Clocks Can't Be Run Backward Without Breaking

I've been following the events in Ferguson, Missouri, with more than a little interest. For those who don't know, that is where Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot to death by policeman Darren Wilson several days ago. The Black community in this country is not amused, to say the least. Most of us believe that the case of Trayvon Martin was a miscarriage of justice. It also seems to many of us that the institutions of “justice” in this country are by now little more than organs of self-expression for narcissistic, sociopathic elites. One interesting thing about narcissism is the need for people who are narcissists to project a grandiose image of themselves. The other thing is that narcissists need an audience to reflect that grandiose image back to themselves. Without that audience, narcissists don't know they exist.

One way to project a grandiose image on to others is to intimidate and oppress others. That way, a narcissist can say, “At least I'm better off than this person whom I am kicking around, this person on whom I project all my insecurities and inadequacies, this person whom I can use as a convenient dumping ground for all my hostility.” For a while the cowboy narcissistic society known as the USA could use the entire world as a mirror to reflect its grandiosity back to the eyes of the chief beneficiaries of that grandiosity. And Anglo-Americans didn't even have to leave the country to find people to kick around – what with slavery, Jim Crow, separate-but-equal laws, and “institutional,” covert racism, there were plenty of victims to dominate.

Then something happened – a critical mass of unrest and unwillingness on the part of the victims of this oppression to take any more. The unwillingness was expressed in such a way that the beneficiaries of American privilege saw that they couldn't continue in their evil ways without risking the loss of that privilege, and maybe even of anything resembling a civil society. That, I am sure, was one thing that persuaded the leaders of American society to lighten up a little.

But now, the privileged sector of the United States is losing its place in the world, due to forces beyond its control. This seems to be provoking a psychological crisis, and some of these people seem to want to roll back the clock to a time when they could use nonwhite people in this country as a punching bag/target stop/dumping ground for their unresolved insecurity and hostility. In their clock-fixing attempts, they are quite bold. But this shouldn't be happening, should it? After all, we have a black President!

Yes we do. But over the last five years, Barack Obama has very obviously proven himself to be nothing more than the lesser of two evils. By now, when one says, “the lesser of two evils,” the eyes of his audience usually glaze over – the phrase has become a cliché. So let me present an illustration. If a gang of thugs breaks down the door of your house and tells you that you have a choice between having your teeth punched down your throat or having your car torched, you have a choice to make between the lesser of two evils! If we add a few more evils to choose from, such as having your house burned down, having your identity stolen, or being sexually assaulted (“raped” in plainer language), you have the smorgasbord that American politics has become with our token inclusion of third-party candidates like Ron and Rand Paul. (Is a choice for Ron a choice to be raped?  Is a choice for Rand a choice to drink battery acid?)  I voted for Barack Obama twice because I didn't want my teeth punched down my throat. But I have very little hope that he will keep my house from being burned down. Obama does seem quite hot to “protect” people in other countries from not being raped by the West – even to the point of sending American bombs, arms and troops where they're not wanted. What evil can you live with, dear reader?

But to those who want to roll back the clock, I have just one warning. By trying to make a clock run backwards, you may wind up breaking the clock. I vividly remember the overt racist garbage (utter garbage!) I had to put up with growing up in this country, and the more covert and insidious attempts to destroy me made by others whom I met in my adulthood. And why? Because my skin looks different from theirs? What utter garbage! What did I ever do to these people? Here's my policy: I want my home and my life to be a clinic of mercy to anyone who needs it, anyone who walks in the door – red or yellow, black or white. But here's my warning to the clock-tinkerers: you won't peaceably roll the clock back on me.  I'm not putting up with it again.

Military Service, Patriotism, Guns, and The Church From Hell

Yesterday, I went to attend a tutoring group where I've been helping immigrant children with math.  "Did you know," one of them said, "there was a shooting at our high school today?"

I already had some idea of the details of the shooter before this morning, even though I know almost no one at that high school.  I knew that the shooter was a white male whose learned pathological narcissism and monstrous sense of entitlement had been threatened by the presence in this world of other people - people different from and independent from him.  But I did not know until today that the shooter was a devout Mormon from a gun-packing right wing military family who had gotten upset a week before when his fellow students disagreed with him about a speech he had made concerning Adolf Hitler.

