Morality and tribalism

I had a bit of an epiphany this morning.

It was when I was reading an article in the news about the fact that Joe Biden has lost support among law enforcement unions because of his call to increase oversight and investigate claims of unwarranted or excessive violence by the police.  "For Joe Biden, police are shaking their heads because he used to be a stand-up guy who backed law enforcement," said Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations. "But it seems in his old age, for whatever reason, he’s writing a sad final chapter when it comes to supporting law enforcement."

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Jamelle Bouie, Police in riot gear at Ferguson protests, CC BY 2.0]

I suddenly realized that this was the common thread running through a lot of the problems we've faced as a society, and that it boils down to people believing that tribal identity is more important than ethical behavior.  The police are hardly the only ones to fall prey to this.  It's at the heart of the multiple pedophilia scandals that have plagued the Catholic Church, for example.  This one resonates for me because I saw it happen -- as I've written about before, I knew personally the first priest prosecuted for sexual abuse of children, Father Gilbert Gauthé.  Father Gauthé was the assistant pastor for a time at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Broussard, Louisiana; the priest, Father John Kemps, employed my grandmother as live-in housekeeper and cook.  The point here is that when the scandal became public, and it was revealed that Gauthé had abused hundreds of boys, the most shocking fact of all was that the bishop of the Diocese of Lafayette, Maurice Schexnayder, knew about it all along -- and instead of putting a stop to it, he transferred Gauthé from one church to another in the hopes that no one would ever find out that a priest could do such a thing.

For Schexnayder, membership in the tribe was more important than protecting the safety of children.

It happens all the time.  Inculcated very young, and reinforced by slogans like "everyone hates a rat" and "snitches get stitches," kids learn that refusing to identify rule-breakers is not only safer, it's considered a virtue.  Things like cheating rings survive in schools not only from the fact that participation is rewarded by higher grades (provided you don't get caught), but from the complicity of non-participants who know very well what's going on and refuse to say anything.

Tribe trumps morality.

The teachers themselves are not immune.  In 2011, a scandal rocked Atlanta schools when it was revealed that teachers were changing scores on standardized exams -- 178 teachers and administrators eventually confessed to the practice, and lost their licenses -- and it had been going on for over a decade.  I'm not going to go into the ridiculous reliance of state education departments on high-stakes standardized test scores that probably acted as the impetus for this practice; regular readers of Skeptophilia know all too well my opinion about standardized exams.  What interests me more is that there is no way that 178 teachers and administrators were doing this for a decade, and no one else knew.

The great likelihood is that almost everyone knew, but for ten years, no one said anything.

Tribe trumps morality.

The truth is that any time people's affiliation becomes more important than their ethics, things are set up for this kind of systemic rot.  How many times have you heard the charge leveled against both of the major political parties in the United States that "you only care about someone breaking the law if (s)he's a member of the other party?"  When the voters -- when anyone, really -- puts more importance on whether a person has an (R) or a (D) after their name than whether they're ethical, honest, moral, or fair, it's only a matter of time before the worst people either side has to offer end up in charge.

We have to be willing to rise above our tribe.  Sure, it's risky.  Yes, it can be painful to realize that someone who belongs to your profession, religion, or political party isn't the pillar of society you thought they were.  But this is the only way to keep a check on some of the worst impulses humans have.  Because when people feel invulnerable -- when they know that no matter what they do, their brothers and sisters in the tribe will remain silent out of loyalty -- there are no brakes on behavior.

So to return to what began this: of course there are good cops.  I have several friends in law enforcement who are some of the kindest, most upstanding people I know.  But it's imperative that the good ones speak up against the ones who are committing some of the atrocities we've all seen on video in the last few days -- peaceful protestors exercising their constitutionally-guaranteed right to assembly being gassed, reporters being beaten and shot in the head with rubber bullets, police destroying a city-approved medics' table in Asheville, North Carolina, and in one particularly horrifying example, cops shooting a tear gas canister into the open window of a car stopped at a stoplight, and when the driver got out yelling that his pregnant wife was in the car, the cops opened fire on him.

If people know they can act with impunity, they will.  It's only when the members of the tribe are willing to call its members out on their transgressions -- when we are as loud in condemning illegal or immoral behavior in members of our own political party, religion, or profession as we are in condemning those of the others -- that this sort of behavior will stop.

