Showing posts with label Explained:. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Explained:. Show all posts

America Explained: guns and society, from my viewpoint

no-reply@blogger on Monday, December 17, 2012

In the year 2007, while I was a senior in high school in Phoenix, Arizona, I traveled to Montana, the state where I was born, to visit old friends. In one instance, I was wearing a t-shirt with a painted image of then-senator Barack Obama when I decided to enter a gas station to stock up on junk food for a road trip. As I was leaving and walking to our car, a man in a large truck yelled at me from across the parking lot, “Hey, you know he’s going to take our guns away, right?”

This is a common mentality throughout the United States. Yesterday evening, just as the NFL game between the San Francisco 49ers and the New England Patriots was getting underway, the network coverage changed abruptly. President Obama was in Connecticut to give a speech addressing the recent school shooting where 20 children and several school employees were killed. In his speech, the President expressed anger. “We have do to better,” he said in reference to the slew of public shootings that have occurred in the U.S. in recent months. Immediately after the speech, people across the country rushed to gun stores in order to buy automatic weapons in anticipation of stronger restrictions on gun ownership.

The NRA is a prominent interest group in American politics.

The NRA is a prominent interest group in American politics.

The issue of gun ownership rights is the most fervent ongoing political topic in the U.S. The pro-gun ownership side is supported by the National Rifle Association (NRA). The NRA is the strongest lobbying group in the U.S., which means that every election unsung quantities of money are given to, mostly Republican, lawmakers in order to ensure that no new restrictions on gun ownership will occur. On the other side of the issue are Democratic lawmakers, for the most part, who want to place buying restrictions on certain types of guns, notably assault rifles and hand guns. If it’s not a sensible hunting weapon it doesn’t belong on the streets, is their argument. This debate has been occurring for a very long time, and it doesn’t look to be letting up anytime soon.

But, incidents like the recent shooting in Connecticut give us pause to reconsider gun ownership laws. Last summer I was living in Denver, Colorado with my wife when we heard about a mass shooting in a movie theatre not even 20 minutes drive from our house. The following night, when we attended a theatre to see a film, policemen were guarding the entrances. During the film, if anyone left to buy popcorn or use the restroom, they would return to the anxious staring of everybody in the theatre. We were all on edge.

When I lived in Arizona, we were literally just a few hours drive from areas of Mexico where people are being terrorized and brutally killed by drug cartels. On nearly a daily basis, news of drug-related deaths in Mexico can be read about, but never seen. This violence doesn’t cross the border into the United States, ever. The reason? Think of 9/11. The number of people killed on that tragic day is about 1/5 of the amount of children globally who parish from hunger everyday. But, the American response to an attack like 9/11 was large enough that 12 years later soldiers are still in Afghanistan.

As Americans, we are not exposed to guns and violence. We are never invaded or attacked, and we never see imagery from overseas. There are human rights tragedies of enormous consequence occurring everyday in places like Syria and the Congo. But, we don’t see any of it.

When I tried to visited the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, I arrived too late and was forbidden from entering. The man who told me the museum was closed, though, had an assault rifle strapped over his soldier. To the people who live there, seeing a security guard with a rifle is normal. To me, being from the U.S., it scared the hell out of me. Similarly, when I was walking in a small border town in Mexico, a policeman walked up to a car and tapped on the window with the barrel of his gun. “What if he shoots someone on accident?” I thought to myself. Talking with a friend in Tbilisi, the capital city of the ex-Soviet Republic of Georgia, he recounted to me the story of how he and his friends were in a street fight when some of the kids pulled out hand guns. “Weren’t you terrified?” I asked him. To which he casually replied, “No, it’s normal.”

Don’t think that guns are completely absent from American society, though. I live in Washington D.C. This city was historically one of the most violent in the U.S. Why? Poverty. Even today, incidents of shootings on city buses in low-income neighborhoods is a reality. For the majority of my life I did not live in or even visit poor areas like that. But, now that I see them, I realize something significant. To illustrate this significant point I’ll use two recent natural disasters. Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy. Hurricane Katrina occurred in 2005 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

To those people who have visited and know that city, it is one of the greatest in the United States. The amount of culture and artistry that exists there is beautiful. But, New Orleans is mostly poor minorities. Hence, the humanitarian response to Katrina was abysmal. Lives there are less consequential. No money, no voice. In the aftermath, wealthy developers have come there to buy destroyed (and un-destroyed) buildings as investment properties. Rebuilding the city is a priority. But, it is being rebuilt to fit a different vision from what existed prior. Low-income housing is being replaced with condominiums and high-rises.

Relief efforts after Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey.

Relief efforts after Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey.

