Like many, I've been reflecting on the South Carolina county sheriff who refused the president's request to fly the American flag at half-staff to honor the passing of Nelson Mandela.
In a reclisted diary, SemDem offers a reasonable speculation on a possible reason--aside from racism, childish intransigence or general dickishness--for the sheriff's anti-proclamation-proclamation: he's angling to run for higher office, and will be seeking the votes of people who approve of racism, childish intransigence and general dickishness.
Ruminating on that possibility led me to an insight the sheriff and the fine citizens he may be courting would have a hard time swallowing.
The many strange seasons of my life have included a number of gigs in the music production trade. In the mid-1990s, I worked with a number of hip-hop artists of diverse styles and approaches. Some were poets of the Druidic powers, some champions of the right to party, some literal thugs and gangsters and some who really weren't any of those things, but did a decent job pretending to be in the quest for money, a skill also meriting respect.
While I tended to shy away from the hardcore thugs, keeping the lights on in a commercial recording studio sometimes necessitated taking clients one might normally pass by, and I got to know a good number of thugs and wannabe thugs in that time.
I understood, to the extent someone from a very different world could, the reasons why these guys (almost exclusively guys) embraced that life and persona. They lived in tough places, usually the projects or the neighborhoods not far from them. Their economic prospects were often pretty dim. And they were surrounded by guys even tougher. "Stand your ground," in their world, was a lot more serious than for Walter Mitty warriors like whatshisname in Florida.
This led to a pretty darn tough mindset and culture, where every action was weighed on the scales of dominance, disrespect and challenge, and any beef could escalate damn fast into something far from minor. It reminded me of the constant vigilance you see sometimes in combat veterans, which these young men, with reason, considered themselves.
Added to that state of being always on the lookout for offense or threat was a damned near absolute xenophobia. Nobody not from your ward, your project, hell, even your building, was considered trustworthy. Deal with them if you had to, but never let your guard down, because they were all out to get you.
A worldview, as I said, far from my own, but which I came to understand made sense, because it worked. It was shared by nearly everyone these young men dealt with day-to-day. Everyone knew the rules, and those who didn't weren't going to get along.
Thinking today about that sheriff, about the constituents he might be trying to impress, reminded me of those days and those guys. A closed society where everyone knows what's true and everyone unlike them is immediately suspect, where belligerence might be required at any moment and the lack thereof holds a real danger, where cred is the currency and loss of face means loss of power. A world where it's just simpler to be the biggest thug in the courtyard.
Knowing the views of Tea Party types on people of color, on the (urban) poor, on those disadvantaged by circumstance to the point where public assistance is sometimes required, I wonder what they would think if they knew how very similar to those young men they sometimes seem.