And that applies to the police spokespersons who are questioning their support of Joe Biden because he called for more oversight.  No one likes outside agencies monitoring their behavior.  I get that.  But until the police are more consistent about calling out their fellow officers who are guilty of unwarranted or excessive violence, there really is no other choice.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week is a fun one -- George Zaidan's Ingredients: The Strange Chemistry of What We Put In Us and On Us.  Springboarding off the loony recommendations that have been rampant in the last few years -- fad diets, alarmist warnings about everything from vaccines to sunscreen, the pros and cons of processed food, substances that seem to be good for us one week and bad for us the next, Zaidan goes through the reality behind the hype, taking apart the claims in a way that is both factually accurate and laugh-out-loud funny.

And high time.  Bogus health claims, fueled by such sites as Natural News, are potentially dangerous.  Zaidan's book holds a lens up to the chemicals we ingest, inhale, and put on our skin -- and will help you sort the fact from the fiction.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

A line in the sand

Richard Dawkins wrote, "I think it's important to realize that when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them.  It is possible for one side to be simply wrong."

After yesterday's unhinged press conference, this is the situation we are in with respect to Donald Trump and his supporters.

The subject of his speech was the violence between white supremacists and protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which a young woman was killed when an angry young man with neo-Nazi leanings drove his car into the crowd.  The violence, Trump said, was the fault of both sides:

What about the 'alt-left' that came charging at, as you say, the 'alt-right,' do they have any semblance of guilt?  What about the fact they came charging with clubs in hands, swinging clubs, do they have any problem?  I think they do...  You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. nobody wants to say it, but I will say it right now.

The "club in hands" reference is to a photograph of an Antifa member allegedly striking a police officer with a club -- a photograph that has since been shown to be digitally altered.

That is, a fake.

What is grimly ironic about this is that Trump defended the two-day delay in condemning the white supremacists and neo-Nazis by saying that he wasn't sure of his facts:

I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct, not make a quick statement... What I said was a fine statement.  I don't want to go quickly and just make a statement for the sake of making a political statement.

Besides the fact that even after the delay, he still got the facts wrong, it bears mention that it took him only an hour to respond when Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier resigned in protest from the President's Manufacturing Council.  Trump's ego was stung by the resignation -- something which evidently moves him more than seeing people marching in Nazi regalia does.  "Now that Ken Frazier of Merck Pharma has resigned from President's Manufacturing Council," Trump sneered via Twitter (of course),  "he will have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!"

But apparently it takes way more time to decide whether to condemn white supremacists who had not only killed a young woman for protesting, but who had said, on a website affiliated with their cause, "Despite feigned outrage by the media, most people are glad [Heather Heyer] is dead, as she is the definition of uselessness.  A 32-year-old woman without children is a burden on society and has no value."

This is the ideology that our president thinks is so morally ambiguous that it took him 48 hours to decide whether it was worth condemning, and then afterwards claimed was actually no worse than the beliefs of the anti-Nazi protesters.

Most media were quick to condemn Trump's speech, but as soon as it hit the news, the apologists started in with equal speed.  Within a half-hour of the story breaking, I saw the following comments posted:

• All he's saying is that white people shouldn't be ashamed of being white.
• I'd take the people in the march before I would the leftist whiners who are trying to tear America down.
• The people in the march aren't responsible for what one crazy man in a car did.
• For crying out loud, shut up and give the President a chance!

This last one is, of all of them, the one that galled me the most.  You know what?  Trump has had seven months of chances.  He has shown himself to be a dishonest, racist, misogynistic prick over and over.  The most surprising thing, in fact, is how unsurprising this last speech was.  It was totally in keeping with his prior words and actions.  All he did here is clarify his own ideology in such a way that there is no doubt any more where his loyalties lie.

So the chances are over, not only for Trump but for his followers.  It's no longer conservative versus liberal, Democrat versus Republican.  This is about deciding whether you side with a man who has allied himself with people who wear swastikas on armbands and chant, "The Jew will never replace us!"  There is no moral ambiguity here.  If you don't repudiate him, now, you are complicit in his actions and those of his followers.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

I try my hardest to listen to the people I disagree with, but at some point, there is no compromise, no way to find common ground.  After that, there is no choice but to commit to every effort necessary to stop people who are violent, amoral, and so convinced they are in the right that there is no possibility of discussion.

