Yesterday, I quit the atheist group Freethought Dayton. As I often do with this sort of thing, I'm going to recap why.
Alas, none of it will have the . . . vigor of my debacles in Miami! No guy lying about how he had seventy bachelor's degrees and the government had to "bring him back" because of what was in his head. No stories of murder-suicide. It was much more pedestrian than that - plain old-fashioned racism.
I will admit I am quite intolerant of racism. Fairly normal, acceptable levels of racism leave me sick to my soul. I think no racism should be acceptable! Broadly speaking, I live up to this.
In particular, I was at an event and people were tossing out bullshit, racist comments about Muslims (which is the most acceptable form of racism allowed in the US, right now). One person said that Muslims were only interested in technology if it could be used to kill . . . this infuriated me. He was talking about people whose homes were invaded who have cobbled together a few bombs . . . fighting the most comprehensive and technologically advanced military that has ever existed. The US spends about half the world's military budget every year but it's Muslims who are in love with weapons technology! It was absurd.
Another dude said that Muslims stopped thinking after the year 1500 and all intellectual and moral virtues passed to the West (which they also asserted was somehow different than "the Christian world" . . . it made no sense to me, either). Again, infuriating. We think of Muslims as racist . . . but this dude is German. There are people who are still living who remember being locked in concentration camps. For Westerns, with our elaborate, multi-century history of genocide, conquest and colonization to believe that we are in some fashion morally superior to Muslims since 1500 is the intellectual position of a . . . well, racist. Indeed, I find it very hard to assert that we're morally superior now, given how many missiles we fire into whatever country we want and how often we get into wars based on thin lies.
That same guy had mentioned something nasty about Muslims every time I saw him. He seemed to be looking for the chance to talk shit about them.
When I mentioned that was racism, they asserted "Islam isn't a race!" Since one of the common definitions of race is a group of people united by culture, language and religion, I beg to differ. I mean, right then, I said, "It is common to refer to Islamophobia as a form of racism." I further said that I had no interest in arguing the semantics of bigotry - even if Islamophobia isn't according-to-Hoyle racism (hint: it is, this is particularly true because almost all Muslims aren't white), it's a vicious form of bigotry - which is the problem regardless of the name, that they were telling ignorant lies about a huge, diverse group of people in order to smear them and make it easier to hate them.
They also asserted that Richard Dawkins isn't racist, despite his support for guys like Geert Wilder and his numerous examples of hate speech against Muslims.
Taken together, the group is racist. Of course, they will deny that - "Islam isn't a race!" they will chant, covering their ears in case some information slips inside - but all racists deny it! The KKK denies it! Nazis deny it! While they're not as bad as the KKK, they're still pretty darn racist.
It is also somewhat ironic, as Islamophobia is derived and sustained primarily by reactionary Christians! Nietzsche said that god is dead but we will live for centuries in his shadow - this is what it looks like. It looks like atheists, without consideration, enacting the principles of the very people they claim to reject. (Pro tip: the reason why you want to acknowledge that the West is also the Christian world is that it helps you to see where your thinking is influenced by religious biases you consciously reject. It's the same reason you should acknowledge that advertising works on you, so you can better observe its action on you with a mind to preventing it.)
(I didn't stay in the group to see what I figure will be a pretty big splurge of racism this coming weekend. Freethought Dayton - which is run altogether by white people, which is almost entirely white - has a table at a local African-American cultural festival. A bunch of white dudes will be trying to convince black people to be more like them! As far as I could tell, none of them understood the cultural history of African-Americans and their relationship with churches - that from slave days, the church was the one place where they could go and NOT be watched by their overseers and masters. It was the one place in all the world they could go to be safely black. Lacking this kind of historical context - and it's not like I'm going to be there to tell it to them, now - I can only imagine that they'll come off as a bunch of patronizing crackers telling the Negroes how they're getting it all wrong. It is my understanding that black people in America have seen quite a lot of this.)
Additionally, man, atheists are assholes. I've noticed this whenever they get together - almost all of them seem bound and determined to prove they're the smartest person in the room. Since no one knows everything, they often come off as real tools, speaking about things about which they have no knowledge because they can't stand the idea that someone, somewhere knows something they don't. It's tedious.
It is also one of my bigger problems with a lot of religions - that show of utterly certainty, the inability to admit that maybe your book written in the Iron Age isn't 100% up to the challenges of the modern world, and the constant assertions that they're right and everyone else is wrong. It's another way atheists are living in the shadow of god. Until they learn to say "I dunno", they'll be perpetrating the same kinds of intellectual mummery as Christians. Admittedly, about somewhat fewer things, but it'll still be there, poisoning the well for people like me. I could have tolerated that if not for the racism, though.
Anyway, that's my review of Dayton Freethought. While there are some good people there, there are too many racists for my taste - a culture that tolerates xenophobia and Islamophobia, and many members who express both.
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Friday, September 12, 2014
Dune and the US State Department
I think someone at the US State Department should read the sci-fi novel, Dune by Frank Herbert.
