jannotes

Hey Gigi – great post.  We naturally categorize and thus generalize  our experiences, and the experiences might be of people’s culturally acquired traits (stereotypes of groups). Evolutionarily, this  gives us the ability to make quick judgments, which may not be accurate at any given moment.  (There is a great and highly readable book you must read by Daniel Kahneman called Thinking Fast and Slow.  It explains our immediate reactions and shows how they are so frequently inaccurate but conducive to quick action when that is necessary).  Stereotypes are our categories and generalizations of people and they have some benefit.  However, prejudice, which though it needn’t be a negative thing, it generally means a negative stereotype being applied to an individual that doesn’t necessarily apply in that person’s case.  I would say the important thing that our stereotypes, which can be helpful, must always be seen for what they are and not become rigid judgment criteria and used appropriately – a cultural attitude might explain why a person acts or reacts the way he or she does and this can allow us to judge that person more fairly; at the same time, a prejudice, considered as an underlying attitude that reinforces disdain or out and out hatred is the entanglement of objective stereotype with subjective fear and xenophobia, and the subjective overtakes the objective for those who are not skilled at introspecting their emotions and modifying their impact through cognitive input. 

GOP boss Rinse Pubis compares women issues to war on caterpillars. Caterpillars are long and thin, thus phallic – shouldn’t he make the comparison with blossoming flowers? Or even the butterfly that flowers from caterpillerdom? Or, in his rather creepy, psychopathic persona, is he expressing his repressed oedipal id? Kill the caterpillar and dominate your mother/lover? That would explain why he is best described as a mother-f****r. Additionally, it recently has been pointed out that when removing the vowels from the name Reince Priebus (I like my revision of the name better), we get RNC PR BS. I suspect that this guy is a hoax, a robot dreamed up and implemented by the Kochs – one might also study the facial expression(less) and body-stance features of such Koch clones as Walker, Kasich, Scott, Snider, West, Haley and the entire Tea Potty bunch and you will note the inhuman character of what is best explained by the notion of a Turing Machine bearing humanoid external features. Have you ever seen a contemporary Republican who has a Duchene Smile? Not I – I only perceive the poor imitation that psychopaths are notorious for – poor imitation because they lack the empathic/mirror neuron functions that underlie our deepest human social nature, that of care and empathy. All displays of humor, mirth, or just the humility of kinship to all others that an insouciant smile and a  nondefensive body displays,  normal human beings notice tacitly and respond to implicitly in their feelings of trust, security, threat, etc. These politicians differ from Democratic politicians specifically in their physio-psychological inability to see others as worthy of respect or care. It shows in their facial features and bodily displays that are  neurally controlled by autonomic systems that underlie our mental states and on which they are dependent. This is not to claim that all Republicans (conservative is too general and imprecise a term) are mentally ill and psychopathic. They instead are variant personality types with the innate disposition to think and act in ways that are quite different than the typical Democrat (Liberal or Progressive has the same problem as Conservative just mentioned). Primarily, rigidity of thought, inability to consider other points of view,  less control over fear responses, less empathic feeling, manifest themselves in egocentricity and selfishness. These personality traits and temperament are based on genetic variations that are necessary for species viability and, in the case of the Republican genome, probably the majority of human beings in the world share many such characteristics. The important point is that a society needs many different personality types to interact and check each other’s excesses. The problem with the Republican personality type, especially in a free-speech culture, is that its rigidity and fear factor creates a need for domination of the society, since this is the only way such a person can be assured of his/her security. The fear, distrust, lack of openness to experience and ability to consider the thoughts and feelings of others of this personality type (always based on a biological temperament) requires domination over others who think and feel differently, since that is the only way in which the world will allow them any peace of mind. The Libertarian wealth complex understands this basic element of most of humanity and cynically exploits it in order to consolidate their will to power and far more pathological agenda.

Recalling an elected official for anything other than corruption should not happen. Policy is what was voted for.   So why then recall Scott Walker?  After all, the issue is only about policy.  What makes this situation different is that a war is in full swing, a war for the existence of the American democracy.  It is being waged at the top by two traitors who have made it their mission to shape our constitutional government in their own image and to impose it on every man, woman, and child in the land.  Their plan to make this country an open and passive victim of Capitalistic rapine so that a miniscule minority can reap constant wealth while the rest fall into abject poverty is in full swing.  These are of course the inimitable Dave and Charley Koch, scions of a founder of the John Birch Society (who did business with Hitler and Stalin) and together the holders of more wealth than any other person in the country.  Their unlimited money is dedicated to making the United States into an Ayn Rand style Utopia for the ultra-wealthy.  So they have begun a tactic of funding local elections for Congress and state offices, including especially, Governors.  Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin is one of these Koch clones and he has been a fine, servile slave to his masters. In typical Orwellian fashion, he label’s his subservience “Courage.”  He has also, through lies and subterfuge, started to bring Wisconsin to a Koch style polity, throwing money at the rich and destroying the lives of the rest of the citizens of the state.  He is in league with other politicians across the country, including the Tea Party clones in Congress and in state legislatures, and Governors in other states – South Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Maine, Virginia and others. So the war is in full flare as we speak, and the ordinary people who trusted the lies and deceptions of the campaign rhetoric, are feeling the full effects of their elected leaders who consider them to be, in the words of their Holy Apostle, Ayn Rand, Parasites.

