Your real crime is being nobody
We all know that we treat people differently based on who they are. We have different standards of behaviour for different people. This is self-evident – if you, say, get into a fight with your partner and yell at each other, you make up a little while later without much difficulty. If a random stranger on the subway starts yelling at you, you ding the “EEEEEEKK! EMEEEEERRRGENCY!” bell and wait for the police.
Even if they yell exactly the same thing* your partner yelled at you the day before.
OK, that’s mostly about the relationship, about the context. All human relationships involve some kind of frame that determines to some extent the roles of the actors involved. Husband/wife, girlfriend/boyfriend, parent/child, boss/bossed, customer/waiter, bum/passerby etc. The same text can have wildly varying meanings depending on the context. But it’s not that simple or that benign.
Some of those frames are pretty toxic, prejudiced, nasty. That stranger on the subway who yells at you is obviously nuts and unpredictable. How about one who just talks to you? Are they a threat? How do you tell?
I can, of course, only speak for myself, but I believe neuroscience backs me up: you make that decision (“Threat? Harmless annoyance? Possible friend?”) based on a number of complex cues based on class markers, age, race, visible gender, tokens of social belonging. To put it bluntly, you judge people superficially based on stereotypes. At least I do. This is probably unavoidable, but still kind of bad. I don’t *want* my eyes to glaze over in a frosty leave-me-the-fuck-alone way when I make eye contact with a stranger, but they do, especially if I read that stranger’s general being-ness as being outside of the group of people I might like to know.
But it goes beyond the personal. You and I, if we make unwise financial decisions, we lose out big time. Giant financial corporations, however, are allowed to get away with or even rewarded for irresponsibilities beyond our wildest dreams. You and me, if we fail to make our rent or mortgage payments, are out on our respective asses. Wall Street, however, can crash the global economy and still get their bonuses.
This is my long winded way of saying: So they arrested the Hutaree guys who, while completely and certifiably nuts, haven’t actually done anything except run around in the woods in camo and make extremely weird Youtube videos with duck-headed people in diapers dildo-slapping naked men with GWB pictures taped over their junk.** Probably a good idea. But hey – why stop there?
Why not Sarah Palin? Or Michele Bachmann? Or Glenn Beck?
The Hutaree are accused of sedition – inciting violence/rebellion against the US government. Can you honestly say the Beck, Palin, and Bachmann are not advocating the same things? The difference is that they are public figures with large followings. They may be crazy, they may be dangerous, they may be irresponsible.
But they’re somebodies.
Crazy, dangerous, irresponsible somebodies. But still somebodies.
Those nuts with their punishing dildo mallet? Nobodies. They can suffer the full consequences of their (non)actions.
But Sarah Palin, though equally ridiculous (in her own entirely inimitable way) and probably more dangerous? Leave her alone.***
*Imagine your partner saying/yelling “You completely immature [son of a] bitch! What the hell makes you think you can do something like that? You think I’m going to put up with that? Fuck you!” Or words to that effect. You’d be mad, of course, but depending on the general tenor of the relationship and the context, you could work it out. Now imagine a complete stranger yelling the same thing.
**Note the ingenious use of the Green Hornet theme song. And do not – whatever you do – watch this at work.
***I know, I know, if you DID arrest her it would probably cause more violence than she herself could incite. I’m not trying to solve any problems here. Just bitching. I muse frequently about the problem of perverse incentives – you know, how it’s cheaper to buy in bulk most of the time, but poor people can’t afford to buy the giant bags of rice or flats of canned soup, so end up paying more for food in the long run, while the rich who can afford higher prices but can afford the up-front costs of bulk end up paying less. But the shopkeeper can’t charge *more* for the bulk package than an equal quantity of the small package, because it’s in his/her interest to sell as much as possible, so the bulk discount remains. I do it myself, charging less for an hour lesson than for 2 half hours. This may be one of the natural asymptotes of human behaviour that will always keep us from having a truly just society.