Slander

Definition of SLANDER

: to utter slander against : defame

“Slander is oral defamation of character. Defamation is a civil offense that occurs when one party makes false and malicious statements about another to a third party. Many jurisdictions have slander laws allow the harmed party to that address this type of behavior and recover damages.”

“Nugent is certain to raise eyebrows by calling Trayvon Martin a "17-year-old dope smoking, racist gangsta wannabe." Nugent placed the blame for the shooting squarely on Trayvon Martin.”

Nugent’s vicious, untrue, unconscionable, and completely stupid remark is actually quite mild when compared to many of the other things that have been said about Trayvon Martin. I do not want to repeat any of them but they run the gamut from gang banger to pimp, to doper, to street fighter, burglar, and I don’t know what all else.

I don’t know anything much about slander and such but apparently slander laws don’t necessarily apply to public figures. Thus any idiot can say anything about the President, exercising his/her right to free speech, and nothing can be done about it. So we find right wingers and even others calling President Obama incompetent, a socialist, communist, fascist, Kenyan, racist, and so on ad infinitum.

Trayvon Martin was/is not a public figure, merely an ordinary teenage citizen of the U.S. There seems to be no doubt he has been terrible wronged and defamed. I have seen nothing about any potential lawsuits regarding slander. If no such suits occur I guess we can conclude that these days anyone’s character can be unfairly, untruthfully, and unconscionably defamed at will, even if it influenced a jury trial and a legal judgement. Or is it the case that slander doesn’t apply when a Black person is the target? You might have noticed that little was said about Zimmerman’s somewhat shady record while so many were eager to accuse Martin of whatever came to mind. There is no doubt in my mind that Martin was racially profiled, not only by Zimmerman, but also by the jury, and, in fact, by the public at large.

The idiotic Stand Your Ground law seems to apply only to Whites. It certainly wasn’t applied in the Trayvon Martin case for him as it was for Zimmerman. I wonder, does it apply to Black people at all? Why doesn’t someone start a foundation dedicated to raising funds so that all Black people can be armed to protect themselves from obvious racial discrimination and attacks? The NRA seems to be remarkably silent on this question, puzzling as it would certainly provide even more profits for the gun industry. Indeed, if they could only figure out how to get us to kill each other more and more often their profits would soar. Why not launch a slogan like “Buy a Black a Beretta,”  or “A Bersa for every Black man and woman.” “A Browning for every Brown,” or better yet, “A handgun for every hand.” Maybe something real cute like “A Machine Gun for Every Matron.” The marketing possibilities are endless, the NRA has barely touched the surface.

Money talks, corrupt Congresspersons listen and count their loot. The farce continues. Just think of it, the more people die from handguns (and other guns) the more profit is made. This is true not only here at home and on the streets of our cities but all around the world. More killing, more wars, it’s a beautiful life.

 Violence is a tool of the ignorant.

Flip Wilson 

A Most Terrible Irony

You might remember one or another of the idiot Republicans (usually a Southerner) saying at one time or another that Black people were better off under slavery, a claim that is, of course, completely absurd, but is consistent with the notorious Republican apparent lack of human compassion (to say nothing of their obsessive inability to tell the truth about anything).

Paradoxically, I should probably say perversely, and certainly ironically, there is perhaps a bit of bitter truth in such a mindless claim. When young Black men (any Black person, for that matter) were slaves they actually had value. They were property, commodities, they could be bought and sold for money, the price presumably based on what the market at any given time could bear. Their labor, and even their virility could be, and was, exploited. It appears that at the present time young Black men have no value whatsoever, and can be killed virtually at will because of laws that extend that privilege primarily to White gun owners. As all people everywhere have always had the right of self-defense there really is no necessity for Stand Your Ground laws, laws that as they are currently used seem to be more like “License to Kill Young Black Men,” than anything else. Unarmed young Black males have been killed fairly routinely in the United States, especially since such laws were enacted in Florida and elsewhere. The chances are very great that a White person who shoots a unarmed Black man will be exonerated.

Black males in the United States have little or no value. A great many of them are in prison, a great many more are unemployed, and those who are employed most probably do not make a great deal of money, and not only that, Black families in general have very little in the way of savings or other assets. Similarly, as a group they tend not to be very well educated. This means they are not a fertile ground for the exploitation of credit card debt, a functional equivalent for slavery. So, between education, prison, unemployment, low wage jobs, last hired, first fired, in a system that demands and exploits cheap and plentiful labor, they are virtually without value. If you don’t own one, and don’t need one, there is small or no loss involved when one or more are “disappeared,” either in prison, unemployed, or worse. I have no doubt there is a causal and intimate link between all of these conditions.       

There is a similar kind of irony that might be seen in Defense Attorny O’Meara’s idiotic claim that had Zimmerman been Black he might not have been arrested or charged for killing Trayvon Martin. Given the obscene numbers of Black men in prison it would seem we have little trouble in charging them with crimes, so how could O’Meara make such a claim? It only makes sense when you understand that what he must have had in mind is the idea that Black on Black crime is as inconsequential as the death of an innocent, unarmed teenager, that Black on Black murders are nothing much to be concerned about. I don’t know, but I suspect that in some quarters, this may be the rule in some cases.

We have a situation in which business demands a large and surplus labor pool, one in which Black people are low on the priority list, constitute a potential  cost to society because of their circumstances, and are therefore at risk. Whereas we could have spent money on their education and health care we have chosen to spend it on prisons, more and more private prisons that can exploit the plight of Blacks for profit (just as we now also exploit our college populations for profit).  It’s a truly vicious system based on short-term profits, exploitation, greed, short-sightedness, and the law of the jungle. We call it free-market capitalism (rather than something more apt, like “Idiot’s Delight”).

 “I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.” 

Eugene Victor Debs

Depravity

The crime of Second Degree Murder (in Florida) occurs when a person commits either:

·         Murder with a Depraved Mind or

·         Accomplice Felony Murder

Well, after all these weeks Zimmerman is found to be not guilty of Second Degree Murder or even Manslaughter. Personally, I think this verdict is an absolute outrage. Granted that proving someone has a depraved mind can be difficult, but manslaughter in this case was virtually admitted. I do not understand how a jury of six women could have come up with such an absurd conclusion. Indeed, I am almost in shock.

Set aside for the moment that when an adult male stalks, confronts, shoots, and kills an innocent, unarmed teenager, and shows no remorse whatsoever, that might in and of itself be evidence of a depraved mind. 

Set aside for the moment that the death of an innocent, unarmed Black teenager in Florida was not regarded as important enough even for an investigation, and only occurred 44 days later as a result of public pressure, that might rightly be considered an example of cultural depravity.  