Hurricane Sandy, which happened last month, affected the East Coast of the United States, not the south where New Orleans is. Here in Washington D.C. we had consistent rain and a tree or two fell down, but overall the effects were minimal. Parts of New Jersey, though, were not so lucky. Images of demolished suburbs and inundated boardwalk communities filled television news coverage. While relief efforts were quickly initiated. Now, Hurricane Katrina happened while George W. Bush was president, and as a leader he was a joke. So, perhaps part of the better response to Sandy involved who was in the White House. It should not be dismissed, however, that those communities most effected were neither poor, nor minorities.

It is the same case with gun violence. It’s the worst in areas like those effected by Katrina, but unless it occurs in areas like those effected by Sandy it isn’t prioritized nationally.

What’s to be taken away from this article for anyone who doesn’t live in the U.S. is a broad understanding of the role of guns in society here, and the politics associated with the debate over ownership, or crime. Again, on 9/11 3,000 people died tragically, and it disrupted the country so badly that even 12 years later people are sensitive about the issue and American troops continue to be stationed in South Asia and elsewhere. But, everyday in the world, 15,000 children die as a result of not having enough food to eat. In this case, who is Katrina and who is Sandy?



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America Explained: Politics, elections, and our uniquely flawed democracy

no-reply@blogger on Saturday, November 10, 2012

At last, the election of 2012 is complete. President Barack Obama has been elected to a second term in office, and the two branches of Congress have each received some new members. In this election, the flaws of our democratic process were especially apparent. This post briefly tells how the American political system works, as well as how it doesn’t work.

In 1775, the colonists of North America rebelled against their British overseers. The end result was an independent country called the United States of America. Originally comprised of 13 colonies, represented by the stripes on our flag, the country today includes 50 states, represented by the stars. Immediately after independence, a constitution called The Articles of Confederation was instituted. This established the country as a Confederacy, where power rested mostly with the individual states, rather than a centralized power. After about 10 years, the absence of a strong central power was problematic, and so a second constitution, which we call “The Constitution,” was ratified. This strengthened the central government, and empowered the presidential position, which George Washington first held for two consecutive 4 year terms.

In our current government, there are three branches at the national level, including the Congress, which proposes laws, the President, who ratifies or vetoes the proposed laws, and the Supreme Court, which handles disputes over the implementation of laws. This three branch system is based on the idea of “checks and balances,” meaning that each branch limits the powers of another, making dictatorship impossible. In addition, each of the 50 states has its own government, led by a governor who ratifies laws proposed by a legislature. National laws apply everywhere, but state laws change in each state.

The biggest difference between American politics and other democratic systems is that we don’t have a parliament where several parties are represented. We have a two-party system, where political leaders either belong to the Democratic Party or to the Republican Party. We have lots of other political parties too, but 95% of American politicians belong to the big two parties. The Republican and Democratic Parties have undergone many changes throughout history. Today, Republicans are the conservative party and Democrats are the liberal party, generally. Democrats favor social policies that help the poor, in exchange for higher taxes rendered on the population. Republicans want a smaller government that does not perform these functions, in exchange for lower taxes. The Republican Party is more overtly religious than the Democratic Party. This is opposite of the Middle East and other places, where the conservative religious parties are more inclined toward social policies.

Our elections have always been scandalous and have involved foul play. Propaganda is as American as apple pie. Just ask our second and third presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. The election between them was filled with slander and lies. In the modern era, though, the influence of money is especially powerful. Our Supreme Court recently ruled in a case (referred to as “Citizens United”) that companies and corporations are, like people, entitled to Free Speech. Therefore, it is unconstitutional to limit the amount of money corporations can give to political candidates for elections.

What essentially happens is that political campaigns become so expensive, including the billions of dollars overall that are spent on TV commercials, that the majority of a politician’s time is not spent on  government duties, but on raising money for his or her upcoming election campaign. The intentions that political leaders have for bettering their state or the country are hindered by other promises and obligations made to the people giving them money for the election. Do you think Climate Change legislation will ever be a priority of oil company executives, who donate billions of dollars each election cycle? Also, if one reads the Affordable Care Act (aptly called ObamaCare) closely, there is a provision that fully excludes pharmaceutical companies from compliance on certain measures. I wonder, who asked for that?

On this issue, there is one misconception held in parts of the Muslim World that must be addressed: The Israel Lobby. There is an idea that supporters of Israel in the United States donate overwhelming amounts of money to political campaigns, and this is  one of the reasons behind the inextricable U.S.-Israel relationship. In fact, that’s largely true. HOWEVER, the majority of Israel’s supporters in the U.S. are not Jewish. They’re Christians, and they’re Republicans.

Support for Israel is a strong tenet of the Republican Party. That’s why Israel’s security is mentioned in every Republican debate, while Obama, who is a Democrat, has never even visited the country. In the U.S., around 80% of Jewish voters support Democratic candidates who don’t overtly support Israel.