In it, the villain of the piece, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, sends his cousin, Beast Rabban, to rule the planet Arrakis. The Baron tells Rabban to "squeeze and squeeze".
For those of you who aren't in the know - and shame on you, since Dune is one of the greatest novels of the 20th century - Arrakis is a metaphor for the Middle East. A desert world, it provides the "spice" which is necessary to sustain the interstellar travel needed to support human civilization as well as having many, many other uses. Control of the desert society of Arrakis is largely over control of water as hydraulic dictatorship - the Harkonnens control the water, so they control the population of Arrakis and, thus, the control of spice.
Except that's not really what the Baron has in mind. It's what he says, but with his orders for Rabban to squeeze and squeeze, the Baron knows that this will do nothing but intensify and spread opposition to Harkonnen rule and make Rabban the particular target of their hatred. The Baron's plan is to whip the population of Arrakis into a frenzy and then recognize their suffering, execute Rabban and install a relatively gentler rule under his nephew, Feyd. It is worth noting that Rabban is an idiot - it's part of the reason the Baron is using him like this. Rabban is too stupid to see through the Baron's plan.
Which is to say that Vladimir Harkonnen better understands Arrakis than the US State Department understands the Middle East.
The United States is about to start a fight with the Islamic State. The model that the President of the United States is going after is the "successes" the US has had in Somalia and Yemen. Oh, sure, both places are war-ravaged places where al-Qaida cells continue to proliferate in great numbers than ever, real hellholes, but the reasoning is that neither has attacked the US, recently. Therefore, success stories!
So the US is going to work along that model against the IS. It's like they're Rabban being told to squeeze and squeeze again and, like Rabban, the US government is full of idiots. They don't seem to realize that groups like the Islamic State are flourishing because of the political chaos created by the United States after destabilizing the whole area. We squeeze in one place and something pops out in another. We squeeze in Iraq and al-Qaida moves to Yemen. We squeeze in Yemen, IS pops up in Syria. Our response is to squeeze harder, imagining that things will eventually stop popping out but that won't happen.
Unlike Baron Harkonnen, we have no exit strategy. There is no relatively benevolent Feyd in the wings or, really, any other plan. The whole of our strategy is to squeeze and we have no notion at all, not the faintest whim of understanding, on a national level, that what we do in one place has consequences in other places. That invading Iraq and bombing the shit out of Yemen and other countries, in violation of law and sense, has created the groundswell of resentment that is fueling the growth of these radical organizations. We squeeze and that's the pressure that drives recruitment in these organizations. But there is no plan beyond squeezing.
The US government is the Beast Rabban, but without the benefit of a Vladimir Harkonnen! Which is truly awful.
Someone should really send a few copies of Dune down there.
In it, the villain of the piece, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, sends his cousin, Beast Rabban, to rule the planet Arrakis. The Baron tells Rabban to "squeeze and squeeze".
For those of you who aren't in the know - and shame on you, since Dune is one of the greatest novels of the 20th century - Arrakis is a metaphor for the Middle East. A desert world, it provides the "spice" which is necessary to sustain the interstellar travel needed to support human civilization as well as having many, many other uses. Control of the desert society of Arrakis is largely over control of water as hydraulic dictatorship - the Harkonnens control the water, so they control the population of Arrakis and, thus, the control of spice.
Except that's not really what the Baron has in mind. It's what he says, but with his orders for Rabban to squeeze and squeeze, the Baron knows that this will do nothing but intensify and spread opposition to Harkonnen rule and make Rabban the particular target of their hatred. The Baron's plan is to whip the population of Arrakis into a frenzy and then recognize their suffering, execute Rabban and install a relatively gentler rule under his nephew, Feyd. It is worth noting that Rabban is an idiot - it's part of the reason the Baron is using him like this. Rabban is too stupid to see through the Baron's plan.
Which is to say that Vladimir Harkonnen better understands Arrakis than the US State Department understands the Middle East.
The United States is about to start a fight with the Islamic State. The model that the President of the United States is going after is the "successes" the US has had in Somalia and Yemen. Oh, sure, both places are war-ravaged places where al-Qaida cells continue to proliferate in great numbers than ever, real hellholes, but the reasoning is that neither has attacked the US, recently. Therefore, success stories!
So the US is going to work along that model against the IS. It's like they're Rabban being told to squeeze and squeeze again and, like Rabban, the US government is full of idiots. They don't seem to realize that groups like the Islamic State are flourishing because of the political chaos created by the United States after destabilizing the whole area. We squeeze in one place and something pops out in another. We squeeze in Iraq and al-Qaida moves to Yemen. We squeeze in Yemen, IS pops up in Syria. Our response is to squeeze harder, imagining that things will eventually stop popping out but that won't happen.
Unlike Baron Harkonnen, we have no exit strategy. There is no relatively benevolent Feyd in the wings or, really, any other plan. The whole of our strategy is to squeeze and we have no notion at all, not the faintest whim of understanding, on a national level, that what we do in one place has consequences in other places. That invading Iraq and bombing the shit out of Yemen and other countries, in violation of law and sense, has created the groundswell of resentment that is fueling the growth of these radical organizations. We squeeze and that's the pressure that drives recruitment in these organizations. But there is no plan beyond squeezing.
