In the 1980s, I used to drive my partner Martha and my daughter Leah crazy by yelling at the TV news. “That’s a lie,” or “or what about white supremacy,” or “give us the context for what is happening — there is a history here,” or “that is sexism!” It was my way of countering the narrative of neutrality and objectivity that is supposedly the standard of mainstream news, even I am sad to say, on PBS. As we learn from the title of the late and great historian Howard Zinn’s memoir, “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train,” we all have to take a stand.
One of the great interventions of gender studies — and Black studies before it — was to critique the notion of neutrality or objectivity. The fallacy of objectivity was never more obvious than it is in this presidency, but there is a long history of lies we have been told that need to be countered. I will mention only one from the many that our leaders have tried to foist on us. President Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara continued to tell us during what we called the Vietnam War but what the Vietnamese call the American War, that there was a “light at the end of the tunnel” even while there was no progress, and we eventually left that country just as the French did without “winning.” That McNamara later apologized for misleading the American public in no way makes up for the enormous loss of life on both sides and massive destruction of Vietnam.
And so here we are again, talking about Iran as the worst of the worst and a threat to the U.S., even though the president claims that the last time we bombed Iran we destroyed their nuclear capability. And we are partnering with Israel, arguably the worst threat in the region, the perpetrator of a genocide we have been seeing before our eyes for more than two years. Israel is also the country that has violated the so-called ceasefire hundreds of times, killing hundreds of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, even American citizens, all with impunity. Who is calling who a terrorist and a threat to the Western world?
There is no other side to bombing and killing a foreign leader or girls and staffs in a school, or civilians on the streets of a capital city.
Will language matter in this world where the perpetrators of genocide are sitting on the board of peace? I stopped watching TV news to improve my mental health and that move was personally effective, but it is not resistance. Still, I think that correcting so-called neutral language is a bulwark against being pulled into the illusion that the news is neutral, that giving equal time to both sides is not idiocy. There is not another side to an unprovoked attack on the sovereignty of another country, whether it is Venezuela, Vietnam, Iraq, or Iran. There is no other side to bombing and killing a foreign leader or girls and staffs in a school, or civilians on the streets of a capital city. That is illegal, and is unconstitutional for an American leader to do without the consent of Congress. And perhaps it is also against international law even if the U.S. Congress approves it. It is also illegal to shoot people on the streets of U.S. cities and not be investigated for murder. It seems that Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent we all clearly saw kill Rene Good by shooting her at point-blank range, will not be charged. It also seems that the state of Minnesota will not have access to the evidence in that case, as is their right. And what about the killer or killers of Alex Pretti? It looked for a while that they were going to be charged, but this case does not even merit a headline anymore. These murders have been normalized as have some many other events that are not normal.
Even though Trump is mostly losing in the courts, the ballot box, and the polls, he and his secret army go on with seeming impunity at home and he is an outlaw abroad, whether in South America or the Middle East.
Most of us know all of this, but we may feel powerless to do anything about it. But we must not allow ourselves to be pulled into helplessness and the despair that accompanies it. We must say what is happening is not normal. That we do not approve. That all of this is not being done with our consent. We must say no emphatically publicly in any way we can.
What to do? Stand out. Speak out. Support grassroots groups. Do all the things we have been doing, but now we are at war in the most volatile area of the world. Israel has already bombed Lebanon. Who is next? We have to find a way to keep resisting, to be creative, to come together with others, or else they will win. They might win anyway but we have to make them fight for it.
I will take a deep breath. Join with others. Stand at the overpass in Hatfield on Fridays at 3 p.m. Stand with hopefully millions of others on No Kings Day on March 28. Make a new sign. Go to an Indivisible meeting. Raise money for Luce and groups like the Movement Voter Project that have been supporting grassroots groups working in their communities for years. And keep the faith in resistance. Remember, wherever there is repression, there is always resistance and we can all be a part of it.
Arlene Avakian lives in Northampton.