Compassion and its Consequences

I'm struggling with this.

It's been dominating my thoughts since I heard of it, and I can't stop turning it over in my head.

As I said to my friend in the comments to my last post, I think Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill's release on compassionate grounds of the terminally ill Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was a good act. It's a brazen act of compassion, one that demands attention.

And I do think there's a difference between compassion and forgiveness. Al-Megrahi hasn't been forgiven, and he won't be. He was returned home in spite of his crimes, not because the slate had been washed clean.

But in practical terms, does it matter? 270 people are dead because of him. They didn't get mercy. Soon, Al-Megrahi will be dead of cancer. Scotland has given him shown him mercy as to where he dies, but no one can change when.

I distrust the concept of "victim's rights," as it is normally applied. It seems to me, in a just society, that the people directly hurt by a crime are the very last people who should decide the punishment. Justice doesn't bring catharsis like revenge does.

But eight years in prison for 270 deaths? Is that justice? I don't think there's any stretch of the imagination that could say that it is. But I wonder: What if the cancer claimed him two days ago? What if he spent the same amount of time in prison, but died there? It's still eight years, but no one would be saying justice wasn't served.

And I think that's the nut of it. On the one side is the good act of letting a sick man return home to die. On the other side is justice -- the need to mete out a proper punishment for his horrible crime.

I think that's why I can't stop thinking about this. Life's not fair, of course -- it's so true it's a cliche. But usually, when justice fails, it falls victim to selfishness, greed, or even expediency. It's a rare thing, I think, to see goodness and justice at odds... and even rarer to see goodness win out.

So which is better, justice or goodness? Which should we strive for, fairness or mercy? As it stands, I'm no closer to finding an answer to that than when I started this essay. But two days ago, before this bold act, I wasn't truly aware of the question.

Rob

Compassion

This video of Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, explaining his decision to release one of the Lockerbie bombers who is now terminally ill with prostate cancer, is worth watching. And worth remembering.

Rob

Seriously?

Fuck these people. Sick bastards.

Rob

In the City of the Mountain King

I had some time to watch a movie last night, and pulled Fritz Lang's M from the shelf. It's the story of a child-killer in 1930s Germany, starring Peter Lorre in his breakout role. But really, Lorre's character, Hans Beckert, is almost incidental throughout most of the film. He's a man in shadows, or signified only by his own cast shadow and the playful tune he whistles (perhaps nervously, or perhaps in barely contained delight) as he stalks his young victims: "In the Hall of the Mountain King," from Peer Gynt. The real story is going on in the city in the grip of the fear the murders create.

Parents are terrified. Cops are baffled. Criminals are angry; the killings are bringing the cops down harder on every other type of crime as they try to uncover the murderer. People are desperate; eventually the crooks band together to find the murderer themselves, just to get the heat off their other crimes.

At one point, an old man is accosted on the street because he dared to tell a little girl the time when she asked him for it. Everyone is suspect, and a mob can form in an instant.

It's this feeling of fear that permeates the movie. People are scared, and they have to do something, even if there's no sensible basis for their actions.

The Dark Knight has a similar baseline of public dread. Heath Ledger's Joker terrorizes Gotham City with seemingly motiveless crimes of great violence. He pits people against each other, and uses their own better instincts against them. He actively tries to make them complicit in his crimes. At one point, after killing a mob boss, he breaks a pool cue in half. He tells the dead men's bodyguards that he's got room in his organization, but only room for one of them. Then he drops the sharp end of the cue on the ground between them.

It's the Joker's unpredictability that makes him terrifying, and he uses it ruthlessly. And Gotham responds by turning on Batman, demanding he unmask on the chance that the Joker would keep his promise to end things once he did. Or they try to assassinate someone because the Joker brutally makes it doing so seem for the greater good. Cops betray their duty, and their friends. All from fear.

It's important to remember, as the days of heightened terror alerts return like swallows to Capistrano, that we tend not to make the best decisions when we're afraid. President Roosevelt said something to that effect. Do not fear. In the end, when we confront it, the monster that terrified us becomes a weak, craven man pleading for his life.