The shooter is typical of the sort of young people many right-wing Anglo-American families are producing nowadays - people who feel monstrously threatened by the emergence of a world which they no longer control, which they can no longer dominate, and in which they will have to exercise the sort of politeness that goes with an accurate estimation of their real place in the world.  In response to the loss of their imagined specialness, these people kill and destroy indiscriminately, proving that they are not special, but worthless. 

There's a lot that can be said about malignant Anglo-American narcissism at the tail end of the American empire,  but I don't have time to say it.  I'll just say this: Jared Michael Padgett - an all-American, a patriot, a gun nut, a Mormon! is dead of a self-inflicted wound after indiscriminately killing an innocent young man.  Now Jared knows how wrong he was about life, about his cult church, about his place in the world, about his relations with his fellow human beings.  Try as I might, I can't feel sorry for him right now.

An Anglo-American Monkey Dance

I too have been following the unfolding situation in Ukraine.  I too have noticed the parallels between Ukraine and Syria ("democratic" revolutions instigated by means of mercenaries and other unsavory types financed by the West in order to prepare a country for rape by rich Westerners).  The revolutions are ending badly, and the speckled past and checkered character of the instigators is being brought to light for anyone who is willing to pay attention.

There is another parallel between the situations in both countries, namely, the
monkey dance which was enacted by Anglo-American media along with the Executive and Legislative branches of the British and American governments during the manufactured Syrian nerve gas attack which Messrs. Obama, Biden and Kerry tried to use as a basis for military action in Syria.  The same monkey dance is being enacted again by all the organs of American media over the Ukrainian crisis.  One way to defuse a monkey dance is to respond calmly and rationally - even indifferently - to the monkey who is dancing, while going on with your business.  That seems to be the course which Mr. Putin is taking.  I think he is a wise man.  On the other hand, I wish the American, British and European monkeys would shut up and realize that they can't own the entire world.  If I thought voting would do any good, I'd be up for throwing a few monkeys out of office.

By the way, did anyone notice that in the controversy surrounding Edward Snowden's leak of NSA documents revealing NSA snooping on world leaders, it was the British and the American governments who spied on everyone else?  I sometimes wonder if Anglo-American global policy isn't governed by a British wish for rich, blond Anglophones to re-establish British global hegemony, coupled with a somewhat clueless American willingness to play the stooge.  One thing that fuels such a suspicion is the extensive coverage of the British royal family by the American media - especially by the gossip magazines that one finds next to the checkout stands of many American supermarkets.  But then again, maybe I'm a bit paranoid...

NPD Nation

I've been reading a lot lately about Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or NPD for short. My reasons for doing so involve people in long-playing difficulties of the sort which I don't want to discuss on this particular blog. However, in my reading I have discovered a few principles which seem to apply to the current world situation, and to the response of the people and politicians of the United States to that situation.

One of the things which has impressed me about NPD is the way in which malignant narcissists blame their victims for the abuse perpetrated by the narcissists. Often the blaming takes place as part of a combat which is solely verbal. Even when the combat is confined to the merely verbal, the narcissist's blaming tactics can become quite bizarre, to the point of reality-altering distortions of events (also known as “gaslighting”). But without a doubt, one of the most bizarre instances of victim-blaming and gaslighting of which I have read involved physical violence. It seems that while a narcissist woman was physically attacking her sister (who did nothing to retaliate), the attacker started yelling through open windows demanding that the victim stop attacking! (What Makes Narcissists Tick, 2004-2007, Kathleen Krajco, pg. 196.)

Which brings us to current events. I am in Southern California this weekend to visit family, and as I did during my last trip, this time I rode the Amtrak train down here. I had dinner in the dining car, sharing a table with an elderly retired couple who live in Klamath Falls, Oregon. We didn't really hit it off very well, though there were attempts at polite conversation. One of the difficult points came when the wife mentioned recent weather in Klamath Falls, observing that there had been a few days this summer during which the temperature had gotten above 90 degrees, and that “we usually never get that hot! Usually the temperature doesn't get much above 80!”

“Well,” I remarked, levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have recently exceeded 400 parts per million. What you are experiencing is a consequence of climate change.”

