There is no shortage of literature and media coverage out there about China's astonishing rise and the shift of economic and political gravity to the East. It was a staple of my undergraduate international relations curriculum, reviewing such works as Martin Jacques's When China Rules the World (2012)--imagining a scenario in which China has changed the rules of the game by virtue of being the new economic superpower of the world--to Charles Kupchan's No One's World (2012)--heralding a coming multipolar world in which the current powers of the West, especially the unipolar power many would argue the United States has been for most of the post-WWII era, must reconcile and power-share with the rising powers of the East, like China and India.
Peter Frankopan, professor of global history at Oxford, joined this debate with works like The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (2015) and continues this story in his latest, The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World (2018), reframing the conversation by showing the East and not the West has historically been the power-center of the world, perhaps explaining the latest power transition.
Reading more like an epilogue to The Silk Roads--or as a more updated edition to the latter--The New Silk Roads provides an Eastern perspective to events shaping geopolitics since its predecessor's 2015 publication, focusing on headlines showing China's increasing rapprochement with its neighbors in the "One Belt, One Road" initiative in contrast with the West's rising isolationism, inconsistent foreign policy, Trump, diplomatic brain drain, and Brexit problems (Frankopan, 2018, p. 17).
This ambitious economic and infrastructure development plan treads the old land and sea routes of the ancient Silk Roads connecting West-East, but also seeks to make new ones in areas like Africa and Latin America, the latest chapter in a larger discussion of the forces of globalization shaping the 21st century, but also the latest entry in the saga of the Great Games of history, calling to mind American and European imperial strategy in the 17th-20th centuries (Frankopan, 2015). In addition to ports, rail lines, oil pipelines, data sharing, and more, China is also building up military outposts to safeguard its investments and engaging in various bilateral trade talks with its neighbors.
Instead of the silk and spices of old, the eponymous New Silk Roads today are trade routes of people, ideas, natural resources (oil and mineral wealth), arms, data, and modern technology (AI, drones, missile defense systems, etc.). With the West going through the convulsions of Brexit and Trump, developing nations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East (even some of the US's erstwhile allies in Europe and Australia) are viewing Beijing with increasing favor and as a potentially more reliable, stable alternative to Washington and London, with the capital to back up its ambitious vision for a prosperous and harmonious new world.
Notwithstanding the rivalries that will need to be dealt with--that of India and Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, Russia and China, to name a few--pragmatists of all parties have realized that a new strategy is needed to secure their prosperity and national security against the disguised flailing of the West--see the "controlled unpredictability" strategy of the U.S.-- and other threats, such as poverty and climate change (Frankopan, 2018, p. 127). It seems that the pressure applied by US sanctions on Iran and Russia and tariffs against China are doing more to push unlikely parties together to serve as bulwarks against Western influence, and China and friends are taking advantage of the gaps left by the political and economic flux of the West by cementing existing and new channels of engagement that circumvent established Western ones.
All in all, while critics may assail The New Silk Roads as being overly optimistic about the sustainability of China's and other Eastern diplomatic and infrastructure projects, Frankopan balances out the rosy visions of prosperity promised by the One Belt, One Road investments with an aside about the real issues standing in the way of realizing this vision and testing newfound alliances: China's debt load, some instances of predatory lending practices imposed on African nations in exchange for foreign investment, and the larger issues of climate change and environmental degradation, the migration crises, and the looming threat of automation in the public and private sectors. Not to mention many of the countries of the Silk Roads are not democratic by any means, discouraging dissent, controlling media, and limiting other human and political rights.
While the changes underway cannot be easily halted and the array of forces driving geopolitics are many and seemingly magnified, Frankopan concludes that along with the "fragilities and dangers" of our current moment, there are just as many opportunities for "cooperation and collaboration" on the part of the West with the East to aid a peaceful transition to the future (Frankopan, 2018, p. 194). Will we rise to the occasion?
Works Cited:
BBC News. (2019, May 10). A Quick Guide to the US-China Trade War. Retrieved May 12, 2019, from https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45899310.
Frankopan, Peter. (2018). The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World. London: Bloomsbury.
Frankopan, Peter. (2015). The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. New York: Vintage Books.
Jacques, Martin. (2012). When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order. New York: Penguin Books.
Kupchan, Charles. A. (2012). No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sunday, July 7, 2019
Friday, June 14, 2019
Book Review: Daniel Immerwahr's "How to Hide an Empire"
When you think of an empire, what comes to mind? For many, probably Britain first, the country the colonies fought in order to gain their independence. Perhaps the Axis Powers in WWII, Germany and Japan. Or our WWII ally turned Cold War foe, the Soviet Union. What these examples show is that for many Americans, empire has a decidedly negative connotation, associated with autocratic nation-states that eschew democratic values of self-determination and consent of the governed, and impose their rule without regard to the well-being of its subject peoples. So there's no way that the home of the free and land of the brave was (is) an empire in its own right? Right? Turns out we were and are. Historian Daniel Immerwahr takes us on a tour of the American territories whose stories, despite their centrality to American history, have been relegated to the periphery of the national consciousness in his 2019 book How to Hide an Empire.
How did we get to where we are today, with the United States occupying virtually every corner of the world in its 800 bases and outposts? Well, it all starts with the familiar story of the western frontier and manifest destiny in the 19th century, whereby the United States achieved its familiar lower-48 dimensions by the forced removal of Native Americans from prized lands. Once it had secured Alaska and Hawaii to bring the total to 50 states, America continued to look outward, equal parts eager to gain international prestige on par with the European imperial powers and also to claim critical economic and military footholds in the Pacific and Caribbean.
Before the post WWII era of rapid technological progress allowed for the streamlined movement of people, goods, and ideas around the world (the advent of the radio, telegraph, and Internet, various logistical technologies, standardization and more), there were overwhelming geopolitical incentives to hold sway over as much land as possible. One was control over the sources of (and markets for) critical raw materials not yet amenable to duplication in a laboratory setting, like arable land, rubber, palm oil, and even bird guano. (Yes, bird guano. Turns out that it's a decent fertilizer.) Second, with enough territory comes the ability to secure critical military outposts, used to protect the imperial borders, quell the on-and-off insurrections, cow external threats (i.e. other imperial powers), and better control the movement of both people and trade within one's borders. Lastly, the more land and peoples under your country's sway, the better the opportunity to spread your economic and cultural values into as many hearts and minds as possible.
