Question Authority

The Grand Jury’s failure to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo in the Eric Garner case is, I believe, fundamentally different from the outcome of the Darren Wilson / Michael Brown case, and arguably different from the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case and any of a number of other white-on-black police killings of civilians in which the officers involved claimed to be reacting out of fear for their own lives. Whether we choose to believe any or all of them is, of course, a personal decision. 

Eric Garner had no gun.  He didn’t put his hand in his pocket (not that there would have been anything wrong with that, of course, other than that it would have provided a convenient excuse for the aggressive cop, Pantaleo, and his four – count ‘em, four – fellow officers to claim that they “feared for their lives.”)  He made no threatening moves whatsoever. 

This guy's "crime" was selling untaxed cigarettes. Let’s pause right there and ask ourselves whether the crime rate on Staten Island is so low that selling loose cigarettes on a street corner warrants dispatching five officers to the scene.  Weren’t there at least one or two auto body shops laundering money for the mob that might have made better targets for investigation that day?  But, putting that aside for the moment, Garner was put in a chokehold, in clear violation of NYPD rules. No one disputes this, and if they did, the entire incident was captured on video to set the record straight. In case you haven’t yet seen the video, here it is. 

Eric Garner had asthma.  He said the words “I can’t breathe” to the officers eleven times. He couldn’t breathe, and he died.  The medical examiner labeled the cause of death “homicide.” 

That this happened is wrong on so many levels; I cannot conceive how a Grand Jury fell for Officer Pantaleo’s semantics-and-remorse story (‘it wasn’t a chokehold, it was a takedown’) so hard that they failed to indict.  Failed to indict!  An indictment is not a finding of guilt, it simply means there is an accusation that warrants a trial.  This cop was clearly in the wrong.  There should have been a trial.

I am fortunate to have friends who align themselves all across the political spectrum.  We know that we’ve chosen to associate with each other because we like each other, regardless of any political disagreements we may have (and, given the breadth of the spectrum, I am always in disagreement with somebody.)

On this issue, perhaps unsurprisingly, some of my friends who hail from the right (and who, not coincidentally, are white) have been playing down or outright denying the existence of a racially-based pattern among fatal police encounters with civilians.  They’ve been focusing on behavior patterns of the victims – which is to say, the dead. 

They believe cops have a difficult job (no argument there – they most certainly do.)  They believe that cops, and authority figures in general, deserve to be shown respect (more on that in a moment) and that the only pattern connecting the dots between Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin and all the others is the victims’ own failure to “comply with authority.” 

I’m going to offer up a partial quote, actually a passage taken from an oath that public servants once routinely recited, that I suspect my friends who hold these beliefs will find appealing.  I’ll fill in the remainder of the quote later. No peeking:

“I shall be loyal and obedient [passage deleted], respect the laws, and fulfill my official duties conscientiously, so help me God.”  Loyal and obedient.  A plug for the Almighty.  Good stuff.

If I had to summarize, in just two words, all that I learned during my four years at college, the summary would be “question authority.”  Not reject, not despise, not provoke, but question authority.  To question authority is, I believe, to actively engage in critical thinking; a skill essential to our survival as a species.

Authority is power, and with power comes responsibility.  We all have a certain level of authority within our personal domains, if nothing more than the authority to make our own choices.  We are obligated to ourselves to make good choices.  That is the responsibility we all bear by virtue of being human. 

People who occupy positions in which they have power over others, in whatever form, for whatever reason, have a concomitantly higher level of responsibility than those who do not. The impacts of their decisions and actions extend beyond themselves, and can therefore have far-reaching consequences.

When I was a child, medical doctors were considered authority figures.  They were the all-knowing, Buick-driving Marcus Welbys of the world (apologies to younger readers with whom these ancient pop culture references will fail to resonate.)  We normal, which is to say relatively powerless, humans never questioned the judgment or actions of a doctor.  We didn’t ask for second opinions. We didn’t sue for malpractice when things went terribly wrong.  Such things could never have been the fault of doctors, because, well, they were authority figures. 