“Yes,” she said, “and I think the whole world should do its part to reduce pollution,” indicating by her tone and emphasis that she considered the rest of the world to be equally as culpable as the United States.

“The United States has five percent of the world's population and uses over a third of the world's natural resources,” I replied.

“Yes, but there's lots of pollution in other countries,” she replied, a bit desperately.

“That's because the United States has exported much of its manufacturing capacity to those countries,” I rejoined.

“And that's terrible,” she said, then, “and I'm sure you don't want to wreck a perfectly good evening.” Then her husband started talking. “What college did you graduate from, since you've been saying all this about global warming?” I told him, having earlier told him that I had an engineering degree. “Good school,” he remarked. The conversation died out shortly thereafter. Later in the evening, I thought, “How American – to blame others for the problems we ourselves cause.”

I got off the train at Bakersfield, having discovered that one can make the remainder of the trip from Bakersfield to So. Cal. much more quickly by car than by train. While driving a rental the remainder of the distance to my destination, I tuned in to KNX Radio 1070, a CBS news station whose broadcasts cover most of Southern California. I was listening to the news that the United States is preparing to attack Syria for allegedly using chemical weapons against its own citizens, and that no other nation on earth supports the United States in this course of action. I also heard a great deal of hand-wringing on the part of spokesmen describing the “terrible humanitarian toll which has been exacted by the ongoing civil strife in Syria.”

Having learned long ago to read between the lines of mainstream news, I know that American eagerness to attack Syria has nothing to do with “democracy” or alleged cruelty by the Syrian government toward its people or the possible existence of weapons of mass destruction. It has everything to do with the fact that the United States is hopelessly addicted to a lifestyle of undeserved extravagance, and that this country can no longer afford to pay for that extravagance. Therefore, we are exporting violence to the remaining corners of the earth in which significant reserves of natural resources (particularly, oil) may be found, in order to obtain something for seemingly almost nothing. Our glorious country has therefore tried a steadily escalating series of destabilizing moves designed to remove the sovereign government of Syria, starting with trying to engineer a “revolution” through means of mercenaries.

Now we are at the point where, “while beating Sue [Syria], Mary [the United States] screams at her to stop attacking.” Naturally, we will try to scream loud enough for the neighbors to hear. But by now, the neighbors have our number.

On Reaping What We've Sown

It's been rather cold and rainy in the Portland metro area lately.  However, that wasn't the case at the beginning of May, when we were subjected to daytime temperatures that were 20 degrees above seasonal averages for several days.  That was also when carbon dioxide levels in the earth's atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time in history.  The present Portland coldness and wetness can be viewed as a merciful yet extremely temporary respite from the consequences of our actions.

Yet other parts of the United States are not so lucky.  I am thinking of the recent massive Oklahoma tornado.  I am also thinking of the doofus responses to the tornado on the part of some of the elected officials and many of the citizens of Oklahoma, not to mention some of the media talking heads who remain constitutionally unable to see the link between atmospheric pollution and an increasingly menacing climate.  Republican Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, who denies anthropogenic climate change, urged her citizens to pray to God for rain in 2011 in response to record heat and drought in her state.  Now she finds herself "praying" to Washington for federal dollars to rebuild some of the devastated parts of Oklahoma.  I wonder if she has given up on prayer to God.  Such a development wouldn't be surprising, as she is typical of a long list of Republican, conservative darlings of the political wing of American evangelicalism (which is really just Constantinianism): loudly proclaiming their commitment to Biblical morality, especially in sexual matters, yet unable to walk the talk in their own personal lives.  In this regard, she is rather like Mark Sanford.

Then there's Republican Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who opposed Federal aid for the victims of Hurricane Sandy, yet is appealing to President Obama for aid for the victims of the Oklahoma tornado, saying that their situation is "totally different" from that of the victims of Sandy.  How is that so?  In both cases, a big storm came with big winds which huffed and puffed and blew a bunch of houses down.  Senator Inhofe, what do you like about the Oklahoma victims that you don't like about the Sandy victims?  Inhofe is also a staunch climate change denier and a darling of American conservative Constantinians evangelicals .

