Uncle Cracker's Ethical Fantasy

by Mike Ferraro

       As is customary in our age of disposable trash culture and celebrity expert opinions, people fell all over themselves to laud Cracker-man David Lowery’s response to some NPR intern regarding the alleged ethics of file-sharing and the cost of “free culture,” whatever the fuck that is. Myself, I couldn’t get through the thing. Lowery commits the only unpardonable sin for a writer: boring the reader. I did, however, skim enough of it to get the gist of his position. After all, as he is quick to point out, he is an Important Artist, a producer of vital cultural artifacts, so his words matter deeply. As a self-proclaimed progenitor of “first-generation Indie Rock,” they must. Or so he desperately wants us to believe.

          How exactly Lowery figures this distinction I leave up to the reader’s imagination. I mean, by the time Cracker rolled-up “indie rock” was in its third or fourth iteration, at least. This would be akin to Mark Hoppus anointing Blink-182 the godfathers of punk. More importantly, the fact remains that when Cracker’s one-hit pop triumph landed, all meaning beyond anything but the vaguely stylistic had been evacuated from the term “Indie Rock.” Whatever vestiges of useful classification or description the designation once held or implied—principally, signaling a state of “independence,” as in an act not signed to a major label—were long gone.

            “It’s so overblown,” Mudhoney’s Mark Arm sang about Seattle on the Singles soundtrack. That was in 1992, at the height of the “grunge” explosion, which would, temporarily at least, catapult underground indie losers into the strata of bona fide music stars, foisting yet another dose of rabid youth culture onto the hapless masses. Yet the seismic cultural shift grunge purportedly heralded was just another shuck and jive, little more than the next spin of the hamster wheel of popular culture. That these fantasies of hipster rebellion promulgated and sold were of the predominantly white, middle-class variety is of course axiomatic. These kids, like their vapid counterculture parents before them, marshaled their disaffection as if it meant something profound, signifying something other than their own vanity and endless privilege. This faux rebellion is their cultural legacy, wasted and misspent for all time—and doomed to untold generations of continued impotence. The Occupiers of today are their direct descendants.

            Goddamn. Had nothing changed since white negro hedonism appeared all those decades ago?    

            Before you sniveling indie purists throw a fit, let me add that I know all about Lowery’s tenure in Camper Van Beethoven. That storied history is precisely the problem. Much as the desire for an impossible synthesis between creative integrity and commerce plagues his overarching argument, a similar ideological clash emerges here in Lowery’s vaunted self-appraisal. Similar because, at bottom, they are one and the same, and stem from an overwrought sense of entitlement and self-aggrandizement. Let’s be clear: Lowery wants it both ways, seeking to preserve his indie-cred while simultaneously maintaining mainstream success and visibility. But these things do not sit well together. In fact, in most respects, especially economically—the central concern of Lowery’s article—they are diametrically opposed. His real grievance then is—what else?—money, specifically his stanched revenue-stream. Lowery sees significant encroachments on his financial gains and “intellectual property,” with greater losses imminent, and he’s pissed. His cultural grandstanding is a put-on and beside the point—a smokescreen for this primary objection. Worse, this playing of both ends reinforces his preposterous self-mythology, namely: David Lowery, indie-folk hero. If you’re buying into this iconographying bullshit you’re an even bigger sucker than I thought.

            Whatever the case, such shameless self-serving dreck is emblematic of Lowery's rhetoric and approach here, the principal effect of which is incessant hectoring. This is how adults behave, he admonishes throughout.

            But forget his pomposity and ridiculously inflated sense of himself, the basics of Lowery’s argument are what matter and they make no sense. His biggest mistake in this regard is that he frames the “problem” of file-sharing as an ethical one. It isn’t. But let’s pretend for a minute that it is. Let’s pretend that if we wise-up and follow his prescriptions we will abolish all forms of file-sharing, thereby righting the grievous “social injustice” at the heart of the artists’ rights matter. Who knows, a more just and democratic world might be just around the corner. We could wake-up one morning and find ourselves free of other social blight as well, world hunger ended, the environment saved. Listening to Lowery, the emancipatory potential unleashed through judiciously exercised individual ethical responsibility is seemingly limitless. As long as that responsibility finds expression and investment in the modes of pre-digital production and exchange, we’re all good.

            What world is he living in? You’re never going to eradicate piracy, neither on nor off the net. How, under our current economic arrangement, could you? The ethical argument Lowery posits runs counter to the very basics of capitalist relations, which, for the brain-dead among us, are so successful precisely because they exploit the very worst in people. Further, Lowery’s position presupposes that the regular functioning of the system, specifically the means of production and operating channels where everyday transactions occur, is principled, fair in both design and practice. They are not, nor were they intended to be. Centuries of abject exploitation instantly confirm this. Just look outside your window if you’re not sure.

