Missouri showed off America's worst in 2014. Are we really this damn divided?
Missouri lore has it that in 1899, the state’s congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver averred in a speech, “Frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”
That’s the homespun skepticism that earned Missouri its unofficial nickname – the stuff of license plates: the Show-Me State. Folks here in the middle of America pride ourselves on a preference for facts over foolishness, deeds over declarations. But what Missourians lack is a robust self-skepticism – the ability to admit that we are wrong, or plain don’t know. And in the tumult of the past year – whether from faith- and fear-based state laws that even our most backward southern neighbors won’t enact, or the unrest and police violence in the streets of Ferguson – that character flaw was laid bare. In 2014, Missouri showed itself, and the nation, at its most benighted.
In September, conservative lawmakers who control the state assembly enacted a new measure mandating a 72-hour reflection period for women seeking abortions– even in the case of rape or incest. That’s correct: any young Missouri woman impregnated against her will, whether by a total stranger or a family member, still must wait three days before she can terminate the pregnancy. Missouri joins only South Dakota and Utah in making such an unreasonable demand.
Why do Republican legislators insist women “reflect” for so long? Because of their Christian idea – based on none of the kind of difficult facts Missourians claim (or at least claimed) to value – that a soul magically infuses a fertilized egg cell at the moment of conception. (Indeed, biological research has made clear that conception is not a “moment” at all, but rather a lengthy process.) Yet this was the year of magical thinking in Missouri, where a Republican legislator just filed a bill that would require abortions to be approved by the biological father, as if impregnating a woman somehow endows him with authority over her body. If enacted into law, this would be yet another unreasonable demand.
Or consider Missouri’s newest gun law, aka “Amendment 5”. Some firearms laws in the US apply to the whole country, while others vary by state. In August, though, voters here approvedthrough referendum a conservative-backed proposal to enshrine the state right to bear arms as “unalienable”. Gun nuts may have felt great protecting their own interests, but they also threw into question longstanding Missouri gun restrictions, such as the ban on convicted felons carrying a firearm – all out of a belief, again unsupported by solid evidence, that the Obama administration has hatched a conspiracy to pry guns away from sane, law-abiding citizens. The result: Some convicted felons who’ve been caught with a gun are already trying to shield themselves under Amendment 5.
Meanwhile, Missouri was the only state in the union to ramp up capital punishment this year, executing 10 convicted criminals in 2014 compared to just two in 2013 – and this at a time when the National Research Council hasconcluded that there’s no solid evidence the death penalty deters crime, and in an age when a majority of states (not to mention most of the developed world) have abandoned it. Missouri doesn’t show good reasons to keep it going. It shows unreason.
This state is named after the Missouria, a Native American tribe that has since moved away or been pushed out. Still today, many folks here default to a tribal mentality: rural v urban, black v white, liberal v conservative, Christian v secular. Clearly, these divisions exist across America and sometimes flare up; Missouri is used to the fissures, but not to the flare-ups. And the when Ferguson flared up, it burned bright enough for the whole nation to take notice.
We all know by now roughly what happened that August afternoon, between the white Ferguson policeman, Darren Wilson, and the unarmed black 18-year-old, Michael Brown. We know what happened shortly thereafter, what the local grand jury didn’t do three-and-a-half months later.
In Missouri and beyond, the tribes lined up immediately. Then the facts turned up – and turned a messy situation even messier.
Liberals called Michael Brown a “gentle giant” but dismissed the fact that right before the policeman shot him, he had committed an aggressive robbery caught on video. Conservatives didn’t want to face the broader revelation that Ferguson and the surrounding cluster of St Louis-area municipalities were mostly run by white people and financed by the fines and court fees that many black people must pay after being disproportionately targeted by police for petty infractions – a perfect recipe (and solid justification) for resentment.
A tribal mentality blinds you to such complexity – and especially the possibility that the opposing tribe isn’t even a unified tribe at all.
I stood in downtown Ferguson on the night the grand jury decided not to indict Wilson. I milled among hundreds of protestors – black and white – who had gathered for different reasons: to express fury, sadness, a desire for reform. Some had clearly shown up to break shit.
I witnessed militant young men pummeling and torching a police cruiser. When these protesters turned to smashing nearby storefronts, I saw many of their fellow protesters rushing forth to block their path: “No, no!”
Which of these are the “Ferguson protesters” that simplistic people refer to? Neither, because when you are talking about life and death, race and religion and abortion and guns and politics, nothing is simple. Tribal allegiance – tribal lore – can blind you to obvious facts.
Missourians have historically identified ourselves with an unprententious simplicity, but we are no longer a simple people. Maybe we never were. What happened in the state capitol and in Ferguson showed that one resident’s reality can differ drastically from another’s. A resident is entitled to her own reality, but if we are to survive together, she cannot be entitled to her own state. The common denominator we have is fact. What we share is reason. We must trade in them now more than ever.
More than 120 years ago, Missouri’s greatest writer and sage, Mark Twain, wrote, “Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world – and never will.”
If Missouri or any other American state with similar conflicts – racial, religious, political, whatever – have any hope of healing, it lies with those who are serious and sturdy enough to ditch their petrified opinions, to embrace complexity and to absorb facts that make them uneasy. The power-elite must do it. The strong young leaders of the Ferguson protests must keep pushing them to do it, and keep doing it themselves. We’ll all be served by a healthy self-skepticism.
Governor Jay Nixon has set up a special commission to do just this. Some doubt it will get much done. Nixon himself concedes, “Change of this magnitude is hard; but maintaining the status quo is simply not acceptable.” Jay Nixon and so many other people swear they’re willing to fight for that change. But I am a Missourian. They will have to show me.
No comments:
Post a Comment