So what we have here is a full state of war.  The recall of Scott Walker must be seen in the context of war, not democratic politics.  He is essentially a local quisling collaborating with the invaders and must be removed. So far it is a bloodless war, and the citizens of the occupied country have the power to oust this, if I may use the terms of the enemy, Parasite.  The recall is a battle for the survival of democracy in Wisconsin, and is a local battlefield for the survival of what had at one time continued to become more and more just to all of its citizens.  The Kochs have articulated a declaration of war against the United States government and are dedicated to destroying it.  This is treason, but within the parameters of “Free Speech” and action.  Like all that these two do, it is clandestine and reaches into all levels of the Republican Party, which is their party of collaboration. They have taken this important institution of electoral politics and paid for it in full to carry out their war against the nation.  So this requires meeting the enemy head on, and using tactics that can win, not narrow adherence to “Principle.”  Recalls must become weapons of defense in the states where they are possible; the fight against this onslaught against our freedom and well-being must be met in every way possible. This is not a trivial matter of mere politics.  It is the second American Civil War, and Sumter is already far behind us.  The last Civil War extended far too long because of initial lack of resolve.  This one mustn’t do the same; the war is upon us, there is no way to sugar coat that fact.

For Republicans, war is their favorite spectator sport.  Without a war going on, it is like a Baseball or football fan deprived during a player strike.  Pity the poor (?) Republican.

