Compassionism

by Mona Shaw

“The fundamental problem is whether we are going to tank the entire economy to save 2.5% of the population which is (1) generally expensive to maintain, and (2) not productive.”

                            -Scott A. McMillian

Well that didn’t take long. In a week, we’ve moved from social distancing to eugenics.

McMillian’s message mirrors that of the Sociopath-in-Chief in the Whitehouse, who said yesterday that the “cure can’t be worse the problem itself.”

Throughout the day we heard government “leaders” tell us we’re going to have to make some difficult trade-offs or painful choices.

Please note and remember this absolute truth.

Whenever a wealthy person tells you they are making a painful decision, they are not the ones who will feel that pain. It always means they are choosing to protect someone’s wealth over someone else’s ability to survive.  Always. In this case, it means the Plutocrats have decided to sacrifice old people to maintain their profitability.

You don’t have to be Nostradamus to see how this will play out.  It means they’ve decided to sacrifice old people to protect their wealth. The first phase of eugenics is to demonize a select population. This has already begun.  Remarks are emerging that praise elders who will sacrifice their lives for the economy and condemning those who won’t. Seniors are already being called selfish for destroying the livelihoods of younger generations for a few more years of life.

Most alarming is the fact that our history under capitalism suggests this sacrifice will catch on and become popular.  Not only are we about to push Grandma over the cliff, we’re about to be mad at Grandma if she doesn’t jump on her own.

Capitalism requires eugenics.  It always has.  That is its nature.  Capitalism prioritizes profits over people. That’s why it’s called CAPITALism and not PEOPLEism. In order to maintain capitalism, capital must perpetually increase. Capital must grow regardless of the human cost. Money must make money.

Eugenics/Capitalism happens incrementally and quickly at the same time.  It always begins with the most vulnerable and “disposable” populations. We’ve already accepted eugenics for the sick and suffering who are not wealthy. Even many “liberals” are okay with letting those people suffer and die.

It won’t take long for other expendable populations to be led to some proverbial gas chamber It won’t take much to decide we can no longer help the poor at all. Or those with disabilities. “It’s sad, but it’s just too expensive,” will be accepted rather quickly.  We already agree that the poor are contemptible and inferior in character, industry, and intelligence and otherwise generally irresponsible. We already resent it if they have a life that’s not bare-bones and miserable. We condemn them for going to a movie with “our money.”

Any extraneous work force will be next. Working class wages will be cut.  “We just can’t afford it.”  Or, “Anyone who makes more than $10 an hour is driving jobs out of the country.” Working class families will find themselves living together in cramped quarters that make the stories of the Soviet Union look spacious. The rich will get richer. Wall Street will see boons, and we’ll believe that most Americans living hand-to-mouth is a good economy.

The great irony is that all this human sacrifice won’t fix capitalism. Capitalism is not sustainable. Capitalism is a Ponzi scheme. Its wealth is on paper only. It’s funny money.  It’s electronic bites lighting up massive screens under a daily clanging bell. Eventually the scheme is exposed. We’ve seen this before. We saw it in 1929 and in 2008. The working people of this country then must endure living on even less, so we can bail them out. Again. And, when the dust clears, most of our sacrifice goes into their wallets.  The richer get even richer.

I believe the COVID-19 pandemic is real. The evidence is too overwhelming to deny. I believe it is as dangerous and as deadly as we’ve been told.  I also believe it is not out of the question that the brief plutocratic support for stemming the pandemic is exploitation to justify another bailout for another imminent collapse. They are certainly running with that.

The great American lie is that capitalism is our only option if we want freedom. We’ve been brainwashed into believing that our only two choices are capitalism or some Stalinist version of communism.  That is a lie.  We have far more choices. It doesn’t even have to be socialism, though socialism is a far, far more humane economic system. We can call it whatever we want, but we must construct an economic system that puts the survival of humanity over the wealth of a few. We can do that and still have democracy, still have elections, and still have the Bill of Rights.  We could even have a better Bill of Rights and elections that the rich don’t own.  Compassionism?

