You Can't Have It Both Ways

Most of you reading this can probably remember back to September 11, 2001. You remember the shock and horror that we -- and I use that term globally, because the whole world was shocked and horrified -- all felt. Shocked because no one could understand why anyone would do such a thing. Horrified because we couldn't understand how it had happened. Why it had happened...

Why did it happen? Why did our government let such a thing as terrorists attacking the country happen? Or, an even better question, how did our government allow the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor. Surely (as conspiracy theorists have been saying for decades), the government knew. And, to bring it up to date, how did the French government allow the Charlie Hebdo massacre? I mean, they had had one of those guys in jail not all that long before. They had to have known!

Someone, somewhere, failed to act and allowed these things to happen because, you know, they could have stopped them. Should have. They should have proactively stopped the bad guys before they had done anything wrong. You know, like in Minority Report. Surely, the government has future-reading psychics hidden away somewhere and know about all the bad things before they happen and are just picking and choosing which atrocities to stop (hmm... and that kind of sounds like what the British did during World War II once they had cracked the Enigma machine).

Look, it would be great if we could see the future and know, for sure, who was going to do what bad thing and when, but that's just not how the world works. Some people will do bad things and some people will only talk about doing bad things, and it's difficult to tell which is which. It leaves us with two options:
1. Catch the bad guys after they do the bad things.
or
2. Toss people in jail (or worse) just because we think they might do a bad thing.

There's this conversation in Captain America: The Winter Soldier about this topic -- actually, the whole movie is about this topic, but there's one particular exchange that really captures it -- between Nick Fury and Captain America:

Nick -- "We're going to neutralize a lot of threats before they even happen."
Cap -- "I thought the punishment usually came after the crime."

I think this is the central conflict not just in the United States but in all of Western culture, right now. How do you balance the need to feel secure against the need for something that is actual just (as in justice) treatment for all people? I mean, it's one thing to shoot a man down who has pulled a gun on you, but it's another thing entirely to shoot a lot of people down for no other reason than you think they might have a gun on them. Or might be thinking about getting a gun.

In general, I think we, as a people, really do believe in the idea of justice, the idea that no one should be persecuted or punished before s/he's done anything wrong. Punishment comes after the crime. However, when something like the Charlie Hebdo massacre happens, we immediately start up with, "Why didn't you stop them?" And that supposes that we should, somehow, not only know that the person(s) was going to do something but that we should also catch and punish that person before the crime has been committed.

Sometimes, it's the same person crying foul over assassinations and drone strikes one day then demanding to know why some terrorist wasn't put away before killing some people. It's not a thing you can have both ways.

And the truth... well, the truth is that some people are going to do bad things, and there's nothing we can do to stop all of them... that is unless we stop everyone that we even slightly suspect. That means, well, that means you, because virtually everyone I have ever known has gotten mad at some point and threatened someone else. So we either have a society with no freedom but total security, or we have a society with freedom and risks where we do the best we can and allow people the opportunity to do the right thing. Yeah, it's a hard choice, especially after an extreme act of violence, but you can't have it both ways.

It's time we make a choice and stick to that choice and uphold that choice. Me? I choose freedom.
Every time.

Selma (a movie review post)

I have to wonder if it's the historical controversies over this movie that have caused it to be so overlooked by the Academy. Not that that has stopped them from being all over movies like The Imitation Game but, then, those are less controversial controversies. Yeah, I know Selma got a best picture nomination, but that seems almost as if it was only a token nomination (because they had to) rather than any serious consideration of the film.

The thing is, I think the controversies, especially the ones around LBJ, have to do with perspective rather than actual fact. In other words, both sides are correct and both sides are wrong. Sure, Lyndon Johnson pushed through the Voting Rights Act and not even against his will, but that doesn't mean he didn't also act as an impediment to King. That's really the kind of thing that depends upon which side of the fence you're on. It's an awfully small thing to be arguing about in a film like this.

And what kind of a film is this? Well, it's everything that 12 Years a Slave was not. Where 12 Years is emotionally distant, Selma is emotionally gripping. Where 12 Years is brutally graphic, Selma shies away from actual depictions of violence. The club goes up, but you rarely see where it falls. What you do see is the aftermath and the emotional turmoil. You see purposeful, personal, systematic persecution of a people rather than the rather impersonal depiction of slavery from 12 Years and the isolated vendetta-style conflict. In Selma, it's not someone with a chip on his shoulder abusing a loan slave, it's a culture of persecution against a race. It's deliberate and it's illegal, and it was maddening to watch the injustice. Selma shines a bright light on what was a culture of intolerance and ignorance.

Look, I grew up in the South, and this movie made me wish that I had been alive in the 60s and could have marched with King myself.

