No Cops on Career Day

I'm waiting for the situation where a public school refuses to allow police to be a part of career day, referencing a policy against inviting representatives from organizations that openly employ violent racists with weapons.

Defending the Rich is a Poor Tendency

While reading a few items recently that contained the normal conservative support for the most wealthy among us (even by the poorest among us) I began to sense a strong similarity to the attitudes expressed by those who have supported dictatorships and monarchies. The specific example that came to mind first was the "White" Russian army that came to the defense of the Czar after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Similar defenses of a society's ruling minority by those who do not belong to that group are not rare so others soon came to mind. There were forces loyal to the English crown during the American Revolution, of course, and the French Revolution was not immune from groups looking to save their monarchy. There are even a few cases I now remember reading about where blacks were in favor of South Africa's former apartheid government.

Although I haven't done any kind of real search, I can't think of ever learning of a case where a minority ruling class didn't have among their supporters those being oppressed by them. If there is a case, it would be an example worth studying in as much detail as possible because it's difficult to understand why people who are suffering would openly support those who cause it. I do understand how some people who are living on the edge will not eagerly take any action that is seen as causing their personal situation to worsen by, for example, being fired from their job if they speak out against injustice. But once a revolution is underway, or there is a clear alternative that will improve one's life, support for the people who cause the suffering is baffling.

This attitude reminds me of a John Steinbeck quote: "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." If true, which I think is the case in one form or another, this sentiment could be the best explanation. But it is still bewildering, to me especially given the historical evidence against social and economic mobility in a society ruled by a powerful minority.

Whether a country's ruling classes are called nobility, clergy, capitalists, or anything else, as a species we seem to gravitate and then support the idea of being ruled by some sort of powerful minority. A true democracy where the power is possessed by "We the People" is something that doesn't come naturally, it seems to me. If we really want to live in a democracy with a working separation of powers principle that diffuses and weakens control by small groups of people, we need stop finding value in their creation. When we don't, our unfortunate tendency to let it happen wins, which means the vast majority of us lose.

Using "Good Cops" To Justify Bad Ones

One of the regular responses to the bad police behavior now getting increased exposure is to claim "good cops" are a relevant mitigating factor to be considered. These comebacks should be discarded from consideration because they are based on the invalid idea that "points" can be earned by any cop in a uniform to be put in a pool to pay for all police brutality and exterminations. I would hope that the creation of a pool of murder points by "good cops" is an insult to them, but I have to see any major objections.


 

Torture Me, Torture You

Story: "Poll: Almost half say torture sometimes needed"

Finding humanity disappointing on a regular basis is now the norm for me. Not only is this pro-torture sentiment about as evil as imaginable, it's one that is fought with vigor when the torture is being inflicted by others instead of to others. "Moral for me only" is the declaration we are supposed to praise, apparently.

The next time an American claims they were tortured by a foreign agent, I will be looking for Dick Cheney and his supporters to voice their support for the torturers. I won't find it, but I'll look.

I also can't help but notice that this sentiment has a religious basis, given that a threat of eternal torture is a typical religious assertion seen as moral. It's hard to be against torture when your religion puts it front and center as a godly action.

It's also worth noting that those who complain about a perceived absence of a "moral compass" will be the ones most in favor of torture, making the claim supremely ironic and pathetic. The moral compass they are looking for literally can't exist.

 

Satire Works When The Content Is Real

What I think a lot of people don't understand who criticize people who find value in The Colbert Report is that the delivery is what's satirical, not the content. And it's content people can't easily get elsewhere. That is what makes a winning combination.

If "real" or self-proclaimed news organizations would actually deliver the content covered by shows like The Colbert Report, The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight, comedians wouldn't have to. The fact that they don't gives these programs even more credibility because they cover uncovered topics are completely open about what they do and how they do it.

(Image and details on the report available from the Pew Research Center.)

The Mistake Of Letting Dead People Make Our Decisions For Us

From bizarro.com

This comic hits on a point I've mentioned before having to do with letting what we create control us.

Other than the creation of religions that we let control us, perhaps the other most obvious example is the U.S. Constitution (or any set of laws). This document is seen by what is probably a vast majority of Americans as ruling over us in a way that takes control of our lives out of our own hands--and they are okay with that.

The list of things we create and then follow without question is huge and includes just about anything people justify with "we've always done it that way." They can range from something rather innocuous like a recipe to something truly awful like racism.

When we give up taking responsibility for ourselves and, instead, claim we must follow some set of past decisions, we create some pretty appalling conditions.  The society we live in is what we create and accept. To improve we need to change and adapt, not following a set of decisions made during a different time. Blaming what we do on people who are dead is not a valid excuse for anything.

One other area of note where we let dead people tell us what to do comes in the form of wills. It is a fairly common practice that we let people who have died having power over the living by telling us what we can do with their former stuff. People who are dead are dead. They no longer exist. For us to concede post-mortem control, for example, to a dead person over a piece of land they used to own is over-the-top nuts. They are dead. Whatever happens after they die is not their concern because they can't even have a concern--they are dead and can't, therefore, do or be anything at all other than dead. They don't exist, and we should not give things that don't exist power over our lives. The strings a person has controlling their stuff should be cut when a coffin enters the picture. 

