When History is not History?

History is a thing of the past, literally. 

History is a record of what happened, when it happened and why it happened. For better or worse it is filtered by the prejudices and preferences that define us in the present. What emerges is often a shadow of the truth. The whole truth is locked in the past. Only an unbiased and unfiltered probing into the past can bring us close to the truth. More often than not, "unbiased and unfiltered" are challenging expectations.

Both American historian Henry Glassie and Prime Minister Winston Churchill spoke to this conflation of the past and the present. Glassie noted that “History is not the past but a map of the past, drawn from a particular point of view, to be useful to the modern traveller.” Churchill opined that "For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all Parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history." 

History for both Glassie and Churchill would be neither unbiased nor unfiltered.

What has happened cannot be made to unhappen. It may be clouded, ignored or deliberately hidden. Nonetheless, happenings and their impact in their own time have a way of surfacing again, reminding us that our present is rooted in our past. Just as a tree is anchored by its roots, our present is anchored by our past. Our history gives meaning to our present. 

State actors of all descriptions, from autocratic dictators to manipulative politicians, want to bend history to their desired goals. They seek to make history subservient to their own aims and their own ends. They might vainly think that they are responding to the times they are in by tuning their perception of history to what is best for their populace. They may seem to succeed, but not for long.

Imagine a fine piece of art, and remove one single color from it. You could barely look at it for want of authenticity and appeal to the senses. Imagine blurring or removing a single strand from the palette of history, and you will be left with a meaningless caricature. 

These are the times we live in, bending history to our will. But, in the end history will prevail, notwithstanding manipulation by autocratic dictators or manipulative politicians.

Is it time to retire 
American Football?

Today is the Day! Football fans across the country will be glued to their TV sets if they are not already in the city or the stadium to watch in person the greatest spectacle of the year in American sports.

At what cost, one might ask? And why this fascination with football?

Let's cut to the chase. Despite all the strategy and art that is associated with football, the primary attraction of football is the violence inherent in the game. Yes, violence. Fascination with violence has been a human weakness, perhaps forever. Violence may have a purpose of last resort. But violence for entertainment has no seeming purpose.  Today the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs will entertain some 60,000 fans in the Glendale, AZ stadium and millions upon millions on TV screens across the country, just as gladiators entertained massive crowds in ancient Rome, until the first Christian emperor of Rome banned the gladiator fights because there was no place for it in times of peace.

Now all this may seem to be an exaggeration. Is it? Gladiators fought sometimes in choreographed fights, but often in fights to death. Costs to society didn't matter a whole lot way back then. Consider the costs today. 

Various studies show that the short term cost of concussions and other contact injuries run up into billions of dollars, and the long term cost keep rising. Guess who pays for this healthcare and other expenses? Not the promoters of the game, for sure. The average citizen is stuck with the bill.

Competitive sports have undeniable value in building one's character. Contact sports where violent contact is an undeniable feature of the game has more downsides than a society should tolerate. The cost for this entertainment is too much to pay.

It is time to change American football in a meaningful way, so that character not entertainment is the primary driver of the game, perhaps to the dislike of the game's promoters.

Why not just play soccer? Much of the world does.

Post Earthquake: The Right Move

The Wall Street Journal reports that "After Earthquake, Turkey Arrests Dozens Connected to Collapsed Buildings." A right move, indeed.

Of course, those arrested must be considered innocent until proven guilty, and their cases must be adjudicated promptly and fairly. Nonetheless, any review of damage caused by earthquakes around the world yields the unmistakable conclusion that most of the damage is caused not be the earthquake but by poor construction of impacted structures.

Most countries have laws and regulation to ensure that buildings are built to a code that makes them safe in geological or weather related disasters. At the same time, scrupulous or greedy builders find ways to circumvent those laws or regulations. These could be builders, contractors, suppliers or a combination of them. They could be regulators who are not doing their job, not always because they don't know how to do it. Sometime, they might just not do the job they know how to do, or look the other way for nefarious reasons, or just be amenable to a little or a lot of bribe. 

We don't know what the crackdown in Turkey will bring. Will it be thorough and fair to all concerned? We do know that the loss of life is so great, the despair so deep, and the anger so boiling that nothing short of a true investigation and purpose-directed action, both penal and corrective, will suffice.

Turkey has an opportunity, unfortunate as it may be, to chart a new course to mitigating loss of life in natural disasters.

Turkish-Syrian Earthquake:
Does Responsibility Matter?

We are horrified at the toll that the Turkish-Syrian earthquake has taken - 20,000 dead at the time of this writing, and the number continues to rise to a limit that has not been set yet. We are grateful for the lives saved and recovered. The survivors face difficulties and challenges that are hard to imagine. 

We admire the energy, the skill and above all the devotion and dedication of the professionals and the volunteers who are doing all they possibly can to mitigate the suffering.

Yet, a question lingers in this disaster as it does in all such disasters. Did it have to come to this? Did over 20,000 people have to die and thousands upon thousands have to suffer injuries and grief beyond description? Was all this death and destruction, injury and grief the consequence of the earthquake alone?

Of course not. In this disaster as in the collapse of an apartment high-rise in Malaysia many years ago,  and a large apartment fire in England some years ago, the cause of death and devastation was principally caused by human negligence, or fraud at worst. But at that time, as now, the focus was on saving lives and not determining responsibility.