That David Oyelowo was overlooked for a best actor nomination is frustrating at the very least. That Eddie Redmayne received one for sitting in a chair is an injustice. As far as I can tell from what people who know have been saying, Oyelowo was pretty spot on and, from the clips I've heard of King speaking, it sounded to me as if he nailed it. What I do know for sure, though, is that he nailed the speaking style of the Southern black preacher. I've been to some of those Southern Baptist meetings with black preachers, and Oyelowo, when he is delivering King's speeches, would have fit in flawlessly. It's also worth noting how monotone Oyelowo was when he was practicing those speeches to himself, but it was a tremendous transformation when he moved in front of a crowd.

The other acting is also great. Tom Wilkinson was spectacular as LBJ, as was Dylan Baker as Hoover. I have a fondness for Wendell Pierce and really enjoyed him as Rev. Williams. And Tim Roth... well, I wanted to punch him in his big, old nose. He needed someone to punch it. Stephen Root is also always good, and we didn't get less than we expected. Carmen Ejogo was also good as King's wife, but I don't actually think that one was an Oscar performance... except when you see that Felicity Jones was nominated; Ejogo was at least as good as Jones.

On top of everything else, though, the movie is timely in its relation to how you deal with terrorism, because that's what had been going on in the South for 100 years. I don't remember the exact quote, but there is a conversation between King and another man while they are in jail, the gist of which was something along the lines of standing up for your rights as a person and how to deal with the fact that the people who have been keeping you down will continue to try to knock you down. You just stand up again. It really resonated with what Charb said about dying on your feet rather than living on your knees. Some of King's followers did die, but they died on their feet for something they believed in, and it allowed those that came after them to start out on their feet. It's a powerful message.

You Can't Expect Better

Working with teenagers can be... Let's just say it can be interesting. They can be very creative, often in ways that will get them in trouble. Often in ways they know will get them in trouble because they're coming up with creative ways to do things they know they're not supposed to do. Fortunately, it's only very rarely that they come up with some brand new way to get into trouble. Usually, they're just re-inventing the wheel and doing the kinds of things we did when we were kids. Like telling your parents that you're sleeping over at someone else's house while that person tells his parents that he's sleeping over at your house.

Not that I ever did that. Or anything, really. Because I was the "good kid" who never got in trouble. But I had friends who did things and, mostly, what they wanted from me was to cover for them, because, hey, if I said it, it must be true. "Good kid," remember? My parents never had to bother with giving me a curfew, because I never stayed out late.

As I have mentioned before, I spent more than a few years working as a youth pastor. I learned very early on to be completely explicit with expectations and consequences. If you're not completely explicit, teenagers will try to get creative on you. Or, you know, tell you that you never said whatever it was you were trying to imply. When dealing with teens, never imply. Actually, when dealing with people, never imply. In general, leaving things to implication will never lead anywhere positive.

The first church I was youth pastor at after I moved out to CA didn't have its own building. The church rented space in a school auditorium for Sunday services. When I got there, that's all they had, Sunday services, and nothing specifically set up for the teenagers. As such, the youth group was very small. Less than a dozen kids and a significant portion of those were kids of the other staff. One of the first things I did was set up a midweek youth service that we had in the church offices, which were quite small. And, so, it didn't take us long to outgrow the space (we grew to over 30 kids within the first year I was there), which is when I had to start getting creative.

We moved to a house with a large living room that could fit everyone. The explicit rule was that once you got there, you stayed, a rule made after one of the girls turned 17, got a car for her birthday, and started using youth group as her excuse to go cruise. She'd show up for long enough to say she was there then cut and run. But it was still a house and had a more casual feel to it. People did things like ring the doorbell when they arrived, which was disruptive when they got there late.

So, one night, one particular girl -- she was 15 or 16 -- was sitting on the couch by the window, and she kept looking outside. A car pulled up and, before the person got all the way to the door, she jumped up to get it. As it turned out, it was her boyfriend and, instead of coming in, she went out, and they left. On Sunday after, I let her know that she couldn't back on Wednesday night, the explicit consequence, until I had had a meeting with her father about her behavior. My view was this: If you were going to leave in the middle, then you didn't want to be there. If you didn't want to be there, you didn't need to be there.

Let's just say there was wailing and gnashing of teeth.

During the meeting with her father (for which the pastor was also there, because this was a buddy of his), he said something along the lines of "Well, you can't expect better behavior than that. She's just a teenager." Basically, my daughter shouldn't suffer any consequences, because you can't expect her to act better than she is. I was blown away. I had never heard a parent say anything like that before.

After I finished staring, I said, "Actually, I most certainly can expect better behavior than that. In fact, I do expect better behavior than that, and the other 35 kids haven't had a problem living up to that expectation. You'll never get better behavior if you don't expect it." I believe that.

