Shame, Shame, Shame

There are some kinds of shame that are prevalent in our culture and they shouldn’t be. No one should be ashamed of his or her sexual orientation. No one over 18 should be ashamed of consensual sex, or having a baby, or choosing not to have one. No one should be ashamed of healthy expressions of sexuality or of any expression of sex in art. These are Puritanical values out of step with the rest of Western culture and it’s time to let them go.

On the other hand, shame can serve a purpose. It tells us that what we are doing is wrong, and hopefully it makes us less likely to do it. It can make someone aware that what they are doing isn’t something that should be memorialized on You Tube. It should kick in when you have just shown the world, on film, that you are an asshole. This is the shame I’m talking about. Psychologists call this a Super Ego. Some call it good parenting. I call it increasingly rare, and that scares me.

I recently posted a video, from You Tube, in which an Australian journalist makes absolute jack asses of some apparently average Americans. They were embarrassing, but a commenter pointed out the truly disturbing aspect - none of them was ashamed or embarrassed at their own poor education. Americans are not only stupid, we appear to be quite content with that fact.

This is largely the result of the bizarro shift in cultural values that is known as the Reagan Administration. Lies became good business, greed became good, and stupid became macho. Reagan was already suffering from Alzheimer’s when he was in office - I told people at the time to wait and see, that in years to come, long after he was out of office, they’d announce that he had it. I hate to say I told you so, but I did. It was SO obvious that he had no concept half the time what he was saying. People worshiped him and still do. (Usually not the people who had to drop out of college because he slashed the student loans, btw - as with many things Republican, it’s mostly true of the rich people. ) Reagan was a pretend cowboy - he played one in the movies, you know - and cowboys didn’t care about sissy stuff like readin’ and ritin’ and ‘rithmatic. I blame Reagan for the fact that people on TV, including journalists and media professionals, can’t conjugate a verb. If I hear one more person say they “had went” somewhere, I’m going hurt somebody. I won’t have to wait long.

Stupid is what the adults are, and that’s bad enough, but their kids are something far worse - sociopaths. As Whoopi Goldberg said in a recent comedy special: “They have raised BARBARIANS!” Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I have a tag for my posts called “generation of sociopaths.” You’ll see it at the bottom of this post, for example. I know I’m getting old, and people have been bemoaning the younger generation since ancient Greece, but this is something new. This is different. Kids aren’t just undisciplined or wild - they’re sub-human. Human beings feel empathy for others. We feel guilty when we do something wrong. If we do something wrong, we tend to hide it rather than advertise it. That’s not true for an alarming number of today’s kids.

Case in point: Florida recently saw a case where 6 girls and 2 boys conspired to beat a young girl so it could be taped and posted on You Tube. They picked their victim, Victoria, because, they claim, she said something “unfriendly” about them when they went into the restaurant she worked in, but they taped it so they could show it on You Tube and be “popular.” Knocked into unconsciousness at the outset and continuously beaten by the 6 girls for half an hour, poor Victoria has lost the sight in one eye and part of her hearing. The news is continually showing the video, and it is disgusting. Note that they don’t just show it once, they keep running it over and over while they talk about it. I actually heard people saying the girls might not be too badly punished because it was a first offense.

So far, they have been charged as adults with kidnapping and misdemeanor battery. They could face life in prison. Not nearly enough, as far as I’m concerned, but here’s my point: they never seem to have thought that beating up another girl was a bad idea. This was planned, and video cameras set up around the room to catch the action. When the girl was unconscious, they kept hitting her. Get that? The sight of an unconscious person, whom they had just knocked out, didn’t slow them down. No remorse. No empathy. No little bell in their head going “ding, ding, ding - this is not a good idea!” They didn’t have the instinct to stop. They didn’t have an emotional response to her suffering. They were so proud of what they had done they uploaded the video to You Tube to brag about it. It apparently never occurred to them that this was a CRIME. That, my friends, is the textbook definition of sociopathy.

So, why am I connecting this to stupid Americans? I believe the two issues are intimately entwined. An uneducated person might feel empathy, but not necessarily know how to foster its development in a child. They might not know that their teenager shouldn’t have access to social networking sites like You Tube, or even know what You Tube is. I’m a firm believer that if you want to raise a kid, you need to be smarter than she is. That’s not the case in most families I see. How do 8 people conspire to do something like this and none of their parents knew anything was up? Are you going to tell me that 8 sets of parents didn’t know their kids were this fucked up? Stupid.

