Heroes in Charlottesville
Whack-a-mole
Where does this bring us if we hope to make progress and create a better world? Clearly, we can’t wait for a superhero to save the day. Maybe a charismatic and competent politician can do it for us? Nope, not without our help anyway. Do we stand arm in arm and try as best we can to love one another? Well, sure, but that’s also not enough. Vaguely trying to exude love won’t cut it. That’s the general thesis of many anti-fascists, anti-terrorists, and anti-racists today, that love will fall short and that we must physically crush these dangerous ideologies before they grow too large. “Punch a Nazi in the nose and teach him that there’s no place for him in America,” is the kind of sentiment that has been floating around a lot lately.
I disagree wholeheartedly. Punch a Nazi in the nose, I say, and you convince him that he was right to cry oppression. If there is no place for him in this country any more, he is further a victim and must defend himself even more vigilantly. Maybe his younger brother gets on board as well, and now there are two. If this cycle repeats too many times, perhaps their numbers grow so large that violence truly becomes the only recourse, as in WWII when hatred marched across continents and there was real all-out war. We are not there yet.
Instead of stopping at “love is not enough” and resorting to violence, let’s first examine where and why love falls short. Let’s think in specifics.
A few weeks before the rally, Deia and I interviewed a young Lakota woman in South Dakota. She described for us a Native American philosophy of absorbing one’s enemies. Take the conquered in, treat them better than you do yourself, shower them with comfort and kindness, and they will become one of you. She later expressed in the interview her fear that, after Standing Rock, future similar conflicts were destined to become violent. She saw no other way forward. There is a growing movement among Native American groups to renounce their social security numbers and become full “treaty status,” to create complete national separation. As Native Americans are a vastly disadvantaged minority, I can hardly blame any of them for these feelings. It is perhaps not possible for them to “absorb” greater America at this point, but I do like the principle. Is it possible for greater America to “absorb” Native American peoples in a way that respects their culture and allows them to maintain their unique way of life and thrive in it? Can we support rather than restrict indigenous peoples and thereby diversify our culture and elevate our nation as a whole?
Taking this idea to the current extreme, can we absorb white supremacists? Can we peer into the human beings underneath, flawed and damaged as we all are? Do we dare respect them enough to help them thrive? Is that wise? Can we stomach it? “They’re Nazis, for chrissakes! They’re evil! You punch them in the face! That’s what you do!”
What about professed Islamic jihadists bent on American destruction? What about would-be suicide bombers? Can they be absorbed? Is there a way to love them so fully that they can’t sustain hatred or a desire for revenge, or must we be resigned to the plan of dropping bombs on their heads until they somehow cease to multiply?
Even if some members of our society prove lost in hate, and the only recourse proves to be prison in their cases, we still have to remember that they weren’t born hateful. They were all babies once, giggly and sensitive and cute as hell. They grew into hate. If we wish to evolve into a better society, we must address the roots of that hate, the systemic causes of it, because new babies are being born every day.
I do assert that there is a way to absorb and love every single human being, both the victims and the villains. There is a way we can nip hatred in the bud. There is an option beyond inspirational memes, rallies, flowers, singing, free hugs, and kind words. Nice as those things are, they do not address the underlying problems that create hatred in the first place. The strength in numbers fortunately still enjoyed by those who believe in equality will only be fully realized once we create policy that restructures our corrupted system. Protesting with love is helpful, but legislating with love is crucial.
Legislating with Love
By and large, hatred and fundamentalism come from economic insecurity. They arise from loss, suffering, and fear. Everyone is the oppressed in their own story, to different degrees, and the way to absorb them is not only to empathize and to understand, which is already often difficult, but to actually aid them directly with their struggles.
We can’t do it individually or in groups. The problem is systemic and must be addressed systemically. It must not place value judgments, and it must leave no one behind. It must not burden people with stigma. It had best be a solution that acknowledges us all as citizens of equal share and value as human beings. Someone who feels actively supported by their community is far less likely to become the kind of person who marches in the streets shouting “YOU WILL NOT REPLACE US!”
In Iraq, as troops drew down, there were some calls here in the US to do more than just leave. An idea was floated, sometimes called the Iraqi Dividend, that we should help set up a system to ensure that the people of Iraq would be financially supported as they rebuilt their worlds. It involved creating a sovereign wealth fund that would return to every Iraqi citizen a share of the country’s considerable oil profits. This would be a dividend not for the government to spend nor the owners of corporations nor foreign interests to pad their profits, but instead a dividend directly for the people, each and every one in equal share. The idea came and went; some say it was squashed, with differing ideas about by whom. Regardless, what would the Middle East look like today if the Iraqi people had been given the chance to recover? Could this type of foreign policy have been employed elsewhere, too?
This idea of the Iraqi Dividend is a version of the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI). Essentially, UBI is the assertion that every citizen deserves to have a secure financial floor — an income big enough to cover basic living expenses — guaranteed to them regardless of circumstances, including whether or not they are employed or able to find work. It presumes that dignity and a drive for higher purpose are inherent in most every human being and can flourish if those human beings are not forced to adapt to a life of scarcity and insecurity.
The film Deia and I are making is an investigation into the concept of UBI in America. We are setting up an experiment to give a diverse group of Americans $1,000 per month for two years, and we will document and share what they do with it. We seek an answer to the human nature questions that arise when people receive unconditional income. We want to find out what changes in a person’s life and behavior when fear of catastrophic failure is taken away, when the gun to the head that is the threat of poverty is holstered, when people know that no matter what happens they’re going to be able to have a roof, a bed, and a full belly to rely on as they face the challenges their lives present.
There are many strong arguments for why UBI would represent not only a far more humane and moral social system than we have now, but also a more efficient, thriving, and productive economic one. Here is a great essay to get you started if you’re curious. For now, I am only focusing on UBI’s power in the fight against hate. It seems to me that an unconditional floor of economic security for all could go a very long way in winning that fight.
So yes, we need UBI. We need it for Christians and atheists, for grandmothers, for brothers, for painters, for the sick, for the healthy, for those who work, for those who love, and for those who hate. UBI for neo-Nazis. UBI for KKK. UBI for the rich and for the poor. We need it for people. We must give people security. If they no longer feel they’re being left behind or replaced, they can forget their romantic fantasies of rising up in heroic force, they can join the new us, and we can all progress together. Meanwhile, the truly and historically dispossessed, oppressed, and disenfranchised of us will be able to further grow and strengthen themselves and their communities, to take another huge leap forward in overcoming the imbalances and injustices of centuries of disadvantage.
It takes a lot of love and courage to forgive and to aid, and it’s so much easier for me to preach this than for someone who has been repeatedly hurt to practice it. I don’t suggest that we should expect the victims of violence to do all the work, to be perfect angels and win the day with love and patience while they see their brothers and sisters hurt or killed daily. We can, however, achieve such progress together through a change in our system. That means we all have to open our eyes and step up in support of that change. We must mobilize for UBI, among other universal and egalitarian reforms. We can turn off the gas that fuels the flames of hate, and it doesn’t require a smackdown. It takes the turn of a rusty, old valve.
To my fellow impressionable young men, let’s not forget that Conan was a barbarian, Patrick Bateman was a psycho, and both were fictional. Leave your helmets and your shields and your mace and your bats behind. We can do so much better. If Conan’s wise old trainer asked me now what is best in life, I would reply: “to embrace and support your fellow human beings, to witness them prosper and heal, and to reap the rewards of a just, effective, and loving society.”
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