Isaiah L. Carter's Open Salon Blog

I Was Spared.

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 09:03:56 -0400

March 19th, 2003.

I remember how dark that morning started out, and how warm it would eventually become later in the day. I had received all my personal belongings the night before, and was swimming in my civilian clothes, having shrunken down to a very skinny 225 pounds. Dressed in my Baltimore Ravens jersey and black pants, I stood in the breezeway of Delta Company, the unofficial name of the Fitness Training Company of the 120th Adjutant General Battalion, in Fort Jackson, South Carolina.

My short, essentially non-existent military career had lasted all of five and a half months. This was the end of my second visit to the 120th AG's "fat camp", having failed my initial physical fitness test in what should have been a four-day stay before heading to Basic Combat Training, or BCT. Knee problems plagued my time in Fort Jackson from start to finish and, despite being given a waiver to start BCT despite not having passed the run part of the PFT, would eventually bring me back here, keeping me from the parade grounds of Hilton Field.

I felt ashamed. I had set out to accomplish something I went to do for the alleged American principles I believed in. I wanted to be a soldier, following a bit of family tradition and hoping to look good in the eyes of my father, who had expressed his disappointment that they had made the long drive from Maryland basically for nothing. I was embarrassed, and truly believed I failed in my duties as a man and as a soldier. The long drive from Columbia, South Carolina to Atlanta, Georgia, a normally four-hour drive stretched to seven that day with stops at every town in between served to perpetuate these feelings.

I would eventually make it to Atlanta, and on the plane ride home, when I wasn't gripping the empty seat in front of me in terror due to the heavy turbulence, I wondered what would happen when I got back to Baltimore. Would I be shamed any further when I got home? How could I face my friends, or the woman who would eventually become my first wife? I had put on Army green, only to take it right back off due to an uncharacterized separation. It was literally like I had never even been in the United States Army at all!

I landed in Baltimore, and began my walk to baggage claim. And then, on the screen, was the image that would remain burned into my mind for the rest of my life.

OutKast's classic, "B.o.B", which stood for Bombs over Baghdad, had now become a real thing.

Burning buildings, brightly lighting a dark night.

Shock and Awe had begun.

The liberation invasion of Iraq was now in full effect.

And I would not be a part of it.

I was spared.

Ten years have passed since that day. In that ten years, I married, divorced, and married again. I sold cars, lived in New York City, and been homeless. The weight I lost in South Carolina was eventually found again, and am now a college student. When I first left the Army, I was one of those on the Right that defended the Bush administration's decision to go to war. I viewed the war as at best a spread of freedom to a land that needed it; at worst, the forced toppling of a brutal dictator who gassed Kurds and slaughtered his own people.

At that time, I wanted to believe so much that we were eliminating evil from the world in going into Iraq, even developing my own ideas as to where those pesky weapons of mass destruction had gone. But not only were those WMDs never found, I sensed this gleeful enjoyment of war from the Bush administration throughout the years we were there. Though Saddam Hussein had been stripped of power, tried and executed, I endured the Bush Doctrine of "staying the course", which eventually meant staying in the Middle East permanently, with no idea or care when we would leave.

Ten years later, the very real human cost of a war infested with lies would be revealed. Almost forty-five hundred of our fighting men and women, dead. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, wiped from the country we claimed to liberate. Tens of thousands of our own injured, some completely incapacitated. Torture became standard operating procedure in gathering information as we in this nation became no better than the terrorists we claimed to be hunting.

As Rachel Maddow pointed out last night, there is no bringing these people back. There is no going back to rewrite what happened, despite the revisionist history that the Right continually partakes of. But to know that a bad knee kept me from being just as much an active participant in that war as those who led this country into it, and potentially becoming one of the casualties makes me realize that maybe, through some providence, I would be able to tell this story ten years later.

Today, let us remember those lives lost, and hold correctly in the light of history the ones who brought death, destruction and chaos to our nation and to Iraq. May we use the events of the Iraq War as a moment to educate future generations about the consequences of nation building and war profiteering, working instead to create foreign policy that seeks mutual, shared benefit and creates real, sustainable good.

Let us spare ourselves another Iraq.

Jumping Through the Overton Window

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 00:01:40 -0500

In the study of political science, the Overton Window is a principle used to describe a set of political beliefs, standards, or practices accepted as mainstream at a given moment. As the Mackinac Center for Public Policy's website explains, "This 'window' of politically acceptable options is primarily defined not by what politicians prefer, but rather by what they believe they can support and still win re-election."