Blame Game Communicaton Block

We often hear from hardcore religious types that some of history's most terrible actions were caused by an individual's atheism. The unrelated this-then-that loose framework at play to discredit this reasoned position on deity claims, however, is never seen as valid when it comes to the much more tenable relationship between gun ownership and gun violence.

No atheist has ever made the claim that their deity-free ethos is the cause for any harmful action (unlike religious believers who brag a deity-based schema directs what they do), and no causal link has ever been otherwise claimed and validated. But we do have gun owners proudly declaring their gun-based ethos will play a role in their future actions when it comes to harming others. It's the claimed reason they own weapons at all. Yet, when one of them ends up inflicting clearly unnecessary harm or death with a gun, other gun owners are quick to try to disconnected the gun owner's actions as some sort of irrelevant anomaly.

Assigning gun-centered actions to a religious belief is also something that doesn't get any weight, even if there is a public claim of religious justification. But if an atheist does something with a gun, a connection will be made tout de suite.

This is just one example of why I have no idea how to communicate with large swaths of people. I just can't relate to where they exist.
 

Criminal Exposure

It seems to be a fairly common trait among conservatives to see a crime's revelation as criminal. There also appears to be a direct relationship between the criminal magnitude assigned to the act of exposure and what's being exposed. Examples include the recent CIA torture revelations, clergy child abuse, almost anything to do with guns, racist and other discriminatory acts by those with power and/or authority, and the illicit spending of money.

Oh, and there seems to be an increased level of outrage at the source of the information if a white person is shown to have been involved in the activity being revealed.

I'm not sure what to say about this other than I'm stumped, especially because conservatives typically announce themselves as generally being in favor of people not breaking the law. I guess this is an exception to that idea, but I have no clear idea of its formulation or purpose.

Police Killings, Torture Report Reveal Racism's Ugly Survival

The recent non-actions by grand juries along with the new torture report from the U.S. Senate are without a doubt a disturbing pair of news items. But what I haven't seen people notice yet is the related racism that's being revealed by them being in the news at the same time.

Racism is what's driving the attention being given the grand jury stories, but racism is being largely ignored when discussing the torture report. The victims of the torture meted out by the CIA were certainly not white and, while we don't know all the players involved, those delivering, designing and ordering the torture most likely were white.

Also telling is that those who most adamantly support the use of torture and what happened with the grand juries are overwhelming white. It's hard to imagine a scenario where such intense support from a collection of white people would be present if any of the victims in either case were also white. The fact that so few of the pro-torture and pro-white police killings are even willing to acknowledge the possibility of racism reveals the unfortunate survivability of deeply strong pro-racist attitudes.

This could be a transformative teaching moment, a catalyst for an improved future, if we would just notice what's been shown to us. But humanity's track record tells us we'll forgo the opportunity to elevate ourselves and, instead, twist the moment in an attempt to justify the bad behavior.

Replay For Sports, Not For Police

The vast majority of us will gladly dispute a referee's call while watching replays if the video shows it was in error. We are so confident in the ability of this technology that we've even accepted it to make on-the-spot corrective actions during a game.

But this acceptance stops for many when using the technology to reveal a mistake made by the police. The reasons why reveal not a flaw in the technology, but in the people who base its accuracy on who is recorded.

Affectively Moving Thoughts To Speech

About this meme...

At first this seems like a simple and rational statement, but I think it has a flaw that needs to be addressed. My objection is based on the difference between the act of thinking and the act of speaking, which this statement can be seen as conflating. As we have all probably noticed (if we're paying attention), saying something can transform a thought from it's original thought-only state. This transformation can be something minor, like when we declare after saying something silly, "That sounded better in my head." But the act of speaking can reveal something more profound about the unspoken thought.

For example, try and get someone who is avidly pro-gun to speak the entire Second Amendment. Even if the caveat is added that the person is not supporting the idea of a "well-regulated militia," they will have a hard time simply speaking the words. The same is true when asking someone to speak any words that contain an idea or assertion with which they disagree. This is because speaking does have the power to transform not only the thought itself but the person speaking it (along with anyone else who is listening). This is in direct opposition to the assertion in the meme above.

However, I know the point of the meme is somewhat different. It's saying that listening to others is valuable because what other people have to offer can be new information to a listener. But so is listening to ourselves--if we decide to actually speak the things we think. What's revealed can be just as meaningful and transformative as listening to what someone else says.

P.S. Along these lines, consider the belief that magicians can speak special words to accomplish something. Think of the secret names of various gods, and the names of gods that are never to be spoken. (For a pop culture reference, think of the movie Beetlejuice.) Think of the courtroom requirement that people speak instead of, for example, nodding yes or no. The human race has known for a long time the power of the spoken word and has taken steps to try and control this power we don't understand.

The One Dollar Dream

The Dream: Waiting for the day when Rupert Murdoch publicly receives his $1 from the the Koch Brothers for winning a bet that a single cable TV network cold ruin a country, a la Trading Places. Then we can get back to normal.

Spiritual Schizophrenia

Very few people seem too see at least a potential problem that their chosen god accesses their brain in the style of those suffering from Schizophrenia. A method with less baggage would seem more appropriate.

The Insufferable Divide

Improving the human condition will always be difficult for a variety of reasons, many of which get no attention at all, including the tendency for the ignorant and the educated to find each other insufferable. If we ever get around to making a list of what holds us back, perhaps this one should be at the top of that list.