I don’t believe a word of Zimmerman’s claim. It is true he had the right to carry a concealed weapon, but as a watchman he was not supposed to be carrying a gun. He was specifically told not to follow Trayvon Martin but disobeyed that order. He repeatedly lied, most importantly about his claimed ignorance of the Stand Your Ground law. He also had a history of domestic violence as well as a history of other misbehavior, but it was Trayvon’s character they systematically tried to destroy.  Zimmerman’s story was full of inconsistencies, exaggerations, and probably outright lies. We are supposed to believe that a 17 year-old boy turned on and deliberately attacked a larger (White) man who was following him, a man who could have been (and was) armed, and could, in fact, even have been a policeman. This makes no sense to me. Zimmerman’s claim of self defense because he was in imminent danger of his life seems to be based only on the fact that he could not overcome the teen. And we are supposed to believe that this man who wanted to be policeman, worked out regularly in the gym, took lessons in self-defense, as well as shooting lessons, outweighed Trayvon by probably forty pounds, was reduced to crying out for help in the face of a non-lethal confrontation. This strikes me as nonsensical, if not perhaps an example of outright cowardice.

There is no doubt that Trayvon Martin was stereotyped, was considered guilty, or potentially guilty of criminal behavior for no reason other than being a young Black male. He was, beyond any doubt, racially profiled as one of “them,” who are “effing punks,” “a……s, who “always get away.” He had done NOTHING whatsoever to be so stigmatized. He was innocently walking home with tea and skittles, hardly dangerous weapons. Whatever happened to the tea and skittles, did he carefully place them on the ground when he decided to attack this larger stranger who was following him? Did he throw them away when accosted? Apparently no one cared enough to even consider what happened to them (just as they initially didn’t care enough to even investigate the boy’s murder). It was also shown to be virtually impossible for Trayvon to have seen or attempted to actually get hold of the pistol that was in a concealed holster inside Zimmerman’s pants and under his shirt. And why was Zimmerman’s 9mm pistol holstered on his right side back on his hip when he is apparently left-handed? Maybe there was an answer to this question, maybe Zimmerman is ambidextrous, but as far as I know it wasn’t even considered. It appears to me that the murder of an innocent, unarmed, Black teenager was (as usual) considered inconsequential, something to get over with as easy and quickly as possible. After all, unarmed young Black males are fairly routinely shot and killed here in the good ol’ U.S.A. I think Trayvon Martin was racially profiled, not only by Zimmerman, but also by the jury (even though they could have been completely unaware of what they were doing).       

  “Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored — it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on.” 
― Pearl S. Buck

The Sky IS Falling

Perhaps you all remember the story of Chicken Little and how, because an acorn fell on her head, she feared the sky was falling, but of course it was not. Well, I fear we have a situation where, at least from the point of view of White male Western-Europeans, the sky truly is falling. I am considering once again,  the increasingly obvious failure of the dominant paradigm of Western-European thought, the paradigm that has been held for at least five hundred years and contains within it the myths of White, Western-European male superiority, as well as the superiority of Western-European culture. I speak of these beliefs as myths because that is what they basically were, although from the first appearance of Portuguese caravels along the African coast, through the horrors of European colonialism, the continued exploitation of the third world, the recent “wars” that still continue it, and the dominance of the West until the present time they have appeared to be facts. That is no longer so.

The American “empire” will be the last of the colonial empires. It is increasingly clear in the Middle East and in Central and South America that Arabs, as well as our “Little Brown Brothers” are no longer going to accept Western hegemony. India, Japan, and China either have or soon will surpass the U.S. in science, technology, mathematics, physics, as well as production. We are rapidly falling farther and farther behind in everything except perhaps military power and nuclear bombs, both being exposed as pretty much useless capabilities, as nuclear bombs cannot be used and our military might can’t even defeat a group of mostly illiterate Afghans fighting with only small arms. And we have, in truth, been defeated in our recent wars in both Asia and the Middle East (I guess we did great under Reagan when we took on Grenada).

In any case, like Chicken Little, we are in a panic, but for good reason, the sky really is falling for us. We, who have been brought up to believe in our superiority and “American exceptionalism,” are now being confronted with the truth, and it is terribly unpalatable for many, as well as somewhat pathetic to witness. Putting our “wars,” foreign policy, and economic problems aside, there are two manifestations of this panic that stand out: the seemingly irrational hatred of President Obama, and the “War on Women.”

I suppose if you were brought up to believe that Black people really are inferior to Whites, hatred of Obama who violates that basic belief might not be considered necessarily irrational. But it is the fact that he violates this basic belief that has to be the real reason for the hatred. As President, Obama has been like most Presidents, both good and bad, depending upon your points of view. His performance as President cannot explain the intense hatred. He is hated precisely because he has shattered the paradigm of White superiority and many just cannot tolerate that. No previous President to my knowledge has ever faced the massive opposition to everything he tried to do, even when those things were first presented by his opposition. When Obama was elected Republicans chose to oppose him no matter what he tried to do, and they have, much to the harm of our nation. And they have, of course, employed the “race card,” describing him as incompetent, a witch doctor, an “other,” and of course everything else from a socialist to a communist, fascist, Muslim, and etc. They hate him, in short, because he is Black, because, in the terms of Anthropologist May Douglas, he would be considered, “Dirt out of place.” It is not only Republicans who feel this way about Obama, it is the vast majority of the less educated White population as well, and, in fact, some of the more educated.

The other seemingly irrational behavior going on at the moment is the so-called “War on Women.” As this is politically suicidal for Republicans but they continue it anyway it can easily be seen as irrational. We wonder how it is that men believe they can decide better than women what is best for women’s health and reproduction. But remember, women were no higher up in the paradigm than children and Black people. In all societies I know of there is none where women held the most significant positions of power. Even in matrilineal societies (there are no truly matriarchal societies) power does not reside in women, but, rather, in mother’s brothers. In the matrilineal Trobriand Islands it is not the daughters that ritually “suck the bones of the fathers,” it’s the sons. Power everywhere resides in males, in Western-European societies in White males. Republican men do not believe they are in engaging in a war on women, they believe it is their “right” to decide such matters, it has always been so.

The belief in this basic paradigm is stronger in older people than in younger people who have been brought up in a more diverse cultural and ethnic society. We are witnessing the last gasps of a traditional belief system undergoing a basic paradigm shift, the last desperate attempts of Whites to cling to the powers they have come to expect as their due. With slavery gone, lynchings gone, Jim Crow gone, demographics changing, equality gaining ground, and voting and abortion rights being upheld, it is clear which direction we are going. It has been and continues to be a difficult journey.

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.

Will Rogers 

Sleaze at Work

I fear we are witnessing a genuine case of sleaze at work “in the fields of the law.” Of course I have the current Zimmerman trial in mind, but sleaze is sleaze wherever found. I wonder if Karl Rove learned his sleazy political machinations from defense attorneys or if they have benefitted from his technique of “roviation?” In any case, there is no doubt the Zimmerman defense from even before the trial has been one attempt after another to portray Trayvon Martin as a less than desirable character, suggesting he was a “street fighter,” a poor student, a possible burglar, a pot smoker, and so on. This is a classic case of using Rove’s technique of attacking your opponent either for his possible shortcomings, or his strong points, rather than those of your candidate, or client. Perhaps the best example of lawyerly sleaze came when Zimmerman’s defense attorney tried to bully Trayvon Martin’s mother into saying that perhaps her son had brought his untimely end on himself. He said something to the effect of, “Wouldn’t you have hoped your son did nothing to bring this on himself?” Pure sleaze, what a ridiculous question, that wasn’t even meant to elicit an answer. Of course any mother would have hoped such a thing, IF it was necessary to even ask such a stupid question in the first place, and IF a mother fell into the trap. It is much to Trayvon’s mother’s credit that she did not, saying simply, “I don’t understand what you are asking me” (apparently she couldn’t believe anyone could ask such a stupid question).

