Covered up and overlooked
“To say that the Declaration of Independence even by its own language was limited to life, liberty, and happiness for white males is not to denounce the makers and signers of the declaration for holding the ideas expected of privileged males of the eighteenth century. Reformers and radicals looking discontentedly at history are often accused of expecting too much from a past political epoch, and sometimes they do. But the point of noting those outside the arc of human rights in the declaration is not centuries late and pointlessly to lay impossible moral burdens on that time. It is to try to understand the way in which the declaration functioned to mobilize certain groups of Americans, ignoring others. Surely inspirational language to create a secure consensus is still used in our time to cover up serious conflicts of interest in the consensus and to cover up also the omission of large parts of the human race.”
These are Howard Zinn’s words from his chapter on the American Revolution entitled “Tyranny is Tyranny” in A People’s History of the United States. I remember learning in my LSAT class prep that it’s a logical fallacy to attack an argument on the grounds that the person putting forth the argument has a vested interest in their conclusion and that therefore their argument is invalid. The argument for life, liberty, and happiness is not necessarily invalid because the authors of that document had an interest in the declaration’s ratification. But that fallacy does not preclude interrogation of what the person means exactly whilst making their argument in consideration of their vested interests. I remember my dad telling me to always look at who was funding a proposition to evaluate whether you should vote for it or not. If a proposition was using language like this proposition will increase medication prices for veterans but was also funded by pharmaceutical companies and their associated organizations, suspicion is warranted.
One of the more important points I’m getting from Howard Zinn’s book is how magical language is. Yesterday, I saw Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky, a beautiful movie about weapons of mass destruction, industrialization and natural resource extraction, the inherent sanctity of the earth and the environment, and love. Sheeta, the movie’s heroine, invokes spells while in distress to save herself and to ultimately save the earth; these are performative utterances in that her words alter her world. I am very interested in performative utterances in the context of the body politic and policy. What gives language power? Is it limited to the power of the person who utters said language? I think usually this is how it works, but I am particularly interested in when that language is interpreted by those for whom that language was not intended to benefit, the unintended audience so to speak. When “all men are created equal” gets interpreted literally, and people organize around that interpretation. This is essentially the struggle to abolish slavery and for civil rights throughout American history. The magic seems to alter its usual course, the causal relationship from author to audience and by extension the world, to one in which the audience through contact with the language alters their social reality. And the effect may be one that conflicts with authorial intent. However, I would argue that it is not necessarily the language itself that takes a life of its own. People give it life, and while I am interested in how language is used for the purpose of subjugation, I am more interested in when that subjugation is subverted for the purpose of justice and, by extension, love. Is it memory? The memory of our humanity? But memory implies that there is a precedent, and what if you were never taught what is meant by this kind of love? The people in this country who harbor feelings of supremacy, and I say supremacy instead of hate since supremacy is the true source of hate, need to do the work of learning how to love. Loving can be difficult because it requires vulnerability, humility, and opening your heart, instead of contracting around the delusion of victimization that your suffering is somehow due to the struggle of people of color and the lgbtq community to have human rights and level the playing field. I do not wish to say love conquers all though. Love is not about conquest or competition. It is a different kind of magic that when coupled with language can be very potent. Intention of love can be discerned, more often it is done outside of language, it is feeling. It’s the feeling that something is off when white supremacists who call themselves the alt-right invoke their right to free speech when they attack the historically oppressed and disenfranchised with their words. This feeling that something is not right is our capacity for love being activated. There is no supremacy in love. There is no hierarchy in love. Love is inclusive, allowing for differences. And I believe it is this radical love that has mobilized the audience for whom the Declaration of Independence was not meant to mobilize: immigrants of color, black people, indigenous people, lgbtq folks. This is my intent: to always use language that practices and cultivates love. If that sounds corny, it’s because it is. Nevertheless, I can think of no other purpose for language.
