Dangerous Ease of Claiming Class-Consciousness

To "possess" class consciousness means that individuals must understand certain group characteristics.  At the same time, having class consciousness means an individual can be aware of a group's collective feelings.  So, either a person is "class conscious" or they are not.  If they're judged unconscious by someone who claims to know the difference, then they're immoral beings.  Who'd wanna be class unconscious?  Please don't let it be me, moral deciders!

This topic reeks of context.  This is group determination of “truth” about individuals.  So, economic data along the lines of income, a number, or a person’s  plight as they sort through garbage for food are experiences that are part of reality, not descriptive pieces that depict the whole that one can absorb without experiencing.   

While facts about a person may cause humans to empathize and assist each other, it is impossible to “think” like a class.  I base this declaration on two assumptions and they might be a tad philosophical.  First, as far as I know I’m the only person inhabiting this body and thus, I’m the only person who can have imperfect knowledge of my mind (me), my experience, and thus my reality as I move through time.  “I know me best," which is a modified version of the Cartesian idea of “I think therefore I am.”  Second, I can’t mindtravel, which means  I can’t enter your brain and comprehend how you view life or even this note.  You could type your response, but I might misinterpret it or you could alter or even deceive others about what I’m trying to argue.

So, it stands to reason that if two person-interaction is flawed, because two imperfect, self-validated individuals can't understand each other "perfectly," then assumptions based on testimonials or data also do not present a “truth” free of doubt of individual reality.  Likewise, the amount of doubt increases as the number of persons involved increases, say to the size of an economic class.  

Even less so, trying to think “socially” does not mean a solution presented for the purposes of altering everyone else’s reality is the right decision.  There is no way to verify social consciousness the way you can validate your sole presence in your mind or your individual ignorance of another being controlling it.  Did God use me as his instrument to write this?  Are martians controlling me?  I can live my life believing so, thus believing in my lack of control, but unless proof appears that I'm NOT it in here, I can only validate "me" as making the decisions.  Nor does declaring that you must act "socially conscious to help the poor" suggest that a problem of whatever scope or complexity has been accurately diagnosed and the remedy valid.

So the question remains:  what's the value of economic data classed by certain criteria?

Under traditional Marxist theory, communists assume they possess the ability of working class consciousness and with that ideological foresight, they are instructed to seize the "means of production" as a "moral imperative (mission)" and then assume a dictatorship of the workers.  Aside from the flawed assumptions on the communist’s part, which subsumes worker differences for “collective truth,” scarce resources etc., the prescriptions to further “class consciousness” are even more horrifying.  So, Stalin’s programs to bring about socialism by fostering it at home in Russia led to purges.  Those millions of lives and families destroyed were bad influences, cancers to be eliminated because they did not fit his conception of class consciousness.  Connecting people by an abstraction led to violence for those that didn’t fit the ideal.

Now, I’m not writing that being aware of poverty is a bad thing or that purges must result.  Rather, I’m arguing that the debate over what to do about the problem of “poverty” should be approached as a rational weighing of different complex solutions.  A debate within the confines of our imperfect “law and order society” should prevent easy abstractions like class consciousness from directing people, based on their subjective view of what the objective should be.   Advocating for solutions because they believe they know what “it’s like to be poor” and therefore their program must be best is not good enough for me. 

The difficulty is that humans need to reduce complex problems to abstractions like class consciousness, because as proponents argue, it helps you to “understand the difficulties they are going through.”  Instead, the concerned public should ask the abstracters who claim social awareness how they know what they claim to know.  A healthy dose of skepticism is important.  I am under no illusions that abstracters will always choose “rational” arguments to defend their viewpoints, because why argue with someone who doesn’t believe in what you believe to be the truth?  

It's easier to call them an idiot or if you're a hardline North Korean Stalinist, label them immoral and shoot them. I am also not confident that by arguing with people who believe that they follow the ideal to its perfect form, they will ever feel obligated to present evidence to support their viewpoint.  It’s just that when challenging an imperfect system with at best a bright idealism or at worst a harmful, ephemeral feelings, humans need to be extremely critical about the prescriptions so that life isn't remade into a bloody gulag from humanity's past. 

The Complexities of Race in Schuette v. BAMN

 Let me break down the main ideas of both the majority and the dissenters so as to avoid any misconstruction of my analysis or to allow any hyperbolic oversimplification of what I have to say.

 Main arguments:

• Whether voters can EVER remove racial preference policies in the university admissions process.
• Whether that reversal can EVER be a valid political process OR whether de facto segregation is present whenever a reversal occurs because it burdens the minorities who were disadvantaged at the time of the original admission policy's creation.
• Whether NOT using a racial factor in an admissions policy places a special burden on certain races.
• Whether it is possible to change an admission process through democratic means.
• Whether or not Supreme Courts "are fooled" when political processes are altered that disfavor minorities as found verbatim in Sotomayor's dissent (2). 

Recently, the Supreme Court decided an important case about the issue of admissions policies based on race.  Schuette v. BAMN concerns the legality of using race factors in admissions.  Specifically, the Michigan voters approved a law removing race as a consideration for admission to undergraduate colleges.  Lower courts reversed this law as violating the political process doctrine.  This process is used to determine if changing a law can lead to negative impacts on certain groups of people.  Because the law's reversal would take away race as a factor, the Sixth Circuit reasoned that this would put an undue burden on racial minorities whose access to university admissions would be affected.  The Supreme Court struck the law down as unconstitutional.

However, they narrowly reversed the lower court's decision and stated that there was no reason to overturn the democratic decision of voters because there was no instance of blatant segregation to favor one group over another.  Basically, the majority's view is that they are unable to force a population to include race as a factor and the democratic process is not itself automatically suspect when it addresses racial issues if no instance of a violation of equal protection occurs.  If voters can NEVER decide issues related to race, because they can never reverse a race-based policy and only courts can, then the value of "democracy" in America is diminished.

  Democracy and Race

People exercise democratic principles and may bypass public officials.  In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor believes that people have many opportunities to express themselves politically, but if they oppose a policy of ending racial preference, they can never have that viewpoint become ensconced in law by popular vote.  She believes that violates the "political process doctrine," which by extension from her opinion forever keeps racial preferences.  

However, the main issue resolved by the majority is that the Michigan law does not inflict injury on those previously preferred (4).  The key question goes back to Hunter v. Erickson, Mayor of Akron, et al. in 1969.  Courts must use a different approach when looking at political decisions that are nonneatural or having a racial element.  The question is whether the Michigan law is nonneutral.  I believe that no racial preferences is neutral and that secondary effects of that change do not constitute segregation or legal racism.

As precedent, Hunter barely applies to the Schuette case.   Sotomayor places too much emphasis on this precedent.  In Hunter, the City Council of Akron passed laws to desegregate housing.  They were elected officials who passed through the political process and were seeking relief for minorities adversely affected by discrimination (Kennedy 7).   However, voters passed an amendment to overturn the ordinance that would desegregate, which then altered the process so that similar laws could not be passed again.  This manipulation of the process had discriminatory intent and was declared unconstitutional because it changed politics.  

