Hate Walks With Me, and Hate Talks With Me...

PFC Manning was forced to strip naked in his cell again last night. As with the previous evening, Quantico Brig guards required him to surrender all of his clothing. PFC Manning then walked back to his bed, and spent the next seven hours in humiliation.

The decision to require him to be stripped of all clothing was made by the Brig commander, Chief Warrant Officer-2 Denise Barnes ["Barnes said she plans to take things to another level within her new unit."] According to First Lieutenant Brian Villard, a Marine spokesman, the decision was "not punitive" and done in accordance with Brig rules. There can be no conceivable justification for requiring a soldier to surrender all his clothing, remain naked in his cell for seven hours, and then stand at attention the subsequent morning. This treatment is even more degrading considering that PFC Manning is being monitored -- both by direct observation and by video -- at all times. The defense was informed by Brig officials that the decision to strip PFC Manning of all his clothing was made without consulting any of the Brig's mental health providers.

This is common, or SOP, for "military intelligence". From a 2004 piece about Abu Ghraib: "Detainees were paraded naked past other prisoners and guards; some were ordered to do jumping jacks and sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in the nude, according to a several witnesses. Also, a father and his grown son were stripped, then forced to stand and stare at each other. The International Committee of the Red Cross, visiting in October, found prisoners left naked in their cells for days, modestly trying to shield themselves behind cardboard from meals-ready-to-eat boxes."

Remember...this is approved of by your Democratic President (if not, it would not be happening). Of course, this president has gone farther than the reviled GWB in that he has claimed the right to murder anyone in the world anywhere regardless of citizenship.

We are in a nation oozing systemic rot. These are not "insurgent" "bad actors" or mercenaries for hire who murder families while at weddings in foreign lands. This is your land, this is my land..."made for you and me" brothers and sisters. We are all in the brig with Bradley Manning. Manning is but one very clear example to you. Get with the program; Be "one of us". Or else. But that is really, the least of our worries.

Wisconsin's Governor is showing us the more of this same mindset--bullying and holding hostage the citizens of his state--defunding care for women; Ohio has already passed legislation to allow its labor force to be steamrolled into a third world existence; Arizona leads the nation in enacting hate legislation; systemic rot pervades our nation. We are lost. Were we ever the idyllic land our mythology proclaims? We are showing our true colors...the bully is in the ascendancy. He is your governor, your police chief, your president. He has the courts at his back. The bully is conservative; the bully says "my way".

I'm wondering when people are going to recognize that not only is the Tea Party socially conservative and uhm ... racially uncomfortable, their antipathy to taxes and government actually stems from those attitudes. It's not a coincidence or even a sympathetic constellation of various positions on the issues. They don't like government because they believe that government should not protect and support people they don't like. [bold emphasis added]

Please read that part in bold again. This is the animus--no government, small government, less government...means keep out of my business. I don't want to treat all people equally. I want to hate my neighbor if he's not like me--I want to hang him from a tree after I drag him behind my truck for a few miles. Having this kind of politician "in charge" will lead to laws that ALLOW this kind of hate-filled abusive behavior and call it "freedom". In this way your only real liberty will be your death.

I'm finished with my own polite response to this kind of inherent bigotry. I believe it is systemic in our white Christian nation. Poll the haters...poll the tea partiers...poll the Klan...poll the neo-Nazis...Do you believe in God, ask them...do you believe in Jesus as your savior, ask them.

I do not fetishize atheism (hate needs no religion or god) but I do not believe any good can come of a religion where the divinity walks with you while you carry your uzi and your flag and your noose.

You cannot disassociate the "ease" of coming to hate from within this religious system. Faith in Hate!

Do some comparative reading to discover which religions are the most warring, aggressive and hate-filled. If you belong to one of these, you really should be asking yourself why. Then take a gander at the tolerance inherent in Hindu religious traditions.

The unFairness Doctrine

This is funny, but deadly serious.

Here is the Atlantic piece he referenced: The Rise of the New Global Elite.

Here's a truth, early in the piece, as to how we managed to "turn the other cheek" as poor folk to allow the rich to "do their thing."

Before the recession, it was relatively easy to ignore this concentration of wealth among an elite few. The wondrous inventions of the modern economy—Google, Amazon, the iPhone—broadly improved the lives of middle-class consumers, even as they made a tiny subset of entrepreneurs hugely wealthy. And the less-wondrous inventions—particularly the explosion of subprime credit—helped mask the rise of income inequality for many of those whose earnings were stagnant.

Facebook makes it all better; and the Googles; and Hollywood; and Charlie Sheen.

If you've been following the news in Wisconsin then you are seeing plainly the ways this very real disparity is being illustrated. The Gov in WI hired Stasi (all dressed in black) to applaud breaking unions and to protect him from the rabble he's trying to further impoverish at the behest of his plutocratic masters. (In case you didn't know, all politicians--at least "national" politicians--do the bidding of Mammon.) Where shall we put our Berlin Wall? We have already built our economic walls and, as Colbert points out, our wealthy live "encamped" within their own walls. Perhaps the real benefit of our digital age is that Mammon can serve itself without even seeing any proles at all; its worshipers are insulated from the rabble--and the rabble is "bounded" (our nutshell of "finite" space) by electronic borders .