Anyway, I think the defense attorneys for Zimmerman have done everything they could to destroy Trayvon Martin’s character and credibility even though such things should have nothing to do with what happened. The blond analyst on MSNBC has praised them as being among the finest defense attorneys she has seen. I guess they are, if defense attorneys employ any sleazy tactic they can to win their case. I guess I would think they should try to prove their client is innocent rather than try to destroy the reputation of the victim, but what do I know, I’m not a lawyer. But to my way of thinking the whole defense reeks of, what can I say…just plain sleaze.

 I continue to believe Zimmerman is guilty. Of course I could possibly be wrong. But as far as I can see his whole story lacks credibility, from start to finish. He wants us to believe that even though he went on his watch fully armed with a semi-automatic pistol (that he was not supposed to be carrying according to the rules for such watchmen), and even though he followed Trayvon when he was instructed not to, and even though it has been established that Trayvon was frightened by being followed by a strange man, that it was he, Trayvon, a 17 year-old with tea and skittles, minding his own business, who ultimately was the aggressor and attacked Zimmerman. Zimmerman also wants us to believe that it was he who was screaming for help rather than the boy. Zimmerman, who outweighed the boy, who aspired to be a policeman and even studied police tactics, who had been working out 2 to 3 times a week for more than a year in a Gym, learning boxing and other self-defense methods (he apparently wasn’t very good at it), had lost about 80 pounds of weight, was fully armed and obviously looking for trouble, was reduced to a helpless screaming victim when supposedly attacked by a smaller Black teenager. Some cop he would have made.

The screaming stopped after the shot was fired. Common sense would suggest the victim stopped screaming because he was shot. Zimmerman’s defense wants us to believe it was Zimmerman who stopped screaming, “because he had no further reason to scream.” I simply cannot get myself to believe this no matter how hard I try. And of course we already know Zimmerman is a liar, having lied about his bail money, and, more importantly, lying that he knew nothing of the infamous Stand Your Ground law even though he had studied it in a class devoted to such topics. His description of Trayvon seeing and trying to get his gun is an unbelievable fairy tale. Zimmerman has shown no regret whatsoever for taking the life of an innocent, unarmed 17 year-old victim. His story reeks of dishonesty. He probably even feels proud of having rid us of another “punk,” that at least he finally succeeded in keeping one of “them” from “always getting away.”  As Black people live in the complex where this unfortunate even occurred, it wasn’t as if Trayvon was suspiciously out of place in a White neighborhood. He seems to have been guilty only of “Walking while Black.” It seems pretty clear to me that this wanna-be tough-guy, wanna-be cop, wanna-be hero, tried to apprehend (capture? Hold? Warn?) Trayvon Martin, didn’t prove to be man enough for the job when the boy resisted, and shot him dead out of desperation. He wants to convert his unwarranted attack on Trayvon to Trayvon’s (defensive, but imaginarily “deadly”) aggressive sneak attack on him. If sleazy lawyering gets him off I don’t believe it will prove “justice” had anything to do with it.

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

Plato

They're Trying to Kill Us

The Koch brothers, that is, as well as other business interests that are spending fortunes to actually block any action to curb global warming. What can they possibly be thinking? It is hard to imagine that such people are stupid enough to believe that global warming is not happening, and that it has at least something to do with human activity. I mean, with all that money and power, no matter what they might personally believe, they must have well-informed consultants who presumably know what is going on in the world. Or do their consultants just tell them what they want to hear? When some 97% or more of all world scientists agree that global warming is happening, and it has something to do with human activity, you would think everyone would take it seriously. While it is true the deniers can hire scientists to say it isn’t happening they must know that is what they are doing – hiring scientists to deny it is happening. They can’t possibly think otherwise, can they? Could their obsession with short-term profits be so great they literally cannot think beyond that? Can they be totally blind to reality, so brain dead and greedy they just don’t care what happens to us? Don’t believe that as a species we are not potentially in danger of disappearing, there have been several varieties of us in the past (Australopithecines, Cro-Magnons and others) that have not managed to survive.

Maybe they are well aware they are putting us in danger but assume they can enjoy their obscene wealth during their lifetimes and before the curtain falls? It reminds me of one of Idaho’s earliest senators (I’ve forgotten his name), who, having made his fortune cutting all the timber he could as fast as he could, when questioned about possibly leaving some for the next generation, replied, “Let the next generation shift for themselves.” This seems to be pretty much the attitude of humans throughout history, having slaughtered many species to extinction, dammed the rivers with little thought to the fish, cut the timber as if there were no tomorrow, extracted oil and minerals in the same mad fashion, and only just now seem to be waking up to the possible consequences of their thoughtless actions. Let us hope it is not too late.

Perhaps with all that money, and being used to getting anything they want, they think they can bribe their way out of the mess they have certainly helped to create. President Obama said he has little patience with climate change deniers and now suggests we act when it may well be too late. Our rivers, lakes, and oceans are so fouled there may be little chance to save them without much more urgent action than anyone has suggested, anyone that counts, that is (scientists apparently don’t count). Think of it, we may be the only species with the ability to prevent our own extinction, but didn’t bother to do it. Can it be the case that species, like individuals, must inevitably die? It seems to me that much of our ordinary activity is leading to extinction. Our behavior is certainly responsible for global warming, but what about our obsession with the internal combustion engine, plastics, built-in obsolescence, and so on, all slowly contributing to our eventual demise, slowly fouling our nest potentially to the point of no return? It is not merely the Koch brothers and their ilk that are trying to kill us, we are killing ourselves.  On that cheerful note let me close with still another problem.

Some are concerned that Zimmerman, who admittedly shot and killed Trayvon Martin, has shown no regret. Why should he, as far as he is concerned he killed a “fucking punk asshole,” not an innocent unarmed Black teenager minding his own business. Our interpersonal relations, too, need a great deal of work.

[History] is little else than a picture of human crimes and misfortunes.
Voltaire

Grasp of the Bloodsuckers

I suppose it might be possible to find a more idiotic way to fund higher education, but I cannot conceive of what that might be. Student loan debt now stands at 1.1 trillion dollars, apparently higher even than credit card debt. Congress in its willful and infinite ignorance just allowed the rate on student loans to double. As many of the students in debt cannot find jobs to begin with, and those with jobs generally don’t earn enough to making paying back their loans very easy or even feasible, the possibilities for defaults will inevitably grow. And, of course, fewer and fewer young people will be able to attend college. In any case, we now have generations of wage slaves, the same generations that will be responsible for taking over the tasks of governing, making advances in science, technology, medicine, and promoting human life in general. This is, to put it mildly, “NO WAY TO RUN A RAILROAD,” and certainly does not bode well for the future of the U.S.

