cheese it, the cops!

try to concentrate as i tell you what went wrong

so it turns out that 11% of american children have been diagnosed with adhd, and the figure is twice that for high-school age boys. there are many theories, evidently, including something in the water, overdiagnosis, and so on. but i am going to explain this to you clearly and, i believe, decisively. even though psychologists want to go with 'chemical imbalance in the brain' and so on, with the usual completely vague scientific-sounding hooha designed to flummox and reassure us and establish their epistemic authority, adhd is not a condition of the brain. it is a condition of a person in a context. what has changed, i propose, is not anyone's brain, but the institutional context in which those brains are embedded. the american educational system has become ever-more authoritarian, rigid, mindless, and unconnected from anyone's actual body. the dedication to standardized tests means that sitting still and doing the prescribed task in exactly the same way everyone else does it at the same time are more or less all that's left. my daughter, who's in seventh grade, does not have recess. etc etc. 'adhd' the supposed dysfunction or illness or imbalance, would be perfectly normal or useful in a less structured or authoritarian context, or in a context that deployed any basic understanding of or connection with children as human beings. these institutions are really merely diagnosing themselves.

let me just remark that by a state of perfect chemical balance or health, these people just mean capitulation and extreme passivity. psychologists, far from being scientists of any sort, merely reflect the authoritarian institutions from which they emerged and the effortless self-subordination to authority which they literally define as health. say you're an inquisitor. the harder you crack down, the more sinful everyone appears, the more heretics you detect. you are manufacturing heretics by your definitions and the way you conduct your church, but then you think, as you define your arbitrary dogmata ever-more narrowly, that society is degenerating because there are more and more heretics. that's exactly as scientific, as reasonable, and as reflective as this.

mo pantheon

i've created the pantheon as a web page, adding emerson, thoreau, margaret fuller, and the quite amazing lydia maria child. i will begin to add links to texts by these folks and other materials, some of which i'll be typing in.

meanwhile, the paper keeps growing. in connecting the radicals to the transcendentalists, i've got emerson, from the journals, approving non-resistance and its attendant anarchism.

Of 'the principle of non resistance,' he says "Trust it. Give up the Government without too solicitously inquiring whether roads can be still built, letters carried, & title deeds secured when the government of force is at an end" (vol 1 711). He too saw Mott preach. He praises her courage and says "she makes every bully ashamed (vol 2 508-509).

 

 

scholarly score

you know, research can be amazingly stimulating and fun. just had a nice moment with regard to the new pantheon (see entry immediately below). so, one thing i am doing is putting emerson and thoreau (as well as alcott and fuller) in this group as a single political movement. now i think my best score up to this point has been documenting lucretia mott's anarchism; she is emerging as an important inspiration and directly linking figure. i think you could say that anarchism arises out of feminism as well as vice versa (cf. godwin and wollstonecraft). i notice that a number of thoreau's formulations in 'civil disobedence' resemble mott.

as it happens, we can document that thoreau saw lucretia mott preach, and can even more or less know the sermon she preached. he actually calls her a transcendentalist. she was born a decade before emerson.

from the emerging paper:

Indeed, the influence was direct. Thoreau saw Lucretia Mott preach in 1843, and wrote to his sister about it.

I believe I have not told you about Lucretia Mott. It was a good while ago I heard her at the Quaker Church in Hester St. She is a preacher, and it was advertised that she would be present on that day. I liked all the proceedings very well. . .  At length, after a long silence, waiting for the spirit, Mrs. Mott rose, took off her bonnet, and began to utter very deliberately what the spirit suggested. Her self-possession was something to say [see?], if all else failed - but it did not. Her subject was the abuse of the Bible - and thence she straightaway digressed to slavery and the degradation of woman. It was a good speech - transcendentalism in its mildest form. (July 21, 1843, The Correspondence, 128)

'Mildest' here I believe is used in a somewhat Christian, lamb-of-God-type sense, because there is no doubt that Mott's preaching was fierce; we have a fair example of what Thoreau heard in her sermon of the same year "Righteousness Gives Strength to its Possessor" (Complete Speeches and Sermons, 35-52). But it is certainly significant that he regards her as preaching transcendentalism, throughout.

i am going to try to type in part of mott's 1843 sermon and post a link.