            Yet, to bolster these bad assumptions—and his superhuman ego—Lowery provides a staggeringly facile and myopic overview of the last couple hundred years of cultural production. Listen to this shit:

                        The fundamental shift in principals and morality is about who gets

                        to control and exploit the work of an artist. The accepted norm for

                        hundreds of years of western civilization is the artist exclusively has

                        the right to exploit and control his/her work for a period of time...

                        By allowing the artist to treat his/her work as actual property, the

                        artist can decide how to monetize his or her work. This system has

                        worked very well for fans and artists. Now we are being asked to

                        undo this not because we think this is a bad or unfair way to

                        compensate artists but simply because it is technologically possible

                        for corporations or individuals to exploit artists work without their

                        permission on a massive scale and globally. We are being asked to

                        continue to let these companies violate the law without being

                        punished or prosecuted. We are being asked to change our morality

                        and principals to match what I think are immoral and unethical

                        business models.

Is this guy for real? There’s so much wrong here, so much taken for granted, it’s hard to know where to begin. Most egregious, however, is his absolute faith in the system’s operations, manifest in the glib assertion that “the system has worked very well for artists and fans.”

            As apologists for the reigning order must, Lowery’s got the fundamentals between the relationship of morality and commercial exchange ass-backwards. The bankrupt principles that constitute bourgeois-morality are the cause of the current predicament, not the other way around. The “immoral and unethical business models” he condemns are merely an extension of this reality, the latest wrinkle in the ongoing global capitalist nightmare, of which music industry decline is merely one facet.

            Which brings us to the main event: When has the music biz, or any business for that matter, been ethically, rather than profit, driven?

            It’s no shock that the music business is a particularly ruthless industry that eats its young. In fact, like the Hollywood-mindset it is an outgrowth of, its business model is by necessity predicated upon this predatory habit and exchange. But this state of affairs simply mirrors and magnifies the intrinsic macro-dynamics of capital where the illusion of merit-based rewards maintains the everyday reality of exploitation. The major difference now is the extremity of the carnage, exacerbated, in the case of the music industry, by the advent of digital media.

            The omission of all this makes Lowery’s veneration of the pre-digital age all the more perplexing. Yet the truly extraordinary thing about Lowery’s assessment of music industry decline is that such rudimentary connections to global developments, and a critique of political economy in general, are conspicuously absent from his appraisal—a truly astounding fact for an economics lecturer. Instead, he readily assumes the mantle of elder statesman of rock, alternating his barbs between playful crotchetiness and outright hostility disguised as self-deprecation. It’s all an act, a sideshow. No amount of false modesty or sanctimony can conceal his supreme contempt for and condescension towards the odious file-sharers among us.

            While beyond hackneyed, the crotchety old guy routine he adopts is apt, the perfect trope to express the particularity of his position, that of beleaguered small-time capitalist, which, artistic trappings aside, he unequivocally is. In fact, there is no screen there; he is that neighborhood grump keeping eternal vigil against them no good kids, protecting his hard-earned property from the vandals. 

            Unsurprisingly, Lowery’s position of relative privilege and prosperity blinds him to the realities of the situation, particularly the plight of those lacking his good fortune. When he extols the virtues of the “old” system, you wonder what the hell he’s going on about, exactly who are these beneficiaries? He means, of course, those like himself, members of that infinitesimal percentage of artists who make it commercially, the big winners of the music sweepstakes. But here’s the thing: the music industry always relied on a stupid business model, unsustainable and grossly mismanaged by intention and design. It’s only stupider now. The advent of digital media hasn’t changed its essential character, it’s only accelerated its cycles of obsolescence, elevating its superhuman tastelessness to ever more ponderous heights. In fact, with a renewed emphasis on hit singles over albums proper, the industry’s come full-circle in at least one significant way. It’s the same old story in any event. The relentless search for the next big thing to run a profit on, only to discard for the subsequent abomination, animates “industry trends.” So let’s not forget how this model actually functions: Then, as now, a few megastars subsidize the entire industry while everyone, in their infinite fear and folly, scrambles to find the next hot property or bankable clones of the current hash. The focus has always been on the superficial and disposable—the main difference is that the overall quality of these phenomena has dipped to its current abysmal level.

            But that’s the youth culture business. No use lamenting its loss or dissolution since it was dead on arrival. Same holds for the rest of the insipid dream-manufacturing enterprises our mangy popular culture grovels before. All of which exist, first and foremost, to support themselves in their primary pursuit: the endless accumulation of wealth, culture be damned.

            The real ethical dilemma in all this is the same one it’s always been, and concerns the material conditions and attendant ideology of capitalist relations—specifically the generally uncontested hegemony of the ruling order. At bottom, then, the problem of file-sharing and its ethical dimension hinges upon a critique of political economy. It is what this argument, and every one regarding “free culture,” is fundamentally about, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. Typically, as it is here, this crucial component is the missing piece to most popular critiques of the subject.