This ridiculous situation is the very antithesis of how a democracy is supposed to both survive and thrive; that is, with an educated citizenry. We have allowed our young people to become prey for capitalistic, privatization bloodsuckers, a clever but rather obscene way of making short term profits at the expense of our future. It would seem obvious to me that when a nation neglects to educate succeeding generations in the very skills they will need to keep it successfully functioning it is heading for eventual disaster. When you consider what is happening to the U.S., no longer leading in virtually any mathematical, scientific, medical, or vital educational category, this seems to be, in fact, coming true. We are, by choice it appears, becoming a third world nation.

How is it we have allowed this to happen? Is it an accident because we weren’t paying attention? Partly perhaps. Is it because we can’t afford it? Obviously not. Is it because we don’t really need an educated citizenry? Of course not. Is it simply inevitable? That, I think, depends on the circumstances. Perhaps the simplest explanation (possibly even the best) is because our country is controlled by a few huge international corporations who demand low wages everywhere they operate, which inevitably drives down wages in the U.S. and decreases the demand for better educated citizens. But I think it is a more complicated and longer story than that with a history of the attitudinal change and an accompanying attack on our educational institutions.

Our basic attitude towards education and the educated seems to have slowly changed. Remember those stories of how children had to walk several miles to school, or ride horseback, and endure hardships of various kinds, of how Lincoln studied by firelight on the floor of their cabin, how small communities raised money for a one room schoolhouse, and so on. Actually much of that was true. In the earlier days of our Republic there was a value placed on education and people did suffer in order to achieve it.  Now, of course, it is difficult for communities to fund their schools, class sizes are large, regimentation rather than education seems to be the priority. Many children do not even want to go to school. Large numbers do not graduate from High School. There is an important movement underway to privatize our schools, thus making a profit from our children and their well-being. Our schools are ripe for capitalistic short-term profit making just like our prisons, hospitals, and so on. While this might well be good for business in the short run it is suicidal for a nation in the long run.

Interestingly enough even the concept of a “nation” is slowly disappearing. A few enormous corporations, with annual budgets that exceed those of most nations, control our lives. As these are international entities, national boundaries and interests are not as important as they previously were, and this change is accelerating. As corporations can find what they need elsewhere if a nation’s rules and regulations are regarded as too stringent, either the rules must change for their benefit or a nation loses out in the competition.

Our attitudes toward higher learning, too, have changed. Now we speak of “Nutty Professors,” “Pointy-headed Intellectuals,” “Know-nothing Perfessers,” and say things like “Them as can’t do, teach,” and so on.  Even many who should know better disparage education:

“Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and higher education positively fortifies it,” Stephen Vizinczey; “America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week, Evan Esar;  “The difference between intelligence and education is this: intelligence will make you a good living, Charles F. Kettering; “A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education,” George Bernard Shaw;  Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught, Ambrose Bierce.

It is true that for every negative quote you can find on education there are many more extolling the importance of it. But when you look at what is actually happening to education in the U.S. you soon realize these are mostly idle chatter. Those with power and influence in the U.S. are not only sucking the blood from our young people, they are sucking it from the nation itself.

 
 The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.
Franklin D. Roosevelt 

What's New with Women?

You may recall my earlier discussions of the basic paradigm of Western/European culture that placed White Caucasian males at the very apex of a “great chain of being” where “civilization” had evolved through savagery and barbarism to what constituted Western/European culture in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. This paradigm had, of course, Black people as lower on the scale of civilization than others, with Asians and others somewhat higher, but inevitably all overshadowed by Whites. It also equated “savages” with children and vice-versa when it came to thought, art, and reason, and so on. What I did not mention previously was the position of women in this paradigm.

Women, in fact, were considered similar to children and savages, partly but not exclusively on the basis of brain size. Consider, for example, some of the major ideas on this subject:

Cesare Lombroso, perhaps the most important criminologist of the nineteenth century, not only linked women to savages and children but  also to criminals: “We also saw that women have many traits in common with children; that their moral sense is deficient; that they are revengeful, jealous, inclined to vengeances of a refined cruelty. In ordinary cases these defects are neutralized by piety, maternity, want of passion, sexual coldness, by weakness and an undeveloped intelligence. But when a morbid activity of the psychical centres intensified the bad qualities of women, and induces them to seek relief in evil deeds; when piety and maternal sentiments are wanting, and in their place are strong passions and intensely erotic tendencies, much muscular strength and a superior intelligence for the conception and execution of evil, it is clear that the innocuous semi-criminal present in the normal woman must be transformed into a born criminal more terrible than any man. What terrific criminals would children be if they had strong passions, muscular strength, and sufficient intelligence; and if, moreover, their evil  tendencies were exasperated by a morbid psychical activity! And women are big children; their evil tendencies are more numerous and more varied than men’s, but generally remain latent.”

Lombroso’s views on women were shared by others. Paul Broca, for example, whose” craniometry movement “preceded IQ testing, believed that women’s brains were smaller than men’s and therefore inferior. He did not, however, believe this was simply due to the relative size of men and women. He knew a priori that women were less intelligent than men! Topinard, one of his disciples, offered an evolutionary explanation for this: “The man who fights for two or more in the struggle for existence, who has all the responsibility and the cares of tomorrow, who is constantly active in combating the environment and human rivals, needs more brain than the woman whom he must protect and nourish, the sedentary woman, lacking any interior occupation, whose role is to raise children, love, and be passive.”

Gustave LeBon, in one of the best anthropological journals of the time: “In the most intelligent races, as among the Parisians, there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most developed male brains. This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion. All psychologists who have studied the intelligence of women, as well as poets and novelists, recognize today that they represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and that they are closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man. They excel in fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason…”

Even Darwin himself linked women to a past stage of civilization: “It is generally admitted that with women the power of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in man; but some, at least, of these faculties are characteristic of the lower races and therefore of a past and lower state of civilization.” (If you wish to know where these quotes come from see my book, The Study of Culture, 2005).

Just as the racism that is implied in this ubiquitous early, and still stubbornly persistent paradigm, so, too, does the sexism, as is obvious in the Republicans “War on Women” currently raging across so many states. I need not remind you that the right to vote came late to women (along with the right to wear pants), until quite recently women were regarded as subservient to men, could not have their own bank accounts or be involved with legal matters independently of their husbands, were not accorded “loss of consortium,” and continued to be considered less intelligent and responsible than men. Thus is it any wonder that men think they should be in charge of women’s bodies with respect to childbearing, rape, health care, and etc., that they know best, that in the words of Zorba, “they are such poor weak creatures, how can we not love them?”  In fact women are now becoming as “uppity” as Blacks, much to the dismay of (especially Republican) men. The standard paradigm that served us for so many years is now being exposed as the colonial fraud it was, both in the White House and in Texas. Good riddance!

The attitudes toward women enshrined in this evolutionary paradigm might even be considered somewhat mild when compared to what various church fathers thought of women. See the article on AlterNet by Valerie Tarico, “20 Vile Quotes Against Women by Religious Leaders from St. Augustine to Pat Robertson.” My favorites:  “Wife: Be content to be insignificant. What loss would it be to God or man had you never been born.” –John Wesley, founder of Methodist movement (1703-1791), and, “No gown worse becomes a woman than the desire to be wise. – Martin Luther, Reformer, and finally:  The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. -- Pat Robertson, Southern Baptist leader.