Thus began the second wave of American imperialism, bringing various archipelagos and islands like the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the less well known Guano Islands into the fold, inextricably tying their economies and political identities closer to the mainland. Over time, the inhabitants of the territories gained at the very least the status of U.S. nationals and statutory citizenship and the fundamental rights that come with it. However, the Insular case (1901) rulings established U.S. colonial doctrine that allowed only the territories that the government deemed on the path to statehood the full protection of the Constitution, while citizens in territories not on the statehood path were left vulnerable to a repeal of their statutorily granted status as a U.S. national or citizen and only had partial protection of the Constitution. Oh, and they don't have official representation in the Congress that had the power to revoke or alter such statutes. This legal limbo led to carte blanche medical experimentation in territories like Puerto Rico and the unfettered architectural redesign of the Philippines' main island.
Surprisingly though, after WWII, the United States suddenly and rapidly decolonized in a moment of postwar ascendancy that many countries would have taken full advantage of to expand their power and territorial holdings. While there probably was some altruistic sentiment underlying it, relating to U.S. values surrounding self-determination, Immerwahr shows that the U.S. did this for overwhelmingly selfish, yet pragmatic reasons.
Nationalist movements capitalized on the postwar devastation of their imperial overlords, asking for self-determination and independence in exchange for helping fight in the war. At the same time, the need for countries to hold large swaths of territory was diminishing with the development of alternative mechanisms of power projection and control, backed up by the improved ability to synthesize necessary raw materials combined with vast improvements in telecommunications, transportation and logistical technologies. Also, it's very expensive to hold large territories. All in all, these factors made it more pragmatic to hold smaller swaths of land in key zones of national interest, backing up economic clout with military power where necessary.
Therefore, the U.S. dropped many of its territories in exchange for investing in a vast worldwide logistical network of smaller swaths of land containing military bases and outposts that we see today. Immerwahr sees this as a new kind of empire, a kind of third wave of imperialism, borne of the realities of globalization, but without many of the overtly negative markers associated with traditional models of empire building. Many other powers seemed to have adopted this model of power, for better or worse, like China.
All in all, what does this mean for the United States going forward? For Immerwahr, it means that the mainland can no longer ignore the crucial role that U.S. territories and military outposts play in continuing to exert U.S. power around the world. As a country, we've largely been expansionist, and continue to be, despite our protestations; we crave territorial influence, but without the baggage associated with having formal political dominion over large swaths of territory and peoples. Our decisions on how to project power had consequences in the past and will continue to do so into the future, especially in our present age of globalization and inter-connectedness. Through this entertaining and riveting jaunt through history, Immerwahr makes it clear that U.S. foreign policy needs to keep these territories and outposts in mind in order to better secure U.S. interests and spread U.S. values without provoking devastating military conflict.
Works Cited:
Immerwahr, Daniel. (2019). How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
How did we get to where we are today, with the United States occupying virtually every corner of the world in its 800 bases and outposts? Well, it all starts with the familiar story of the western frontier and manifest destiny in the 19th century, whereby the United States achieved its familiar lower-48 dimensions by the forced removal of Native Americans from prized lands. Once it had secured Alaska and Hawaii to bring the total to 50 states, America continued to look outward, equal parts eager to gain international prestige on par with the European imperial powers and also to claim critical economic and military footholds in the Pacific and Caribbean.
Before the post WWII era of rapid technological progress allowed for the streamlined movement of people, goods, and ideas around the world (the advent of the radio, telegraph, and Internet, various logistical technologies, standardization and more), there were overwhelming geopolitical incentives to hold sway over as much land as possible. One was control over the sources of (and markets for) critical raw materials not yet amenable to duplication in a laboratory setting, like arable land, rubber, palm oil, and even bird guano. (Yes, bird guano. Turns out that it's a decent fertilizer.) Second, with enough territory comes the ability to secure critical military outposts, used to protect the imperial borders, quell the on-and-off insurrections, cow external threats (i.e. other imperial powers), and better control the movement of both people and trade within one's borders. Lastly, the more land and peoples under your country's sway, the better the opportunity to spread your economic and cultural values into as many hearts and minds as possible.
Thus began the second wave of American imperialism, bringing various archipelagos and islands like the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the less well known Guano Islands into the fold, inextricably tying their economies and political identities closer to the mainland. Over time, the inhabitants of the territories gained at the very least the status of U.S. nationals and statutory citizenship and the fundamental rights that come with it. However, the Insular case (1901) rulings established U.S. colonial doctrine that allowed only the territories that the government deemed on the path to statehood the full protection of the Constitution, while citizens in territories not on the statehood path were left vulnerable to a repeal of their statutorily granted status as a U.S. national or citizen and only had partial protection of the Constitution. Oh, and they don't have official representation in the Congress that had the power to revoke or alter such statutes. This legal limbo led to carte blanche medical experimentation in territories like Puerto Rico and the unfettered architectural redesign of the Philippines' main island.
Surprisingly though, after WWII, the United States suddenly and rapidly decolonized in a moment of postwar ascendancy that many countries would have taken full advantage of to expand their power and territorial holdings. While there probably was some altruistic sentiment underlying it, relating to U.S. values surrounding self-determination, Immerwahr shows that the U.S. did this for overwhelmingly selfish, yet pragmatic reasons.
Nationalist movements capitalized on the postwar devastation of their imperial overlords, asking for self-determination and independence in exchange for helping fight in the war. At the same time, the need for countries to hold large swaths of territory was diminishing with the development of alternative mechanisms of power projection and control, backed up by the improved ability to synthesize necessary raw materials combined with vast improvements in telecommunications, transportation and logistical technologies. Also, it's very expensive to hold large territories. All in all, these factors made it more pragmatic to hold smaller swaths of land in key zones of national interest, backing up economic clout with military power where necessary.
Therefore, the U.S. dropped many of its territories in exchange for investing in a vast worldwide logistical network of smaller swaths of land containing military bases and outposts that we see today. Immerwahr sees this as a new kind of empire, a kind of third wave of imperialism, borne of the realities of globalization, but without many of the overtly negative markers associated with traditional models of empire building. Many other powers seemed to have adopted this model of power, for better or worse, like China.
All in all, what does this mean for the United States going forward? For Immerwahr, it means that the mainland can no longer ignore the crucial role that U.S. territories and military outposts play in continuing to exert U.S. power around the world. As a country, we've largely been expansionist, and continue to be, despite our protestations; we crave territorial influence, but without the baggage associated with having formal political dominion over large swaths of territory and peoples. Our decisions on how to project power had consequences in the past and will continue to do so into the future, especially in our present age of globalization and inter-connectedness. Through this entertaining and riveting jaunt through history, Immerwahr makes it clear that U.S. foreign policy needs to keep these territories and outposts in mind in order to better secure U.S. interests and spread U.S. values without provoking devastating military conflict.