The trouble with American politics, is that the overwhelming amounts of money involved sometimes blur the lines between paranoia and rationality. Is U.S. military policy tied into the manufacturing of arms and the extraction of natural resources. Of course. Is this the only cause? Probably not. But when government policies are obviously beholden to the wishes of some campaign money donor, it is reasonable to question its merits, and whether its intentions are for the good of the country, or the money donor.



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America Explained: Geography, and why we don’t know it

no-reply@blogger on Thursday, November 1, 2012

Recently, Hurricane Sandy bashed through the East Coast of the United States, flooding areas like New York City, and causing fallen trees and other debris to block a few roadways around my apartment in Washington D.C. Even though the storm was light in comparison to, say, Hurricane Katrina, which wiped out the beautiful city of New Orleans in 2005, it was still severe enough for my mother to call me every 10 minutes, anxiously checking-in on my well-being and offering kindly advice like, “make sure to have a flashlight, extra batteries, and bottles of water for when the power goes out.” It didn’t.

But, interestingly enough, when my mother and I discussed the contrast between inland and coastal areas, and she asked me which bodies of water were near D.C., I paused, thought hard, and had absolutely no idea. For Americans, this is normal. When it comes to geography, we’re clueless.

Americans’ poor knowledge of geography is a leading cause of our absence in knowledge about global affairs, and, in that sense, it is inexcusable, especially given the enormous size and omnipresence of the U.S. military. But, what exactly are the causes of this ignorance? With this article, my hopeful achievement is to explain these causes. My intention being that a global understanding of America’s misunderstandings of geography and global affairs will offer some much needed elucidation to our behavior here and abroad, which should also lead to the exchange of a few antipathies for emphathies abroad, inshallah.

The first step in understanding our lack of geographical insight is to look inside our own geography. Americans are cut off from everyone else. To the east, the Atlantic Ocean keeps Europe, Africa, and the Middle East at bay. To the west, the Pacific does likewise for all of Asia. To the south, we are discouraged both by a tangible metal wall guarded meticulously by xenophobic minutemen and an intangible wall of traumatic news coverage and other horror stories. While to the north, Canada, though with colder temperatures measured in Celsius instead of Fahrenheit, is not all that dissimilar culturally. Essentially, we our geographically isolated.

The theme of isolation also describes our culture. Few Americans could name a Japanese rockband. But, I’ll guarantee you Snookie and the Jersey Shore are known in Tokyo. True, we are a nation of immigrants, not discounting Native Americans, who have inhabited North America for a minimum of 12,000 years; Western Europeans, on the other hand, did not start settling until the late-16th century. Indeed, it has only been in the last 500 years that the majority of Americans arrived here, all coming from someplace else. As of late, however, there is a paradigm shift. Whereas Europe once dominated ethnically, as of this year the majority of babies born here have non-European origins.

We are taught in school that America is a melting pot, where different peoples all come together to form one unified entity. This is obviously a highly simplified rendering, but, for the most part, it’s true. We buy burritos, kabobs, and egg rolls all on the same street. America amalgamates cultures. But it doesn’t import them. Westernization has exported Levi’s to the furthest corners of the earth, but when it comes to popular culture, the current of globalization runs in one direction: downstream.

It’s important to understand that everything in America is commodified. Everything revolves around a capitalist lifestyle, where advertisements, endorsements, and sponsorships are pervasive. Holidays were once just that, holy days, and there were lots of them, mostly determined by seasonal agricultural cycles based on the lunar calendar. Now, we have condensed our holidays, spread them out strategically, and promoted them at every store. For Christian holidays, Saint Nicholas, or Santa Claus, as he exists in his modern form, was invented by an early-20th century advertising campaign from Coca Cola, while Saint Patrick brings charitable liquor sales. For Jewish holidays, Hanukkah has been given primacy by its close proximity to the Christmas buying season. The transformation of this minor Jewish holiday into the biggest of the year speaks to the power of commodification. Islamic holidays are also promoted similarly. For example, the U.S. Postal Service sells stamps that say Eid Mubarak during Ramadan. And just like Nike, Pepsi, and Levi’s, America has become a brandname; a product for sale. It is sold in the U.S. as nationalism and patriotism, while it is marketed abroad as modern progress.

Commodification is not all bad, though. It also drives innovation because companies are always in competition with one another, constantly vying to create a better technology, and ultimately a better-selling product. But, what does this do to news coverage in America? Well, news companies here are just that, companies. Journalism used to be a public service. Now, it is another commodity. So, as a commodity, it has to make money, and it does this through commercial advertisements. Whichever news company has the better news then makes the most money from advertisements. So, news coverage in America is determined by . . . ratings. The news company doesn’t broadcast what’s necessarily most important. Instead, it shows what people want to watch, in order to have the best possible ratings. And what’s most important, is not global affairs, but what’s happening at home, in America. The world’s worst conflict is not Israel-Palestine, but the Congo in Central Africa, where innocent people are suffering tremendously. And what about Darfur, where upwards of 3 million people have been displaced? Or Nigeria, where violence between Muslims and Christians frequently claims the lives of women and children? Or Western China, where the Uighurs, a Turkish-speaking Muslim minority, are persecuted by the Chinese authorities? We don’t see that. None of it.