We are at a moral crossroad. We will either choose compassion, or we will allow ourselves to be bullied and cowed by the threats of the rich.  Whose side are you on?

Requiem for Justice

by Mona Shaw

In the late 1980s, I was standing in a line at the checkout counter at Hy-Vee grocery store on Waterfront Drive in Iowa City.  A woman ahead of me put a beautiful birthday cake from the cold food section on the counter. She paid for it with Food Stamps.

A woman, in between me and the woman buying the cake, decided it was her job to critique the cake woman’s spending decision.

“You know a lot of people who work for a living can’t afford a cake like that. My tax dollars are paying for that cake. You could have made the cake yourself.”

A sting of tears welled in the cake woman’s eyes. She grabbed the cake and started to walk away, but then she stopped.

“My little girl turns seven today.  She has late stage leukemia. She won’t see her eighth birthday. The only thing she wanted for her birthday was one of these cakes. I’m sorry if that’s not okay with you.”

She, then, raced from the store in that hunched, closed posture people have when they’ve been humiliated and shamed. No one said anything. 

There is some twisted and perverse notion in the minds of the privileged that poor people should never have anything they don’t absolutely need. They should never go to the movies or the Dairy Queen. Their children should never climb on a ride at the County Fair. They should certainly never know what a bite of steak tastes like or enjoy a pizza made at a local pizza joint. Of course, they’re should never have things like dancing lessons or learning to play a musical instrument.  And, God forbid they spend money on something like a package of firecrackers on the fourth of July.

To be poor in our culture means you are not allowed to have any pleasure in life that their critics take for granted.  Every penny is scrutinized for the frugality of how it’s spent.

I recall vividly giving a gay man who lived on SSI a ride to Des Moines. (He was disabled from injuries incurred when he was gay bashed. A woman railed an entire afternoon because when we picked him up, he was eating a Dove bar. It was somehow unforgiveable he could expect others to pay for his transportation when he indulged in such extravagance.

People with money squander money on ridiculous things all the time. But, they’re more apt to be admired than criticized for their profligate ways. Whether it’s a yacht or designer shoes, those people are held in consummate deference and fawned over in the most disgusting and cloying ways.  The richest person in a room will always have the most people circling them with obsequious grins.

“But it’s their money,” is said to anyone who questions the spending of the rich. Except, it isn’t their money. From the wealth they glean from paying substandard wages to their many tax breaks, they live more on the dole than any of the poor.

We’re expected to believe this is more indicative of their intelligence than their greed. It may be my poor trash roots, but I’ve never seen letting people die as brilliant.

The poor are abstract to the privileged. They are not precious individual human beings with names and faces and hopes and dreams and unique stories to tell.  They may, in this abstraction, be merit badges the privileged love to wear and earn societal awards for donations to soup kitchens or having liberal opinions. They are not their beloveds. They are bargaining chips in political wars, literally and figuratively.

It’s March 9, 2020, and I’m in deep mourning.  It’s my own fault. I had allowed myself to believe, to hope, that there might be a chance that an advocate for universal healthcare might get to the oval office.  It was so foolish on my part.  I knew better. I knew the Single Payer bills that have been filed still had a slim to no possibility of becoming law. But I hoped for a fighting chance.

Still, I knew the health insurance industry had a strangle-hold on Congress and both major parties.  There is nothing that evil enterprise won’t do to protect their profits. Killing people is quotidian procedure. There is no one in a seat of institutional power who loses sleep because dozens will die today or suffer unnecessary pain because they can’t afford the medical care they need. People are paid high salaries to manufacture rationalizations for this crime against humanity.

I’m in the last chapter of my life now. I must face that economic justice will not have a win in my lifetime. In review, I also must acknowledge my consummate failure at convincing enough people to care.  This morning I’m flailing in a bottomless reservoir of shame.

Loving your neighbor as yourself has never been and will never be, the American way.

The Justice Struggle Is not for the Faint of Heart

by Mona Shaw

For decades I wondered what I was doing wrong.  I sure pissed off a lot of people who were ostensibly on my side. I was mostly told it was my tone and my timing.  I agonized over both every time I did something. Sometimes my efforts did get traction. When that happened less radical folks would take the reins and cast me out as problematic as soon as a critical mass of support was achieved.