So, when my father was paralyzed by a botched spinal surgery, my parents never questioned the surgeon.  He was a doctor.  Years later, when our family’s avuncular family physician – a true Marcus Welby type who still made house calls – came to the house to diagnose my bedridden father’s sudden flu-like symptoms, he declared that it was, in fact the flu, and recommended the usual remedies. Within a day, my father was dead. The aortal aneurism that Dr. Welby had failed to diagnose had bled out.  But he was a doctor, so naturally the concept of “fault” never crossed my bereaved mother’s mind.  She Respected Authority; she did not question it.

The world has grown tremendously more complicated.  As a corporate manager, I am viewed as an authority figure by those I manage.  I am constantly vigilant with regard to my own behavior, hyper-aware of that reality.  My statements and actions may have exponentially impactful effects involving other people in meaningful ways, positive or negative.  I hold myself to stringent standards of behavior, and go out of my way to ensure that my directions, my comments, my motives are not misinterpreted.  I am an authority figure, so I’m held to a higher standard of responsibility than would otherwise be the case.  This is as it should be.

Doctors are sworn to abide by the Hippocratic Oath (or, I learned by Googling, some modernized version of it.) The legal and moral obligations of corporate managers are laid out in various internal and external policy statements and employment contracts.  Police officers take an oath of some sort (“to protect and serve” or something similar) and wear a badge as a visible symbol of their power and authority.  There are countless other examples (teachers, firefighters, attorneys, EMTs, clergy members, and on and on) of professions that require symbolic expressions aimed at ensuring that practitioners are worthy of the public trust.  And, as all are human, there are inevitably “good” and “bad” professionals of every stripe – those who live up to the commitment they’ve made, and those who do not.

Power and authority can save lives, ruin lives, cripple, or kill.  Power and authority, counter to appearances, are not conveyed in full at the moment an oath is taken or a badge is awarded.  Power and authority, all of it, flows from those who are not in power: the governed, the citizenry, the patients, the students, the taxed, the voters.   

One who abuses his/her power is destined to lose it, sooner or later. This can happen at the individual level, swiftly (as when one is indicted and convicted) or it can happen at the macro level, with time, when critical mass is reached – as when, for example, the countless childhood victims of clergy abuse {perhaps the ultimate abuse of power} finally came forward, shattering years of silence and nearly bringing down the Catholic church.  Those victims were not only right, they were morally compelled to speak out and – wait for it – Question Authority.

We are witnessing another groundswell.  Whatever the underlying reasons may be – and people can and will continue to disagree as to what they are – there have simply been too many incidents involving unjustified, fatal white-on-black encounters with police. We are reaching critical mass.  We have already seen rioting.  We will see more. The Eric Garner case will ultimately prove to be a tipping point.  It was clear-cut, unambiguous.  It was documented with videotape.  And still, the guy with the badge walked.  I question his authority.  So should we all.

“I shall be loyal and obedient to Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the German Reich and people, respect the laws, and fulfill my official duties conscientiously, so help me God.”  --- mandatory Oath of Loyalty for public officials, enacted into German law, August 20th, 1934.

 

 

Genesis - a Parable

In the beginning, Mr. Morse created the telegraph.  Crude, costly, and rare.  And Mr. Morse looked upon his creation, and saw that it was good.

And Mr. Bell said, “Let there be voice, that travels across the wires.”  Mr. Bell called it the telephone.  Then Mr. Bell said, “Watson, come here, I need you.”  And there was voice, and it was good.

And Mr. Cooper held a brick into the air and said, “Begone the wires.”  And he called his brick the cell phone.  And there was voice, and there were no wires.  And it was good.

And Mr. Gore said, “let the wires and the bricks, and the larger bricks called computers, come together in cyberspace.  And the thing shall be called the internet.  And it shall be everywhere."  And Mr. Gore looked upon his creation, and saw that it was good.

And Mr. Ayyadurai said, let the postal mail travel across cyberspace so that all mankind may be instantly contacted, even he who has no voice and no brick. And thus the internet begat e-mail, and it was very good.

