Constitutional Puppies - 3

By J.R.

"Umm… better I guess. But it’s still, you know, 364 people dead instead of 365. It’s still bad."

"Can you think of any other recent disasters or anything like that?"

"Well, New Orleans. Obviously. And those other hurricanes. And another natural disaster I read about, I think in Indonesia. And something in Africa. And of course there was a foiled terrorist attack…"

"Roger"

"Yes?"

"Do you really feel any substantive difference—emotionally, anything—between knowing one less person died?"

No point in being evasive.

"No. Not really. I mean it’s better that one less person died."

"What if I had told you, when it was 365 people who died, that if you offered up $500, one person would be saved, bringing the body count down to 364."

Now it was Graber waiting to gauge a reaction.

"I don’t understand."

"$500, and one person survives."

Roger sat there, his eyes devolving into his Simpsons routine.

"I’m sorry, sir."

"Just hypothetically, like a Gedanken experiment. If you sacrificed, offered up, whatever, $500, and one person 'survives.'

Say, they decide not to go on the plane for any millions of different reasons and end up surviving. So now its 364 instead of 365. Would you do it?"

"I don’t have $500, to be honest. Not like spare cash."

"You could charge it on a credit card."

"No, I mean I really don’t, like, have that much money."

"You don’t have $500 to save someone’s life?"

Roger could see through Graber’s amicable mock-outrage, and, smiling, he asked: "Well, could they pay me back after?"

"Nope, sorry. It’s completely anonymous. And if $500 is too rich for your blood, how bout $300. The price on human salvation just went down. $300, and the stranger lives."

"I mean, no—no—because I really don’t have the money. I mean I really don’t… no, I can’t… I’m on student loans."

Roger felt ashamed. He had put too much emphasis on "no," and repeating it probably didn’t help his case. He knew Graber saw right through it.

"Well," Roger began, "actually, I think I would. I would try, try to do something."

"Do something? Roger—"

"Yes?"

"Estimate . . . how many people die, would you say, of, say, preventable diseases or starvation each year? Throughout the world."

"I—"

"How about we throw genocide in there too. Think of disease, accidents, and malnutrition, think of that as a statistic, constituent elements of reasons why people die. Think of all the 'disappeared' people in Latin America; just think of how people deal with in it Iran and North Korea and China. And now add genocide. How much does that statistic increase now? Hundred percent? Two-hundred percent? Fifty percent? Ignore deaths and disappearances. How about just Vitamin A deficiency? How many kids go blind from that. How many South African children does Brat Pitt weep for? Do you know what the effect of Vitamin A deficiency is?"

"I don’t know. I mean, aren’t they all related? I mean, war and famine and disease."

Graber smiled.

"Ahh yes, your classes teach you well. Yes, yes, I am not claiming, say, that poverty and disease are mutually exclusive. Not in the slightest. But, please, admit it if you cannot wrap your head around that figure, or even begin to visualize the mass bulk of bodies that figure covers, how many people die on average per year—and that you really have no idea."

"I don’t. I’m sorry. I never hear that information, but if there is like a statistic on it, I would like to hear it." Even though Roger said "sorry," he didn’t feel ashamed or anything other than surprisingly upbeat; this jousting with Graber was fun, and he felt privileged, since he doubted many students got to talk this intimately with the professor, even if he was there for a paid test sample.

Graber nodded, understanding as he always seems to do.

"It’s no surprise then, Roger, that you should feel reluctant to pay. I mean, when we see advertisements for those Save the Children programs, the starving Christian children—well first of all some of us may object to the exclusive focus on Christian children—but anyways, for the most part, most of our participants, the other students we interviewed…"

(Roger didn’t like to think of the other special kids Graber cherry-picked for this assignment).

"…believe that it’s a scam, or at the very least, all of the money isn’t even going to the children. They joked about how the organizers pick the cutest kids, smear them with dirt, and put them in front of the camera. There is so much tragedy in the world that people become inured to it, make jokes about it, deflect it any way possible."

Roger wondered if this inferred that those Christian charities were, in fact, legitimate, which he secretly doubted.

Roger nodded, enraptured with a lovely feeling—that lovely feeling of professor/pupil convergence. Roger wanted to add something: "It is horrible that so many people die, but yes, one person, it’s natural to be reluctant, with so much tragedy in the world."

He didn’t like how sanctimonious and pretentious that sounded.

Dammit.

Graber answered as if he didn’t notice:

"That tragedy, it reminds me—when I grew up, in Long Island, it…reminds me of the first time I was told that America was mainly a Protestant country. 'America?' 'Are you sure?' I knew about Protestants in America like I knew about penguins in Antarctica—remotely.

"But Roger, if I told you how many people died of a preventable disease, or malnutrition, it would effectively just numb you to it. I am sure you’ve had some familiarity with things like this; an introductory IR course has to cover the problems plaguing the Third World. But those classes, they re-affirm what students know. Sure students acknowledge it, they profess their horror, their moral outrage, then they have a recitation period on it, and then they just compartmentalize it. So that’s Topic One, normally at the end of the class, after things like IR structure.

