discursive parity

Now that I’m in the thick of teaching my six year old how to read, I look at words - small innocuous ones that we use so often - for how easily they can be mispronounced, anticipating ahead of time how I’ll help him see the word for what it is.

Take a word like act. The “a” could be long or short, pronounced like ached by accident. Or the “c” could be pronounced like an s like ast (a sometimes controversial pronunciation of asked) or assed (as in assed out). It could also be pronounced uh-ct like a German word for something really delicate that sounds offensive to the non speaker. I just made that up. Because I think all German words sound so offensive that they must really be delicate. The “t” could be ignored altogether, making it “ack” - less word, more sound of utter disgust.

And no matter how sophisticated our brains become, I think that on some level learning to read is just a process of training to eliminate the wrong possibilities more quickly. Not only through the context of the letters in the singular word but also the words in the sentence, the sentence in the paragraph, the paragraph in the section, the section in the chapter, the chapter in the book, the book in the genre, the genre in the literary canon, the canon in the history, the history in the language, the language in migration, migration in humanity. Each sound can carry you to a world before time.

Even the most literate of us - we still cycle through the wrong. We go back because that sentence doesn’t make sense if that’s the word. And we acknowledge our mistake but also maybe marvel at the insight we started down the path toward when we had confused the words. For that little while, whether a couple syllables or sentences down, maybe even whole paragraphs. No, it didn’t fit ultimately, that became obvious, but there was a way in which it almost did.

The wrong is never really wrong, not wholly. It too is a factor in the equation of comprehension. It too offers sense. There is a relationship, after all, between act and ached and act and asked. One who acts has ached, whether that be the cause for or consequence of the action. One who acts may have first asked. One who acts is by virtue of action assed out, vulnerable.

We can’t really know a word intimately without reckoning with its relation to those words for which it might be confused.

Several times these past few weeks I’ve read on social media something like: “our solidarity with oppressed people is not dependent on how Gazans would treat us, we still believe Palestine should be free.” And before someone jumps to a programmed thought: it is not islamophobic to note that the treatment and behavioral expectations of women, queer people, non-Muslims, and people of Black African descent in countries governed by contemporary human interpretations of the Quran is not on par with what we, in North America, believe to be right or would be willing to live with (or even visit). I’m not talking about what the countries were like a century ago or what they will be like a century from now. I’m talking about Islamic countries as they are now (and to be clear Islamic and Arab are not interchangeable adjectives as there are Jewish and Christian Arabs - most of whom have been forcibly expelled from their countries of multi-generational origin since the mid-20th century, not to mention the many indigenous belief systems that were wiped out through conversion by force and are at best highly localized syncretisms similar to Voodoo).

Back to the point: I’ve seen a lot of people who know they wouldn’t stand a chance in a peaceful Gaza wish away the dissonance of their advocacy by stating something along the lines of, “My solidarity with oppressed people is not dependent upon how they would treat me. I believe Palestinians should be free regardless.” I should remind readers, Perish the Thought is a newsletter about bad ideas and the necessary space that, even the worst of them, grant us to clear some shit out, enema style. Relax your sphincter, babe. It’s almost in.

Now, reading such statements, I couldn’t help but reflect on the way in which the Left regards working class whites with whom we disagree morally and politically. Given that the same solidarity isn’t extended to them, oppressed as they most certainly are, it seems to me that we can only hold a belief in solidarity-regardless-of-personal-impact (not the impact of expressing the solidarity but the impact of getting what you’re asking for) if we also believe that we are protected from sharing discursive parity with those who oppose us - that’s the relevant difference between working class Trump supporters and Palestinians. That the beliefs of the latter are not propelled into global public discourse by the force of and made palpable by American identity.

People who cannot extend solidarity to working class neighbors would only advocate for another moral opponent who would kill us (perhaps not literally but we def would be kissing goodbye to our bare skinned queer gender equality public involvement life) to be free to do so, which is to say to have not just sovereignty as a nation state but the ability to assert geopolitical influence which is a function of modern national sovereignty, if it’s a given that they’ll never actually have such freedom. The American Left doesn’t want Palestine to be free free, otherwise we’d engage all oppressed people with whom we disagree with the same fervor and willingness to forgive regardless of discursive parity. We want freedom with an asterisk that, down below, reads: as long as there’s American hegemony

Some people are going to read this as anti. You know my heart or you don’t. You’ve read my body of work or you haven’t. This is pro-non-memeable-arguments-with-logic-that-doesn’t-undermine-itself.

My stance for those wondering: I’m hardly neutral. I just don’t see desiring that one side kills better than the other or is allowed more shots at doing so as non-neutrality. Someone absolutely has to be the first to stop. Arguing over who is more wrong for not stopping first seems to me a waste of breath.

This too shall pass. Whenever we need it to. Right now, though, it seems by and large we need to be needed more.

Impossible things happen all the time. Each of us is an impossible thing. The amount of space we’re able to hold for the impossibility of an outcome in which the needs of Jews and Israelis and Palestinians and Gazans and Arabs and Persians and Turks and everybody else in the region are met is the same amount of space we’re willing to hold for the meeting of our own impossible needs. When will I stop bombing myself? I’m working on it

Anyway, let’s say the outcome is a free Palestinian sovereign nation state with the geopolitical influence such status potentializes. I recognize that DISCURSIVE PARITY between members of various sovereign nation states, including the US and a hypothetical Palestine, would incur a level of multi-sided dialogue about morality that could change the way I live my leggy life if the side with the religious and cultural reality with which I’m least familiar were to grow in geopolitical influence (which they should have the freedom to do without incursion from the west if we truly want them to be sovereign). Are you ready for that?

But before we can consider such freedom dreams, I encourage you to review your social media history - how have you spoken about those who disagree with you morally and politically in the past eight years? How have you talked about those who disagree with on this very topic in the past month? How many of your opponents have you actually talked to and not just about, asked genuine questions to, approached as equals and not potential converts, with curiosity and the understanding that you need them just as much as they need you? Do you listen to those who believe that something about you is wrong or do you recoil at the first sign that they might? Do you even allow yourself to know people who believe that something about you is wrong?

How we feel about those with whom we share discursive parity but vary in moral and political perspective is how we actually feel about Palestinian freedom.

When we read, we have to be just as aware of what is not there as we are of what is.