And the corporations said, “let us replace our postal mail with e-mail, reducing costs while increasing throughput and efficiency and morale.”  And so it was. And it was pretty good.

But the young, those not yet shackled to the corporations, said “send and receive not from the tree of e-mail, for it is evil, and ye shall be uncool.”  And the young instead communicated in an obscure language of tongues known as texting.  And it was fast, and it was kewl, and it was blasphemy unto all spelling and syntax.

The corporations beheld the young texting, and asked, “who told you that you were illiterate?”  And there was silence, for they did not understand the question.

Lo, in the early days before cyberspace, graduate students in the distant and foreign land known as MIT had said “let our messages traverse the wires of yon mainframe instantly, to inform and enlighten each other without delay.”  And this later became known as Instant Messaging, or AIM, or the Serpent in the Garden. 

And the young looked upon the Serpent, and called it cool.  And AIM begat Skype; and texting begat sexting; and Skype begat Webcam Girls, and it was all very, very bad.

Then the corporations, seeking to harness the superior technical knowledge of the young so as to maximize profits, purchased licenses from the Serpent, thence known as Microsoft Lync.  And they looked upon Skype, and repurposed it as Web Conferencing.  And the corporations saw all that they had co-opted, and saw that it had saved money. And they called it good.

Then all the workers in the land became users of Instant Messages and Web Conferencing.

And lo, there were no more face-to-face meetings, except online.  And it came to pass that they could no longer focus on their work, for e-mail, which had replaced the telephone, had itself been replaced by the IM.  And the tyranny of the Serpent known as IM demanded instant and constant attention.  Productivity was lost.  Money was lost.  And the Consultants looked upon this, and declared that it Was Not Good.

And the Consultants, Pharisees of the corporate world, said “I give you every tool of empowerment on the face of the whole Earth, the fruit of every keyboard and the wisdom of every gigabyte; go forth and heal thyself.”

And the workers said, “Watson, come here. I need you.”

And it was good.

  

 

 

 

Where are you from?

Since former senator Scott Brown lost his re-election bid in 2012, I had lost track of his career; so I was quite surprised to read press accounts of his announcement, earlier this week, that he has formed an “exploratory committee” to evaluate another possible senate run – in New Hampshire. 

My own opinion of Senator Brown’s record or his politics notwithstanding, and actually quite irrelevant in this context, my initial gut reaction was negative.  New Hampshire?  He moved there?  When did that happen?  Assuming he has indeed taken up residency and unpacked his boxes, what qualifies him to seek to represent the good people of the Granite State?

As it turns out, my initial reaction was shared by many.  The term “carpetbagger” has been popping up regularly in social media circles that I frequent.  Mr. Brown has clearly been trying to defuse such perceptions by claiming that he has “deep roots” in New Hampshire.  He has owned a summer home in the wealthy beach community of Rye for many years, and beyond that, his maternal ancestors had lived in New Hampshire for centuries.  Who knew? 

Intrigued, I came across an analysis of Mr. Brown’s claim, “I’m ninth generation from New Hampshire” in this article at politifact.com.  The article goes beyond simple confirmation of the facts of Mr. Brown’s lineage, briefly exploring what it means to be “from” New Hampshire, and by extension, “from” New England.  Cultural factors come into play.

This got me thinking… and pretty much forgetting about Scott Brown.  As for him, I still find his current political ambitions to be somewhat disingenuous, though certainly no more so than the Clintons’ calculated move to Chappaqua, enabling Hillary to almost instantly become the junior senator from New York; or all manner of Kennedy cousins holding elected offices while sprawled across Rhode Island, New York, and who knows where else they’re not actually “from.” 

Far more interesting to me is the question of what criteria apply in determining the legitimacy of a person’s claim to be “from” a given place.  We are all from someplace, right?  Or are we?

People I know who were raised as “Army brats” tell me that for them, “home” is wherever their loved ones happen to be.  They are, I suppose, ‘citizens of the world.’  While I can appreciate and even admire that perspective, it is foreign to me. Having never experienced it, I can’t really imagine what it’s like to feel that way.  I’ve always had a powerful sense of place - an emotional attachment to a relatively small handful of specific places that have significance to me.  If there is a spectrum of rooted-ness, I am at the opposite end from my home-anywhere friends.