The Hunter case overturned the voters opinion NOT because voters could never change the law in racial matters, but because the supporters of the amendment had created a law with the specific intent of targeting minorities.  Elected officials had acknowledged the unfair and discriminatory practices of landlords and acted.  By overturning that action to perpetuate inequality, the amendment was unconstitutional because it violated equal protection.   Another way of summarizing it is that removing the authority to address a racial problem has practical effects.  That may lead to a special burden on a minority group, which means the public can't take away the authority to address a racial problem from existing decisions.  It also means that advocates must seek relief for a denied service.  The most abstract implication is that demonstrated injury as a result of a change policy because of state encouragement or participation means that a racial problem could be made worse (Kennedy 7).

Seattle School District

Another key precedent to this case was Washington v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 458 U. S. 457. 
Then, it was decided that one level of government cannot take away authority from another part of government to resist desegregation IF the desegregation policy is still deemed necessary to achieve equal justice and integration (4).  The NAACP sued a school board in Seattle, Washington.  Seattle responded with the court-mandated "Seattle Plan," which used busing and mandatory reassignments to reduce racial imbalance (Kennedy, 9).  A state initiative seeking to overturn the Seattle Plan was determined to be unconstitutional.  Busing students to achieve racial balance was a valid remedy (Ken 10.).  Passing a law to overturn a legitimate remedy is unconstitutional.  Therefore, even a democratic initiative can be unconstitutional if it violates a court specified remedy.

As a precedent, Seattle seems to favor Sotomayor's line of reasoning as a democratic initiative was struck down because of the burden it placed on minorities that had successfully sought relief.  However, Sotomayor misreads Seattle as much as she accuses the majority of doing the same.  Unlike Seattle and in Shuette, remedial action in college admissions policies required "a showing of de jure segregation," meaning specific actions that Sotomayor calls  "invidious" and a "reallocation of power whose practical effect was condemned in Hunter" (Sotomayor 14).  

Kennedy rejects this broad reading of Seattle because there is no principled limit, no principle requirement for the court to determine the interests served by political policies of  a specific racial group according to Seattle (Kennedy 11).  Using the broad interpretation would allow "the creation of incentives for those who support or oppose certain policies to cast the debate in terms of racial advantage or disadvantage.  He believes this furthers "racial antagonisms and conflict (Ibid).  Seattle could be used expansively to gain benefit or even that certain interest groups could demand an equal protection ruling where decisions could be kept from voter review or participation simply of the possibility that a decision could be made on race" (Kennedy 13).  In the end, Kennedy decides that voters must be given the power to determine IF race-based preferences will be adopted and the court may "not dis-empowers the voters from choosing which path to follow" (Ibid).  Maybe they will vote for race-based preferences.  But, the court can't overturn that unless a violation exists.  

Kennedy also strikes at Sotomayor's assertion that the voter's decision should be overturned.  He states that Hunter and Seattle are not valid precedents, therefore rejecting Sotomayor's claim that the majority violates stare decisis (Kennedy 10).  He rejects the precedent that in this case the government can be instructed not to follow a course that defines racial categories and then one that grants special consideration to some races and not others (Kennedy 18).  Voters thought such a categorization and preference system was unwise. 

 

The Hunter-Seattle cases "direct courts to determine whether the challenged act "places effective decisionmaking authority over the racial issue at a different level of government"" (5).  Kennedy also exposes a contradiction in how courts have made decisions because states get almost limitless sovereignty as to how their states are structured.  Individuals still have the ability to participate in meaningful political processes regardless of race.  In fact, Kennedy argues that this idea doesn't even apply because voters were given the ability to decide and opponents of the law had the ability to engage in meaningful political engagement to stop it.  The Court can't invalidate 15 years of state public debate on this issue, nor can they pick and choose which policy interests are at stake with regard to the constitutionality of laws forbidding racial preference (Kenn. 15).  They failed, and it is against precedent to take away a mandate just because that outcome was not what the opponents wanted.  Therefore, Seattle and Hunter do not apply (6).  According to Kennedy, no precedent exists that limits racially disproportionate impacts (5).

This opinion is contrary to Sotomayor's characterization of the majority opinion that there was a transfer of discrimination across populations simply because a majority of the population changed its mind.  If that range has a racial component, then the court must scrutinize that decision.  The question remains if any state can address a racial problem by creating laws to remedy discrimination and create a law that helps one race.  If the state is given the power to remedy a situation, can the state EVER reverse its view of the state of race amongst the people it represents? 

To contradict Sotomayor, Kennedy wrote that those changes involved moving the ability to make a decision around the levels of government so that a racial preference could be established (for whites, against minorities).  In Schuette, unelected officials used race in admissions as one factor.  The Michigan law reversed the ability of these officials to use race.  The electorate is not too sensitive to handle the debate of complex issues like racial preference in the admissions process (Kennedy 16).  Furthermore, he argues that you can't simply take an issue out of the hands of voters just because you don't trust their result.  That, he argues, goes against the country's democratic principles. 

"Race-Neutral Laws"

Race-neutral laws CAN be created in states if they do not actively create discriminatory practices.  Kennedy wrote that one BROAD interpretation of equal-protection, like that found in Justice Sotoymayor's dissent, is unhelpful and can actually lead to more racial problems.  Some laws can have language that appears neutral, but when put into action, it can have adverse racial effects.  He and past courts categorically rejected that precedent because laws must show discrimination or the intention of it (5).  In Schuette v. BAMN, opponents of the law were unable to prove that voters intended to discriminate against minorities by altering the Regents board process and rules so race was no longer considered a factor in college admissions.  Basically, one cannot claim that a law violates equal protection only to remove equal protection from others.  

While the reasoning of the majority in the case may not be perfect, the decision was also NOT a reversion to the principle of "separate but equal" or the legal segregation as found in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson.  That leap of rhetoric is anachronistic as it assumes the same level of racism of institutions still exists comparable to over a hundred years ago in areas predominately in the South.   It does a disservice to those who might be convinced that there are factors which disproportionally affect minorities and keep them from attending college at a number consistent with whites.   This slippery slope fallacy has found its way to Justice Sonya Sotomayor's dissent.  She assumes an outcome, a return to segregation, from the propositions provided and automatically suspects race to be a factor in changes to the admissions policy.  She also implies  that any equalization of minority and majority rights in the political process is a deceptive practice on the part of the majority.  But, I believe she is mistaken.

Justice Kennedy and the majority more correctly assess the historical precedent set.  If judges can invalidate any law relating to race, even one that removes a race preference policy, then no democratic decision can be made concerning race at all.  In 2014, Michigan is not a region targeted for the kind of remedial efforts to break segregation in the South in the 1950s.  States with a history of actively integrating students should be able to make judgements about their laws especially if there is no blatant discrimination that results.  

