Fantasy

Thinking calls not only for intelligence and profundity but above all for courage.

― Hannah Arendt

I've learned my lesson in the past 48 hours: arguing with right-wingers is thankless.

Foolishly, I joined two Facebook "conversations" inviting comments about the Black Lives Matter marches.

I was daft enough not to know "only the closed-minded need apply."

Right-wingers often pose as moderate and thoughtful, but are lightning-swift to unleash mockery, once presented a view at odds with their own, or with facts that contradict the dubious and paranoid bullshit they champion. They'll even throw in emojis to reinforce their contempt.

Mockery as a rhetorical strategy predates Trump's ascendance, so you can't blame that buffoon for right's embrace of it. Nor can you blame Rupert Murdoch and his cavalcade of stooges.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, Aristotle scolded Greek orators who mocked their opponents, insisting "the arousal of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts."

The writer Thomas Friedman last week called right-wingers "angry and stupid," a characterization I can agree with.

But I'd go farther: right-wingers are colorless dummies―the Mortimer Snerd kind―without intelligence, profundity or courage.

And, like Mortimer, they work hard at being ignorant.

I'll share a fantasy of mine: I long one day to make a "knockdown argument," in the sense of that term as defined by the late American philosopher Robert Nozick.

The knockdown argument, Nozick said, represents the "attempt to get someone to believe something, whether he wants to believe it or not." Perfect in its power over others, it "forces someone to a belief."

But knockdown arguments aren't easy to come by, because listeners are so stupid. "Perhaps philosophers need arguments so powerful they set up reverberations in the brain," Nozick said. "If the person refuses to accept the conclusion, he dies. How's that for a powerful argument?"

I can only wish.

Blind from Birth

The place was bright with industriousness. There was a big belief in life and we were steered relentlessly in the direction of success.

— Philip Roth

With exceptions—most of whom answer to the name Billy Ray—white Americans aren't born racist.

But they are, in fact, born blind.

From the crib, white Americans are raised to pursue competence.

Our Puritan romance with competence in fact explains why we idolize so many black Americans: black athletes, in particular; but also black preachers, poets, musicians, comedians, actors, directors—even a few politicians. They make whites' A-List.

The rest of black Americans—the non-celebrities—don't make that list. They don't make any list. You might say they're unlisted.

That's not because we're bigoted, but because we're preoccupied with competence, the gold standard drilled into us from birth. And that preoccupation perpetuates a tragic blind spot.

We're blind, as surveys show, to the effect thousands of incremental policy decisions have had on so many black Americans; decisions about matters like emancipation, homesteading, voting rights, the GI Bill, desegregation, interstates, truth-in-sentencing, and the seemingly innocuous questions asked on IQ tests, SATs, and job applications; decisions that destined so many to live their lives on the margins, without hope or the prospect of achievement, while a talented few become society's idols.

Today's New York Times reports that our abundant incomes hide from view racial inequities. “We so want to believe we are not racist,” a sociologist told the paper, “we don’t even see the way that race still matters.”

But we're not racists and we know race matters. We just can't see how. 

We were born with congenital blindness.

The Long, Hot Summer

Picketers at City Hall, Newark, New Jersey, July 16, 1967

A riot is the language of the unheard.

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

Summer '67 still lodges in my memory. It won't move out.

I was 15 and lived two miles from Springfield Avenue, ground zero of the week-long riots that, until quelled, rocked the once-placid and pretty city of Newark. 

I remember the troops and the half-tracks, the smoke and the barricades, the sniper-fire and skyward nightly blazes. I also remember all the tough talk of pals and neighbors and the gang at the barber shop (always my conduit to the adult world). Nixon and George Wallace were sounding pretty good of a sudden and the government had better crack down hard on the blootches or we're all fucked.

But at home—our still-tolerant, FDR-democrat stronghold—not a syllable of criticism for the rioters was uttered that week; and I'm glad for that.

Newark was the worst of the 159 "race riots" that combusted across the US during The Long, Hot Summer, a phrase coined in 1940 by William Faulkner in The Hamlet and made popular by the steamy 1958 movie based on his novel.

Faulkner's 1949 Nobel Prize had made him an important spokesman for civil-rights moderates who endorsed "gradualism." the notion that, for society to improve, blacks need only wait—to sit tight until whites come to around to their point-of-view. Just you wait and see, things will get better.

Faulkner revealed his middle-of-the-road stripes (I'm mixing metaphors) in a March 1956 letter to Life Magazine, published as a commentary on the recent arrest in Montgomery of the ringleader of the Bus Boycott, Martin Luther King, Jr. 

In the letter, Faulkner made clear that, though he loathed Jim Crow, he equally hated the prospect of compulsory integration: "So I would say to all the organizations and groups which would force integration on the South by legal process: ‘Stop now for a moment. You have shown the Southerner what you can do and what you will do if necessary; give him a space in which to get his breath and assimilate that knowledge."

To which King the next week replied, “We can’t slow up. We can’t slow up and have our dignity and self respect. We can’t slow up because of our love for democracy and our love for America. Someone should tell Faulkner that the vast majority of the people on this globe are colored."

And although Montgomery made integration the law of the land, Newark boiled over eleven years later. The July '67 riots began after two white cops beat and arrested a black cabbie for passing their double-parked cruiser. Within a day, the molotov cocktails were flying. The six days of riots left 26 dead and hundreds injured. Property damage exceeded $77 million. White flight escalated and once-placid and pretty Newark entered an ugly  downward spiral it has yet to reverse.

The morning after the riots ended, the Springfield Avenue precinct police chief assembled his officers on the steps of the precinct house to give them a pep talk. 

“Just return it to normal," he said. "Don’t treat it as a situation. Because once you begin to look at problems as problems, they become problems.”

PS: Go here to see a gallery of photos from The Long, Hot Summer.

It's Never Too Late

When I make a cup of coffee I change the world.

― Jean-Paul Sartre

The smart money's on Starbucks: its stock, which bolsters the leading hedge-fund portfolios, returned nearly 19% this month, despite a global drop in same-store sales.

But, I'm sorry, I've had it with Starbucks. Not the stock. The store.

I just paid $3 for a single cup of drip coffee―only a buck less than the price I pay for a whole pound of ground at Safeway (the equivalent of 27 cups of brew).  

Coffee is my water, as singer Becky G says; and though many Americans will gladly fork over three bills for a bottle of water, I won't pay that for a cup of coffee―not even a cup of kopi luwak, the coffee made from civet doodie.

I guess I'll be making my own coffee now. It's still the cheapest way―and has been for a century. A home-brewed cup in 1920 cost only 24 cents (adjusted for inflation). Today it costs a drop less―just 18 cents.

The sad thing is, I used to love Starbucks. 

I'd spend hours of my time there, even though the chairs were tippy and the stores looped the same Bob Marley record over and over again. I sat drinking coffee and reading philosophy books, yakking with fellow caffeine addicts about movies and politics, and writing marketing copy (my sole source of income for years).

But at some point the romance forsook our marriage.

The reasons escape me. 

Were I to consult Dr. Phil, I'm sure he'd say it was my fault our marriage turned ugly (or as he'd put it, "It's because of you your marriage looks like the dogs keep it under the porch").

And he'd be right. I demeaned Starbucks, complaining when the bathrooms hadn't been cleaned. I hid expenditures for restaurants, clothes, and movie tickets. I was neglectful. And I had a wandering eye: more than once I fantasized about visiting Peet's.

But Dr. Phil would be quick also to point out that marriage is a proverbial "two-way street" and at least some of the blame for the chill in our relationship falls on Starbucks.

Starbucks was simply too needy. It begrudged me for sitting hours on end with my nose in a book. It turned angry over the the fact that I ignored important chores, like taking out the garbage. And it resented that we never went anywhere.

But it's never too late to remove the strains on our marriage, Dr. Phil would add. 

Starbucks and I could still sit down and reach an understanding about what we each need, what we each deserve, and what we can realistically give one another. 

Starbucks only needs to affirm that our commitment and loyalty to each other are deep.

And drop the price of a Grande Drip.

In the Year 2525

Customer service is the new marketing.

— Derek Sivers

Mind if I make a prediction? 

I last predicted Hillary would win in a landslide; but here's my prediction anyway: 

Before the year 2525, for once a CSR won't blame me for her company's mistake.

Blaming customers for her company's mistakes has become every customer service representative's default response to problems.

I'm unsure when the practice began, and unsure why.

It truly vexes me. 

Maybe I'm in an unwitting member of a customer-rewards program designed by Lex Luthor. Maybe I'm on a shared list of losers. Maybe in a prior life I was Stalin's sous chef and this is payback.

I don't know the reason, I only know it happens to me repeatedly. Just this month:

• A CSR for Cloudburst (a lawn-sprinkler company), when I called to ask why I hadn't heard from the firm, insisted I never mailed back the reply form from its direct mail solicitation. But I did; I remember, because I resented needing a stamp.

• A CSR for Michaels (an art supplies retailer) told me I was a dodo to arrive at its door for a curbside pickup before the company's app advised me to do so. Telling her I don't have the app on my phone earned me an exaggerated eye-roll.

• A CSR for Young Explorers (an e-retailer of toys) said I was to blame for the fact the company shipped a talking laptop to me and billed my grandson's credit card. When I informed the rep that I'm 66 and don't need a talking My First Tablet, I was still blamed for the mistake; and when I said my grandson was 2 and didn't have a credit card, I was blamed once more.

• A CSR for M & T (a bank) told me it was clearly my fault the bank didn't receive my online application for a new checking account; the fact that Russian hackers had hijacked the bank's website a few days before was immaterial. (I immediately hung up and called the three credit bureaus to set up a fraud alert, FYI.)

If indeed customer service is the new marketing, your marketing sucks.

Sorta like my ability to predict.