David Hogg and his sister (three years younger) Lauren
Hogg have authored a minimalist book #NeverAgain:
A New Generation Draws the Line, from Random House, which arrived by
Amazon (inexpensive) on time yesterday.
Let me preface the review by saying I visited South
Florida myself in November and spent some time in Wilton Manor, about 20 miles
from the site of the Parkland shootings. Much more recently, I was in the
Houston area, and was about 25 miles (in Sugarland) from the Santa Fe shooting
incident.
The book, organized into seven chapters, 165 small
pages (including an appendix listing the victims of other school shootings)
starts with a detailed account of Valentine's Day, 2018, at Marjory Stoneman
Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida (Broward County). David and Lauren give their own separate
accounts.
David then gives his own autobiography. I was surprised (given his confident public
demeanor starting in his high school years) was dyslexic and, by his account,
didn't learn to read text until fourth grade. He talks about special education
classes (recalling my own days in the 2000's as a substitute teacher in
northern Virginia). I also hadn't
realized his life started in the Los Angeles area, and that his father (in the
FBI) was present when a TSA agent was killed at LAX airport. He refers to the
Christmas decorations in his boyhood neighborhood as creating a 'Cindy Cane'
lane. It's interesting and true that many homes in southern California skimp on
central heat, and baseboard systems are common
When his dad transferred to Florida, David's life
seemed to take off. He became engaged in
causes, and suddenly transformed himself into a consistent AP-course
student. Biologically, this makes
sense: some boys' learning skills
enhance when they approach and hit puberty; testosterone actually helps (this
gets into Leonard Sax's 'Why Gender Matters'), even
though in verbal and reading skills girls usually outperform boys, especially
before puberty.
David taught himself video, and
developed a certain compassion and willingness to intervene in troublesome
incidents, as with one involving a surfer in California (on a trip back),
apparently the summer before his senior year.
He also had made some interesting short film on travel.
Lauren offers another biographical chapter, 4, called
'Aftermath', dealing with the way students were counseled and handled after the
shootings.
The book then moves on to the organizing of marches
(especially March 24 in Washington, when David gave his infamous speech) and
the evolution of a 'Parkland Manifesto'. As we know, 'manifesto' has gotten to
be a bad word: my first DADT book was
called that.
The policy proposals as regarding gun control in the
book are reasonable: they mostly comprise closing loopholes, and it's hard to
see legitimate objection to them.
(Remember Piers Morgan covering the issue on CNN.)
My own concern would be, however, that moderation may
not stop the school shootings or attacks on other soft targets. Many of these attacks have come from weapons
that had been legally purchased (although not always stored and locked properly
by owners or parents). The shear volume of weapons in
the US makes protecting the public difficult.
There has been partial success with gun control in Europe, the UK, and
particularly Australia, with the buyback - but Australia has a smaller
population.
Furthermore, the risk to different peoples is
asymmetric - which brings us back to considering Nicholas Taleb's
ideas in 'Skin in the Game'.
Families and especially young men taunted by gangs in inner cities are
obviously at the highest risk, and have been so for
years. In Chicago, this was particularly embarrassing for former President
Obama. (I recall how it was in the 1950s and 1960s, leading to the 1968 riots,
but that is another matter.) In more
recent times, the 'fat tail risk' (as Taleb calls it)
for a 'Black Swan' incident has spread to more affluent and previous sheltered
populations, and that can include students in higher income schools. This sounds a little mean to say, but at a
moral sense, the risk reminds me of what young men faced during the era of the
Vietnam draft - with many sheltered by student deferments. Privilege, and the building resentment for
it, matters.
Furthermore, organized terrorism, often foreign,
changes the risk assessment for weapons ownership. In the UK and especially Europe (France, Belgium and Germany), the relative 'disarmament' of citizens
may have made them more vulnerable to incidents like 11/13 in Paris. (This
sounds like the NRA's 'good guy with a gun' argument, which in this perspective
gets some perspective, with me at least.)
Likewise, organized terror, in the last two decades motivated in part by
radical Islam, had led to some catastrophic incidents, most of all Pulse, a gay
bar in Orlando, in 2016. It is
conceivable that white supremacy (from the extreme right), or North Korean
interests (from the extreme Left) can present these kinds of risks from
domestic and foreign enemies.
