Christopher H. Holte, 12/11/2014 in reaction to Senate Torture Report & reactions
If we want our party to "be all that it can be" -- we need to recognize that party officers do not always have the same interest as party members. The Democratic party doesn't belong to the officials, if it is to be a democratic institution it has to belong to US.
To move the conversation forward we have to start with the recognition that our own leadership has been failing us. They've been doing so for some very understandable reasons. Some of this is articulated in an article by George Lakoff that someone shared with me last night/this morning, but that I've noticed myself. He at least puts it into a list of bullet points.[http://georgelakoff.com/2014/11/13/democratic-strategies-lost-big-heres-why-and-how-to-fix-it/]
This is like an extended "favorite". The website Brain Pickings, which lists 9 Techniques for discovering and fighting "Baloney". Suggest people read their blog. But for my own memory I'll list them as 10 techniques:
More at: http://www.brainpickings.org/
Christopher H. Holte
On the 19th of November 2010 my friend Malvina Burstein passed away. She was a Holocaust survivor, though she was never in the death camps but was instead someone who did some heroic things during the time when the Nazis were killing nearly every single Jew they could get their hands on. I think of her everytime I visit her wife. Her grave is near that of my wife and I always say hi to her when I visit my wife. It has no headstone. I remember where it is because her husbands grave (Max Burstein) is right next to it. I always put a stone on it when I'm visiting her. And it makes me sad that she is forgotten, apparently by her own children and friends. But I do not forget her. I don't know what day her yartzeit is but today is close enough for this year. I'd been thinking of her and then I saw a memorial to another hero of that time who died this week and it reminded me of her while I was near a computer. Gariwo net summarizes her experience:
"Malvina was from Trebisow, in Czechoslowakia. When the village was invaded by the Nazis she closed her milliner's shop and hid in a cellar for one year. In 1942 she reached Budapest thanks to forged documents. Here she met other Jews." [http://www.gariwo.net/pagina.php?id=6711]
She told me she made a living as a seamstress. I think she said she made hats. She told me other stories too, including one story of one German Nazi officer who seemed to have a crush on her and how she was able to use that to help her stay alive. As she also told me (Washington Post Reports):
"A Jew could exist in Hungary at that time," she told The Washington Post in 1981. "I had illegal papers and no visa, but I got along. You had to keep well-dressed, look clean and neat, with nail polish and everything." [Post Article]
She had to act like she wasn't afraid. She seemed a fearless person to me. She smiled for us, she and my wife got along like mother and daughter. And My wife's mother ("La Suegra") loved her too. My Mother In Law didn't want to visit the retirement home however, she didn't want to move to one and those places gave her the heebie jeebies. So we'd pick Malvina up and bring her to the house or go to a restaurant. She needed to get out of the place. My Mother in Law could speak Yiddish with her. She adored her.
"One of them managed to obtain hundreds forged work permits for non Jews by ordering them on the phone from the national printing institute, by pretending he was a prominent industrialist. [http://www.gariwo.net/pagina.php?id=6711]
He goes on:
"Malvina, who was smart and good-looking, accepted to run the risk of life to fetch these permits for three times, saying she was the secretary of the faked enterpreneur.[http://www.gariwo.net/pagina.php?id=6711]
The Nazis and their European Allies from every single country operated their project of murder by starting with dehumanizing and denying citizenship to Jewish citizens. Non citizens had nowhere to go but Gas Chambers. British, French and US colonies wouldn't take them. If they coud make it to Israel the British would put them in concentration camps on Cyprus if they captured them. Or sink their boats before they reached Israel. The Mufti of Jerusalem was in Berlin egging on Hitler to finish the job. Rommel's target was Israel. People forget this.
"Most of the people who received the permits survived and fled to Israel. After the war Malvina emigrated to the United States where she ran a quiet life in the shade. She spent the closing time of her life in a resting house in Maryland." [http://www.gariwo.net/pagina.php?id=6711]
My wife and I knew her from the Synagogue and we visited her frequently in the the retirement home she moved to when she left her house. Her house in Silver Spring was less than a mile from mine. One year we spent time during Sukkot in her Sukkose Shelter soon after we moved to Maryland from DC. My wife and I adored her.