“The problem with women is that they have small, smooth brains.”

An African elder being interviewed by an anthropologist.

None of the News Most of the Time

I have no idea why MSNBC decided to follow so thoroughly the Zimmerman trial. It is so slow and mostly boring (like most such trials) that I cannot believe most of their viewers can be following it equally in as much detail or with as much interest. Perhaps the editorial board thinks it is really more important than the scandalous behavior of the “To-Big-to-Fail” Banks that continually escape any punishment for their crimes, other than minor fines. And maybe they think it is less important than the fact that we are being constantly monitored and spied upon by our own government. Then, again, perhaps they don’t want to mention the ongoing Israeli crimes against the Palestinians and their complete disregard for international laws. It appears to me that “Bibi” has now established himself as the ruler of the planet as he simply ignores the demands of the international community, with the support of the U.S., of course, and does whatever he wants (and continues to get away with it, just like the Banks). I guess if I were a news agency in the U.S. I might well be too ashamed to mention such things. Of course our relations with Russia, China, South America, and Africa are all going so splendidly there is no reason to spend time there. We do have the Zimmerman fiasco to keep us entertained.

And speaking of the trial, I said earlier I could not have been a juror because I already believe Zimmerman is guilty. I have not (actually cannot) watch the trial for more than a few minutes at a time, but I confess to having seen and heard nothing so far to make me believe  he might be innocent. You might recall there might not have been a trial at all if the Police Chief and the Prosecuting Attorney had had their way as they chose not to prosecute Zimmerman at all. This was a most interesting decision. Here was a case where a volunteer Night Watchman who was told not to follow the boy did so anyway, armed with a handgun he was not supposed to have been carrying according to the rules of the Night Watchmanship, who then shot and killed an unarmed Black teen-ager on his way home with tea and skittles, argued that he was merely “standing his ground,” according to a ridiculous superfluous Florida law that need not have been passed in the first place as self defense has always been a prerogative, and the Chief of Police and Prosecuting Attorney felt the death was so inconsequential as to require no further action. Whew!

Anyway, after considerable pressure was brought to bear charges were finally filed (second degree murder) and we are now being entertained by what seem to me to be mostly a waste of time. I say a waste of time because Zimmerman’s account strikes me as totally far-fetched which I believe will inevitably be exposed by the evidence. To believe Zimmerman you have to believe that a 17 year-old boy who was demonstrably afraid enough of being followed to consider running away, actually turned and pursued a larger man he did not know and attacked him. For all Trayvon Martin could have known the man was not only larger and threatening, but could even have been armed (which he was) or might even have been a policeman. Zimmerman’s claim of having been the victim strikes me as preposterous on the face of it.

The fact that Zimmerman had injuries consistent with fighting and having his head banged on the cement walkway indicates to me that Trayvon put up a substantial fight against a strange man intent upon either capturing him or at least punishing him, thus it was Trayvon who was “standing his ground,” not Zimmerman. Zimmer man’s account is full of inconsistencies and has changed over time. He has Trayvon  jumping out of bushes (there were no bushes), with his hand in his waistband (where were the tea and skittles), Trayvon threatening him with dying that night and other things (which so far, at least, no witness has said they heard), and others as well. And do not forget the animosity with which Zimmerman approached Trayvon, referring to him as an “fucking punk,” an “asshole,” and complaining that “these guys always get away.” Zimmerman also referred to Trayvon as a “suspect.” You are not considered a suspect unless there has been a crime, what crime did Trayvon commit (or was presumably going to commit)? it seems pretty clear to me that Zimmerman, in his zeal to capture “one of them” tried to subdue Trayvon, failed to do so, and was then forced to shoot and kill him, and now wants to be exonerated using a ridiculous defense that should never have been allowed in the first place. Of course I could be wrong. On the other hand I don’t know what all the fuss is about, unarmed Black teen-agers are shot and killed quite often in the U.S. I suspect that might have been the motivation for the Stand Your Ground law in the first place.

 The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.

Lois McMaster Bujold

   

A Most Curious Inversion

You have no doubt at some time heard someone say, “I’d rather be right than President,” or “I’d sooner die than give in,” or some such claim, indicating they are persons of principle and will not compromise their beliefs for any reason whatsoever.

Republicans seem to have inverted this to suggest they would rather be “wrong” than be President (or succeed in some way). I suppose there may be a few of the most rabid dogmatic Tea Partiers, perhaps a few other screwballs somewhere in the world, who might actually believe that what they have been doing is “right,” but surely some Republicans, perhaps even a majority, must know that what they are doing is clearly “wrong.” Can they, for example, truly believe that shutting down Planned Parenthood, thus putting millions of women’s lives in danger, is the right thing to do? Similarly, can they actually believe that it is either necessary or desirable to take food out of the mouths of children by taking away their meager food stamps? How about forcing women to undergo unnecessary vaginal probes, or forcing them to carry the fetuses of rapists to term? Do they believe that voting against background checks that are supported by 90% of the public is the right thing to do? Ignore for the moment the facts that they are also opposed to a minimum wage, unions, increased taxes on the obscenely wealthy and corporations making record profits, environmental protections, global warming, and etc., and wonder if, most importantly of all, they think it is right to effectively shut down the government, all of the people’s business, for several years, in spite of the urgency of it all, simply to prevent a Black President from achieving any success?

Many, if not most Republicans, must know that what they have been doing to the President and the nation is wrong, but they have doggedly, even obsessively, been doing these wrong things for years. They simply have to know that attacking women and women’s rights over and over again is not only morally wrong but politically wrong as well. And they certainly know that blocking immigration reform will hurt them as well, but that is what they are trying to do. Not only that, they are attacking the most basic tenet of our (presumed democracy), the right to vote. This is, in the terms we have been taught to believe, clearly wrong. The fact they are doing it for political reasons does not make it right.

When they continue to allow the most moronic among them to speak for them, Backmann, Gohmert, Perry, King, Inhofe, Palin, and others, and do not disclaim their basically insane rants and claims, they again are doing wrong. When you consider the more despicable hate merchants that speak for the party, like Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, and they do not disclaim them, whether out of fear or not, they are constantly sinking further and further into the depths of Rovian slime and disgracing themselves even more, and I have not even mentioned the Evangelical wing of the Goofy Old Party, like Robertson, Huckabee, Warren, Colson, and such. And do not forget their current champion and pretender to the role of Joe McCarthy, the dishonorable Darrell Issa, who has not only lost all credibility, proven himself to be an outrageous liar by making assertions that lack any basis in fact whatsoever, and continues his irresponsible behavior with no regard whatsoever for truth and justice.  

As they must know their behavior will keep them from the next Presidency, and may even ultimately destroy their party entirely, I conclude they must believe they would rather be wrong than win, a most curious inversion indeed. They cannot all be so completely out of touch with reality, but if the sane ones among them remain silent, as they have for so long, they are just as much a part of the same revolting circus that now tries to pretend to be a serious political party.

"Who knows what goes on in the minds of baboons?”
My neighbor, quoting an unknown logger.

My neighbor, quoting an unknown logger.