[Aside: Branch Davidians, for example, were "encamped"; Survivalists are "encamped"; the rest of us, in fact nearly all of us, are unprotected.]

Our forefathers walked in the world & went to their graves tormented with the fear of sin & the terror of the Day of Judgment. We are happily rid of those terrors, and our torment is the utter uncertainty & perplexity of what we ought to do; the distrust of the value of what we do; and the distrust that the Necessity which we all at last believe in, is Fair. (RWE, 1841))

Alas, we should embrace that distrust. Further, we should be clear exactly who is banging the drums of imminent terror.

I think the American Revolution bought its glory cheap. If the problem was new, it was simple. If there were few people, they were united, and the enemy 3,000 miles off. But now, vast property, gigantic interests, family connections, webs of party, cover the land with a network that immensely multiplies the dangers of war. (RWE, 1883)

Why Make the US into a Third World Nation? **UPDATE

A little more bouncing off the Krugman piece. But first, perhaps you'll recall this from a piece by Simon Johnson in the Atlantic back in May of 2009 called The Quiet Coup (he was on Moyers too--worth it):

But inevitably, emerging-market oligarchs get carried away; they waste money and build massive business empires on a mountain of debt. Local banks, sometimes pressured by the government, become too willing to extend credit to the elite and to those who depend on them. Overborrowing always ends badly, whether for an individual, a company, or a country. Sooner or later, credit conditions become tighter and no one will lend you money on anything close to affordable terms.

The downward spiral that follows is remarkably steep. Enormous companies teeter on the brink of default, and the local banks that have lent to them collapse. Yesterday’s “public-private partnerships” are relabeled “crony capitalism.” With credit unavailable, economic paralysis ensues, and conditions just get worse and worse. The government is forced to draw down its foreign-currency reserves to pay for imports, service debt, and cover private losses. But these reserves will eventually run out. If the country cannot right itself before that happens, it will default on its sovereign debt and become an economic pariah. The government, in its race to stop the bleeding, will typically need to wipe out some of the national champions—now hemorrhaging cash—and usually restructure a banking system that’s gone badly out of balance. It will, in other words, need to squeeze at least some of its oligarchs.

Squeezing the oligarchs, though, is seldom the strategy of choice among emerging-market governments. Quite the contrary: at the outset of the crisis, the oligarchs are usually among the first to get extra help from the government, such as preferential access to foreign currency, or maybe a nice tax break, or—here’s a classic Kremlin bailout technique—the assumption of private debt obligations by the government. Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk—at least until the riots grow too large.

Now to the Krugman; it starts like this:

Last week, in the face of protest demonstrations against Wisconsin’s new union-busting governor, Scott Walker — demonstrations that continued through the weekend, with huge crowds on Saturday — Representative Paul Ryan made an unintentionally apt comparison: “It’s like Cairo has moved to Madison.”

It wasn’t the smartest thing for Mr. Ryan to say, since he probably didn’t mean to compare Mr. Walker, a fellow Republican, to Hosni Mubarak. Or maybe he did — after all, quite a few prominent conservatives, including Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santorum, denounced the uprising in Egypt and insist that President Obama should have helped the Mubarak regime suppress it.

In any case, however, Mr. Ryan was more right than he knew. For what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy.

So, you might find Johnson persuasive now if you didn't then (and likely you do if you read Taibbi at all).

But to the eponymous point here...why? Well, why not?

Power serves power. And as we read in the earlier post...Power is godly and good--and the Lord has a plan and works in mysterious ways, and etc. Our mentality as a country (if countries have mentalities) is a mixture of Calvinist "election" and Market laissez faire and this has brought us to our current dilemma. Our demigods don't believe in free markets, rather they control the markets--and in doing so use the rhetoric of god and country to establish a market loving god.

So, with that rhetoric serving the powerful, they push. Why? Because the only that actually serves the common man is that Reaganite bugaboo--the government. And by government I don't mean President or Congress. I mean the departments that have been created to manage this vast land and help those of us without any real power. Independent agencies like the FDA, USDA, EPA and so on are there to regulate corporate greed. EPA tries to enforce protections to our air and water...corporations lobby congress to make laws to gut the power of the EPA. The Koch Bros are now the most visible and clear example of the real power and the real reason for this anti-government/pro-market mentality. They want no obstacles to their greed.

And if God the Father in His Heaven is Republican then all of this has been done for his glory...amen.

UPDATE: and now Minnesota

Do Unto Others

Krugman today on Wisconsin:

In principle, every American citizen has an equal say in our political process. In practice, of course, some of us are more equal than others. Billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put the desired spin on policy issues; they can funnel cash to politicians with sympathetic views (as the Koch brothers did in the case of Mr. Walker). On paper, we’re a one-person-one-vote nation; in reality, we’re more than a bit of an oligarchy, in which a handful of wealthy people dominate.