One of many examples was in 1990.  A friend, Brett Beemyn, had filed a complaint with the University of Iowa Human Rights Committee (UIHRC).  Brett claimed that a poster displayed in the Iowa Memorial Union violated the University’s policy against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and created a hostile environment for LGBT people.  The controversial poster was the image of Bart Simpson aiming a slingshot with a large rock. There was a conversation balloon extending from Bart’s mouth that read, “Back off, Faggot!”  At the top of the poster were the words, “STOP AIDS!”

The UIHRC denied the complaint. They claimed the poster was free speech. One woman on the committee also said the poster was a public service.  There was a gay man on the committee who resigned over the finding. I spoke with him, but that was all he wanted to do about it. 

I could only find one other person who wanted to make a stink about it.  I couldn’t just let it go. So, I issued a press release from the UI Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Staff and Faculty Association stating we were going to file a complaint against the UIHRC claiming their finding was discrimination. I listed my name and phone number as the press contact.

All Hell broke out. The University brass were caught with their pants down. I called an emergency meeting of the University of Iowa LGBT Staff and Faculty Association. There was no such organization, so I was pleasantly surprised when about 40 people showed up for the meeting. The consensus of the meeting was that the group would back the complaint and sent a letter to University President Hunter Rawlings saying as much. Several in the group wondered if they could just put their initials on the letter. In the end, some faculty and staff agreed to put their names to the letter as representatives of a community of more than 3,000. 

The matter was front-page news for weeks. The Chronical of Higher Education, Newsweek, and the New York Times covered it.  There were op eds not only across the state but across the nation supporting us. The University did a little damage control by posting an official letter next to the Bart poster stating they disagreed with the poster and valued their lesbian and gay members of the university “family.” We said that wasn’t enough. 

In the middle of this, we sent a copy of the poster to Matt Groening, the creator of “The Simpsons.” Groening sent a “Cease and Desist” letter to Campus Review, the conservative student group responsible for it.  That removed the poster.

Eventually, a meeting was scheduled in President Rawlings’ office to hear our demands. We were given these things.

A Blue-Ribbon Panel would be established to study the incidence of sexual orientation discrimination at the University.

The University would a establish a separate office to confront homophobia and support efforts to counter it. It would be called, “Opportunity at Iowa.”

The University would sponsor and donate its resources to a national conference on LBGT issues.

The UIHRC would find that its own committee had discriminated. The woman who spoke in favor the poster would resign.

I became persona non grata overnight. I was excluded from every subsequent university sanctioned activity. At first, I thought I was being paranoid. I tried to not take it personally. Until a friend asked me to tag along to the first meeting of the Blue Ribbon Committee.  The anger on several faces when I walked into the meeting could not be denied. I was taken to task for being there and scolded harshly for being some place where I was not invited.  My friend tried to defend me and explained I was there only because of his invitation.  Still, someone said, “You are not to be here! Leave NOW!”  So, I left.

I was squeezed out of the UI LGB Staff and Faculty Association. The group chose a more reasonable woman to be their president.  My salary increase was shaved for the next seven years. The wage smack was also in part because I blew the whistle on a member of the School of Music faculty who was excluding gay men from faculty searches.

Three years later the Office of Opportunity at Iowa would drop LGBT concerns as part of its mission.

The LGB Staff and Faculty Association is now the University of Iowa LGBTQ+ Council. It no longer has an activist component but does sponsor a few educational and social events a year.

Sometime later at some University event, President Rawlings approached me and squeezed my shoulder.

“I wish we could leave and get a drink,” he said.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“Sorry, kid,” he continued as he walked away, “You embarrassed us. You were the squeaky wheel, the loose cannon. I had to cut you out. Be glad I could save your job. And, we didn’t have this conversation.”

Still, this was easier than some struggles in which I’ve engaged. It was a picnic compared to what others have faced. When studying human rights struggles, I’ve found a consistent pattern. It isn’t what you do wrong that gets you in the most trouble. It’s what you do right.

