Tag Archives: detroit

The Problem of Dealing With Race By Invoking Historical Ancestors

Business, Computer Games, Economics, News, Politics, , , , , , , ,

Race seems to be a big issue these days. I guess that’s a good thing. It means people are thinking about the concept and discussing it with others. At least that’s my hope. In some cases this is massively necessary because it helps deal with oversights that have been going on way too long. In other cases, not so much. What I see is that in those types of cases racism as a concept is used as a process to silence others or to beat people over the head in an attempt to collapse all disagreements under the blanket of racism, even if the individual artifacts we’re discussing may have had little to do with racism (which is why blanket criticism is used).

But this post isn’t really about that. Like I said, I’m glad people are addressing racism. There’s just way too much of it present in this day and age, even though a lot of closeted racists would really like to put forth the idea that racism is gone (so they can stop being rightly accused of being racists, or at least apologists for the same). What this post is really about is one of those commentaries that shows up in these discussions, and quite often this commentary comes in groups of people who don’t actually deal with racism in any way.

I know that sounds confusing, but let me explain. People who address and call out racism are quite often those who are directly affected by it. Racism directed toward race is more often addressed by African-Americans in U.S. society because let’s be honest: African-Americans are far more the targets of racism here than most other demographics. Sure, any minority race and/or ethnicity is a potential target for racists, so I don’t want to make an argument that assumes otherwise. But overall, African-Americans are going to have a better chance of perceiving racism more than a Caucasian because racists are pretty one-sided when it comes to this dichotomy. Sure, an African-American can be a racist, but part of what makes racism as powerful a weapon as it is is because it also has a mechanism of power to be used against the victim. A group of African-American racists standing around the streets of Wall Street aren’t going to chase a non-African-American away from Wall Street because the background of Wall Street doesn’t support such an attempt to alienate the victim, but a group of Caucasians targeting a non-Caucasian on a street of Wall Street might cause someone from that targeted demographic to think that Wall Street isn’t a safe place to hang around. The point is: Racism involves power, but it also requires power in order to be effective.

As an academic, I find myself around a lot of people who quite often invoke specific arguments whenever it comes to the idea of racism. I’m also a moderator on a very active current events message board, so I see all sorts of commentary that comes from that origin as well. And what I’ve come to observe is something I don’t believe a lot of people realize seems to be happening around them. And specifically, this sort of racism that is happening today is also very localized in its temporal vicinity (the time it inhabits right now). As a result, people today who are frightened of being perceived as race-challenged (or “racists” for lack of a better term) will do everything possible to avoid being cast as villains in this dynamic. As such, it’s not surprising to hear someone say something along the lines of “I’m not a racist because I have a friend who is black.” Okay, that one is kind of obvious because we’ve all heard that one and know how it’s almost become a punchline to a joke no one wants to admit making.

No, part of the problem stems from an argument that orchestrates how a lot of people who are a part of the problem that they don’t even acknowledge exists. We all know the argument, even though we don’t think much about it because we discard it because of its simplistic nature when we should have thought about and realized why it makes things worse rather than explain things away. You know you’ve heard this argument whenever you hear someone say “Well, my ancestors are from Europe, so I wasn’t responsible.” It’s one of those arguments made in hopes of closing off conversation (and hoping the topic changes as well). But think about it. If someone’s ancestors were from South Carolina, does that make that particular individual responsible for racism that happened 150 years ago and several generations ago as well? Probably not. But that’s only if you feel that responsibility ends with theoretical people who may or may not have been personally involved. Are people complaining about stuff that happened in the 1860s? I don’t think they are. We all know that horrible things happened back then, and we all pretty much agree today that if we could change things, we would make sure they didn’t happen again. Or would we?

And that’s where that argument that gets made loses its traction. There are problems happening today, and rather than deal with them today, we have people saying they shouldn’t have to be responsible because they weren’t around 150 years ago. But again, the problems exist today. What are any of us doing to change things here and now? I would argue “not a lot” because if we were all doing something to make things better, my belief is that things would be better.

