Arthur Answers, Part 6 – On the other side

This is the penultimate post in this “Ask Arthur” series, and this post is about questions relating to ideological differences, and dealing with them. It’s a vexed subject, since it gets to the very heart of why it’s so hard to find common ground.

First up, Roger Green asked on Facebook:

“What do some smart (IQ) people have such stupid ideas, such as creationism?”

Man, I wish I knew! There are many theories and explanations for how it can be true that, basically, people who are smart enough to know better say or believe things that simply aren’t true. Here’s why I think they do it.

In some cases, it has to do mainly with ideology, either political or religious. They can’t accept something as being true because their politics denies it or their religion preaches against it. This is, of course, cognitive dissonance, which is basically a coping mechanism, a way of reconciling contradictory beliefs. In such situations, some people will pick their belief structure over reality and spout all sorts of nonsense.

The people whose cognitive dissonance leads them to bizarre justifications based on falsehoods tend to be sincere: Generally speaking, they really believe that they’re the true and honest ones, and those on the side of the evidence are all deluded, lying, or corrupt (or a combination). Sincere people may, over time, be reasoned with, though actual change requires them to first open up their minds to the possibility that they may be wrong, and that can be a huge hurdle.

The other kind of person espousing “stupid ideas” is pretty despicable: They do it for personal gain. Such people are usually politicians or preachers, but there have been other people who clearly know better but still sell absolute nonsense (like doctors on TV chat shows). Politicians may say utterly asinine things (like against LGBT people, or Black people, or women) not because they believe it, but because they see it as a way to gain and hold onto power. Some preachers, especially on TV, will similarly promote utter nonsense as a way to gain donations. Personally, I have contempt for such people.

Which brings me to a related question from Roger:

“And from Jaquandor to me: In this age of increasing partisan division, I am finding it harder and harder to even empathize with the “other side” (in my case, the political right in this country). I used to at least understand how they arrived at their worldview, if not share it, but now I increasingly can’t fathom how or why they would look at the world that way at all. Does this make sense to you, and if so, what can be done about it?”

I used to be a Republican, so for many years I understood how Republicans came to their ideological positions, even though I didn’t share them. But that hasn’t been true for 20 years—the change started with the gaggle of far right extremists that Ronald Reagan’s 1980 landside bought to the US Congress.

I actually do understand why so many people come up with a worldview I don’t even remotely share. For example, I can understand (yet despise) why politicians, Republicans in particular, pander to their most ardent base; their worldview is based on what will get them votes/campaign contributions, and they’ll change as soon as their base changes.

Among ordinary people, there are a large number who are just completely uninformed, and a large number who are badly informed. They’re actually quite different.

The completely uninformed are the sorts who never watch the news, or hear it on radio, never pick up a newspaper, and they may not even vote. They’re disengaged, detached, and form their opinions primarily on what other people talk about. Sometimes they defer to someone else—an opinionated co-worker, a preacher, a partner, parent, or a friend. For such people, the quality of information depends entirely on how well informed the people they listen to are, since they don’t seek out other views or information. To be brutally honest, I don’t get very upset at the idea of such people not voting.

What we have nowadays, though, are people with access to ever more diverse sources of information and opinion, yet they end up badly or narrowly informed. I’m in the camp that believes that the great variety of news, views and information on the Internet has resulted in the narrowing of perspectives because people tend to focus in on what reinforces their existing belief structures. In a way, this is no different than the old days when people read one newspaper and watched one TV news and listened to one radio station: For such people, their information was similarly narrow.

What HAS changed is the hyper-partisanship that exists now—not always in the literal sense of reinforcing one particular political party, but more in the sense of general political orientation: Left v. Right. In such a dynamic, even people who are familiar with a wide range of topics can still be badly informed, and have a shallow worldview because their sources of information are so narrow.

I’m extremely pessimistic about this, because I can’t see a way forward. The mainstream news media is, more often than not, shallow and doesn’t challenge the folks in power or the assumptions they promote. The interests of the oligarchs, plutocrats, and corporations are promoted, while at the same time, dissenting views aren’t given a fair hearing. How can anyone see a different way of doing things when they don’t even know there IS a different way?!

Roger answered the question on his blog, and his answer is somewhat different from mine, even though we had some common themes. That’s not uncommon, actually.

The next post in this series will be the final, and it promises to be eclectic.

Arthur Answers, Part 5 – A little gaiety

Lately, the posts in this series of “Ask Arthur” answers have been kind of serious. Which means it’s time to inject a little gaiety into this series. Even so, today's subjects are still serious—it's just there's a theme for this post.

Roger Green asked on Facebook:

“Does the foot dragging on marriage equality implementation, primarily in the US South surprise, or irritate you? Or do you think it's just an inevitable part of the process?”

