Ebola and Divine Punishment

Ebola has been much in the news, lately, so much so that even someone as relatively uncurrent as I choose to be cannot help but hear about it. Currently two nurses in Dallas, Texas who were treating a Liberian Ebola victim are diagnosed with the disease, and some nervousness ensued in Ohio after it was found that one of the nurses flew to Ohio while on quarantine and with a mild fever. She was diagnosed after returning to Dallas.

Of course she immediately became everyone's new favorite person to hate, but as it later turns out, she checked with the CDC's epidemiology office that was handling her case before flying out to Ohio and was given the green light because her overall risk category was "uncertain."

A number of American Ebola patients have recovered using an experimental new drug which I have not taken the time to consult the literature about (because at the moment I am not worried about it). Seattle's Harborview hospital, practically in my back yard, has agreed to take on ebola patients, should it become necessary. The hospital my wife works at has also begun conducting ebola training, since there is a remote possibility they could be tapped to take on overflow patients.

All in all, if you are looking for something to worry about, ebola is as good as anything.  It is scary, foreign and outside your control so if you are looking for a reason to panic, you could do worse. In fact, the fact that it is completely outside your control is a major selling point. You don't actually have to do anything about it, other than what you already wanted to do anyway.

media covers it extensively (I am not going to bother posting links because if you are reading this I am going to assume you have google capability) and both political spectrums have picked their approaches to it with incredible alacrity. In fact, his rather long, but entertaining blog examines it as a case study in politicization. 

Homelessness, or poverty, or labor trafficking, or what-they-teach-in-school-these-days, are not nearly so convenient as they seem to require some measure of engagement with the real world, and might lead to, (Oh Horrors!) responsibilities!

That being said, there is one aspect of the ebola panic that strikes me as useful and enlightening. On a hunch I googled "Ebola" and "divine punishment" and sure enough I found a few articles from Africa, a Slate Article decrying the "God's punishment" narrative, and even a couple of extreme righter's claiming that it is either God's handiwork, or an opportunity to purify America, as long as Obama doesn't use it to declare martial law.

Okay, so there are crazies in the world.

The question I want to raise is, does God, in fact, use diseases to punish people and nations for their sins?

I immediately associate the question with my Grandpa. About three years ago, as he was dying of lung, breast and metastatic skin cancer, in fact one of the very last times I saw him, I asked him how he was holding up. He gave me an answer I will never forget. He said, "Ryan, I'll tell you, most of the time I hold up just fine, but sometimes I just get angry. I told my doctor yesterday that I was angry and I just keep asking, 'Why is this happening to me?'

"But I know why this is happening to me. It's because I smoked for 30 years, and because I went out in the Pacific sun for years without a hat on, and because I worked on RADAR towers with no shielding for so many years. That's why all this is happening to me."

November 2011, Shortly after my graduation from the Q course, I got the opportunity to have one last visit with a truly great man.

There was some anger there as he said it, but on a deeper level there was courage. He was being a man, and I think, showing me how to be a man, by taking responsibility for his actions. He was dying of cancer as a result of his own choices, no more and no less.

Were they morally terrible choices? Absolutely not. When he started smoking in the 50's no one knew that it caused lung cancer. When he worked on RADAR towers in the Air Force no one knew about the harmful effects of the electromagnetic radiation. No one knew about the effects of UV rays on the germ cells in the skin. He was not bad because he made these choices. He was sick, and eventually he died.

The point that was suggested to my by the association of that memory, specifically with the news about the nurse flying to Ohio while infected with the disease, was that human actions have consequences. Ebola, AIDS, wars, pollution, poverty, etc. all of these things are, without exception, either caused, or propagated, or both, by the choices of humans. Sometimes those choices affect primarily the chooser. More often, they effect everyone else as well.

This is what we must learn from ebola (and from every other social ill). We live in a web of

causation, where our actions and inactions have real consequences that will really effect real people. Ignorance excuses the guilt, i.e. the nurse who flew to Ohio contacted the CDC and they gave her the go ahead and told her she was still clear to fly. Turns out they were wrong. She was not a malicious person, neither was the poor (probably by now unemployed) clerk who took her call and answered her question based on the risk assessment matrix on the computer screen in front of him. That matrix itself, drawn together from the best guesses of a whole bunch of really smart people, was also wrong. Turns out a whole bunch of people were wrong, no one was a "horseman of the apocalypse" trying to spread the plague. Now they know more than they did.