If I strike up a casual conversation with a stranger who asks me where I’m from, in most circumstances I’ll simply answer “Massachusetts.”  It’s an unrehearsed, uncritical, and for most purposes, accurate response.  I’ve lived in Massachusetts since coming here to attend college, decades ago.  It is my home.  My children have never lived anywhere else.  But I wasn’t born or raised here, and if I allow myself to over-analyze the question, things get complicated.

Facebook, in its infinite, zeitgeist-shaping wisdom, provides its users with profile data fields in which to enter their “current city” and “home town” information.  I have never entered values for either, because place names are validated against a database (presumably to prevent people from misspelling the names of their own towns?)  This prevents entry of multiple “current cities” or “home towns.”  I imagine this must wreak havoc with the integrity of profiles for my globe-trotting friends, but even I am stymied by it, because if I were able to answer truthfully, I’d have to declare allegiance to two of each.

So, what would this mean if I were to decide to run for office?  Would my options be limited by the fact that my “New England roots” run back only a few decades?  In an odd twist of fate, the boat that brought my first Gould ancestors to these shores landed in Hull, Massachusetts, in 1664.  Does that count for nothing?  I’m sure Scott Brown could find a way to milk it.

On the flip side, If I were to uproot my family and move back into the New Jersey home where I spent most of my childhood – the house in which my mother still lives – would that make me an outsider, a carpetbagger, or might I get a pass from the populace there by playing up my “deep New Jersey roots” which do in fact reach back hundreds of years, despite the fact that I only spent a dozen or so actually living there?

And what of our summer home, Wellfleet, on Cape Cod?  My wife and I have been second-home owners there since 1999 – a longer span of time than I spent living in my “home town” of Hawthorne, NJ.  If we decide one day to move there full time, Wellfleet will be my Rye, albeit within state boundaries.  But I know full well that in the pecking order of Cape Cod street cred, we will never be considered more than “washashores” – the caste that is above tourists but below natives.  It’s that New England cultural thing again.

In the end, Scott Brown and I share a peculiar problem.  We are misfits, in a sense.  We are not globe-trotting world citizens; we have deep roots and allegiances to a relative few particular places.  Yet we aren’t quite all-in anywhere.  The problem, I think, lies in allowing others to define the answer to the question “where are you from?”

One can attempt to apply an objective formula – e.g., your “home town” is the municipality in which you spent the longest period of time as a legal resident while under age 18, or some such nonsense.  But it would be just that – nonsense.  The real answers, I believe, come from a more spiritual place.  We aren’t limited to having just one “home town” or being “from” a single place if, in fact, we feel connected to multiple places.  It’s tempting to tie these connections to other people, but in reality, people move on, and places remain. Some remain in our hearts, bound to memories that will die only with us.

I will close with a shout-out to all the places that I am “from”:  The villages of Warwick and Greenwood Lake, NY; North Haledon and Hawthorne, NJ; the Jersey Shore, especially Wildwood Crest; New York City; Boston, especially the neighborhoods of Back Bay and Hyde Park; Canton, Truro, and of course, Boxford and Wellfleet, MA.  Thanks for the memories.

So where are you from?  I’d love to see your list of special places in the “comments” below.

 

Hyper-specificity

Nearly a year ago, the Boston Marathon bombing pierced our collective sense of well-being.  Our nation was riveted by the news coverage - the horrific scene at the finish line, the subsequent shootings of MIT and MBTA Transit police officers, the surreal “lockdown” of the entire city as the police engaged in an unprecedented manhunt, culminating in the shooting of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the capture of his brother, Dzhokhar, huddled in a winterized boat in a Watertown backyard. 

Almost immediately, the stories of heroism and courage emerged.  Jeff Baumann, his legs blown off, providing an eyewitness description of the suspects that, without question, helped law enforcement to hone in on the perpetrators. Scores of others - rescuers who ran toward the bombing site to render aid, victims whose lives were forever altered, but who nonetheless persevered with dignity and incredible bravery – all etched this event onto the soul of this city.  “Boston Strong” is still heard in these parts from time to time, with no small measure of regional pride.