Do not fear. There is no Mountain King.

Rob

Oh, Dear. Is There an Election Coming Up?

What a surprise: The terror alert goes to "heightened."

I really miss trusting the government, even the little bit that I used to.

Rob

The Drama of Inevitability

I feel surrounded by inevitability, and the weight of history. Or at least, that’s what my entertainment is telling me.

For the past few days, I’ve been watching The Battle of Algiers, a 1966 film by Gillo Pontecorvo (who also directed Burn!) about the Algerian uprising and war that eventually drove the French from the country. It’s shot in black and white, and looks almost like a documentary. The movie is more concerned with the movement of cultures than characters, and what is essentially the birth of terrorism as we know it.

Meanwhile, I’ve been listening to The Archivist’s Story, by Travis Holland, about a disgraced professor in 1939 Russia—a man charged with destroying the unpublished manuscripts of blacklisted and imprisoned writers, who smuggles a short story out of the prison walls.

Both stories have a hopelessness and an inevitability about them—Algiers on a global level, and Archivist on a personal level. The archivist, Pavel, is essentially the lead in a prison drama: Even though he leaves the prison every night, the whole of his country has become a police state, and he can’t even have dinner with a friend without paranoia. Beyond that, his personal life is deteriorating. His wife is dead and her remains are missing in the bureaucracy, his best friend (and father figure) is heading for dire political trouble, and most tragically, his mother is beginning to have blackouts and showing signs of neurological problems. Nothing, it seems, will come to a good end. He has a burgeoning, tentative romance with his building manager, another damaged soul. Maybe, maybe, he’ll be able to draw a little joy from this. But how can he trust anyone in this place? Maybe the only thing he can trust is the words he has risked everything to smuggle out.

In The Battle of Algiers, nothing seems to slow the growing cycle of terrorism and retaliation, sometimes misdirected. French police are shot. An off-duty captain gathers some men and blows up a suspect’s house. The Muslim section of town (called “The Casbah”) is cordoned off. In the most riveting scene of the film, three women have dyed their hair and westernized their outfits, in order to pass the checkpoints more easily. They’re given destinations, and bomb components for their handbags. They meet an explosive expert in a warehouse, who sets up the devices and tells them they have a half hour to set them. And off they go, to a bar, to a teeny-bopper hangout, to an airport.

The woman at the bar is beautiful; a man offers her his chair. She sits, sipping a soda, looking around the bar. There are businessmen there, and couples on dates. A little boy licks an ice cream cone. You can see her realize—or maybe I’m just projecting, but it’s an easy projection to make—that she is moving from revolutionary to murderer. And there’s something heartbreaking about her standing up and leaving, sliding her handbag under the bar with her foot. It’s like history hinged on that moment—that fictional moment, or fictionalized, at least—and since then there have been no choices.

Of course, that’s an illusion. There are always choices to make, and so many of us make the right ones. But when we fall, the earth quakes beneath us.

Rob

Return of the Munchkin

Kevin asked if I ever received any response from my letter to Dunkin' Donuts. I did, almost immediately. Here's the (unsigned) letter they sent, dated June 2.

Thank you for sharing your comments. We always appreciate hearing from our customers. The intent of the online ad featuring Rachael Ray wearing a paisley silk scarf was to promote iced coffee. Given the surprising and truly unfortunate interpretation of this ad from some of our consumers, we decided to pull the ad and replace it with another as it is no longer serving its intended purpose, which was to simply promote our iced coffee---nothing more, nothing less.

At Dunkin' Donuts, we value all of our customers and remain steadfastly committed to making your experiences with us both memorable and pleasant. Thank you, again, for making us aware of your concerns; it is appreciated.

I didn't blog about it before because it gave me some mixed feelings. I felt at the time, and still do, that the proper response to Michele Malkin and her vicious crew is to say, "No. You people are idiots led by bullies, and we're not knuckling under."