I’m often struck by how common knowledge of the struggle and history of human rights advances in the United States is profoundly skewed and distorted.

Many believe it goes something like this.

A handful of people decide to stand up against an injustice. The others affected by the injustice stand with them. Then, people who are not affected by the injustice stand with them.  Almost everyone else is convinced. They win their cause. A national holiday is declared, and you get your photo on postage stamps and money. They all live happily ever after. This all takes about 10 years.

That’s not how it works at all.  Struggles for justice take many decades, if not centuries.  Most members of the oppressed group do not stand with those who speak out. Most keep their head down and stay quiet. Many even join in to persecute the strugglers. On top of that, the bravest and most outspoken are mistreated and betrayed by others in the struggle with them.  Almost no one lives happily ever after. For most their lives are forever severely damaged if not destroyed. Many are outright murdered.

Let me give a few examples.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered. He was not publicly popular on the day he died.  He was support was growing but spotty and unpredictable.  He was staying in a cut-rate motel when he was shot. Most, including those sympathetic to his cause, saw him as too radical, too pushy, too harsh, and too demanding. He was persecuted by the FBI and arguably killed by that agency. The family won a wrongful death suit years later based on that claim.  (The FBI admitted shooting Viola Liuzzo and defaming her afterward.)  He was constantly in contention with his own group, not to mention the white people who thought they knew better than he.  King didn’t write the famous “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” to white supremacists. He wrong to the Southern Christian Leadership Council, the Civil Rights group that had recruited him.  They were admonishing him for being too radical.

Susan B. Anthony didn’t live long enough to see women get the right to vote. She, too, was harshly criticized, within and outside of her ranks, for engaging in civil disobedience. She, too, died with a criminal record and fines she refused to pay. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was treated worse. She was ousted and banned from the women’s organization she founded because she had the audacity to take on sexism in religion.  Cady Stanton died still devasted by that act. Alice Paul was given a harsh dressing down by Carrie Chapman Catt for criticizing then President Woodrow Wilson. She was given a lecture about incremental change, the lesser of two evils, and not alienating “our friends.” However, it was the imprisonment of Alice and the other women who chained themselves to Wilson’s White House and their consequent torture that turned the tide.

Activists for workers and class rights were treated no kinder. Read anything written by Eugene V Debs, Mother Jones, or about the Haymarket Massacre to get a glimpse of that ongoing persecution.  And what did happen to Jimmy Hoffa and why?

Harvey Milk did not die of natural causes. His killer was let off on a junk food defense. The nation watched 60,000 gay men die and did nothing until ACT-UP became very civilly disobedient and protested Democrats as vigorously as Republicans.

I could write a book, but they’ve already been written.  We just need to read them. You’ll find the struggle never ends, it always requires a price, and it doesn’t happen in a voting booth.

Who's the Boss?

by Mona Shaw

Mike and I became friends in 2007, when I lived in Des Moines. He was a regular in a soup kitchen where I volunteered. The first time we met, he lumbered into my personal space, but it felt loving not intrusive. He looked me dead in the eye and demanded an answer to his question.

“Who’s the boss?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“Who’s the boss around here?” he repeated.

“I don’t know,” I repeated.

“I am!” he chortled. “I’m the boss around here!” He laughed and thumped his own chest.

“Glad to meet you, Boss.” I grinned and shook his hand.

I was an immediate fan. No one knew how old Mike was. Mike didn’t know. He looked to be in his 40s. He was a little less than six-feet-tall, average build. He frequently needed a shower. He was African American as are many in any soup kitchen. The legacy of racism affects people of color in poverty disproportionately to the rest of the population.

Mike had an intellectual disability. I never knew what exactly. He had the vocabulary and mental capacity of an average four-year-old.

Looking back on it, I’m not surprised we became fast friends. Our broken wings matched. We both shared the frustration of the inability to communicate to others what we wanted them to know. Yet, we understood each other and had meaningful conversations that were looks and eye-rolls and gestures as much as they were words.