"Then at the end—you know how it is—you get the lecture on institutional problems in the Third World, debt, starvation, and then the individual, state, system paradigms, then some easily dichotomized left-wing/right-wing approach with maybe some Marxist perspectives thrown in there too. Students then just go on, from disease in the Third Word to, you know, controversy over the UN—it’s always groundwork, problem, opinions.

"But to actually think that each number that makes up this grand total of preventable fatalities is an individual; that autonomous, independent human beings make up this number, it’s impossible to truly fathom. It’s like if I told you that you just lost the chance of winning $50,000, you’d be devastated; but if I told you that you just lost your chance at winning a billion dollars, the information… it’s too cataclysmic to be absorbed."

Roger faintly nodded while responding, "I know. It’s—it’s a real shame. Maybe, maybe instead of focusing on individuals… I mean it would be nice to save as many individuals as possible, but if we focused on systematic solutions, you know, I mean I know you just… I guess sort of, sort of denigrated this approach, but if we focused on either aid or trade or development, on liberalizing, say foreign markets to help foster sustainable… sustainable agricultural development…"

"I know you’re taught to say things like that, Roger. For some reason—I don’t know why—but the word 'foster' always seems inextricably and inexorably linked with discussions of international economics and political science. It’s always 'foster' economic growth. It is never 'forward' or 'advance' or 'cultivate'—well sometimes it’s 'cultivate' when you’re talking about maybe 'cultivating a moral climate' or a climate suitable for business or something like that—but the word 'foster' makes me think of neo-liberal policy wonks writing in Commentary Magazine offering some hackneyed plan to let corporations make more money.

"But, to be fair, the reflexive Left isn’t much better. The Left’s insistence on aid instead of trade is

It finally began to dawn on Roger that this really was extra-curricular; the stultifying political-correctness of the classroom, the diminution of received wisdom on helping the Third World, the fact that the pedantic, condescending piety of most IR was finally being debunked. The conventional wisdom, the dualist policy options—offer aid or trade, liberalize or subsidize—was being treated as so much accumulated detritus.

Graber continued, talking about the ABC approach developed in Uganda to prevent the spread of H.I.V. to a litany of African economists' views on debt and this and that, and Roger's eyes glazed over a bit—he only really appreciated the bit on Bono's Messiah Complex, and exhibit A in the case against allowing Bono to lobby on behalf of anything should be the self-effacing failure of Pop.

Graber apologized for being tangential, but his pace never quickened, and he never seemed overwhelmed. It was as if this information existed independently and was using Graber as its natural conduit. His tone was always convivial and conversational, but still, Roger was beginning to feel worn down.

Roger had almost forgotten how they had arrived upon this conversation thread (it seemed like ages ago) when he remembered that little red clown’s nose sitting on top of that pack of innocuous computer paper.

When Roger’s eyes went astray, Graber’s words redirected them.

"Do you know what I always find amazing, Roger? I find it amazing that Democrats and Republicans can get married, fall in love. It’s just politics, right? But look at what the two disagree over: initiating wars, social services, health care—these things have real consequences. If you feel that Republicans are starting a war in violation of the Constitution, or are wantonly killing civilians in fighting a dishonest war, or vice-versa, or you’re a Republican who thinks Democratic timidity would allow people to be ruled by a despot or that liberal multiculturalism is providing safe haven for Muslim anti-liberals, well, these things actually mean something. Whether or not a war is immoral, or if not having "moral clarity" against Islamic fundamentalism is immoral, well, people’s lives really hinge on these issues; these are issues of life and death. Social services—people suffer because food stamps or welfare is cut. You say Republican tax policy is depriving the middle-classes in favor of the rich, well, that’s less food on the table for a poor family, that’s health insurance a middle-class family can’t afford. You say Democrats capitulate to terrorism? Well, that’s our national security down the drain. But it’s only politics, right? Even though it affects the fate of this nation and, by extension, the fate of the world, it’s only politics, right? It doesn’t matter that your lover holds beliefs antithetical to your own, beliefs we are all so willing to label as cruel or deranged or even criminal when targeting the official standard bearers of these positions, be it Jesse Jackson or Al Gore or Hilary Clinton for Republicans or George Bush or Ann Coulter or Bill O’Reilly or Donald Rumsfeld for Democrats. It’s cognitive dissonance.

"I think the point, Roger, is domestic politics, ideas, have, ironically, become a little bit like the UN—a debate squad for the chattering classes."

Graber leaned in.

"Roger."

"Yes?"

"Remember, when you thought that 365 people died on that plane… and then you found out it was 364?"

Roger got that look on his face, that look where the eyes slant slightly upward, as if he was trying to look into his brain and visualize the numbers.

"There is no difficult math here, Roger. But would you rather think there were 365 people who died instead of 364, and have gotten an additional $500?"

Roger sat there, treating the statement as a non-sequitur, waiting for the link.

"Would you rather believe that 365 people died instead of 364, and have an additional $500? You said that finding out that one less person died made you feel good; would you sacrifice that feeling—well, more accurately, preclude it—to gain $500?"

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