As generations pass, and as the sensitivities of public opinion change over the years, this window is at times shifted, causing viewpoints that would have been acceptable in years past to be cast out as extremist and beyond the pale. In the case of the Right, most recently the last thirty years, the Overton Window has been used by many of conservative ideology to advance some of the most radical and out-of-touch ideas of governance ever seen, sometimes using this principle to repackage certain ideas untenable with the branding they had at the time of inception.

On Monday, CNN revealed in grand fashion to the world Alex Jones, a surprise to most everyone that covers politics now, including some like myself who had never heard of him until that night. I still maintain that CNN did this country a service by showing him in all his unedited, raging, jingoistic glory, as for far too long we have never taken a hard look at the true form of those who are the self-appointed acolytes and defenders of the Second Amendment. While many may be concerned that Jones, a man with Branch Davidian ties and freely calls himself a "paleoconservative" while spouting off various conspiracy theories for years, should only be viewed in small snippets and sound bites, the fact remains that this man is not outside of the mainstream of conservative ideology at all, as fellow, more commercially successful ultra-Right folk would have one believe, as Glenn Beck tried to paint Jones Tuesday.Rather, he is the logical, most fundamentalist form of conservative ideology, not bound by the constraints of electability or advertising revenue.

If Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are the ayatollahs of conservative ideology, Alex Jones is no doubt their Taliban.

Though fractal in their stature within the Republican Party (to borrow from Chris Hayes' theory laid out in his book Twilight of the Elites), the Alex Jones Right is possibly the most dangerous strain of conservatism to rear its head. While many are just finding that Republicans have become fully beholden to their bubble of "post-truth" used to establish ideological purity, people like Alex Jones, Michael Savage and others of like ilk have weaponized their rhetoric, potentially awakening someone's desire to make good on their promise to water the "tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants."

As the NRA's influence on this country with respect to its views on gun control wanes following the events of Sandy Hook, as was brilliantly reported on Wednesday by Rachel Maddow, the question still remains as to who will rise up to replace them as the leading voice of gun worship in this country. So far, they remain a very viable option, especially as more people begin to rise up in support of assault and military-grade weapons bans and find success, with New York coming out as the clear leader and Maryland not too far behind.

Defeating people like Alex Jones and others who would continue our barbaric gun culture ad infinitum must be high on the list of our legislators. For the Department of Homeland Security to simply release the report it did back in 2009 is not enough; unless we want to endure another Oklahoma City, measures must be taken to stop these domestic terrorists in their tracks. If twenty dead first graders are not enough to prove to these people that enough is enough, nothing will.

WHY Spike Lee Needs to Have A Seat

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 22:12:37 -0500

Filmmaking is one of humanity's most glorious achievements. Through fourteen-hour days, the use of sophisticated technology, and the coming together of hundreds of people, human creativity is at its best when on display at the movie house. The silver screen, which represents the empty canvas of the imagination, can be used to dramatize historical or current events, or to take the mind to places never thought possible, even within itself.

The idea of purism in filmmaking, or designating certain topics as "off-limits" for writers, directors and producers for any reason is beyond ridiculous. That Spike Lee would go after Quentin Tarantino for making a movie like Django Unchained with such racial animus is disingenuous on its face, especially since Lee himself was considered such a groundbreaking, if not very racially controversial director himself not twenty-five years ago. After all, where else but the silver screen can one go back in time to burn Adolf Hitler in a fire, or whip a slave owner in the manner he beat his own property?

As I wrote in my first piece on this topic, Spike Lee at one point was Hollywood's leading voice of the Black Experience in the 1980s and 1990s with films like Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, School Daze, and Crooklyn. He could rightly be viewed as a pioneer, blazing a pathway of success and possibility for other Black directors, like Training Day's Antoine Fuqua, Law Abiding Citizen's F. Gary Gray, and Precious' Lee Daniels. Instead of making better, higher quality films with wider appeal, Lee could never seem to get past the Angry Black Man of Hollywood image he had created, and his movies are a testament to that fact.

In January, at the Sundance screening of Red Hook Summer, Lee confirmed his image, going into this angry tirade on stage after being asked by Chris Rock what would have been different if a major studio had backed his movie, which according to Entertainment Weekly's Lee Breznican was reported by comingsoon.net's Twiter feed @WeekendWarriorCS as "...one of the worst movies to ever premiere at #sundance":

So this whole thing was planned out. I didn't need a motherfucking studio telling me something about [Brooklyn neighborhood] Red Hook. They know nothing about Black people! NOTHING! And they're gonna give me notes about what a thirteen-year-old Black boy and girl do in Red Hook? Fuck no!! What else can you do? We had to do it ourselves! We shot motherfucking She's Gotta Have It for twelve days back in 1986, and I'm now waiting for Universal to do the sequel to Inside Man, my biggest hit EVER!! I CAN'T WAIT ANYMORE!!