The US government is the Beast Rabban, but without the benefit of a Vladimir Harkonnen! Which is truly awful.
Someone should really send a few copies of Dune down there.
Monday, September 8, 2014
My Visit to Aldi and Some Thoughts on Choices
Yesterday, the wife and I went down to the grocery store, Aldi, here in Xenia, and shopped. For those of you who don't know, Aldi is a European-style (yea, Germany-based) chain of grocery stories which offer a greatly reduced number of items compared to the big grocery stores we're used to seeing in America. In addition to having a smaller number of products, they have less selection in products, though they claim this gives them sufficient cost savings to give high quality goods. Additionally, they don't bag your items - though they provide shelf space so you can - or provide bags. To use a cart, you have to put a quarter into a gadget, though you get the quarter back when you return the cart. This is another cost saving tool, meaning they don't have to have dudes wandering around collecting carts. Nowadays, they market this as the greener alternative to big box supermarkets that most Americans shop at, though my understanding is the impetus is more pecuniary than environmental . . . but that's a trivial point!
For us, the upshot was, we really liked it. The store here in Xenia has the right items, broadly speaking. And given that the store is much smaller than a regular supermarket, we were in and out in half an hour. Broadly speaking, we didn't feel the supposed lack of choice. Even the big box supermarkets fail to have things I want, like spices for Asian cuisine. Broadly, what we can't get at Aldi we can get online or by stopping, now and then, at specialty stores (like liquor stores for beer).
But this made me think about choices. Recently, when Adrienne was at a convention up in Minneapolis, she spoke to a Danish collegue of hers, Jesper. He'd been down at FIU and we had hung out a little, he's a nice guy. At the conference, he mentioned he had forgotten how exhausting being in the United States was - that he had to translate everything in his head and then, surprisingly, to Adrienne and then to me, was the "number of choices". Being an American has a lot of choices.
Jesper told a story about how he went into a burrito joint because he wanted to try this crazy American foodstuff about which he's heard, so he goes up to the counter and asked for a burrito. He was then asked what he wanted on his burrito . . .
He had no idea. He's Danish! Their main exposure to burritos is, and I'm quoting Yona, who is my main source of all things Denmark, "Middle Eastern-owned fast food places that make them from store-bought components and have no real idea what they're supposed to be like." The question drew nothing from him so he said, and I can see Jesper in my mind saying this, "A little bit of everything. Which was not the right choice."
Everything in America is like this. Once I started seeing it, I saw it everywhere. Soda aisles with dozens and dozens of choices. You want toothpaste? There are a dozen brands and each brand has several different products! There are forty linear feet of beer shelves at the local Kroger's . . . and that's not even a liquor store! Americans are constantly asking other Americans what we want with that - do you want onion rings, house chips, French fries or steak fries with that? What kind of cheese do you want on your hamburger? It's everywhere!
And it is exhausting. A supermarket is the precise kind of place that we hate and I'm sure part of it is all the damn choices. And they're so identical! How do you know which brand of toothpaste is actually better?! Worse, most of the brands are functionally identical.
So you're in this supermarket and you're surrounded by choices and most of them are false choices. But because there is this farcical illusion of choice, the store is goddamn enormous! It's huge! You can land aircraft in there, play football games! So you wander around aisle after aisle, being forced to make false choices, searching around for the lowest price, or the price point you want, surrounded by other sullen faced people doing the same thing, trudging along, back and forth, making these same false choices.
Which is to say shopping in a store where there were many fewer choices was a great relief to me. Jesper is right. We have too many choices in America.
For us, the upshot was, we really liked it. The store here in Xenia has the right items, broadly speaking. And given that the store is much smaller than a regular supermarket, we were in and out in half an hour. Broadly speaking, we didn't feel the supposed lack of choice. Even the big box supermarkets fail to have things I want, like spices for Asian cuisine. Broadly, what we can't get at Aldi we can get online or by stopping, now and then, at specialty stores (like liquor stores for beer).
But this made me think about choices. Recently, when Adrienne was at a convention up in Minneapolis, she spoke to a Danish collegue of hers, Jesper. He'd been down at FIU and we had hung out a little, he's a nice guy. At the conference, he mentioned he had forgotten how exhausting being in the United States was - that he had to translate everything in his head and then, surprisingly, to Adrienne and then to me, was the "number of choices". Being an American has a lot of choices.
Jesper told a story about how he went into a burrito joint because he wanted to try this crazy American foodstuff about which he's heard, so he goes up to the counter and asked for a burrito. He was then asked what he wanted on his burrito . . .
He had no idea. He's Danish! Their main exposure to burritos is, and I'm quoting Yona, who is my main source of all things Denmark, "Middle Eastern-owned fast food places that make them from store-bought components and have no real idea what they're supposed to be like." The question drew nothing from him so he said, and I can see Jesper in my mind saying this, "A little bit of everything. Which was not the right choice."