Instead, we have ghettos, slums, income disparities, fenced off housing, more cops than educators, hostility towards certain populations, massive corruption in places that should be making a difference, and finger-pointing rather than any desire for accountability. An example is the City of Detroit. It practically collapsed due to white flight and inner city corruption. Instead of solutions that work to fix these problems, we end up with right versus left rhetoric, race baiting and people who support corrupt leaders because to not do so means giving ground to racist rhetoric. In other words, NO ONE is seeking to fix the problems, and the few who are seem to basically be drowned out by the people who find more importance in criticism and looking for scapegoats.

So, what’s the solution? Well, let’s stop caring about what the color of someone’s skin is and start looking at how we can make the neighborhoods of people prosperous and worth living in. That means also changing our criminal codes so that “crimes” that don’t hurt people stop being crimes. If “drugs” are seen as a problem, convict people to treatment programs rather than criminal institutions. Some aren’t going to be fixed the first time, but a responsible civilization doesn’t give up after the first time. It keeps trying until it works.

We also need to change our financial circumstances to benefit all. Yeah, a lot of very rich people are going to hate that. But having a few pissed off people and a civilization filled with thriving individuals seems like a good trade off. This A. Rand society of doing well and screwing over everyone else needs to end.

We need to stop going to war because some group of people don’t think like we do. Different thinking people should be interesting, not enemies. The reaction is that we need to do this because there are people out there trying to kill us. They’re trying to kill us because we always go to war against people who don’t think like we do. That tends to lead to diminishing returns. Change the thinking; change the outcomes. It can be pretty simple. Of course, the naysayers will say no because they only know the institution that we are currently in and like the frog in a well who sees only the circle of light in the sky, we’re never going to see constellations in the paths of other wells if we never get out of the well we’re currently stuck in. Just saying.

Or we can keep doing the things we’re doing and hope that somehow things get better. But they won’t. So good luck with that. I’ve given up trying, so I’ll be playing video games while the world crumbles around me. At least I can accomplish something with a high score. They don’t give Nobel Peace prizes for that, but I guess that’s just cause I don’t own an army that kills a lot of people. Yet.

People of Detroit are Learning How Much Government Doesn’t Care About People

Business, Politics, Technology, , , , , ,

faucet

It was reported today that a government official in Detroit, U.S. bankruptcy judge Steven Rhodes, has decided that water isn’t a right, and that if people can’t pay for it, the government is obligated to shut them off. Basically, the argument is that government has been keeping the water on too long, and if you can’t pay, you don’t get to drink, or bathe, or do anything else that involves the most abundance substance on the planet.

What people should get from this story is not that water is not a right, but that when it comes down to basic survival, your government doesn’t give a rat’s ass about you, even though they will say the opposite in hopes of getting your cooperation, or votes.

I learned this myself this month when I moved to Texas. I moved into an apartment that was kind of nice, but over this first month, let’s just say that I’ve had EVERY utility that is owned by government somehow blow up in my face, and then some uncaring civil servant has sat across from me (or sat on the phone with me) and basically said: “It’s not my problem, so why are you bothering me?” Well, they didn’t say exactly that, but they could have and it wouldn’t have changed the outcome whatsoever.

As we’re talking about water, let’s talk about water. I was fine when I moved to my new apartment, but the person who lived in my apartment before me decided to cut off ALL utilities when she moved. And the way the government did it was quite unique. It didn’t matter that I was now the person on record as paying the bills, EVERY utility treated that original cut off notice as more important than the person who was now living in the building and actually paying for the service. So, for one week, I lost electricity. The next week, I lost gas (which meant hot water). After those were re-established (keeping in mind that NONE of these companies will do this at night or on a weekend, and almost always they shut me off at five o’clock on Friday (yep, each of them did it one weekend after another), meaning I went without electricity first, then without hot water (or the ability to cook)…well, that was followed up last week with several days of absolutely no water whatsoever. The people at the water company were “wow, that sucks, but sorry, we can’t have someone out there to turn it back on, even though he’s probably a few yards from where you’re at now because he just freaking turned the water off, so you’ll have to wait a day or two until we can pencil you in for our next turning on the water guy to show up.”