Whether or not minorities will be affected in college is not the issue.  What is important is the ability of voters to engage in democracy even if their decisions are not universally accepted.  We engage in political debate not for some purposeless talk, but to find solutions to problems in a more orderly way than mudslinging or outright violence.  "American democracy" works best when we thoughtfully consider the implications of words, our abstractions, and recognize that even when discussing complex issues like race, where real injustices have occurred and still occur, we must work together to avoid bitter terminology and the oversimplification of the other side.  So please avoid comparing
Schuette vs. BAMN to Jim Crow or slavery.

Source:

 Schuette vs. BAMN.  572 U. S. (2014)

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/12-682_j4ek.pdf

Can a "Dream" Work for You?

Some "American Dream" Isn't Working for You?  Really?

"Happiness" abstractions are ideas different from our thoughts during sleep, which are comprised of   elements from our daytime lives.  Awake, we produce numerous thoughts that neither you nor I could ever count.  Yet, we use these same abstractions as tools much as a hammer is used to physically pound in nails.  Conscious thoughts do mental work for us as we roam the earth; sleep thoughts are scrambled ideas that we occasionally recognize if we remember them upon waking.  Conscious, mental tools are applied especially if we're exposed to them and if they're useful.  Yet, it matters little whether we're conscious believers or if we're nurtured into belief.  We believe because it helps us survive.

Dismiss this if you want, but why do you believe you need to work typing on a keyboard every day?  What's the real importance of your social life to your physical survival?  Is the "bad day" you've had without coffee really so or would it be trivial by other standards?

Arguing about abstractions is the reason why we have art, culture, or even war.  We dispute ideas from our own perspective, our own understanding of  ourselves, our happiness, and our comparison of ourselves with others.  Maybe, it's shared with others because they are "like us."  Maybe, it isn't and that's why "they" are wrong and maybe we should even hate them.  Whether it is the concept of "land ownership," "social justice," or some "holy war," mankind fights over what it thinks the real world is about.

We can still fail as species despite our best efforts.  Feelings of "failure" and "misery" are probably still going to be present in the real world, even if some people in places like America continue to feel happier.  Unless, some savior figure or some abstract system has some kind of world more perfectly organized and gifted to us because of their benevolence.  Wait!  Marxism and Nazism have failed in the real world so far, yet maybe someone can do them right?  Thank you future benefactor, whoever you are. (end sarcasm)

This unrelenting difference in belief is why humanity has disagreements.   Our undefined, abstract happiness stems from us as disagreeable beings because there are others that we can never have absolute control over.  What we've done with these beliefs is history.  But, how and why we believe in things often veers into a fruitless, metaphysical, and unsolvable debate.  (See Haybron for Happiness metaphysics).  Nowadays, does the average person really know what metaphysical means anyways?

Some abstractions should be useful as positive tools for individuals.  "The American Dream" should just be a goal-setting device, a positive, abstract direction that many people living in this "country" use to challenge themselves and to bring some greater sense of "happiness."  It's an explanation for individual drive and motivation here.  It is not the full attainment of all physical and emotional desires either for the individual or for society.  The abstraction does not describe happiness now, in the present.  Likewise, believing in the dream doesn't mean you believe that everything is perfect right now or that improvements can't be made to our lives.  So, why hamper or attack a belief that simply motivates individuals because it doesn't encompass a completely happy society?

It's just a future belief, something good and helpful.  It's a positive belief, a tool, that I've never felt wrong accepting.  Am I wrong to believe in "American Happiness" as INDIVIDUALS striving for a better future rather than having some objective state of happiness that MUST be given to everyone?  Why should we despise positive challenges when short of perfect luck, we're all going to face the good and the bad ones?  Can we  really socialize challenges so that everyone must rise to them?  Should the State do this?  Can the dream be imposed and should it?

(Don't answer...now)

Can anyone really say what "Happiness" SHOULD BE?

 

I saw an advertisement for the television show "Enlightened" that inspired me in a different way than the writers probably intended.  In the ad, Laura Dern said about America that "people are living under the illusion that the American Dream is working for them."  My first instinct was to groan.  What a defeatist attitude towards life and the problems we all face!  Recovering, I tried to figure out why this criticism was so widespread, why the "American Dream" abstraction was being attacked from such a lame show? What illusion was I under because I thought differently than these unhappy fictional people?

I researched and came to a different conclusion.  Many intellectuals groped about their existence in this place (America), yet did not flee to "better" places with less people, less diversity, and less responsibility in the world.  Apparently these other places have greater social systems where happiness flutters down from controlling governments. Where was this ultimate happy place?  Some say Denmark was it, the so-called happiest place in the world.  Really?

Others support this notion.  Writer Kerry Trueman believes that "Denmark" is better and happier.  Her idea of the place benefits many more people especially when put into contrast to the supposed failures of America and its huge impoverished underclass.  Denmark's social happiness comes from trust in each other and "at least in part to Denmark's legendary income equality and strong social safety net."  In the same article, she also attacks a strawman she sets up, whereby "Tea-party types" would probably attack Denmark as a hotbed of socialism, when it's really "just practicing a more enlightened kind of capitalism."  Again, America's critics view themselves as enlightened, with better ideas based on rationality, while those content with the ambitious nature of the American dream are uninformed, supportive of a system she believes willfully impoverishes millions.  As a group of "unenlightened capitalists," they hope for a ridiculous dream that will not come to pass with society left the way it is.

So, Danes must be happier all around.  The stats show it and their people must believe it.  And those who possess this positive formulation, a "pro-American interpretation" of some of the most complex abstractions mankind has ("aspirations," "happiness," "contentedness," etc.), don't rationally understand why Denmark is better or why a social safety net is necessary.  In fact, they probably don't understand much of what enlightened people like Ms. Trueman have planned for them.  Right?

Not exactly.  If these "Enlightened" are right, why was this foreign happiness so restrictive to tiny Denmark and not made available to people like me in America?  Nordic countries have smaller problems than the American superpower that has protected them.  They're smaller geographically, have smaller shares of the world's resources, and that's just a few of the geographic factors that don't allow for easy comparisons.

The people themselves are different.  Interconnected as though the two peoples might be, the USA has a lot more people, a greater cultural diversity, more immigration from more places and the problems that result from that complexity.  And there's the ideas that certainly differentiate the two.  The US is much younger than its Nordic competitors for happiness.  At its best, it is seen as a beacon for people seeking freedom everywhere.  At Denmark's best, they are Danish people with a shared identity, race, culture, as well as a long and colorful history that is incomparable to the American Republic.  Denmark even has a popular constitutional monarchy.  America threw out its king 238 years ago.

