Staying Rational in Irrational Times
Before starting this, I have two disclaimers.
First, this is going probably to be an echo chamber. You’ve read it and heard it before, both better written and better spoken than I can provide. Second, I don’t like writing about my politics very often. As the Arts and Culture editor at The Ontarion, I know that art has political dimensions (and it often needs to), and I have to engage with these ideas in some way, both as a writer and an artist. I feel more comfortable writing about these so-to-speak abstractions and metonymies than I do otherwise when it comes to my politics. I digress; I feel like it’s time I write down what I’ve been feeling about our country’s critical current and social climate over the past week or so.
In the aftermath of unnecessary and vile events like those of last Monday and Wednesday, the public’s reaction to this kind of brutality is to be expected; it is infinitely easier to associate an individual (or handful thereof) with a larger organization, ideology, or illness, than it is to consider the countless factors that possesses individuals to commit such violent acts. It is not right to consider those people, in the case of last week’s violence, as representative of Islam as a whole, just as we cannot consider these people representative of those suffering mental illness as a whole. That seems to be a less discussed topic, one that I’ll muse on later, but I feel it warrants mentioning here, if not only to establish a dialogue between the fear of people with mental illnesses and looming Islamophobia in events like these.
Why are we compelled to lump these events into a broader framework of extremist ideology or mental health, instead of examining the instigators as individuals, with their own social stresses, contexts, and motivations to consider? I feel it’s because the spectacle of violence is so powerful that it all seems so irrational. We do this because we try to make sense of such an inherently senseless and irrational locus of violence and hate. We do this because we are afraid of our own impulses, and we need to ascribe a scapegoat to them.
We live in angry times. We’ve all been screwed one way or another by society, the state, etc. Our tax dollars have been used to kill Afghan civilians in bombing raids. Our government has stripped Native people of fundamental human rights. Our government has acted in the shadows on crucially public matters. Our government has shown blatant disregard for our country’s environmental future. Canada is not some kind of haven for peace, justice, and equity – as much as we’d like to think it is. And we are upset because the narrative of our exceptionalism has been shattered.
…we try to make sense of such an inherently senseless and irrational locus of violence and hate.
Why didn’t it take anywhere from 400-1000 missing and/or murdered Aboriginal women for people to be disillusioned en masse? “It can’t happen here.” Well, didn’t the École Polytechnique massacre happen here, where 14 women were killed by Marc Lépine in the name of “fighting feminism?” What about the G20 riots, where civil liberties were stripped so quickly, and in such a chaotic way, that the actions of the violent arm of the state and the violent arm of corporate interests were blurred to the point of indistinguishable?
So when we think, so surprised, “How can this happen here? In Canada?” we are contributing to that masturbatory exceptionalism that is all so often at the heart of this country’s dominant cultural narrative. Since Canada came into its own as the Cold War good-guy nation-state, it has always been “us vs. them” in terms of us and the United States, and we are pressed, on and on, left, right, and centre, to believe we are better. Our government is more civil and more humane. Racism is a thing of the past. Because socialized health care means more as a cultural icon than it does as a functional thing. Because we are content with being the gentle, passive beaver, minding our business and building our dams (often around and between ourselves), instead of the predatory bald eagle, swooping down on its prey with a force to be reckoned with.
That’s why these events struck so much horror into the resonating imagination of safety and tranquility we have established. “It can’t happen here. This is Canada.” It can, and does, happen everywhere. You’re deluding yourself if you think otherwise.
I am not of the mindset that we need to discount our armed forces’ work in light of this. I have utmost respect for the men and women that serve our country. I refuse to back any military-industrial-complex, but I realize that it’s unfair to target soldiers as people for that. It’s not about that. That said complex is too unbelievably massive and omnipresent to warrant criticizing any individual. It wouldn’t make any sense and it does not.
But I am of the mindset that, in light of these incidents, it is very easy to cross into dangerously shortsighted solutions that are detrimental to our civil liberties at best, and functionally racist and classist at worst.
It doesn’t take much to racialize anything (or at worst, everything) in the framework of these tragic cultural narratives. You’d be hard pressed not to find some kind of “go back to Africa” mentality regarding Ebola, or a “those Japanese are ruining the planet” sentiment in wake of the Fukushima disaster two years ago. It also doesn’t take much to say, “this is the work of an Islamic militant, and all Muslims are potentially militant,” in the wake of a shooting incident such as this. When this shortsightedness becomes legislative action, as it often does, nobody wins. The average critical current and social atmosphere becomes one fraught with nationalism, fear, micro-aggressive racism, and exclusionary tactics. Pretty much antithetical to that tricky old “mosaic” narrative we built for ourselves, right?
At that point, you get the redneck Neanderthals, like those in Alberta, so convincingly and artfully scribbling “go home” on a mosque, like a petulant child lashing out at their parents who made them share the Lego box with a sibling. We like to think it’s not a shared sentiment, and it certainly isn’t for many people. But it’s not an isolated incident, and it’s dangerous to be so congratulatory as to think that it is isolated and not recurring.
Violent actions committed by people with known mental illnesses are not isolated incidents either. Care for mental illness in this country is dreadful to begin with, so think of where it could lead now. Autistic people, those with bipolar disorders (I and II), schizophrenia, people prone to panic attacks, etc., can be (and probably will be) more easily profiled and scapegoated as a danger to society. This perception operates in an almost Puritan-tinged notion of “evil” that is unscientific, oppressive, and does absolutely nothing to improve treatment and care for these illnesses – because they are illnesses, and require treatment and support.
These representational and legislative problems, again, operate cyclically. An encroaching, oppressive narrative defines public perception of a particular group of people, and legislation becomes written – sometimes slyly, sometimes blatantly – to reinforce this and further marginalize these people. And when projected anger at the system that operates on this marginalization begins to define that group in both the public and legislative eye, the narrative has reduced these people to simple “dangers,” and not human beings who need help.
I’m not even a very politically-inclined person. I’m not a firebrand or a radical. Half of the time I don’t even give a shit, or at least choose not to give a shit in vocalizing where I stand – for the most part. And I’ll confess to that with no qualms or pretentions. I should be more invested in politics, but a guy can only do so much. I am the guy who plays the bass, writes poetry, and does music, theatre, and art show write-ups for this paper. And that keeps me plenty busy.
But I felt compelled to write this, if not just for time’s sake. The editorial writer rotates weekly, and I just happened to get the spot for this week – not specifically in light of all that’s happened. I’m just trying to make sense of the madness and do a bit of bigger thinking in the process.
After all, if we expect our media and critical currents to be impartial, truthful, and not so reactionary with information and interpretation, shouldn’t we expect it of ourselves?