One by One, Change will Come

Up until recently, the State of Maine had one remaining high school with an American Indian mascot. Skohegan is the county seat of Somerset County, the Skowhegan Regional school district services 5 other neighboring communities. The Press Herald published the following story earlier this week about a press release from Maine's Department of Education. The link is below.

The history of Maine and tribal relations revolves around a series of wars with the Wabanaki Confederacy. By 1725, the 4th Anglo-Abenaki War ended with the native population of the Somerset area either pushed out or massacred. This history, like most American relationships with local tribes, makes using the mascot far more uncomfortable.

Later in the week, Skowhegan held a meeting to discuss the mascot. Apparently, the meeting concluded with a resolution to discontinue the name. The story is below, reported by the local ABC affiliate. The State of Maine no longer has American Indian mascots in their schools.

Utilitarianism: A Primer

Sometimes I am accused of being, or lumped into a box called The Left. While it may be true that I am Left leaning on the political spectrum, I think it is important to distinguish how, like the Right, there are many different philosophical groups within the Left.

I like to think of myself as a Utilitarian mostly because A: for it's flaws, it mostly makes sense to me as a broad plan to make decisions B: the over arching theme spells a death for individual exceptionalism. No one is special. C: It's basics are echoed by many other Leftist philosophies. So what is it exactly?

Utilitarianism: 

A branch of Consequential Philosophy declaring that consequences of utility should be the basis for decision making. Basically, actions should produce the most utility for the largest group of people. Utility in this case means "good". Also, to clarify, the philosophy as a whole considers all human beings to be people and to be equal. There is no special determinations made for wealth, gender, or age. As Utilitarianism has evolved, it has merged with deontological ethics, bridging the two philosophies.

In 1780, Jeremy Bentham published the first ideas of utility as a basis for morality. As a consequentialist philosophy, Bentham argued that "the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people" is the measurement for morality, right and wrong. Instead of rules and laws laid down ahead of time that can be very black and white, consequentialism views the outcome as the indicator of morality, not the actions that lead to the outcome. In Utilitarianism, if the outcome benefits more people, than the actions are justified.

Bentham

Bentham was more interested in earlier Hedonism, popularized by Aristipuss and Epicuris, but Utilitarianism evolved under John Stuart Mill, who moved the definition of utility from "utility=pleasure" to "utility=well-being". Mill was pretty clear to separate Utilitarianism from Hedonism. Hastings Rashdall and G.E. Moore continued to separate the two ideas at the turn of the 20th century. Ideal Utilitarianism is a rejection of Bentham and focuses on promoting beneficial experiences, and relationships, and limiting pain, hatred and contempt.

One of the biggest challenges to early Utilitarianism was the rejection of rule/law. Mill wrestled with this, as did Richard Brandt and Brad Hooker. Act and Rule Utilitarianism attempts to mitigate the problems that arise from attempting to weigh consequences for each and every decision. The probability of choosing less than the best utility are high. So... Act Theory states that an act is right if it maximizes utility. Rule Theory maintains that an act is right if it adheres to a rule/law meant to maximize utility.

John Stuart Mill

Robert Merrihew Adams then took Act/Rule theory in 1976 and rolled it all into Motive Theory, which posits that Utilitarianism should be used to create motive and disposition which would then dictate choice of action and applied rules/laws. This allowed Utilitarianism to shed its Consequential Hedonist past and merge with Kantian ethics.

The biggest issue with Utilitarianism is the definition of utility. How do we quantify it? If we use the earliest, most vague notion of utility as happiness/pleasure, than this criticism has weight. Hedonistic happiness seems to be short term, individualist, and subjective. But, when the idea of utility changes to well-being, the ability to measure that on a grand scale becomes easier, and it evolves from a short-term consequence, into a longterm, more objective, more group-based happiness.

There are definitely parallels to Socialism here. Many Socialist ideals hinge on the greater good for the most number of people (the working class population far exceeds management/shareholders). However, Utilitarianism is not without casualties. The ideal is the "Greatest Good for Greatest Number" after all, not "Greatest good for Everyone". Realistically there will be losers, the plan is to minimize the losers, but still acknowledge that reducing that number to zero is not always possible.

