Newtown, "Community" Organizers, and History

Let me say at the outset that President Obama's sermon at Newtown last night was astonishing. It's hard to imagine he'll give another speech/sermon as powerful as that. (Here's hoping!) If you missed it, you can see it here in its entirety; this WaPo piece also includes the transcript. But his sermon also set off a long train of thought in this historian's brain, and that's what I'm writing about here. 

Among the "money quotes," these get to the core of his message:

This is our first task, caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged. And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we’re meeting our obligations? . . . .

Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose? I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer’s no. We’re not doing enough. And we will have to change. . . .

We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society, but that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely we can do better than this.

He did not mention "gun control" or "politics." Instead, he focused on the conclusion at which so many of us had already arrived during the past few days: It's not guns that kill, or even people. It's a society that has lost its way and is no longer a "community."

As soon as it became apparent that's where he was headed in his sermon, the historian in me sat up straight. Mental light bulbs flashed, etc. So. Here's this historian's take.

Back in 2007, 2008, when Obama ran for president the first time, the Republicans belittled the fact that he'd been a "community organizer." Truth be told, I didn't pay much attention to that particular part of his resume.  I had a mental image of someone chatting with young toughs on street corners, trying to set them straight. Other than that, I didn't give it much thought.

Now, however, my perspective is quite different --- thanks to the research I'm doing for the final chapter of the book I'm writing, which is a history of meat in America. The final chapter examines the origins of the "organic-local-alternative food system." (*1)

That "alternative" food system took shape in the 1980s. A group of activists, reformers, and academics used food as the anchor of an effort to link rural and urban America, and to forge a new "community" in which every member, regardless of race, class, income, or geography, would feel connected enough to care about all the other parts.

I'm simplifying the story (hey! You can read more when the book comes out...) --- but my point is this: In the 1980s and 1990s (and now), "community organizers" like the young Barack Obama were many in number and purpose. But whether the organizers focused on issues of poverty, jobs, hunger, the "family farm," or weaknesses in the nation's food system, a single, larger goal united them: to forge community among Americans.

I would argue, however, that the late-20th-century search for community went beyond "official" community organizers like Obama. That same search fueled the craft beer movement. Homebrewing, to name another example, emerged as a "community" rather than just a hobby. (To which I would add the form of so many web-based businesses: Facebook, Pinterest, etc., as well as the internet and web themselves.)

Again, I'm simplifying (in part because I've not yet worked all this out), but as a historian, I'm convinced there are linkages between and among projects that otherwise appear, on the surface, to be unrelated: farmers' markets, homebrewing, craft beer, Facebook. (*2)

Back to Newtown: When I listened to the president's sermon last night, many of these pieces fell into place.

I see more clearly now what drove Obama's initial run for the presidency. He had a vision, shaped by his young adulthood, of how "community" could transform the United States spiritually, socially, politically. He believed (rightly, I would argue) that millions of Americans shared that view even if they had not articulated it. (*3)

Alas, once elected, that vision ran up against the reality of the American political system and "vision" was set aside in the name of survival. Grousing ensued: "What happened to the guy we elected? Where's our hope and change?" Obama had been forced to weigh the long term benefits of vision against the short-term need to survive.

The irony is that Obama was forced to sacrifice long-term vision for short-term survival precisely because we Americans have so little sense -- none, really -- of community, of common purpose. We've never needed it more --- and yet, it's never been more out of reach.

For the past few days, I've had this odd sense of deja vu, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Last night, as I listened, I found it: The aftermath of Newtown is much like the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Stunned disbelief; near-universal grief; groping for answers.

But it also shares this with that earlier tragedy: It's aroused a powerful undercurrent, a powerful yearning for stronger connections between and among each other. (*4)

We need to change. "We" meaning us as a community. Lack of gun control. How we as a society cope with mental illness. Those aren't causes. Those are symptoms (especially the latter). Symptoms of malaise, of drift, of lack of purpose.

So when President Obama spoke of "community" and the "need for change," he didn't mean "politics." He meant: We can no longer ignore our lack of, loss of, purpose, meaning, community. Only when we face up to the hollowness that is the reality of life in America will we finally see an end to the madness that afflicted the lives of so many Americans on December 14, 2012.