Go Hawks!! Great sport, this war thing.  No fistfights, just lots of bloody murder. The REAL thing.  What if they all went on strike? Then what will we have to entertain us – what heroes will be be able to emulate and fantasize that we are from our arm chairs?  Those who love war must go and fight it or I will never take them seriously. The Caesars, the Medieval Kings, always led their soldiers into battle.  They were as cruel as Cheney and Bush, but had something those two utterly lack, COURAGE. The new COURAGE  is thanking a soldier for his/her service. No draft, no pain for anyone who wishes to turn a blind eye. If the US still had a draft going on, foreign policy would be far different.  That’s why we got out of Viet-Nam’s civil war. The great warriors, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, those heroes of rhetoric and mugging stern faces, preened their football coach, “winning is the ONLY  THING,” Patton/Lombardi personae as the bodies at Dover were surreptitiously brought in.  You apparently know more about this than the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA, and certainty our Muslim Kenyan President.  Fantasy War.  Annihilate the entire Arab world:  attack averted.  Makes sense to me.  The human being is the most violent beast on the planet, and it is amazing how those who love murder will disguise in their denial and rationalization the sheer horror they condone.  We are by massive amounts the most powerful nation in the world – we will never have to kow-tow to invaders.  Our troops are there to fend off legitimate threats when there is no other recourse.  Their potential is their greatest power. You might just read more widely in making your opinions – right wing Neo-Con opinion has only one agenda and has no desire to weigh in any other possibilities or bring in truths that show them to be, as the usually are, wrong. Know what your foes base their positions on, learn from them.  I do from those who oppose my ideas, and often see occasional valid points, though rarely good Aristotelian logic – that tends to be a centrist skill (this is  not a Right-vs- Left issue, it is a Far Right vs. Centrist/Near Right issue.  there is no viable left left in this country). War is ultimately not a political issue, it is a moral issue. My views are strictly moral, though I find that the Right and I live in utterly different moral worlds. Never, apparently, the twain shall meet. This is probalby true of you and me, though I would never gather that in any other subject than the love of war. The axioms of Right Wing Libertarianism are false, but given that, one would think they at least could carry a cogent logical argument (Valid, if not Sound).   There really are other valid perspectives, and large amounts of  people in government and especially the Military brass, are opposed to those right wing ideological strategies. To claim that the Milirary leadership is in lockstep with the Neo-Con doctrine of Necessary State of Perpetual War (taken from their scripture, 1984) is just not so.  This does not have most of the military on its side – they understand their true function, which is defense of our country (a country many right-wingers are attempting to destroy from within through degrading the democracy step by step with vast sums of money)  Are they ALL stupider than you?  Can there be no facts you are NOT privy to that could change your mind?  Or is this a sport you are loathe to lose? The Iranians are not all madmen – they are ideologues who must be firmly put into positions that harm their self interest. That is what is being done. Boring, no bombs, massive slaughter of civilians, not chanting USA-USA,no preening spoiled brat Faux Ceasars looking oh so heroic from the White House – no red meat for the hoi polloi.  9/11 changed one thing:  terrorism must be taken seriously. After 9/11, we found only an excuse to sell the ignorant and ignored terrorism.  The death of the true enemy, Al Quida and Osama bin Laden, was not even a consideration until 2009. when wise people realized that this was what it was all about.  Because the true agenda was greater wealth for US billionaires, and this proceeds to this day.  To believe that Iraq and Iran are essential elements in the terror situation is just expanding the flavors of Kool Aid for the further success of the company that makes it. That they (Iraq didn’t, period) might feel allied to terrorist organizations  is understandable (after all, we have also supported terrorists and evil men ourselves when it suited us p Pinochet is a case in point, and not the only one. Though it is probably asking too much for you to consider that these people aren’t clinical schizophrenics, but are hard nosed politicians like your own heroes, maybe they too feel an existential threat, and a threat to life as they understand it.  Maybe we are dealing with human beings, members of the species homo sapiens who have their own self-interests in mind. Maybe killing children with bombs in Tehran or Hiroshima is just as unconscionable as killing children with bombs in New York. Maybe a moral country would seek out other less horrifying ways to deal with other members of the species. Is paranoia (a schizophrenic symptom) and an absolute belief in an unalterable future outcome based on complex and murky evidence the necessary way to go?  I hear nothing but impressionistically internalized fear that is enchained in tunnel vision in your position. I see no in-depth data, facts, actualities given to support this irrational succumbing to a psychological process that calls on panic in response.  Panic is the least functional human behavior.  Much expert opinion offsets the limited expert opinion you obviously choose to read (I assume you do read and think about this seriously).     There will always be another way. Military threats will always, and should,  be on the table,and they are (Obama is not the pansy you guys paint him to be – he just lacks that insatiable need for violence – he doesn’t fall into that Orwellian trap that Respect=Fear, War=Peace)  but they are cheaper and more humane when they do their primary job, that of deterrence.  War can only be the most final of all last resorts, when absolutely NOTHING can prevent it.  That hasn’t happened since 1939. This statement can only make a Neo-Con tremble – he might lose his favorite spectator sport. You’d think they would want to participate beyond the stands or throwing out the first pitch.  Isn’t it every boys dream to be a sports hero?    Yeah, War!!

P.S. The person this was addressed to answered and it turns out he is not nearly  as misinformed, bigoted, or inhuman as I sometimes make him out to be, nor did I think he was.  So to be fair, consider this a generic reply to a generic Neo-Con with a touch of tea in his limbic nuclei.

Self-defense: can it really be called self-defense merely because you “feel” threatened?   “Stand your ground” as the title of a law says it all. This is Machismo reactivism as the primal moral principle. It is the morality of the existentially angst ridden, whose very religious faith cannot overcome their deepest terrors of an always impending death.  Libertarian prattle imbues the discussion with Hobbesian state of nature nonsense: the war of all against all. Hobbes too insisted that fear for one’s life and the right to defend it is the primal moral issue, and all morality and political structure must be based on preventing that fear from materializing.  The government that libertarians find to be so intrusive in making socially necessary coercive requirements for the good of the effective functioning of the society are denounced as fascistic, communistic tyranny.  Yet mandatory drug testing, reproductive choice, voting rights, control over one’s labor in the market, and a long list of freedom would be denied by law by these lovers of liberty.  “Stand your ground” is pure frontier justice and only resonates with those who have no human capacity to bring cortical feedback into their fear centers.  This is not necessarily a physiological deficit, though some may have it and would be considered neurally challenged.  For most of us, we have plenty of cognitive and conative ability to focus our attention on the situation and to rationally evaluate this “feeling of threat.”  It’s what makes us human. To activate that aspect of our human decision making process is called “responsibility.”  Almost never are our “feelings of threat” truly life threatening; usually, they are overspecified, which has great natural selection value by automatically calling attention to alarming events in the environment.  This overspecification is offset by the human cognitive ability to analyze the situation and by doing so, to modulate the emotional reaction and modify our intuitive disposition to react violently. This has group evolutionary consequences that keep the species viable.   Moral reflection goes beyond primal egocentricity and mere self-interest. Something the libertarian does not understand about morality is that morality is always about how we treat others; it does not start with strict individual self-interest. Altruism and empathy, which are inborn traits in healthy human beings, are scientifically supported characteristics of our species that are necessary for our survival and viability as a species. This shows up in feelings of affiliation with others, group coherence, respect, gratitude and just plain good old-fashioned love.  The libertarian begins with false axioms in that individual isolation and self-interest are not the dominant elements in human nature or behavioral dispositions. And thus libertarians show their own ignorance of human nature by taking their own rather extreme temperament and personality traits and assuming they generalize to all of humanity, when in fact the opposite is the case.  And even if they were correct, it is almost never in anyone’s self-interest to kill another human being when there is any other alternative to doing so, which is 99.999. . . % of the time.  The killing of another human being is almost never justified, and when it is, the reasoning behind it would be self-evident to any healthy human being, whatever his or her temperament and personal  moral temperament may be.