Denmark welcomes non-Danes to its country, but citizenship is different from cultural or ethnic identity.  Does being "Danish" have the same relation of shared historical, ethnic, cultural, linguistic abstractions to its believers as being "American" has with someone living in the USA?  I do not think so at all.  Those differences result in different institutions, in different acting people, and a translation of that difference to how those societies function.  Basically, they're just different "nations" with different people.  Some objective level of happiness between them would be nearly impossible to determine and trying to do so is self-serving for those seeking to change the lives of Americans.

Skepticism of Remedy:  A Critical Look at "Happiness" Abstractions and Their "Truthfulness"

I'm accepting the critic's form of argument about the American Dream.  We're putting two abstractions, two "countries" into a contrived confrontation along the lines of Ms. Trueman, one that she does for the purpose of boosting one side to chastise another.  Clearly, I do not intend to boost Ms. Trueman's side because I never perceived "American enterprise" to be a futile tool, or even one that is threatened with extinction if desired changes aren't made.  Is there a better model that can be rationally constructed and applied to reality so that the most or ALL people can achieve some objective level of happiness?  Maybe.  But, I'm not willing to give up my life for another person's conception of the world unless I feel it improves the good things we have now. 

And the better model question opened up a thousand more.  If Denmark was MORE happy, what were the requirements, the standards set by these Danish adjudicators of happiness?  What did Americans  have to do to make happiness appear as it apparently manifested elsewhere?  Should we empower these judges just so that we could meet their standards?  What authority of argument should we confer on Ms. Trueman or the fiction writers at "Enlightened" to allow them to disrupt and change the world we know?  In other words, why pick them to change us and what makes their vision of happiness right while others have to be wrong?  I didn't know.

Was it because Ms. Trueman claimed the Danish system was enlightened?  Was it because she attacked the Tea Party who, regardless of their arguments, must be bad and thus not worthy of us reading or deciding the validity of their beliefs ourselves?  Name-dropping and sarcastic references used in conjunction with logical fallacies must be acceptable forms of argumentation IFF they come from enlightened people.

A Glorious Past as Evidence of the American Dream?

(subtext: Certain things worked better in the past.  Therefore, empower the "Enlightened") 

 

America's social critics often look towards material happiness at either a desired future point of existence, someplace so designated on the planet today, or in some society that has gone or is in danger of going.  Yet, I easily found a more comfortable version of the dream, something still more familiar to 70% of Americans even today after all of our national troubles (See the Economic Mobility Project).  It was and is defined as something useful that many Americans still understand despite the turmoil in their individual lives.  It is individualistic and motivational, yet from our past.  It is without perfect social safety nets or "enlightened"  philosopher kings.   Yet, we've held on to this abstraction despite the negativity of the materialists who'd change us to be more like them. 

Let's look at the past because that at least doesn't venture into fortunetelling and these views resonate with at least surveyed opinions of what the American dream should be today.  Alexis De Tocqueville provides the most interesting early view of American material happiness and the American dream.  At the same time, de Tocqueville never painted an utopic picture  of America, bereft of some abstract concept of inequality or poverty.  America was not perfect, nor necessarily better, just different in outlook as he perceived it from "Old Europe" back home.

In Book two, Chapter ten of "Democracy in America," De Toqueville writes of the "general" feeling of Americans for the "passion of physical well-being. "  He contrasts the complex American democracy and the general feelings he observed of its citizens to equally abstract "aristocratic communities" where the wealthy, "never having experienced a condition from their own, entertain no fear of changing it."  In 19th century Europe, the rich, landed and heredity-privileged possessed economic and social stability and did not feel the need to advance.  Likewise, in such abstract societies, the poor become used to their lot.

But, he saw "America" differently.  He saw the love of well-being as the main taste of the nation where even the wealthy continue their quest for more because many knew poverty at some point in their lives.  It is this attitude of happiness that best exemplifies the "American Dream."  Americans enjoy "the bootless chase," where only death ends their unending quest for happiness.  We are "restless" in a land De Tocqueville called abundant (Book 2, Chapter 13).

I find this vision of the American dream vastly more appealing not because it places Americans at some higher level of humanity.  Rather, it presents an "American Dream" for what it is.  A tool, an ambitious one at that, but one that provides opportunities for good and bad among those who accept the challenge.  The challenge is not a social directive, where more rational people (like Trueman) or more socially unhappy people (like the "Enlightened" characters) decide what is best through more abstractions and government actions.  Rather, the American Dream is fundamentally individual and can only be conceived as motivation. 

De Toqueville's theories have further interesting applications for those who complain about the American Dream today.  He wrote that abolishing all privilege and fortune (let's say chance of birth or circumstance) is essentially impossible and dangerous.  Cloners or social planners beware!  When all jobs are made open to all, total equality would mean all citizens are less able to attain happiness because of "universal competition" where endless struggle overwhelms those individuals willing to use their unique talents to get ahead.

De Toqueville is also correct logically when he states that we will "never establish any equality with which [American] can be contented."  How does everyone enjoy independence and freedom without "anxiety and impatience?"  Critics today worry about the equality of condition, that altering the physical must translate into the mental.  But, De Toqueville contradicts this position when he wrote that a people "will never succeed in reducing all the conditions of society to a perfect level."  Even if they did, "the inequality of minds would still remain, which, coming directly from the hand of God, will forever escape the laws of man."  That's plenty abstract.

Natural law aside, why has the circumstance of my birth, education, and growth rendered me unable to comprehend the vision of happiness that reduces the element of "freedom" and "motivation" and increases the role of the government as a helping hand?  Can I ever understand this view point, to comprehend a powerful safety net at the expense of individual choice?  Is disagreeing with the critic's understanding of happiness simply to be dismissed, relegated to an irrational criticism coming from a privileged elite group?

Clearly, we have an inequality of minds as a people about the truth of the American dream.  But, why destroy my conception of the abstraction to justify your actions in affecting my freedom, namely by taking away more things I believe I own?  While you believe you are helping the needy become "happy" by taking stuff from some, to those who object to your seizure, you are making others less happy by violating their beliefs in working and owning what is theirs.  Both conceptions of happiness cannot then be acted upon by the two groups at the same time, with the same limited resources in contention, while keeping both opposing groups happy.

Is it your right and responsibility to increase the number of happy people in society because creating a social safety net will neccessarily result in that action?  Is that action guaranteed to increase happiness if we are going to alter reality for all to meet your vision?

In my case, I am motivated to achieve my own sense of happiness.  Because I am struggling with a positive attitude, I am not recklessly or even intentionally acting in a way that takes from other people.  Remember, ownership is simply believing that something is yours and not someone else's. Yet, I believe that we all benefit when people of all races, incomes, or creeds are motivated to do things for themselves so we share some useful concept of "America." 

Remember, getting angry about complex abstractions like "the American Dream" and "Happiness" is a waste of our limited time on earth!

 --> Do something yourself first and encourage motivation in those who lack it!  

Then we'll all be better off!

Sources:

Adams, John Truslow . “The Epic of America.”