Dead Party Walking

What used to be the Republican political party is, for all intents and purposes, now dead, but still walking (crawling is perhaps more accurate). The main reason, in general, for its demise has to do with the fact that it is opposed to anything and everything that might in any way improve the lot of U.S. citizens. This manifests itself in their opposition to unions, the minimum wage, food stamps, unemployment insurance, health care, Social Security, taxes on the wealthy, promoting jobs, and on and on. There are, however, two things in particular going on at the moment that are inevitably going to destroy the Greedy Old Party.

The first of these is their virtually pathological obsession with rape and abortion and attempting to do away with Roe vs Wade. You all know about one Republican’s claim that the female body has a way of shutting down the possible results, and another one’s claim that if a baby results from a rape it must have been God’s will, and still another’s belief that pregnancy rarely result from rape, and others. Now we have a claim so far-fetched as to stun one into complete stupefaction, namely, the male fetus masturbates! This was claimed by a Republican gynecologist and used to explain why the fetus feels pain (if it pleasures itself it must also be able to experience pain). As proof of this claim he explains that you can see the fetus with its hands near its genitals. I wonder where this learned doctor thinks it might otherwise hold its hands and arms while in the fetal position in the womb? Perhaps with its hands clasped behind its neck like swinging in a hammock, or maybe holding its arms extended as if describing a fish that got away might also be a possibility. And what of a female fetus, does it rest comfortably with its hands demurely clasped behind its back? Along with these bizarre notions are also the apparent beliefs that women lie about being raped, that men are in a better position than women to know how women should treat their bodies and health, and they should be made to bear a child to term no matter what. I suppose that while holding such misguided and false beliefs does not prove they are crazy, they certainly certify them as unbelievably stupid.

The second thing that will surely lead to the Republican demise has to do with their opposition to immigration. At least some of them seem to be aware that they cannot possible win elections in the future without the Hispanic vote that went overwhelmingly for President Obama. In spite of this they have done everything possible to delay and defeat any serious immigration proposal. Even if a decent immigration policy emerges after all this it will still be obvious Republicans did not want immigrants and only agreed to them as a matter of political expediency, hardly a position likely to appeal to many immigrants.

So, having lost the Hispanic vote, along with the votes of a majority of women (and not having the Black or other minority votes as well), the Republican Party that exists at the moment creeps on zombie-like into bringing about its own oblivion, truly a dead party walking. Stupid, crazy or both, take your pick.

 Facts are stupid things.

Ronald Reagan  

Terrorist Mumbo-Jumbo

Just who and why and where are terrorists? This is a concept that makes no sense to me. One person’s terrorist is another person’s hero. Terrorists exist only by definition and who is a terrorist depends upon who is doing the defining. Hezbollah and Hamas are defined as terrorists by the United States and Israel but are not considered terrorists by Russia, China, and Arab states. Israeli settlers are terrorists by almost any definition of terrorists as they attack Palestinians, kill them, destroy their homes and villages, destroy their orchards, and obviously attempt to drive them away (if not into extinction). Israel itself clearly employed terrorism in the early years of its existence (and probably still does depending upon your point of view).

If a Muslim were to blow up a building in the U.S. it would surely be defined as an act of terrorism, whereas if an American citizen blows up a building it is not so considered. Iran is constantly referred to as supporting terrorism but you rarely see them accused of any acts of terrorism apart from supporting Hamas and Hezbollah who are terrorists only in the eyes of the U.S. and Israel. If a Muslim were to enter a primary school and, using an assault rifle, kill twenty or more children and adults it would surely be considered a terrorist act, but if the same thing is done by a non-Muslim American citizen it would not be similarly considered (only the act of a deranged person or someone out for revenge or etc.).

Although there is no legal definition of terrorism in criminal law it is usually considered an act of terror, using fear and violence, as a means of coercion, especially if it targets civilians rather than combatants. So how are we to consider drone strikes if not acts of terror? They certainly kill civilians and are intended to create fear (or at least do create fear even if not intended to do so). If gangsters run a protection racket using fear and coercion it is not considered an act of terror. And what about George Washington, the “father of our country,” who was one of the wealthiest men in America, having accumulated his wealth by ordering the destruction of entire Indian villages, including their crops, and stealing their land?

It is obvious that terrorism is a term with essentially no meaning, or meaning only in the eyes of those who want to label something terrorism. Sit was that Bush/Cheney could order an all-out “war on terrorism” that would allow them to do whatever they wanted to whomever they wanted whenever they wanted and however they wanted. Carte blanche to murder, torture, steal, rape and pillage, whatever. It has been said somewhere or other that when Bush/Cheney lied us into the “war” on Iraq, Bush at least (if not Cheney also) were not aware there were both Sunnis and Shiites. This raises the interesting question, does anyone in the U.S. even care if there are both forms of religion? I think not.

So if no one cares about this religious distinction why are we involved in supporting the Syrian rebels who are apparently Sunnis attacking the Shiite regime of Assad? In fact I think we don’t care about their religious views, except insofar as they have to do with Iran. Iran is a predominantly Shiite culture as opposed to the predominantly Sunni Arabs who do not want Iran to gain any power or influence in that part of the world (and, of course Iranians are also not Arabs). I suspect that the U.S. and Israel wouldn’t care what religious group was involved as long as they were opposed to Iran. Hezbollah, fighting against the rebels to protect Assad are apparently not considered terrorists at the moment (I guess), but if they were attacking Israel they would certainly be considered terrorists. So it is that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorists but the U.S. and Israel are not even though they all engage in terror, fear, killing civilians, and what-have-you. Iran is a terrorist state but Israel and the U.S. are not. Similarly, Afghans who fought against the Russians were patriots and heroes, when they fight against the U.S. they are terrorists. It’s all mumbo-jumbo to make us believe that black is white, white is good but black is not, we are loyal patriots, they are cowardly terrorists, good is what we do, bad is what they do, up is down and down is up, and it is all simply a matter of good versus evil, nothing in between, no shades of gray, after all, God is on our side, and our God is superior to all other gods. Sigh!

 “Well, I never heard it before, but it sounds uncommon nonsense.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Right and Wrong

I sometimes wonder what happened to the ideas, or concepts, or beliefs, or whatever you want to label them, of “right” and “wrong.” I guess they have become considered just old-fashioned and/or irrelevant these days. Certainly they no longer have any meaning for our elected officials, our “leaders.”

I am not concerned here with the basic philosophical question of whether there are absolute rights and wrongs, merely with issues that would seem to be pretty obviously right and wrong, relatively speaking. Perhaps the best example at the moment has to do with gun control. It would seem to me clear that with some 90% of the public in favor of background checks, along with just basic thoughts on the issue that background checks are the right thing to do. I know that just because a majority is in favor of something it does not mean that is necessarily right. But in this case, with such a huge majority in favor, and just plain common sense, along with statistics that illustrate the problem clearly, it would appear that passing background checks would be the right thing to do. But what is of most interest to me is that right and wrong have nothing to do with what is happening on this important matter. Those individuals who are voting against background checks are not voting because they think it is a matter of right or wrong. They are voting solely on the basis of whether or not their vote will matter with respect to their next election. Right and wrong has absolutely nothing to do with it. Similarly, it is not obvious that those who are voting for such checks are doing so because they think it is right to do so or also voting for political reasons. I would assume that many of them think it is the right thing to do but it may also be the expedient thing to do for their future careers.