Hi Cameron – I have never communicated with you and have no interest in debating abortion with anyone.  I am not a Christian and I make my judgments based on the information I glean through serious research and study of the moral issues.  I teach philosophical ethics on the college level, and feel secure in my moral views. They have evolved and will continue to as I study and ponder more on them, but that only comes of clear critical thinking. I also have a graduate degree in cognitive/developmental psychology, which is an essential part of my understanding of morality as well. Non-deontological views have a legitimate place in the debate as well, pace the Holy Church.    I get much moral wisdom from  people of all stripes, including highly religious people.  My moral decisions don’t follow the orders of an authoritarian institution that in my own autonomous decision making I consider based on pure superstition.  All people have a right to their moral views, but not all moral views jibe.  Human personhood (not life – cells are life, but not persons) is a matter of religious or non-religious belief, and as such it is a religious judgment, which is not the place of any American government, federal or state, to take sides on.  The religious right, in their inimitable fashion, has co-opted a word used by Peter Singer to give the argument “against” personhood for a fetus, let alone a fertilized egg.  This is typical of the disingenuous person who argues in bad faith.  It has an Orwellian feel to it. I respect your personal view and would never ridicule it as a personal view that I highly sympathize with, but it is not shared by all, and as such you have no choice but to follow for yourself, your own moral vision.  But to insist that all others believe it and be punished and harshly restricted from making a choice that has no such religious authority for them is to inflict your religion on all.  I’m sorry, but you cannot rightfully do it.  Actually, uncontroversially real  “persons” are killed unjustly in large amounts in this country by government or social acceptance, whether it be executions of the non-guilty, the war policies of immoral political leaders, and the newest fad, new ways of framing the concept of lynching in Orwellian terms, such as “standing your ground.”  Since I don’t know your particular view on these things, I will only say that from what I have notice over the eons, as much in this country if not more so than in others, generally those who oppose a woman’s right to choose are fine with the killing of post-natal persons in all sorts of dubious situations.  Listen to the cheers for Perry’s policy of refusing to halt the execution a very probably innocent man; he calls it justice.  Letting a person die who doesn’t have health insurance – Dr. Paul: he wasn’t being responsible, “let him die!” scream the hoi polloi from the stadium. The boos for a gay soldier by those who would have that war stretch on throughout infinity without a one of them actually going out to fight it themselves (cowards booing a man who has the courage to state who he is honestly as well as fight their dirty little wars). I would suggest you read Camus’s The Fall – we all believe we are innocent and point our fingers at everyone else in order to reinforce our mythical need to believe in our own metaphysical innocence.  In order to be innocent, one must have something to be innocent of – thus, one must have the personhood of an actual born and active, breathing, feeling, cognizing human being.  What I get from people who think like you is that they have this need to feel innocent, if only by projection to a group of differentiating cells that the leaders of their superstition insist are real human beings with supernatural souls. Church doctrine, from Augustine to Calvin, i.e., Catholicism to Evangelical Protestantism, insists on humanity’s inherent sinfulness, our separation from God, and the need to have this non-existent supernatural being (in actuality) decide quite arbitrarily (Calvin) or through priestly intervention and penance (Catholicism) our eternal fate. This is a purely religious view, and to define human personhood and impose it on any who disagree through Draconian penalties is an unconscionable infringement on a civil liberty, freedom of religious thought.  This is my position, and I am not in any mood to proceed with a debate on it –  I have gone through this with many people  of your position hundreds of times, and unless someone has something truly original and uncliched to offer, I’m tired of going over the same recalcitrant, unbridgeable arguments.  I know your position, I disagree with it as I do with many other religious positions, and understand how powerful such a belief is, because it is a moral existential within you.  You hold it as deeply as I hold killing actual, uncontroversially real  persons, civilian men, women, and children by invading their country and bombing it, unjust executions, and the killing of teenagers (or anyone else) carrying loaded iced-tea cups, lethal skittles, and a cell-phone that fires 30 rounds a second.  That’s what pro-life means to me – a life that is being lived by a true person, with all the attributes of personhood. Where is your outcry over that?  Is it because all living, post-natal human beings are guilty and deserve such arbitrary deaths?  But by taking the case of the unborn, you preserve your innocence?  Standing up for what you consider “the innocent” sounds to me like a projective need for personal innocence, which according to your church, we all lack by the sin of Adam and Eve. It’s understandable that many would need some way to relieve their angst in contemplating eternal damnation.  I see it in a much less stressful way, that I, no less than Adolf Hitler, will merely disappear as a conscious being and my atoms will disperse in the never ending cycle.  And what was the sin of Adam and Eve?  Disobedience.  I do not obey your church.  It has no right to tell me how to live my life, especially through the religion-neutral Constitutional government of the United States.  Again, I am in no mood to moot this further – I am only interested in exchange of ideas that might add to my knowledge, if nothing else than greater insight into how clearly people understand their own positions, not tendentious verbal combat.