            Like it or not, the stakes are much higher than any one group’s diminishing rights and financial returns. The setbacks for musicians represent the new reality for subjects under digital capital, a reality that will worsen as the global financial crisis intensifies. A return to the halcyon days of music industry returns is surely a fantasy. The crucial thing to remember here is that this shift does not occur in isolation, but rather reflects a global trend regarding the degradation of intellectual workers. Thus, the decline of the music industry is simply one result of the disastrous consequences of digital capitalism.

            This returns us to the “undoing” of the old model that Lowery characterized above. Again, he’s got it all assed-up. Not some aberration that blindsided and upended the smooth and equitable functioning of hundreds of years of cultural production, this critical rupture was instead precisely the recalibration required to sustain the endless circulation and self-reproduction that is capitalism’s goal. The breakdown of the old model of commercial exchange that Lowery laments, is not, as he would have us believe, some secondary, correctable development—the nefarious work of greedy individual corporate-entities—but rather represents the principal and essential shift of the digital capital revolution. In fact, to the extent that it was a revolution at all, this transformation of the distribution and commercial system is the revolutionary aspect of digital capitalism, its worldwide explosion marking the next step in the inexorable march of capitalist accumulation. What Lowery does in this moment amounts to the basest subterfuge since, while acknowledging the global scale of the problem, he conveniently fails to locate its relation to global socioeconomic developments.

            This is of course no accident, but rather a calculated elision, of which the motivating self-interest is already apparent, as is the fallacious logic that his position implicitly demands. Again, such manipulations demonstrate how Lowery’s sense of entitlement matches that of the petite-bourgeois. The “problem” of file-sharing, much like the insufferable middle-class mindset that spawned it, is a luxury we can no longer afford if our objective is to re-imagine social relations in a truly radical way. In fact, the bulwark of middle-class entitlements needs to go if we’re to seriously contemplate new ethical relations of exchange and a social order based on radical emancipatory politics in a real sense that exceeds the lip-service Leftists pay to the idea.

            But Lowery’s not talking about a radical transformation of any kind. Far from it. To make such demands would require us to reorder all our priorities and commitments. And lord knows we don’t want to do that. That would require a tremendous act of will we simply do not possess. I mean, is an economics instructor, a preeminent representative of reified bourgeois society, prepared to do that? Fuck no. As long as Uncle Cracker’s fat royalty checks keep floating in, he’s happy. Screw the suffering of the truly exploited underclass. If only they were more talented, then maybe they, too, could rise above the peril of their predicament.

            Right. Lurid and pandering as they are, the dead rocker anecdotes Lowery provides make the point well enough, underscoring, as if additional reminders were needed, the harsh reality of life in the arts. Most artists do not see much money, nor gain sizable recognition, from their life’s work, and they do it full well, and in spite of this fact—if they are artists. If it’s material riches you seek, don’t bother. There are far easier ways to make a buck, and woe is the individual who embarks on a creative life under any delusions of grandeur, financial or otherwise. In fact, by the fucked-up standards of the popular imagination, these woeful examples, contrary to Lowery’s romanticized depiction, are success stories of a certain type. After all, people know who they are—they are written about and listened to. Further, they received recognition and found audiences for their efforts during their lifetime. That’s artistic achievement of a not inconsequential kind.

            Under our current economic system no one is entitled a livelihood, least of all the artist. It is the relations of capital themselves that need abolishment if things are to improve for everyone, not just our artists. Rather than use these music biz casualties to highlight the universal hideousness of poverty, we get more tear-jerking moralizing regarding the erosion of artists’ rights and the alleged singularity of the individual travesty at hand, with Lowery indulging the exact behaviors—shaming and finger-pointing—he denies are his motivation and intention.

            If he sounds like a relic that’s because he is. Simply put, the struggle for artists’ rights in the digital age is a struggle for mass rights of the permanent excluded underclass, same as it’s always been. And it is with this exploding population that our sympathies must lie. In fact, through the mobilization of this group, and nowhere else, does the latent potential for a more just world reside. If the plight of musicians is not seen for what it is, and does not work to mobilize these forces, it is a dead issue and serves no purpose. Further, if it continues along the lines it has—as a cause of identity politics, fragmenting the solidarity of class-struggle and leaving the essential power-structure of the capitalist edifice intact—it deserves abandonment.

            The point here is that under our current economic arrangement none of this will change. The very notion of ownership and property rights is the problem, the biggest delusion and barrier to personal emancipation. We are slaves to this delusion, and the bondage of its attendant ideology shapes the economy of everyday life. To avoid this fact is to only further avoid the obvious fundamental realities that order our world, and to further entrench the stranglehold of this diabolical and life-denying system.

            It is an ideological war, first and foremost. Always has been, always will be—and you can’t afford to cede an inch. After all, as the ongoing global catastrophe exemplifies, everyday reality is nothing but theory put into practice, and enshrined through the centuries. Everything follows from our thinking. That is, in a very fundamental way, what and how we see shapes the world. Not in theory only but for real. To think otherwise is pure folly. But people don’t want to see the world clearly—they want American Idol and hope to hit the lotto. On the latter score I can’t blame them—fools’ game that it be.