Works Cited:
Immerwahr, Daniel. (2019). How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Monday, June 3, 2019
Book Review: Jill Lepore's "These Truths"
What is America? Who is America, what do Americans believe in, and how does one define an American way of life? The answer to these questions go beyond America's demarcation on a map as one of 194 recognized nation-states around the world, a republic of 325 million people, composed of some 50 states and five territorial outposts. Author and professor of history Jill Lepore is one of many in a long line of scholars that attempts to answer these difficult questions by way of an ambitious 932-page volume of America's history, These Truths: A History of the United States (2018). Here, the epic saga of American history is explored not just by the time-honored practice of rote chronological recitation of major events, but also by the examination of their ideological and philosophical underpinnings, forces and debates that continue to drive the complicated and ever-evolving American experiment forward.
To understand where we are today, Lepore takes us way back to the 16th century to show that, above all, we are a country of contradictions, and have been from the beginning. A nation that started from the chaos of revolution naturally will have its fits and starts. In an age of postmodernism, where truths seem few and far between or up to interpretation, Lepore begins her examination by asking if American history has lived up to its lofty ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution (i.e. America's "truths").
From the time of Columbus landing in the Bahamas to the colonial era, European colonizers and explorers brought their ideas of "equality, sovereignty, and consent" (see the Magna Carta, for example) with them (Lepore, 2018, p. 787). Despite believing in these higher-truths, they did not necessarily apply them to the Native Americans they encountered, who appeared backwards to them in their darker skins, practice of pagan religions, and seeming inability to cultivate (read: build/develop/own) their lands in the ways of modern societies. These were not necessarily new ideas, as the conquerors, in their debates over what they were doing in the New World was right, dug up Aristotle, who believed in a natural hierarchy, where some were born into slavery and others into the ruling classes. Stable societies needed hierarchies, that's just how it is.
Those precedents seemed like biological truths rather than the products of sociopolitical realities and would serve, for a time, to sustain certain oppressions in the United States alongside almost utopian conditions of freedom and equality in governance.
Add a new technological revolution with both the potential of unity and division among a growing electorate. Shake. Rinse, repeat. As a result of this turbulent national environment, both conservatives and liberals have taken turns being either the champions of or opposing reactionaries to reforms such as emancipating the slaves (result: the Civil War) to the regulation of labor conditions, legislation of civil rights, and equal rights for women. The echoes of these fights remain with us today, giving us such partisan philosophies as identity politics and creeds of law and order that threaten to undermine the continued fights for the realization of true equality.
In the end, Lepore spares no one in her critiques of the past, showing how peoples of all political persuasions are complicit in either the nation's successes or failures, and that ultimately, the nation is better off for having brought in more of its people underneath the big tent of citizenship (and all of its accompanying obligations). She pushes for continued improvement of the American experiment, taking pride in its successes and asking us to learn from our past grievous errors. Because of the ongoing nature of our national experiment, an epic tale Lepore tells with elegance, no definitive conclusion can be reached on whether or not our nation has, in fact, realized its fundamental truths for all of its citizens. Of course, this means that there is more work to be done, a new generation that needs to wrestle with its history and take the nation into the future.
Works Cited:
Lepore, Jill. (2018). These Truths: A History of the United States. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
To understand where we are today, Lepore takes us way back to the 16th century to show that, above all, we are a country of contradictions, and have been from the beginning. A nation that started from the chaos of revolution naturally will have its fits and starts. In an age of postmodernism, where truths seem few and far between or up to interpretation, Lepore begins her examination by asking if American history has lived up to its lofty ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution (i.e. America's "truths").
From the time of Columbus landing in the Bahamas to the colonial era, European colonizers and explorers brought their ideas of "equality, sovereignty, and consent" (see the Magna Carta, for example) with them (Lepore, 2018, p. 787). Despite believing in these higher-truths, they did not necessarily apply them to the Native Americans they encountered, who appeared backwards to them in their darker skins, practice of pagan religions, and seeming inability to cultivate (read: build/develop/own) their lands in the ways of modern societies. These were not necessarily new ideas, as the conquerors, in their debates over what they were doing in the New World was right, dug up Aristotle, who believed in a natural hierarchy, where some were born into slavery and others into the ruling classes. Stable societies needed hierarchies, that's just how it is.
Those precedents seemed like biological truths rather than the products of sociopolitical realities and would serve, for a time, to sustain certain oppressions in the United States alongside almost utopian conditions of freedom and equality in governance.
"A nation born in contradiction, liberty in a land of slavery, sovereignty in a land of conquest, will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history." (Lepore, 2018, p. 786)
So when the United States of America was established out of a bloody severance from Great Britain in the name of freedom and liberty, there were many groups of people left out of the promises of a truly democratic society, namely Native Americans, African Americans, women, poor and non-propertied white men (later on, immigrants and the LGBTQ community would be slighted as well in this regard and would agitate to secure their rights). These resulting frictions built up plenty of strain in the sociopolitical tectonics of the nation, with releases coming often as reactionary calamities and a halt or backwards regression of the expansion of equal rights, before another generation would come along and realize the error of its forebears and make corrections.Add a new technological revolution with both the potential of unity and division among a growing electorate. Shake. Rinse, repeat. As a result of this turbulent national environment, both conservatives and liberals have taken turns being either the champions of or opposing reactionaries to reforms such as emancipating the slaves (result: the Civil War) to the regulation of labor conditions, legislation of civil rights, and equal rights for women. The echoes of these fights remain with us today, giving us such partisan philosophies as identity politics and creeds of law and order that threaten to undermine the continued fights for the realization of true equality.
In the end, Lepore spares no one in her critiques of the past, showing how peoples of all political persuasions are complicit in either the nation's successes or failures, and that ultimately, the nation is better off for having brought in more of its people underneath the big tent of citizenship (and all of its accompanying obligations). She pushes for continued improvement of the American experiment, taking pride in its successes and asking us to learn from our past grievous errors. Because of the ongoing nature of our national experiment, an epic tale Lepore tells with elegance, no definitive conclusion can be reached on whether or not our nation has, in fact, realized its fundamental truths for all of its citizens. Of course, this means that there is more work to be done, a new generation that needs to wrestle with its history and take the nation into the future.