Ignorance excuses guilt. It does not negate the consequences. Just because I don't know I have the flu (I think it is just a cold) doesn't mean that when I give it to someone else it might turn out to be a very serious deal for them.

A hunter falls asleep in a tree stand and wakes up when he accidentally pulls the trigger. The fact that he did not deliberately aim at his partner's foot or have any intention of doing any harm will not alter the course of the bullet or its effect on the bones and tissue of the foot that it strikes.

We don't know what the consequences of that flight from Dallas to Ohio and back will be. My honest (and not particularly educated) guess is that likely nothing will come of it. If that is the case, I will praise the Mercy of God for once again minimizing the potential harm that we human beings like to do to ourselves. I would say that that is the norm of Divine Action, that He intervenes more often to prevent or mitigate the negative effects of our stupidity and malice than to enhance them.

It is in this sense that I say, yes, if ebola does spread it spreads, not as punishment for, but as a result of sins; sins and ignorance, ignorance as a result of sin. Where is ebola spreading? In Africa, among the poor, the downtrodden, the weak, and the ignorant. Why are they poor, downtrodden, weak and ignorant? Because other people (black and white, this has nothing to do with race) keep them so, in order to remain rich and powerful, and to increase their wealth and power. Why do AIDS, syphillis, gonorrhea, HPV, and all the other STD's keep spreading? Is it a punishment for sin? Or is it a result of human behavior that is naturally conducive to their spread? Why does 10% of the U.S. Population have diabetes? Is it because God is smiting us with "the sugars" for our sins of unbelief and immorality? No, it is because we eat like pigs and we don't exercise.

My response to ebola, as to nearly every other crisis we choose to get excited over, and a good number than most people never hear about, is to pray. To pray and always to try to reform my life, to continue the work of conversion. If victims of this or any other disease come our way, I believe our hospitals should open their doors (maintaining all reasonable precautions) and welcome them. If in the future I am called upon to treat them (as I have treated patients with AIDS, HEP-C, TB and other terrible and contagious disease), I hope I will do so conscientiously and with mercy.

My emphasis on personal morality will not protect me or my family from the results of other people's choices. It may actually place me at a higher statistical risk of dying in horribly unpleasant ways, but when has that ever been different? Has life ever been safe? Has anyone ever gotten out of this world alive? We have a greater chance of getting wiped out in a car accident because someone chose to drink too much and then drive than we ever will of getting ebola. No amount of worry is going to keep me from becoming the victim of other people's choices. Rant and rave about how unfair that is, but that does not change the truth. "Being good" has never been a guarantee of safety. Indeed, it often seems to function rather more like a red cape in front of a bull. The most innocent human being ever to live died of asphyxiation and blood loss, hanging from his arms by nails, and cursed or abandoned by almost everyone.

I do not choose to be on the side of Mercy to protect myself, but because that is what Jesus did, and I want to be like Him when I grow up.

Mercy

Lord, I worship you, crucified

In the bodies of your children, and

Crucified still more terribly

In the souls of your children
Who crucify them,
And in the souls of your busy children
Who do not intervene.

In all these, still you abide,

In perfect love.

The One Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil

In keeping with my last post, here is some food for thought that my little brother shared on facebook.

Granted, there is no point in jumping half cocked into a situation where you might end up getting stabbed or shot, and not do anyone any good. On the other hand, the sort of bullying shown in this video could easily have been stopped by nearly any college age adult with a half an ounce of confidence. People choose not to step in, not because of any reasonable fear of personal harm, but because of a kind of psychological and moral paralysis, which may be the subject of my next blog.

The decision about when and how to step in in more dangerous situations is a thornier question. I think I might do a blog on that as well.

In the meantime, I hope this video has given you some cause to think.

Death Sentence

On the news today I saw that Major Nidal Hasan was sentenced to death. One of the guys in the bay mentioned it outloud this morning. He had just read it off his Iphone. I commented, "May God have mercy on his soul."

Another guy said, "Nah. I don't really care."

"I do," responded.

