Category: Political

Day 18: Ethical vs. Legal

Back when he was in college, soon-to-be Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously wrote:

You can be unethical and still be legal that’s the way i live my life

Mark Zuckerberg, in an instant message sent to a friend

We’ve seen what Facebook has become, and know now that he really meant it. And it’s just not him; many people feel that as long as there’s no law against it, it’s fine to do. Or even if there’s a way of interpreting an existing law that exempts the particular thing they want to do, it’s OK.

Ideally, laws and regulations exist to codify a society’s sense of what is ethical. When I was growing up, it was perfectly legal for anyone to dump anything into any body of water. And it wasn’t just big factories that were doing this. When I walked to school I crossed the Hackensack River, and just upstream was a car wash. I remember always seeing foamy bubbles floating on the river as I passed. It was not uncommon to see big rainbow-colored oil slicks, too.

The environmental movement of the ’60s led to laws against this and many other types of pollution. These laws represented the sense of people that it was not ethical to pollute, ruining things so that a company can save a few dollars. Fast forward to today to find many of these environmental regulations being loosened or removed, just so the big political donors can make a few more dollars.

Back in the 1920s, there was rampant financial speculation, making a few people rich, but destabilizing the overall financial system. The collapse of that system led to the Great Depression. At that time new laws were enacted to make those shady financial practices illegal. One such law, the Glass-Steagall Act, forced the separation of commercial banks, which regular people and businesses relied upon, and investment banks, which were in the business of underwriting all types of securities. That separation worked well for nearly 70 years.

But then in the 1990s, banks began to clamor for the removal of these restrictions. There was just too much money to be made! So in 1999, Democratic President Bill Clinton signed into law the Gramm‐​Leach‐​Bliley Act, which essentially repealed Glass-Steagal, and allowed for single corporations to be involved in all kinds of financial services. No longer prohibited from this type of financial intermingling, corporations merged with each other to create financial powerhouses – the so-called Too Big To Fail companies. The financial collapse and subsequent government bailout of these companies was the chief cause of the 2007–8 global financial crisis, and the Great Recession.

After that crisis some laws were enacted to address the shortcomings of the current system, but the lobbying by these companies has made it nearly impossible to enact laws as strict as those from the 1930s. So while the mixing of risky and secured securities is still legal, most people consider it unethical. After all, when those risks pay off, the corporation makes a lot of money. But when they fail, the government (that’s us) picks up the tab.

Another great example of a regulation that was vilified was the FCC Fairness Doctrine, which required that TV and radio stations to devote some of their air time to matters of public interest, and to enable different viewpoints to be heard. This requirement was removed by the Reagan Administration in 1987. Shortly after that, Fox News was born. They are probably the grossest example of what the Fairness Doctrine was designed to prevent: one-sided propaganda that is capable of ill-informing its viewers.

There are laws that govern what you can and cannot do with people seeking asylum at the border. The Trump administration didn’t like those laws, so he issued an executive order that made the image below legal. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if it is ethical to separate children from their parents and keep them in cages.

Immigrant kids seen held in fenced cages at border facility
Children held in cages, McAllen, TX 2018

And remember, Auschwitz and the other camps were also legal, but I can’t think of anything less ethical.

So when you hear politicians, especially conservatives, rail against “regulation”, what it really means is that they want to be able cheat and cut corners in order to make a fast buck. Of course, it isn’t difficult to cite some overzealous regulations that serve no purpose – no system of laws is perfect. But to extrapolate that to the conclusion that all regulations are bad is a clear sign that someone’s trying to get away with something.

Day 16: Barefoot People Have the Cleanest Floors

I like to go barefoot whenever I can. Outdoors I wear footwear when I need to, but once I’m home, the shoes come off. I’ve preferred being barefoot for as long as I can remember. And as I’m walking around the house I tend to notice things on the floor, like crumbs from toast in the kitchen, or bits of kitty litter that our cat likes to distribute around his box. I find myself sweeping and vacuuming often, because I get annoyed by the feeling of walking on things that shouldn’t be there.

It got me thinking: if I wore shoes or even slippers around the house, would it bother me as much? Would I feel the need to clean as often? So I posted this on Twitter:

It was a kind of throwaway tweet, but the idea stuck with me. People tend to work to improve the things that affect them the most, especially if it is a pain point. But if that same thing that bothers someone enough for them to get motivated to fix doesn’t bother you, you probably would wonder what the big deal is. It doesn’t bother me; why are those other people so worked up about it?