Now, as we approach the 2014 marathon, news reports of tightened security along the marathon route are taking center stage. And this is where I lose the thread of logic.

The centerpiece of the new security initiative is a “no backpacks” policy.  Also no handbags, no shoulder bags, no bags of any kind.  Boston.com (2/26/2014) reports: “Bags, used in the past by runners to carry clothes and other personal items, will be banned on the buses that carry runners from Boston Common to Hopkinton, where the race starts. And no bags will be brought by those buses back to Boston.”  No. Bags. At. All.

Ostensibly, because the Tsarnaev brothers used backpacks as containers for their deadly bombs last year, we will inoculate ourselves against another bombing by banning bags. 

Right.

Like almost everyone over the age of fifteen, I vividly remember the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. I need not recount the horror of that event, nor the palpable, fully understandable fear that clouded the years that followed.  One thing about those years has always – even then – struck me as bizarrely illogical: Our national reaction to the fact that airplanes had been used as weapons was to focus intensely on tightening security measures at airports. Air travel became a nightmare of silly rules and endless lines.  Three ounces of liquid in transparent plastic bags.  Random “pull-outs” for more intense pat-downs.  TSA profilers who deny being profilers.  We all accepted, and continue to accept the indignities of this treatment, because airplanes had been used as weapons, once.  Airplanes.  Not trains, buses, tunnels, or other transportation-related items.  Airplanes, specifically.

In December, 2001, while aboard a flight bound for Miami, Richard Reid attempted to detonate bombs embedded in his shoes.  In response to the would be “shoe bomber,” to this day every air traveler must remove his/her shoes as part of the TSA screening process.  Shoes.  Not wigs, gloves, or other particular articles of clothing.  Shoes, specifically.

And now we will focus intensely on bags along the marathon route.  Because two backpacks had been used to effect a horrible outcome, once.

I get it, sort of; but if I go into town to watch the marathon (running is, and always has been, out of the question) I’ll be keeping my eye on the trees, the storefronts, the manhole covers… pretty much anything but the bags, because we’ve got them covered.

Damage Control

Today I received a letter from the Automobile Division of American Honda Company, concerning a warranty extension for my car.  I very nearly threw the letter into the trash without reading it, assuming it was one of those ubiquitous solicitations to purchase an extended warranty.

It was not. It was, rather, a classic example of the way Corporate America steps up-but-not-really these days. American Honda no doubt paid some PR wonk with a legal team a small fortune to come up with this hedge. You can read the letter for yourself below.

Let's review: Honda is extending the warranty on my 2008 Civic 'to ensure my confidence in their product.' <cool!  feeling confident!>  There is 'no action required on my part' <phew!> 'unless I experience a problem' <wait, what?>

Why would I experience a problem? Because my car is apparently prone to “leaking coolant from the engine block.”  

So let me get this straight: if my car overheats on the highway, stranding me somewhere because of some acknowledged-but-undisclosed defect affecting the engines in my particular model/year combination, Honda will pay to repair or replace my engine block, even though the car is beyond its warranty period. But Honda is stopping short of a normal recall (bring your car in, so that we can proactively replace the {engine block or whatever,} which we know has some statistically significant likelihood of being defective.)

I am not going to find this reassuring when I’m stranded by the side of the road.  Shame on you, Honda!

To be clear, I have long been a fan of Honda products.  My wife and I own three of their vehicles.  I'm even an $HMC stockholder.  But as a consumer and loyal customer of many years, this is disappointing at best - and sadly, also typical of the way American corporations conduct themselves these days; every decision of this type consists of some combination of risk management, damage control, manipulation of public perception, and profit maximization.  Rare is the company in which there is an over-arching imperative to Do the Right Thing for its customers.

Not that I would expect corporate misbehavior in Dearborn to be any less likely, my next car may nonetheless be a Ford.  The Fusion is particularly appealing. 

Here' the letter I received.  How would you have reacted, if you had received this regarding your car?