Works Cited:
Lepore, Jill. (2018). These Truths: A History of the United States. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Friday, May 17, 2019
Book Review: Greg Grandin's "The End of the Myth"
If there's anything as American as apple pie and baseball and the Fourth of July, it is the frontier. Today, we don't live in the age of Manifest Destiny, cowboys and outlaws racing ahead of the streams of wagons headed West to the Pacific coast. So politicians have to get more creative nowadays in evoking the cultural memory of the ever-expanding frontier, whether it be international markets or the stars, when trying to pass major policy initiatives. But what happens when politics takes a more insular turn, from the optimism of the seemingly infinite expanse to the pessimistic fortress-mindset represented by the Trumpian Wall? How did we get here? Historian Greg Grandin sheds light on our present moment in his 2019 exploration of the frontier's role in American history, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America.
The frontier has always held a special place in American hearts and minds, serving as a basis for what we term today "American exceptionalism." Wisconsin professor Frederick Jackson Turner first invoked this idea in his "Frontier Thesis," wherein he argued that America's ability to settle such vast swaths of "free land"--not officially claimed by other recognized nation-states--allowed for the genesis of the "uniquely American form of political equality," premised on a fiercely "vibrant, forward-looking individualism" skeptical of centralized power that we've all come to know and love (Grandin, 2019, p. 1). Pioneers at the border needed to be hardy and adaptive when it came to settling in an unfriendly wilderness, encountering justifiably angry and dispossessed Native Americans--the latter pushed ever-westward by the U.S. government--harsh weather, and unfriendly wildlife, forming collective alliances when possible and thus creating outposts of freedom as bulwarks against an uncivilized frontier.
As Americans would come to establish themselves, from "sea to shining sea" and then move out into the world, whether by acquiring territories, opening new international markets, and fighting a long-line of world wars, the thinking went that America could serve as a sort of universal model for democracy done right, where the unceasing onward march would serve as a way to ameliorate social problems like racism or income inequality that plagued other crowded, border-bound nation-states. Why? Because those extremists, racists, and other problem elements and discontents were pushed ever farther away with the expanding frontier line. The best part was that the frontier was self-renewing, as a new frontier beckoned all the time, even after the mainland was thoroughly settled, keeping populational pressures low and divisions minimal, or minimized. Thus, a country could be knit together and political polarization kept at bay by promises of endless growth, an expansion of our universalist ideas, economic and political systems into the world short of imperialistic command and control.
Not surprisingly, there are problems with this Turnerian ethos. One, the world's resources are not infinite. National policy and our current model of troubled capitalism have not historically recognized this and are just starting to recognize our ecological and economic limits (at least on some fronts). (More liberal humanist perspectives, upon recognizing this, thus posit a more equitable societal arrangement to better share our finite resources, a model of social democracy. Others see limitations as an invitation to double down on an isolationist and racist mindset of domination and exclusion of non-whites from sharing in these benefits. The more dog-eat-dog model, if you will.) Secondly, this brand of American exceptionalism was founded in an era of contradictions, where unprecedented individual freedom (absolute freedom from restrictions in a world that does demand some restrictions on this freedom) only extended to whites and not African-American slaves, dispossessed Native Americans, or later immigrant peoples of color. Additionally, the government and not the rugged individual working collectively were able to open the doors wide for an unprecedented settlement and prosperity, pushing Native Americans and people of color out of the way of white settlers. Thus, these contradictions have remained, and have festered.
With the Great Recession of 2008 and draining Middle East campaigns under our national belt and income inequality rising (corporations have exploited the frontier mindset to the detriment of the commons raised on the unfettered idealism of the American Dream), pessimism has set in, with Donald Trump's election and Wall declaring the frontier closed and for America to start digging in the trenches. The safety valve of expansion seems to have failed, leaving no place for the fringe extremists and nativist elements to vent aside from internally directed violence against immigrants and people of color and a ramping up of polarization, starkly revealing the unavoidable social problems of modern life. More importantly, the realization is slowly setting in that the United States is like other nations, obligated to reckon with the latter problems just like everyone else.
We seem to have come down from the clouds, faced with the destructive impulses of a Trumpism that refuses limits, even when recognizing that the world is limited, an uneasy, destabilizing contradiction detrimental to the stability of our polity. While Grandin pulls no punches in his troubling assessment of our present and possible future of ever-greater polarization, he concludes with the cautiously optimistic hope that America still has time to recognize its limits in the Global Age and learn to thrive in a more balanced social democracy. This moment of reckoning will come, and we need to be ready for it.
Works Cited:
Grandin, Greg. (2019). The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America. New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company.
The frontier has always held a special place in American hearts and minds, serving as a basis for what we term today "American exceptionalism." Wisconsin professor Frederick Jackson Turner first invoked this idea in his "Frontier Thesis," wherein he argued that America's ability to settle such vast swaths of "free land"--not officially claimed by other recognized nation-states--allowed for the genesis of the "uniquely American form of political equality," premised on a fiercely "vibrant, forward-looking individualism" skeptical of centralized power that we've all come to know and love (Grandin, 2019, p. 1). Pioneers at the border needed to be hardy and adaptive when it came to settling in an unfriendly wilderness, encountering justifiably angry and dispossessed Native Americans--the latter pushed ever-westward by the U.S. government--harsh weather, and unfriendly wildlife, forming collective alliances when possible and thus creating outposts of freedom as bulwarks against an uncivilized frontier.
As Americans would come to establish themselves, from "sea to shining sea" and then move out into the world, whether by acquiring territories, opening new international markets, and fighting a long-line of world wars, the thinking went that America could serve as a sort of universal model for democracy done right, where the unceasing onward march would serve as a way to ameliorate social problems like racism or income inequality that plagued other crowded, border-bound nation-states. Why? Because those extremists, racists, and other problem elements and discontents were pushed ever farther away with the expanding frontier line. The best part was that the frontier was self-renewing, as a new frontier beckoned all the time, even after the mainland was thoroughly settled, keeping populational pressures low and divisions minimal, or minimized. Thus, a country could be knit together and political polarization kept at bay by promises of endless growth, an expansion of our universalist ideas, economic and political systems into the world short of imperialistic command and control.