"Does America Promote Mobility as Well as Other Nations?" Economic Mobility Project, November 2011. www.economicmobility.org

Daley, Suzanne.  "Danes Rethink a Welfare State Ample to a Fault."  The New York Times.  April 20, 2013

Isaacs, Julia B., Sawhill, Isabel V., and Haskins, Rob.  "Getting Ahead of Losing Ground: Economic Mobility In America."  The Brooking Institution
http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Economic_Mobility/Economic_Mobility_in_America_Full.pdf

Haybron, Dan, "Happiness", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/happiness/>.

Kamp, David.  "Rethinking the American Dream." Vanity Fair.
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/04/american-dream200904

O'Brein, Matthew.  "RIP, American Dream?  Why It's So Hard for the Poor to Get Ahead Today."  The Atlantic

Traub, Amy and McGhee, Heath C.  "State of the American Dream: Economic Policy and the Future of the Middle Class."
"http://www.demos.org/publication/state-american-dream-economic-policy-and-future-middle-class"

Trueman, Kerry.  "Looking for the American Dream?  Try Denmark."  10/07/2011  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kerry-trueman/looking-for-the-american_b_1000928.html

http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/here-comes-the-tidal-wave-on-enlightened

Sons of Anarchy is About Anarchy Being Awful

Abstractions in TV Criticism:

Where's the Anarchy? Is it really about Sons of Patriarchy or Post-Racialism?

 

****Probable spoiler alert, not because I'm detailing the plot lines, but because in analyzing this fiction, I might let details slip that could ruin the show.


America's critics ignore the awful fiction of anarchy in the show "Sons of Anarchy."  Why?  Most critique it as action-packed and hyper-masculine (mostly true) while at the same time simplifying or eliminating anarchy altogether  in favor of pursuing their own pet forms of literary criticism.  Thus, anarchy is MIA while SAMCRO (Sons of Anarchy) faces off against apparent enemies from Glenn Beck, because a neo-nazi double-dealing enemy looks like him, to all of the supposed evils of conservatism (See Bellafante).  In a way, the show presents a dystopia of sorts, but one I think is much more complicated than the narrow and sometimes completely off-base gender, ethnic, and racial criticisms of the show.

To understand the show,  the abstraction of AUTHORITY is essential, particularly the relation of a rebel motor cycle gang to both law enforcement and other rival "underworld" gangs.  To represent authority in the show, the central literary device used in seasons 1-2 is dramatic irony.  A simple diary contains hidden, authoritative knowledge that everyone seems to want to get their hands on.  Inside is both a 1970s radical anarchist manifesto and a sordid tale of the Club's quite imperfect past.  Its author implicates the Club's president, Clay Morrow, in past Machiavellian machinations.  In this show,  that means murder within the brotherhood, which operates outside of the law.  Let's deal with the literary comparisons first and the influence of tradition through a diary.

 "Hamlet" Comparisons:  Revenge, Ghosts, and Classic Inter-Family Blood Feuds"

The show is "Sons of Anarchy," so literally, Jax Teller is the "son" of an anarchist diarist and as a literary parallel, the diary in the show is just like the ghost in Shakespeare's Hamlet.  Most critics pick up on the Shakespearean parallel.  The radical diary is so important to the story because the past problems of the Club haunt the protagonist, Jax.  I think that this "ghost of the past" illustrates that no perfect world exists after violently ending the oppressions of one "society" for another.  His father, John Teller, wrote about the fanciful wishes of anarchism, while idolizing and quoting Emma Goldman, one of America's foremost anarchists.  The father sought an escape from society with its oppressive "evils" and the son might want to try the same thing.

At the same time as he came to this ideological epiphany, John was also messing up his personal relationships.  So, he traveled to Ireland to expand the Club, found comfort with someone other than his cheating wife, and had another family.  He was happy until he returned to the kingdom he abandoned and was murdered by Clay. 

It's the second family issue and the immoral starting point of John as the not-so-just slain father that complicates the rather simple Hamlet analogy that other reviewers like.  It would have been a very different Hamlet story if King Hamlet (John) was also a cheating, murderous quitter who left his kingdom partly for selfish reasons.  How justified would Prince Hamlet (Jax) have been in avenging his father's murder when mom was the one who was abandoned to raise him with Clay (Claudius) while the King left his kingdom to sleep with other women?   Or shirk his kingly responsibilities for a European lust excursion because his ideas and hedonism outpaced reality and his job was becoming too difficult?  And did Hamlet have an Irish step sister?  And John would have been a criminal  by the standards of the 1970s, the 2010s, or during Shakespeare's day.  Thus, the Hamlet story base is nicely twisted by post-modernism, if we can even continue the literary parallel in a meaningful way.

But with infinite space on a blog, I will continue.  Thus, Jax treats Clay like a father and willingly assists him in enforcing Club business.  There's no ickiness with the Clay (Claudius) and Gemma (Gertrude) marriage as there is in Hamlet.  In Hamlet, the kingdom is abuzz because of a hasty marriage so soon after the death of King Hamlet.  Yet in SOA, they are a happy, loyal, and faithful couple for most of the series, often working together to limit the influence of John, even though Gemma likely knew nothing of Clay's responsibility for John's murder.  And though not condoning the murder, Gemma repeatedly explains to Jax how much John did wrong and how the diary didn't do justice to the real issues that ripped apart their family.  Clay put it all together for Jax and offered stability, at least more than the defunct utopia that John had tried to create.

In fact, the anarchist diary, the ghost, ruins everything.  In a gang of murderers, it's only the death of  family that warrants a catastrophic response.  Jax butts heads with Clay in the first season only because he starts to read the diary as he's asserting his independence as an adult.  The diary fuels this process as did Jax's off-show stint in jail.  And Jax doesn't even kill Clay outright either, so there's not (yet) a tragic triple death scene with Jax, Clay, and Gemma all dying because of dramatically ironic circumstances.  So, really the only successful Hamlet parallel rests with the diary (as the ghost) and the angry stepson seeking a less determined revenge against his murderous stepfather.  Really, Jax is even more unsure and timid in revenge than Hamlet was.  So, then what about the ghost of anarchy, tradition?

John Teller Is A Flawed Ghost of Anarchy, but as a Voice from a Diary, A Tradition Followed Nonetheless

So when life becomes difficult, anarchism provides comfort because it provides a way to escape.  It is a comforting ideology where problems are easily solved, namely blame "the system," whatever that abstraction means, and where people have the individual ability to do as they want, like they apparently didn't before.

Yet, perfection never came for John Teller and Jax nearly falls into the same traps.  Given dad's manifesto, Jax wrestles with the ideas of his murdered father, which then lead to business mistakes, conflict with Clay, and murder, as Clay and Gemma seek to keep the diary and its ideas from getting out.  While being protective of him and also limiting their culpability in John's death, Clay and Gemma want to stop the damage.  Already prone to hot-headed moves, Jax could run off on an anarchist "crusade" and that could ruin the Club and its business operations that Clay and his cold, hard-headed calculations have built.  As television viewers are introduced to these high ideals, read to us by dad as Jax sits pensively, the memoirs illustrate the depressing path from idealism to disillusionment.