So, the other day, I got to take a shower with bottles of water from Wal Mart because I had no water in the apartment. And of course, it was cold water, because I couldn’t exactly heat up a plastic bottle of water for a shower (it just wasn’t really an easy proposition).

So, when I see people protesting out in Detroit over the government being a meanie, well, that’s just what government is. They don’t care about the common person because they’re not a common person, nor do they know any. They see someone who doesn’t pay as a delinquent, and if you happen to be one of them, expect them to respond with extra fees to turn back on your water because you’re inconveniencing them for their trouble.

For those in Detroit, keep in mind that when they turned off someone’s water, getting it back on isn’t just a matter of calling up and saying, yeah, I’ll pay the next bill. Instead, they’ll charge “administration” fees to turn it back on, which quite often are more than the water ever would have cost in the first place. And more importantly, they don’t care.

That’s life in the big world. And quite often, it sucks.

Recap of the News and a treatise on quantum mechanics in movies

Business, Movies, Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s time for a little recap of the news, Duane style. There were just too many little things going on that I didn’t want to write a bunch of different posts rather than just do the whole thing at once.

1. Charlie Sheen. It seems his second performance (in Chicago) was a lot better than his first one in Detroit. Let’s see if he can manage to pull it off with a majority of his shows or if the one in Chicago was a fluke. What I have found fascinating about this whole story is how many people feel it necessary to comment about how stupid people are for wasting lots of money for a concert ticket to watch a “train wreck”. You know, as much as I agree with the sentiment, it’s their money, and if that’s what they want to do with it, who cares? It’s not like everyone else doesn’t waste money on stupid things as well. Some people pay outrageous amounts of money on porn, some on shoes, some on video games, others on Apple products. So let them. The only ones I found to be most relevant in their condemnations were the people who paid money to see him and were seriously disappointed. It should be interesting to see how this whole thing plays out over time.

2. Libya. Most people who know me also know I’m not a real fan of war. Since leaving government service, I’ve become more of a peaceful individual, and the idea of starting wars for any reason bothers me. Anyway, the situation in Libya is interesting in that it’s not just about war. It’s about choosing sides. For decades, we treated Gaddafi as the enemy, and then during the War on Terror, we started treating him as an ally. And the second that a revolution started in his country, we took sides against him. But at the same time, we also realized that we still want and need oil, plus the help of Libya against future terrorists is also a necessity, so if he isn’t removed from power, there’s going to be a very interesting dilemma our country has to face in the future. Do we go back to treating him friendly, or do we forever treat him as an enemy, knowing that he’ll probably start fostering terrorism used against us. Add to the fact that the rebels are now possibly targeting civilians in order to fight Gaddafi, and you have one of those situations the US is so good at getting itself into. We’re really good at doing the “right thing” but what we’re not really good at doing is knowing when to stop or even how, especially when the “right thing” is no longer the good thing. We stopped potential civilian casualties, and now we’re in the situation where we have to decide whether or not to back the rebels rather than just protect civilians. Like I said, we’re not historically very good at making choices like these.

3. Source Code. I saw this movie over the weekend, and I really enjoyed it. I’ve been hearing mixed reviews from others, however. Most of the established review sites have liked it, but the people who haven’t seen it seem to be interested in criticizing it, which is somewhat bizarre if you think about it. One of the biggest criticisms has also come from people who have seen it, and it (SPOILER ALERT…don’t read further if you’re interested in seeing this movie) has to do with the ending of the movie. And I’m finding that kind of funny because I think the criticism comes from people not realizing exactly what happened at the end. I keep hearing critics say, “the cheezy ending which didn’t make any logical sense” or how they believe that there was too much suspension of disbelief that was required to make that leap at the end. Well, what I want to add to this is that I think they didn’t understand what happened. It wasn’t a cheezy ending for the main character to make the choice he did. What really happened was he understood what was going on, but the scientist didn’t. The scientist thought he invented a process (the source code) to take someone through another individual’s mind and relive the last moments of his life. He argued the significant point that kind of gave away the ending, IF YOU KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT QUANTUM MECHANICS. The movie created a Shroedinger effect, in that what was really going on (and the main character realized it in his own uneducated way) was not a reliving of last moments of life, but a jump into another reality, kind of the “is the cat dead or alive” effect of Shroedinger. When he asked to save the people on the train and sent out an email message to the woman behind the camera, he realized that he was saving another reality, not his own. He understood that the people on the train were dead in his own reality, but he wanted to save another reality this time, and that’s the one he managed to continue living in. Yes, it’s highly complex, but if you followed the quantum mechanics, it actually made some sense. Anyway, spoiler done.