Everything in America is like this. Once I started seeing it, I saw it everywhere. Soda aisles with dozens and dozens of choices. You want toothpaste? There are a dozen brands and each brand has several different products! There are forty linear feet of beer shelves at the local Kroger's . . . and that's not even a liquor store! Americans are constantly asking other Americans what we want with that - do you want onion rings, house chips, French fries or steak fries with that? What kind of cheese do you want on your hamburger? It's everywhere!
And it is exhausting. A supermarket is the precise kind of place that we hate and I'm sure part of it is all the damn choices. And they're so identical! How do you know which brand of toothpaste is actually better?! Worse, most of the brands are functionally identical.
So you're in this supermarket and you're surrounded by choices and most of them are false choices. But because there is this farcical illusion of choice, the store is goddamn enormous! It's huge! You can land aircraft in there, play football games! So you wander around aisle after aisle, being forced to make false choices, searching around for the lowest price, or the price point you want, surrounded by other sullen faced people doing the same thing, trudging along, back and forth, making these same false choices.
Which is to say shopping in a store where there were many fewer choices was a great relief to me. Jesper is right. We have too many choices in America.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Richard Dawkins seems to be a sexist and racist asshole
I've never really liked Richard Dawkins. At first, my dislike was merely philosophical - I think saying there probably isn't a god is wishy-washy. The reasons he says there probably isn't a god amount to a repetition of the epistemological uncertainty into which the god of the gaps lives. Since we can't be certain of anything, we can't be certain god doesn't really exist.
Or anything else! So he should say, y'know, nothing exists, that it all is probably this and probably that - or we can live with the epistemological uncertainty and speak with conviction. God does not exist any more that teapots whirling around the sun exist.
Then, when I heard him on some show or another . . . I was overwhelmed by the sense of class. Here's a dude who is that upper crust British asshole - almost a parody. He's everything that Monty Python has ever made fun of. I just assume he has a stupid walk.
He is also a sexist asshole, to get to the thrust of this post. He tweeted, recently "Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse."
Is it? I'm not sure that getting raped by someone you know is better than being raped by a stranger, myself. And I also know that date rape often includes threats of violence. So, it was really just a stupid fucking thing to say, ignorant and nasty.
But here's the thing - why say it at all? What would prompt a guy to, out of the blue, say something like that?
In short, it's that comic upper class English-ness. He's an important rich white man. He speaks with the confidence of being master of the world. He knows his opinions are the opinions that count. So he can dismiss anyone he wants who isn't an important rich white man. Like, say, women.
(He also added, "If you think that's an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think." Indeed, he is endorsing nothing, but he was definitely speaking out of turn - arrogantly, hurtfully and he was wrong, to boot. But that's something arrogant rich white men do, too - they can throw out any rationalization to make themselves feel good about the shitty thing they just did. No one has the status - and everything about Dawkins screams that he's obsessed with status, that he really, really likes being an important rich white man - to seriously gainsay him. He can dismiss them, as he did, and does. Learn to think! It is you who is clearly the problem!)
A couple years back, he told a woman who dared talk about sexism in the atheist conventions that because she wasn't being beaten up by her husband that she should shut up. He tells other people that they should think, but he often fails to do it, himself - two wrongs don't make a right. Beating women - beating anyone - is wrong. But so is sexual harassment that occurs at atheist conferences. A person who bothered to think would recognize that . . . but this is Richard Dawkins. He's an important rich white man! He's got TITLES! So women who aren't beating beaten by their husbands need to shut up.
He is also a racist. He said that Cambridge has produced more Nobel laureates than the whole of the Middle East. Should we be stunned that a prize created by a northerwestern European is mostly given out to other northwestern Europeans? But he has the bigotry of a Englishman, including the arrogant belief that they are really the best at everything.
So, he's a pig. There, I said it. Fuck that racist, sexist asshole.
Or anything else! So he should say, y'know, nothing exists, that it all is probably this and probably that - or we can live with the epistemological uncertainty and speak with conviction. God does not exist any more that teapots whirling around the sun exist.
Then, when I heard him on some show or another . . . I was overwhelmed by the sense of class. Here's a dude who is that upper crust British asshole - almost a parody. He's everything that Monty Python has ever made fun of. I just assume he has a stupid walk.
He is also a sexist asshole, to get to the thrust of this post. He tweeted, recently "Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse."
Is it? I'm not sure that getting raped by someone you know is better than being raped by a stranger, myself. And I also know that date rape often includes threats of violence. So, it was really just a stupid fucking thing to say, ignorant and nasty.
But here's the thing - why say it at all? What would prompt a guy to, out of the blue, say something like that?
In short, it's that comic upper class English-ness. He's an important rich white man. He speaks with the confidence of being master of the world. He knows his opinions are the opinions that count. So he can dismiss anyone he wants who isn't an important rich white man. Like, say, women.