When Mike hugged me, which he did often, I always felt safe and loved.  There is something extraordinary about a hug that is just for the hug’s sake.

He was clever. The first time I gave him a ride home, we drove around for a good hour, while he gestured for me to take one turn, then the next. I was close to giving up, when he pointed to the entrance of a subsidized housing complex only about ten blocks from my place

“Here!” he announced.

As he left the passenger seat, he turned and grinned.

“Good ride!”

He loved going to church, and he attended several. He loved congregational singing. He didn’t know a single word of any hymn, but he would vocalize loudly and with great joy until the singing ended. This annoyed or left more than a few people feeling awkward, but it always charmed off my socks. It was just so happy.

We hung out almost every day. I would be writing at my computer, and he would just walk into my place and sit on the couch.

“Hi, Baby.”

“Hi, Mike.”

He knew I liked quiet while I was writing. So, he would watch PBS kids with the volume low. Out of the corner of my eye, I would notice him watching me out of the corner of his.

At some point, when I write, I reach a point where the juices dry up. In that moment, I put my hands over my face and take a deep breath.  When, this happened, Mike would come to me and drop my car keys or purse on my keyboard.

“Play now,” he would say.

Sometimes we’d go to the park. He loved the carousel; so, I loved it too.  Sometimes we’d go to lunch. He always wanted whatever I was having. Except, when we went to a buffet, then he’d load up on donuts and desserts. He would try to hide the vegetables I would sneak onto his plate under a napkin next to him in the booth.

I know I’m likely going to Hell for this, but one day while we were riding in the car, he smiled at me and said.

“You beautiful, Baby.”

“Yeah,” I agreed sardonically. “I’m the most beautiful woman in the world.”

This became a routine for us in greeting each other.

“Who’s the boss?”

“You are! Who’s the most beautiful woman in the world?”

“You are!”

After that he’d introduce me as his girlfriend. I didn’t correct him because I could never think of a good reason to do that. The ascription came with no extra expectations from me at all. He never made any romantic, let alone sexual, gesture. It was more that he wanted people to know we were special to each other.

We had so many routines, like when he needed a shower.

“Mike, you need a shower.”

Mike would pull his t-shirt up to his nose.

“Stank! Ewweee.”

Going places with Mike was like walking next to Jesus when he rode into Jerusalem. It was a rare person who did not know him and didn’t greet him. Down every aisle of every store, throughout every shopping mall, any restaurant, or on the street, Mike was hailed.

“Hi, Mike!”

“Hi, Buddy.”

“Hi, Mike!”

“Hi, Buddy!”

“Hi, Mike!”

“Hi, Buddy!”

He was a true Des Moines celebrity. One day in the soup kitchen, another volunteer questioned why I was cooking something a certain way.  I was feeling impish.

“The Boss is my boyfriend, so I can do things however I want.”

“That’s right!” said Mike as he put his arm around my shoulders.

One day I was in a contentious discussion with another volunteer, Jim, about wealth.

I was insisting that wealth was inherently evil.

Jim believed I was letting jealousy influence my thinking. He believed in a meritocracy that rewarded people for ingenuity and hard work. The system may not be perfect, but there would be no progress without it.

People always look at me as if I’ve lost my mind, when I insist that intelligence is a privilege and shouldn’t be rewarded with material wealth any more than race or sex.

So, we did point, counterpoint for the better part of the afternoon. We were fixated on a popular television show in 2009, called “The Apprentice.”  I saw the show as an icon for how we foster a culture of greed and class supremacy.  Jim insisted it was a healthy example of rewarding ingenuity.

Jim was a kind guy, and he delighted in Mike almost as much as I did. He also knew how much Mike loved Hershey bars and Pepsi. In mid-sentence, he remembered he’d brought both for Mike.  He stopped, reached in his backpack and handed them over.

“Thanks, Buddy!” Mike was over the moon with joy.

Mike laughed. Jim laughed. I laughed. We all reflected joy in one another’s eyes. And then we laughed again.

After hugs all around, I just had to ask.