You might be saying, "Well, aren't you equally convinced that you're right?"  Perhaps.  But I'm not the one calling for violence against people of different races, religions, or sexual orientations.

This is the point where moral people have to stand up and take a hard look at what is happening here, and realize that neutrality is no longer an option.  We are fast approaching something very like the Weimar Republic of the 1930s -- waiting only for our own Reichstag Fire to plunge the nation into darkness and bloodshed.

So if you're a Trump supporter, I'm sorry if you were misled by his rhetoric.  I understand that it's easy to get swept away by the theatrics of politics, to vote for someone who turned out to be something other than you wanted.  But we've crossed a line, here.  If you still support him, if you are one of the ones crying out "give him a chance," then you and others like you are fully responsible for the horrifying place we seem to be headed.

Sayonara, Fred

Well, the news is being spread far and wide: Fred Phelps, the founder and primary spokesperson of the Westboro Baptist Church, is dying.

This has been the cause of widespread jubilation amongst folks belonging to a variety of groups: LGBTQ individuals and their allies; atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers; members of the military, who had seen funerals of their comrades picketed; and people of all stripes who were simply repelled by the hatefulness of his message.  Every time his little group of angry, bitter followers showed up in a new town, waving their placards saying "God hates fags" and "God laughs when a soldier dies," they made a few more enemies.

So I suppose it's only natural that there would be some crowing at the man's imminent demise.  "God hates Fred," read the subject line of one post on Reddit.  Others stated their determination to picket his funeral, and some went the further step of describing, in detail, their plans to desecrate his grave.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Now, I'm no apologist for the WBC.  I'm an atheist, which already places me amongst the individuals that they believe are destined for the Fiery Furnace.  Further, I'm a supporter and ally to LGBTQ people, and in fact two of my dearest and closest friends are lesbians.  I think that the pain he has caused to the families of military men and women who were killed in action is inexcusable.

But I would not join in a protest at his funeral, even if I had the opportunity.

Everything Fred Phelps did was a bid for publicity.  The protests, the outrageous statements, the inflammatory signs -- all of it was a pathetic, twisted attempt to turn the nation's eye on him and his followers and keep it there.  Did he actually believe what he was saying?  Perhaps.  I don't know.  In the end, it doesn't matter.  Whatever he was -- a zealot or a snake-oil salesman -- he brought out the very worst in the people around him, and through the hatred he spewed, he caused a lot of people to sink to his level.

Not all, of course; there were the people who formed silent human shields, so that mourning families wouldn't have to see his nasty messages as their loved ones were being buried.  Even more wonderful was the time that Phelps and his cadre showed up in Brandon, Mississippi to protest a soldier's funeral, and the day of the funeral every car in the town with Kansas plates was found to be blocked in place by a car or truck with Mississippi plates.  The Mississippi cars were removed, with many apologies for the inconvenience -- after the funeral was over.

But mostly what he provoked was hatred.  Not as vitriolic as his own, usually, but still hot and dark and damaging.  And that, I think, was precisely what he wanted.

So, you want to make a real statement, now that Fred Phelps is soon to be no more?  Don't give his followers the satisfaction of knowing that his life, or death, has had any impact at all on you.

More than perhaps anyone else I can think of, Fred Phelps deserves obscurity.  He is dying, alone in a Kansas hospice, estranged from much of his family, by some accounts excommunicated from the church he founded.  Let him.  Let his legacy of hatred die with him.  People like him deserve none of our effort, no piece of our hearts, no more attention than an irritating mosquito on a beautiful summer day.  Acknowledge his death, then let it be forgotten along with him and the rest of his bitter and vindictive followers.

I remember my grandmother once telling me that because we have the capacity to grow to be like what we love, we must be careful, because sometimes it can backfire and we can grow to be like what we hate instead.  If that message is not understood, then in some bizarre sense, Phelps himself has won.  He will have turned us into the caricatures he always thought we were; evil, nasty, ugly, forsaken by all things that are good and worthwhile.  By turning away from him, even in his hour of death -- at this time when we could shout triumphantly that he's getting what he deserves -- we are depriving him of the victory of being right about us.

Phelps is soon to be no more, for which I am glad; his is a mouth that should be shut.  But now that his voice has been silenced -- or is soon to be -- let us give thought to using our own voices for better things.  For caring for each other, for ending inequality, for speaking out for truth and love and compassion.

Only in doing so can Fred Phelps be said, finally and completely, to have failed.