Why is a lynching not recognized for what it is and treated as the crime it is? Is it because people like Clarence Thomas and Herman Cain in refusing to answer to their own bad behavior completely trivialize the word to deny responsibility for their immoral behaviors? When small people with high status take morally powerful words and trivialize them in order to rationalize their bad behaviors, attacking those who ask for clarification of their activities, they do damage to the social need for clear communication. Orwell understood the power of linguistic manipulation and we now, after years of Republican linguistic violence, cannot call a crime a crime. Whether it be the crimes of Bush, Cheney, et al. or the lynching of a teenager, we no longer have a clear enough linguistic base to clearly communicate or understand the immoral horrors being allowed on a daily basis in this country. A murder is a lynching when it is motivated by racial hatred and when the perpetrator(s) are not held to account by the legal authorities, and often abetted by them. Trayvon Martin was lynched and no one has the guts to say so.

“No one expects such generous gifts today

As the old Republican gentry once bestowed on

Their humbler  friends.  In those times such largesse

Brought more honour than title of office.  All we ask

Is – dine with us as an equal.  Do this, and no one cares

If you follow the current fashion, keep your wealth for yourself,

Act poor to your friends.  Go ahead.”

Juvenal Satire  V

Pliny the younger notes that at the dinner party he attended the lower classes attending were treated differently and given less sumptuous fare (the Freedmen are the lower classes, former slaves):

“The man reclining next to me noticed this, and asked if I approved.  I said no.  ‘What is your practice?’ he asked. ‘I put thesame food before all,’ I replied, ‘for I invite them for dinner, not for disgrace.  Those whom I have made equal at table and on the couches, I make equal in all respects.’  ‘Even the freedmen?’ he asked.  ‘Yes, the freedmen too, for then I regard them as fellow guests, not freedmen.’  He rejoined: ‘That costs you a packet!’ ‘Far from it,’ I replied.  ‘How come?’ he asked.  ‘Because, I suppose, my freedmen do not drink what I drink; no, I drink what they drink.’”

Pliny the Younger, Letters, Bk.2, No.6

I have been spending the day reading Roman literature, Pliny the Younger and Juvenal.  I never cease to be amazed at the parallels across history, no matter how ancient, in which the dominance of certain classes of people are both remarked upon in moral terms and frequently denounced.  To the point is Juvenal’s Satire 5, where a man named Virrio has dinner parties of various classes of people attending and how they are treated differently in the quality of the food they receive and how they are treated by the servants (slaves) of Virrio.  Juvenal, through biting satire and irony, shows the hypocrisy and manipulative ways in which Virrio uses and disrespects his lower class guests.  Virrio is a Roman Koch brother, and the lower classes he invites to his parties are the Tea Party.  Pliny has a similar idea in Bk.2 letter 6.  What both writers point out is that the privileged classes use the working class and manipulate them through flattery and primal fears.   They also tell these people that they are being used and ultimately disrespected by their wealthy high status patrons.  The similarity between these writings and the issues of today’s political/social scene is uncanny.  If Augustus Caesar stands for the best of the Roman way and we compare this with the American Presidency, we are now on the cusp of a new kind of Caesar in this country should Romney, Santorum or Gingrich become president:  an era of Caligula’s and Nero’s.  History is eternal repetition – only a speciation to another type of humanoid animal could possibly change anything for the better.