There are plenty of ethical scenarios that play with this idea. Grim scenarios abound, like, "If you have to sacrifice one child to save the lives of millions, do you do it"? Utilitarianism would say yes, by the way, if that is the only, best option. This makes Utilitarianism out to look unfeeling, robotic in the way it weighs consequence, turning people/populations into equations rather than appealing to lives as more significant. I don't believe it does this at all. I think the fact that the end goal is to lift up majorities is enough to prove Utilitarianism does in fact value human life as significant, far more significant than any one single individual.

It seems to me that Democratic Socialism, or as they used to say, Democracy, as a form of government would be the best way to govern through Utilitarianism. If everyone has a voice and vote, it is an easy way to calculate what most of the society wants. At this point, it is pretty easy to study society and figure out best practices to be used to best defend our welfare, maximize social capital, and promote healthy lifestyles on a grande scale, without limiting liberty.

Utilitarianism does not place anyone's own personal ambitions above others, which is why it isn't really a Capitalist philosophy. If the consequence of the actions leaves one person rich, and many others scrambling to survive, that isn't maximizing group utility. If laws protect and serve only one groups' utility and undermine the utility of minority groups, than that doesn't fit into this philosophy.

By framing my thinking this way, like Adams said, I have changed my motivations, which has led to changing my opinions about many political issues. Utilitarianism, at its core, ignores systemic groupings like race, culture, religion, and class. It ignores the ambitions, and desires of the individual for the betterment of the welfare of the group. This appeals to me.

Can a DC Movie Universe be Successful?

Obviously from prior posts I'm a bit of a comics nerd. I adore storytelling, and the medium of comics lends to storytelling very well. They are the new pulp fiction, the new serial, the new short story; published monthly, and later collected and published in larger volumes. Lately, comics have become fodder for other mediums. We get to watch comics unfold on both the big and small screens, live action and animated. It's awesome.

Of the top 5 comics publishing companies, Marvel and DC have the biggest stakes in licensing material for non-print media, and Marvel has been crushing it with their massively popular shared movie/television universe. I've seen everything they've produced (except Agents of Shield and the Inhumans because I watch good television) and they're stuff is fantastic.

However, I am, and have always been a DC guy. 

Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and a plethora of larger than life heroes, several decades older, at times darker and more philosophical than Marvel. They always seemed to me, since I started reading comics, to be more grown up. There are clear analogies to Neitzsche, and Machiavelli in the three major characters. I agree with Laurence Maslon and Dr. Kate Roddy when they claim superheroes are our new mythologies. DC characters specifically fit into the classic myth versions of heroes. They are kings, and princesses, and aristocrats, rich one-percenters with money, and education, and privilege who go through journeys and defeat monsters in order to save the general public. It is a shame Warner Brothers, the DC parent company, is so bad at storytelling.

pulp fiction mythologies

This seems to be the real success with Marvel's shared universe. They write good stories first, and then tie them together. They took their time with the project, a whole decade to make films, and thread commonalities between them. They made good casting decisions, allowed writers and creators to create good plots and interactions for the characters, and never appeared to try to do too much in any one film (except maybe Civil War and Infinity War).

living large

The Cosmonaut Variety Hour put it this way: while Warner Brothers and DC were busy trying to make movies based on a few already existing plots from the comics, Marvel allowed writers with a knowledge of the entire canon to create new stories and plots based on story and character elements. Most of the time the Marvel movie writers get it right, like in Iron Man, and the Avengers, but sometimes we got Iron Man 3. Meanwhile, DC is the complete opposite, creating movies like Justice League, Suicide Squad and Batman vs Superman which were colossal messes, but sometimes they make Wonder Woman just to give us fans a little hope. 

The problem seems to be Warner Brothers' decision to do what Marvel did, build a shared cinematic universe. Instead of doing it in the logical way of gradually introducing heroes in their own stand alone films and then connecting them all for a blockbuster crossover event, they decided to do it backwards and introduce all their characters in one blockbuster movie and then break off into solo films. Why would you decide to do that? The only reason I can think of is just to be different, I guess. Overloading one movie with so many major characters makes for a bad movie, and the reason we never had an Avengers or Justice League movie decades ago. Marvel's plan was a huge gamble based on contemporary movie making thinking.