Another factor feeding the risk of unpredictable
violence is inequality. Not so much just the usual arguments about workers and
capitalism, but the hyperindividualism that leaves a lot of people out, and
wondering if there is anyway to fit in. This may be mixed with issues of previous
bullying, or even the incel problem, in the Florida
and Texas incidents especially. Law enforcement and the court systems and
attorneys have said very little about the motives of the defendants to date.
But inequality, hyperindividualism, and the ungated
speech on the Internet, especially large scale social
media (with cyberbullying), may feed some of these incidents in unpredictable
'fat tail' ways, which makes the 'skin in the game' idea so disturbing.
Regulating amateur speech could (arguably) become as effective in curbing gun
violence as gun control itself. That
observation may relate to recent crackdowns by social media and hosting
platforms on weapons-related content, for example (as well as white supremacist
speech). Regulation of individual speech
could, however, enable some kinds of group activism by forcing individuals to
join groups to be heard - and that observation also bears on polarization and
tribalism. So
the speech issues cut both ways in David Hogg's success in organizing his
movement.
In both First and Second Amendment settings, we have
seen (post 9/11) an erosion of the libertarian concept that blame for criminal
acts goes completely to the actor. People now sound offended by saying �guns
don�t kill people, gunmen do.� What happens if you apply this paradigm to words
themselves?
Hogg has also stressed participation in voting. On one level, he has gone after campaign
contributions from gun lobbies (hence 'the NRA's worst nightmare'). Going after lobbies would seem to be good for
individualized or grass-roots speech (previous paragraphs). But a logical extension of his ideas would be
to encourage more people to volunteer in registering minority voters and to
support political campaigns for the 'politically correct' (for Hogg,
democratic) candidates. Another idea is
to encourage more people who are normally loners and work as journalists and
bloggers to run for office and get real people in life to support them (Taleb and 'skin' and 'do not talk' again). If Hogg puts off college for a year, will he
run for some sort of office in Broward County?
(That puts is off for more than a year.)
David Hogg has emerged as a truly charismatic figure,
with unbelievable energy (added to quick wit, charisma, and articulation) of
youth ('The Young People will win.') He
easily pushed back right-wing claims that he was a hired crisis actor, but he
does have a Hollywood-like personality.
Imagine him playing himself in a Marvel Studios movie. The young people will prevail - but no one
stays young forever - sorry, Oscar Wilde.
Another joke: if the Constitution allowed years lived in past lives
(reincarnations) to count toward the age requirement, Hogg could run for
president now. I do like his paradoxical statement on turning white privilege
around.
We can disagree with some of his occasional outlandish
statements (like the end of net neutrality would be manipulated by big business
to deny blacks voting rights - why would companies try to do this? Look at their sensitivity to
Charlottesville.) I am not a parent,
but had I been, I'd be proud to have the authors of this book as my own kids or
grandkids. I'd have to earn that
'right'. We should learn we can 'love' and disagree at the same time. Isn't that part of the message of the group
'Better Angels'?
Hogg says that proceeds for the book will go to his
causes. He will still need to 'pay for'
college when he goes. Kudos also for his mention of the idea of seeing 'people
as people' on p. 54; an idea that came up in a negative way during my own
'therapy' during my own dark days when coming of age, documented elsewhere.
A documentary movie for all the film festivals (maybe
starting with SXSW in Texas) soon sounds inevitable. I would probably
contribute to it.
Let me add, I do not intend to resume substitute
teaching personally. When I did work
(2004-2007) there were no drills and little concern (in northern Virginia) but I did have issues with discipline with a small
minority of disruptive students, mostly disadvantaged or disabled. I simply am not personally prepared to defend
people from a military assault. A few
jurisdictions (like in Ohio and Texas) already have some armed teachers - it's
'voluntary', without extra pay (in Ohio at least), but it puts the other
teachers on the spot. I will personally
have no part of it. Skin in the game?
The title of the book has drawn some controversy since
the hashtag applies to the 'real' Holocaust.
publication date 2018/6/19
ISBN 978-1-9848-0183-8
Publication: Random
House, 165 pages, small, with appendix, 7 chapters; e-book also