Not surprisingly, there are problems with this Turnerian ethos. One, the world's resources are not infinite. National policy and our current model of troubled capitalism have not historically recognized this and are just starting to recognize our ecological and economic limits (at least on some fronts). (More liberal humanist perspectives, upon recognizing this, thus posit a more equitable societal arrangement to better share our finite resources, a model of social democracy. Others see limitations as an invitation to double down on an isolationist and racist mindset of domination and exclusion of non-whites from sharing in these benefits. The more dog-eat-dog model, if you will.) Secondly, this brand of American exceptionalism was founded in an era of contradictions, where unprecedented individual freedom (absolute freedom from restrictions in a world that does demand some restrictions on this freedom) only extended to whites and not African-American slaves, dispossessed Native Americans, or later immigrant peoples of color. Additionally, the government and not the rugged individual working collectively were able to open the doors wide for an unprecedented settlement and prosperity, pushing Native Americans and people of color out of the way of white settlers. Thus, these contradictions have remained, and have festered.
With the Great Recession of 2008 and draining Middle East campaigns under our national belt and income inequality rising (corporations have exploited the frontier mindset to the detriment of the commons raised on the unfettered idealism of the American Dream), pessimism has set in, with Donald Trump's election and Wall declaring the frontier closed and for America to start digging in the trenches. The safety valve of expansion seems to have failed, leaving no place for the fringe extremists and nativist elements to vent aside from internally directed violence against immigrants and people of color and a ramping up of polarization, starkly revealing the unavoidable social problems of modern life. More importantly, the realization is slowly setting in that the United States is like other nations, obligated to reckon with the latter problems just like everyone else.
We seem to have come down from the clouds, faced with the destructive impulses of a Trumpism that refuses limits, even when recognizing that the world is limited, an uneasy, destabilizing contradiction detrimental to the stability of our polity. While Grandin pulls no punches in his troubling assessment of our present and possible future of ever-greater polarization, he concludes with the cautiously optimistic hope that America still has time to recognize its limits in the Global Age and learn to thrive in a more balanced social democracy. This moment of reckoning will come, and we need to be ready for it.
Works Cited:
Grandin, Greg. (2019). The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America. New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company.
Friday, May 3, 2019
Taking a Look at the Redacted Mueller Report
The wait is over! The Mueller Report has finally been released to the public, albeit heavily redacted, and boy is it a whopper. Coming in at 448 pages, the report consists of two volumes, covering Mueller's findings concerning potential obstruction of justice and conspiracy by the Trump administration and Russia during the 2016 presidential election, and the Trump administration's reactions to Mueller's probe. So was there collusion and obstruction of justice? No, but there wasn't not collusion and obstruction of justice. "A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts," writes Mueller in the introduction (Mueller, 2019, Vol. I, p. 2). Confused? I'll explain.
So, Mueller's team was unable to definitively prove-underneath the high evidentiary and intent bars set by federal obstruction of justice and conspiracy statutes-that individuals associated with the Trump campaign and Russia consciously conspired together to sway the 2016 presidential election in Trump's favor. Why?
For one, there are differing points of view over what investigatory actions can and cannot be taken in the course of an investigation while the President holds office and, as a result, is protected from certain legal liabilities. The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the White House asserts that investigations like Mueller's can only investigate and prosecute a narrow set of obstructive acts such as evidence and witness tampering and perjury. To prosecute any broader than those acts infringes on the President's powers to "supervise prosecutorial conduct or to remove inferior law-enforcement officers" like the FBI director or Special Counsel in the course of the President's job to see that laws are "faithfully executed" (Mueller, 2019, Vol. II, p. 170, 180). Basically, Congress can only look at the crimes that don't fall under the powers and actions allowed the President in the Constitution. On the other side arguing for a broader interpretation of federal laws is Mueller's team, saying, look, Congress has the power to protect its oversight operations (like the Special Counsel's inquiry) "against corrupt acts from any source" (hence the legislating and enactment of federal criminal law statutes and grand jury protections) and that there are more ways aside from evidence tampering for obstruction to take place (Mueller, 2019, Vol. II, p. 176). Ways that may entangle messily with executive powers and that aren't easily prosecuted while a President holds office.
Secondly, Mueller admits in the report that he is unable to say with certainty whether or not the President and his inner circle committed any crimes because some sensitive communications are protected by executive privilege. There is also the issue that the President refused to submit to a personal interview, instead submitting written responses to Mueller's questions that read like the written equivalent of Jeff Sessions's "I don't recall" Senate testimony in June 2017. Therefore, Mueller could not satisfactorily clear up any doubts whether the evidence showed without a doubt the actions taken meet all the criteria set by obstruction of justice statutes, namely, those of the "obstructive act, nexus to a proceeding, and intent" (Mueller, 2019, Vol. II, p. 15). In other words, you have to prove that a specific action, like bribery, was taken with the knowledge of an upcoming judicial proceeding or investigation, and was not taken in the public interest (i.e. taken in a personal interest).
Therefore, Mueller's strongest case for the potential bringing of charges seem to be Trump's actions to discourage Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen from testifying against him, his attempts to have the investigation restricted to future election meddling, repeated attempts to get former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to "unrecuse" himself and take control of the Special Counsel investigation, and the President's two attempts to fire the Special Counsel himself (Mueller, 2019, Vol. II, p. 5).
While Mueller could've subpoenaed the President to try and get the evidence he needed to make a definitive charging call, he didn't bother, finding the President's written submissions to be "inadequate," but not wanting to delay the investigation further by going to court over the subpoena (Blake, 2019; Mueller, 2019, App. C, p. 2). Besides, Mueller reasoned that the investigation had enough viable evidence from other sources to be confident about the established facts without wading into the legal morass.
So where do we go from here? It seems that Mueller is telling Congress that his investigative scope was limited, along with resources and time, and further tied up by the thorny legal questions surrounding executive criminal liability, and that it is up to Congress to continue investigating. (In fact, ongoing cases involving Russians and former Trump team members have been handed off to law enforcement agencies like the FBI, who in turn have partnered with state Attorneys General and other prosecutors.) If Congress finds amidst the evidence conduct that amounts to conspiracy or obstruction, it can then check executive abuse of powers by initiating impeachment proceedings to remove the President from office. Moreover, Mueller points out that the President's protections against certain legal liabilities go away when not holding office and responsible for enforcing the nation's laws.
Whatever happens next, whether or not Mueller chooses to testify in front of Congress about his findings or House Democrats start impeachment proceedings, what is clear is that the ball is in Congress's court now.
Works Cited:
Blake, Aaron. (2019, April 23). The 5 Crimes Mueller Suggests Trump Could Be Charged With. Retrieved May 2, 2019, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/23/crimes-mueller-suggests-trump-could-be-charged-with/?utm_term=.aff9aa072005.