"The woman who took 1,500 Hungarian Jews into safety during the Holocaust passed away at age 97." [http://www.gariwo.net/pagina.php?id=6711]
Malvina was also a good painter. Here she is with my wife and one of her paintings:
They sleep within feet of each other. I believe I have that painting and one other. She was a marvelous painter too.
I miss them both. I really want to get a memorial stone for Malvina however. I know she's there, but who else does? I've got more photos but I have to either scan them off of old fashioned pictures or find my backup disks. I think I'll blog on her every year til it's my turn to join my wife.
When Malvina tried to return to Trebisow after the war she was treated vilely. She never shared the details with me but with another interviewer from 2005 she said (see above Beyond Violence reference):
"After the war, I traveled to see my house. We had a big house. I came back and the woman [the maid before the war who was the caretaker] hit me" and said "why didn't you die with the rest of the people"[http://books.google.com/books?id=hem3AwAAQBAJ&dq=Malvina+Burstein
Malvina called the police and "she hit me again in front of a policeman and he didn't do anything." Malvina wasn't the kind to be intimidated. She stayed long enough to get her house back, then "sold" "cleared" her house and left the country. I don't think she looked back. The choices were the USA or Israel. And for many USA had entry barriers. She married Max Burstein. Had children and lived (more or less) happily ever after.
I can't resist arguing with trolls. Been doing it since the 90's when I didn't know what a troll was yet and had a friend who was a rational seeming Libertarian. Over time he revealed his underlying ideology as completely useless and distorted. At first I thought he knew what he was talking about and rarely challenged him, but eventually I realized that he and that entire ideology was full of snit. Those ideas put him in charge of a reform movement and then sabotaged that reform movement. I've since seen the same thing happen to the Occupy movement. I blame libertarianism for sabotaging reform efforts since the 70's. It's not that libertarians are bad people, but their ideology is an astroturfed ideology made up of astroturfed straw designed to subvert real change for the 99%. Other folks, thankfully can provide the details, but the point is that I have found that whenever I argue with doctrinaire libertarians I'm arguing with trolls. The core of libertarianism is extreme selfishness and individualism.
What they did do was to turn me back to rereading source materials. Been reading up on Locke, Paine, the Federalist Papers, Anti-Federalist Papers. There are a lot of them and one can't read them thoroughly unless one does it over a period of time. I've come to be in love with most of the founders. Scoundrels, curmudgeons, romantics, sometimes corrupt. If I romanticize them it's not as paragons of perfection but as human beings.
We are stronger together.
There was a tradition of piracy that informed our country from before the first colonies were officially planted. And our democracy owes as much to pirates and Indigenous, Robin Hood and Blackbeard, as it does to the Athenians and Romans. Robin Hood legends aren't contemporaneous with the legends around the Magna Charta for no reason. In real life authorities steal, and law abiding citizens get painted into outlaw corners. The Yeomen with their bowmen won their liberties with their bows and arrows. Robin Hood embodies that fact. The core of democracy isn't the militia, it's the General Assembly that the institution of militia enables. Towns and yeomen couldn't demand rights just because it was the right thing. They could demand rights because aristocrats have their roots as military commanders and can't force people to fight for them without their consent all the time. It isn't the power of the militia to shoot at aristocrats or cut off their heads that protected common rights for citizens -- thought that helped. It was the fact that aristocrats depended on raising troops from among the common people -- and they had to make deals. When the Aristocrats forced King John to sign the Magna Carta they were making a deal of exchange with him, and they had to make deals with their commoners to have the force to enforce that deal.