I am thinking of all of this in the light of a book I recently received, Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore The Obvious At Our Peril, by Margaret Heffernan.  (That book has been a good read, by the way.)  When people willfully blind themselves, perhaps there comes a point when they become irreversibly blind.  As the ruin starts to fall around us, let's all have an eye-gouging party; why not?  But before Mary Fallin gouges her eyes out, she should read the part in the Good Book where God promises that whatever a person sows, that he will also reap.

Clueless Conversations (A Look At The Country)

Once again, I am down in So. Cal. for Christmas. This time, I traveled by different means than I normally use. Heretofore, I had always driven straight from Portland to here and back, having developed something of an allergy to flying several years ago. (Who wouldn't be allergic, what with TSA checkpoints, pat-downs of grandmas and grandpas, full body scans, deferred maintenance on aircraft, and pilots who make less per hour than Pizza Hut drivers?) Unfortunately, driving from Portland to So. Cal. takes about seventeen hours, assuming that a driver knows when to judiciously drive faster than the speed limit, and that he doesn't spend more than the minimum time necessary at gas stations, coffee shops, and fast food joints. It takes a few hours longer if you decide to drive at or below the speed limit all the way, although you can shorten the time by driving a car with an extremely large fuel tank and doing without bathroom breaks. Good luck with that!

Last time, I was not judicious enough in knowing when to speed. I also made the mistake of believing that since I had never been stopped by the California Highway Patrol, they were therefore harmless. They got me about 25 miles south of Weed, California. My trip wound up costing an extra $200. At least the cop who wrote the ticket was a nice guy, or the trip would have been even more costly.

So this time I took the train, a choice which provided a good opportunity to study some of the features of mainstream American culture, as most of my fellow travelers were Anglo-Americans. I like to use traveling time to improve myself, so I brought my computer, my guitar, a copy of the Good Book, a graduate level text on HVAC system design, and a copy of the New Penguin Russian Course (Я ещё изучаю руский язык).

Most other people also brought computers and other hand-held data display devices, on which the majority were watching movies or playing video games. Occasionally I saw someone reading a book. In almost all cases, the books being read were popular novels. The man sitting next to me had his smartphone plugged into the AC power socket next to the window, and he was following a football game involving the Seattle Seahawks. A relative of his was sitting in the seat directly in front of him, and was doing the same thing on his own smartphone. Occasionally the two men exchanged comments on the progress of the game. About half an hour out of Eugene, an elderly man sitting in the aisle across from me looked over at my fellow passenger and said, “How 'bout them Seahawks! Too bad they don't have a TV on this train. Otherwise, we could watch 'em! I wonder if anybody has a TV or a laptop we could use to watch 'em!” Suddenly feeling uncomfortable in the presence of my company, I decided to move to the observation car, where I busted out one of my books and started to read.

I chose a seat across a table from a tall, thin, quiet blonde woman. She was also reading (her book was a novel), although from time to time she looked at her smartphone. She never spoke. However, most of the people in the observation car were quite talkative, and as I read, occasionally I focused my attention on the scraps of conversation reaching my ears. Two conversations stood out on account of their extreme banality. One conversation was between two men sitting at a table right behind me, and concerned brew pubs in Portland and the opening of a McMenamins pub out on the West Side (west of the Willamette River for those of you who are unfamiliar with Portland). This led one of the men to talk at great length (rather incoherently) about which brand of beer was his favorite.

The other conversation was between two young women at another nearby table, and concerned work and career. It seems that one of the women works at a Starbucks and the other works in a telemarketing call center, having worked in Starbucks for a while as well. Both women constantly used two particular four-letter words in describing the downsides and the high points of their jobs, which included getting lots of free coffee. One of them remarked to the other that she had wanted to work at a Starbucks ever since she was a little girl. Then they discussed their interest in creative writing and some of the writing classes they had taken, using one of their two favorite four-letter words as a noun to describe the things they wrote about.