__________________

*1: I knew nothing about any of it (hence the need to do this research), but I'd heard the standard version of "what happened": Alice Waters, the California restaurateur, discovered "local" foods and voila! The local, organic food craze began. Even before I started researching this chapter, I was sure that standard story was wrong, and that some other set of factors had shaped the "alternative" food system we now have. I was right (for a change!).

*2: That's one reason I want to finish this current book and move on to my next: this set of ideas has been floating around in my brain for over a year now. I think I'm on to something.

*3: Although Christian fundamentalism has become mainstream and institutionalized, back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it spread in large part because so many people were seeking "community."

*4: Before you all go crazy and start sending me hate mail: No, I'm not comparing Newtown to Al Qaeda terrorist attacks. Rather, I'm comparing the emotional, spiritual aftermath: In the midst of intense, shared grief, we've rediscovered a need for community. We reached out, rather than withdrew. In the wake of the terrorist attacks, I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only person who sensed that our collective grief also gave us a sense of community. We found solace by embracing each other in a way we rarely otherwise do.

The Lehrer Episode: When the Truth Doesn't Matter, We All Pay the Price

I'm a fan of smart people, especially smart writers. I could list boodles of such creatures --- and one of the great joys of a tool like Twitter is that it allows me to "follow" their work and thinking. Among them has been Jonah Lehrer: one of those absurdly young (he's only 31), hard-working, and therefore unnervingly prolific thinker/writers.

I say "has" because --- boy oh boy has he screwed up. I won't go into the details here (there's plenty online, but this is the place to start, followed by this piece about the start of his "downfall" earlier this summer).

Briefly: in the space of a few weeks, he's been caught recycling his own material and now, worse, flat-out lying in print. I'm sorry for him --- and baffled, too.

But that's not what prompts this post. Fury does.

Because I am furious. Here is yet another case of "facts" turning out to be lies. Another case of a writer making stuff up and passing it off as truth. (There have been so many of these in the past few years that if I linked to even half them, this post would be saturated in bright blue.)

Why do I care? Because I write non-fiction. Because I'm a historian and history is based on fact, not fiction. (*1) Let me repeat that: Historians start with FACTS. We don't get the pleasure of making stuff up. Our reputations, and the public's regard for our discipline, rest on our honesty.

So when people like Lehrer fuck with the facts, it makes EVERY non-fiction writer, historians and otherwise, look bad.

God knows the practice of history is already suffering thanks to the fictional history that's become so popular these days. (When a writer is praised for making "history" seem like a novel, chances are it's because that writer is taking liberties with the facts, typically by making up dialogue or ascribing knowledge of inner thoughts and motivation when he/she has no knowledge of them.) (And if no one minds, I won't mention names. I'm not interested in engaging in a public pissing contest.)

The more often Americans hear about fuckups like Lehrer (and what a shame that, in my mind, that's what he's become), the more likely they are to mistrust all writers of non-fiction. And the more likely they are to disregard substantive history in favor of the fictional stuff.

I can't say I blame them. After all, we know that politicians, to name the obvious example, lie on a regular basis as a way of promoting their cause. So why not journalists, public intellectuals, and historians?

It's no wonder that we Americans "enjoy" a reputation as "anti-intellectual." Why  bother with hard thinking and fact when any ol' made up shit will do?

Yes, I am more than a little pissed off.

UPDATE:  Michael Sacasas just remarked, via Twitter, that the Lehrer episode

could be the subject of a Lehrer-style book of neuro-moral psychology.

Indeed. As I said above, there have been SO many of these episodes that I wonder what's really going on. Surely more than a cavalier disregard for fact. Is this nothing more than the ease with which information is transmitted (and verifiable)? Or is there some weird, contemporary neuroses at work (perhaps connected to the ease with which we can communicate)? Who knows?

_____________

*1: Yes, yes, yes. I KNOW that a work of history reflects the historian's personal biases and interests. That no history can ever be objectively "true" because truth, to a certain extent, is in the eyes of the beholder. The facts that I amass and analyze are ones that I've chosen. And the analysis I arrive at is based on the way I choose to interpret those facts. But the operative word here is FACT. Historians start with FACTS.

Drought, Weather Cycles, and the Historian's View

Today's Washington Post has a short, but juice-laden piece on this summer's weather and its connection (or not) to "climate change" and long-term weather cycles. It's definitely worth reading, if only because so many commentators have jumped to the easy conclusion that this summer's weather is the result of global climate change. (*1) The WaPo piece puts that conclusion-jumping into perspective. I mentioned my view on that in my previous post, but the historian in me (you know: the person who takes the Long View of the Big Picture) would like to add this:

Sure, this summer's weather has consists of broken records: new high temperatures; new streak of days without rain, and so forth.