            Eventually we must admit: it is precisely these things, the things we don’t face, that constrict and paralyze us. The thing we lack, the thing that we are most closed off from is our irreducible nature; the pervasive alienation we all feel is a direct result of the means of capitalist production and exchange. The truth and clarity of this realization terrifies us, just as the denial of its power destroys. The objective then, same as ever, is to see clearly what is in front of your nose. In the struggle of excluded subjects, the only question that matters is "what next?" All the rest is child’s play.

"Django Unchained": Tarantino's Revenge on America's Nightmare Racial Past

- Anthony Schiappa & Mike Ferraro

The great thing about “Django Unchained” is that the sickness of white America is front and center. Far from the usual working-out of white guilt seen in other films, “Django” mercilessly ridicules all of white America’s racial psychoses and fantasies. It shows the awful truth, obscured by myths and lies, that white Americans have insulated themselves from since the birth of the Republic, unflinchingly showing them as they really are: unimaginably wealthy, supremely powerful, and  utterly depraved. Believing itself the apotheosis of civilization, America is shown as the irremediably sick society it is. Like plantation owner Calvin Candie, the more civilized Americans act, the more monstrous they become.

It is the portrayal of this lie at the very heart of American society—the dishonest presentation of “high culture” and the insistence on innocence while perpetrating the most heinous atrocities—that makes “Django Unchained” so trenchant. It demands that Americans look at themselves as they really are, at least for those who dare look.

As dogs rip the flesh from a runaway slave, Django, acting as a vile black slaver, reminds Candie that the German, Doctor Schultz, in agony over their ruthlessness, “isn’t used to seeing how Americans act, but I am.” This line is not only the touchstone to the film, but to the whole of American history.

The claim that this subject matter is too serious for a ham like Quentin Tarantino is perfectly wrong. His violent, sexual style is ideally suited to the subject of the hideous transformation of human beings into property. Throughout the film, we witness the abjection of chattel slavery and the absurdity of racism in its brutal nakedness. Best of all, however, from a filmgoer's standpoint, is how effectively Tarantino uses black and physical comedy to make his points, like when the Sheriff is called in simply because Django and Schultz have a beer together in a saloon. Most impressively, Tarantino successfully deploys virtually every white stereotype and hang-up in this film to their fullest, most repugnant measure—chief among them the starkest and most lurid twin titillations of white America: the fear of a black uprising and a collective rape fantasy.

This obsessive, sexualized issue of control is well illustrated toward the film's end, when Django hangs upside-down, naked and tormented. While inside the mansion his white captors gleefully discuss how best to mutilate his genitals, a good ol' boy affectionately caresses his balls minutes before preparing to castrate him. In a scene reminiscent of James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man,” a story about the horrific grandeur of white delusions, we see here a gruesomely honest portrayal of the same white obsession over that supreme fetishized object of terror and desire, the black cock.

But remember, it’s just a fantasy. Whites only masochistically play at losing their power. Actual relinquishment is unthinkable.

In some write-ups, reviewers have complained that Tarantino missed a golden opportunity to depict a large-scale Nat Turner-style revolt, thus giving “Django” essentially the same ending as “Inglourious Basterds.” On its face, this is a non-criticism that refuses to take the film on its own terms and registers as a PC cop-out. But there is something more disturbing beneath the surface of these claims:  just the suggestion speaks volumes about the state of our modern understanding of what slavery was and why it was so terrible.

There never was a full-blown revolution in Dixie as in Haiti—the two contexts are different and largely incomparable, though film reviewers have tried. Though smaller-scale rebellions did happen, the fear of such mass revolution was a preoccupation of the landed Southern gentry. But this question, “Why don’t they just rise up and kill us?,” asked by Candie in one of the film’s most chilling scenes, takes on a more sinister tone when asked by a hack film reviewer or “legitimate” academic. It begins to feel like a surrogate for asking the same thing about actual historical slavery. At best, it betrays a complete ignorance of the abjection of slavery; at worst, it reeks of the blame-the-victim mentality of the oppressors and their apologists.

           

But first, let's be clear about the nature and origin of wealth and power in America, for this is precisely what the slave system, and Tarantino's exploration of it, is about. Put simply, everything white people have is because of black people and their enforced labor. This is an incontestable fact of American life. With that in mind, a return to Baldwin again proves instructive. From this understanding, it is not only logical but right for him to conclude, as he does near the end of The Fire Next Time, that “The only thing white people have that black people need, or should want, is power.” This taking back what is essentially his is the motivation animating Django's one-man rebellion. In short, his revenge is a mythic reversal of the entire blood-soaked history and enterprise of American slavery. On paper, this story, told by a white man no less, is a ham-fisted disaster; its telling, in less capable and studied hands, surely going awry a thousand different ways. But entirely to Tarantino's credit, it doesn't miss a beat. The fact that it is as rollickingly engaging and funny a romp as it is makes his achievement all the more remarkable.