(He also added, "If you think that's an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think." Indeed, he is endorsing nothing, but he was definitely speaking out of turn - arrogantly, hurtfully and he was wrong, to boot. But that's something arrogant rich white men do, too - they can throw out any rationalization to make themselves feel good about the shitty thing they just did. No one has the status - and everything about Dawkins screams that he's obsessed with status, that he really, really likes being an important rich white man - to seriously gainsay him. He can dismiss them, as he did, and does. Learn to think! It is you who is clearly the problem!)
A couple years back, he told a woman who dared talk about sexism in the atheist conventions that because she wasn't being beaten up by her husband that she should shut up. He tells other people that they should think, but he often fails to do it, himself - two wrongs don't make a right. Beating women - beating anyone - is wrong. But so is sexual harassment that occurs at atheist conferences. A person who bothered to think would recognize that . . . but this is Richard Dawkins. He's an important rich white man! He's got TITLES! So women who aren't beating beaten by their husbands need to shut up.
He is also a racist. He said that Cambridge has produced more Nobel laureates than the whole of the Middle East. Should we be stunned that a prize created by a northerwestern European is mostly given out to other northwestern Europeans? But he has the bigotry of a Englishman, including the arrogant belief that they are really the best at everything.
So, he's a pig. There, I said it. Fuck that racist, sexist asshole.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Childhood neglect, abuse and asthma
I don't really talk about my childhood abuse and neglect very often . . . well, I guess I talk about it more often than many abused children, but because I wasn't regularly beat up by my parents it's often hard to talk about.
(There was a period where I was beat up pretty regularly - when my mother was married to her second husband, Jerry. It is weird. Before and after, my mother didn't really hit me, but when she was with Jerry, she did. I'm not even talking about with her hand, I'm talking about with a stick, a 1 inch by 2 inch stick, just wailed on me. But only for those two or three years she was with Jerry.)
It's hard to talk about because the shape of the abuse was neglect (the time with Jerry notwithstanding). While all abuse is tragic, I think neglect is insidious because it's often very difficult to talk about something's lack. When you've been hit, you can go, "Holy shit, these adults kicked the tar out of an eight year old with a fucking stick!" But when they don't do something, it's harder to parse.
In particular, there are a lot of things that happened to me that aren't normal but because no one really talks about (because they are pedestrian) so the abnormal, the terrible, seems normal to me. I don't even realize that they are a sign of neglect. Which is why it took me thirty years to figure out that I was neglected in the first place: I thought everyone had similar experiences.
The specific case is this: I have asthma. I have probably had it since I was a little kid, but I only - right this very day - realized that I have it and have probably always had it.
A chief symptom of asthma is coughing at night. I remember, as a child, coughing a lot at night, coughing until my sides hurt and my throat was raw. I remember because coughing sucks and because my mother and grandmother's response to me coughing as to tell me to shut up.
It is only now that I'm looking back and going, "That's fucked up." You have this kid of single digit years and he's coughing up a storm late into the night, just absolutely miserable, and the response isn't to take him to the emergency room or even to schedule a doctor's appointment - it's to tell this sick kid to shut up. Hell, they didn't even come into my room to check to see if I was okay - they would just yell, "Shut up!" They treated it like I was faking it, like it was some sort of ploy to get out of school or chores the next day - that a reasonable kid would put that much effort into not going to school or taking out the trash. I submit this says more about them than me.
(Which puts a zap on a kid's head, too. For a long time, I did think I was faking it - or, more precisely, that I had a weak character and found it easier to "pretend" to be sick than to do work, because we learn the meaning of things from our family. It wasn't until I stood up to dozens of bullies, stared down cops, told the truth even if it meant getting fired that I realized that I don't have a particularly defective character. I might not be particularly strong, but neither am I particularly weak. It's something else. But it was a hard road because I was taught that stuff like asthma was a ploy I used to get out of school and chores.)
The coughing was and continues to be a fairly frequent occurrence, by the way. It is just this constant thing in my life that I've assumed is pretty normal because, y'know, it was treated it that way. No one talks very much about their doctor's visits as a child but I had, basically, none unless I had a broken bone or was spurting blood. I didn't know that was strange. I figured everyone coughed. (And, to be fair, everyone in my family did, because they smoked like chimneys.)
I want to emphasize here, too, that I had insurance and both of my parents had good jobs. It wasn't that. Going to the doctor was quite affordable. But I can't remember ever going to a doctor unless there was severe structural damage and we never had anything so high falutin' as a family doctor. Ditto dental - I didn't have my teeth cleaned once, not once, as far back into my childhood as I can remember.
Also looking back, I am angry because this is the sort of thing that really effects a kid's - and adult's - life. For instance, I have struggled with weight my entire life. I have generally found exercise to be really hard. Other kids would be running and I would have to stop to cough. That is the classic asthma symptom, too, right up there with night coughing. I thought it was just that I was really out of shape but now I'm wondering how much more difficult all exercise has been because I have trouble breathing and rather than checking it out, when I was a kid and coughing my lungs out, I was told to shut up.
