Guest #4

Ok, Neil deGrasse Tyson, you can come to my dinner party too.

Change vs Trust

Via The Boston Globe

[Still actively working through these ideas; forgive any lack of clarity.]

I’ve been thinking a lot about trust recently. It started in relation to the Rick Warren inaugural invocation fiasco and, since I’m way too late to be commenting on that, on the idea of bipartisanship in general. Well, it’s bigger than that, but it’s a good point to circle around since the rest of it is very personal, and this isn’t really a personal blog.

Anyway. When I first heard of the Rick Warren thing, I was, like a lot of people, rather disappointed. I don’t think anger was the right emotion—especially directed toward President Obama—but disappointment was certainly up there. Like others, I don’t see legitimizing fascist theocrats as the kind of “change” we voted for. But a lot of people have covered why not to like Warren better than I could.

See, like a lot of people, my first response was “hey, Bush was elected (and even that is being generous) by the barest of threads TWICE, and his response was never to invite the other guy over for a chat.”  Like, we won, right? And when you win, you get to do your thing, right?

As my friend Mr. Eldridge pointed out when we were talking about this issue, though: Everyone likes to talk about bipartisanship until it comes time to actually do it. Which, well, is true. I mean is wielding the same power as George W. Bush really the goal we should be after? Is that a desire I am proud of having? If we act like our ostensible enemies, don’t we in fact become them?

So I’d like to be able to say that I will take the high road. Not only is it ok that Obama invited the dude to speak, in fact I am elated that he did. Bush never would have invited one of his ideological opposites to speak in a position of prominence at one of his major events—so, by inviting Warren at all, Obama is providing change. He’s the president of everyone, not just everyone who voted for him. There are not red Americans and blue America, etc. etc. etc. And at this point it’s a moot point since Warren’s boring and forgettable invocation was so thoroughly showed up by Rev. Lowry’s benediction.

But I can’t bring myself to say that. Not because I don’t want to—I understand the desire for vengeance, or power, or what have you, but that’s not where my emotion is on this one. I have my doubts about Obama, but I do respond well to his tone. I want to be able to believe in what he’s selling: hope in the face of uncertainty. It’s not the desire that I lack. It’s the ability.

How do you trust someone?

Because I do understand, intellectually, the benefit of being open, of being both trustworthy yourself and trustful of others. Of bringing people together, even when they disagree (especially when the disagree) and giving them the respect of believing that you both want the same things at the end of the day—be it a better country or just a better way to get through life—and starting from that point. That no one can do this alone, we’re all in this together, and that trust has to start somewhere, that you should be the change you seek, etc.

But I also don’t think that is something that you can just . . . do. Even if you want to—you can’t make yourself trust someone. Especially when the person in question hasn’t proven themselves to be trustworthy in the past. Because what I keep coming back to is that not only do our ideological opponents disagree with very basic principles that we hold dear (such as the belief that two consenting adults should be able to enter into a legal contract, even if someone happens to think it’s icky), but that they have shown in the past that they have no qualms about being intellectually dishonest at best, and active and deliberate liars at worst, to meet their ends.

What do you do when you want to trust someone, but time and again they let you down? When is it time to just let that person go? What do you do when you can’t?

I can’t support always trusting others simply because it would be better if everyone did. I can’t participate in choosing the high road on this. Even if I wanted to—I simply don’t have that ability. Feeling morally superior to someone isn’t enough of a reward for me when they inevitably betray you again. You still end up hurt. To a certain extent you have to protect yourself. At a certain point, avoiding pain is instinctive. If your leg hurts every time  you walk, you develop a limp. This isn’t a choice—it’s how your animal body reacts to repeatedly having that support yanked out from under you.

Because it’s not just about trusting other people. It’s about other people being worthy of your trust. Of proving that they are worthy of your trust.

Other people being trustworthy is out of my control. And while I’m pretty much talking about something else at this point, to bring us back to the beginning: I respect Obama’s invitation to Rick Warren. But I don’t trust Rick Warren. Same goes for the rest of the Republican machine that ground our country into our current state over the last eight years. And the idea of a world where I could feel differently sounds fantastic, but I can’t believe in that world, as it flies in the face of my experience. And I don’t mean that I choose to not believe in that. I am just simply not able to.

A Gentleman and a Scholar

Mr. Eldridge has a new project y’all should check out.

We’re Going the Wrong Way!

Warning: spoilers/nerdiness ahead

For those of you good readers who know me personally, you are well aware that I am a huge Battlestar Galactica fan. If you’re not as well, you should stop reading right now and get the DVDs for seasons 1-4.0 and watch them before next Friday when season 4.5 starts. Unless you’ve seen those (Hi Jason!) the rest of this either won’t be particularly relevant or, more importantly, it will spoil the series when you do, inevitably, watch it.

Anyway, I re-watched Razor yesterday, and I still don’t like it. It certainly isn’t the worst episode of the series (that honor goes to either “Black Market”  in season 2 or “The Woman King” in season 3), but it did bring back Admiral Cain, who was great character, so it’s not a total loss. And you know what? I could have lived with the fact that most of the plot hinged on explicitly showing things we already knew about, even though those events (the failed  Pegasus plot against the Cylon comm relay/staging ground; Cain shooting her XO; the massacre aboard the Scilla) were more powerful as symbols of the culture aboard Pegasus than as action sequences. And I could have probably ignored the fact that, apart from Kendra Shaw (a brand new character), the ending made zero sense w/r/t being anything those characters would actually do, given, you know, the three seasons of time that has been spent developing those characters (Lee ordering Starbuck to sacrifice herself for a mission he doesn’t believe in ‘cause his dad kinda told him to? Really? I don’t know what show the writers have been watching, but it certainly wasn’t this one).

