Disposability as a Politic

I think it’s really interesting how popularity works. Not just in social situations, which are already confounding to me, but also in a political and in a representative sense within media, whether that be TV or news or even just dialectic between people on the street. The speed and frequency at which things hit us every day almost make it impossible to identify the thing I’m trying to address through this writing unless somebody is either not paying enough attention to other things or sacrificing time to think about how quickly things leave the public stream of consciousness. I think that this is attributable to the nature of government-based politics that arises out of societies such as the ones we occupy in the modern world that involve formalized structures of “national” authority which at times can take a very dark turn. These types of systems, in my mind, are uniquely predisposed to an understanding of life contained within it as “throw-away,” where life itself becomes a number in a collection of data, or a pawn on the political battlefield, for example.

Looking at the way our news cycles and political systems operate, it is very apparent that our society’s cycling of people’s worth is hiding within the construct of public interest. Obviously this is already super clear in a lot of ways for many minorities in America, for example, who only really get a chance to see themselves represented in the public eye when something tragic or problematic happens. I think on an international scale, this is pretty apparent in the way that Yemen and Palestine have been vastly ignored in recent years when atrocity has struck the people who live there, if nothing else because their interests don’t align with the powers that be in a way that is beneficial. However, if people from either place were to engage in conduct detrimental to one of the global popular kids, stories would be plastered all over the front page crying out for empathetic identification. Likewise on a local scale, communities ravaged by injustice from power structures (i.e. the police or immigration) don’t see their stories represented in a national cry for help the way that political gurus calling those people dangerous do. That part is more obvious- the people from those communities already know about these occurrences and are pretty convinced I’m trying to make in this writing. What I’m trying to point out here is that nobody is safe, and that there really shouldn’t be a desire to feel like one is safe atop any sort of pedestal because of the social position they occupy.

John McCain is a super great example of this- the man was just diagnosed with brain cancer this summer. Let me know who was not out there connecting his health situation to the man’s political decision-making shortly thereafter, and I will give them a proverbial brownie point even though it’s not applaudable to give a crap about a person’s humanity. Finding somebody in that boat will be kind of hard precisely because of the point I’m trying to make here- our political system and media treat all persons as a tool to hit ratings in the news cycle or to make a play for their ideology. The man was only relevant in the news when he came back to Congress for his healthcare vote, and then again a couple more times, most recently when he made a statement about Arpaio’s pardoning. I’m not saying that the news would be the news if it did anything different, but I’m trying to point out that because the news is this way and the political system uses the media in this way, that everybody all the way up to the actual butts in the seats in office are nothing more than objects for the system.

And disposability doesn’t just have to be in relation to the actual people represented within the system and media themselves, but also those who are erased from impact discussions stemming from certain political representations. I was talking about Arpaio’s pardoning before, and I think this is something worth a little bit more expansion here. I’m not entirely sure I could give less of a crap about what happens to this Arpaio man because of the evils that he has preached and practiced upon the people he’s unfortunately been able to effect, so let’s think about the other people in this story for a second (although the disposability is real with him too). Trump decided to pardon this man that was found to ACTUALLY BE IN VIOLATION OF A LAW and was thrown in prison. Say what you want about whether or not the system was created to actually punish wrongdoers, but this man did bad stuff to people and got recognized for it in court. BUT the President of the United Hates decided that it would be cool to score some with his constituents by using his platform to forgive the dude because I guess dehumanizing Latinx and other immigrants under your purview is just an inevitable consequence of doing your job or whatever. Aside from the absolute crapshoot this was on that level, notice how easy it was for the system to tool this man and bring him back from what could’ve been the metaphorical grave- now he’s relevant again because the President thought it would be cool if he was. Furthermore, there isn’t an articulation from that same political system today of any narratives pertaining to the people Arpaio’s offenses against humanity, and there likely won’t be any coming up soon because at the end of the day, THOSE PEOPLE DON’T MATTER. Those people already know what their perceived value in America is, and they know that the media is happy to interview them and make one of them famous for a week once in a while so that they can help their friends get votes, and that’s the point. Systemically, those relegated to the margins are tools for scoring brownie points, and those currently not there yet are just waiting to be used so that the temporary powers that be can do the same.

But I guess the question then becomes “why does this matter?” At the end of the day, understanding your inherent social disposability doesn’t really do much then bum people out, and that’s a totally fair point. However, the larger concept clarified by understanding this is that we can’t trust structural powers to remember us. I remember sitting in a room in Texas hearing an announcement back when officers in Arizona had initially begun pulling people over just to check their papers, and I was terrified. There was a fear sitting in many communities then because there were people saying that Arizona was putting people in jail just under suspicion of being illegal and it sounded like if it could happen there it was totally possible that such a policy could spread elsewhere. But the political officials don’t talk about that American past. The news doesn’t cover that part of minority history. Yet, we remember because we were there. And because we remember we’ll tell the people who come after us that weren’t. So we know they won’t remember for us- but we can’t forget either. Part of oppression in America has always been a lack of chronicle- aside from major events that led to laws or wars, many accounts have been lost in the winds of supposed progress. Many of these stories have remained behind within the stories and journals of those that lived them, and that’s the takeaway here. We can’t afford to forget because there isn’t one to remember for us. Our efforts have to include our memories just as much as they include our hearts. I essentially am just asking us as people fighting to be remembered to ensure that we come together to maintain communal memory, that we ask those around us to make us listen to where they come from, and reciprocally expect the same from them. This is not a courtesy- it is a question of recognizing humanity and the legacy of struggle that so many have gone through, so let us give the issue the magnitude it deserves and work around the way that the politics of the government and media have render us all tools in the proverbial toolbox.