(There was a period where I was beat up pretty regularly - when my mother was married to her second husband, Jerry. It is weird. Before and after, my mother didn't really hit me, but when she was with Jerry, she did. I'm not even talking about with her hand, I'm talking about with a stick, a 1 inch by 2 inch stick, just wailed on me. But only for those two or three years she was with Jerry.)
It's hard to talk about because the shape of the abuse was neglect (the time with Jerry notwithstanding). While all abuse is tragic, I think neglect is insidious because it's often very difficult to talk about something's lack. When you've been hit, you can go, "Holy shit, these adults kicked the tar out of an eight year old with a fucking stick!" But when they don't do something, it's harder to parse.
In particular, there are a lot of things that happened to me that aren't normal but because no one really talks about (because they are pedestrian) so the abnormal, the terrible, seems normal to me. I don't even realize that they are a sign of neglect. Which is why it took me thirty years to figure out that I was neglected in the first place: I thought everyone had similar experiences.
The specific case is this: I have asthma. I have probably had it since I was a little kid, but I only - right this very day - realized that I have it and have probably always had it.
A chief symptom of asthma is coughing at night. I remember, as a child, coughing a lot at night, coughing until my sides hurt and my throat was raw. I remember because coughing sucks and because my mother and grandmother's response to me coughing as to tell me to shut up.
It is only now that I'm looking back and going, "That's fucked up." You have this kid of single digit years and he's coughing up a storm late into the night, just absolutely miserable, and the response isn't to take him to the emergency room or even to schedule a doctor's appointment - it's to tell this sick kid to shut up. Hell, they didn't even come into my room to check to see if I was okay - they would just yell, "Shut up!" They treated it like I was faking it, like it was some sort of ploy to get out of school or chores the next day - that a reasonable kid would put that much effort into not going to school or taking out the trash. I submit this says more about them than me.
(Which puts a zap on a kid's head, too. For a long time, I did think I was faking it - or, more precisely, that I had a weak character and found it easier to "pretend" to be sick than to do work, because we learn the meaning of things from our family. It wasn't until I stood up to dozens of bullies, stared down cops, told the truth even if it meant getting fired that I realized that I don't have a particularly defective character. I might not be particularly strong, but neither am I particularly weak. It's something else. But it was a hard road because I was taught that stuff like asthma was a ploy I used to get out of school and chores.)
The coughing was and continues to be a fairly frequent occurrence, by the way. It is just this constant thing in my life that I've assumed is pretty normal because, y'know, it was treated it that way. No one talks very much about their doctor's visits as a child but I had, basically, none unless I had a broken bone or was spurting blood. I didn't know that was strange. I figured everyone coughed. (And, to be fair, everyone in my family did, because they smoked like chimneys.)
I want to emphasize here, too, that I had insurance and both of my parents had good jobs. It wasn't that. Going to the doctor was quite affordable. But I can't remember ever going to a doctor unless there was severe structural damage and we never had anything so high falutin' as a family doctor. Ditto dental - I didn't have my teeth cleaned once, not once, as far back into my childhood as I can remember.
Also looking back, I am angry because this is the sort of thing that really effects a kid's - and adult's - life. For instance, I have struggled with weight my entire life. I have generally found exercise to be really hard. Other kids would be running and I would have to stop to cough. That is the classic asthma symptom, too, right up there with night coughing. I thought it was just that I was really out of shape but now I'm wondering how much more difficult all exercise has been because I have trouble breathing and rather than checking it out, when I was a kid and coughing my lungs out, I was told to shut up.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Why I don't like Colton Smith's pathetic excuses
I read this article about why Colton Smith isn't a very good representative of the US Army. It mostly comes down to the justifiable perception that he's a total douche. He's a smug, self-important asshole who is a bit of a dirty fighter, who brags about cheating to win in the cage ("if you're not cheating, you're not trying hard enough") and is basically a jerk.
What bothers me about him, though, is that he makes excuses for his losses before there's even a fight. Before his fight with Carlos Diego Ferreira (which he lost in humiliating fashion in 38 seconds . . . his third straight loss, I should add), he said, "On the base, we train soldiers, and I’m a combative instructor right now. But that’s life and death stuff, that’s not sport stuff like mixed martial arts. Missions come first, soldiers come first, then MMA was a pretty distant second. Now it’s just changed, and the Army has been very supportive of me. I took a personal leave for this fight."
I could be critical of the US military's combatives training as a waste of time. It is. US soldiers have guns. There is almost no unarmed hand-to-hand fighting in combat. Additionally, it takes years of dedicated training to learn unarmed martial arts thus almost a tiny handful of soldiers ever learn combatives. One would be hard pressed to find a single situation where military combatives actually saved a soldier's life in combat. I did some googling and couldn't find a case - and even if you can, it doesn't change the point, it's rare as hell.