Isn’t anyone afraid of their parents anymore? If I had done something like this when I was young the police would have been the least of my worries. I’d be afraid my mom would find out, and there was no wrath greater than the wrath of Mom. I wasn’t particularly concerned about being “cool,” and I went out of my way to avoid cliques of any kind. If I did do something wrong, I wouldn’t advertise it. I’d know that putting something on the internet is like making a global confession. But then, I’d also know that fighting is wrong, and a planned team assault is nothing to be proud of. If anything, it’s cowardly. 6 on 1 makes the 6 look weak, stupid and incapable of independent thought. Three qualities I think makes them ripe for life in prison. These kids are in their mid-to-late teens. They aren’t going to grow a conscience at this point - they’re a done deal. The only choice society has is to lock them away with other equally damaged people and let them victimize each other. We’re producing so many damaged people that we’re going to have to legalize marijuana just to make room for them. I’d much rather my kid smoke a little weed than commit an assault.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. These kids have spent half their lives with a pResident who is a war criminal. With an administration that conspired to torture people in violation of international law. They probably can’t remember a fair election, if they even know what an election is. I’d bet money none of them could find Iraq on a map. I don’t see any Rhodes Scholars coming out of this crew.

OMFG! I’m watching Bill Maher and he’s saying this is not a big deal! That it’s “kids being kids!” What an asshole. I used to like him, but I’m reconsidering that. He thinks the film is funny! Ugh. I'll never think he's funny again.

I have nothing more to say. This country is going to hell and nobody cares.

The Blowback...

Naturally, the news had to bring in a lyin' ass Republican to counter the Edwards Tour on Poverty. This time around we have RNC Chairman Mike Duncan, your basic evil, entitled white guy speaking from Washington. The first thing he mentions is the haircut. *sigh... Then he says Edwards is out of touch with poverty in America - as statement dripping with such irony it makes my eyes hurt - and starts talking about how big Edwards house is and blaming him for the health care crisis in North Carolina because he used to sue doctors for medical mistakes.

Then, wouldn't you know, he mentions the bible. The Republicans' favorite line in the whole thing is "the poor will always be with us" and he trots it out, implying that we have no obligation to help the poor because Jesus says they can't be helped, and there's the implicit understanding amongst the Republican rich that anyone who wants a job has one, and if you were a good, "god"-fearing Xtian you wouldn't be poor anyway. I'm glad this guy isn't here in KY, because I might have to hunt him down and scream at him. Edwards even used the Gordon Gekko line in saying that the view in Washington has been "greed is good" and he resoundly rejects that. The Repubs don't have a leg to stand on here, put they keep throwing labels at Edwards that more accurately apply to themselves. When you haven't got a conscience, it's easy to lie like that, especially when you have no respect at all for your intended audience. Edwards does have the distinction of having used the "L" word in the debates for 2004. He said of Bush and Cheney "they will absolutely lie about anything." The person who will stand up and call shrub out for being the Liar that he is gets my vote, hands down.

Duncan next hammers the sore spot for this area - liquid coal plants. A lot of people in this area think liquid coal is going to save Eastern Kentucky, but they're only going to do what the coal industry has always done here - make the mine owners rich, get a bunch of miners killed, and destroy our environment. It won't do shit for poor people, even if they're directly employed by such a plant.

This area is still struggling to get plumbing and potable water to our poorest residents. (The coal industry has destroyed our ground water. You should see the sludge that comes out of the faucets in some places - or wells, if they don't have faucets.) The average income in the area Edwards visited today is $12,000 dollars a year. The drop-out rate is the highest in the state and therefore in the country. 1 in 4 people in Kentucky is disabled, and a large part of the population is simply unemployable, even for the most menial jobs because they are illiterate. Yet Floyd county has more millionaires per square mile than any other county in the country, because there are a few VERY wealthy mine owners who maintain residences here. Nowhere in America is the "2 Americas" analogy more accurate.

It's not a visible difference, though. That table full of guys in trucker hats and overalls at the local Dennys might have a combined worth that would make Donald Trump drool. Rich people here don't necessarily look rich, and their houses are hidden up in the hills behind gates and stone walls. The money isn't visible here.

Now here's where I get in trouble with my middle-class family...

The poverty in Eastern Kentucky is in. your. face. I can't begin to describe to you the conditions some people live in here. My best analogy is that Eastern KY is like an Indian reservation, without the sovereignty or government aid. We're isolated geographically and we have no infrastructure, so nobody gives a shit about us. They're trying to create tourism in this area with native arts and crafts, golf ranges, skate parks, ATV trails, horse trails and our new elk population, but tourists need things like hotels and restaurants. Except for fast food and an occasional Chinese smorgasboard or Mexican place, there's no such thing. The best meal in the area is supposedly the catfish at the Lodge at Jenny Wiley State Park. There is some higher culture in Kentucky, including fine restaurants, hotels and art galleries, but it's in Lexington and Louisville on the other side of the state.