The conductors announced that they were taking dinner reservations, so I signed up for a time slot. When my time came, I made my way to the dining car, where I was seated across from a quiet, middle-aged married couple. I also was quiet. For several minutes, I sat and continued listening to the conversations of others. A couple of tables down the aisle, there sat a big, burly young man wearing a baseball cap. Next to him was a cute young blond woman. They were obviously attached to each other. Across from them sat an elderly woman. The couple was in the midst of delivering a long lesson in things Americans like to the elderly woman, using lots of pronouns such as “I” and “we” as they went down the list of favorite foods, sports and other things. I wondered at them, because it had seemed to me that all three of them were Americans (whenever the elderly woman managed to get a word in edgewise, she did not speak with any obvious accent).

Directly across the aisle from our table was another table, at which two couples were seated. One couple consisted of an African-American man married to a Caucasian woman. Both were middle-aged. Across the table from them was a young Asian pair who were, I believe, at the boyfriend-girlfriend stage. The conversation shared between these four, and the conversation I had with my dinner companions, were the most thought-provoking ones I heard during the entire trip.

My conversation began slowly. The couple at my table started by sharing some ice-breaking information about themselves. I found out that they had recently sailed up the Amazon River in South America, and were now traveling from Portland to Klamath Falls. This piqued my curiosity and got me talking. “Klamath Falls? Isn't that where the Oregon Institute of Technology is? I know a bit about their renewable energy engineering program.” I informed them that I am an engineer. They then informed me that they had both worked in the engineering field, the husband as a civil engineer and the wife as a drafter. They asked me how I liked engineering, to which I replied that there were parts I hated – namely the attempt by employers to work us like dogs for 55 to over 70 hours per week, world without end. My comment led to a general discussion of present-day life in America.

The discussion covered some familiar ground, such as the fact that people in most other countries – including many Third World countries – seem to be much healthier mentally than Americans, the fact that most immigrants to this country come here in much better mental health than most native-born U.S. citizens, and the fact that immigrant mental health deteriorates with increasing length of time in America and increasing Americanization. The wife then asked rhetorically, “Why is it so that we are so selfish here, so isolated from each other?” “I think it's because of the myths on which this country was founded,” I opined. “Other nations have realized for a long time that their citizens lived in a land of limits, in which everyone had to sacrifice certain prerogatives so that all might benefit. The dominant culture in the United States has always believed that there are no limits to what we can do or have if we want something badly enough. Therefore we haven't learned effective strategies for sharing limited resources with each other.”

That led us to talk about where we believed this country is heading as undeniable limits are beginning to bite us. It was also at this point that I began to tune in to the conversation between the mixed-race couple and the Asian boyfriend-girlfriend pair sitting at the table across the aisle from my table. The African-American male half of the married couple was relating what sounded like a belief that Asian (specifically Chinese) culture, intellectual power and economic might would bring about the end of American hegemony. It was with some effort that I managed to remain focused on my own conversation. At my table, we reviewed the spectrum of the most widely-held opinions concerning the future of industrial society, and of the United States in particular. Then a moment came when our food was all eaten, our energy spent, our words all said. We all excused ourselves and said our goodbyes for the night.

As I returned to the observation car, I saw several new arrivals, including some college-age guys enjoying a night of underage drinking. It occurred to me that they, as well as most of the passengers, were so typical of Anglo-American culture at present: unreflecting, sensual, incapable of articulating anything other than the cravings induced in them by our commercialized culture, and totally clueless about the future. Later, as I tried to sleep, my thoughts expanded to consider how the wealthiest and most powerful members of our society had become utterly incapable of giving ground or sacrificing assumed “rights” in order to benefit the common good. I was particularly mindful of the statement of the president of the NRA to the effect that guns were not the reason for the recent shooting rampages in this country, and that instead of restricting gun access, we should install armed guards in every elementary school in the United States. I was thinking also of the most recent shooting rampage, in which an older white male with a criminal history set some houses on fire and then shot volunteer firefighters as they arrived to try to put the fires out, before shooting himself. I thought of the lack of adult, intelligent, realistic conversations on the part of media figures or politicians to address the violent reality of mainstream American culture, or the multifaceted predicament we now face. We are forced by events to acknowledge that our society is killing us, yet nothing is done to effectively remedy the causes of the killing, because to do so would cause certain wealthy people to lose a lot of money, and would force most of us to live far more simply. And that's something that most people don't want to talk about.