The implication was this guy is a traitor and a murderer of fellow soldiers. He doesn't deserve mercy, so why pray for it?

Well, of course, he doesn't deserve mercy. If he did, he wouldn't need it. The perequisite for needing mercy is that you do not deserve it! That is pretty much the definition of mercy.

But more troubling than that very universal human misunderstanding was the tone that accompanied it. It felt like the soldier was saying that this was a crime that should not be forgiven. He is a traitor. He killed our fellow soldiers. It almost sounded as if that was worse than the killing itself.

Why should we consider treachery a worse crime than murder? On the one hand, it makes the murder impersonal. He wasn't gunning for those particular people, he was striking at a symbol of the country he hated. But honestly, why does that matter? What does it matter why he killed them? Is hating America worthy of the death penalty? Or is it the murder?

Does it ever reeally matter? When someone kills people because they are Christians, or because they are homosexuals, or because they are prostitutes, or because they are black or because they are Muslim, or because they happened to be there, what does that matter? Is murder less murder if you do not particularly hate the group of people that the victim belongs to?

And why should murdering soldiers be worse than killing anyone else? Ostensibly, soldiers signed up willingly, knowing that there was a risk of impersonal death at the hands of someone who hated them simply because they wear an American flag. It is the attitude of flagrant nationalism, the hatred for anyone who hates America that troubles me. The kind of emotion that vents upon unknown, uncounted people in The Middle East, that insists we should turn the whole place into a parking lot for what they have done to our soldiers.

Let them hate America all they want. We must do what is required to protect ourselves, but why should we sink to their level and hate in return? Frankly, nationalism frightens me more than terrorism.

I do not think Maj. Hasan should receive the death penalty. He should be kept in prison and given
every opportunity to repent and make amends. Not because he deserves it, but because I want to see him in Heaven. It is as simple as that.

My Gun Control Post

Gun Control is a frequent topic of discussion these days it seems. The recent shooting in Connecticut and the readiness of politicians and lobbyists to seize upon these events as impetus for their own agendas all but guarantees that it will be thrust upon us, and we, being the creatures of the media that we are, cannot help but discuss it.

I am not a politician. Making policies is not my job, neither is enforcing them. I dislike getting involved in political debates, mostly because most people who debate politics are not speaking original thoughts, or even thoughts at all. That which passes for debate these days is generally little more than repetition of party slogans. Party slogans are, by their very nature, divisive, polarizing, and unamenable to compromise or an understanding of the opponent's views. Human debate cannot be reduced to sound bites and it seems most Americans cannot think in anything but sound bites.

The gun control debate seems to me to be divided between a small minority of vocal activists on extreme ends of the spectrum. On the extreme liberal end is the rhetoric of fear, exemplified by articles such as this one. These are people who do not understand guns, do not know how to use them, know nothing about them except what they have seen in movies, and are unwilling to learn. On the extreme conservative end are the gun manufacturers, sellers, and to a lesser extent, the enthusiasts who do not want any government control on weapons whatsoever. If they want to own machineguns and cannons, well, that's their constitutional right!

As for myself, being the libertarian that I am, I tend (tend mind you, not reside) towards the more conservative side. I believe in minimal government and minimal governmental control of day to day life, and so it is no surprise that I resent the government telling me what kinds of guns I can and can't own. I think of the fact that this country was settled from one end to the other by grown men and women who carried their own weapons, enforced their own laws, built their own homes, earned their own living by the sweat of their brows, defended themselves against marauders by their own wits and courage, and did not rely on the government to do anything for them that they could do for themselves. It sort of rubs me the wrong way to see that we Americans have, to some extent, chosen to relinquish our responsibilities as citizens, and chosen instead to be subjects, and this extends far beyond the gun control debate. The welfare state falls prey to the same criticism on an even greater level, as does socialized healthcare.

That being said, I do not ignore the benefits that come from having a strong government. Even the fact that I can drive from Puyallup to Lacey in 35 minutes, a distance of nearly 30 miles, would be impossible without a government that levied taxes and built roads. I am also acutely aware that the reason the drivers going from Lacey to Puyallup are doing so in their lane and not in mine is that a government has standardized driving and enforces the rules of the road. Whenever I drive my car out of my driveway I am interacting with other citizens, with potentially life shattering consequences, and those interactions are (rightly) coordinated by the government. If the government didn't do it, (as is common in Asia) the citizens would find a way to do it themselves with greater or lesser degrees of messiness.