The good news is DC did manage to build a pretty decent television universe on the CW network. The only thing seeming to hold it back from being Marvel-sized is the inability to use Batman, Superman or Wonder Woman on the live-action small screen. I have no idea what the rationale for this decision/rule but everyone would love to see an Arrowverse Batman.

My solution for DC/Warner Brothers... Continue your movie franchise, as it does make money, but put all your effort into television. Comics and television are a natural fit. Comics are serialized issue by issue with large story arcs playing out over several issues. Television is serialized episode by episode, with large story arcs playing out over a season. Bring in Batman and Superman, and Wonder Woman! Give people what they want, not a show like Gotham which is Batman without Batman, or Smallville which is Clark Kent before he becomes Superman, but not really, or whatever Lois and Clark was (literally no one asked for these shows, stop trying to be clever and just do the show we want). Also, Wonder Woman? Can we get a follow up to the 1970s show, please?

Just give them what they want!

DC is actually really good at their animated television shows, it cant be that difficult to do live action. In fact, Marvel has already proved quality television can be done in short miniseries with the Defenders franchise of shows. 

Parodies Piss Off Racists

The other day Frederick Joseph, a Manhattan area activist, went out wearing a Washington football team parody t-shirt. Instead of the Indian head mascot, the logo featured the bust of a white dude with the term "caucasians" underneath instead of the actual team name. He documented it on instagram and twitter.

Joseph's interactions with the public were actually not that surprising. He said himself, the reactions were disappointing, but not unexpected. Sports fandom can be pretty rabid and nonsensical to start with, but the backlash to Colin Kaepernick and the whole national anthem craziness doesn't make rude, obnoxious and ignorant responses to such a subtle parody shocking. You can read all about this public opinion experiment on several news outlets, including The Washington Post, USA Today, Yahoo Sports, YouTube and many others.

Predictably, Washington fans lept to defend themselves. Joseph pointed out a particular poll was cited as evidence that 9 out of 10 American Indians polled think the current mascot name is okay. I posted about this poll before. Joseph points out the poll was debunked by The Nation, and Joe Rosenstein wrote about the dubious poll for the Huffington Post as well. It took me a while to track down these articles, after searching for terms such as "Redskins Poll Debunked", or "false Redskins poll" or other similar phrases. The results were dominated by the original press releases by the Post and CBS, and even ESPN celebrating the original Washington Post poll.

These articles confirmed my earlier suspicions of foul play. It is a bit of a coincidence that the Washington Post, which covers Washington football, conducted and published the poll. But also, the poll, done by telephone, only polled 504 people claiming to be Native, without any sort of background check, or confirmation of actual Indian status. This highly publicized poll attempts to counter similar polls and studies done across the country by various other civil rights groups, and universities.

Once again, it seems that a false or misleading narrative has garnered the loudest, most easily found voice on this subject. The good news is change will come. The right people, in the right places are agreeing with these sentiments. California banned Indian mascots from all high school athletic departments. Lord Jeff is no longer the unofficial mascot at Amherst College. The Laughing Brave and Chief Wahoo are no longer part of the Braves or Indians marketing. These are big strides, and the end game will be a Washington football namechange. It's coming, patience. 

That's What the Papers Say

US Bombs

the World

1999, Hellcat

Duane Peters - vocals

Kerry Martinez - guitars

Johny Two Bags Wickersham - guitars

Wade Walston - bass

Chip Hanna - drums

I always thought this album title was clever. 

The band is US Bombs, a street punk band from the Clash/Buzzcocks school. Punk always championed the independent, band owned record label, ever since Black Flag put together their own SST label in 1978. Hellcat Records was Rancid's label, imprint of Epitaph (Bad Religion's label). The World is the 2nd record the US Bombs released on Hellcat. This record has classic street punk themes coupled with political anti-war themes.

My friend, in high school, got his hands on a US Bombs t-shirt. It was simple, with just the band's wordmark across the chest. I didn't know it was a band, and thought it was a boobs joke. My friend was a guy.

At the time, I was thrilled to add this to my music library. And now, I feel the same.