Though I did find that the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), the dudes in charge of deciding how the US Army is trained, wants to get rid of the current combatives program and replace it with a two week course. This is an ongoing thing. Soldiers dig martial arts, so when some soldiers get good at them, they get a few officers behind them, get some funding, create a program and then someone notices once again that unarmed combat has no place on modern battlefields and the program gets scrapped. Combatives is merely the latest in a long line of martial arts whose usefulness has been overblown to rationalize soldiers acting like tough guys who can kill a person with their commando moves.
OK, ignoring that TRADOC wants to get rid of combatives and there is no indication that it has saved any soldier's life, what Smith is basically doing is making an excuse why it's okay for him to lose.
It's bullshit for a couple of reasons, if you ask me. The first is that it's just some chickenshit thing to say - he is giving himself an out, an excuse to lose. Mind you, he is losing. Three in a row. But he's saving lives . . . oh, wait, except that there is no proof that Army combatives have done anything of the sort, to the extent that TRADOC wants to cut the program.
Second . . . Colton Smith isn't the first guy in MMA to be in a dangerous job. I can't think of a single policeman who said, after getting their ass kicked in 38 seconds, the third time in three fights that he's been finished (which might not happen so much if he didn't give himself so many ways out). Before fighting Ben Askren, Karl Amoussou didn't go, "Well, if Ben whips me, it's because my police work in Paris, fighting gangs, is why will have lost. That's important work, not like this MMA stuff." (Note: he did lose, but not as badly as Smith makes a habit of losing.) Mirko Crocop never used his service with Croatian anti-terrorist special police as a justification as to why he lost. Tim Kennedy hasn't done it when he was a Green Beret sniper. Even though those guys could legitimately say they're saving lives, or at least fighting a war.
Most MMA fighters hold a day job, even many in the UFC. Since the kind of guys who beat up each other in a cage have that mindset all the time, many MMA fighters have jobs that are risky - cops and soldiers have populated MMA's ranks from nearly the beginning. Smith's excuses are a slight to every person in MMA who has done their job and fought and lost and never made excuses - Smith's excuses are doubly bullshit because he made them before the fight.
After three straight losses, it was normal for a dude to get bounced from the UFC. Especially at lightweight, which is a shark pit. Smith was never a very good fighter and he keeps getting his ass kicked so I don't imagine he'll be with the promotion very much longer. Still, he's a jerk.
What bothers me about him, though, is that he makes excuses for his losses before there's even a fight. Before his fight with Carlos Diego Ferreira (which he lost in humiliating fashion in 38 seconds . . . his third straight loss, I should add), he said, "On the base, we train soldiers, and I’m a combative instructor right now. But that’s life and death stuff, that’s not sport stuff like mixed martial arts. Missions come first, soldiers come first, then MMA was a pretty distant second. Now it’s just changed, and the Army has been very supportive of me. I took a personal leave for this fight."
I could be critical of the US military's combatives training as a waste of time. It is. US soldiers have guns. There is almost no unarmed hand-to-hand fighting in combat. Additionally, it takes years of dedicated training to learn unarmed martial arts thus almost a tiny handful of soldiers ever learn combatives. One would be hard pressed to find a single situation where military combatives actually saved a soldier's life in combat. I did some googling and couldn't find a case - and even if you can, it doesn't change the point, it's rare as hell.
Though I did find that the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), the dudes in charge of deciding how the US Army is trained, wants to get rid of the current combatives program and replace it with a two week course. This is an ongoing thing. Soldiers dig martial arts, so when some soldiers get good at them, they get a few officers behind them, get some funding, create a program and then someone notices once again that unarmed combat has no place on modern battlefields and the program gets scrapped. Combatives is merely the latest in a long line of martial arts whose usefulness has been overblown to rationalize soldiers acting like tough guys who can kill a person with their commando moves.
OK, ignoring that TRADOC wants to get rid of combatives and there is no indication that it has saved any soldier's life, what Smith is basically doing is making an excuse why it's okay for him to lose.
It's bullshit for a couple of reasons, if you ask me. The first is that it's just some chickenshit thing to say - he is giving himself an out, an excuse to lose. Mind you, he is losing. Three in a row. But he's saving lives . . . oh, wait, except that there is no proof that Army combatives have done anything of the sort, to the extent that TRADOC wants to cut the program.
Second . . . Colton Smith isn't the first guy in MMA to be in a dangerous job. I can't think of a single policeman who said, after getting their ass kicked in 38 seconds, the third time in three fights that he's been finished (which might not happen so much if he didn't give himself so many ways out). Before fighting Ben Askren, Karl Amoussou didn't go, "Well, if Ben whips me, it's because my police work in Paris, fighting gangs, is why will have lost. That's important work, not like this MMA stuff." (Note: he did lose, but not as badly as Smith makes a habit of losing.) Mirko Crocop never used his service with Croatian anti-terrorist special police as a justification as to why he lost. Tim Kennedy hasn't done it when he was a Green Beret sniper. Even though those guys could legitimately say they're saving lives, or at least fighting a war.
Most MMA fighters hold a day job, even many in the UFC. Since the kind of guys who beat up each other in a cage have that mindset all the time, many MMA fighters have jobs that are risky - cops and soldiers have populated MMA's ranks from nearly the beginning. Smith's excuses are a slight to every person in MMA who has done their job and fought and lost and never made excuses - Smith's excuses are doubly bullshit because he made them before the fight.