I like to consider myself a liberally educated conservative. I can appreciate benefits of the status quo, while maintaining the ability to examine it critically and independently. I can drive on the right side of the road and at the speed limit as long as things are the way they normally are, but in an emergency I can scrap those conventions and drive off road, or as fast as I need to in order to survive. This, I think is the mentality we need in regard to guns.

Since the whole debate is too large to go into here, I am going to limit my discussion to the issue of concealed weapon carry only. For an explanation of the "Assault Weapons" ban issue that rips that concept into shreds far more effectively than I ever could, go here.

In America we have a legal concept called the "Concealed Carry Permit." It is a piece of paper issued by the state of residence licensing the holder to carry a pistol in such a manner as to be concealed from view. Each state determines its own requirements as far as what training (if any) is mandatory, where a pistol can be carried (federal offices are always off limits) and when and where and how it can be used. Some states hand out permits like candy. All you have to do is apply and as long as you don't have a criminal or mental health record you will get it in 4-6 weeks. Other states allow "open carry" (carrying a pistol in plain view) without a license. Some states (including my home state of NY) do not allow anyone even to own a pistol without a permit, and permits are routinely difficult to acquire, especially for men. In most states it is illegal to carry in schools, banks, places of worship, or any establishment that serves alcohol. Most shootings in America, not surprisingly, take place in schools, banks, and places of worship. Why? Because from the point of view of a bad guy, these places offer a target rich environment with almost zero chance of meeting armed resistance.

Leaving aside the question of whether or not the government has any constitutional right to issue these licenses (it's not an issue I am qualified to comment on) I want to examine the idea of concealed carry from the point of view of personal responsibility, rather than from the point of view of Governmental policy, mostly because I have no influence on government policy, but I can influence individuals in the exercise of their own personal responsibility.

I carry. When I am outside the house in civilian clothes I am 90% likely to have a gun. I carry a gun for the same reason I carry an emergency medical kit behind the passenger seat of my truck. I have been trained in the use of both of these things. I have the power to save lives in an emergency, and therefore, as far as I am concerned I have a responsibility to do so, and to take reasonable steps to ensure that I am able to do so. I am also not your average joe. I have dedicated my adult life to such training, albeit with a different focus. What about the typical citizen who does not have any such training? Should he be allowed to carry a pistol?

This is why personal responsibility is so important. I have no problem with any person carrying a pistol, so long as they are willing to accept the responsibility that entails. If you want to own a gun you should, at a minimum, know how to load it and fire it safely and accurately, and then clear it and store it safely. You should know the three rules of gun safety backwards and forwards and upside down. This goes for any gun, from an AR-15 to Grandpappy's old hunting rifle.

If you want to carry a pistol around other people, with the intent of using it for self-defense, then you need to go beyond that. You need to increase your range time and learn some basic tactical shooting. In short you need to have a realistic assessment of your ability to engage a target accurately under stress with possible non-hostiles all around. Can I get my breathing under control? Can I make rational decisions under stress? Can I hit my target reliably at five feet when I am shaking and sweating bullets? Ten feet? Fifteen feet? Twenty? Twenty five? What if there are innocent people nearby? How close to them can I safely shoot? Can I remember to check what is behind my target?

Guns kill. Sometimes they kill animals, and sometimes people. That is what they are designed to do, and ignoring that fact does no one any good. Can I take a human life? Can I make moral decisions about whether it is right to kill someone? Can I tell when violence is justified and when it isn't? Am I carrying in order to protect, or in order to give myself a false sense of security or power? (You see, carrying a gun is not a physical or tactical matter only. It is even more deeply a moral matter, concerning the health of your very soul.)

These are questions you need to face before you start carrying a gun on the street. They are not questions the government can ask for you. They are not covered in any CCP course. You, and you alone, bear the responsibility for your answers, and any actions you may take with a gun. This is why, from my perspective, Governmental regulation is superfluous, and only complicates things. My own personal training program and moral and ethical reasoning is much more in depth and responsive than any law or regulation could ever be.

This is personal responsibility.

What to Say?