4. Obama announced his reelection. Really? That came out of nowhere.

5. The Budget and Shutting down of the government. Hope it doesn’t happen. But this is what happens when you give people too much power, too much responsibility and no ramifications if they don’t get the job done. To them, it’s all about winning this ideological battle and has nothing to do with actual service. All of them were elected to serve their country, but in reality they’re doing what they do best, serving themselves. The only people who will suffer will be “the people” as the politicians will all get paid regardless of what they do. Always remember that when they do what they do, or even more importantly, don’t do what they do.

6. Anti-teacher sentiment in America. I’ve really never seen it this bad. For ridiculous reasons, the right has decided that the way to clean up government is to go on the warpath against teachers, pretty much trying to use teachers as their scapegoat of everything that’s wrong in America. For years now, the problem has been education, but teachers aren’t the problem; they’ve been the ones trying to solve the problem. Unfortunately, no one seems to really be interested in dealing with the actual problems, like poverty, hunger, apathy and violence. Because governments have been spending money like it’s going out of style, somehow the teachers have been seen as the ones responsible, even though they don’t make those decisions but politicians do. So, of course, because politicians can’t blame themselves, they’re going after the people they can blame. Economically, the system cannot maintain itself as it has, but that’s not the fault of teachers; that’s the fault of the budget people who have been playing the “kick the can down the road” game for decades now. Well, we’re running out of road, so obviously now that it comes time to make tough decisions, we’re proving we elected people who have never made good decisions to begin with and expecting them to come up with proper solutions. How more broken can the system be than that?

7. The War on Drugs. I know it hasn’t been in the news lately, but actually it has. It’s in the news every day, even though we see it as other stories. We’ve been fighting this “war” for decades now, and we’re not winning. Instead, what we’ve done is create a criminal society where addicts are now perceived as criminals and added to our prison system population instead of treated. Then we ruin their lives, making it impossible for them to ever properly rejoin communities, thus falling back into irresponsible behavior. We have also created a criminal element of people who prey on other people. By allowing this behavior to continue, we have also pushed back race relations a hundred years, where we have one group of people attacking another group of people, where the only things that separate them are color of their skin, because other distinctive characterizations are more difficult to ascertain. In some cities, like Denver, we have race riots being fought, and they happen under the noses of the rest of the country, which prefers to be completely oblivious to this type of behavior, using pretense as a process of filter. Where we need leadership to fix this, we have people who gain political prominence and power by fueling this behavior, and we all lose. I’m just saying.

That’s all for today. Stay well, and don’t eat the yellow snow. It doesn’t taste like bananas.

No End to the Misery that is the City of Detroit

Economics, Politics, , , , , , , , ,

On Sunday, in Detroit, a man walked into a police station and opened fire, injuring four officers before being killed by the rest of the officers who returned fire. As of the next day, there has been no motive, explanation or even bizarre justification for his actions, other than he was some guy who walked in off the street and decided to pursue “suicide by cop.” Since then, there have been all sorts of commentaries, ranging from the expected to the outrageous. But what hasn’t been discussed at length is how much this should have been expected. I mean, no one expects these things, and when they should, they rarely do.

Detroit is one of those cities that ends up on practically every bad list that gets reported about cities in the United States. Literacy is lowest, crime is highest, murder is highest, corruption is constant, racism is everywhere (from expected racism to reverse racism), gang activity is amongst the highest in the nation, and the city is pretty much a cesspool and an example of what should not be done with a city if you want to achieve some sense of normality and progress.