 

 

opt away

doubt it will shock you, but i really think it's the right decision to make it easier for groups with religious affiliation to opt out of contraceptive coverage. we ought, to whatever extent we can, to allow there to be sub-state groups that can determine their own values, though it is self-evident to the left that there should be no such possibilities. the state oughtn't to be the only context in which policies and hence values are decided , even if you had some sort of clean majoritarian democracy, which you most assuredly do not. it has no claim even to be the only group that exercises power over its members. or to put it in more familiar terms: there have to be conscience rights accorded to some groups and the people in them, on the pain of crushing oppression which insists that it has the right to make you violate your own deeply-held values. if you think this turns only basically on the question of whether there should be access to contraception, you're missing a lot of what is important in cases like this. in fact, religious groups are almost the only ones that can make a direct constitutional claim for that sort of status, but i'd like to see many sorts of groups with the ability to opt out of all sorts of things. your feminist collective should be able to opt out, e.g.

manifest destiny

this is why you just don't want to be associated with the political left: give these trivial clowns a chance, and they're policing your fucking t-shirts. look you could read 'manifest destiny' in a thousand ways on a t-shirt: ironically, or as a kind of pure concatenation of sounds or as a visual design etc. just go away. it's not like the phrase is even in contemporary use.

fillet of rahm

i went and got a chick fil-a sandwich yesterday, not because i am opposed to gay marriage (indeed, my view is that gay marriage should be compulsory), but because the idea of mayors trying to get rid of businesses because they don't agree politically with their executives is frigging insane. 'they don't represent chicago values': just as though chicago were a collective consciousness and it happened to be rahm emmanuel's. funny how for a politician 'all of us together' means 'me.' that's the alternative to individualism, i guess.

wait didn't these obama-types just come out for gay marriage a half hour ago? now they won't do business with anyone who doesn't agree with their brand-new position, which is a fundamental part of their identities and those of all of us.

yo the place was crowded.

cack blunts

In his verdict, Riddle said there was "no doubt" that Terry had uttered the words "fucking black cunt" during the final stages of the match at Loftus Road last autumn. He had done so in anger, he said.

But it was "impossible to be sure" both of what Terry said and what Ferdinand had said to him.

Riddle concluded: "It is therefore possible that what he [Terry] said was not intended as an insult, but rather as a challenge to what he believed had been said to him. In those circumstances, there being a doubt, the only verdict the court can record is one of not guilty."

the idea that insults are crimes is insulting, hence criminal. and the idea that an insult directed at one grown man by another is a crime shows that, while we are not all 'fucking black cunts,' we are certainly a beautiful rainbow of little fucking pussies. you actually have a judge trying to lip-read videos and crap. (as well as concluding with magnificent stupidity both that there is no doubt that terry said it and that it's not certain that he did, and that 'fbc,' offered in response to an insult, is not itself an insult; these are the thoughts of a man wondering what the hell he is doing with a case like that in his courtroom.) maybe having said it 'in anger' is an element of the crime? surely terry meant 'fucking black cunt' affectionately. plus maybe he didn't start it! where's the assistant principal when you need him? by what means the government convinces itself that such things are crimes or that it is their legitimate function to intervene, it is impossible to say.

just say no to drug testing 6th graders

central pa rocks.

eat me

mark bittman: The government regulates tobacco and alcohol. Why not diet? and while we're at it, there are a lot of harmful books out there. why not? at any rate, the idea of prohibiting people from buying x, y, and z with food stamps (of course that's already in place in some respects) shows very precisely that dependency and liberty are inversely related, that a dependent population is an abject population, that a welfare state is an authoritarian state. a government that provides your food owns your body.

in the age of mechanical reproduction

in case you're wondering, i agree with all these conservative types that catholic medical institutions must be exempted from rules requiring provision of contraception. this, it seems to me, is perfectly clear on constitutional grounds, but also on basic moral grounds according to which one ought not to require people to violate their own ethical and religious principles. as i always say, ask yourself which has been the source of more evil: permitting people to act according to their own moral convictions, or coercing them to act in violation of those convictions. however, on the same grounds, doctors must be permitted to opt out of these state laws requiring that women wanting abortions must be shown ultrasounds or hear their fetuses described in any particular way. here's what i'd actually suggest: such decisions must be left to each individual doctor, working with her patient. this seems entirely obvious to me. stop trying to institute conformity to your own little beliefs, convictions, prejudices, and allow each person to act according to her own.