I feel like I ought to say something about the tragic killings in Newton, CT. Every other blogger in the world worth his salt has taken a break from their regular schedules to talk about it, offer some consolation which will not be read by the ones who most need it, or a prayer, or an invitation to prayer. I don't even have a regular shcedule to take a break from. But what is there to say? What do I know about it? Nothing.

I know that a young man went into an elementary school with a gun and killed children and teachers. That is it. I don't know any more, I don't want to know any more. I wish I didn't know that much.

I don't know any more because I only hear about things like this second hand. I don't watch, listen to or read the news except at work where I cannot avoid it. I can't help but think there is something unhealthy, or at the least a bit disturbing in our national fascination with "The News." It feels a touch voyeuristic. A tragedy like this occurs, and yes, it is tragic. The nation will talk of nothing else for a while, and ratings will go up. The gun/anti-gun debate will intensify, politicians will make speeches. The faces of those who survived and the families of those who did not will be splashed across television screens and printed pages for our sympathetic viewing pleasure. Somewhere in the nation, right at this moment, there are a handful of sad, sick, dead young men who are taking note, wondering whether they could do the same thing, whether they could maybe do it a little more spectacularly.

Whose life is enriched in the slightest by having all the horror and pain of the world paraded in front of their eyes every evening, commented on by talking heads with well-practiced emotions? How many people are going to do anything to live more fully, and how many will merely become more depressed, or more desensitized?

For myself I never want to know about things like these, unless I can do something about it. My first reaction is always a deep, black, nauseating anger. I wish I had been there. am one of a handful of men in this country with the training, skill and will to stop such a tragedy in its tracks. I could have killed the perpetrator, quickly and efficiently, and saved lives. But I wasn't there. It does neither me, nor the victims, nor their families, nor the perpetrator, nor any living person any good for me to be angry like that. Anger without action is poisonous, and I don't want to be poisoned by it, so I don't want to hear about it unless there is some action I can take.

Ever since I can remember I have dreamed about being a protector of lost, abused and neglected children. My reason for joining Special Forces was to get training I could use for that goal. Sometimes the knowledge that I have these abilities now, but not yet the freedom to put them to use, irks me. About three years ago I was venting about that to a friend of mine and she told me to be patient. I will be led to act when I am ready, but only God knows when that is. In the meantime, she said, you should pray. So I have. Everyday since then when I have prayed my rosary I have included a decade for the children of the world who are lost, or neglected, or abused. That is my action for now. I did not want to know, but now I do, and therefore I will pray.

Another action is to continue to train. As I get closer to finishing out my time in the Army I am starting to research the anti-human trafficking fight. Somewhere, sometime, a door is coing to open and when it does I will be ready.

From now on, I will always have a pistol on me whenever I legally can. The odds are I will never be in the right place at the right time to have to use it, but that isn't really the point. The point is that wherever I am there will be a tiny island where violence against the innocent will not be tolerated, and will be met with consequences proportionate to that violence.

This should go for everyone. I am not saying that everyone should carry a pistol (although if you are willing to put in the time and money to learn its use, I highly reccomend it.) I am saying that this tragedy, like all others, was the culmination of millions of tiny allowances. Whatever it was that happened to this young man throughout his life to kill his soul so thoroughly, it happened because people around him allowed it to happen. If it was abuse, he was abused because people who knew about it did not take action. If it was bullying then he was bullied because the students and teachers around him allowed him to be bullied. We reap what we sow.

Defend the innocent around you, and remember that the guilty are guilty because they were not defended when they were innocent.

HHS Health Reform Strategy: Two Scenarios

There has been a huge hue and cry in the Catholic blogosphere recently in reference to the White House’s recent statement that there will be no broadening of the conscience clause in the Health Care reform bill. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and many other religious organizations in America have been lobbying for this broadening since the bill was passed, and this month, three days before the National March for life in Washington, the White House stated that “This group (Faith based institutions) will ultimately have to offer female employees cost-free contraception, just like others across the country.”


This was not at all what those faith based institutions were hoping for. In a somewhat insulting nod to these organizations, the White House is allowing them an additional year to comply. This is not an acknowledgement of the conscience issue, but to allow more time for administrative changes that will need to be made. “We know that a lot of these organizations may be large organizations, there are approval processes that require the approval of boards,” an administration official told reporters on a call this afternoon. “The transitional period responds to those concerns.”