White people are walking around this country as if they are wearing hiking boots. People of color, though, are barefoot and they feel every bit of the systemic racism that reminds them constantly that they are the “other”. When you’re white those things don’t register in your consciousness, because those thick soles of your hiking boots insulate you from it.

Those boots are a metaphor for white privilege. When black people voice their issues, it’s easy to dismiss them as imagined or overblown, because if they really were that bad, you’d notice it too, right? It takes something like the video of George Floyd being murdered by that cop to finally get through to white people just how bad things are for black people in this country.

It’s good that people, white and black, are getting angry and calling out for reform and improvement. But that’s not enough: we white people need to keep listening. We can’t take off our metaphorical boots, but we can learn that since our experience is not the same as others, the voices from others need to be heard and valued if we are ever going to improve the world for all people.

Day 14: Complacency

I saw this post on Twitter this morning:

My first reaction was “Wow! It’s gonna be a landslide!”. Even Texas is looking pretty blue.

But then I thought about what would happen if millions of people saw that, and decided that Trump’s defeat was a done deal? Why bother to vote?

I’m happy to see that people are finally realizing what a terrible leader Trump is, and that he is only ever thinking of himself. I’m shocked that everyone didn’t see that well before he was elected, but if we can get him out in November, we can repair some of the damage he has done before it is irreparable.

BLM Protestors in Philadelphia (photo credit: Chase Sutton)

We need every single person who came out to protest these past few weeks to also come out to protest where it really counts: the ballot box. We need to get rid on not only Trump, but every single Republican who has enabled him by putting party before country. We can never become complacent.

Day 11: Spreading Racism

Mass protests in a time of the COVID-19 pandemic: are they foolish gatherings that will only result in spreading the disease?

In an editorial in today’s NY Daily News, the authors make the case that even though protests in response to the execution of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and far too many others, are important because “racism is a deadly virus, too”.

I agree with the sentiment: racism is deadly, and we cannot just sit back and ignore it. But it is the analogy to a virus that really bothers me.

Viruses spread without intent. They do not choose their hosts. They are opportunistic: if a virus lands on a cell that it can infect, it does so. If it doesn’t, it dies. It does not have the capacity to choose.

Racism, however, is not randomly spread. Instead, it is actively taught to each generation. Children listen to their parents, and largely follow the values that they are taught.

When my kids were young and in day care, one of the other kids there called another kid a derogatory racial name. The woman who ran the day care handled it calmly, explaining to the boy why he shouldn’t call people those names. I talked with her about it afterwards, and she said that her grandmother had a phrase she used when she heard kids say ignorant things: “Well, he didn’t just lick that up off the floor!”

In other words, it wasn’t an accident; it wasn’t randomly spread. Instead, someone spoon-fed that to the child.

The only way to combat racism is education. For years most white people thought that the reports of police misconduct and brutality towards blacks was probably just “a few bad apples”, but that most were fair and respectful. Since the advent of ubiquitous video recording, though, those same white people are getting educated about the reality that POC have known for far too long.

And I hope that children growing up today see these protests, with people of all colors coming together to demand that things improve, and take away from this at the very least the concept that Black Lives Matter. They will be better equipped to deal with a racist relative, and refuse to be spoon-fed that bigotry.

Day 9: What Matters

It really sucks to have to dig into this once again, but apparently the statement “Black Lives Matter” is somehow controversial. Why is it so hard for people to hear that phrase and just say “Yup!”? What makes them so resistant to it? Do they hear that and mentally add the word “only” at the beginning, as if the claim is that somehow only black people deserve life?

For those who have trouble with this, or who have friends/family/co-workers with this issue, here’s a simple way of understanding it: imagine that you are at a dinner party. Everyone is seated around the table, and the food starts being served. Plates of food are placed all around, but you notice that they forgot to serve your friend Peter. So you state “Peter needs food”. But instead of the hosts apologizing and getting Peter a plate, they respond with “Everyone needs food!!”.

That’s certainly a completely true statement, but what is the point? Of course everyone needs food; nobody claimed otherwise. You are simply pointing out that at the moment, Peter isn’t getting any food.

Yes, all lives matter. But at the moment, black people are being treated by many police as though their lives don’t. They are getting killed for the most minor of reasons, when there is a reason at all. And when justice is demanded for the police officers who commit these murders, it almost never happens. Time after time, those murderers are let go, simply because they are police, and different rules apply to them.

When we say “Black Lives Matter”, we are saying that we need to address this systemic issue, and address it urgently before any more black people are murdered by the police. Those officers who have been part of these murders shouldn’t be held to a lower standard than that of an average citizen who kills someone; instead, they should be held to a much higher standard.

Let me leave you today with a clip from someone making a very similar case about this topic: