VS.
“But it is one matter to suffer violence and quite another to use that fact to ground a framework in which one’s injury authorizes limitless aggression against targets that may or may not be related to the source of one’s own suffering” (4).
This week’s reading brought up the concept of Us vs. Them, and how it has become a prevalent concept in the American conscious when it comes to everything from politics to pop culture. While the reading takes the perspective specifically of wars that America wages and how they are discussed at home, this mode of thinking is not limited specifically to foreign affairs.
As Butler frames it, “Intellectual positions that are considered ‘relativistic’ or ‘post-’ of any kind are considered either complicitous with terrorism or as constitution a ‘weak link’ in the fight against it” (2). In this manner, the current mode of thinking in America when it comes to politics is either in favor or against the choices being made, with no grey area for discussion and compromise.
This is a trend that started in the Bush administration that has continued into the Obama administration without intent; it was adopted by the masses as a form of self defense from what seemed to be an ominous threat. Either a citizen was a “patriot”, in support of the war and what the Bush administration was doing to cope with the losses from 9/11, or they were terrorists against the government. In order to be this patriot, one did not need to believe fully in every decision made; they only needed to be sympathetic: “[…] as if the sympathy with the one translates in a single symbolic stroke, into support for the [cause]” (3). Voices that tried to reason in the middle, against war but not inherently on the side of terrorism, would be dismissed with accusations of not being a “true American”, “ […] and that frame works both to preclude certain kinds of questions, certain kinds of historical inquiries, and as to function as a moral justification for retaliation” (4).
“In order to condemn these acts as inexcusable, absolutely wrong, in order to sustain the effective structure in which we are, on the other hand, victimized and, on the other, engaged in a righteous cause of rooting out terror, we have to begin the story with the experience of violence we suffer” (5).
The only way this dynamic is created is through the story of the victim. Someone has to get attacked. This way, retaliation can begin without fear that others will see the wrong for our actions, and instead simply see it as “settling a score”. As long as the narrative centers on “I”, and what has happened to the people in the setting of the story, the actions taken can be justified. “Isolating the individuals involved absolves us of the necessity of coming up with a broader explanation for events” (5).
This rhetoric involved with how we think has begun to expand beyond foreign affairs. It has seeped into culture, sabotaging how a generation thinks. On different areas of the internet, people ask why people play the victim so often, why they make stories not necessarily about them suddenly centered around them and then insert themselves into the discord, and why there is a very black — and — white mentality when it comes to issues. One person developed a theory: “Well, how old were you on 9/11?” Those old enough to remember politics and how they played out before 9/11 found it startling and unsettling to see people as dogmatic and argumentative as they were; to the younger generation, it seemed normal. It was the rhetoric we had grown up in. To us, a black — and — white division seemed normal and not something unusual. To others, it was startling: people from younger generations were not willing to discuss perspectives at all, and instead wanted to know who was on their side or not.
“And subsequently we ask, Who is with us? Who is against us?” (7).
As someone who spends lots of time surfing the web, I often find myself in the middle of this kind of turmoil. It makes it difficult to hold discussions when people have not unlearned this problematic rhetoric; I even find it seeping into my everyday life. While this does not relate back specifically to my community partner, it is an interesting trend I have noticed over the past year as it has come to surface on various internet sites. It is a powerful analysis on what makes people tick, and moreover, how new generations are already having issues communicating with the older ones.
In order to build a functioning society, we need to be able to have some level of discourse. A strict system of bipartisan choices will lead to results such as the pictures above; when that happens, no one wins. None of this is a fight between two ultimate powers of Good and Evil. It is instead a discussion of different perspectives and points of views on issues that should be conversed.