Unfortunately, these were never actually concerns. This is not a question of “an approval process” as if the implication were that “boards” just need enough time to argue about it before finally bowing to the mandate of Washington.

The uproar has been considerable, though not as widespread as the response to the SOPA bill. Catholic bloggers and bishops, not-for-profit organizations and media personalities have been firing back. I cannot say anything that they have not already said.

I am interested, though, in the Administration’s point of view. What is the end game here? It was a bold strategy, not only the decision to ignore the principles of the largest religious body on the planet, but to drop the ultimatum three days before the largest gathering of Catholics in one place in America. Coincidence? I’ll just say, competent strategists don’t allow coincidences like that. If the timing was not taken into account it was sheer incompetence. If it was, then what on earth was the strategy?

You see, only an idiot goes into battle without knowing his enemy. While there are varying levels of competence in Washington, I’m not ready to believe that the architects of this bill are idiots. They went into battle, and they had to know how the Catholics were going to react. This isn’t an administrative policy we are talking about here, this is a matter of moral principle. The Catholic Church’s opposition to contraception is a matter of history, and She has been before now the single voice in the world condemning the contraceptive culture. We made it through the 60’s without changing that for crying out loud. There is no excuse for ignorance about the Church’s position on this topic. Therefore, there is no possibility of compromise. We literally cannot give in to this law. It would be like forcing Jewish businesses to sell Kosher Bacon.

So I have no choice but to believe that at the very least the Administration knew that there was going to be an uproar. Perhaps they underestimated how rapid and loud it would be, but they took it into account in the decision making process. What part did it play?

I can think of two possible strategies that account for this blatant aggression. The first, and I think the most likely, is ideological. Perhaps the President and his advisors really believe that contraception and abortion are so obviously mainstream healthcare, that anyone who does not provide them shouldn’t be in healthcare anyway. An analogy would be someone who did not believe in prescribing antibiotics and refused to do so on moral grounds. Such a person has a right to believe that, but no hospital in America would hire them. They would not be allowed to practice as a physician, and rightly so. I think it is possible that Obama and his cronies are so in love with the idea of contraception that they have deluded themselves into thinking that contraceptives are on the same level as antibiotics and other routine, life-saving interventions. The rhetoric of “reproductive rights” might well have tricked its authors.

If this is the case then the move to engage in open warfare, as it were, was seen as a calculated risk. They think they are right to force people to take care of their employee’s health and welfare (their view), and they are counting on popular support and even more popular apathy to wear down religious resistance over time. In this scenario they expect to hunker down, weather the storm and keep up an endless stream of propaganda. It will blow over eventually and they will get their way.

The second scenario is more sinister, and I think less likely. In this scenario the motives are not ideological but pragmatic. They don’t give a damn about reproductive rights or contraception or any of that. What they do want is power. The Catholic Church, by Her nature, is always a possible threat to the power of the State, because She claims divine authority to resist laws it deems unjust. In this view the goal is to hamper the freedoms of this institution, consolidating power for the State. What you need for that is to do two things, simultaneously: First, you need to isolate and weaken the institution’s base of support among the population. Second, you need to create the opportunity to take action against that institution in such a way that it will be perceived as legitimate. To accomplish these you need an issue which will be at the same time odious to the institution in question and widely popular among the rest of the population.

So in this scenario this particular issue is not the issue. Instead it is simply a weapon. The goal is to draw intense, outspoken, and hopefully hot-headed or even inflammatory response from the Church, which can then be construed as backward, selfish and intolerant. The Church is forcing her beliefs on employees who do not even share the same beliefs! The hope then is that when the inevitable confrontation occurs, whether the Catholic institutions try to continue operating in defiance of the law, or close their doors, any government action can be presented as preventing the Church from imposing Her ideas on other people. No one will come to our aid in any effective way.

I don’t think this is the scenario, because it means that the Administration thinks the Church is weak enough that they can get away with it. You don’t deliberately provoke an all-out power struggle until you are certain you have the tactical advantage. I don’t think we are at that stage yet. In fact, if anything can bring out a little fight in us, this is it. But in the short term, motives matter very little. In either scenario the crux of the matter remains the same. The side that sways the people will win, and if Obama has proved adept at anything, it is influencing the people. People will point to his crashing polls, but the mystery is not that they have crashed so far, but that they have not bottomed out. The man can spin a yarn, and people listen. This is the most dangerous quality he possesses and we must not underestimate it.