Mueller, Robert. S. III. (2019). Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election: Submitted Pursuant to 28 C.F.R. §600.8(c) (pp. 1-448) (United States of America, United States Department of Justice, Office of the Special Counsel). Washington D.C.: United States Department of Justice.
So, Mueller's team was unable to definitively prove-underneath the high evidentiary and intent bars set by federal obstruction of justice and conspiracy statutes-that individuals associated with the Trump campaign and Russia consciously conspired together to sway the 2016 presidential election in Trump's favor. Why?
For one, there are differing points of view over what investigatory actions can and cannot be taken in the course of an investigation while the President holds office and, as a result, is protected from certain legal liabilities. The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the White House asserts that investigations like Mueller's can only investigate and prosecute a narrow set of obstructive acts such as evidence and witness tampering and perjury. To prosecute any broader than those acts infringes on the President's powers to "supervise prosecutorial conduct or to remove inferior law-enforcement officers" like the FBI director or Special Counsel in the course of the President's job to see that laws are "faithfully executed" (Mueller, 2019, Vol. II, p. 170, 180). Basically, Congress can only look at the crimes that don't fall under the powers and actions allowed the President in the Constitution. On the other side arguing for a broader interpretation of federal laws is Mueller's team, saying, look, Congress has the power to protect its oversight operations (like the Special Counsel's inquiry) "against corrupt acts from any source" (hence the legislating and enactment of federal criminal law statutes and grand jury protections) and that there are more ways aside from evidence tampering for obstruction to take place (Mueller, 2019, Vol. II, p. 176). Ways that may entangle messily with executive powers and that aren't easily prosecuted while a President holds office.
Secondly, Mueller admits in the report that he is unable to say with certainty whether or not the President and his inner circle committed any crimes because some sensitive communications are protected by executive privilege. There is also the issue that the President refused to submit to a personal interview, instead submitting written responses to Mueller's questions that read like the written equivalent of Jeff Sessions's "I don't recall" Senate testimony in June 2017. Therefore, Mueller could not satisfactorily clear up any doubts whether the evidence showed without a doubt the actions taken meet all the criteria set by obstruction of justice statutes, namely, those of the "obstructive act, nexus to a proceeding, and intent" (Mueller, 2019, Vol. II, p. 15). In other words, you have to prove that a specific action, like bribery, was taken with the knowledge of an upcoming judicial proceeding or investigation, and was not taken in the public interest (i.e. taken in a personal interest).
Therefore, Mueller's strongest case for the potential bringing of charges seem to be Trump's actions to discourage Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen from testifying against him, his attempts to have the investigation restricted to future election meddling, repeated attempts to get former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to "unrecuse" himself and take control of the Special Counsel investigation, and the President's two attempts to fire the Special Counsel himself (Mueller, 2019, Vol. II, p. 5).
While Mueller could've subpoenaed the President to try and get the evidence he needed to make a definitive charging call, he didn't bother, finding the President's written submissions to be "inadequate," but not wanting to delay the investigation further by going to court over the subpoena (Blake, 2019; Mueller, 2019, App. C, p. 2). Besides, Mueller reasoned that the investigation had enough viable evidence from other sources to be confident about the established facts without wading into the legal morass.
So where do we go from here? It seems that Mueller is telling Congress that his investigative scope was limited, along with resources and time, and further tied up by the thorny legal questions surrounding executive criminal liability, and that it is up to Congress to continue investigating. (In fact, ongoing cases involving Russians and former Trump team members have been handed off to law enforcement agencies like the FBI, who in turn have partnered with state Attorneys General and other prosecutors.) If Congress finds amidst the evidence conduct that amounts to conspiracy or obstruction, it can then check executive abuse of powers by initiating impeachment proceedings to remove the President from office. Moreover, Mueller points out that the President's protections against certain legal liabilities go away when not holding office and responsible for enforcing the nation's laws.
Whatever happens next, whether or not Mueller chooses to testify in front of Congress about his findings or House Democrats start impeachment proceedings, what is clear is that the ball is in Congress's court now.
Works Cited:
Blake, Aaron. (2019, April 23). The 5 Crimes Mueller Suggests Trump Could Be Charged With. Retrieved May 2, 2019, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/23/crimes-mueller-suggests-trump-could-be-charged-with/?utm_term=.aff9aa072005.
Mueller, Robert. S. III. (2019). Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election: Submitted Pursuant to 28 C.F.R. §600.8(c) (pp. 1-448) (United States of America, United States Department of Justice, Office of the Special Counsel). Washington D.C.: United States Department of Justice.
Friday, April 19, 2019
Book Review: Peter Frankopan's "The Silk Roads"
What was your history class like? Was there any world history? If there was, chances are that it was relegated to the periphery of the largely Euro-centric story told of the rise of the West, or left out to be taught in another non-mandatory elective. Professor of global history at Oxford University, Peter Frankopan, seeks to rectify these historical gaps in his 2016 bestseller The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, and in the process maybe change Western perceptions of a region today commonly seen to be backwards and reactionary.
Frankopan tells the interconnected story of the world by examining the civilizations along the ancient trading routes of the Silk Roads that spanned from Africa to the Mediterranean to East Asia that connect the West to the East, from the distant past to the present, giving readers a new perspective on major historical events, like the fall of the Roman Empire to the later fall of the European colonial powers. It is the epic story of conquests, wars, and the constant trade of goods, people, ideas, and religions, a globalization that started and has never completely stopped, but seemingly has increased in intensity in the present moment.
So rather than follow the traditional route of historical analyses in expounding heavily on our inheritance of the Greco-Roman legacy, a path Frankopan sees as neglecting a nuanced tale of vibrant East-West exchange, Frankopan starts with the rise of the Persian Empire in the 6th century BCE in competition to the Romans as one of the first defining moments of antiquity. Within this hotbed of exchange, major religions and economic conventions became fairly mainstream, from common trade currencies to religions whose success depended on emphasizing common elements of these doctrines with local traditions. Christianity moved this way east and Buddhism west, attracting large sects of competing followers and helping to ensure their statuses among major world religions.
There was a healthy inter-mixing and borrowing (and relative tolerance) of ideas that, by-and-large, enabled the East to flourish in a varying succession of great empires, a condition that has endured for a majority of humanity's existence. The West caught up and eventually surpassed the East in large part through the exploitation of the bountiful natural and human resources of conquered lands, from the gold and slaves brought back from North and South America, Africa, and Asia, to the spices, precious stones, and eventually oil, of the Middle and Far East. Conquest and suffering went hand-in-hand with prosperity at home, allowing Western Europe and later America to beef up their militaries while simultaneously raising their political, cultural, and economic stars worldwide in the form of various colonial empires. When those empires fell, the powers-that-be turned to short-term deals with strongmen to safeguard their interests in the region (think oil). (Of course, we know today how that's gone.)