The Liberty of Addicts

...Jesus therefore said to those Jews who had believed him, “If you remain in my word, then you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are Abraham’s offspring, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How do you say, ‘You will be made free’?” Jesus answered them, “Most certainly I tell you, everyone who commits sin is the bondservant of sin. A bondservant doesn’t live in the house forever. A son remains forever. If therefore the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

• John 8:31-36 (World English Bible, a public domain translation)

There is a myth widely taught in public schools today. (At least it was widely taught when I was a kid.) That myth goes something like this: The United States was founded by people who were pursuing liberty – especially freedom from governmental restrictions which violated their conscience, in order that each man might have full liberty to act in accordance with the dictates of his conscience and reason. Therefore the chief priority of free citizens of our glorious democracy must be to guard this liberty at all costs, and to prevent the encroachment of any governmental restrictions on this “liberty,” defined as I have defined it here.

But let write an equivalent definition of “liberty,” using simpler language. The United States has defined liberty as the freedom to do whatever you want. Plain and simple, isn't it?

Let me ask a question. If you live in a country where you can do whatever you want, are you actually free? Suppose you live in such a country, yet you are addicted to alcohol or heroin. Let's also say that you have ready access to however much alcohol or heroin you may desire. Are you still free? Are you free when you are so enslaved to your addiction that you can't do what you are supposed to do, and you can no longer avoid suffering the consequences of not doing what you are supposed to do and doing what you are not supposed to do?

I propose therefore a radically different definition of liberty: the freedom to do what you are supposed to do. Liberty is the freedom to obey moral “ought's.”

By that definition, America is not free. America is a nation of addicts run by addicts. The addicts who run the show are addicted to the continued accumulation of ever more unholy concentrations of wealth. And they continue to enrich themselves by pushing an addictive lifestyle onto the rest of us. The means used by these pushers include advertising, media capture, the promotion of dysfunctional trashy popular culture, and the dishonest manipulation of political discourse in this country. One particularly egregious example of that manipulation is the attempt to demonize any governmental restriction on potentially hurtful behaviors and policies of private citizens – especially when they are wealthy.

Thus we have incidents like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, for which British Petroleum still has not been brought to book. We have blatant lying and misrepresentation of facts by Fox News. We have fraud and misinformation practiced by the Wall Street Journal. We have banking and investment fraud practiced by outfits like Goldman Sachs and MF Global. And no one goes to jail.

But in this country, it's not just the extremely wealthy who can cause unspeakable harm to their fellow citizens. Ordinary people can get in on the act. We have seen two shooting sprees in the last seven days. The most recent shooting spree claimed 27 lives (20 children and seven adults), and happened within the last 24 hours. A few days ago, there was a shooting spree at the Clackamas Town Center (less than 10 miles from where I live); three people are dead. According to some reports I have read, there have been at least five random shooting sprees in the United States this year.

Predictably, the latest shooting spree has revived discussions regarding gun control. Predictably, the Republican Party and the National Rifle Association are gearing up to oppose any new restrictions on gun ownership, and to further weaken those restrictions that already exist. But it's funny how the number of shooting rampages in the United States has been increasing every year since 2007, when the Federal Government under President Bush allowed a number of gun ownership restrictions to lapse, and several state houses controlled by Republicans began to to allow just about anyone in those states to own and carry a gun. According to Mother Jones, there have been at least 62 firearm-involved mass murders in the United States since 1982, and 43 of the 62 mass murderers were white males. In the vast majority of cases, the weapons used were obtained legally. According to other studies, the United States is the most violent nation in the OECD, and the American South is the most violent region in the U.S.

It seems obvious that mainstream America is increasingly a nation of disconnected, antisocial individuals who are a menace to themselves and to each other. It also seems obvious that rectifying this situation will involve placing restrictions on people's access to technologies and devices that can be used to hurt a lot of people. Guns are at the top of the list of things that should have very restrictive access. But cars can easily qualify as well. Many people who buy large SUV's do so not because they need these vehicles, but because such vehicles serve as instruments of intimidation.

Finally, it seems obvious that unless this nation becomes truly free – free to do what we ought – many of us are likely to destroy each other in the pursuit of doing whatever we want. Trying to do whatever you crave doesn't work well in an age of economic contraction and energy descent.