And so it is, it seems, for most of the votes being cast either for or against whatever the issue may be. I doubt that most of our officials give much thought to whether or not they are doing the right thing. They are obviously more concerned with voting the way their contributors want them to vote. If that happens to coincide with what is right so much the better, but what is right has little or nothing to do with how they actually vote.

I believe, naively I guess, there was a time when our elected officials actually had the best interests of the citizens in mind, and they voted for what they believed was the right thing with that aim in mind. That is, there was the idea, if you were elected to public office, you were to serve the public, or at least your constituency and vote for what was in their best interest. This does seem at the moment to be a particularly old-fashioned, even stupid idea, for if you wish to stay in office nowadays you vote the way you are subtly or no so subtly instructed to vote, public interest has little or nothing to do with it. This is clearly what is happening with respect to background checks, and there is little doubt the same thing is true of votes on health care, unions, minimum wages, food stamps, and most other issues of importance to ordinary people. Votes are blatantly bought in what has become basically a system of bribery where those with money can arrange for the votes they want. Right and wrong have nothing to do with it. Notions of right and wrong have gone the way of the Passenger Pigeon, “ 23 skidoo,” corsets, modesty, virginity, and etiquette, to say nothing of the English language. It’s the American way!

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

Ambrose Bierce

    

Keeping Secrets

All this talk about secrecy and how terrible it is that Whistleblowers exist and occasionally tell the truth about what our government is doing, what to believe. Frankly, I cannot get very worked up over this, not only because it has been going on for a long time, and also because apparently Congress has been briefed on it many times (apparently without paying much attention), but, more importantly, it strikes me as ridiculous. If I heard it correctly, almost 5 million individuals have some form of security clearance and 1.4 million have top secret clearance. I gather that about one quarter of these clearances are held by private companies. It seems to me that if that many people have such privileges when it comes to secrets, and if some have them without the same loyalty oaths, we probably don’t really have any secrets. I mean, seriously, how can you believe something is secret if 1.4 million people are in on it? My experience leads me to believe people are not very good at keeping secrets. If 1.4 million know about it, it can’t really be a secret, can it? I am amazed there have not been more whistleblowers, and I doubt that President Obama’s so-called crackdown on them is going to make much of a difference. How can one argue that the Obama administration is the most secretive in history when approximately 6.4 million people know the secrets? I know that not all the people with clearances know all the secrets, certainly they are not supposed to, but apparently Snowden knew much more than he should have and no doubt others do too. Thus the secrecy situation strikes me as fundamentally absurd, as does the entirety of what now passes for the government of the United States.

As usual in such cases, there seems to be two different views of Mr. Snowden, as also in the case of Bradley Manning, either they are treasonous individuals out to destroy their country or they are heroes for what they have done. I guess neither side believes it should be necessary to conduct an objective investigation into what they have done as either they are already pronounced guilty of treason or awarded sainthood without any further ado. Personally, I don’t believe that either of them meant to harm our country, and I suspect both of them honestly believed they had a moral duty to speak out about what they believed was wrongdoing. But both cases involve the problem of distinguishing motive from function. That is, even if their motives were noble and just, the function (result, in this instance) of what they did was potentially very harmful (the road to hell is paved with good intentions sort of thing). So how do you decide what to make of such individuals and situations? Should they be punished for the results of their actions or praised for their good intentions? I know of cases where good intentions seem to win, as in the case of missionaries, for example. I have seen at first-hand examples of how missionaries with the best of intentions created almost irreparable damage to those they were attempting to help, and certainly there are myriad other examples of when “The best intentions of mice and men often go astray.”

Unfortunately, in both of these cases, no objective judgments will prevail. There seems little doubt (to me at least) that Bradley Manning will not get a fair trial as no less that the President himself has already declared him guilty. Similarly, as some in position of power and influence have already declared Snowden guilty of treason, there is no reason to suppose he will fare any better (if and when they catch him). Ironically, as they will both be punished in the here and now, they will probably both go down in history as martyrs to the causes of freedom, decency, and justice.

 Behind many acts that are thought ridiculous there lie wise and weighty motives.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

"Being" While Black

We have all heard by now the problem of “driving while Black,” and in places like New York City there is an obvious problem of even “walking while Black.” Surely there is a problem with “standing on street corners while Black,” and no doubt there are in some circumstances and places with even “eating while Black,” “drinking while Black,” and of course there is the obvious question of being President while Black. There is, it seems to me, an even more fundamental problem with being Black, the existential problem of even “being” while Black. Depending upon where you are, and with whom, you may not even exist at all if Black. Ralph Ellison’s book, Invisible Man, speaks wonderfully to this point.

As a simple example here is one from my childhood. In the small mining town where I grew up it was said “The sun will never set on a n……. (Black person) in this town. This was partly I think just because of ordinary prejudice against Black people, but it also had special circumstances in our town because once when the miners were striking a group of Black soldiers were brought in as strike breakers and there were some problems as a result. But it was common knowledge that Blacks were persona non grata. But curiously enough there was a Black man and his wife who lived in our little town, and while he was not all that dark he was Black enough that he could not pass for white. Not only did he live there, eking out a living mostly by janitorial work, he and his wife were expert bridge players (this was at the time when contract bridge was a rage). They played bridge with at least some white families and their skills were appreciated.  Thus even though they existed in the flesh they did not exist in the beliefs of the townspeople, their actual “being” was more or less denied.

Similarly, in the small town where I now live you would not necessarily be aware of Black people even though there are two or three Black families living here. North Idaho is widely perceived as a hotbed of White Supremecy and has a well-known reputation for that. Yet a few Blacks live here and you virtually never hear of racial incidents or problems. In the local ethos it is as if they do not exist.

Interestingly, the existential position of Blacks has not been the same in other countries. It is well known that Blacks were welcome, perhaps even more than welcome, in France, and many of them flocked to that country for just that reason. They not only lived there, their very “existence,” their “being” was not contested and many of them became quite famous and successful. Similarly, there is an interesting book recently published called The Black Russian that traces the life of an 18 year-old Black man from the deep South who wanders the world working in restaurants, learns the business, and becomes a very wealthy restaurateur and businessman in Russia. He became so successful and wealthy he was forced to leave during the 1917 revolution. He fled to Turkey with almost nothing and then repeated his success there until eventually driven out by Ataturk who wanted to cleanse his country of all foreigners. It is clear that in Russia, France, Turkey and elsewhere in Europe he did not encounter the prejudice that he did in the U.S. His very “being” was not denied or ignored, he was accepted as just another person.

There was, in seems, no concept of “race” or racial inequality until well into the fifteenth century, when the colonial period began. In the ancient world, where Blacks and Whites co-existed, they were all accepted merely as persons (living beings that existed in nature). But during the colonial period racial inferiority was used as a justification for the otherwise unbelievable brutality that was used to exploit the “savages” for ivory, gold and silver, rubber, cotton, oil, land, and whatever else so-called “civilized” society wanted (and didn’t want to fairly pay for).   