There has to be a balance between central government and local government or their is conflict. And it's a two way thing. Hamilton explains why we want a "union" rather than divided neighborhoods and tiny warring states in his early writings in the Federalist Papers. In Federalist 6, Publius (Hamilton) notes the purpose of a unified Federation is to prevent war between States, quoting Abbe de Mably:
"An intelligent writer expresses himself on this subject to this effect: 'NEIGHBORING NATIONS (says he) are naturally enemies of each other unless their common weakness forces them to league in a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC, and their constitution prevents the differences that neighborhood occasions, extinguishing that secret jealousy which disposes all states to aggrandize themselves at the expense of their neighbors.' This passage, at the same time, points out the EVIL and suggests the REMEDY." [http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed06.asp]
I suggest people actually read Hamilton in 6 through 15 as he explains the value of a Union to our liberties. We see how fractuous our country can be, without a Federal Union that factionalism would have been expressed in even more violent and bloody wars than we saw in the Civil War. More likely also we'd have central governments that live on conquest, funding their armies with loot drawn from the citizenry. We are trending towards something like that now, but that just argues for reforms. Hamilton's argument for Union was that Union provides a check on local jealousies and rivalries. Without a Union things would be far worse and ordinary citizens would have fewer liberties.
Hamilton argued that we needed a strong Federation to move the focus of government back to legislation for the benefit of the individuals of the commonwealth. Even in his time individual states tended to legislate for the benefit of the legistlators and the principle people of their state. Results such as the Whiskey Rebellion or Shay's rebellion come from legislation that disregards or even oppresses the majority of the citizens for the "private, separate advantage" of the few. And coercive states suffer that risk:
"The great and radical vice in the construction of the existing Confederation is in the principle of LEGISLATION for STATES or GOVERNMENTS, in their CORPORATE or COLLECTIVE CAPACITIES, and as contradistinguished from the INDIVIDUALS of which they consist." [Fed 15]
We see this even with the "new" constitution he proposed. States treating some of their people like garbage and legislating for the benefit of local business barons rather than for the benefit of their commonwealth. But his remedy was in the power of a Supreme Court to uphold legislated rights and liberties and limit the power of states to fight one another or to oppress their own people. His entire argument about the history of intrastate conflict was to impress on the people the value of Union over disunion and civil war. We have either the choice of:
"COERCION of the magistracy, or by the COERCION of arms."[Federalist 15]"
We have seen the value of the "coercion of the magistracy" in remedies to segregation in the South and other misbehavior by state power against ordinary citizens. Our current civil rights laws reflect Hamilton's vision of replacing the risk of war and internal conflict with just courts. We can improve on this, but the benefits fo the principle involved are obvious. Hamilton reiterates this point over and over again. And in Federalist 22 he says:
"The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority."[Federalist 22]
And it's pretty obvious that he saw the Federal Government as a collaborative Unity where the Federal Government would check the states and the people would check the Federal Government and oversee officers at all levels of government.
Hamilton worried more about the ineffectiveness of the militia than it's effectiveness. Armed citizens are helpless individually against a corrupt and centralized Professional Army. We fought the British and might have lost the war but for an organized and centralized Militia. Militia supplemented with professional training and reserve capabilities is the equal of professional armies in defending the country but alone it is inadequate even for that task. It can be inadequate for invading foreign nations -- but that is something anathema to the vision of our founders and of most of us. And Hamilton warned in Federalist 26 that prohibitions on Standing Armies are insufficient.
"The Bill of Rights of that State declares that standing armies are dangerous to liberty, and ought not to be kept up in time of peace. Pennsylvania, nevertheless, in a time of profound peace, from the existence of partial disorders in one or two of her counties, has resolved to raise a body of troops; and in all probability will keep them up as long as there is any appearance of danger to the public peace."[Fed 25]
Which is why we have a National Guard that requires the State Governor to get permission of the President to use it. The Story of Pa pre-Constitution is also why these "foreign entanglements" we have now are toxic. Eternal warfare is even worse than keeping a standing army in time of peace. And historically we've seen time and time again how folks who are very stentorian (loud) about the constitution when it is convenient, treat it like toilet paper when they are afraid of, say, minorities. Police used in SWAT formation against demonstrators are essentially a standing army being used to repress dissent.