Much, though certainly not all, of the foot-dragging has started to resolve itself since Roger first posted the question at the start of the month, but my answer to the question is, yes.

I wasn’t surprised, since the pro-discrimination crowd had fought so long and hard and invested so much energy and money into preserving discrimination that there was simply no way they could back down once they’d lost.

However, it’s always irritating when people grandstand for political, especially partisan, reasons, and this was that. Some of the grandstanding, like that infamous judge in Alabama, was just pandering (and fundraising), and along the line some officials were used by the radical right anti-gay industry to try and score points with the most frothing part of the USA’s Rightwing (to better raise money). All of that irritated me.

But the clerks and such who dug in their heels, many of whom were being used, are more objects of pity than scorn. It’s really sad when people use their prejudices as justification for denying equal treatment under law. The clerks’ refusal was never about “religious freedom”, and only ever about anti-gay animus. We know this because they didn’t refuse marriage licenses to people who were divorced and remarrying, people of different religious beliefs—or, especially, no religious belief, inter-racial marriages, etc., etc., etc. I’ve no doubt that some of the refuseniks really did believe it was about religious freedom, but it wasn’t. That was irritating, but more pitiable than actually angering.

So, because it was all expected, including the political posturing, and because the individuals who refused were worthy of pity, not scorn, on the whole I’d say it was all part of the process.

Roger also asked me to comment on the “controversy” around a picture of shirtless men raising the rainbow flag, looking much like the famous photo of the Iwo Jima flag raising (See: “Iwo Jima Marines, gay pride and a photo adaptation that spawns fury” in the Washington Post).

I absolutely hated the “controversy”. The photo was over a decade old and, as the photographer, Ed Freeman, pointed out, it only became widely known because of social media, which, as we all know, has a ready-made audience of people looking to be outraged over nothing very much at all.

Years ago (I have no idea how many), I saw the photo (I have no idea where) and thought nothing in particular about it (apart, maybe, from thinking the lads seemed rather attractive—maybe). The point is, it certainly didn’t outrage me at the time, probably because I’d seen the image appropriated dozens of times over the years, often to promote products, some of which might be viewed as disrespectful.

The main reason I hated the “controversy” wasn’t just because of how stupid it was, but also because the visceral reaction from SO many people was obviously because of its gay theme. I know people are quick to become outraged these days, but it seemed that too many were too quick to assume that gay people had done something just to insult them, and that insulted me.

Roger also asked me to comment on an anti-gay marriage ad made by a rightwing Roman Catholic group. The ad appropriated gay imagery and themes to make an anti-gay point, and it was a truly awful idea. AdWeek discussed it and posted the videos of the ad and the first parody. The AdWeek commentary is pretty much what I thought, too. Obviously, the Catholic group can be anti-gay if they want to be, and they’re free to oppose the freedom to marry if they must, but to do so by stealing the very imagery used by LGBT people for years is pretty crass, and using it to try and present themselves as “victims” and “oppressed” is actually pretty disgusting. Still, they’ve been roundly mocked for the ad, which is good. Again, the point here is not that they’re anti-gay (one of many religious groups), the point is that they deliberately insulted and mocked LGBT people in order to try and get people to oppress us, and that was despicable about it.

Finally (for today), Roger asked here on the blog:

“Matt Baume's book (Defining Marriage: Voices from a Forty-Year Labor of Love) – I'm about a quarter of the way through it – talks a lot about some gay folks believing that marriage as an institution was heterosexist hegemony, and they wanted to have nothing to do with it. Others (later) thought that a domestic partnership was "marriage-lite". What was your evolution on these issues?”

I well remember when I was an activist that some of my more Leftist colleagues were against the idea of marriage, because of the reasons you list, among others, but I wasn’t opposed: I just thought it wouldn’t happen for decades, possibly not in my lifetime. I supported marriage equality all along, I just didn’t see it as a winnable battle back then.

When things picked up speed this century, and some Leftists were still objecting, I became an advocate for marriage. My position was—as it has been for some 35 years—that it was wrong to exclude gay couples from marriage because LGBT people ought to be equal citizens and treated as such. I knew (and know) that many Leftist LGBT people were (and remain) opposed to marriage, to which my glib but sincere answer has been, “then don’t get married.” Their personal opposition to marriage wasn’t a legitimate reason why the rest of us should be denied, just as the fact that some rightwing religionists opposed it also wasn’t a legitimate reason to forbid it.