It seems this denial of “being” extends to President Obama. He is not treated with the respect due to the office as most or all other Presidents have been, he is sometimes referred to as merely “Obama,” he is described as a socialist, communist, Kenyan, fascist, Muslim, even as the anti-Christ, anything but what he is, a Black President of the United States. These are all, it seems to me, attempts to deny his “being,” to pretend he is not really President, is a fake, and whatever. Why race and racial prejudice is so prevalent and persistent in the U.S. and not in so many other countries is an interesting question. If I were fifty years younger I might consider it. Anyway, think what you will, President Obama actually and truly exists, he has “being,” as it were.

The hatred you're carrying is a live coal in your heart - far more damaging to yourself than to them.

Lawana Blackwell
 

Point of no Return?

I should think that in view of the current ridiculous and wasteful machinations of Republicans they may have finally reached the point of no return. That is, their talk of somehow changing into a different and viable political party is, I fear, just that, talk. I can see no way for them to overcome the incredible damage they have done to our country by their obsessive hatred of President Obama and their persistent obstructionism. It has become obvious by now to virtually everyone, except perhaps the complete nitwits that comprise their base, they have nothing to offer, no program, no agenda, no ideas beyond simply refusing to co-operate with Obama and the Democrats, and opposing anything and everything he has tried to do to improve things. In my view their behavior for the past few years has bordered on treason. The only way Republicans could possibly renew their party is if the entire current leadership, and most or all of the members, could be voted out of office and replaced with all new and more intelligent and responsible individuals. Not only that, they would also have to make massive changes in their philosophy and other core beliefs. As this is not at all likely to happen I think they will be, for all intents and purposes, finished as a political party after the 2014 elections – or at least they certainly should be.

The Republican Party was at one time respectable and acted as a responsible party should have. At no time in the past did they ever simply refuse to participate in governing, whether they were in power or in the minority.  Although the rot may well have begun earlier, probably under Saint Ronnie, and certainly grew during the Clinton era, I think it became more obvious and much more serious during the George Bush/Dick Cheney administration. When it became obvious during the Clinton Presidency the Republicans could not win at the ballot box they began to turn to desperate measures. Their attack on Clinton was unprecedented in its savagery, dishonesty, and hypocrisy. Clinton survived but the die was cast. With Karl Rove leading the way everything went downhill from there. Honesty and fair play were abandoned in favor of slime and unprincipled attacks on whoever opposed them. Lying and hypocrisy became their standard operating procedure. The concept of “Roviation” was born and in many cases it worked. With the help of the corporate media they managed to destroy Howard Dean, John Kerry, John McCain, and others that displeased them. No tactic was too sleazy or dishonest, innuendo and slander became an integral part of their plan to grab and hold power, according to Rove, forever. In short, they morphed from a viable, respectable political party into a criminal conspiracy, what I called the “Brafia.” Brafia was a naïve mistake as I assumed it was merely part of the Bush/Cheney era, not considering it would remain the basic characteristic of Republicans in general.

And so now we have this bizarre collection of religious nut-cases, ultra-conservatives, warmongers, and hyper-capitalistic neo-cons, who never saw a potentially profitable war they didn’t like, are basically opposed to government, and are so basically incapable of governing they do not even pretend to have a platform for that eventuality. As they are morally, intellectually, and politically bankrupt they can do nothing but obstruct, obstruct, and obstruct. Thus the vital needs of the country are ignored while they manufacture scandals out of thin air and waste our time and money. They are not bright enough to realize their tactics have now been exposed, and also not capable of changing their hateful, racist, sexist, greedy, unconscionable, and self-destructive behavior. If they are not voted out of office en masse, god help us, for we will have proved we cannot help ourselves. Republicans have gone too far, for them there is no turning back. If there is ever to be a new Republican party (unlikely) it will certainly not resemble this miserable excuse for one we see now.

 Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle - the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.

Karl Popper

Whatever Happened to the Tea and Skittles?

The wheels of justice turn so slowly in our country I had almost forgotten about the Martin/Zimmerman affair. As Zimmerman is about to go to trial, in spite of asking for a delay, the whole sordid episode has now re-entered my increasingly dim mind.

I confess I would not be able to serve on a jury in this matter as I basically (however unfairly and prematurely) suspect that Zimmerman is guilty. This is mainly because I find it unlikely that a 17 year-old boy, being followed by a larger unknown (and not Black) man, would have turned on him and attacked him. Martin apparently had a drink of iced Tea and some Skittles (I guess this is a form of candy) and was returning to his father’s home from a 7-11 store. On the phone with his girl friend he apparently reported he was being followed and did not know why. When Zimmerman was asked whether he was following Martin he said he was, and was told he did not have to do that. Apparently, according to Zimmerman’s account, he was returning to his car when Martin approached him from behind and attacked him.

So what happened to the tea and skittles? Did Trayvon Martin set them down somewhere and then attack Zimmerman? Did he just casually throw them away and attack? Were they ever found? Did anyone pay any attention to this? Were they found near the attack site? Were they found on the clothes of either of the participants? Did Martin attack Zimmerman with tea and skittles, and if so, how? Zimmerman’s account makes no sense to me. His defense is the questionable Florida “Stand your ground law.” If Zimmerman was indeed walking back to his car how was he “standing his ground?” If he was the aggressor how was that standing his ground? Remember, Zimmerman was armed with a semi-automatic pistol and was apparently much larger than Martin. It makes far more sense to me to believe that Zimmerman was the aggressor, confronted Martin, and then a fight ensued. Why would a boy attack a larger man, who may have been armed, unless he was himself being attacked in some way?

Zimmerman was armed although as a neighborhood watchman he was not apparently supposed to be (he did have a permit to carry, however). He was a volunteer watchman who went armed and deliberately looking for some kind of trouble. Martin was an unarmed teen-ager on his way from a 7-11 store. I suspect that if Zimmerman was attacked by Martin it was Martin that was “standing his ground.” Anyway, what do I know about it? The accounts given vary depending upon who gave them and when they were given. They are somewhat inconsistent. Although I believe Zimmerman’s scenario makes no sense, I also believe he is certainly entitled to a fair trial – but so is Trayvon Martin who isn’t even being charged. Of course people have always been entitled to self-defense, the Florida law was/is unnecessary and has led to nothing but big trouble, a green light for killing (especially young Black males).

It appears that Daryl Issa is also armed (with power) and out looking for trouble. While Holder and President Obama may be guilty of something-or-other they are not guilty of whatever it is that suits Issa’s fancy at the moment. He said he would hold a hearing every week and he seems to be living up to that ridiculous pledge. What a creep! Wouldn’t it be nice if the Republicans would actually participate in governing and give up trying to make scandals out of ordinary acts of everyday public life. Of course mistakes are often made, and of course things sometimes go wrong. In the Republican case mistakes seem to be always made and imaginary wrongs are their stock-in-trade. If they cannot be voted out of office in 2014, especially in the House, I fear things will just get worse and worse. No government can withstand constant obstructionism forever.

 On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.

Will Rogers

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