Sunday, May 17, 2009

Pink: the Color of Justice

I’ve noticed that of the many groups on the left, Code Pink raises more hackles than most. Of course right-wingers hate them and demonize them pretty regularly, but I’ve also heard them catch flak from leftists for their tactics, and just from casually informed people I hear more rejection of them than I would normally expect to hear about a political group.

Code Pink’s style of protest is to get into the face of people in power and call them out. Recently, at the Washington press dinner, they started yelling “Here comes the war criminal!” when Donald Rumsfeld showed up. A few years ago, famously, a Code Pink member with fake blood on her hands got right up in Condi Rice’s grill at a Senate hearing. I find it remarkable how offended many people get at this sort of thing.

The right’s antipathy is fairly easy to dissect. Code Pink is basically a women’s organization. Any activist organization on the left that is primarily composed of women is going to be a special target of the right because the right wing hates feminism, along with any woman who is aggressive in the cause of peace or human rights. The basic position of the right is that male supremacy is the way it should be, and that anyone challenging that is a scary extremist.

In terms of the mass of only casually informed people, it’s my belief that we have been instilled with a sense of “propriety” that pretends to be about respect, but is in fact based on blind deference to authority. Boldly and loudly confronting political authority seems frightening because of the unconscious fear of retaliation from those in power. It’s as if we’re all tiptoeing around the powerful, doing everything we can not to upset them so that we can stay out of harm’s way. Code Pink violates that unspoken fear, and it frightens people.

Now, if a group of people were to go up to Casey Anthony, a woman accused of murdering her child in a case hysterically covered by the sensationalist media, and yell “murderer!” at her, I would guess most people wouldn’t be offended. Casey Anthony is not an authority figure, but a media-sanctioned object of our moralistic scorn. Donald Rumsfeld, on the other hand, is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. But because it’s a war, and we’re not supposed to criticize war, since that would be unpatriotic, then people get offended by Code Pink calling Rumsfeld a war criminal.

Again, think of the socially sanctioned hatred that many have felt towards rioters and looters. I remember vividly the disgust and disapproval people openly expressed about the looting that occurred in Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict in 1992. Fair enough, it’s looting and it’s wrong. And yet, during the late 1980s and early 90s, the perpetrators of the Savings & Loan collapse looted on a scale thousands of times greater, robbing ordinary people of their life savings to the tune of billions of dollars. Some went to jail, most didn’t. In fact, Reagan-Bush policies allowed and encouraged the looting to occur, and taxpayers ended up paying the bill when the industry needed bailing out. Was there a comparable sense of disgust, contempt, outrage among the populace? There was not. These looters were elite bankers and politicians in suits and ties. Their power made it less safe to attack them.

Cowardice is the basic moral currency of American political life. The Republicans turned this into an art form. They learned how to divide white working class from black working class, men from women, straights from gays, Southerners and Midwesterners from Californians and East Coast residents, and any number of variations on the basic theme of scapegoating. The ultimate scapegoat was the liberal, who became the author of everything wrong in the country. The rule of thumb is that the scapegoat is always less powerful than you. To attack those who are actually powerful is taboo, and will result in attacks being aimed at you.

Code Pink breaks that taboo by calling the powerful what they are—criminals. They reject the passive spectator role that has been assigned to ordinary citizens, and especially women, in this country. Some on the left sincerely believe that their tactics are counterproductive. I understand that point of view, but I don’t agree. In my view, one of the functions of a progressive movement is to break through the false propriety, the denial of what is right before our eyes but goes unnamed. If someone were to scream at an SS or NKVD officer who has gone unpunished for murders they committed or ordered, we would consider that normal. But there is a common assumption that America is magically different, and that we don’t have war criminals in our midst. For the truth to get out in this case, someone must first yell it in public, despite all the social taboos against it.

War remains an abstraction for many of us. A Rumsfeld or a Rice may have loving relationships with their families, and their pets. At the same time, the suffering they cause is put at a far remove from their actual experience. As a people, we have become accustomed to thinking of war in these abstract ways. We don’t imagine what it’s like to be the father or the sister of someone who has been suddenly blown to pieces for no reason. The car bombings and the so-called collateral damage are just statistics to us. But war is very real, and real people’s lives, many thousands of them, have been cut off because of the lies and manipulations and greed and self-interest of people sitting calmly in a Washington office. Code Pink gives voice to the outrage that is real and that needs to be expressed. And I think the degree of condemnation and hatred that they receive is a measure of how important their work is.

I haven’t heard of them killing anyone yet. I cannot say the same of their targets. We must learn to channel our outrage towards the powerful who continue to cause untold suffering without having to endure meaningful consequences for it.

5 comments:

Life As I Know It Now said...

Excellent post. You know I agree 1000% I like you're being able to voice my vague feelings and fears into words and getting it out there for analysis. I need to be prodded to remember the fight is far from over.

The progressive blogosphere can't let the Obama administration continue Bush's wars of aggression without calling him out on it. The powerful need to have the truth told about them and we need to recognize that truth and act upon it.

Mauigirl said...

Astute analysis - I think you've hit the nail on the head. It's almost like the "Emperor has no clothes" syndrome - we aren't allowed to point out the faults in our own government and authority figures because if any of them are flawed that means that all of them could be and it might all come crashing down.

As Liberality says, we have to keep up that level of scrutiny and not be afraid to talk about the Emperor's nakedness.

Chris Dashiell said...

I'm grateful to you both for keeping up with my little blog.

Travis Cody said...

I generally lurk. But I am continually impressed with your analysis and commentary.

I shall try to tell you so more often.

DED said...

Interesting essay.

With regards to outrage over the S&L crisis, I have to disagree. There was outrage. However, it wasn't covered by the MSM. It was stuck in America's living rooms.

[sarcasm on]
And why should they? After all, the L.A. riots featured all kinds of violence that make for great video: beatings, fire, looting, etc. That's an excellent lead in to get people's reaction to the frenzy. The taxpayers getting stuck with the bankers' tab from Congress doesn't make for good TV.
[sarcasm off]

Maybe it was the circles I ran in at the time, but we talked more about the S&L bailouts then the riots. Then again, the crowd I hang out with has always distrusted the government.

But it's different now. The bailouts of this economic collapse are at such an unprecedented level that outrage spilled out of people's homes and into the streets. Even Code Pink has gotten involved. On the anti-bailout blogs I follow, video of their protests surfaces from time-to-time.

Maybe Code Pink is the tip of the iceberg. Maybe fear of the power of gov't and the corporate aristocracy is starting to subside. Perhaps it'll sink into the American psyche that the raiding of the US Treasury for corporate welfare is wrong and has to stop.

Or maybe we'll let TV seduce us back into that mind numbing coma we've been in for so long.