{"id":78556,"date":"2016-08-29T12:00:53","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T11:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=78556"},"modified":"2016-08-27T17:39:03","modified_gmt":"2016-08-27T16:39:03","slug":"the-heart-of-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/08\/the-heart-of-order\/","title":{"rendered":"The Heart of Order"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Robert-Koehler-pic\"<\/a>24 Aug 2016 – <\/em>He\u2019d left the water running, flooding neighbors\u2019 apartments. He\u2019d been running around outside naked. By the time police arrived, he was standing in the window of his fourth-floor apartment on Farwell Avenue \u2014 a few blocks from where I live in the diverse, unpredictable Chicago neighborhood called Rogers Park<\/a> \u2014 threatening to jump.<\/p>\n

He pointed his finger at the cops, pretending he had a gun. \u201cFuck the police,\u201d he said. The standoff lasted four hours.<\/p>\n

But eventually he capitulated. The forces of sanity held sway. He was taken to a hospital. No one was hurt. (Phew-w-w!) And life in Rogers Park moved on.<\/p>\n

Beyond the big why, a question the size of infinity \u2014 why, sir, did you snap? \u2014 things more or less returned to normal (Clark Street reopened, I could get to Walgreen\u2019s) and the incident folded into our ongoing, collective shrug: This stuff happens, y\u2019know?<\/p>\n

But I have this one sticking point, and it won\u2019t go away. The more I wonder about it, the wider it opens. Local coverage of the incident included a photo montage of the standoff: pictures of police officers standing around by the apartment building, the blurry naked guy in the window, SWAT team officers in full body armor, an MRAP parked on Farwell . . .\"robert<\/a><\/p>\n

Huh?<\/p>\n

They drove a tank (or tank-looking armored truck, designed to withstand improvised explosive devices) up to Rogers Park because a guy was running around the neighborhood naked? Who\u2019s crazy here?<\/p>\n

Unavoidably, an ancient Norman Mailer quote flooded my thoughts. Writing, in Miami and the Siege of Chicago, about the Republican and Democratic national conventions of 1968, Mailer observed that despite the massive police and military presence at the events, we have \u201cno real security, just powers of retaliation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Half a century later, all that\u2019s changed is the technology: what you might call the technology of insecurity. Our powers of retaliation are more massive than ever. It\u2019s the mutually assured destruction complex, perhaps: the governmental abdication, at every level, of any attempt to achieve a complex understanding of human behavior and the maintenance of social order sheerly by the use of force or its symbolic display. That\u2019s why the MRAP in my neighborhood felt so disheartening.<\/p>\n

I started thinking about the nature of authority. Is there such a thing as authority that isn\u2019t hierarchical in nature, that isn\u2019t about the threat of punishment? Then I thought about Elian Gonzalez.<\/p>\n

Remember him? Back in 2000, when he was 6 years old, he accompanied his mother and her boyfriend when they attempted to flee Cuba and join relatives in Miami. His mother drowned in the journey, but Elian survived and was held in the custody of the relatives, who wanted to keep him here. His father, still in Cuba, wanted his son back, and eventually a federal district court ruled in the father\u2019s favor. U.S. border patrol agents were sent to retrieve Elian from the relatives \u2014 and they entered the house in full battle gear, brandishing assault rifles.<\/p>\n

Someone present took a photo<\/a> of one of the agents apparently pointing his rifle directly at the face of a screaming Elian. The photo went viral.<\/p>\n

I wrote at the time: \u201cCertainly the intransigent faction who believed 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez should not have been returned to his father got what it wanted, a readymade poster of tyranny \u2014 Soldier Waves Weapon at Screaming Child, Rips Him from Embrace of Loving Family. Small matter that\u2019s not the reality; the government action righted a wrong, seized the boy from the grasp of his politics-besotted relatives and returned him to a father who loved him. No one was hurt, but measured force was necessary.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a shame, then, that a right action had to look so wrong \u2014 thanks to the fundamental dishonesty not of the mission itself but of its design. The planners, anticipating violent opposition, had to protect the agents (hence the battle armor, goggles, etc.); they also had to convey seriousness of intent. This was not a \u2018request\u2019 for the boy\u2019s return to his legitimate parent, it was a demand. And something has to back up a demand.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government decided to go with the threat of violence, a big bluff \u2014 the agents weren\u2019t going to shoot up the place or kill Elian in order to save him. Little Havana isn\u2019t Vietnam (or Kosovo). If the military action is on American soil, collateral damage isn\u2019t an option. So why the assault rifles, then? Why such a dishonest display of authority?\u201d<\/p>\n

Sixteen years \u2014 of war \u2014 later, I remain transfixed by that question. Why must social authority be symbolized with escalating bombast? Assault rifles, body armor, MRAPs? Then a scene from Robert Duvall\u2019s 1997 movie The Apostl<\/a><\/em>e flickered for an instant in my mind. Billy Bob Thornton\u2019s character, a racist with a bulldozer, is threatening to demolish the church that Duvall, a preacher on the run from the law, has constructed with his racially mixed congregation. Duvall sets his Bible in front of the bulldozer and Thornton is immobilized, indeed, reduced to tears. His hatred melts; the threat disappears.<\/p>\n

Another memory, this one from real life: My daughter was maybe 4 years old. I need to take her to day care, then go to work, but it\u2019s the dead of winter and she refuses to put on her coat. I feel extremely pressured to get moving but instead of throwing commands and the threat of punishment at her, I seize an opportunity to talk with honesty. I tell her why I\u2019m in a hurry and we talk as equals. After maybe five minutes, she puts on her coat \u2014 happily \u2014 and a precious memory remains transfixed in my heart.<\/p>\n

Maybe all I\u2019m saying is that authority has more likelihood of impact if, instead of threatening harm or punishment to the transgressor, it reaches across the divide that separates us. I know this isn\u2019t a solution for all social disorder, but maybe it\u2019s a starting place.<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

Robert C. Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based peace journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, <\/em>Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is still available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 commonwonders.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He\u2019d left the water running, flooding neighbors\u2019 apartments. He\u2019d been running around outside naked. By the time police arrived, he was standing in the window of his fourth-floor apartment threatening to jump. He pointed his finger at the cops, pretending he had a gun. \u201cFuck the police,\u201d he said. The standoff lasted four hours. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tms-peace-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}