Kinsley's conjecture
Daniel Drezner linked to an interesting L.A. Times essay by Michael Kinsley yesterday, in which Kinsley makes a kind of glass-three-quarters-full claim about tolerance in America:

Today's near-universal and minimally respectable attitude - the rock-bottom, nonnegotiable price of admission to polite society and the political debate - is an acceptance of gay people and of open, unapologetic homosexuality as part of American life. [...]

Such a development is not just amazing. It is inspiring. American society hasn't used up its capacity to recognize that it harbors injustice, and it remains supple enough to change as a result. In fact, the process is speeding up. It took black civil rights a century, and feminism half a century, to travel the distance gay rights have moved in a decade and a half.

Let's get it all out of the way: (1) That's pretty easy for a straight white guy in L.A to say.* (2) Judging by the wait since, say, 1776, for approximate legal equality for these groups of people, he's got the order reversed: it's taken gays the longest, assuming they didn't just form out of thin air or something in the 1960's. (3) Rah, rah, tolerant USA pieces are not the order of the day following the deceptive, mean-spirited state constitutional amendments against gay marriage and gay civil unions that swept the country a month and a half ago. The water's pouring out of the glass right now, not into it.

And yet: point taken. I make no claims to be a paragon even now, but I used to be worse; for example, I probably helped alienate closeted gay high school classmates (no idea... well, some idea) with thoughtless homo jokes back in the 70s, stuff that would redden my ears now to hear myself say. And even though I thought myself reasonably tolerant, I had to cross a double "who cares?" and "give me a break" threshold about gay marriage at some point, too. I don't keep haven't always kept obsessively meticulous logs of such things, so I can't say exactly when it stopped failing the laugh test. (I suppose it was seeing a couple of gay friends break up, and the pain that caused.) Which brings me to Kinsley's interesting conjecture:

This is also scary, of course, because there is no reason to think that gay rights are the end of the line. And it's even scarier because these are all revolutions of perception as well as politics. That means that all of us who consider ourselves good-hearted, well-meaning, empathetic Americans - but don't claim to be great visionaries - are probably staring right now at an injustice that will soon seem obvious, and we just don't see it.

It's true, a little modesty will become us all. Just as we might well not have actually been so great when rights were being demanded or ignored, or risen above the prejudices of our time and place, so we will necessarily continue to be insensitive to injustice not yet even perceived: call them maybe the "unknown unknowns" of injustice.

Now I'm wondering: what might those now hidden, soon obvious injustices be? There are the known frontiers, I suppose: the elder, the dying, and their right to autonomy versus their vulnerability to abuse. (Mine, soon enough.)

Teresa Nielsen Hayden points out (and as have many others before her) we're quite good as a culture and/or species at ignoring injustices that are plain to see, were we to simply take the trouble. So maybe it doesn't need to take much speculation or flipping to the news from Sudan or the Congo: just think of something you've consumed or benefited from without a thought to where it came from, and all too often there are ignored injustices attached to it: a sweater made in a Saipan sweatshop, a leafblowing gardener in Sacramento, a cup of coffee from points south.

There are injustices we may suspect, but don't have the means to see... yet. For example, it may become clearer over the next decades just what kind of mentalities our fellow animals have, with increasingly difficult consequences for a world of conscience, and even for those of us who just like a good steak or pork chop. I can even imagine the path that some of this might take: the same future devices that help future Stephen Hawkings or even locked-ins express themselves are also used to display, suggest, or maybe even "prove" in some way some real sapience in dolphins, chimpanzees, or other animals, not completely off the scale from the full range of humans who are said to have inalienable rights. Then what? (And, of course, maybe it shouldn't take 21st century neuroscience to accomplish this. But what if it did?)

Likelier, maybe, will be that some perceptions will be forced upon us and recast or re-cognized as "injustices" -- first in quotation marks, then simply as such. For example, it seems there will be an inevitable oil and perhaps a similar water crunch in the years ahead. Profligacy with those resources will be resented and sanctioned. What was once a simple matter of freedom and purchasing power may come to seem like theft.

The trajectory Kinsley describes -- consciously, acceptedly disenfranchised people fighting their way into the light with some help from their friends -- is more familiar. But I confess I don't have the imagination to point to an unidentified group in this country (thus illustrating Kinsley's point). It's easier for me to imagine the notion of "franchise" or the accompanying rights themselves expanding to things like minimum health care standards, or living wages. That doesn't seem likely now in this country, let alone globally, and it's under siege elsewhere. But it's imaginable.

I'll end where Kinsley began -- remembering his introduction to the idea of gay marriage:

Some time during the late 1980s, some guy (I don't remember who) from some conservative think tank (Cato? Hoover?) asked me at some Washington reception whether The New Republic, where I worked as the editor, would be interested in publishing an article advocating gay marriage. It was the first that I had heard of the idea.

He handed the job off to Andrew Sullivan, as it happened. I wonder who will write the next essay in the tradition of "The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage," and what it will be about.


