Harassing Harassers
My thoughts on the former Obama advisor (very important point) harassing a halal food vendor.
I just watched a video of a former government official harassing a Muslim Egyptian in New York City. Gonna share some thoughts.
First - I felt sick.
It’s a feeling I get rarely, but one that is so bad it’s indescribable. My heart constricts, I inhale faster, my brows tense. Inside, I feel vulnerable, depressed, hopeless, and terribly scared. Classic response to “someone is out to get me”, aka discrimination in its higher forms.
Why did I get such a strong response? I think it’s because I’m part of the community that was being attacked. Folks will say this incident is “shameful” and “against humanity”. You know what? My heart wasn’t really thinking about humanity as I watched that attack. It was something far more primal. It was the result of an inherent defense mechanism that perhaps viewed this as a threat to my own existence. Regardless of the psychology, it definitely wasn’t altruism.
Fighting discrimination is something I’ve been concerned with for years. Something that’s been disturbing me more recently, after I discarded societal rhetoric, of how should we tolerate intolerance? The default response by most “civilized” people (no offense) is intolerance, “war on terror”, “crackdowns” and “severe responses”. By saying this, I don’t mean to criticize only the West - this is precisely what most of the Muslim world, for example, is doing in relation to Israel. “Standing up for your rights”. “Forcefully ending apartheid”.
I deeply identify with the ethics underlining these statements: but I’m concerned both by the inherent, theoretical aspect of it - breaking your own law in order to enforce it, -but far more importantly, the practical issues it raises. What stops the cycle?
As I argued in Choose The Garden Over The Courtroom, nothing. Let’s take the Israel-Palestine conflict as an example. If we assume the best of everybody, Hamas attacked Israel this October due to Israeli policies, policies that even the Amnesty International has condemned. Well, Israel has its excuses - most of them valid. The pro-Palestinian folks have their adequate responses. You know how somebody wins in these non-arguments? They conveniently ignore the opposite side’s valid points (something I see from pro-Israel people a lot), or keep screaming their own points in hope that their own wrongs are extinguished (pro-Palestinians), or randomly place one year “where it all started” and disregard both history before it and events after it (both sides).
Let’s assume the worst of both sides, should you like. Both Israel and Hamas are terrorist states intent on destroying the other side. And this is where difficulties seep in. My own opinion is while both sides are definitely not in one easily classifiable extreme, they’re both bordering towards this one.
OK, so they’re somewhat terrorist states. Does that invalidate the arguments we made when we assumed the best of them?
Do not psychology, circumstances, and how life has treated you play an immense role in whether or not you become a “terrorist”? Does not the fact that the perpetrators of this war were once victims of some war they played no role in make their stances and actions a little more relatable? Isn’t it terrifying that by continuing this war, we’re breeding thousands of tomorrow’s terrorists and dictators?
We return to the video - “If we killed four thousand Palestinian children, you know what—it wasn’t enough”. The current total death count stands more than three times that. This man is saying this in in response to the 1200 Israeli lives lost in the attack.
You call it hypocrisy. I consider it something more fundamental, a frightened, pathetic, human being who lost it that night.
It gets even more disturbing. The real issue here is Stuart Seldowitz is not a frightened, pathetic, human being. And neither was Bin Laden. And neither is Netanyahu, or Ismail Haniyeh.
They’re just human.
And you’re human too. All of us have these frightened, pathetic, parts inside of us that rise in the most unexpected of times. As I saw that video, as I started trembling slightly for no really logical reason - I mean, if I was that anti-discrimination (which I claim to be), I’d suffer equally strong reactions when, say, blacks are being taunted in the United States. Don’t get me wrong: I do have a strong reaction, but this sort of intense feeling is crazy - and dangerous. I’d suffer equally strong reaction when a member of a dominant party is attacked by members of a minority party.
I’d have cared about Russia and Ukraine as much as I care about Israel and Palestine.
Again, I’m neither indicating that I don’t care about these things, nor that you don’t. We do - but when it’s related to us, our reactions are far less factual and far more emotional. This often short circuits our logic, and we do crazy, extremely wrong, things.
Am I defending Seldowitz? No. Am I saying that he isn’t that unusual? Yes. If he was in front of me when I was watching that video, and he was sufficiently below me in terms of power, I have little hope that I would have at least not screamed at him.
Seldowitz says he was responding to provocations. Maybe. The guy was provoked by a guy who was provoked by someone else who was provoked by… you get the idea. It’s awful, but it is human. Painfully so.
Me raging in my desk chair for two minutes is fine, but shouldn’t politicians behave more responsibly? I think that’s a valid question.
The biggest issue is that the rulers almost always represent the people. And the people are - well, not evil Jews or freedom hating Muslims or arrogant Westerners or whatever, I’m afraid - they’re just people.
That’s what we must change if we want broader change. When we can empathize how awful someone must feel when their own community is under attack, regardless of how rational they are or ought to be - when we can accept that yes, these violent thoughts are human impulses, but they’ll pass - and they must pass because if they don’t, the opposite side will soon think (if it doesn’t already think) the very same thoughts about you - that’s when our politics will change.
You might be uncomfortable by this very explicit acceptance of something so disturbing as human. Here’s the deal: humans think they are motivated by two big things - “rationality” and “morals”. They don’t like to accept anything else. That isn’t inherently problematic - but when bigotic remarks or discriminatory actions do enter your brain, you feel this is extremely against your morals.
So you rationalize it. You persuade yourself that this makes perfect sense. This is where the danger lies, folks. If we don’t accept that these impulses are human - they must be either rational or moral. If we indeed believe that they aren’t moral, then we arrive at what people are doing now: rationalizing terrible acts of violence.
We compare morals to each other, and often choose one over the other. The lesser of two evils, they say - when they can often avoid the second evil, if not both.
Is emotional manipulation wrong? I’d say it is. There are some slippery cases, but there are some cases were it’s painfully clear that the fact provided has no relation to the issue at hand. And that’s the second thing that struck me here: “Former Obama advisor”.
I mean, who cares?
Did Obama order this guy? Did he praise his actions? Did he train him? Did he ever claim that all of Seldowitz does is right? Heck, did he every mention him in public?
Why are people mentioning that?
He also served under Republicans: are they mentioning that? No, “Obama advisor”. It’s an unnecessary and illogical jab at the President. Sitting here, I can say it - but when people watch that awful video, they’re not going to think that. They’re going to say: look, even Obama, who allegedly the most nice and liberal and pro-Muslim President the US has seen for a while, is supporting Islamophobia.
It’s senseless.
Do we want a peaceful planet for everybody, or conflict for everybody, people? Because there isn’t much in between. You cannot subordinate people and expect peace. You cannot attack people, verbally or physically, and expect peace. I now remind you of something many, myself included, often forget: you cannot subordinate your ex-masters and expect peace. You cannot retaliate with attacks to people, verbally or physically, and expect peace.