As a result of the latter policies, the exploitation of the East by the West left mixed-bag legacies that continue to resonate today, from the powder keg of the largely autocratic Middle East to the economic dynamism of East and South-East Asia. This is where it becomes especially helpful to know the other side of the story, how imperial legacies set the countries of the Silk Roads back in the modern era, with arbitrarily designed national boundaries and centuries of economic exploitation (think oil) resulting in autocracy, income inequality, and a bevy of other declines on various social indices for many living in the region.
But, there seem to be major changes underway today that are serving to revitalize the ancient corridors of commerce, people, and ideas, and with it lift up the peoples of the area. While uneven progress has been made in the center of the world towards climbing back upwards, the exhaustion of the West in the wake of huge military expenditures in the region in combination with increased political infighting over the globalization opening up new avenues in the East seems to show that the Silk Roads may be reclaiming their historical top-dog status once again. For one, China is investing heavily in Africa and in its ambitious New Silk Roads initiative to build up the transportation and economic infrastructure of the region. New centers for the arts and learning are popping up again in the Middle East and Asia. Many Western foreign policies are beginning to shift their focus Eastward.
In any case, in an era of transition, much uncertainty remains. While The Silk Roads prescribes no solutions that will avert potential conflict between a seemingly peaking West and rising East, it provides helpful context, a roadmap of the past leading to the present. Whatever we choose to do next, it seems clear that Western foreign policy should be geared towards peacefully guiding the rising powers upwards and securing a prosperous multipolar world for the many. Peace would seem to depend on that.
Works Cited:
Frankopan, Peter. (2016). The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. New York: Vintage Books.
Frankopan tells the interconnected story of the world by examining the civilizations along the ancient trading routes of the Silk Roads that spanned from Africa to the Mediterranean to East Asia that connect the West to the East, from the distant past to the present, giving readers a new perspective on major historical events, like the fall of the Roman Empire to the later fall of the European colonial powers. It is the epic story of conquests, wars, and the constant trade of goods, people, ideas, and religions, a globalization that started and has never completely stopped, but seemingly has increased in intensity in the present moment.
So rather than follow the traditional route of historical analyses in expounding heavily on our inheritance of the Greco-Roman legacy, a path Frankopan sees as neglecting a nuanced tale of vibrant East-West exchange, Frankopan starts with the rise of the Persian Empire in the 6th century BCE in competition to the Romans as one of the first defining moments of antiquity. Within this hotbed of exchange, major religions and economic conventions became fairly mainstream, from common trade currencies to religions whose success depended on emphasizing common elements of these doctrines with local traditions. Christianity moved this way east and Buddhism west, attracting large sects of competing followers and helping to ensure their statuses among major world religions.
There was a healthy inter-mixing and borrowing (and relative tolerance) of ideas that, by-and-large, enabled the East to flourish in a varying succession of great empires, a condition that has endured for a majority of humanity's existence. The West caught up and eventually surpassed the East in large part through the exploitation of the bountiful natural and human resources of conquered lands, from the gold and slaves brought back from North and South America, Africa, and Asia, to the spices, precious stones, and eventually oil, of the Middle and Far East. Conquest and suffering went hand-in-hand with prosperity at home, allowing Western Europe and later America to beef up their militaries while simultaneously raising their political, cultural, and economic stars worldwide in the form of various colonial empires. When those empires fell, the powers-that-be turned to short-term deals with strongmen to safeguard their interests in the region (think oil). (Of course, we know today how that's gone.)
As a result of the latter policies, the exploitation of the East by the West left mixed-bag legacies that continue to resonate today, from the powder keg of the largely autocratic Middle East to the economic dynamism of East and South-East Asia. This is where it becomes especially helpful to know the other side of the story, how imperial legacies set the countries of the Silk Roads back in the modern era, with arbitrarily designed national boundaries and centuries of economic exploitation (think oil) resulting in autocracy, income inequality, and a bevy of other declines on various social indices for many living in the region.
But, there seem to be major changes underway today that are serving to revitalize the ancient corridors of commerce, people, and ideas, and with it lift up the peoples of the area. While uneven progress has been made in the center of the world towards climbing back upwards, the exhaustion of the West in the wake of huge military expenditures in the region in combination with increased political infighting over the globalization opening up new avenues in the East seems to show that the Silk Roads may be reclaiming their historical top-dog status once again. For one, China is investing heavily in Africa and in its ambitious New Silk Roads initiative to build up the transportation and economic infrastructure of the region. New centers for the arts and learning are popping up again in the Middle East and Asia. Many Western foreign policies are beginning to shift their focus Eastward.
In any case, in an era of transition, much uncertainty remains. While The Silk Roads prescribes no solutions that will avert potential conflict between a seemingly peaking West and rising East, it provides helpful context, a roadmap of the past leading to the present. Whatever we choose to do next, it seems clear that Western foreign policy should be geared towards peacefully guiding the rising powers upwards and securing a prosperous multipolar world for the many. Peace would seem to depend on that.
Works Cited:
Frankopan, Peter. (2016). The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. New York: Vintage Books.
Friday, April 5, 2019
Book Review: Laurie Halse Anderson's "Shout"
In the era of #MeToo, many women in the United States and around the world have found their voices to speak out against a persistently misogynistic cultural, economic, political and social system. A shot heard round the world, from the United States to Bollywood. Sure, it was much worse in the past, the usual narrative goes. But now women have achieved voting rights and a degree of social mobility. Now, with #MeToo, it seems the power imbalances have been thrust into the light, and no abuser is safe. Yay, progress!? Well...not so much.
Like much else, recent history is a mixed bag, with many benefits of movements that shake the powerful and go viral on mainstream news outlets around the world not necessarily trickling down to the masses or affecting change on the underlying structural issues and social attitudes that cause the problems in the first place. This is frustrating and demoralizing for women across the world, who, silenced by the stigmas surrounding sexual violence and assault, may judge it not worth the social costs to come forward, to agitate for change. If they do, they may face scorn and even death threats (see the case of Christine Blasey Ford, who received death threats after her testimony at the hearing for now Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh). One of many giving voice to this despair and rage felt by many women is author Laurie Halse Anderson, first through her 1999 novel Speak, and in her latest, Shout: A Poetry Memoir (2019).