This is an error we keep repeating.

Authorities would say, let's take care of the emergency right now and worry about responsibility later. Nice sentiment, but completely out or order. We need to do both now.

By putting off the reckoning of those who were responsible for shoddy construction and violation of building codes, we allow them space for insensitive assessment of their responsibility. Putting off reckoning for another day gives them an escape route and comfort to repeat their criminal conduct as they please. We can't prevent earthquakes, but we can ensure that the consequences of earthquakes are not magnified by irresponsible human agency.

We are too busy saving lives, government officials will say - an unacceptable excuse. Any government is large enough to attend to two emergencies at the same time - saving lives and catching those responsible for causing more death that can be attributable to the earthquake in this case.

We wait to hear from the Turkish authorities if they have apprehended those responsible for the magnification of death and destruction initiated by this earthquake. 

Name of 988 does not serve its purpose

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline - 988 - dubbed as Suicide and Crisis Lifeline - is being promoted as a response to the mental health crisis that, according to some, has led to recent spate of shootings in public spaces. Setting aside the validity of this conclusion, the naming of 988 will discourage many who may need it. None of the recent shooters had reached the state of being suicidal, even if they had a mental health problem. By conflating mental health with suicidal tendencies, we will discourage people with normal mental health problems from calling 988. That will be a disservice to them, and will not serve the purpose of setting up 988. 

Equal Justice?

Sam, a county trash collector earns around $30,000 year. John, a general manager in a sizable firm earns around $180,000. Sam and John are imagined persons. They have no quarrel about what they earn.

Here is the problem. Sam and John are stopped for knowingly breaking the speed limit on a highway. They get traffic tickets. Sam is fined four hours of his earnings. John is fined only forty minutes of his earnings. They committed the same offense, yet Sam has to pay six times as much in his earnings as John. Why?

This unequal response to the same offense may sound trivial at first. But it isn’t. The offense is committed by the individual who made an individual decision to break the law. Punishment should be inflicted on the individual’s worth represented by his capacity to earn, and his capacity to enjoy that earning. So the right response would be to fine Sam his four hours’ earning ($60) and fine John his four hours’ earning ($360). Why not?

If the intent of the speeding violation law is to punish the violator, surely John is not impressed. He can easily pay $60 without blinking, and probably speed again. Sam may have to cut on his grocery budget for a few weeks to avoid going into debt, and he will perhaps not speed again. Why this unequal treatment?

If the intent of the speeding violation law is for the police department to raise revenue, why not charge John and Sam the same hours of their earnings, and collect more money from John?

But let’s focus on the basic injustice in this situation. Trivial, you say? Let’s say both Sam and John are arrested for not paying a fine or not appearing in the court. Sam gathers his savings to pay bail, and has to forego his short once a year vacation. John has to just forego a couple of golf games. It gets worse. They need lawyers. Sam gets an overworked public defender. John hires a team of two expensive lawyers to get him out. Sounds fair, does it?

I know there are far bigger issues of unequal justice in society. Let’s begin with rendering equal justice to Sam and John, and go farther from there.

Iqbal Unus, 

Herndon

Police Training:
Why Not Try the 9th Commandment?

In the wake of continuing cases of police over-reaction and violence against individuals who pose no danger to the police or the populace at large, there has been a great deal of discussion on police training and police culture. Is police training effective in de-escalation as opposed to escalation in such encounters? Can a different training paradigm serve any real purpose in changing police behavior? Will tweaking police culture serve any purpose. Can police culture be effectively changed anyway? 

Why the 9th Commandment?

There is no doubt, nor any fear of any contradiction, that police reports - either written by police officers on the scene or issued by the police department after the incident - are manipulated and fashioned to divert attention from possible police misconduct. Videos of recent incidents make this conclusion clear beyond a shadow of doubt. So, let's not waste words on this aspect of police encounters.

Let's try something different. Let's try the 9th Commandment. "Thou shall not bear false witness."

The reason police gets off the hook in violence against innocent or low level crime individuals is primarily because the offending police officer gets off the hook by writing his own version of the encounter in a manner that absolves him or her or their partners from any wrongdoing in that encounter. No amount of training has motivated the trainees to shun such aversion to the truth and just report as it truthfully was. No amount of training will encourage police department leadership to not accept situation reports on face-value. This is because neither their conduct nor their behavior is rooted in the their committed to the Ninth Commandment, regardless of their religious grounding. 

Just Tell the Truth

Thanks to surveillance cameras, whether on the bodies of police officers or on street corners or in the hands of a conscientious bystander, truth is there for everyone, except police departments, to see, so it seems. The recent actions of one police department give us some hope that police leadership may be appreciating that they cannot continue to manufacture truth in the era of video surveillance. Even if just the possibility of being caught on camera, as opposed to a commitment to the truth, encourages not bearing "false witness", that's a good start. Wouldn't it be nice if each police officer and each police department just told the truth and shy away from bearing "false witness"? Then let the chips fall where they may.

Having to tell the truth, under a strict departmental policy that prohibits giving false witness, can do more to quell the epidemic of excessive abuse by some police officers than routine police training. 

Iqbal Unus / iunus@me.com