The former mayor of the city is in jail, as are numerous members of its former governments. Crime is so out of control that people don’t even think about moving there; it’s on the lowest of the low lists for people moving to a city. Whenever a television show has something to do with Detroit, it’s almost always a gritty police procedural where people die, cops are on the edge, and there’s lots of gang violence. I have yet to see Meg Ryan looking for love in Detroit, although I wouldn’t be surprised to see some random hood beating the crap out of a suspect with a baseball bat because “dat’s how we do tings in da Troit!”

What’s interesting is that Detroit is one of those cities where if government really cared, it could actually use the city as a petri dish of improving urban despair all over the country. Other than Washington, D.C., and maybe parts of Los Angeles and New York, Detroit has pretty much everything going wrong for it so that a concentrated effort might actually make a very significant difference.

But no one seems to care about places like Detroit, except for the people who live in Detroit, and for some reason they don’t seem to matter. If you follow the politics of a place like Detroit, you notice that quite a few of the people running for office all run on the same types of platforms, about improving Detroit so people can be proud of it. But then a few years down the line, people throw those bums out because it turns out they weren’t interested in helping the city, but in helping themselves, usually to the coffers and whatever they can lay their hands on before they’re either caught or voted out of office. Even when they’re caught, quite often the masses will rally around the culprit, somehow claiming that going after a public official the people elected is wrong, that even though the person is corrupt and stole millions of dollars, he’s “their” thief, so the government should leave him or her alone. It’s often enough to cause one’s head to spin continuously at the ridiculousness involved.

Detroit is very much becoming one of those Mexican provinces where government has collapsed, and the drug gangs have taken over. The police are fighting a never-ending battle to regain control of the city, but like a proud parent, they just refused to believe that they’re really not in control. It would not surprise me to discover the culprit in this current case is some drug dealer who felt slighted by the police, and this is his way of striking back, or that he’s some trigger man for a drug gang that has decided to send a message to the cops.

Or he’s some delusional man who decided life wasn’t worth it, and suicide by cop was the easiest way out. Either way, there are problems in Detroit that need some serious attention. Unfortunately, the experts IN Detroit are obviously not the ones who are capable of handling the problem. They’ve been doing the same things over and over, hoping for different results (the Internet definition of insanity).

I used to drive through Detroit a couple of times a month, and it’s like entering a different world when you do. You go from the nice, grassy landscape, and then the journey on the freeway turns into dirtied concrete, and you realize that this is not a place that has any respect for itself. And why should it? It’s just getting worse and worse.

What’s going to happen over the next few days, and possibly weeks, is locals will point their fingers at what they’ve always pointed their fingers at, blaming unions, gangs, politicians, big government, little government, the auto industry, drugs, guns, overzealous police, underzealous police, and they’ll come up with the same conclusions they always do. But in the end, they’ll do nothing, hoping it was an anomaly that will never happen again.

Until it happens again, and then some reporter will start off a story with some ridiculousness like: “They never believed it could happen here.”

Why Television is Failing So Much These Days

Television, Writing, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Networks really don’t want to admit this, but they’re losing big time in the ratings wars. Oh, they’ll acknowledge it by saying really stupid things like, “we have to compete with so many other sources, like computer games, Xboxes and cable” but what they’re really not admitting is that they’ve so lost the pulse of America that they may never gain it back. The reason they don’t want to admit that they’re failing big time is that everyone who works for the networks realizes that his or her job is on the line if someone higher up realizes how incompetent they really are. So, instead of admitting it and fixing it, they’ll go on pretending that the emperor has no clothes and hope no one notices either.

Well, I’m going to put forth a couple of problems and solutions, and then we can kind of figure out if the networks are ever going to get any better.

1. The Hiatus. One of the biggest mistakes the networks could ever make is to start up a new show that starts to gain the attention of the public and then SUDDENLY yank it off the air for three or four months, and then let it reappear again. If there was a number one stupid thing to do so you could derail any chance at succeeding in ratings THIS  it is.

The origins of this stupid idea quite possibly came as a result of the infamous writer’s strike that halted all production for a period of time right in the middle of a brand new season. As a result, some really promising shows got canceled prematurely because they didn’t even get a first half of a season to gain popularity. They were pulled off the air during the strike and then never brought back.