I also thought that the various separate and unequal marriage alternatives proposed for gay couples were never anything more than “marriage lite”. One of the few blog posts I permanently deleted was one in which I called New Zealand’s then still new Civil Unions “marriage lite”. The problem was that in this country, as in so many other places, civil unions, etc., were seen as a stepping-stone to marriage equality: Calling it “marriage lite” was counter-productive, while a steady campaign showing why that was the case was a strategy. Subtle, and a little too “don’t make no waves” for me, but probably true (and why I deleted that post).

The fact is, I’ve always been a pragmatist: Take what we can get now, even as we work toward full equality. So, civil unions, etc., were a means to an end, but—and this is what mattered to me—they gave at least some of the protection of marriage right then, even as we waited and worked for full equality. I’ve always felt it’s better to get a little civil rights and keep working, than it is to have no rights while we wait for the “someday” in which full equality arrives. This is also why Nigel and I got a civil union: We had no idea that marriage equality would arrive so quickly, and we wanted to protect our family. When marriage became possible, we got married, of course.

Thanks to Roger Green for the questions for today. I obviously grouped them because they all related to gay stuff, but the remaining questions don’t lend themselves to such easy grouping, so the rest of the posts in this series will probably be shorter—probably.

We’re nearing the end of this series, with some very interesting questions still to go, but there’s still time to ask questions! You can leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are okay). You can also email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom du question?). And, for the first time, you can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page.

Arthur Answers, Part 4b: And furthermore

In yesterday’s “Arthur Answers” post, I answered several questions about candidates running for US President in the 2016 US elections. Commenting on that post, Roger Green had a further question. So, for the first time, this is an addendum “Arthur Answers” post.

Roger asked:

“If Hillary could NOT be the Democratic nominee, because of some legal problem, who would be? Who should be? Would it come out of the present collection? Or Clinton disciple Kirsten Gillibrand? Or would they exhume Al Gore from the crypt?”

The tl;dr version of what I said yesterday is that while it was possible that Bernie Sanders could defeat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, it was unlikely to happen. I mention that first because Hillary dropping out is one of the few ways Bernie might win the nomination, but I don’t think that's likely, either.

I think that what would be most likely to happen would be that either Martin O’Malley would emerge as the alternative for mainstream Democrats, or, more likely, someone else would enter the race. I don’t think that Senator Gillbrand would be that person (she’s too closely identified with Clinton), but Senator Elizabeth Warren could be.

Warren is in a unique position: She’s a definite Liberal, maybe not as far Left as Sanders, but further Left than Clinton. She doesn’t have the same “insider” association as either Clinton or Sanders (who’s a career politician, after all). She’s crusaded, like Sanders, against the Wall Street “Banksters”. And, obviously, she’s a woman, like Clinton. In some ways, Elizabeth Warren is combination of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, but without their negatives. She even used to vote Republican.

There were a lot of Left-leaning Democrats hoping that Warren would run, and many of those same people now back Sanders. The “conventional wisdom” was that Warren didn’t run because Clinton was, and she had no interest in diminishing the chance for a woman to be the Democratic nominee. Maybe so, or maybe she just wasn’t interested, full stop. Does it matter? She didn’t run.

So, if Hillary Clinton was forced out of the race for whatever reason, I think the most likely replacement would be a candidacy by Elizabeth Warren, or else the party establishment might rally around Martin O’Malley.

However, I don’t think it matters who could be the replacement nominee: For this scenario to matter, Clinton would have been forced out of the race, and that would almost certainly mean that the Republican nominee would be elected, no matter who the replacement Democratic nominee was.

But, instead of unlikely legal issues, let’s suppose that it was simply a matter of Hillary losing the early contests. This is precisely the possible scenario that Stuart Stevens, former chief strategist for Mitt Romney, talked about in a recent (somewhat grumpy) piece for The Daily Beast. Stevens was giving “advice” to Clinton on how not to lose, but electoral defeat is the only likely reason why Democrats would be looking for a new person to rally around.

In that case, Warren would be the most likely to win the nomination, but if she chose not to enter the race, Sanders would be the most likely replacement. If Warren didn’t enter the race, O’Malley would probably pick up the support of centrist Democrats, but I’m not sure he could win the nomination: Sanders would have momentum on his side.

At the moment, none of the actual or possible replacement candidates have the name recognition of Hillary Clinton, so any late-entry candidate would have to somehow establish national awareness, and fast. It’s possible, but it wouldn’t be easy. Then, they’d have to take on the Republican nominee who by the time of the nomination will have been in the news for months. A big ask no matter the reason for the replacement.

So, depending on the circumstances, if Hillary Clinton was not the nominee, I’d expect the replacement to be either Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, or Martin O’Malley. Circumstances would determine who would try to be the replacement and, once chosen, how successful he or she would be.

But, at the moment, I’ve seen nothing so far that makes me think that anyone other than Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee.