In true everybody-but-me form, Spike Lee refused to see the bigger picture as to why he isn't great anymore: after Inside Man, he's made subpar films; he burns his bridges with studios, directors and actors, with nothing to offer up-and-comers except jealousy and vitriol.

Love him or hate him, Spike Lee's success in Hollywood made even Tyler Perry's success possible. With one of the most unbelievable rags-to-riches stories in America, having lived in a car for a time and abused by multiple family members throughout his life, one would imagine that someone like Perry would be celebrated by Spike Lee, given the recurring theme of Blacks rising above and through adversity in his movies, and has put food on the table of many forgotten Black actors and actresses via his successes. Instead, Lee only hastened his irrelevance by engaging in useless beef with Perry, which he was having none of.

Spike Lee is a clown; a wretched dude lost in the heroin-like fog of bitterness and ego. His desire to hold the monopoly on Black filmmaking success in Hollywood has him looking like a blithering idiot, dismissing anyone more successful than he as someone sent by The Man to piss on his shoes. With Lee's latest assault, this time on Quentin Tarantino, he proves that it is hard to blame The Man if The Man is you.

I plan to go see Django Unchained, and given the reviews (including quite a masterful one by MSNBC's Toure'), it sounds every bit like the winner I think it will be, especially after Lee's antics. Given the subject matter and the story, I don't believe for one second that Spike believes his ancestors would be offended by this movie at all.

If anything, I believe Spike Lee is probably upset that he didn't think of Django first.

Spike Lee Needs to Have A Seat

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 17:12:02 -0500

The illegal drug of choice here for many in the city of Baltimore is heroin; a powerful, dangerous substance that has destroyed many a life here in this town. From the party where an unfortunate soul gets their first blast of the drug, many a soul here has spent an entire lifetime chasing that first deceptively blissful, forever elusive high, often being frozen in time in the era they started using. With prolonged abuse, nothing else matters; achieving that first blast becomes their raison d'etre.

One of the worst traits of humanity, proven true over the course of our history, is that of bitterness. With characteristics like that of heroin, bitterness can be seductive, even invigorating at times, stirring a soul to action against a person, place, thing or idea in response to a perceived slight or personal insult. At the same time, bitterness is corrosive and harmful, sometimes causing irrevocable damage to life, career, and reputation as hatred and jealousy are spewed about with great enjoyment. To one enthralled with bitterness, the consequences don't matter, and everyone must be made to feel how deep their hurt is rooted.

However, far too often those controlled by their bitterness become laughingstocks; pariahs in lands where their names at one time demanded great reverence. Their past glories and successes matter to none anymore; all that remains is the shell, the leftovers of those who let their hurt define their life. Similarly, no-one remembers who the heroin addict may have been before the drugs took hold; they remember the body odor, the track marks, and the nodding out at the bus stop.

Those of us who write about politics can write thousands of words' worth of pieces on figures like Senator John McCain, whose loss to Barack Obama in 2008 was the catalyst for his new reason for living: opposing the President by any means necessary, and on every issue imaginable. Outside of politics, though, one man stands out as another well-known, shining example of bitterness, and can be found at every Knicks home game, clad in orange and blue.

That's right, Spike Lee, I'm looking at you.

You used to be great at one time in your life, and came to define the Black struggle through the turbulent 1980s. As urban areas were decimated by crack, despair, and rising poverty, you gave us films such as School Daze and Do the Right Thing. Your movies were powerful, gritty, and told stories that would otherwise go unheard in that era. At one time, sir, you were the quintessential voice of Blackness, especially after your epic,Malcolm X.

Then other people came to Hollywood, with other perspectives of the Black experience. Other Black directors, such as Tyler Perry, drew your ire back in 2009, becoming enough to where Perry, a monumental success at box offices across the country, told you to go "directly to hell" after you referred to his work as "coonery and buffoonery." After being that powerful voice that many came to respect, in baring your teeth in jealous rage against Perry you came to embody the hater that no-one can stand to be around.

So now that Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino's latest epic that tells the story of an escaped slave who, as Foxx himself said in an interview, is simply "trying to get his girl (Kerry Washington) back", you go right back into jealous, bitter, "what-about-me" mode, this time invoking ancestry?