At the same time, I understand where they're coming from. Once Malkin & Co. framed the image as Rachel Ray in a kaffeyeh, there was no getting around that that's how that ad would be viewed, both by the idiots who wanted to ban the ad and people like me who wanted to defend the ad. But Dunkin' Donuts doesn't buy ad time to stand up for freedom and diversity; very few companies do. They just want to sell their product.

While I would appreciate a stronger statement from Dunkin' Donuts along the lines of, "What are you, idiots?" I can't entirely fault them for pulling out of the fight altogether. I'm disappointed, but no longer angered. (At them, anyway. Malkin's ignorant fearmongering is a whole 'nother story.)

Except, a little bit with myself. The end of my letter to Dunkin' read:

...at this point, there's no avoiding the controversy. The only question is, which side of it are you on? Do you side with Malkin and her fear-mongering, or are you willing to stand up against the fear and distrust she engenders?

That's a little too much like the Bush "with us or against us" mentality for my tastes. The world isn't binary. We have more choices than that, and I'd do well to remember it. Even when I'm angry enough to give up doughnuts.

Rob

My Letter to Dunkin Donuts

Skippy's right: It's time to fight fire with fire.

Here's what I wrote. I didn't feel the need to summarize the whole brouhaha, and got right to the heart of the matter:

Just a quick note to let you know that I won't be buying any Dunkin Donuts coffee or doughnuts until your company publicly apologizes for knuckling under to ridiculous pressure from Michele Malkin, implying that all Arabs who wear a kaffeyeh (all Arabs, really, is Malkin's point) are terrorists or endorse terrorism. Pulling the Rachel Ray ad due to Malkin's stink was the worst kind of cowardly, and stupid and offensive besides. Malkin exists to drive wedges between people; by playing into her hands, your company has implicitly agreed that Arabs should rightly be suspected of terrorism.

I know in my heart that's not what you meant to do; you simply meant to avoid controversy. But sometimes controversy seeks you out, and a publicity hound like Malkin is always willing to target an innocent company for her own ends. I'm sure you'll get many letters like this one, so at this point, there's no avoiding the controversy. The only question is, which side of it are you on? Do you side with Malkin and her fear-mongering, or are you willing to stand up against the fear and distrust she engenders?

Thanks,

Rob Staeger

P.S. I haven't seen the powdered vanilla creme-filled doughnuts in my local store for a while. Have they been discontinued? If you do apologize for this misstep, could you bring them back?

If you want to write to Dunkin Donuts, here's their contact form.

Rob

Uh-oh.

Benazir Bhutto has been reported killed in a suicide attack in Pakistan this morning (evening there). Considering she represented the main opposition to Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf's leadership, and there'd been a general election scheduled for two weeks from now, things have been completely upended. I'm worried that we're about to see what happens when a country armed with nuclear weapons plunges into chaos.

I don't know what the right moves to make on the foreign policy front are here, but I can only hope President Bush makes them, and manages to ease the tensions there rather than inflaming them. He tends to operate with a sledgehammer. Let's hope this is one of those times when a sledgehammer is the right tool for the job -- or better yet, he looks a little deeper into his toolbox and finds just the right gauge wrench.

Rob

Axis of EVOO?

Do people who buy extra virgin olive oil get put on the terrorist watch list?

No extra virgins for me, thanks. I'm happy with my share.

Rob

Mooninite Invasion

Rob

Batman, Guantanamo, and Me

Strange thing, I’m discovering. I’m 35, and comics suddenly are meaning more to me than they have since I was in high school.

In order for you to understand, I’m going to have to give you some background. On some comic book plots. If you’re normally not into the comic-booky goodness on this site, bear with me. I have a larger point than how cool Bloodhound is. (Still cool, by the way. Cancelled, but cool.)

In case you are planning to pick some of these books up, I’ll be discussing plot points from Identity Crisis, The Omac Project, and the “Sacrifice” crossover that ran through last month’s Superman and Wonder Woman titles.