But back to the working dynamics of slavery. As already indicated, the entire social and economic edifice of the United States was built on the degradation of human beings into chattel, not only as a legal status, which was the historical norm, but as the constitutive element of their identities, based solely on the color of their skin. As a result, they were subjected to some of the worst atrocities in human history; a limitless amount of physical and psychological violence was directed at them for centuries. This all-consuming power relationship manifested even, and especially, in the most intimate everyday relations between black and white: as Baldwin never tired of telling us, the South was “integrated” long before the rise of the Civil Rights movement. Everything—the entire warped and double-sided, inextricable history between black and white—is right there in the complete dependency of Candie upon his house-negro Stephen (expertly played by Samuel L. Jackson, who elevates what could have been a one-dimensional character to one of the most memorable in recent cinema).

This childish notion of willy-nilly mass slave revolt in Dixie implies that they somehow had agency, a wholly incoherent idea in a discussion of slavery. If they had meaningful agency, they could hardly be called slaves. It is, in fact, the wresting and loss of agency that is the essence of slavery, and it is from whence all the other crimes derive. Recognizing the hopelessness of the plight of the enslaved is in no way demeaning, but the opposite: it is demeaning to diminish the historical uniqueness of American slavery by pretending revolution was possible.

Hell, it’s been said a million times: considering the myriad historical accounts of life on Southern plantations, the fact of the matter is Tarantino did hold back. A truly realistic portrayal of slavery would be so extremely violent that it could never be released and in all likelihood it wouldn’t be believed by most people anyway. It would have been labeled a snuff film—which it would be, in every sense of the term. Indeed, American history is a 400-year-plus snuff film, ideal material for Tarantino. If the kind of outrage reserved for his film was directed at history textbooks, maybe Americans could begin to talk about their history without sounding like complete fools, and maybe, maybe, they would not cling so tightly to their delusions and blindness.

In America, anything's possible, right? Too bad it will take another four-hundred years for most white Americans to reach such an honest appraisal of their nightmare racial past. In the meantime, by some miracle, we have “Django”—that small bit of celluloid truth adrift in the darkness and decay of cinematic blight—to watch on infinite repeat to our fiendish delight.

Follow Yr Dreams: "The Hurt Locker" As War-Porn Wanderlust

-Mike Ferraro

Given the subject’s prominence over the last decade, when considering the most influential American films of the last ten years you would be remiss not to focus part of your selection on a film or films that depict war in the Middle East. Of the slew of such films that have come and gone, a worthy contender for discussion, not least of all for its raised profile as last year’s big Oscar winner, is The Hurt Locker.

Because of the film's documentary or embedded reporter-style depiction of combat, and the level of purported objectivity such a style allegedly employs, the more generous reading of the film's treatment of war is that it depicts, like all good anti-war films, the cold and impartial carnage and madness of combat in all its abject horror.

A less generous reading would suggest that it glorifies violence and the rush of combat to a frightening and fantastic degree. Not only that, but more troubling, in the figure of veritable sociopath—or is it just plain old war junkie, the film has trouble making a distinction—James, the film glorifies the mentality that such senseless violence breeds.

In fact, the overt message of the film indicates the latter, less generous, reading.

Disarming IEDs, after all, is “gangster.” And war can be fun, advises the well-intended but preposterously fatuous officer-psychologist who trades the cushy confines of his desk for a day in the hummer on bomb-duty. Given the stunted trajectory and limited imagination of the film’s narrative arc, do I even need to add that he is blown to smithereens as a result of this stab at everyman heroism?

Whatever irony and intended message underlying such subtle filmmaking, the effect is lost on me. Simply put, moments like these come across as pure Hollywood-schmaltz. Even more simply, the psychologist is a straight-up dope.

I mean, they're all dopes, stuck in a godforsaken desert-hell, risking their necks for fairy-tales. But that is another discussion altogether, I’m afraid.

For the heart of the film lies in James' return home to his humdrum suburban-existence—the staidness and uniformity of which, the film suggests, is enough to justify his war-lust. There he confesses to his infant son that in life you only really love one or two things. Well, one thing, it turns out. The closing shot of the film is of James, shitkickers laced-up and crunching that infernal desert sand as he embarks on yet another tour of duty.

Sorry, kid, you gotta follow your dreams no matter how putrid.

I realize James’ confessional is supposed to be a big, brave moment of emotional honesty and character-revelation, one that shows—in a film, ostensibly, about such moments—the cyclical nature of, and our obsession with, violent masculinity. But, because of the schmaltz and one-dimensionality of everything that came before, it falls flat. Further, whatever the filmmakers' intentions, in the The Hurt Locker the Iraq War comes across as the pointless waste of lives and resources that it is and was engineered to be. And such revelations do not seem to be the point of this film. The film’s preoccupation with the glorification of war-violence, disingenuously and irresponsibly rendered under the guise of mock-objectivity and reporting, exacerbates this tendency in virtually every frame.