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* Or wherever; New York City? And I guess I'm assuming he's straight because I've never heard otherwise. Hmm.
UPDATE, 12/20: I guess I forgot that Americans might be willing to revoke the rights of other Americans: a Cornell University poll finds that "About 27 percent of respondents said that all Muslim Americans should be required to register their location with the federal government. ... About 22 percent said the federal government should profile citizens as potential threats based on the fact that they are Muslim or have Middle Eastern heritage. The other results are a little less sweeping -- not all mosques should be monitored, etc. -- but it's not a pretty picture. I'm so proud. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:10:00 PM -- |    

 
Not so fast, Nationals
Ha! The DC city council has changed the terms they're willing to accept for a major league baseball team -- to be called the Nationals -- in Washington, D.C. City council chair Linda Cropp is insisting that private co-financing be found for the construction of a new stadium, instead of the city footing the entire $650 million bill. Baseball's reaction has been predictably chilly, as has the local media's -- although I saw a fabulous exchange on Channel 4 just now:

George Michael (sports): It was a DEAL!
Jim Vance (anchor): It was a BAD deal.
George Michael: It was a DEAL!
Jim Vance: It was a bad deal.

It was a bad deal. Good for the D.C. City Council, and who knows, maybe good for cities around the country -- it's just got a little easier to walk away from a Bud Selig hold-up. ("We of Metropolis are only too glad to stick our citizens with a $650 million project if those nutballs in DC don't have the guts to.") For more good commentary on this "breath of sanity," see Jim Henley and scroll up the next couple of posts.

Let's say MLB knuckles under. Maybe there's still a slim opening to get the name changed to "Bureaucrats"? I'd be a fan. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:38:00 PM -- |    

 
Reduced service
Blogging will remain infrequent for a while as I get over a pretty bad case of strep throat. I just about couldn't move yesterday, it felt like I'd hiked twenty miles with a fifty pound pack.

As some of you may have noticed, the site design changed late Monday -- by mistake; I thought I was fooling with a test blog but wasn't. All is now restored to the way I like it. Plus I finally figured out how to make the place look a little better for all my Atom feed subscribers by placing posts at the top of archive pages, instead of centered within them.

Case in point: my Germany travelogue of our trip in October, now updated with a final waypoint -- Schweinfurt, my first home town. posted by Thomas Nephew at 7:48:00 PM -- |    

 
Beyond belief

Presidential Medal of Freedom awards for George Tenet, Tommy Franks, and Paul Bremer. Steve Clemons calls them "Spear carrier for empire" awards. See also fafblog:

"Can my dog have one too?" "Hell, why not?" says the president. "We got like a truckload a these things."

Failed DHS nominee Bernard Kerik used an apartment donated for the use of policemen after 9/11 to carry on an extramarital affair. The New York Times' Elisabeth Bumiller writes:

...Mr. Kerik has had to answer questions about his connections to a New Jersey company suspected of having ties to organized crime and his use of an apartment, donated as a resting spot for police officers at ground zero, where he conducted an affair with his book publisher, according to someone who discussed the relationship with him. [...]

Throughout the process, the Republican close to the administration said, everyone at the White House knew that Mr. Bush liked Mr. Kerik, placing him in the special category of "this guy's our guy." Mr. Bush admired Mr. Kerik for his service as New York City's police commissioner on Sept. 11, 2001, for his willingness to try to train the police force in Iraq and for campaigning tirelessly for the president's re-election.
(via Josh Marshall)

Maybe he should get a medal, too. posted by Thomas Nephew at 3:24:00 PM -- |    

 
Conforming to Wal-Mart
The New York Review of Books features a lengthy article on Wal-Mart: "Inside the Leviathan," by Simon Head (hat tip: Scott Hanson) The article mentions a number of books and publications discussing the company, including Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed," and "Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart," a report compiled by Democratic staffers in Congress.*

While acknowledging Wal-Mart's prowess in logistics as part of the explanation for its productivity, Head focuses on the low labor costs Wal-Mart enforces, and lists a number of strategies that have the effect of encouraging abuses like time-shaving or illegal union-busting tactics:

• forbidding workers to talk of anything but work, and considering anything else "time theft"
  
• instituting so-called "decision making days" when employees explain why they shouldn't be fired
  
• permanently understaffing stores to put pressure on managers to get more work out of employees
• carrying out unlawful employee surveillance
  

A while back, I wondered whether Wal-Mart was as careful in selecting employees as it was in its supply chain. Ehrenreich provides one indication that it is:

The corporation insists on an elaborate aptitude test for new employees that is intended to weed out troublemakers. When Barbara Ehrenreich took the test at the Minneapolis Wal-Mart, she was told that she had given a wrong answer when she agreed "strongly" with the proposition that "rules have to be followed to the letter at all times." The only acceptable answer for Wal-Mart was "very strongly." Similarly, the only correct answer to the proposition "there is room in every corporation for a non-conformist" was: "totally disagree."

So Wal-Mart apparently wants people who instinctively give craven answers, or who are good liars, and this is a good way to send that message. The author concludes:

Since 1995 the US government has issued sixty complaints against Wal-Mart at the National Labor Relations Board, citing the illegal firing of pro-union employees, as well as the unlawful surveillance and intimidation of employees. But under the present law persistent violators of government rules such as Wal-Mart are responsible only for restoring the lost pay of fired workers —in most cases, not more than a few thousand dollars—and these penalties do not increase with successive violations. So long as US law makes it possible for Wal-Mart to crush efforts to organize unions it will continue to treat its more than a million workers shabbily, while the company no doubt continues to be celebrated in the business press as a a model of efficient modern management.

Democrats should put tougher labor laws and a tougher NLRB near the top of their agenda, and fight hard against letting Republicans weaken it any further.


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* Discussed in "Wal-Mart in the News" here earlier this year. For other posts about Wal-Mart click here -- and pardon the likely automatic Wal-Mart ad! posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:10:00 AM -- |