No, what really continues to piss me off is that they ruined one of my favorite episodes in the series, namely the Pegasus/Resurrection Ship arc in the middle of season 2. Razor succeeded in taking one of the most nuanced and moving explorations of both the dangers of unquestioned authority and how pervasive oppression is due to institutional culture that I’ve seen anywhere, let alone just on some cable tv sci-fi show, and turning it into just another instance of crazy lesbians.

One of the things that I love about BSG is that while being pretty explicit about their main theme of exploring what it means to be human and how we come to define certain individuals as being part of that group and others as explicitly being Other, they also have an implicit, below-the-radar critique of that in our own culture by doing what they can to have Galactica not participate as thoughtlessly in our own oppressions. It’s a pretty diverse cast (for TV-level diversity, anyway), and women are given plenty of roles in powerful positions. President Laura Roslin is given a lot of shit for being a teacher, and both she and Starbuck are given shit for being assholes, but neither are given shit for being women. And they do this just as a matter of course, with no in-your-face “this is our oppressed-person-getting-their-due episode. This is just the way it is.

It’s certainly not a utopia—what with the occasional mention of class and race issues w/r/t internal designations such as Geminons vs. Capricans (and of course any episode written by Michael Angeli has to have some sexist dialogue in it)—but it does warm my heart to see women non-ironically referred to as “sir”  left and right. Of course this also aids their main goal, because there would be something hollow about a critique of institutional othering from an all-white, all-male cast.

But by the time we get to season 2 one could argue that it doesn’t really say anything about the “institutional” aspect of this—it’s a fantasy world, maybe they just don’t have sexism there, right? Which is where Pegasus comes in. The rape and torture of Gina is extreme because it is meant to shock us with what the given outcome of treating someone as not human can be, and it is successful in this end. But, for me, the most revealing scene is the one where the two dudes from Pegasus are drinking with the Galactica deck crew, and laughing about how they got to rape Gina:

Dude 1: I heard you guys even got yourself a Cylon. Heard she’s a hot one too.
Dude 2: Have to get me some of that Cylon stuff.  A little of the “oh yeah oh yeah!” [high-fives Dude 1]
Chief: That’s enough guys, just shut up.
Dude 1: Ohh, sensitive. Got a soft spot for the little robot girl, do you?
[cut to Thorne questioning/beating/raping Sharon]
Dude 1: Remember when Thorne put that “Please Disturb” sign up on the brig there? [laughs]
Dude 2: I got mine twice!
Dude 1: Oh I hear that. Remember she was just laying there like with that blank look on her face [Dudes laugh]
Cally: Hey, do you mind? [leaves angrily]
Dude 2: Ooh, frisky!
[cut to Thorne/Sharon]
Dude 2: You think there’s a chance he’s going to give us a shot at this one too?
Dude 1: Nah, I heard him say he’s going to have to break her in a little first.
[Helo tries to hit the guy, Chief holds him back]
Helo: Who the hell’s this Thorne?
Dude 2: Lt. Thorne, Cylon interrogator. Rides ‘em hard and keeps ‘em talking.
Dude 1: Your little robot girl is in for quite a ride. [Dudes laugh]
[Helo & Chief go to save Sharon]

Their comments are so utterly disgusting, and not just to us but even to Cally. Cally, who shot Boomer, thinks that these guys are disgusting. And it’s not just that they raped Gina, but that they are so casually laughing about it. This conversation would not have made anyone on Pegasus think twice. Because under Cain this sort of behavior is acceptable. And this is the natural outcome of the institutional culture of Pegasus. Civilians murdered when they won’t surrender their gear and supplies to the military; subordinates murdered when they take a stand against bad orders. People don’t matter on the Pegasus; authority does. This is why Gina killing Cain at the end is both powerful and makes all kinds of sense; Gina realizes that while Cain didn’t personally rape her, it was her leadership that lead to a culture where those atrocities could take place at all.

And so it is not that using rape and torture as valid means of interrogating a prisoner did not happen on Galactica because the people on Galactica were just better people—it is because Adama was more open to other people questioning his decisions. Which is not to say that his “openness” was entirely voluntary. Between Roslin, and Starbuck, and Lee, and Helo questioning his decisions—and deliberately disobeying them when required—Adama had most of this openness forced on him. But at the end of the day, he was able to recognize when this or that mutiny was actually the morally superior way to go. The give and take on Galactica is what helped them maintain their humanity a little bit more than those on Pegasus.

So this whole series of episodes was, for me, a profound and extreme way of exploring the results of extreme institutional authority, especially in a time of extreme war and hatred—what a topic in a world of Abu Ghraib’s and Guantanamo’s. Well done, cable tv show!

And then they go and turn the whole Gina torture thing into just more crazy lesbians.

Now, Ron Moore, the show’s creator, had mentioned previous to this that one of the ways he was disappointed in himself with the show was that none of the characters were gay. He didn’t want fans to think that there were no gay people in this world, but he also didn’t want to have a “very special episode” of BSG. Both sentiments I respect. But then, rather than doing the smart thing (and having Gaeta just casually wake up in bed with Hotdog or something, since I’ve been saying since forever that Gaeta is gay: how else does his relationship with/worship of Baltar make any sense?) they take a complex and thoughtful situation and make the whole reason for Gina’s rape and torture that Cain was feeling personally betrayed by her lover. And she then gives explicit permission for Thorne to use “degradation” and “shame” to break Gina down.  Now  is no longer institutional; its personal. If they hadn’t been lovers, none of that would have happened.

So that’s how I feel about Razor. If you’ve made it this far, let me know if you want to come over and watch the new episode next Friday, so I won’t have to bitch about all this stuff alone in my apartment.