Still, I would like to think that the film adopts the attitude of say, Zola, or Brett Easton Ellis—that imitation is the most severe form of criticism, but honestly I don't think this is so.

In any event, the film taught me exactly nothing new regarding the madness of combat. Worse, each fragmented scene, stuck in its monotony, serves only to further desensitize the viewer to the obscene violence onscreen. And that is perhaps the film's most disconcerting aspect. Correlatively, the fact that the first female win for best director came under the banner of this type of war-porn tells us much about ourselves and sick cultural norms.

Sanborn was right: they should have blown that "rowdy boy" back to hell when they had the chance. 878 bombs disarmed or not, James is a liability, and the mentality that he embodies needs permanent erasure.

An impossible task, I know, but one worthy of our attention nonetheless.

Pride Goeth Before A Fall: An Open Letter to My Hometown

Anthony Schiappa

I.
Delhi, India. Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Steubenville, Ohio.  All deeply connected previously unimaginable ways.

It must finally be faced. Our sons raped one of our daughters and the authorities are doing as little as they can about it. For many residents, the first reaction was to defend our precious Steubenville pride, in ourselves, our kids, our city, our school, our football team. Too fearful to speak the truth, we turned the stark relief of black and white, of right and wrong, into an opaque gray.

Equivocation is spinelessness. It is high time to end the chorus of “whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?” This seemingly levelheaded plea for open-mindedness only functions as an attempt to stop the discussion dead in its tracks, and to keep us from confronting reality. It removes power and responsibility from our hands, which is exactly where it should be, and places in the hands of “authorities.” The lawyers and judges will determine what is legal; I seek the truth.

So once and for all, let us end this horrid, transparent pretense to impartiality and accept that a young girl was sexually assaulted multiple times over the course of that August night—taken from party to party while unconscious and intoxicated, and forced to endure an endless stream of humiliations—by members of the Steubenville high school football team. Like most sexual assaults in our morally repugnant society, her brutalization was not at the hands of some random psychopaths hiding in the shadows, but by people she knew and trusted. In this case, these trusted friends meticulously and gleefully documented their actions. Everyone present that night shares the guilt, verdict be damned, and their crimes continue every day they refuse to step forward and take responsibility for what they have done.

Though the details are common knowledge, most of the perpetrators face no consequences. The two defendants are facing reduced sentences as juveniles despite the very adult and illegal activity they engaged in. We are frequently told the case will be difficult to prosecute: an odd characterization given the literal stream of digital evidence available to prosecutors and investigators. The only logical conclusion to draw then is that authorities aren't interested in finding and using this evidence. Despite the incessant blue-collar yapping about self-accountability, there is a concerted effort to keep the guilty from taking full responsibility for their actions. All of this is painfully obvious to the casual observer and represents the source and scope of the outrage now directed at Steubenville.

So how did this happen? Unlike a tragedy such as the Connecticut shootings, the perpetrators in this case cannot be simply—and falsely—labeled outsiders who went crazy and did despicable things, but who do not represent the community as a whole. That is the usual response: we bury our heads, and our chance of real healing, further into the sand. In Steubenville, some of us have clung to a puerile refrain to further insulate ourselves from this truth, hitting all the tired old notes regarding the indomitable spirit, strength, and purpose of vision of our good ol’ American values along the way, insisting: “we have a lot of of good student athletes, we believe in our kids, we have a top-notch high school, the coaches mean well but are imperfect, and we support our students.”

It’s all a sham, of course. The ugliness and violence of the case are just as much a part of us as our proudest achievements, whether or not we choose to take responsibility for them. This attempted reaffirmation of our quintessential “goodness” in the face of tragedy is rotten through and through because it leaves all of the underlying causes of these events unexamined, unchanged, and waiting to happen again, as it inevitably will. (Ask yourself if you really think this is the first time something like this has ever happened in Steubenville.) No bastard children to disown this time. Big Red’s athletes carry on our proudest traditions and represent our values. And they raped a sixteen-year-old girl.

For a town like Steubenville, for any town across America, these are desperately hard facts to come to grips with. But we must face them bravely. The health and security of our nation depends on it. In order to accomplish this task of creating new and better values—beneficent, life-affirming values—we need to ask ourselves difficult questions. First and foremost, where did these boys learn their attitudes towards women? Where we all learn our attitudes: in the home, in the school, in the locker room, in the church, from parents, siblings, teachers, coaches, clergy, our city fathers, and one another. They are as much a reflection of our community as the upstanding kids who stay out of trouble and do great things, and try as we might, we cannot distance ourselves from them now.