excellence

i don't think any better op-ed columnist than ross douthat is working today. that one's thoughtful, more measured than i would be on a similar theme (perhaps that's not saying much), and right.

all together now

a couple of highlights from today's nytimes op-ed page. 

krugman demonstrates again why you shouldn't send an economist to do a writer's job: '“I have a dream,” declared Martin Luther King, in a speech that has lost none of its power to inspire.' if you know that a sentence (by which i mean krugman's whole sentence, not king's per se) has already been written a thousand times, or is has been a cliche among assistant principals for decades, you should give it a miss in your column and resolve to write your own material instead of plucking it from the cloud of socially-approved yapyap. and you know what? it's really an excellent refutation of itself: a nice demonstration that king is now just a cliche whose words we recite like automata.

egan argues that the tea party was a fraud because they never really wanted to 'govern.' cf. proudhon:

To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality. 

only a 'daft, grandfatherly skinflint' like ron paul wouldn't want all of that for everyone.

 

couldn't happen to a nicer guy

i'm glad to see protests erupting in moscow. putin is an autocrat, and i'd like the know the actual amount of his personal fortune. and my belief is that he pursued a policy of systematic genocide in chechnya.

left-right ideology

[just back from my mom's in little washington, va, where both she and my ex-wife/gf performed autobiographical monologues. my mom's included the story of my brother bob's murder. i was rocked a bit, but 11-year-old jane was crying. i'm going to try to get on this lisa simeone situation tomorrow. we already know she rocks.] 

here is a nice piece bringing tea partiers and occupiers together and letting them see the commonalities. really, i think the hope has to be to get beyond the left-right ideological spectrum. obviously the left-right split has rendered our political system completely useless. on the other hand, who cheered the iraq war? the mainstream right (msr) and the mainstream left (msl). who did the bank bailout? msr and msl. who's competing for the most possible fundraising from wall street? msr and msl. take the commonalities more seriously than the differences, is my advice to you.

the alternating unanimous catch-phrases, rival sets of potted experts (all of whom i have utterly discredited), contrasting demographics, etc might disguise the fact that the whole spectrum is a single political ideology. we should think of it that way and develop its antithesis. the dilemma is always state or capital, but they are merged, and they are both forms of dependency and subordination, between which they bat you back and forth like a pingpong ball. the state represents by definition the most assymmetrical arrangement of power that our species is capable of producing; capital of wealth. it more or less goes without saying that these are going to coincide in the long run.

so i propose that the opposite is self-reliance and mutual aid: the dignity of autonomy and voluntary internal organic community organization. it is individualism and inter-individualism. the (early or sincere) tea party and the occupy movement provide actual models on the ground of such activities: they're fun and goofy and theatrical and human. they are not gigantic bureaucracies, and have actively resisted hierarchical forms of organization.

so don't listen to the voices, like msnbc and fox, who want to line you up against each other, or who are focused maybe on your race or age etc. don't develop a legislative agenda (admittedly, basically too late for the tea party). show us what you want us to be.

 

subversive activities

hey lisa: give us an update on your situation? sorry i've been out of the loop for a couple of days here.

occupied

everyone is thinking that occupy wall street is very important and hopeful. me too, come to that. hope it went well in dc, lisa!

takin it to the streets

so if you're wondering - not that you are - what i think about the occupy wall street thing. first: yes, absolutely.there should in particular be outrage at the activities that sucked money out of the economy without producing anything, and there should be outrage at the excruciating and increasing inequalities of wealth that, first, have nothing to do with anyone's merits or value (or actually are an inverted image; the worse you are, the richer), and second brought the economy to the brink of collapse. also the idea that the movement has no leaders - which the media etc always find incomprehensible - is a very good thing. it's about time someone took to the streets.

now on the other hand, there has to be something in the solution other than state action (which means that the left has got to re-think its basic approach, in place since 1848). that you look at centuries of collusion between state and economic power, or their actual merger (here represented by bank bailouts, quantitative easing, war profiteering, and so forth) and conclude that much more state power over the economy is needed, would suggest a complete immunity of this sort of position from empirical input. and second: for heaven's sake put away the global warming thing. irrelevant. it's not the case that you need (and global warming!) as a parenthesis of every goddamn sentence.

