There’s a debate going right now about whether images and rhetoric that are extreme and potentially violent in nature can be responsible for actions taken by the people who view them. Obviously, the recent tragedy in Tuscon, Arizona is what sparked this debate, but it’s nothing new. Some people who are against people having legal access to abortions have painted the physicians who perform them as evil murderers and other people who have heard that message and internalized it have murdered abortion doctors. It’s happened more than once. If you’ve studied semiotics, you understand that at a minimum symbols and signs have power. Almost everything is a sign, both words and symbols, that is they mean something, often different things to different groups of people depending on how they’re framed or used. Dean Rader, in the San Francisco Chronicle, had an interesting piece applying semiotics to the events prior to, and leading up to, the Tuscon incident and assassination attempt in Palin, Crosshairs, and Semiotics: The Signs of the Times.
I bring this up because anti-alcohol and neo-prohibitionist groups have been painting alcohol as a great sin and inherently evil literally for decades. That includes both harmful propaganda and rhetoric along with graphic symbols, such as the banner used by one group showing a bottle of beer as a syringe, attempting to equate beer with heroin. The result of that, I believe, is that the average person does believe that drinking is a “sin” and that people cannot be trusted not to abuse it so therefore it must be highly regulated, taxed, demonized and marginalized. The other thing that such an incessant parade of propaganda might cause is the incident that occurred near Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Friday afternoon.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinnel, an unidentified 32-year old man with a metal pipe several feet long and two inches in diameter walked up to a beer delivery truck making its rounds at Mid-Town Groceries and ordered him to stop delivering the beer. When the deliveryman continued doing his job, our wingnut began smashing the beer, and spent about thirty minutes destroying roughly $2,000 worth of beer — possibly Milwaukee’s Best. While he took pipe to beer can — and the intrepid deliveryman tried to get him to stop without getting beaned with a big metal pipe — he ranted about the evils of alcohol, and “scolded the deliverymen for bringing what he called ‘poison’ into his neighborhood.”
That’s the same tactic Carry Nation employed, smashing up bars — private property — with a hatchet just because she didn’t like what they were doing. It’s something she was celebrated for, but it’s still vandalism and without trying to sound overly dramatic, terrorism. My OED defines terrorism as “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims” and Merriam-Webster calls it “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.” Whether wielding a hatchet or a lead pipe, it’s using violence to promote your ideas and get your way.
Where did the Milwaukee man get the idea that beer is “poison” and it was acceptable behavior to smash someone else’s property? To me, that’s a great question we’ll probably never know the answer to, because this story’s not quite big enough news that we’ll likely see a follow-up report. Did these ideas infect him through years of neo-prohibitionist propaganda? Through the subtler, but no less effective, way in which so many take it for granted, thanks to our policies and laws, that drinking is “sinful” and that demonizing it only appropriate? With anti-alcohol propaganda so pervasive it seems quite unlikely to me that he came to this notion on his own. I take it for granted that he is indeed a lone wingnut and no neo-prohibitionist group will claim him as one of their own. But it makes you wonder. Rhetoric and symbols are powerful weapons that can influence just about anything, so why not a violent hatred for alcohol and the people who deliver it?
This is a tough question, because in a lot of neighborhoods, alcohol is a very real and legitimate scourge. Particularly in African-American communities, extensive sociological research has proven that quality of life, particularly personal health, is significantly lowered due uniquely to alcohol consumption. Liquor outlets are present in increased quantities, and public consumption is less of a concern for police. In these neighborhoods, alcohol, especially high ABV beverages such as malt liquor (called ‘liquid crack’ colloquially), is a true demon.
The average craft beer drinking is wealthier and more educated than the most disadvantaged and impoverished members of society. So there is a necessary balance to be found between beer as a demon destroying communities and as a delicious, artisan craft that brings joy to many.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that there is certainly a need for government regulation of this addictive, dangerous beverage. The government is there to protect people who are being continuously screwed over by just about everyone. And while picking up a beer and drinking it is technically a choice, we’ve all had bad days where we just have to have a couple beers. Imagine if every day is a bad day, and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. Alcohol is a depressant. Once you stop, there certainly won’t be a light at the end of the tunnel until you’re totally fried.
Just some food (or beverage) for thought. In my opinion, the real solution is to target regulation, so that craft beers are excepted from debilitating bureaucracy, but I’m sure AB-Inbev would be able to find a way around that.
Jim,
I appreciate your thoughtful comment. In those neighborhoods you mention, I believe that it’s poverty and a real lack of opportunity, education, etc. that is the real scourge. Alcohol is not the cause of the problems, but something people turn to out of desperation, a short-term solution or way to forget temporarily. I agree that some people do indeed abuse it as a result of whatever personal challenges they’re facing, but I do not believe that regulation is an effective way to balance anything, because it punishes both people who abuse it and those who do not. Demonizing anything should never happen just because a small percentage of the population has trouble with them. I mean no disrespect, but saying so in a sense proves my point that as a society we’ve internalized the very idea that it’s appropriate to demonize alcohol, when in fact that’s utter nonsense. Those communities that are being destroyed, are not being destroyed by alcohol, but simply alcohol is a visible and convenient scapegoat that allows us to focus on them and avoid the true reasons those neighborhoods are falling to ruin.
Alcohol may be a depressant but it also has many positive health benefits, not least of which is that people who drink moderately have been shown to live longer than people who either abstain or binge drink. Not everyone who has a drink can’t stop, beer is not addictive for a majority of people. There is perhaps a minority of persons for whom genetics play a role, but even that has been called into question recently by studies that have shown it may be more psychologically driven than previously thought. While that remains controversial, I believe it’s more than “technically” a choice, but actually a real choice. I’ve had plenty of bad days without becoming addicted to anything, including alcohol.
Thanks, Jay, and well said. I wonder if cigarette fans, and those who enjoy other legal “sins”, have undergone any strong attacks. The Milwaukee beerserker shows the problem clearly, but I wonder how frequently such attacks, of any degree, on beverage alcohol occur. I’m 60 and I read, and I can’t remember any.
Here’s my view about the safety of beer and its cousins in the United States: The United States Congress needs drink. Those people understand. We’re OK. For a time.
My take is that the Milwaukee perp was a random & misbeguided idiot looking for his proverbial 15 minutes of fame – the act was akin to, but far less tragic than the Tucson idiot’s gun barrage.