II.
So what is it with Steubenville?

Steubenville is a former booming, bustling steel town that has been in decline for decades, completely battered and bewildered by the indifferent forces of global economics. At the whims of Almighty Capital, we have been bled dry and left for dead, and the cancer of corruption feasted on whatever was left. This corruption, in many ways, is a holdover from the Glory Days, when the mob ran things and there was plenty of action to be had downtown. A big-city, almost East Coast mentality is easily discernible to this day, the source of our much-vaunted grit and toughness. The “Little Chicago” lore is well known: nightclubs, bars, gambling, brothels, with the mob pulling the strings of it all. A wild time, better than Vegas.

When the good times ended, the mob mentality lingered on like an endless hangover, even though there was nothing to control. This persistent corruption extends to the police force, one of the first in the nation to sign a consent decree with the federal government for excessive Civil Rights lawsuits, tampering with evidence, falsifying reports, and sheer intimidation and brutality (and anyone who has had spent some time around ex-cops knows the documented evidence does not reveal the half of it). The past few years have also seen a steady rise in gun violence, gangs and drugs, the responsibility for which is placed on individuals from outside the area moving in. We all know the oft-cited positives: sure, there is a wonderful effort to bring back the Grand Theater, and yes, the elementary schools are the best in Ohio. But on the whole, the future for Steubenville, and the Ohio Valley as a whole, is rather grim. A glimmer of hope on the horizon comes from the shale gas cash-in, igniting talk of a kind of renaissance, but we are placing this hopes in a group of thirsty businessmen who are coming to drink our blood—and we can take or leave whatever they’re offering, but they will unquestionably keep the true wealth for themselves.

The largest remaining shared positive experience is Big Red football. Despite the halfhearted protestations on Facebook and the comments sections of various articles on the case, in Steubenville, the sun rises and sets on this program. The large and beautiful stadium is full every Friday. The players and coaches are unquestionably among the best at what they do and have the complete support of the city, financially and otherwise. There is also the pure spectacle of the games: the show put on when team enters the field, with The Best Band in Buckeye Land, the majorettes, the cheerleaders, balloons, video presentations, and Man O’ War sending huge plumes of fire into the sky. A visit Harding Stadium will tell you all you need to know about what Big Red football means to Steubenville. It’s like a Nuremberg rally.

If all that sounds a little quick and easy, and more than a little embarrassing it, that’s because it is. The truth is, as always, very simple and very uncomfortable.

It is within this context that the case is unfolding, and whatever happens we can hardly blame those making accusations of a cover-up, for such claims are entirely reasonable, if not always correct. This case has been handed shamefully but predictably. All but two of the players suited up to play ball this season. Most of the people who know something do not have the courage to come forward. What they fear, we can only speculate: intimidation, threats, violence, or that something might actually change in Steubenville. The Police Chief says his hands are tied, and he doesn’t know what else to do, lamenting that some people just aren’t very nice, and he wishes he could arrest people on that account. This does not sound like an experienced lawman who knows how to doggedly pursue a case; it sounds like a man either cowed or bought off. The prosecutor and judge eventually recused themselves due to their relationship to the school and to the accused, which was the right thing and had to be done, but this illustrates how closely connected everyone is in the city. The local news station is doing as much as it can to not ask difficult questions for the fear of offending their viewers, and featured the accused on a promo for “Sports Friday,” dedicated to high school football coverage. The coach of the team said he didn’t think the kids had done anything. His investigation consisted of asking the kids themselves if they felt what they had done was wrong, and naturally, they said they didn’t think so. In terms of real actions, he did nothing other than threaten reporters. Anything to protect his beloved football program, since that is who he is, and without it, he is nothing.

My own hunch is that he thinks we should be grateful that he offered up his two top players, and that we’re crazy to ask for more when he has his season to think about. The superintendent of the school system said he is satisfied with the coach’s “handling” of the situation, almost as though he was afraid of stepping overstepping his bounds. The principal, astonishingly, said he wasn’t even aware of what was happening until October, even though the story broke in August. School administrators have done nothing to reassure the girls of Big Red that they will be protected from brutalization. Clearly, they won’t be. Whether this is gross incompetence, corruption, or just pure chickenshit cowardice, you can decide for yourself.

And yet people bristle at the idea that Steubenville is an economically-depressed, seedy, football-obsessed town that is circling the wagons around its favorite sons, a place where everyone knows everyone and a small cadre runs the town like a fiefdom, a bizarre amalgam of the towns of “Friday Night Lights” and “In the Head of the Night,” with a dollop of no-potatoes “GoodFellas” thrown in for good measure.

Considering these reactions, it is not at all surprising that these kids thought they would get away with it. And it looks like they will.