Given this reality, it’s important to have institutions that can act as counterweights to the power of big money. And unions are among the most important of these institutions.

This is true to a degree but very weakly put. Even Krugman doesn't seem to have a voice these days and he's a Nobel Laureate. Money is the only VOTE unless the underclasses vote by demonstration. Finally, Wisconsin's people are voting with their physical presence. It's unclear whether it will make a difference. The only way an oligarchy is "checked" is, as Krugman points out, by Institutions that serve as counterweights to the "corporation". Liberal Institutions used to balance out Conservative Corporations. Now our institutions (like Universities--hell, even churches) are only commodities and our society is out of balance with Power being served by all parties. The real trouble comes when our national government enacts laws that hinder us further but are deemed constitutional by that third corrupt branch, the judiciary. Money has power in all places.

But why do these things happen? Why is the Republican/Conservative mentality so intractable.

Here's a clue from George Lakoff at Huffpost:

The way to understand the conservative moral system is to consider a strict father family. The father is The Decider, the ultimate moral authority in the family. His authority must not be challenged. His job is to protect the family, to support the family (by winning competitions in the marketplace), and to teach his kids right from wrong by disciplining them physically when they do wrong. The use of force is necessary and required. Only then will children develop the internal discipline to become moral beings. And only with such discipline will they be able to prosper. And what of people who are not prosperous? They don't have discipline, and without discipline they cannot be moral, so they deserve their poverty. The good people are hence the prosperous people. Helping others takes away their discipline, and hence makes them both unable to prosper on their own and function morally.


The market itself is seen in this way. The slogan, "Let the market decide" assumes the market itself is The Decider. The market is seen as both natural (since it is assumed that people naturally seek their self-interest) and moral (if everyone seeks their own profit, the profit of all will be maximized by the invisible hand). As the ultimate moral authority, there should be no power higher than the market that might go against market values. Thus the government can spend money to protect the market and promote market values, but should not rule over it either through (1) regulation, (2) taxation, (3) unions and worker rights, (4) environmental protection or food safety laws, and (5) tort cases. Moreover, government should not do public service. The market has service industries for that. Thus, it would be wrong for the government to provide health care, education, public broadcasting, public parks, and so on. The very idea of these things is at odds with the conservative moral system. No one should be paying for anyone else. It is individual responsibility in all arenas. Taxation is thus seen as taking money away from those who have earned it and giving it to people who don't deserve it. Taxation cannot be seen as providing the necessities of life, a civilized society, and as necessary for business to prosper.

This ultimately blends everything into Might Makes Right. Who's the most powerful? The Father (God?); The Market. Notice how we can be absolved of all responsibility? Let go, Let God; Let go, Let Greed. (In the market greed is supposed to be balanced by something...I forget what--more greed?)

All else is human (liberal) meddling. This is finally where I stand. To be human is to be liberal, open, caring, giving, sharing, hoping. To be anything else is less than human.

By Their Very Fear (Update)

The community is inhuman, and less than human. It becomes at last the most dangerous because bloodless and insentient tyrant. for a long time, even a democracy like the American or the Swiss will answer to the call of a hero, who is somewhat of a true aristocrat: like Lincoln: so strong is the aristocratic instinct in man. But he willingness to give the response to the heroic, the true aristocratic call, gets weaker and weaker in every democracy, as time goes on. All history proves it. Then men turn against the heroic appeal, with a sort of venom. They will only listen to the call of mediocrity wielding the insentient bullying power of mediocrity: which is evil. Hence the success of painfully inferior and even base politicians...

So today. Society consists of a mass of weak individuals trying to protect themselves, out of fear, from every possible imaginary evil, and, of course, by their very fear, bring the evil into being.

This is the Christian community today, in its perpetual mean thou-shalt-not. This is how Christian doctrine has worked out in practice.

There is no doubt that Lawrence is troubling...that his deep insights into the mind of man and the mind of the collective (not woman per se, though woman is lost in the collective) will often spill over into some very distasteful thinking. But baby/bathwater; wheat/chaff.

There is a clear understanding here of the weakness of humans in general. We fear for our very existence (we are small and soft as predators go) and so we have created systems for protection from the natural world and from each other.

Lawrence believes in the strong, brave aristocrat--where strength shepherds the weak--and believes that the religion of the masses, which is Revelation (as he propounds) and not that of Jesus, exists only to destroy all worldly power with the only "good" being the power yielded by the elect in another world (yet to come, but never arriving). Apocalypse is the theology of those who are already "left behind".

And those who feel this deep sense of denigration in their very soul have a singular desire to "equalize" through violence, to be "tough" in their fear.

UPDATE: Digby details some Tea Party plans regarding budgets, teachers, churches and armed employees of the state.