"Father anarchy" leaves an artifact to his son that explains all of his personal and business problems as his life unraveled.  Jax sees parallels with his own life and family.  On top of gunrunning, drug trafficking debates, and dramatically ironic plots between members, there's always the self-interested connivance of his stepfather, Clay, and the secretive, over-protective, and invasive actions of his mother that keep Jax wondering.

Clay gets along with Jax when Jax is most like him; realistic, self-preserving, and loyal.  Afterall, he possesses the powerful title of Club President, a very unanarchist position of authority with lots of coercive power.  Jax gets into the most trouble with everyone in the club during seasons 1-2 when he is idealistic and wants to steer the Club's business in a more righteous direction.  It turns out even anarchists can't create a moral society either.

Maybe it's the types of economic production, the income they're deriving?  Drugs, guns, prostitution, and porn should be morally acceptable so long as the individual wants them, right?  Wrong.  Members rarely agree with the proper "types of business."  It turns out that not all humans want drugs, guns, or meaningless "sex."  As if that's even possible.  At times the other members bring on the smack down against each other like when Jax fails with the porn industry and they attack him.  He loses credibility because of the failed venture.

And infidelity is also common among some members both as a tool of revenge, "because she did it too," and also as a way to drive away beloved spouses so they avoid the violent lifestyle that often visits the Club's Old Ladies.  So, the men sleep around to "make them hate me, so they can leave and be safe."  That only causes the Old Ladies to hold on to the Club tighter, to preserve their way of life with all of its violence and immorality.

When the club tries its hand at drugs, they end up expelling Clay because the transactions brought too much violence.  Many members of the gang have committed multiple murders and countless other felonies and misdemeanors that nearly every society on earth has punished for thousands of years.  Yet, Clay had gone too far in pushing drug violence in the protected "utopia" of Charming.  For this gang, it's a question of relativity, of the degrees of immorality involved with sustaining a not-so voluntary organization!

The irony is that the Club is often tougher, harsher, and more immoral when enforcing their vision of society and Club business than the cops or FBI who seem to be inept and thwarted at every turn.  I thought anarchism was a neccesary belief that could rip apart the insidious nature of traditional society and the oppressive conspiracy that runs it?  Traditional authorities are pretty stupid if that is the case.

Of course there is the exception of the arch-villainess Agent Stahl, the antagonist who engineers less murders and backstabbing than the Club, but is still a major thorn in the side of SAMCRO.  But, she also is also snuffed out by them in vengeance for her ultimately failed machinations.  So in the midst of the violence, it still turns out that morality police exist in anarchic motorcycle gangs too!  And among murderers, only the badguy murderers get killed and not the "good ones" who've actually committed more violence to enforce their vision.  Once the murder threshold has been crossed, what moral barrier does Club Anarchy have left to stand on?  Is an anarchist-protected society really better off or less violent?  SAMCRO aren't really building a better world, and by continuing to pursue separtism, dominance over Charming, and their own individualist pleasures, they are in fact more oppressive, more violent, and more sinful than traditional authority.

Anarchist Communities Are NOT Hermetically Sealed Environments

(Meaning that you can't simply throw away the abstractions or the human connections with "outsiders" that influenced your individual ideological journey.)

Anarchism is an interesting belief system because of its claims about the ability to rid the world of "tradition" and the ability to successfully devolve authority to the individual, as if abstract conspiracies of the "powerful" are the collective, inhuman monsters who oppress, while anarchists are the human individuals that possess a true moral reality.  But, how does the belief in individual morality and communal anarchism apply to the SOA?

Well, the answer stems from the diary and the club charter, the former as the supposedly revolutionary document meant to educate the "sheeple" of the 2010s and the later as the founding artifact of the Club.  Really though, as a product of another era (the 1970s), they are traditional artifacts just as much as the Constitution and patriotic symbols they would replace.

These artifacts guide the superclass of anarchists in their leadership of SAMCRO and its supportive underclasses (Old Ladies, local law enforcement, shops, prostitutes, "mules," etc.).  Those initiated into the SOA community are thus the moral, individualistic resistance to the oppression of American society outside of it.  Then, the non-member community of Charming serves as not only the base for SAMCRO, but also the subject people to the superhuman, moral anarchists that rule over them.  The community is ruled because local law enforcement is on the Club's payroll at least early in the early seasons.  The townspeople go to the Club's front shop for service.  If they step out of line, disagree, challenge the moral situation in their town whether at the hospital or in their schools, they face violent discipline and coercion, which are two very unanarchic concepts.  A real parallel to this would be anarchist destruction of property in street protests, where the mere act of ownership of businesses acts as a justification for the destruction of their property by self-righteous anarchists (See Occupy Wallstreet's closer of the Port of Oakland, etc.)

If the show is useful in any way, it would be to show idealistic people that you can't always have what you want and that immorality or your past DOES NOT disappear just because you have chosen to believe something new.  Anarchism does not wipe away immorality from the planet and sin stays with people as long as they stay on earth.  It is just voluntary belief in something that makes you feel better inside while damaging everyone else in society, a society in America organized around more collective justice and less vigilantism.

This message also applies to the real-life college students most susceptible to the anarchist dribble, a small unhappy group that are worried about things like having to fight the oppression of having to pay for their own poetry studies.  The show uses logic and deduction to show how such belief MIGHT change us and our individual morality if put into action.  According to this artificial construction (anarchism), whether its promiscuous sex, drugs, or resistance against would-be oppressors, vice is action.  That means with absolute anarchist choice, human beings may do things that at least are petty immoralities and at worst violence, destruction, and increased misery.  Initiating this form of change seems many times worse than the supposedly evil society itself.   

Confronting Rape with "Justice" NOT "Vigilantism"

Many reviewers  are concerned with the gender and racial roles of central characters like Katie Seagal's character Gemma Morrow.  They argue that SAMCRO's violence is indicative of a male-dominated patriarchy that uses it to maintain its position.  They claim that SAMCRO even uses patriarchy to control the loyal women of the club.  All interesting and potentially important, but really, what about the effects of ANARCHISM on women or minority rights?

I think leading female characters join leading males on this show because of ideology, because their lives are made unanarchic because they willingly pursue power within the Club.  At the same time, they desire the stability that the Club tries to offer its women, even though women can never attain full membership and it has removed traditional means of justice for them.  Courts, laws, and police are unacceptable venues for justice because of their particular anarchist ideology and because the Club operates on vice revenue.

So, like their men, the women of SAMCRO seek justice within the confines of the Club, which is much less "justice" than they would receive through legal recourse.  But anarchist ideology has not purged patriarchy from the men of the Club either.  Even in fiction, we simply can't stop believing.  Afterall, it's Emma Goldman, a woman, and not Mikhail Bakunin that Jax is citing while trying to keep his love from becoming ensnared in the anarchic Club lifestyle.

