issues that aren't

Now, here's the sort of thing that just goes and gets me really cranky.

Look, friends and sundry: moral stances only have value beyond their correctness to the degree that they involve risk. Sometimes the risks are big, like "I may get killed if I speak out against this that I find immoral, or in favor of what I find moral." Sometimes the risks are medium, like "I risk ostracism and serious social unrest from my peers or community if I speak out on this moral issue." Sometimes the risks are minor, like "speaking out on this might make this party awkward and harsh my mellow."

Then there's the risk of opposing things no one supports, like genocide. One way to term this would be to call it "no risk whatsoever." That's probably the best way to describe Andrew Sullivan's showy opposition to Che t-shirts. It is a proud denunciation of that which no one of consequence condones. I mean, if I stood on a street corner, yelling that people shouldn't randomly walk up to strangers and punch them in the dick, nobody would be nominating me for the Nobel Peace Prize. Nobody would imagine that I was making any kind of morally proud stance. Indeed, even taking a stand would be praising too highly. It's an enterprise without moral weight because it does nothing but suggest the superior morality of the speaker at no cost to the speaker.

Yet, to my surprise, not only did Andrew stamp about on his blog, burnishing his credibility by opposing tasteless casual wear, we now get a post (likely the first of several) where his emailers can participate and let the world know what lions of liberalism they are by denigrating laundry.

You might well ask what important news event inspired these posts. Did some unthinking public figure praise Che Guevara? Or, worse still, Stalin and Hitler? (They of course have been brought into the discussion, for reasons that escape me)? No. Nothing at all happened. Somebody else wrote a post expressing the utterly banal and thus utterly unpraiseworthy commitment against genocide. That's all. This post could have appeared five years ago and could appear five years from now and nothing would have changed. It's inspired only by the desire to be seen.

What is being accomplished here? Who is being served? What positive impact on the world can this possibly have? What is at stake? What matter of genuine controversy is being debated? What minimally mainstream figure is out there singing the praises of Che?

Sadder still, they can't even get their story straight. Since this is the Internet, and you have to say these things: no, I am not at all an apologist for Che Guevara. But genocide-- well, that's the sort of term that's supposed to have a special meaning, you know? Aside from how  unseemly it is to trade on the victims of real genocides for psychic comfort, it's unhelpful (and that's being charitable) to dilute the term to mean any kind of senseless slaughter. A barely literate weak man emailed, but even with his limited abilities, the emailer makes the essential point that Andrew has equated Che with Stalin, Mao, and Hitler without actually pointing towards the actual genocide. In response, Andrew links to a similarly self-aggrandizing piece from the Independence Institute:

Guevara might have been enamored of his own death, but he was much more enamored of other people’s deaths. In April 1967, speaking from experience, he summed up his homicidal idea of justice in his “Message to the Tricontinental”: “hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine.” ... It is hardly a surprise that during the armed struggle against Batista, and then after the triumphant entry into Havana, Guevara murdered or oversaw the executions in summary trials of scores of people—proven enemies, suspected enemies, and those who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In January 1957, as his diary from the Sierra Maestra indicates, Guevara shot Eutimio Guerra because he suspected him of passing on information: “I ended the problem with a .32 caliber pistol, in the right side of his brain.... His belongings were now mine.” Later he shot Aristidio, a peasant who expressed the desire to leave whenever the rebels moved on. While he wondered whether this particular victim “was really guilty enough to deserve death,” he had no qualms about ordering the death of Echevarría, a brother of one of his comrades, because of unspecified crimes: “He had to pay the price.” At other times he would simulate executions without carrying them out, as a method of psychological torture.

I'm happen to be one of a tiny handful of people in the blogosphere who is willing to voice a blanket denunciation of the intentional taking of human life in any context. But this is not genocide. Killing rivals when you take power is not genocide. It is monstrous and it is senseless but it is not genocide. If it is genocide, it is a genocide that has been perpetrated by the vast majority of what are commonly referred to as "great leaders." Is Augustus Caesar guilty of genocide? He was ruthless with his rivals to power, absolutely ruthless. There were a lot of people put to death when he took control. Is having a bust of Augustus an equally terrible crime in Andrew's eyes? If not, why not? How about Vlad the Impaler? Is dressing up as Dracula for Halloween an equally repellent act? I oppose Che's murders because they are murders. To dress this up as genocide for the purpose of grinding an axe against imaginary enemies is, at the very least, a distortion of history.

To reduce genocide into a generic term for violence that is politically unpalatable is childish and dishonors genocides victims. Again, Andrew's post and his emailers have directly equated Che with Stalin, Mao, and Hitler. This is simply a category error. You don't have to praise Guevara to recognize the carelessness of such a comparison.

It gets worse. Because despite Andrew's considerable distaste for hipsters who wear Che t-shirts, he actually has equal disdain for hipsters who... take meaningless statements against genocide. He mocks a photo from Look at this Fucking Hipster featuring a women with "Fuck you Hitler" written on her arms. So hipsters who wear Che t-shirts, an utterly meaningless act connected to no existing power or political movement whatsoever, is bad, but so are hipsters who make empty waves against Hitler. As I hope is clear, there is no difference between that woman's photograph and these posts. They are the same animal.

Look: right now, this country is killing innocent people. Right now. We are using lobbing ordnance on completely innocent civilians as a matter of course. We are involved in two official wars and perhaps five unofficial ones and in all cases we are sowing destruction on people who have absolutely no recourse against it, no democratic or legal process to oppose it. These actions are being undertaken with the blessing of Barack Obama. Now a real moral stance, one that would actually involve sacrifice and risk, would be for Obama's champion Andrew Sullivan to invest as much outrage and anger against Obama for presiding over it all. That would cost something. That would be a stance that would carry risks. That would have relevance to actual, existing, meaningful, contemporary political debates. That would involve an actual painful choice, given Sullivan's regard for Obama. And he might even contribute to the cause of right, rather than the cause of righteousness.