Hence, the biggest problem: global affairs are deemphasized in American culture. In 2006, CNN polled college students about geography, and, after three years of war, 60% of them did NOT know where Iraq was located on a map. These were college students. Educated youth. Imagine what the majority of Americans, who don’t attend college, know about geography and world affairs. It’s not that we don’t care. It’s that we’re conditioned not to look. We can go weeks at a time without hearing about the war in Afghanistan, even though lives are lost on all sides of that conflict everyday. And as far as showing the violence of war on television news, forget about it. It isn’t like Aljazeera, which broadcasts wounded bodies. We see images of someone shooting, but never the target that is hit. Thus, we are also desensitized, because the human elements of war are a mystery, unheard and unseen.

When it comes to not knowing geography, Americans are guilty as charged. But in some ways, we’re innocent too. Unlike in the newspapers, nothing in real life is black and white.

 



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America Explained: An introductory guide for the Muslim world (and everybody else, too)

no-reply@blogger on Sunday, October 28, 2012

If you had to choose one item to be a metaphor for all of humanity, what would it be? A strange request, I know. But, think about it. What might you choose? A piece of fruit, to represent Eve’s forbidden act in the Garden of Eden? Facebook, to show off your 7 billion friends? Water, a substance we can’t live without? A Big Mac sandwich from McDonald’s, because “we’re loving it”?

The item that I would choose is . . . a fingerprint. Why? Because no two fingerprints are exactly the same. Just like us. We are all unique. And while we sometimes try to deny it by dressing the same, listening to the same music, liking the same movies, or using the same slang words, the fact remains that human-beings, the creators of mass-civilization, are also individualists.

So, if we accept the premise that humans are fundamentally differentiated from one another, the next step is identifying the bases for that differentiation. What really separates us? And why?

There are a few broad categories of differentiation with which we are all familiar, like nationality, religion, or language, as well as more specific ones, like shoe size, eye color, or boxers or briefs. There is nothing wrong with categorization. It’s instinctual. It’s how we make sense out of our environment, and the people in it, to best enable our chances for success. When we hear an accent in speech it’s sometimes compulsory to ask, “Where are you from?” This way, if we hear a similar accent later on then we can make an assumption with increased precision. What is the purpose of this? I don’t know. Perhaps identifying the accent’s origin simply means we better understand our environment, which makes us more comfortable, and increases our chances for success. Or something like that?

So, what’s the problem? Well, when we categorize too often, it sometimes leads us to focus on differences, or similarities, a little too much.

This is the purpose of America Explained. This will be a series of articles that will attempt to explain American culture, history, politics, lifestyle, etc. from an American point of view, but intended for non-American readers, especially from the Muslim world. Each article will focus on a different theme from America that is in some way misrepresented, misunderstood, or just missed.

Here’s why I think I can do this: I am an American. I am an aspiring cultural anthropologist, which means I believe in cultural relativism, or the idea that every society is equal, and that no one culture, civilization, ethnicity, etc. is better or worse than any other. I have lived in many different areas of the United States. I have a college degree in area studies of the Muslim world, so I have dedicated lots of time to learning about many different aspects of many different places there. I am married to a Muslim from the Muslim world. I also live with a non-Muslim from the Muslim world. I have visited the Muslim world. And, when I say “Muslim world,” I don’t mean any specific place or people. It is a term, just like “the West.” Europeans and Americans are very different, but both are from the West. Uzbeks are very different from Egyptians, but both are from the Muslim world. (Check out my past article Religion: We are all Right)

I humbly acknowledge that even though it is my fascination, I know very little about the Muslim world. When I am choosing themes for my articles, it will be based on questions, comments, or concerns that I have either heard raised from someone or someplace related to the Muslim world or that I personally estimate to be relevant in that regard. And I especially hope for international comments that include similarities, differences, and impressions. I’m ultimately doing this to listen, not to talk.

So please look for America Explained in the title of future posts. It will be fun, educational, and reading it will make you more handsome (results may vary). But in all seriousness, my sincere hope is to start the dialogues that I feel are lacking with regard to cross-regional relations between the West and the Muslim world, especially at the human level with respect to differences and similarities.

I want to eliminate our presumptions, while reminding us that we all drink water to survive. But, what type of vessel do you use, a cup, a mug, a ladle, your hands?

We’ll get to all of that shortly. Stay tuned . . .

 



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