Take the example of "his love," the pediatric physician Tara Knowles.  Separate from the Club, she built a strong career for herself.  Would Tara, a successful woman doctor, prefer a violent life in a sub-dominant position if she becomes an "Old lady" or economic and social stability as a woman in control of her own destiny?  Well, her love for Jax plunges her into the Club, a willing choice that she makes time and again.

SAMCRO is a social system that tries to ignore the laws and law enforcement's conceptualization and actualization of justice around them.  Yet, anarchy is a destructive belief system that attempts to unlatch both men and women from a complicated "authority" itself with lots of "paternalist" and "violent" strains of abstraction.  But, anarchism also tries to "unlatch" all genders from "laws," which are just artifact pieces of paper, and "AUTHORITY," which are people's complex abstractions about how people command the duty to obey.  Yet, people's respect for authority derives from those artifact laws, which developed over centuries to punish "crimes" like rape.  The show might be fictitious, but it does illustrate what might happen when the individual MAN knows best and when MAN thinks he has sealed off his utopia from the corruption of the outside world.

Maybe, it's the anarchy that's to blame when the men maintain that women are going to remain subordinate because only SAMCRO MEN are capable of the right kind of individual moral thinking required of true member of the SOA?  Maybe, physical strength, "machoism," and male cunning are ideal parts of this "liberated anarchic experience" and the most a woman can hope for in the anarchic individual world of SOA is to be supportive individuals of their "men?"  And women aren't allowed to be members, just "Old Ladies," just a link to their men.  Instead of the authors supporting male dominance and violent patriarchy, they could be showing that even anarchists, supposedly the most morally pure individuals of society cannot leave their flawed abstractions behind!

Otherwise, Tara would've chosen her career over a love-affair with a protagonist obsessed with anarchism.  Rather than anarchy being the liberation of the mind, in the case of this fiction, it seems quite a few abstractions remain, like "traditional male dominance" or "love."  Anarchism seems to be the tool that drags women into a less equal, more male-dominated society that was never roped off from everywhere else.  It seems human beings can liberate their minds from very little.  And in the act of TRYING to free yourself, more violence and destruction results for everyone else. 

So why does this show's anarchy and Club culture affect women so negatively?  Why does circumventing the law damage women and a more time-tested concept of "natural rights"? 

Well, by circumventing the law to participate with SAMCRO, women can't receive a more time-tested form of justice, one less likely to involve vigilantism or paternalism.   In actuality, women have more opportunities outside of the Club and without this particular form of anarchism.  Agent June Stahl is a pretty good example of an over-zealous law enforcement official who is the nemesis and antagonist to the male-dominated Club, the protagonist Jax, and the weaker Club women.  She is strong not because of her gender, but because of her ruthlessness, which she uses even after the death of her lesbian partner.  She twists her partner's death so that she is not held responsible.

Even though Stahl is defeated and killed by SAMCRO, she is just as manipulative, immoral, and prone to illegality as Clay Marrow and her other male counterparts who get involved in vice operations.  She is a female symbol of "justice gone bad" and the antithesis to all-American hero wanna-be Deputy Hale who strictly follows the law, seeks to expel the club and root out bad cops.    But, the unjust tentacles of anarchism affect even him.  His reward for believing in justice is to get killed in a drive by shooting after flirting with the dark side.

While Stahl symbolizes societal injustice and the corruptions of power,  it is Gemma who represents not just the effects of patriarchy on justice, but the damage that anarchism and patriarchal vigilante justice can bring to those willing woman followers.   As the most powerful woman in the Club, greatest rival to Stahl, and the mentor to Tara, Gemma uses physical violence to beat her opponents up.  She proves to be totally loyal to her son, even when he doesn't know she's watching out for him. They grow closer as mother and son as Clay is alienated and his inter-club crimes are revealed.

So how does Gemma fit in with the all-male power structure of SAMCRO?  First, the injustice of the Club's authority is on display with Gemma's horrific rape by a rival gang, who happen to be Neo-Nazis.  The fundamental injustice stems from the Club doing justice itself, aka vigilantism.  The abstractions of anarchism and vigilantism reinforce the predominance of the Club men who either founded the Club or are its successor generations.  SAMCRO men either punish the offender for the victimized female, thus preserving the "protective," and thus demeaning patriarchy, or, SAMCRO women pursue their own justice, based on their very human and individualistic perception of what justice would entail.  They could murder the male criminal or they could remain silent because that would bring attention to the Club, which could upset its (ironically) criminal stability.

Rather than showing the chain reaction of events from illegal decision-making, Peggy Seggal's horrific rape scene and strained coverup is viewed by one reviewer as an "extension of America's conservative reactionary wing."  What??  A number of problems ensue from this form of criticism.  First, reactionary is an abstraction that suggests a reaction to political events.  But, every person reacts to changes in some way.  Why must reaction only be extreme, especially when you look at the death and destruction that SAMCRO is responsible for?  Isn't there a reasonable criticism for all of the characters on moral grounds?  Why must the antagonists, rather the ideological opposition to anarchism and murder be murdering Neo-Nazis?  Is the only legitimate criticism for more open  immigration policies one that comes from Nazism?  That's ridiculous hyperbole and an argument about the immigration debate that really isn't present in the show.  If anything, it's the ease with which violent Mexican gangs and SAMCRO do business across the border that should warrant notice from critics and not a look-alike actor whose racism doesn't go as far as his willingness to make lots of money off the Mexicans.

Instead, doesn't "SOA" show both the violence and humiliation of rape, but also how BELIEF affects all people in a complicated world?  Rather than strict lines of gender, nativism, or racism, where there's some sinister patriarchy versus an idealized, solitary, and moral woman, isn't the show making the larger point that MORAL AUTHORITY, sexual, racial, and political, does not disappear even when an obvious immorality, a crime like rape, is committed?

Maybe in the idealized "Wild West," victims of rape would be avenged by the victims themselves, rather than others.  However, if Clay or any other male figure were to avenge his wife's rape, wouldn't he be "patriarchal" because his sense of vigilante justice overrides Gemma's?  Bellafante ascribes Gemma's actions as both "victims and agents of vengeance." But, is all decision-making that crosses genders really indicative of the absolute presence of the patriarchy abstraction?  If all laws that exist in the fictional world of the show protect men before women, are women the only persons capable of deciding how to confront such an injustice as rape?  Are they the only persons capable of judging an immorality and responding to it?  Does a society of men and women have an interest in preserving laws whereby someone other than the victim or the other figures in their life respond to a rape?