Let me tell you about the hotels. There's a former Holiday Inn that one of my many, many cousins redecorated with a gun during a party. He was away for a few years. There's a motel that used to be the home of a satanic vampire cult that made the national news when it's "leader" - who was something like 17, and whose mom was a part of it and having sex with his friends - murdered his girlfriend's parents in Florida. There's one other place that Hillary Clinton got to stay in, which I understand is passable, but not great. So if you're coming to visit, bring a tent. We've got an abundance of open mountain land, as long as you don't mind copperheads, rattlesnakes (like the huge one my dad killed in the front yard last week) mountain lions (like the one my cousins down in hollow saw up on our side of the mountain the other night, so we can't let the dogs out after dark) bears, deer, tics and the aforementioned giant elk. No bees, though, so it's getting hard to grow anything. Don't get me started on the foreign insects and flora that have been brought into the area which all caused greater problems than they might have solved.

A friends husband once said that I lived in the middle of nowhere, but my reply was that I have to drive 3 hours to get to the middle of nowhere. That's why my family had to camp at the hospital in Lexington when my mom had two brain surgeries and couldn't be left alone. There are fabulous hospitals even in this area, though, because everyone is sick. Diabetes, heart disease and lung ailments (from exposure to coal) abound. Then there are the accidents, like the toddler who was burned this week when he dropped his sippy cup on some black powder some boys had been playing with, and the car that went driving down the state highway in front of my place shooting randomly the other night. Did I mention that we are the reason oxycontin is called "hillbilly heroin?" It's the number one form of recreation for our young people. We have the same pervasive problems with domestic violence and rape that are found on reservations, too.

Most people are older, poorly educated even if they finished school, and they're deeply indoctrinated in the local religion which is reactionary far beyond anything justified by the actual text of the bible, but they don't know that because the preachers they listen to are illiterate, too. Not just unschooled in theology, I mean can't read a word at all.

The middle class here is tiny, and even a county employee can be the biggest fish in this pond. The bigger fish get angry that this area is portrayed as impoverished. These are proud people, but frankly, they're in denial. You should see what passes for a newspaper here. It's more like a church newsletter, with columns by paperboys and adults who can't write, or even conjugate a verb. They won't touch anything controversial and there's no "investigative reporting" though we sorely need some for reasons I'll get into later on. I don't usually read it because it makes me want to hurt somebody.

Finally, the government recently decided not to put a bio-weapons lab in London, KY because they wouldn't be able to get anyone to work in it that would actually consider living here. The kicker for me is that people here were upset that they weren't going to get a lab full of anthrax and ebola in their back yards because it would have created jobs. Get that? They'd rather have a job doing scutt work around bio-weapons than live.

Is there really anything left to say after that? More power to you, John. Even if you don't succeed, at least you've got people thinking about the poor.

Killers in the Classroom

By Dr. June Scorza Terpstra

02/15/07 "ICH " -- -- During a heated debate in a class I teach on social justice, several US Marines who had done tours in Iraq told me that they had "sacrificed" by “serving” in Iraq so that I could enjoy the freedom to teach in the USA. Parroting their master’s slogan about “fighting over there so we don’t have to fight over here”, these students proudly proclaimed that they terrorized and killed defenseless Iraqis. They intimated that their Arab victims are nothing more to them than collateral damage, incidental to their receipt of some money and an education.

A room full of students listened as a US Marine told of the invasion of Baghdad and Falluja and how he killed innocent Iraqis at a check point. He called them “collateral damage” and said he had followed the “rules”. A Muslim-American student in front of him said “I could slap you but then you would kill me”. A young female Muslim student gasped “I am a freshman; I never thought to hear of this in a class. I feel sick, like I will pass out.”

I knew in that moment that this was what the future of teaching about justice would include: teaching war criminals who sit glaring at me with hatred for daring to speak the truth of their atrocities and who, if paid to, would disappear, torture and kill me. I wondered that night how long I really have in this so called “free” country to teach my students and to be with my children and grandchildren.[emphasis mine]

Read the whole, chilling thing. Apparently, American youth will do ANYTHING, no matter how vile, for money. We've got a new generation of killers ready to violate the Posse Commitatus Act on Shrub's signal. They'll either remain the fascists they've become, or they'll realize that they've committed war crimes. We may not be able to live with the first; they may not be able to live with the latter.