In any revolution or counter-revolution, the propaganda war is the real war. The human terrain is the only terrain that matters.

UC Davis Incident: A Technical Critique

I suppose everyone has seen this video by now.




I’ll start off by saying that from a big picture point of view, I don’t know much about this incident. I don’t know much about Occupy Wall Street, I don’t know what (if any) goals they have. I don’t know what these students were trying to accomplish, or whether they knew what they were trying to accomplish, or how legal their protest was. I also don’t know much about the overall decisions from the cops’ point of view. Whether it was necessary to move the protestors or not, whether it was necessary to intervene at all, I can’t say. My issue with this is from a much more technical point of view. That’s not how you run a revolution, and it’s not how you deal with one. Both sides seemed amateurish to me.

First, from the cops point of view: Let’s bypass the question of the legality of breaking up the protest, and the decision to make the arrests and skip straight to how that decision was executed. Cops on UC Davis campus: automatically in hostile territory. They can start by knowing that 1: they are not welcome; 2: they are already assumed guilty until proven innocent; 3: they are surrounded by cameras, which is essentially a hostile PR campaign already under weigh. Thanks to this attitude, combined with the ubiquity of I-Phones and youtube, police ought to know that even before they get on the ground they are already the target of choice for a decentralized mechanism of propaganda gathering and distribution.

This situation is the truth on the ground. Lack of situational awareness of this strategic concern is the root issue behind the mistakes made.

If you watch the video carefully you’ll notice that the only voices you can hear are the voices of protesters. They are not especially unified, not especially controlled, but they have one advantage: they are loud. By contrast the cops are absolutely silent. They aren’t yelling and screaming, only a few of them are doing the talking and they appear to be the command and control (C&C) element for the riot control unit. This is good unit discipline, but bad PR. It means that the only point of view that is going to be heard is the protesters. Anything the cops say afterwards is automatically damage control at best, which leads me to my first critique: where was the megaphone? If you are a riot control unit, your megaphone is your primary weapon. If you don’t have one, you’re wrong. You can’t shout down the protestors, but you can at the least make sure that you are providing a step by step narration of what you are doing, which is then an intrinsic part of any audio record of the event.

Next step, the decision to arrest was made. Already their actions are crippled because they don’t have the shouting power to issue clear instructions or ultimatums. All we see is one muttered contact in the first ten seconds, and then two minutes of the cops standing around, silent and indecisive. I know what they are doing. They are pulling security, while the C&C element makes up their minds what to do. Bravo on maintaining good discipline, but in the long run it makes them look like idiots. At 2:12 you can see one officer make one half-hearted attempt to pull one of the protesters out of their formation. Everyone knows what’s coming, but the cops are not visibly trying to resolve the situation without escalating to the use of chemicals. So I have to ask, what is their protocol? Given a decision to arrest, it might be argued that it’s safer to break up the formation with pepper spray than with batons. I would whole heartedly agree with that. However, there has to be an escalation of force protocol. Warnings (mostly inaudible apparently) notwithstanding, I would question the wisdom of going directly from verbal warning to pepper spray. There has to be an intermediate level of force.

Starting at 2:05 you can hear a female voice yelling “Protect yourselves, cover your eyes.” Why shouldn’t that warning have come from the cops? Nothing enhances your image like visibly and obviously seeking to limit damage to your opponents.

The actual spraying, from 2:25 on is obviously visually disturbing to civilians. It looks so wanton, so cold-blooded, so cruel. He’s spraying it right in their faces and they aren’t violent, aren’t visibly resisting. It screams “Police Brutality.” From a tactical point of view I can understand it, though. Once the decision is made to move them, and the tool chosen is pepper spray, it makes no sense to delay or be half-hearted about it. Either do it or don’t do it, but don’t half do it. It does no one any favors to draw it out. One quick pass across their faces is not going to damage them seriously, and from then on out, it’s all business. Break up the formation, pair up on the protestors, cuff them and move them out. I would have had my paddy wagon closer, but other than that it was tactically pretty good. They don’t lose security either. The perimeter gets pretty thin at one point, but by 4:30 all the moving pieces are resolved. The perimeter is full and solid, and it needs to be. They are surrounded by a crowd, and maybe the crowd was initially spectators, but now they are clearly shifting into protester mode. Anyone who was not involved before is involved now. A solid perimeter is a must.