There’s still time to ask questions! Like Roger did last time, you can leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are okay). You can also email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom du question?). And, for the first time, you can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page.

Arthur Answers, Part 4: Candidate questions

I got several questions about candidates running for US President in the 2016 US elections, so I thought I’d group them together. The questions were asked earlier this month, and my answers are based on the current situation.

First up, Roger asked a question on Facebook that was endorsed by Andy:

“The Donald's comments about Mexicans, along with being rejected by Comcast/NBCUnivision and Macy's, for two, has helped him in the polls. Are you SURE he can't win the GOP nomination?”

The short answer is yes, no, and maybe. Next? Seriously, Trump’s biggest enemy is himself, not because of what he says, or even how he says it, but because he gets bored. I’m not convinced he’ll go the distance because of that, or that he won’t decide to launch an independent bid.

But that’s about why Trump might choose to not get the Republican nomination. What’s certain is that the Republican establishment doesn’t want him as their party’s candidate, and neither do the oligarchs and plutocrats who bankroll the USA’s rightwing politics (they want Scott “Koch” Walker). So, the power and money for the party are against Trump, which is why he may yet be prevented from getting the nomination.

On the other hand, Trump in typical of the Republican Party’s base—the people who are certain to vote in primaries or turn up to caucuses. They’re xenophobic, often racist, and dead set against immigration reform (the teabaggers threatened to mount a primary challenge to their former darling, Marco Rubio, because of his limited support for immigration reform, but Rubio chose not to run for re-election to the US Senate). So, while Trump sounds batshit crazy to everyday Americans, what he says is music to the ears of the Republican base. That suggests he could win the nomination, despite the opposition of the bigwigs and mega-rich.

Trump’s biggest challenge could be that even Republicans are turning on their party. A new study by Pew Research found: “Positive views of the GOP among Republicans have declined 18 percentage points since January, from 86% to 68%.” This spells trouble for the more extreme Republicans if that decline is related to, as the same survey found, the fact that Americans in general see the Republican Party as more extreme and least likely to govern in “a more honest ethical way”.

So: Yes, I’m sure he won’t get the nomination because the party’s establishment and money men don’t want him, and because the party is losing the passionate support of it’s own partisans. No, I’m not sure he won’t because he is in lock-step with the Republicans most likely to participate in the selection process. Maybe, because that base may not be enough to overcome the other obstacles Trump faces.

Andy asked:

“In your opinion, Arthur, is Hillary Rodham Clinton the best qualified candidate for POTUS in all of the United States of America, or is there something about the selection process that precludes better qualified candidates from running for office?”

Hillary Clinton is as qualified as any/every candidate for US President because the qualifications are VERY specific. Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution states:

“No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”

That’s it—the only qualifications for US President.

What Andy’s actually getting at are qualities, the whole list of things that we personally think are important in a US president. This may include experience, positions on issues, temperament, age, gender, or any number of other things. One’s perception of what qualities are important is entirely subjective, based on the things that matter to us personally, things like ideology, partisanship, issues one is passionate about, prejudices—any number of possibilities.

So, obviously Hillary Clinton is qualified to be president—and so are all the other candidates. However, I also think she has the right qualities to be president, too, and not all the other candidates do.

The question then becomes, does Hillary have the best qualities of anyone in the USA who might run for president? That’s something I can’t possibly know. However, I’m sure that, theoretically, there are probably Americans whose qualities would make them better presidents, but those theoretical candidates aren’t running (see also my answer about Bernie Sanders below).

There is one thing that DOES preclude candidates with the best-possible qualities for president from being viable candidates: Money—specifically, corporate money and money from the oligarchs plutocrats. Ordinary people who would make brilliant presidents don’t have even the remotest chance because they can’t possibly raise enough money to be competitive.

Roger Green asks:

“And in the same vein, can Bernie Sanders win the Democratic nomination? He's getting big crowds, and frankly, is more in line with the liberal wing of the party than HRC.”

Yes, Sanders CAN win the nomination—he’s just not very likely to do so. He’s been drawing record crowds, and Bernie’s favourability is now polling ahead of Hillary Clinton is the latest Gallup Poll. Clinton’s also viewed more negatively than positively in that poll, which sounds good for Bernie. Well, not quite.

52% of the Americans surveyed have never even heard of Sanders. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters—the people who will actually decide who wins the nomination—Hillary is viewed favourably by 74% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters, while 39% view Bernie favourably. Clinton is viewed more favourably than Sanders by every single demographic, including Liberal Democrats, 81% of whom view her favourably, while only 53% of Liberal Democrats view him favourably.

