut taxes? If the goal is to give relief to the middle class, as the Republicans who passed the law claim, this tax bill makes only a token, temporary effort at doing so. The middle-class tax cuts are modest at best and expire after 10 years while the corporate tax cuts are generous and permanent. The bulk of the tax cuts go to corporations and wealthy individuals. If that is supposed to help the middle class, it contradicts history: Providing more money to the rich never trickles down to the lower classes.

When President Hoover tried it, as Will Rogers wrote, the money trickled up, not down. Government policies that allowed market greed and corporate irresponsibility to run unchecked led directly to the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The tax bill of 2017 is more of the same. Cut taxes on the rich, deregulate business, and everyone will prosper. But, not only is this tax cut unnecessary to improve the economy, it comes with a $1.4 trillion price tag. Yes, the party of fiscal responsibility passed a bill that increases the national debt by one-and-a-half trillion dollars over 10 years.

There are so many pressing issues that could be paid for with that missing revenue. Infrastructure improvement was high on the list of campaign promises, but there are no programs to repair and improve the country’s infrastructure and now even less money to pay for it. Adequately funding of health-care continues to be an issue, but Congress won’t even continue funding the Children’s Health Insurance Program for 9 million children. Veterans programs continue to be underfunded and there are many other essential programs that are being cut or defunded by the current administration.

The worst part of the tax cuts is who will end up paying for them. Social Security, Medicare, and other safety net programs are in jeopardy and members of Congress have already signaled that cuts to these programs will be the next target. As the budget deficit grows, average Americans and those in need of a social safety net will end up suffering the most. This kind of action is not the promise of a government that works for all its citizens. This is not how we take care of our fellow citizens and “promote the general welfare.”

In the stock market crash of 1929, those hurt the most weren’t the big bankers and the wealthy, but the average, hard working American who suffered from the economic collapse. Following the Great Depression, we enacted programs for the poor, established social security to take care of our elderly, and imposed tighter regulations on banks and corporations. Labor laws have improved the workplace, supported the rights of workers, and helped make America a place where a living wage is possible.

But for the last several decades, Republicans have worked to erode or eliminate many of these programs. Banking regulations passed less than a decade ago in response to the recession are being rolled back. Environmental regulations are being weakened, labor laws are being undercut, and equality is being jeopardized. The economy is growing, and corporate profits are at record levels, but wages for the poor and middle class aren’t improving. The rich keep getting richer, but they aren't letting that extra wealth trickle down to the rest of the population.

This tax cut is not about helping the middle class. It’s about concentrating wealth for members of Congress, their wealthy supporters, and corporate America.

Will Rogers got it right. Trickle-down economics is a farce. Capitalism is only sustainable with a well-regulated economy that balances the drive for profit at any cost. Until we have a Congress that truly represents the interests of all Americans, our economy will continue to trickle up.

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[1] Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics – bls.gov

[2] Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities - cpbb.org

[3] Source:  U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis - bea.gov