Now, I could see this as one of those once in a lifetime situations, but somehow the networks thought this was a really good idea to subject viewers to a gap in time right in the middle of a show, as if this would cause them to come rushing back to that show, because they’ve been waiting and anticipating its return. This is supposedly what happened with LOST. But because it worked for LOST, they tried it with every other stupid show they aired. They did it with Heroes, and then Heroes went completely downhill. Then they did it with every other shows as well. SyFy became famous for doing this (even though it’s not a major network), and it is quite possibly the reason for the destruction of Caprica. Caprica was a somewhat decent show, but they cut it right in the middle of its first season so that people just stopped caring about the show. Then the second half came, and well, no one cared. So it got canceled.

That’s the problem right there. If you give us a new show and then halt it in the middle of the very first season, don’t expect us to come back. Sorry, but you lose.

2. Remake Hell. There’s a reason some shows were canceled the first time around. They failed. Remaking a failed show from yesterday may sound like a daring idea, but all it does is show that your network has no creativity whatsoever. Hawaii 5-0 might sound like a great idea, and I’m kind of liking the idea of seeing Grace Park in a bikini once a week, but to be honest, Hawaii 5-00 wasn’t all that great a show back then. I’m not all that excited about it now. So, I don’t watch it. And when others get over the fresh car smell, they probably won’t either. And that’s the most popular of the remake shows to have been done. Imagine what happens to the ones that aren’t as popular. The show V sounds like a neat idea, but it’s been done before. Even though some of the actors on the show are all from a Best of Sci Fi of all time (watching the cast is like watching a recap of who was once great in sci fi), it’s very hard to get past the fact that almost nothing in this show is original. And then they put it into half season hiatus (see complaint Number 1), which means they’re going to be seriously struggling to maintain an audience. And when they cancel it on us, they’ll blame us for not wanting to watch it.

3. No Faith in a Network. This is one of my biggest pet peeves with the networks. I generally don’t watch a new television show any more until it reaches the third season because I’m so tired of a show being canceled in the first or second season, right after I’ve gotten drawn into it. They did it to me with Harsh Realms (remember that one?), Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Jericho, Jeremiah, Firefly, and Dollhouse. Why would I trust a network to actually continue a television show that I started to watch? It’s really not worth the effort until they’ve decided to reward us by actually continuing the show. But they won’t continue a show because none of us are watching it (maybe because we don’t believe you’ll continue it).

4. Rehashes of Overdone Formulas. How many Law & Order or CSI franchises can we create? As a matter of fact, do we really need another cop show of any sorts? At one point, I was getting paranoid while living in San Francisco because there were more cops on television from San Francisco than there were actual cops on the streets. I was scared to walk to the corner because on TV there was a crime happening every fifteen seconds in San Francisco. And I knew not to call a cop because they were all basket cases who were having problems dealing with their sanity (or ex-cops who were scared of their own shadows…thanks, Monk). Recently, there was a show with a guy who played a drugged out mafioso in New Jersey who was now a cop in Detroit. I was starting to wonder who I could trust anymore. I mean, I’m kind of scared just now writing about it. But stop giving us more stupid cop shows. There’s not as much crime in the world as there is on television. Stop scaring the crap out of us.

5. Bad writing. This is probably my biggest complaint these days. The Event stopped being an event for me because the writing was straight out atrocious. And then they backed it up with some of the worst acting since Pauly Shore decided to make serious movies. Or maybe he didn’t. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just a recurring fear I have. But either way, the writing is awful on some of these shows. I remember watching an episode of The Chase (or is it just Chase?), and three times in a row I was able to blurt out the next line of dialogue word for word before the actor could say it. And these were the “gotcha” moments that cop shows have where the hero gets to say the cool thing to the guy who is setting him or her up for a big dramatic moment. The writing was so bad that it was badly predictable.

That, in short, is why I find network television these days to be suffering. If they want to really compete with the competition that’s up against them, they have to raise their game. But they can’t raise their game if they’re going to keep doing the stupid things they keep on doing.