But it's worth noting the obvious: records can be, and are, broken, right? Back in the 1930s, for example, people marveled at the abysmal stretch of heat/drought/whatever, as records were broken right and left, and they wondered about its causes.

So, too, back in, say, the 17th century: When people experienced "exceptional" weather --- lack of rain; too much rain, etc. --- they looked for causes. At that time, they typically blamed human sin and error for their misery: god was punishing them. In the 21st century, we simply have a different explanation for "unusual weather." (Which, by the way, usually means the bad stuff. No one ever bitches when, as has been the case for the past three, four years, we have spectacular weather.)

Nor does it follow that new records/broken records are necessarily indicative of anything other than "Oh, hey, we're having an unusually brutal summer of a sort not seen since the 1930s" (or whenever).

Is climate change a factor in this summer's weather? Perhaps. Perhaps even probably. But we would do well to recognize that climate and weather operate in long-term cycles.

Indeed, at a time when everyone chatters about "nature" and the "environment," surely one way to honor both is by respecting their complexity, in this case by recognizing that many of nature's patterns are cyclical and that those cycles typically extend for periods that extend well beyond one persons lifetime. This year's awful weather may be more than just this year's awful weather or evidence of "climate change." It could be part of a long-term cyclical shift.

Embracing a deeper understanding of nature is as important as the knee-jerk conclusion that new weather records equal "climate change." Jump to a conclusion, and you may end up missing the bigger, more important story.

______________

*1: Again: I'm not a climate-denier, or whatever term is being used these days. I've no doubt the scientists are on to something. But I'm also a long-time weather watcher with an enormous respect for nature and its forces, which are much bigger than me.

How About A Little History With that Meaty Fresh Air?

Think of this blog entry as part of my never-ending attempt to bring history to the rest of us, and to make use of what I learned about meat history from writing the new book. Last week, Terry Gross, the host of a radio program called Fresh Air, devoted a segment to the current controversies surrounding meat. Her guest was Tom Philpott, a blogger who covers food for Mother Jones. (*1)

I’m delighted Gross devoted a program to meat and glad she interviewed someone other than the Usual Suspect --- it’s a subject that can use some, uh, fresh air. (*2)

Gross and Philpott covered a lot of ground: the dangers of the work; antibiotics in livestock production, Lean Finely Textured Beef (aka Pink Slime), and the use of “poultry litter” as the basis of cattle feed. (I disagree with his assessment of Pink Slime: It’s not “pet food.” See this longish explication.)

Gross asked Philpott about why the meat industry relies on tools like Pink Slime and antibiotic use. (Good question!) Philpott is correct when he explained that PS, antibiotics, and large confinement operations are driven by cost: The food industry does whatever it can to a) give consumers what they want; and b) keep costs low for both consumers and for the company bottom line. (That’s so obvious that it’s easy to overlook: companies are in the business of earning profits for their owners or shareholders. The way to do so is by making stuff people will buy.)

Where Philpott went astray is where I would have expected: in his explanation of the historical background (after all, the guy’s an investigative writer, not a historian).

Philpott dated the effort to contain costs to the 1970s and 1980s. He told Gross that back then, meat was a “luxury.” The meat industry decided that if it could produce meat more cheaply, grocers could sell it at a lower price; people would buy more of it, and corporate profits would rise. (*3)

Not quite.

Since the day the first Europeans got off the boat (early seventeenth century), the People Who Would Be Americans were obsessed with having meat, and lots of it. Entitlement to meat is as much a part of our national DNA as our right to free speech. Foreign visitors have always been astounded by the carnivorous bounty of the American diet. (I’m trying to keep this blog entry to a manageable length, so I’ll skip the details, but I detail the point in the forthcoming book.)

Historically, in the U. S. meat consumption, and especially beef consumption, have been tied to income: When incomes rise, so does meat eating. (That’s one reason, although not the only one, that Americans adopted a more efficient method of making meat back in the 1870s and 1880s.)

The connection between disposable income and meat consumption became apparent during and after World War II, when incomes rose markedly. (War, hot or cold, is good for the bank account.) (*4) At the time, farmers scrambled to meet demand by inventing new ways to organize livestock production. By the late fifties, for example, giant commercial cattle and chicken feeding operations had become common. Large-scale hog feeding was slower to unfold, but well underway by the late 1960s.