The main one is Identity Crisis. Quick rundown: Sue Dibney, wife of the Elongated Man, was murdered. One of the chief suspects is Dr. Light, a villain long considered a buffoon. During the course of the investigation, the reader discovers a secret kept by a handful of Justice Leaguers – that years ago, Sue had been raped by a much more dangerous Dr. Light. The League apprehended him moments later, but even caught, he claimed he would do it again. And these members took a vote, and decided to alter his personality magically so that he couldn’t. (They had previously erased their secret identities from other villains' minds; this was a bigger deal.)

As this was being done, things got complicated. Batman arrived on the scene, and saw what the League was doing. He objected, and the members opted to use the magic on him, as well – stripping away those ten minutes of memory.

So Light becomes a joke, and Batman is missing ten minutes of time. It might not bother anyone else, but they’re not Batman. They say it’s often not the crime that gets you in trouble, but the cover-up, and that’s the case here. In The Omac Project, we learn that Batman eventually pulled his memory back together and realized he can’t trust even the Justice League. He sets up spy satellites to monitor superhuman activity.

These have secretly been taken over in a comic-book/SF way, by a guy named Max Lord. Lord has limited mind control power, but he’s spent years working on a way to control Superman. He sets him off, having Superman beat Batman into intensive care. Wonder Woman tries to stop him, and she and Superman get into a knock-down, drag-out. Eventually she gets her Lasso of truth around Lord, and she asks him: What do I have to do to eliminate your hold on Superman. Unable to lie, he says “Kill me.”

She does.

So this is pretty much where things stand. Batman has spied on his fellow heroes. Wonder Woman has killed a man. Superman, while he didn’t participate, actually knew about the memory wipes of supervillains and didn’t say anything; they helped keep Lois safe, after all. Now some supervillains have regained their memory and have attacked the Justice League’s loved ones. And the time has come to vote again as to what to do.

This stuff has been knocking me out. It’s not all hero vs. villain stuff, or at least not all black and white. It raises all sorts of questions: Is safety worth constant surveillance? How far should a hero go to protect others? What happens when you cross a moral or ethical line in order to protect someone? Will you cross it again? Is the line permanently redrawn? And if we draw that line too timidly, and fail to act with enough force, are we culpable for any deaths that stronger action could have presented? Can we trust the people who protect us? Should we?

These questions lead to questions about superhero tropes in general. What right, for instance, does Superman have to send someone to the Phantom Zone? Why does Batman get to break and enter to find evidence of a crime, or beat up thugs for information. Why is it okay for Green Lantern to put a supervillain out of harm’s way in a green cage on the moon, but if I lock up someone in my basement I’m a dangerous sicko?

It makes me think of the internment camps at Guantanamo Bay, and the prisons in Abu Ghraib. Locking up people without due process is wrong – but is it keeping us safer? Some people think so. Torture is wrong, but some people think it’s effective, despite the evidence that the information it yields is unreliable.

What the comics let me – and people all over comic book message boards -- do is this: They let us discuss these issues of ethics, morality, power and security while keeping our preexisting political viewpoints out of it. The ideas we’re talking about are relevant to the times we live in, yet aren’t charged with the rhetoric that inflames most political discussion (including my own, certainly).

Also, it lets me look obliquely at these issues without reducing me to a quivering lump of despair and fear. Terrorists will try to attack us on our home soil again, just as Dr. Light promised to find Sue once he escaped.

This is not a new idea, I realize. Science fiction and fantasy have always addressed contemporary issues, and comics are no different. But it’s taken me a while to articulate it, since it’s more a metaphor of tone than an analogy with direct correlations in the plot.

And I have to say that I’m hooked. What I’m getting lately are adventure stories that have relevance to my own life. But instead of trying to deal with reality in the plot, their hook is in the theme: What moral compromises are we willing to make to keep our loved ones safe? It’s a fascinating struggle, and one I don’t think any hero can truly win.

Rob

Fatalism? Or Fatal Realism?

Rob's post brought this to my attention, but I wanted to put what he said another way:

This president is going to get me killed. (This may be your last chance to buy me Christmas presents, so make 'em count.)

(And thanks so much for making Bernie "cut-and-run" Kerik the new Homeland Security secretary. That should last until we go to code orange again...)

Rob