This is only one poll, of course, though it’s also the most recent, so this may change. At the moment, this preference that Democrats have for Clinton over Sanders tends to reinforce what I’ve said several times, that Sanders’ main support is coming from Leftists who don’t usually participate in the Democratic Party’s selection process, and who often specifically reject the Democratic nominee because they’re not Left enough. Put another way, Hillary Clinton’s support is coming from within the party and Sanders support is coming from outside the party.

If Sanders keeps drawing large crowds and keeps raising money, then he could be a factor in the race. But even if all that happens, he faces an enormous uphill challenge unless he can get his supporters to participate in the Democratic Party’s selection process. At the moment, it would take an enormous influx of Leftist, but non-Democratic voters to overcome Hillary’s support among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters.

In the interest of transparency, I should point out that while I’m still neutral in the race for the Democratic nomination, on most issues I’m more aligned with Bernie Sanders than I am with Hillary Clinton. However, I want the next US President to be a Democrat, so I’ll support the party’s nominee—whoever that is.

So, to sum up, it’s possible that Sanders could win the nomination, but at the moment, it doesn’t seem very likely.

Thanks to Roger and Andy for the questions!

There’s still time to ask questions! Here’s how: First, you can leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are okay). You can also email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom du question?). And, for the first time, you can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page.

Arthur Answers, Part 3: Flags and national discussions

Today’s “Ask Arthur” answer combines separate questions, something I do when they’re thematically linked in some way. This also gives me the chance to talk about a related New Zealand national discussion currently in the news.

Roger Green asked on Facebook:

“Give me your take on how the Confederate battle flag from Virginia almost overnight became toxic? And how far should it go? Should it include removing from Confederate cemeteries, clothing, Dukes of Hazzard model cars?”

I think it’s pretty clear now that it happened because of the reaction to the racist mass murder in Charleston, South Carolina. Many people throughout the USA were shocked (whether they should have been is another matter), and they wanted to “do something”, and in a way that didn’t mean they actually had to, well, do anything. The non-Confederate flag, as I’ve called, provided a clear and easy symbol. That’s why I think it became so toxic, as Roger put it, almost overnight.

I also think that South Carolina did the right thing in removing the flag from the grounds of the South Carolina capital. The flag was there as a compromise: In 1961, South Carolina raised the Tennessee battle flag over their dome supposedly to commemorate the start of the Civil War when the secessionists fired on Ft. Sumter in Charleston Harbor. However, TIME Magazine thought it was more of a middle finger to the civil rights movement.

In 2000, the flag was removed from the capital dome, and the smaller battle flag was placed next to a Confederate memorial. I congratulated the state (the first time I’ve ever done so on this blog) when the legislature voted to remove the flag, and I celebrated when it finally came down altogether—peacefully, I might add. Since then, white supremacists have rallied in support of that flag, thereby proving the point of the vast majority who wanted the flag removed, that it was nothing but a symbol of racism.

I honestly don’t know about removing the flag from pop culture, though I tend to think it’s the right thing to do. Still, that’s a decision that’s been made by retailers alone, and it is absolutely their right to do so. In the current climate, however, it would have been foolhardy for them do to otherwise.

I also don’t think that any non-official Confederate flag (like the battle flags of Virginia or Tennessee) should ever be flown over Confederate cemeteries or monuments because it’s not historically accurate or true. That’s why I’m less troubled by flying the real and official flag of the Confederate States of America in such places, though it may be difficult to agree on which flag of several to fly (although the flag of the US State of Georgia may point the way). The official CSA national flag also doesn’t have the same racist legacy of the battle flags (in the post-Civil War sense). Others may disagree.

Roger also asked a question that’s related to this topic:

“Someone asked me this recently, and here's variation: How can a ‘national conversation’ take place in the US? What topics ought to be discussed? And ditto this for New Zealand.”

Real national conversations can only happen organically, that is, people start talking about a topic because it concerns them in some way. The news media can lead the people to an issue, but they can’t make them think. So, it’s impossible to say what topics “ought” to be discussed, because people choose that for themselves.

When the people have a national conversation that the news media may not even notice, it can change things dramatically, and the turnaround in support for marriage equality is a prefect example of that. People having quiet conversations in their families can change all of society, and lead to new political realities and paradigms.

However, when the news media drive national conversations, it seldom matters because in almost every circumstance the discussions end up being nothing more than verbal circle jerks: People talk about how Something Must Be Done, and convince themselves that merely talking about it IS doing something. In relatively rare cases, something actually results, and the removal of the non-Confederate flag is a good example of this. It allowed even relatively conservative people to feel that by supporting removal of that flag they were Doing Something about racism—violent racism in particular—when, in fact, nothing has actually changed apart from removing an egregious symbol of that violent racism.