Philpott apparently believes that meat was a luxury back in the 1970s because he remembers meat prices being high then. It’s true that meat prices rose significantly in 1973 and 1974 in part because the costs of producing meat went up (thanks to high costs of grain and fuel). Consumers raised hell and the White House imposed price ceilings as a way to appease angry voters.

My point is that Philpott inadvertently confused cause and effect: In the U. S., food producers are under extraordinary pressure to keep food costs low. When they don’t, there is hell to pay: Consumers grouse, and politicians demand answers from food makers. (Early on in the process of writing this book, I lost track of the number of congressional investigations into high meat prices.)

Indeed, Philpott’s analysis ignores the way that consumer demand shapes the food processing industry. Put briefly, during the 1970s and 1980s, changes in demographics and in social and cultural mores altered what, how, and where Americans ate. Food processors had to respond to those changes.

For example (and as Philpott noted), starting in the 1980s, food processors integrated backward to the farm and built their own livestock feeding and breeding operations. He says they did so to control costs. That’s true but there’s more to it than that.

In the late 1970s and into the 1980s, demand for beef  fell off a cliff, pork consumption stagnated, but Americans' intake of poultry soared. Why? Because consumers had become obsessed with the dangers of “fat” and chicken has a lower fat content than beef and pork. (Again, I'm simplifying a point that I detail in the book.) Food processors realized that if they wanted to satisfy consumers, they’d have to create “leaner” beef and pork.

How to do that? By breeding and feeding “leaner” cattle and hogs. But rather than simply hope that farmers would produce those leaner animals, food companies guaranteed the supplies they needed by building and operating their own livestock production facilities (using the large-scale and/of confinement systems that farmers had developed thirty years earlier).

Most critics of the “industrial” food system blame “corporations” for the problems of that food system. (*5) Corporations are an easy target, not least because this single, monolithic scapegoat enables activists with diverse interests to rally around a common enemy.

The downside, however, is that when critics blame a monolithic scapegoat, they miss the complexities of the woes they seek to fix. In this case, when critics blame corporations, it's that much easier to cast consumers as helpless victims of corporate greed. But consumer demand is arguably the most powerful force in American society. Leave that out of a critique and, in my opinion, you’re missing more than half the story.

But -- minor details. (Well, in my opinion, of course, not minor at all, but my perspective is shaped by my work as a historian. Historians live and breathe complexity.)

Take 38 minutes to listen to the interview.

________________________________ *1: Yep, that’s two blog posts in a row with that mention him. Not to worry: It’s just a coincidence.

*2: Based on my own experience, my guess is that she probably aimed for the Usual Suspect first, then a Second Usual Suspect; couldn’t get them, and landed on Philpott. Again, glad she did.)

*3: Philpott also blamed Walmart for the pressure that meat producers face. He explained that Walmart entered the grocery business in the 1990s and now “controls” it. And then said that W. controls somewhere between 18 and 25 percent of the grocery industry. That’s not “control.”

*4: A side note: I was amazed at how much meat Americans ate during World War II. I always thought of that period as being marked by rationing and a certain amount of deprivation. Not in the U. S. Americans were insistent that the government “do something” to make sure that meat was available. That’s one of the most interesting parts of the book because that war-time demand drove the research that led to the use of antibiotics and growth hormones in livestock production.)

*5: There’s a historical reason for that: Today’s activists are the grand-children, metaphorically speaking, of Ralph Nader, the godfather of modern consumer activism. Back in the 1960s, he identified “corporations” as the source of all evil.)

Mapping Travel in the Rome Empire

This is so cool I can hardly stand it. Be still my historian's heart. Yes, you do need to read the bit of instruction. Yes, the tutorial is helpful. Still, this digital map of the Roman Empire and the reality of travel in it is amazing. Do we live in a great age or what??

Making Meat, the Writer's Pitfall, and Online Interaction With Readers

Finally, a good example of the way website/online interaction can inform a writer's work! (*1)

A couple of days ago, I commented on a New York Times op-ed piece about land use and meat supply. You can read my comment here, but what’s relevant is the point I made about farm land: Farmers compete with city folks for land. What’s farmland now may, in ten years, contain houses or office buildings, a shift in land use typically identified as “urban sprawl.”