After three straight losses, it was normal for a dude to get bounced from the UFC. Especially at lightweight, which is a shark pit. Smith was never a very good fighter and he keeps getting his ass kicked so I don't imagine he'll be with the promotion very much longer. Still, he's a jerk.
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Talkin' to a communist - haven't done that in a while!
Friday night, I spoke with a self-described communist.
I have done considerably more than flirt with communism, socialism and anarchism. I often describe myself as an anarcho-syndicalist, tho' I suspect that is much less true than when I was in college and had these kinds of conversations quite frequently. See, nowadays, I don't let ideological purity get in the way of the practical nuts and bolts of human society.
My fall-out with communism occurred, for instance, when I noticed that every attempt at a communist government had collapsed into a cult-of-personality military dictatorship and never really left it in a way that could be described as communist. Mostly, they stay military dictatorships, or become regular capitalist democracies.
So the socialist lacuna between the people's revolution and the withering of the state became troubling for me. It seemed to me that on one side you had the worker's revolution and on the other side, across a bottomless pit, you had this wonderful utopia but no one knew how to build the bridge attaching the two. So the primary question became, for me, "How do we fill the chasm or build the bridge?"
I have considered the question, off and on, for years . . . and no solution is forthcoming. No one seems to know. The practical nuts and bolts of building a better society don't seem to be very interesting to most people - the utopian fantasy seems to move them.
(Of course, this is just as true of radical capitalism. Anarcho-capitalist fantasies are splendid but to get there we're just supposed to trust that megacorporations are going to let their power go to fit the ideology of Miltonian economics? Preposterous. Just as preposterous as imagining a communist dictatorship will cede its power to some ideal stateless society. The reality of power and control make this nearly impossible to imagine.)
Which as both a writer and a sausage maker is unsatisfying. Books are great, but they aren't the creative frenzy that, well, artists sell as the artistic process. There's a lot of stuff that isn't obsessed dudes at typewriters spilling their heart and soul. There's a lot of research and then a lot of editing. The finished product is the result of a lot of hard work.
The same with sausage. We all love sausage, but to get there requires pushing meat through a grinder. It's sticky, messy, cold work. The end results are great, but there are practical issues in sausage making that need to be performed before you sink your teeth into its utopian pleasures.
Finishing a big project is best accomplished with a solid, concrete plan. If you don't have that plan, you'll end up with a shoddy product (the USSR), nothing at all (any failed revolution the world over) or you'll never start (dreamy eyed middle-class communists). Without that concrete plan, don't expect most people to get worked up over your ideology. Don't expect the revolution to happen if you don't know what that even means.
I have done considerably more than flirt with communism, socialism and anarchism. I often describe myself as an anarcho-syndicalist, tho' I suspect that is much less true than when I was in college and had these kinds of conversations quite frequently. See, nowadays, I don't let ideological purity get in the way of the practical nuts and bolts of human society.
My fall-out with communism occurred, for instance, when I noticed that every attempt at a communist government had collapsed into a cult-of-personality military dictatorship and never really left it in a way that could be described as communist. Mostly, they stay military dictatorships, or become regular capitalist democracies.
So the socialist lacuna between the people's revolution and the withering of the state became troubling for me. It seemed to me that on one side you had the worker's revolution and on the other side, across a bottomless pit, you had this wonderful utopia but no one knew how to build the bridge attaching the two. So the primary question became, for me, "How do we fill the chasm or build the bridge?"
I have considered the question, off and on, for years . . . and no solution is forthcoming. No one seems to know. The practical nuts and bolts of building a better society don't seem to be very interesting to most people - the utopian fantasy seems to move them.
(Of course, this is just as true of radical capitalism. Anarcho-capitalist fantasies are splendid but to get there we're just supposed to trust that megacorporations are going to let their power go to fit the ideology of Miltonian economics? Preposterous. Just as preposterous as imagining a communist dictatorship will cede its power to some ideal stateless society. The reality of power and control make this nearly impossible to imagine.)
Which as both a writer and a sausage maker is unsatisfying. Books are great, but they aren't the creative frenzy that, well, artists sell as the artistic process. There's a lot of stuff that isn't obsessed dudes at typewriters spilling their heart and soul. There's a lot of research and then a lot of editing. The finished product is the result of a lot of hard work.
The same with sausage. We all love sausage, but to get there requires pushing meat through a grinder. It's sticky, messy, cold work. The end results are great, but there are practical issues in sausage making that need to be performed before you sink your teeth into its utopian pleasures.
Finishing a big project is best accomplished with a solid, concrete plan. If you don't have that plan, you'll end up with a shoddy product (the USSR), nothing at all (any failed revolution the world over) or you'll never start (dreamy eyed middle-class communists). Without that concrete plan, don't expect most people to get worked up over your ideology. Don't expect the revolution to happen if you don't know what that even means.
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