toughen up, cupcake

there are a lot of things that one might should get offended about, but the affirmative bake sale at berkeley isn't one of them. it didn't employ any racist slurs, and in terms of actual baked goods it discriminated most against white men. so, is your view that the college republicans can't express opposition to affirmative action? or that they can't express their opposition satirically or with an analogy? or perhaps the view is that they shouldn't be able to express their opposition so cleverly, or so humorously, or so effectively. i'd suggest instead trying to show why the bake sale isn't a good analogy for college admissions. so far i don't hear people doing that, just creating a hostile-learning-environment style argument for the repression of satire.

there's been a lot of stuff like this:  Joey Freeman, vice president of External Affairs of the Associated Students of the University of California, said, "It really was deeply hurtful to lots of members of our college community." of course, hurting people is wrong. selling them cupcakes, however, appears to do little actual harm, though i admit a person might be hurt by almost anything at a bad moment. regard it instead as perfectly protected political discourse, and respond to it.

 

hacking syria

anonymous rocks.

ask, tell

thank god that legal closet thing is over.

only crew socks are permitted

the problem with a totalitarian theocracy is that it's so much like high school.

The conservative clerics, and like-minded military commanders, complain that Ahmadinejad must do more to ensure that the dress code is strictly enforced, even, as some have said, “if blood needs to be shed.” Some of them have also blamed recent violence against women on the victims themselves, arguing that they are at fault because of their failure to wear the veil properly.

no cost in lives is too high for enforcing the dress code.

galliano

you know, there's a difference between verbal abuse and assault. drunken yapyap, though no doubt stupid and annoying, ought not to be a crime. i'd arrest him for being done up like that, though. there have to be limits. if the french have banned headscarves, then a fortiori they have banned dior headscarves, as well they should.

now the idea that everything he said was arbitrarily caused by substance abuse and had nothing to do with his actual opinions or identity - repeated everywhere by his defenders - strikes me as unlikely to be true, exactly. there are a lot of things you might say when you're drunk, a profuse panoply of possible prepossessions and prejudices to parade. slurred nonsense is an infinite universe. why this instead of something else? prescription drugs and mojitos don't cause anti-semitism. or if they do, maybe that needs to be on the label.

the fashion world deploys a rhetoric of profound human liberation achieved through extremely expensive clothing and cake makeup: gaga ideology, we might say. (that's why this sort of thing is particularly difficult for the industry to face up to squarely.) there's no doubt whatever that galliano had the courage to be extremely gay (in, we might add, an atmosphere where i imagine it's difficult to be anything else, in which you might actually find closeted straight people); but that doesn't mean that fashion really does set you free or overcome various bigotries.

people are deeply confused about the nature of the state. obama yesterday remarked that gaddafi has 'lost his legitimacy.' now first of all i've argued that no government (for example, obama's) has legitimacy, but what in the world would cause you to think that gaddafi ever had any legitimacy? is a military coup a social contract? then cnn is doing a piece right now on worries that the libyan government's weaponry "might fall into the wrong hands." whose are the right hands? moammar fucking gaddafi's? the government of libya's? we're concerned that the weapons will fall into the hands of 'terrorists.' meanwhile he's using whatever he has left to strafe his own population. it's like people just can't think around this government thing at all, like it's a totally effective smokescreen or fireproof theatrical curtain.

so there have been some pretty dramatic protests at the college where i work (dickinson in carlisle, pa) concerning sexual assault of students (mostly, of course, by other students, and mostly acquaintance assaults by male on female students, again of course). hundreds of students have occupied the administration building for the last couple of days, and coverage has been kind of amazing: it led all the local newscasts and the local newspapers, and you've seen slices even on huffpost and other national outlets. 

now first of all, it's actually great to see students active in this way; dickinson hasn't really in my time there been a hotbed of activism, and more students seem interested in binge-drinking (which of course you'd have to say plays a large role in this problem, which is serious) than anything that has anything to do with anything. and the demands of the protesters seem by and large reasonable: more transparency in the disciplinary process, expulsions for serious sexual offenders, and so on. but we're also back to the following, which is the kind of thing i've spoken out against at a number of the institutions where i've worked (this is from the list of demands as presented by the protesters this morning):