Obviously society does. Bellafante misses that women too can buy into bad abstractions, like SOA, without having patriarchy be to blame.  Is it the patriarchy of the rapists, and their message, or the threat of a patriarchal response that stops Gemma from disclosing it to the police or Club authorities?  Or is it that she is committed to her belief system and that means SOA is paramount?  And if Gemma conceals her rocky relationship with Jax's father and Clay's role in the failure of that relationship, is she acting patriarchal because she believes she's acting in Jax's best interest by keeping him in the dark, thus overriding his ability to decide, or is she acting maternally, as mother knows best what will keep her son from harm?  Is a maternal mother a moral secret-keeper when the information may lead to violence whereas a step-father is less so because of his sex or the exclusive history of people of that sex?  Is Gemma more moral than Clay because of her sex if she pursues vigilante justice instead of Clay?

In a fictional motorcycle anarchist gang, women still face the terrible problem of disclosure.   While avoiding the law, Gemma is willing to suffer the humiliation in silence rather than risk giving the gang's white supremacist rivals an opening to humiliate Clay.  Her secrecy is part desire to prevent her rapist from winning, but also because she's committed to acting within both the SOA anarchist abstractions and within marriage.  Telling Clay "would ruin him."  Her decision-making is both grasping at power after the sexual power struggle of rape, but also restrictive as her SOA beliefs cloud her sense of justice.  Should she end the terror brought by racist rapists if that means the end to her way of life and all of the illegalities perpetrated by the Club?  She didn't think so, so she stuck it out.

Is it really the patriarchy abstraction that prevents her from disclosure or is it her commitment to being an "Old Lady" to anarchism that stops her disclosure?  It is fiction so we can't ever know.  But, rather than the "corporate neo-nazis" being indicative of the partriarchalism and racism behind supposed right-wing talk show hosts, aren't they really a fictional example of another ideology that thrives outside of prevailing justice abstractions?

The show's about the anarchists, not the Glenn Becks.

"Post-Racialism" won't be more REAL without "Laws" and accompanying justice

In SOA, some critics have found strange criticisms about "post-racialism."  Ms. Bellafante wrote that the show "presciently captured the ugly nativist strain running on the edges of American life, the mentality that has led to false beliefs about the president’s birth status and talk of denaturalizing “anchor babies." What an awful line!  Where in any part of Sons of Anarchy is there a serious theme of nativism, birth status, and denaturalizing immigrants coming from law-abiding Americans?  The cross-racial murders seems a bit more important than the intolerance of one season's Neo-Nazi enemies.  And the only talk of babies or birthright citizenship occurs because the IRA stole Jax's son and priests refuse to give him back because they feel he could lead a better life with a caring Irish (Catholic) family.  Is that Irish racism against American anarchist bikers?

Ignoring all of SAMCRO's murder and immorality, why is it important to analyze the Neo-Nazis  as representing some fringe questioning President Obama's birth status?  Why does a rival gang who wants minorities expelled from Charming illustrate a political debate over the 14th Amendment and naturalization, especially since SAMCRO doesn't even follow the most basic laws of society and drives them out by inciting murder?  Why miss the all-around criminality to score (terrible) political points in a largely unrelated political debate?

If it's the racist group that engages in warfare with SAMCRO over dealing with minorities, only to do business with minorities, then how does Bellafante reconcile "Juice's" aka Juan Carlos Ortiz's complex race issue?  Afterall, he's one of the good guy protagonists, a member of SAMCRO fighting the racist Neo-Nazis apparently representing the fringe birther movement.  Yet, because the Club is almost 99% white Male, he's forced to conceal his mixed birth (his dad was an African American) for fear of being expelled from the Club.  Maybe, SAMCRO isn't so post-racial afterall and maybe the writers are trying to illustrate that intolerance still exists even amongst the "good guys."

In fact, Juice is so concerned about Club racism that he murders a man to conceal his mixed race, not because this fictional America is post-racial and accepting of immigrants, while a lunatic fringe attacks anything different.  Instead, Juice uses violence because he's unlatched from justice, because the Club operates a separate authority that violently expels members who don't look like the leadership.  Rather than post-racial vigilantes bringing justice to a fringe of hateful right-wingers, vigilantes bring injustice to the unjust and that's because they've tried to do it themselves!  And humans who think they've thrown away all of the bad still prove themselves to be quite imperfect. 

SAMCRO has proven its members to be quite human, especially when unlatched from more time-tested abstractions like "justice."  So, the choice of their gun buyers is not necessarily ideological, in that the Mayans, who organize based on racial and ideological abstractions (anarchic Mexican Indian) are at times both a hated enemy worthy of racial slurs and at other times  business partners.

 The Failure of Motorcycle Primitivism: 

I think "SOA's" altering relationships are a powerful REFLECTION of the author's interpretation of humanity, how limited and dangerous beliefs can be, and most importantly how those beliefs can dehumanize those around us to conform to the ideal.  Even ultimate individualism is potentially dangerous or when so-called ultimate individuals organize into so-called voluntary associations.  One simply can't claim to lead a simpler life while riding away from the difficulties of society on a complex piece of steel and rubber, wearing metal earrings, a mass produced leather jacket, while protecting yourself with pistols and making money from the sale of high-caliber firearms or synthetic methamphetamine.  One can't claim to have purged tradition while one is part of an association with charters, presidents, and a weak democracy through voting.  Motorcycle primitivism is just a cover for unhappy people seeking a means for their own power.  The rest of us must suffer for their vision to succeed.

This violence is also why fiction is useful as individual tales of morality, to suggest hypothetical outcomes that may never realistically come to pass.  While fiction may not be truth, it provides at least a logical construction of what might be.  Even made-up abstractions can be useful to those wishing to expand their understanding.

As much as the Club tries to separate itself from the rest of America, it is not averse to the complex beliefs and calculations of non-members.  The Club is not hermetically sealed from the outside world, there is no absolute justice by its deciding board.  Even banishment results in the tortuous removal of the Club's insignia.  (Torture isn't considered a universally immoral action if anarchist individuals deliver it!)

So, even a show can illustrate to its viewers that as much as we might like to destroy the physical things or people around us in order to somehow bring concepts like "harmony" or "liberty" into the real world, we really can't.  We arrange, destroy, or create physical things and BELIEVE we have made our lives more harmonious.  However, the concept is still abstract.

Stay off your bikes, put down your pistols, and stop selling illegal drugs if you want more "justice" in "America!"

Cited or Influential Sources:

Bellafante, Gina.  "Post Racial Vigilantes in a World In Peril." The New York Times.  9/6/2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/arts/television/07anarchy.html?_r=0

Dawkins, Marcia."Mix Messages: Barrack Obama and Post-Racial Messages."  Post Identity.  Janani Subramanian, editor, Spectator 30:2 (Fall 2010): 9-17
https://cinema.usc.edu/archivedassets/101/16191.pdf

Gilbert, Matthew.  "Biker Gang Saga 'Anarchy' has Appeal."  Boston Globe.  http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2008/09/03/biker_gang_saga_anarchy_has_sopranos_appeal/

Christiano, Tom, "Authority", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2012/entries/authority/>.