“Give me one GOOD reason Donald Trump should have a better standard of living than Mike?”

Silence.

“I can’t,” Jim finally said.

Mike passed away a few years after I moved from Des Moines. They don’t do autopsies on men from Mike’s side of the tracks, so we’ll never really know why he died.  I know I miss him and think about every day.

Mike’s life mattered. He was a walking, shimmering beacon of love and joy.  When I think of him, I always wonder why love isn’t our meritocracy.  What if love was the measure?

What if rather than spending every morning pleading with God in prayer to make me more effective in convincing others to care about the least of these, what if we lived in a world where that was our focus of attention?

What if instead of bickering about elections and political theory and describing the relative merits of candidates or philosophers and defending our fealty to them or other flavors of celebrities, we were talking about our plans to end human suffering?

What if the main news story was about efforts to end poverty and war for profit? What if we decided it was unacceptable to allow anyone to die or suffer pain because they couldn’t afford the medical care they need for any amount of time or for any reason?  What if we were hanging banners on turnpike overpasses demanding any end to racism, sexism, ableism, classism, heterosexism and transphobia?

What if we were advocates of unabashedly loving our neighbor as ourselves?

Mike’s life was a masterclass in that.

Red Baiting in the 21st Century

by Mona Shaw

Red baiting in this election is going to get someone killed.

The Red Baiters are getting traction, and it’s leading to things like this gem.

“BTW, If you think we are going to let Comrade Bernie and all of you little communist scumbags turn our country into the USSR, we arent going down without a fight. I think there is a good reason guns are and have been flying off the shelves for the past few years. There is a major storm brewing and people are going to learn what the 2nd Amendment is all about.”

This was posted by a Trump supporter on a Burlington, Iowa, Facebook page in a discussion about Sanders’ candidacy.

The blood this man is threatening isn’t just a wacko Trumpster call to battle. It’s a sentiment that’s being ginned up the Democratic Party establishment.

Every, single, time a Democrat insults Bernie Sanders for being a “socialist,” they trigger this kind of response.  You can’t demonize people for being socialists and not expect a violent response from those inclined to violence.  That’s how hate crimes are motivated.

Even so, the Democratic Party Establishment is wielding the “Better Dead than Red” sword with the ferocity that would leave Joe McCarthy feeling inadequate. Not since the nadir of the 1950s HUAC hearings have we seen such viciousness toward those on the far left.

MSNC pundits like Chris Wallace have compared Sanders supporters to brown shirts who would call for public executions.  James Carville has called for socialist Bernie to be stopped before it’s too late. Michael Bloomberg called Sanders a communist from a public debate stage.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read or heard some Democrat say, “I don’t want socialism,” when Sanders is the topic of conversation.

The irony, of course, is that Bernie Sanders isn’t a socialist at all. He’s a capitalist with a more progressive agenda than centrist Democrats.  His politics are no more “socialist” than were those of FDR.

DNC leadership knows this. Sanders has caucused with Democrats for decades. They’ve appointed him to policy leadership posts.  Sanders has been a darling of the Democratic party. He has been one of the most popular keynote speakers at Democratic Party fundraisers for years. He has faithfully serviced as their favorite sheepdog bringing home the progressive wing of the party.

This makes the DNC more culpable than ignorant Republicans for violence that comes from red-baiting. They know they’re lying.

The more you portray people as a threat to democracy and freedom. The more you accuse them of being dangerous to the public. The more likely someone will believe socialists need to be taken out.

The thing is. There are real socialists in the United States, millions of them. These are kind and decent people who share the belief that capitalism begets suffering, racism, inequality and senseless death.

It is reasonable for real socialists, communists, anarchists and mutualists of any stripe to be alarmed.  What’s next?  Will they be blacklisted again?  Put before tribunals as an enemy of the state again?  Incarcerated?  Or just shot on the street?

If the word “socialist” can be used to interfere in the democratic electoral process of someone who is not a socialist, what’s in store for those who should have the right to espouse actual socialist beliefs? Should they stitch a red patch on their clothing now, or wait until it’s required?