The college must recognize sexual violence as existing on a spectrum: cat-calling, lewd comments, and homophobic or misogynistic slurs contribute to a culture conducive to sexual assault. This is one sideof the broad spectrum of offenses that we consider sexual violence, with the most extreme end of said spectrum being rape and sexual assault. These behaviors must be dictated in the same policies thatgovern sexual violence and formally punished, though certainly not with the same severity as sexual assault and rape.

the definition of speech as violence, and the banning of certain phonemes, is just completely wrong and counter-productive and counter-educational. i and others have put forward these arguments for so long that it seems almost silly to repeat them, but i will just a bit. it matters who uses the 'slur' and when and why. a gay person throwing around 'faggot' and 'queer' (like a black rapper with 'nigger' or a feminist with 'bitch') is routine and part of the ways that words mutate and get constantly inflected and turned around. i just mentioned or quoted those words, and that is completely different for my money than hurling them at someone as a form of verbal abuse. you actually get the feeling that people are scared of certain sounds, and 'the n word' etc is just pathetic: gutless. they want to ban even talking about what words they want to ban. please.

banning certain words just leads to the spiral of useless euphemisms, and if you think people can't replace 'retarded' with 'special' or whatever you may authorize next, i will demonstrate that you are mistaken. and even if you could get teenage boys actually to stop using 'gay' as an all-around term for anything they don't like, that wouldn't keep them from feeling like they have to continually establish their heterosexuality to each other using whatever terms you might leave at their disposal.

you increase the power of any word that you brand as an act of violence or propose to delete from the language. in fact you attribute to words a literally magical power: like i can literally assault you, damage your body, by sitting here in my little house typing. and i can make you love me by writing your name on a piece of paper and folding it up just so. if it were true, i might be tempted actually to make use of this supernatural ability.

and if you can't hold out some sort of distinction between words and violence, you can't stop censorship anywhere, of anything. etc!

 

today does indeed seem to be the biggest day for protests in yemen. the question of whether they can keep from becoming a tool of the islamic party islah or other existing political factions is important, however! 

lala in yemen says the revolution is tomorrow! or at least a big next step. so check jazeera.

from gadafi's inspiring address to his people (calling on "all those who love gaddafi"): "i will fight to the last drop of my blood." i'm down with that. let's drain him thoroughly. i'm grooving on the 'strong and united' international response, spearheaded by hillary, who said that his actions are 'unacceptable.' strong words indeed! perhaps we will escalate our commitment even unto the teacher's ultimate term for seething evil, "inappropriate.' even the mere threat of deploying 'inappropriate' would surely make him resign in disgrace. they're not willing to go so far as an arms embargo, which i suppose entails that we're still shipping him weapons? well that would be a strong step, though perhaps not so strong as 'tsk tsk.'

as i've often said, nothing is more stupid, yet more funny, than a dictatorship. power makes people stupid, and absolute power makes them absolutely stupid; power insulates you from reality and immunizes you against reason or even meaning. but stupid people are funny! just rent a will farrell movie and you'll see what i mean. indeed i'm not absolutely certain that gaddafi isn't being played by will farrell. he vows to die a martyr. to what? his own greed and megalomania? heroic! his son, of course, in the time-honored tradition, warned that 'anarchy might break out' if the protests continue. now perhaps you are not an anarchist. but even if not, you will perhaps agree with me that anarchy looks pretty good compared to a situation in which the airforce of your own country is calling in strikes on your baby sister. i guess that's 'order.' trailer for will farrell's new film:

our media really are incredible. as the libyan airforce bombards its own cities, and reports swirl that qaddafi has fled, etc, npr leads with wisconsin, then goes on to weather. who edits this crap? al jazeera is all over this stuff. truly i would urge an international military operation in this case and it needs to happen yesterday. anyone who has military resources that could be brought to bear and doesn't is complicit. berluconi and the italians are straight-up ill on this. i wish i could find a good link; al jazeera english reporting berlusconi's comment as being something like: i'm not really going to do or say anything against my buddy.

who knows how to spell 'gadhafi'? at any rate, we might not have to worry about it. al jazeera reports rumors that the man has fled to venezuela. also that military aircraft are firing on protesters in tripoli. what a mind-numbing combination: i flee and order a slaughter simultaneously.

update: ok now they are attributing the venezuela thing to william haig, the british foreign minister.