From the get-go, Shout issues a siren call for a new wave of activism in a searing work of poetic prose that is half unflinchingly personal autobiography and half advocacy treatise. Like protagonist Melinda from Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson was sexually assaulted as a teenager, when she was thirteen years old. Of course, this assault having occurred in the 70s meant that Anderson, like other girls and women (and yes, boys and men), were counseled that to stay safe from predatory men (and women), they must dress conservatively, make themselves blend in to the wallpaper, to be seen, not heard. If they were assaulted, it was their fault for dressing provocatively, for drinking, being out at night alone. As for having candid conversations about sex, healthy relationships, consent and menstruation? Out of the question. Talking about sex was taboo, and when non-consensual intercourse happened, it was also taboo to speak up about it.
What makes it even worse is that in addition to the latter smothering cultural mores, Anderson's home life also had another toxic layer of drug and emotional abuse, as a result of her father's PTSD and her mother's powerlessness to change the family situation. After her rape, Anderson fell into a similar spiral, driven by her shame and anger at having to deal with her continuing trauma.
It wasn't until she spent 13 months in Denmark as a foreign exchange student that Anderson was able to gain the clarity she needed to begin healing, something she was unable to do living under her parents' toxic roof. Upon her return home, this clarity began to crystallize into an awareness of the pervasiveness of her situation, as she attended college at Georgetown and dealt with handsy professors, and as a reporter witnessed a defense attorney engaging in the brutal character assassination of a rape survivor. She channeled this awareness and dawning rage at the trauma she faced into fiction writing, first in Speak. When Speak broke into the mainstream, she used her newfound platform to tour schools and speak against sexual violence, empowering students to address these issues openly in their schools to everyone's benefit, while not flinching away from the hard path of recovery those who've dealt with sexual violence must take in order to heal. It is in this unflinching address to readers where Anderson's prose is at its most powerful, a dagger to pierce through layers of ignorance and trauma alike to let the light in.
While we've come a long way from the 70s, there still is much work to be done, as seen by the push back of school administrators against teaching sex-ed sans abstinence, school librarians worried about losing their jobs for ordering Speak, and even one revealing episode in which the fire alarm was pulled by a principal to stop Anderson's talk. But not talking about it will not make the problems go away. Instead, they fester, and the cycle of sexual violence and misogyny continues.
The laws may have changed so that women are able to vote and speak their minds publicly, but social and cultural norms must evolve alongside the laws for a truly lasting change to take hold, to break the cycle. Shout's brutal honesty makes this abundantly clear, and clears the way for other similar much-needed stories to be told, to remind us that the fight is not over. There's still much more work to do.
Works Cited:
Anderson, Laurie Halse. (2019). Shout: A Poetry Memoir. New York: Penguin Random House LLC.
Taub, Amanda. (2019, February 11). #MeToo Paradox: Movement Topples the Powerful, Not the Ordinary. Retrieved March 31, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/11/world/americas/metoo-ocar-arias.html.
Like much else, recent history is a mixed bag, with many benefits of movements that shake the powerful and go viral on mainstream news outlets around the world not necessarily trickling down to the masses or affecting change on the underlying structural issues and social attitudes that cause the problems in the first place. This is frustrating and demoralizing for women across the world, who, silenced by the stigmas surrounding sexual violence and assault, may judge it not worth the social costs to come forward, to agitate for change. If they do, they may face scorn and even death threats (see the case of Christine Blasey Ford, who received death threats after her testimony at the hearing for now Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh). One of many giving voice to this despair and rage felt by many women is author Laurie Halse Anderson, first through her 1999 novel Speak, and in her latest, Shout: A Poetry Memoir (2019).
From the get-go, Shout issues a siren call for a new wave of activism in a searing work of poetic prose that is half unflinchingly personal autobiography and half advocacy treatise. Like protagonist Melinda from Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson was sexually assaulted as a teenager, when she was thirteen years old. Of course, this assault having occurred in the 70s meant that Anderson, like other girls and women (and yes, boys and men), were counseled that to stay safe from predatory men (and women), they must dress conservatively, make themselves blend in to the wallpaper, to be seen, not heard. If they were assaulted, it was their fault for dressing provocatively, for drinking, being out at night alone. As for having candid conversations about sex, healthy relationships, consent and menstruation? Out of the question. Talking about sex was taboo, and when non-consensual intercourse happened, it was also taboo to speak up about it.
What makes it even worse is that in addition to the latter smothering cultural mores, Anderson's home life also had another toxic layer of drug and emotional abuse, as a result of her father's PTSD and her mother's powerlessness to change the family situation. After her rape, Anderson fell into a similar spiral, driven by her shame and anger at having to deal with her continuing trauma.
It wasn't until she spent 13 months in Denmark as a foreign exchange student that Anderson was able to gain the clarity she needed to begin healing, something she was unable to do living under her parents' toxic roof. Upon her return home, this clarity began to crystallize into an awareness of the pervasiveness of her situation, as she attended college at Georgetown and dealt with handsy professors, and as a reporter witnessed a defense attorney engaging in the brutal character assassination of a rape survivor. She channeled this awareness and dawning rage at the trauma she faced into fiction writing, first in Speak. When Speak broke into the mainstream, she used her newfound platform to tour schools and speak against sexual violence, empowering students to address these issues openly in their schools to everyone's benefit, while not flinching away from the hard path of recovery those who've dealt with sexual violence must take in order to heal. It is in this unflinching address to readers where Anderson's prose is at its most powerful, a dagger to pierce through layers of ignorance and trauma alike to let the light in.
While we've come a long way from the 70s, there still is much work to be done, as seen by the push back of school administrators against teaching sex-ed sans abstinence, school librarians worried about losing their jobs for ordering Speak, and even one revealing episode in which the fire alarm was pulled by a principal to stop Anderson's talk. But not talking about it will not make the problems go away. Instead, they fester, and the cycle of sexual violence and misogyny continues.
The laws may have changed so that women are able to vote and speak their minds publicly, but social and cultural norms must evolve alongside the laws for a truly lasting change to take hold, to break the cycle. Shout's brutal honesty makes this abundantly clear, and clears the way for other similar much-needed stories to be told, to remind us that the fight is not over. There's still much more work to do.
Works Cited:
Anderson, Laurie Halse. (2019). Shout: A Poetry Memoir. New York: Penguin Random House LLC.
Taub, Amanda. (2019, February 11). #MeToo Paradox: Movement Topples the Powerful, Not the Ordinary. Retrieved March 31, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/11/world/americas/metoo-ocar-arias.html.
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