In the USA, there have been many media-led national discussions about big issues, but nothing has changed with gun laws despite frequent mass shootings. Similarly, virtually nothing has been done to clean up police behaviour toward minorities, despite the many well-publicised police shootings of unarmed black people.

In New Zealand, nothing has changed with child poverty, domestic violence (especially violence against children), income inequality and social deprivation, or even overseas investors buying up houses in Auckland and making prices soar beyond the reach of ordinary Kiwis—despite all these things being frequent topics of national discussions driven by the news media.

Now, someone less cynical than I am (which, to be fair, is most people…) could reasonably argue that nothing changes because people don’t know what to do, and, being people, they eventually lose interest in an issue. I think that’s true, and that people want quick and easy “solutions”. But I also think that most people don’t want to have to take personal action, personal responsibility, or make a personal sacrifice to effectively deal with an issue. Maybe that’s not their fault, and it’s really because of the rank cowardice and amorality of most politicians, who, because of whatever personal failing, never offer real solutions.

And then, sometimes people are just idiots or arseholes.

We’ve seen that with the non-Confederate flag debate in which some people deliberately ignored reality to argue that a symbol of racism and racist violence was, in fact, merely part of their “heritage” (what, do they have a white hood and robe hanging in their closet, too?).

In New Zealand, we see this with the current debate over whether New Zealand should change its national flag (apparently, flags can be quite contentious…). The entire focus of the discussion in New Zealand has been over how the process is costing us $26 million at a time when there’s so much need. That’s a fair criticism, but totally irrelevant: There WILL be a referendum to pick an alternative flag, and there WILL be a referendum for people to choose between the current flag or the alternative. Neither fact will change, no matter how much people complain about the cost, which is the main focus of the news media's "national conversation".

So, in my opinion, “national conversations” are generally overrated, producing little of substance when they’re driven by the news media. What DOES change things are those quiet, self-started conversations within families and among friends, almost invariably without the news media even noticing. That kind of unnoticed “national conversation” can change everything, and it’s not something that anyone can control or manage, but when enough people care about a topic to start discussing it without the news media pushing it, then real, substantive change can happen.

I do wish it happened more often, though.

There’s still time to ask questions! Here’s how: First, you can leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are okay). You can also email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom du question?). And, for the first time, you can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page.

Arthur Answers, Part 2: Freedom’s flavours

Today’s question is from my friend Andy, with whom I’ve had many interesting Facebook discussions. On the blog post announcing this series, Andy asked:

“You have experienced the American flavor of ‘Freedom’—which, in the Land of the Free, tends to be fairly overt; and you have experienced the New Zealand flavor of ‘Freedom’—which, in the Land of the Long White Cloud, tends to be implied and quite understated.

Which do you prefer, and why?”

When I first began this blog in 2006, that was the sort of question I didn’t want to answer. I had this idea that I shouldn’t criticise my homeland, mostly because of how notoriously tetchy Americans can get when their country is criticised, especially when it’s compared unfavourably with another country. Clearly, I no longer have any such reluctance!

I should say upfront that “freedom” is a very general term that can be interpreted in numerous ways. For this post, I’m using the term in relation to enumerated rights, that is, rights that people have guaranteed through their national constitution/government structure, and how that affects the way people (including me) feel about their level of freedom.

So, keeping that in mind, at a certain fundamental level, both the USA and New Zealand have very similar attitudes toward freedom: They both protect freedom of speech, and of belief, and of assembly, for example, and both countries also forbid unreasonable search or seizure, and also ban cruel punishment.

New Zealanders’ fundamental rights are laid out in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 (the link goes to the NZ government website, where the entire BORA, as it’s called, can also be downloaded as a PDF; naturally, I’ve done that. Of course.). It’s also been further clarified in subsequent court rulings (the Wikipedia article on the BORA is pretty good).

Americans’ fundamental rights are spelled out in the Constitution of the United States and its amendments, but the most fundamental rights are listed in the first ten amendments, known collectively as the “Bill of Rights”. US Courts have also expanded and explained the rights held by citizens. The Wikipedia article on the Bill of Rights provides good, basic information on the history and meaning of the amendments.

I mention all that first because I think it’s important to understand that the citizens of both countries enjoy pretty much the same enumerated rights. There are, however, some significant differences in those enumerated rights: US citizens have the right to “keep and bear arms”, and New Zealanders do not. New Zealand’s BORA forbids discrimination on wide range of criteria as outlined in the Human Rights Act 1993 (HRA), and these go FAR beyond the discrimination that the US Constitution forbids, even with NZ’s carve-outs and exclusions (the Wikipedia article on the HRA is a pretty good tl;dr description).