"The conduct of Massachusetts affords a lesson on the same subject, though on different ground. That State (without waiting for the sanction of Congress, as the articles of the Confederation require) was compelled to raise troops to quell a domestic insurrection, and still keeps a corps in pay to prevent a revival of the spirit of revolt. The particular constitution of Massachusetts opposed no obstacle to the measure; but the instance is still of use to instruct us that cases are likely to occur under our government, as well as under those of other nations, which will sometimes render a military force in time of peace essential to the security of the society, and that it is therefore improper in this respect to control the legislative discretion." [Fed 25]
Hamilton as an elitist saw a revolt by ordinary farmers and workmen as alarming. But there are times when revolts should alarm anyone such as when insurrectionists start engaging in lynchings and "ethnic cleansing" such as happens in the South. At such times a non-representative militia is as likely to be an agent of repression as an agent of liberty.
"It also teaches us, in its application to the United States, how little the rights of a feeble government are likely to be respected, even by its own constituents. And it teaches us, in addition to the rest, how unequal parchment provisions are to a struggle with public necessity..." [Fed 25]
The revolts mentioned were popular insurrections and the people involved should have been able to elect leaders and overthrow the government with elections, but many of them didn't have the right to vote. In the end, even with military forces they won the right to vote and the government made at least some concessions to them. The reason that happened is that they were needed in order to make any kind of military possible. The people are a check on both Federal Government and State Government -- to the extent that they can assemble generally and develop some unity.
The value of Militia is their connection to democracy. The original militia muster, was also the time when ordinary people could assemble and petition for their needs. Local Democracy has always been associated with the need to defend the state and pay it's bills. We are stronger together and divided we are weak. United we guarantee our liberties at the same time we provide for the general welfare. Divided we fight, die, are oppressed and destroy the tools of our happiness.
Further reading; Please read the Federalist Papers!
The police cite the "Broken Window" theory when justifying police murders, but the Atlantic article they cite doesn't support the argument that police should be arresting people for minor crimes to prevent bigger crimes. The article was talking about how the way to prevent bigger crimes is to have community policing that keeps the locals feeling safe. As I noted in my previous post [http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/11/why-broken-windows-theory-was-corrupted.html]. The Atlantic quote is:
"one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing."
The article talked about the importance of on the ground policing "community policing", where the purpose of local constabulary is to maintain order and not just to make arrests or enforce top down laws. The Broken Glass theory before being distorted was premised on the very obvious observation that. Broken Glass theory was about the important of not letting "untended behavior go on in communities because:
""untended" behavior also leads to the breakdown of community controls. A stable neighborhood of families who care for their homes, mind each other's children, and confidently frown on unwanted intruders can change, in a few years or even a few months, to an inhospitable and frightening jungle."
It was tendered on the importance of police and communities being "community."
"The essence of the police role in maintaining order is to reinforce the informal control mechanisms of the community itself. The police cannot, without committing extraordinary resources, provide a substitute for that informal control. On the other hand, to reinforce those natural forces the police must accommodate them. And therein lies the problem"
But of course the "Broken window" theory applied was opposite. Instead of focusing on the need for police to provide local order it focused on two roles mentioned in the article
Many citizens, of course, are primarily frightened by crime, especially crime involving a sudden, violent attack by a stranger. This risk is very real, in Newark as in many large cities. But we tend to overlook another source of fear—the fear of being bothered by disorderly people. Not violent people, nor, necessarily, criminals, but disreputable or obstreperous or unpredictable people: panhandlers, drunks, addicts, rowdy teenagers, prostitutes, loiterers, the mentally disturbed.
And instead of regarding these people as citizens to be helped off the street and treated, the police began looking for ways to eliminate them. Sometimes literally.
Nevermind that the article was talking about the need for legitimacy, intimacy and involvement of police and being part of the community. The Atlantic article had talked about how even white police could patrol black neighborhoods if they knew the neighborhoods:
"The people were made up of "regulars" and "strangers." Regulars included both "decent folk" and some drunks and derelicts who were always there but who "knew their place."
The key is to respect the integrity of neighborhoods. And that is not what the police are doing. Choking citizens is not community policing. Though Staten Island is closer to community policing than what happened in Cincinnati or Ferguson.
I go into what I think we should do in more detail in The Neighborhood and the City The Village and The Town and We need local community government.