Say what you will, from the point of view of the cops it is a tactical success. They moved into a hostile crowd, arrested the focal point of that crowd and moved out in less than ten minutes with no injuries on either side. No one broke ranks, no one went crazy, the objective was met and the withdrawal was planned and disciplined. The problem is, no one is ever going to see it from their point of view except those who already know it.

Now, let’s move to the protestor side of the house: Overall I am left with an impression of simple, mass hysteria. They did a lot of things right. There were clearly movers and shakers within the crowd who were periodically able to start a mass chant, aided by the fact that it’s friendly territory for them. Those most involved have at least passive support of everyone around them, and moral support from a majority of potential youtube viewers. They can move with ease, their risk is minimal due to the cops’ rules of engagement, and their payoff is potentially high. The big questions I have really come down to, What’s it all about? Who organized the protest? Who decided to occupy that particular piece of ground, and why? Was pepper spray anticipated? Apparently not, but an intelligent organizer might have anticipated it, and planned a ready-made PR campaign for it. Overall, though, my impression is of hot-headed, young, amateurish disorganization. I would bet most of the people there could not have told you why they were protesting or what their goals were in any coherent form that would hold water for more than a minute. They didn’t need to. Whoever organized it doesn’t need intelligent disciples to provide rational argument on a popular level. He needs bodies to fill space, and vocal cords to fill the air with noise.

The exploitation of the incident was ad hoc, and hot-headed. At 8:56 you can see that the crowd is getting riled up, and is starting to press the cop’s withdrawal. A cop flashes a tear gas canister and a student yells “They’re spraying again.” The crowd backs off a little and at 9:05 you hear a voice start rising out of the chaos. Again, it is not the cops, it is a protestor. He essentially leads the crowd in proclaiming that they are going to give them a moment of peace so that the cops can leave. By 9:33 they are cheering and shouting as if they drove out the invader, when that is simply not what happened. It was a spur of the moment thing, and it was hot-headed. Taunting edgy, adrenalized cops in a situation like that is far from a smart move, tactically. Strategically it makes all the sense in the world because any reaction on their part is more fuel for your fire later on, but the fact remains that it was only the fact that those police officers were disciplined and did not rise to the taunts that saved those kids from a serious hurting. Their restraint was the protestors’ only guarantee of safety. The taunting was a juvenile attempt to appear in control of the situation, when that was far from the truth, but once again, the truth matters very little to America. The cops won the battle, but they lost the war.

The protestors were a little lacking in follow-up, though. This is a golden opportunity to get the message out but there seems to be an issue: There is no message. There are only pity-parties, such as this first class example of incident exploitation. No manifestos. No pithy statements of objectives. There aren’t even any demands. I still have no idea what they were protesting. There should be a website with clearly defined problems to be addressed and solutions to those problems proposed. But I haven’t seen it. Nothing.

This leads me to my biggest issue with the protestors. In the Army we have a saying: “If you don’t have a solution, don’t point out the problem.” Apparently these kids see a problem. Whether it is a legitimate problem or not I don’t know, but all they are doing is criticizing. As far as I can tell there is no effort to come up with a solution. That’s the government’s job, apparently. There is no coordination, no planning, no foresight. They seem to be flying on the seat of their pants, letting an agenda emerge haphazardly as they go along. As someone with some degree of specialized knowledge on this subject, that’s no way to run a revolution, unless your goal is simply mass hysteria. I can think of several scenarios that would fit that picture.

I do not take sides on this issue. I neither condone the use of tear gas, nor do I agree with the protestor’s allegations of police misconduct. If I have put a little more time into showing what I perceive to be the cops’ point of view it is because no one else seems to. I am trying to avoid Monday morning quarterbacking. Instead I am trying to provide an honest and objective assessment of both sides. I have no illusions that either side will read it, but it might just help a few spectators find a more balanced and hopefully charitable view.