The USA’s Bill of Rights, however, can only be changed through Constitutional Amendment, a process that was deliberately made difficult and cumbersome—so much so, it seldom happens (it's described in Article V of the US Constitution, btw). In New Zealand, a simple majority of Parliament can amend the Bill of Rights Act at any time—or repeal it altogether.

The US Constitution is what’s called “entrenched”, that means, it’s supreme law and cannot be easily changed or abandoned. New Zealand’s constitution, on the other hand, is unwritten and made up of the laws passed by Parliament. An incomplete portion of that—generally the parts about the structure of government—were codified in The Constitution Act 1986. The Act was passed as the result of a constitutional crisis, but also established the final independence of the NZ Parliament from that of the UK (again, Wikipedia has a good, brief discussion).

All this talk about structure is important because I think it’s the reason for the fundamental difference in the way Americans and New Zealanders look at their rights. In the USA, with its difficult-to-change Constitution, there’s a culture of entitlement in which people think they have absolute rights that apply in all cases, even when they don’t—like, for example, that most Americans fundamentally misunderstand their rights under the First Amendment (the xkcd cartoon on free speech wonderfully illustrates—ahem!— what I’m talking about). This attitude leads to a lot of court action.

New Zealanders, on the other hand, have a culture of assumption, that is, they assume they have basic rights. Like their American cousins, NZers sometimes misunderstand free speech rights, but they otherwise don’t assume that their rights trump other people’s rights, as so many Americans clearly think. On this point, Kiwis clearly have the advantage. We don’t have a litigious culture, and our civil court proceedings aren’t about conflicting rights.

New Zealand’s more laid back attitude extends to government regulation, and Kiwis can pretty much just get on with their lives without a lot of government interference. For example, if a New Zealander wants to start a business, they just start: They don’t need to register with anyone (though they may have to register with Inland Revenue to pay Goods and Services Tax, but very small businesses don’t need to bother with that). In Chicago at the time I left, anyone wanting to start a business needed to get a license from the City of Chicago, register with the State of Illinois and Cook County (all of which charged fees for that, of course). In addition, at that time it was generally illegal to run a business out of one’s home in a residential area, even if no customers would ever visit and there was no “noxious” manufacturing (some of that has been eased since I left, and I realise that in other places it’s easier—or harder—than Chicago was then).

But it’s not just about constitutional structure or lack of unnecessary regulation: There are profound differences in the way that Americans and Kiwis approach their lives as part of a community. In general, NZers have an attitude that how other people live their lives is no one else’s business (unless they’re endangering other people or creating a nuisance for the people around them). Americans, on the other hand, have a long history of telling other people how they must live their lives. As a gay man, I never felt as free as I did when I arrived in New Zealand. Sure, the USA has caught up a bit in the past two decades, and New Zealand isn’t perfect (of course—no place is), but I feel freer as a gay man than I did in Chicago.

To sum up, then: Both the USA and New Zealand have the same basic enumerated rights, while differing in some areas, as well as how secure those rights are. The differences in how those rights are structured leads individuals in the two countries to have differences in expectations of what their rights mean for them personally. Added to the more relaxed NZ culture, and the more controlling US culture, this leads to New Zealand feeling more free to me than the USA did.

One final caveat: I left the USA nearly two decades ago, and things have changed a lot. The dark years of the Bush/Cheney regime aside, I think there has been a clear move toward greater freedom in general, but having been away so long, there’s no way I can possibly know how the USA’s freedom feels. So, my reactions are based on what my lived experience in the USA was and is in New Zealand.

Noting that caveat, and all the other qualifications and such in this post, in general, I personally prefer New Zealand’s flavour of freedom over the USA’s.

There’s still time to ask questions! Here’s how: First, you can leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are okay). You can also email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom du question?). And, for the first time, you can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page.

Arthur Answers, Part One: Who knew?

It’s time to start answering this round of “Ask Arthur” questions, and I thought I’d start with one that I actually received months ago. There’s still plenty of time to ask your own questions, too, by the way.

Today’s question is from Roger Green who asked last April:

“OK, that suggests an Ask Arthur Anything question: When you were growing up, what did you think of performers who were THOUGHT to be gay, but weren't out (because almost no one was out), such as Liberace and Paul Lynde?”

The simple answer is that it never occurred to me that people like Liberace and Lynde were gay. They said they weren’t, and I took them at their word. Mind you, I was quite young in the 1960s, and not fully grasping the realities of sexuality and identity.

By the 1970s, things were changing. Elton John said he was bisexual, and David Bowie more or less did, too. Even Daryl Hall & John Oates were in on the act, and Billboard magazine said of the cover of their 1975 album called, oddly enough, Daryl Hall & John Oates, that they were adopting a playful bisexual look, whatever that meant.