In a tweet you said, "American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them." Still feeling yourself, you added later in another interview, "All I'm going to say is that it's disrespectful to my ancestors to see that film. That's the only thing I'm gonna say. I can't disrespect my ancestors. I can't do it. Now, that's me. I'm not speaking on behalf of anybody but myself. I can't do it."

Spike, your last relevant movie, if not long, redundant and superfluous, was 2008's Miracle at St. Anna. Since then, your movies and other works have been largely undermined by your jealousy and envy of others, who seem to have just "showed up" to greater box office success and accolades. Maybe if you offered something other than envious, elitist mocking, maybe people would come back to see your films, especially since Tarantino actually played in one of your films, but your history of burning bridges precedes you, doesn't it?

For someone of your filmmaking acumen, you make yourself look small and petty when you do things like this. So please, Spike, do better than this.

Michigan, American Petri Dish

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 14:12:19 -0500

Last April, The Rachel Maddow Show broke the story of Benton Harbor, Michigan, a documenting of events that should have given cause for the highest levels of outrage and motivation throughout the country back then. In the wake of Michigan’s experiment with the dangerous conceptof “emergency managers”—men and women commissioned by the Republican legislature to fully override the locally elected governments of cities and towns threatened with insolvency—Benton Harbor, 93 percent Black, plagued by poverty and home to the appliance manufacturer Whirlpool, would be the first place where this would be witnessed.

Since then, the state of Michigan, the cradle of both American manufacturing and the birthplace of the workers’ union, has been ravaged by the affects of Republican hegemony. At the time of this writing, the state’s legislature has voted 58-51 in favor of stripping out the requirement of employment-conditional union dues, and will send the bill that essentially is the death knell for unions in Michigan to Governor Rick Snyder, introducing the falsely so-called “right-to-work” status to a state that many thought would never happen.

Behold the true face of Republican hegemony, ladies and gentlemen. In brazen, audacious form, the party that has peddled the farce of “small, less intrusive government” has done exactly the opposite; treating the state of Michigan as its personal guinea pig for whatever laws and regulations (or lack of such) will most benefit their well-known, well-moneyed corporate donors that demand a return on their investments. While Republicans may like to play at the idea that “right to work” protects “working families”, nothing could be further from the truth.

According to studies conducted by the Economic Policy Institute last year, wages are much less in RTW states than others:

Wages in right-to-work states are 3.2% lower than those in non-RTW states, after controlling for a full complement of individual demographic and socioeconomic variables as well as state macroeconomic indicators. Using the average wage in non-RTW states as the base ($22.11), the average full-time, full-year worker in an RTW state makes about $1,500 less annually than a similar worker in a non-RTW state.

In another briefing by EPI, the case against Right-to-Work becomes even stronger:

RTW laws have no impact on the performance of state economies. Seven of the 10 highest-unemployment states are states with RTW laws, including Nevada and Florida, which have unemployment rates higher than Michigan’s unemployment rate of 10.5%, and South Carolina, which also has an unemployment rate of 10.5%. Factors other than RTW laws, such as major industries and climate, shape states’ economies.

RTW laws lower wages for union and non-union workers by an average of $1,500 a year and decrease the likelihood employees will get health insurance or pensions through their jobs. By lowering compensation, they have the indirect effect of undermining consumer spending, which threatens economic growth. For every $1 million in wage cuts to workers, $850,000 less is spent in the economy, which translates into a loss of six jobs.

Every lost job in Michigan is another life ruined by poverty and lack of opportunity. Every dollar not earned by a resident of that state goes directly back into the pockets of greedy business owners and corporations obsessed with turning a record profit by any means necessary.

This, then, is the final sum of “trickle-down economics”; the end result of Ronald Reagan’s grand scheme to protect the interests and pocketbooks of the infinitely wealthy. Those “job creators” and captains of industry we lionize on a regular basis as American success stories and glorious examples of the attainability of the elusive “American Dream” have acquired a mitten-shaped safe house in the state of Michigan, at the expense of its natives and residents.

So, Democrats, while we regale ourselves with thoughts of the Second Coming of the Clintons, and revel in 2016 election punditry that is about as vacuous and useless as sports writers calling Super Bowl winners in the second week of preseason, a state that was at one time the shining example of America’s creative greatness is being reduced to a fief; a piece of land that will soon become the birthplace of corporate feudalism here in the United States. Unless a substantive conversation about electing people unafraid of confronting and defeating conservatives in 2014 begins immediately, Michigan will be the least of our problems, especially as Rick Snyder and many other Republicans are up for re-election in 2014.

If we are not vigilant, folks, we could end up like South Korea…