Now Anonymous is involved. It was only a matter of time before the case caught the attention of the national media; the only surprise is that it happened so late. There has been a resurgence of something vaguely resembling political consciousness in the country—even if this interest is, at bottom, only lurid sensationalism engineered to sell more ad space—and it was inevitable that “outsiders” would get involved. If the authorities engage in their own brand of extra-judicial justice, as it appears they have done, they can hardly be surprised when vigilantes arrive. However jerked-off the Occupy movement is, however ridiculous the Guy Fawkes masks are, whatever the deficiencies of the current state of radical politics, however many people are really only there to lodge their thankless complaints against the general shittiness of Steubenville, they are at present the only strong public voices for the victim. A sexual assault crisis organization will be at the next protest, and this will in all likelihood be the first opportunity for Steubenville’s girls to learn what rape is. In this alone, they are doing what we failed to do.

Does this sound unfair? Too harsh? The rush to defend ourselves as good parents and our kids as basically good kids is understandable, though one wonders who is trying to convince whom. Everyone loves their children, everyone is doing the best they can for their kids. It is because of our love for our children that we must do right by them—all of them, without exception. We must show our love now by truly interrogating what happened and why. The time is long past for cold, hard introspection about ourselves and what we want for our community. It is from our love that we must re-examine the values we are instilling in our sons and our daughters and take the responsibility when they do wrong. At present, the lesson we are clearly sending is that we will not protect our daughters from rape, that our boys may do whatever they wish to whomever they wish, that sex is violence, that its better to keep quiet and not make a fuss rather than to hold each other responsible for our actions, that silence is better than speaking uncomfortable truths. A shameful state of affairs to be sure, but it is impossible to conclude otherwise witnessing what is unfolding before our eyes.

More Death, More Bombs, More Death-In-Life

Mike Ferraro

The shootings of recent days are of course tragic and sad. But what can you expect when you live in a depraved, morally and spiritually bankrupt world such as ours? In fact, the truly shocking thing is that such rampages don't happen more often than they do.

And so to the great liberal response.

Gun control. Mental illness sensitivity and awareness. Yes and yes. Of course, yes. Cue the hand-wringing, pants-shitting pundits and harrowing statistics.

Too bad everyone already knows the statistics, has felt the crushed and bruising reality of their indicies, either personally or through friends or family. That untreated schizophrenic aunt on her deathbed, crippled and long-forgotten. The never-do-well cousin serving time for armed-robbery, maybe a murderer maybe not, but surely a criminal, a miscreant-degenerate of the highest order and certainly no good. No, not a nice guy at all, someone to avoid at all costs, permanently. Someone, finally, deserving of his imprisonment and wretched fate.

We've all got stories and tragedies, big and small, regarding the horrors of gun violence and mental illness. Behind them all lies the same, simple truth. Namely, that if American legislators cared about the health of the nation and its citizenry, the social landscape would look vastly different than it does presently. Education, healthcare, the so-called war on drugs, judicial and financial reform, the list goes on and on. Instead what do we get? More bombs, guns, sickness, and death. All the rancid fruit of the plutocratic cabal between political and financial interests and the exorbitant sums exchanged between them. In other words, bizness as usual, son.

If legislators wanted to reform gun laws it would be done by now. Same holds for all the aforementioned ills and injustices. The only logical conclusion to draw, then, is that they in fact do not want these things, and will do whatever they can to prevent their occurrence, preferring instead the spoils of their perennial graft and the preservation of their shamefully lucrative subservience. Again, no surprise there: more business as usual.

These issues of corruption and decadence are not unrelated to current events. In fact, all are inextricably woven into the sickness that is American life, past and present. For what is a healthy nation but a healthy citizenry? Judged by this simple theorem, then, America has been, and remains, the sickest of all “first-world” nations. As the shootings and the reactions remind us, such events, and their causes and consequences, are already deeply politicized. To suppress this fact, even for an instant, dishonors the memory of the slain. Further, to ask that these events not be politicized in the wake of the tragedy, as if such a thing was possible, sounds good, but is in fact deeply disingenuous, patently ludicrous, and downright cowardly. It is, in essence, bad medicine, and manifests the very opposite of the liberal avowal of alleged compassion motivating such a request. In this instance, the compassionate thing is to speak truly about the underlying causes that make such tragedies a reality, and to speak against fake and easy alms and solutions that do nothing to assess the miserable record that makes such catastrophes inevitable.

To continue to mindlessly comfort ourselves with surfeited platitudes and falsehoods regarding the indefatigable will, generosity, and compassion of the American spirit may achieve its short-term narcotizing goal, providing a necessary distancing to face another round of national tragedy and mourning. But such succor is ephemeral at best. As always, the true terrors and unchecked passions linger, festering just below the surface. Yes, we may assuage our guilt for the moment but it is a shallow convalescence.

Such rhetorical perversions are the transparently manipulative purview of politicians and pundits and nothing more, serving to mask the unending clamor of the American nightmare reality and its manic beat of more death, more bombs, more death-in-life. If we are to get serious about saving ourselves and this country, these aberrations, and their attendant death-march, need discarding pronto. The future of all our children, and the republic itself, depends on it.