The thing is, it wasn’t until the 1980s that I ever heard of an openly gay recording artist (and for me, everything changed then). Up until that point, I can’t remember even thinking that a recording artist might be gay because I was so used to there being none.

The same is true for actors. It wasn’t just that I took performers at their word, but also that there were no openly gay actors when I was a kid or young adult, so I just assumed there was no such thing as a gay actor. I was also totally unaware that the campy performances of Lynde, Liberace, and others, were anything other than a performance style.

By the time I was a teenager, and more aware of the world, I used to sometimes wish some performers were gay, but I assumed none of them were (and, far more often than not, I was right). So, even then, I didn’t think any performers were secretly gay.

Even so, I do remember one actor who I thought was gay, and that was Nancy Kulp, who is most famous for playing Miss Jane Hathaway on the 1960s hit TV show, The Beverley Hillbillies. To this day, I have NO idea why I thought that: As a kid, I didn’t even know what the word “lesbian” meant, and her character was more or less an “old maid”, and I knew some of those in my dad’s church without ever thinking they might like the ladies. And yet, I had a sort of intuition about her that I can’t remember having about any other actor, male or female.

Now, because there was no such thing as an openly gay performer in the 1960s, and I’m not entirely sure I even understood what that would’ve meant, anyway, I just thought Nancy Kulp was funny. Many years later when I heard she was out, I did sort of think, “I knew it!”, but I didn’t hold her earlier closetedness against her.

But, then, I didn’t hold clostedness against any of the performers I saw growing up and didn’t, at the time, know were gay, finding out later that they were (like George Takei, Jim Nabors, Johnny Mathis, and, apparently, Barry Manilow, for example). Some of them I at least suspected were gay when I became an adult, but they’re all much older than me and I didn’t try and project my values onto them and others of their generation.

So, while I was growing up, there were no openly LGBT performers, so I didn’t know LGBT people could even be performers of any kind, so it never occurred to me that any of them could secretly be LGBT. I completely bought the narrative and beliefs of the dominant culture, and it wasn’t until later in my teens and early 20s that I realised I’d been lied to.

Things are WAY different now, and obviously for the better, with openly gay performers all over the place. I wonder, though, if young gay kids these days still imagine that cartoon characters are secretly boyfriends, like I hoped Jonny Quest and Hadji were. Do kids even need to imagine such things any more?

There’s still time to ask questions! Here’s how: First, you can leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are okay). You can also email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom du question?). And, for the first time, you can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page.

Ask Arthur yet again

For several years now, I’ve done an “Ask Arthur” series of posts in which I answer readers' questions. This time, partly as an experiment, I’m going multi-media. Well, maybe. In any case, it’s your turn.

I’ve done one of these “Ask Arthur” series every December since 2012, but in 2013 I also did one in July. I decided to revive that this year.

The way it works is that folks as me questions about things they’re interested in knowing about—obviously things I can answer. In the past, I’ve had questions about me, about life in New Zealand, about being an expat, what I think about certain topics—lots of things. Any topic is okay, though if I have no idea how to answer a question, or can't for some reason, I’ll say so. I’ve never had a question that I wouldn’t answer (I clearly have few boundaries…), and pretty much can’t be offended, so there’s no prior restraint for questions asked.

As I’ve said before, this idea is stolen from inspired by Roger Green, who does “Ask Roger Anything” (“ARA”) posts. He’s actually already provided me with two Ask Arthur questions.

This time, I’m open to the possibility of posting video answers on the AmeriNZ YouTube Channel (I’ve had questions in the past that would have benefited from pictures, and if that happens this time I may make videos to go with written answers here). I’ll solicit questions separately on YouTube, but if there’s something you’d like to see, let me know (they do need to be based in Auckland, and there are some things I can’t do, like go in a grocery store because they ban cameras). You can even send me a video question if you want to be included in my video answer.

This time, too, I’ll also ask AmeriNZ Podcast listeners to pose questions. Some of the answers may end up here, or in video form, too. Here again, if you want to, you can send me an audio file with your question, and I’ll include that in the podcast where I answer any question(s) I get for answering on the podcast.

The point in trying to use all three AmeriNZ channels is that I’ve said all these media channels are different facets of the same storytelling effort, and this is my first attempt to use all three together. It might be good fun—or, it might fail miserably and be a total disaster. We’ll see.

Here’s how to ask questions: First, you can leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are okay). You can also email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom de question?). And, for the first time, you can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page.

So, ask your question whatever way works best for you, and I’ll do my best to answer it.

Your turn—again!

Previously:
What do you want to know? (December 2012)
Ask Arthur (July 2013) The only time I’ve done one of these outside December
Ask Arthur – Again (December 2013)
Ask Arthur Again, again (December 2014)