A person identifying herself as Louisa commented on that blog entry. Here is her comment:

Not quite…it’s not land vs. urban spaces, which are actually pretty efficient, but land vs. SUBurban spaces, with all the sprawl that entails. I live in a small town surrounded by farmland. Every year, more farmland is bought up by developers to turn into another grossly oversized subdivision filled with 4,000 sq ft houses- whose owners then turn around and lobby for nuisance laws that are aimed at, among other things, farm smells and sounds. After moving out into the country because it’s “so picturesque.” So yes, we do need to have the conversation about what kind of agricultural system we want. But we also need to have a conversation about what kind of living space we want, and whether we want to do more to protect farmland from becoming suburban sprawl.

I am grateful that Louisa took the time to read and comment (more grateful than she probably knows!), but as important, her comment reminded me that I need to beware of the writer’s pitfall: Don’t assume readers know what you mean. I’ve spent so many years working on the meat book that I tend to write/think in shorthand and make assumptions about what readers know and don’t know. In this case, I should have been more clear about the relationship between farming methods and urban societies.

First to her comment: She’s correct: The more houses, office buildings, and gas stations we build, the more likely we are to use what was once farmland. As I type this, I’m sitting in a house that is sitting on land that was part of a farm just twenty years ago. So, yes, I’m aware of the “urban sprawl” part of the equation. (And, because I live in Iowa, I’m also aware that, as Louisa points out, when people move to houses like mine, they often complain about rural smells and sounds.) (*2)

But I failed to make a more subtle distinction. Americans have chosen to live “in town” rather than “in the country.” Nearly 80% of us live in “municipalities” of one kind or another. Only two percent of us work as “farmers.” So that two percent has to figure out how to make food as efficiently as possible. If we shut down all the Ames, Iowas, razed the “sprawl,” and forced everyone to move to, say, Manhattan or Brooklyn, we’d still have the same equation: Nearly all of us would rely on a tiny minority to make our food.

But even if the agricultural two percent suddenly had access to farmland once devoted to houses and office buildings, it’s unlikely they would decide to send their cattle, hogs, and chickens out into the “pasture” to range freely.

Why? Because those are labor-intensive forms of agricultural production, and we’d still have just 2% of the population making the food. That’s a primary reason that farmers back in the 1950s embraced confinement as a way to raise livestock: they faced a serious labor shortage. They didn’t have enough “hands” to raise livestock the “old-fashioned” way. If they wanted to keep farming, they had to figure out how to do it without additional labor.

Why was there a labor shortage? Because after World War II, farmers’ sons and daughters decided they wanted to live in town, not on the farm. So --- as those sons and daughters left the farms, they became part of the “urban majority” who relied on farmers to produce food for them. But those farmers, in turn, were left short-handed and in need of ways to make their operations more efficient. (*3)

So when I write about the connection between life in an “urban” society and systems of farming, I need to be more clear about what I mean. City folks are not farmers. They rely on others to grow food for them. In an urban society like ours, most people have CHOSEN not to be food producers. The people who do produce the food are then faced with a quandary: How to make enough food for everyone?

It’s perhaps worth repeating the point I made in that blog entry: When a people choose to live in an urban society rather than an agrarian one, they also enjoy the benefit (luxury) of time for intellectual work. The farming two percent make it possible for the rest of us to sit around and invent iPads and smart phones, blog, write critiques of the food system, or whatever. We can engage in "other" work because we don't spend time growing or preserving food.

Again, the physical form of the urban setting is irrelevant. Sure, if we all moved to Manhattan, we'd free up land for farming. But it's unlikely we'd have more FARMERS. We'd still have 98% of the population living in an urban setting, and two percent making the food.

So. Memo to self: in the manuscript of what is becoming a “real” book, I need to be wary of skipping A so I can get to B.

Again, many thanks to Louisa for her help. __________________ *1: We writers hear this all the time: We can engage with readers! (Yes, of course.) We can use feedback from readers to shape our work! Umm. Okay? Maybe? Not sure. And I've been one of the doubters. But now I "get" how interaction can, in fact, shape my work.

*2: Indeed, that conflict was one of the first ideas that came to me when I decided to write this book. See this blog entry I wrote for Powell’s Books six years ago.

*3: Another point is worth mentioning: Even those “young” people who chose to stay on the farm were no longer willing to work 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. They were even more willing than their fathers and mothers to embrace labor-saving tools and systems of production, including livestock confinement.