It was with some distress that I saw someone post on facebook last week that the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, basically, deserved what they got because they provoked terrorists and you can't expect terrorists to do more than kill you when you provoke them. Now, while it's true that teenagers will misbehave and, yes, terrorists will kill people, that doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't expect better behavior.

After all, terrorists, just like teenagers, are people, and we should be able to expect better of people.

I mean, it hasn't really been that long since we had a significant issue with racial terrorism in the United States and, while that's not 100% solved, it's a lot better than it was. It's better because we, as a nation, expected better behavior. In fact, we demanded it. We had clear expectations and clear consequences. Maybe it's time that we, as a world people, did the same. Terrorism, whether it's racially motivated or politically motivated or religiously motivated or whatever, is unacceptable behavior. We expect better.

"I'd rather die standing..."

I suppose you could say that I was a real Looney Tunes fan when I was a kid. It came on at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday mornings, and I got up, religiously, to watch it. None of my friends did that. At best, they might catch one or two of the cartoons before it ended three hours later. Often, when I would spend the night at a friend's house, I'd be the only one up on Saturday morning, which is why I know none of my friends got up to watch cartoons that early. I'd only turn the TV on, with the sound down low, sitting close to it so that I could hear, and sit and watch Bugs, Wile E., and Yosemite Sam in someone else's still-sleeping house.

Oh, and Porky Pig. You know, the stuttering pig. Not one time in all of my childhood did I ever think that people who stutter were being made fun of because of Porky's stuttering. That did not stop a wave of protests throughout the 90s, though, against the pig and the removal (at least for a time) of Porky's famous closing line "Th-th-th-that's all folks!" Evidently, people (or pigs) who stutter were not considered good enough to be on TV. They might offend someone else with same condition. It's good no one ever told Mel Tillis.

We have become a culture too scared to give offense and too willing to be offended. Any hint of offense must be met with an immediate and very public apology. It's ridiculous and has moved into the realms of being an unhealthy obsession. This reluctance to offend has become the largest barrier to free speech in the world. We're too busy self-censoring to even know what free speech is. It's all about fear.

Maybe Porky is an extreme example but, seriously, being offended by an animated pig is pretty extreme. Probably, being offended by any cartoon is extreme. What a way to hand power over your life over to someone else. But I don't want to get side-tracked on the psychology of why people are blatantly offensive.

The actual issue is that when we all try so hard to never offend anyone and spare everyone's poor little feelings then, when there is someone who is willing to be offensive and ridicule things that probably ought to be ridiculed (because, honestly, more things probably ought to be ridiculed; anything that people treat as religion, in fact, from actual religion to money to sports teams), then that person stands out, way out, and stands out in that way can make him a target for retaliation from people who have given all of their power away.

The problem is that too many people, almost all people, just go along. It doesn't matter if it's wrong or right, they don't give things enough thought to ever get to that determination. Religious people are the worst. I say that as someone who grew up Baptist and worked in churches for years. I say that as someone who lost his first church position because he spoke out against something wrong the church leadership was doing. I say that as someone who was told, "Teenagers are not a priority for us because they don't bring in any money. Unless you can figure out how to get their parents to come to church [and tithe], we're not going to support the program [beyond being a babysitting service]." I say that as someone who is no longer associated with an organized church because every organized church I've been a part of has been more concerned with money than doing its job. No, wait, only concerned with money. The "job" was only a means to bringing in money.

But, then, churches are another of the places that are primarily concerned with taking people's power away from them. Satire, in that sense, can be a way to give that power back to the people.

Charlie Hebdo was not unknown to me before the attack on January 7. I didn't read it (because, well, French), but I agreed with its ideologies. I admired those men for continuing to publish despite the very real (as the massacre demonstrates) threat upon their lives. As Stephane Charbonnier said in 2012, "I am not afraid of retaliation. I have no children, no wife, no car, no credit. It perhaps sounds a bit pompous, but I'd rather die standing than live on my knees." That's not actually a new quote, the part about dying on one's feet. It goes back at least 200 years... to another Frenchman. People, some small group of people, have always been willing to stand up and die.

I can't say that I'm not afraid of retaliation. I have children. I have a wife. I even have a car, a house note, and a dog and a cat. But... But I would rather die standing than have my children live on their knees. The thing is, if more people would take that stance, the people who would kill wouldn't stand any kind of chance. But most people just stop at fear. And refusing to think.

Look, I get that Charlie Hebdo was irreverent, and I remember just how un-funny I found Bored of the Rings back when I was 14 or 15 and thought it would be a good idea to read it (but I was 14 or 15!), but!
When irreverence is seen as a justification for murder, there is no place left for reverence.

"I am Charlie."
and
"I am Ahmed."