There has been a lot of talk recently about discrimination, such as with gay people in Oklahoma and the ever-present talk about black people. I've noticed something I call the Invisible Hand Job. No offense is intended toward Adam Smith, who was a subtler thinker than most of those who invoke them.
Let's say that there are some new kids in town. Nobody really hates them, per se. There's no serious bigotry against them. They're just a little bit different, that's all. They have a hard time fitting in. They could be black or Mexican or Irish or have tattoos or have unusual sexual practices or like comic books or be a particular sex or gender. Something minor, of a minority.
There's freedom of association, and some people are reluctant to associate with them. They may even come to put up signs asking them to stay away. Well, no biggie, right? There are always other places they can go, and the Invisible Hand will work things out. Discriminatory businesses, housing, etc. will suffer and tend to go out of business. There's no need for legislation. They can still eat and drink and find places to live. They might even be pretty nice.
Over time, these people, whoever they are, will tend to go where they are welcome and not where they aren't. They'll form bohemian neighborhoods, kicky little clubs. These might even be really cool, and this will attract some people who aren't of the minority, because it's cool to go there. To "slum," as people put it. The minority won't keep the majority out. They couldn't do so if they tried, and they need the business. There will be higher tolerance of differences in those areas, clubs, etc. They might even become trendy, and people will say, "Oh, isn't that wonderful. They aren't hurting at all."
Then, some other people will notice. Criminals, say. They know that they will get on better where there is high tolerance, which means tolerance for them. They might be of the minority, but then again, they might not. Crime will go up in those places.
Again, no biggie. There will be more police presence there. Assume all the cops are good and honest, and they just want to do good. But they will associate crime with those places and those people. The majority, who live and socialize elsewhere, will see the names and faces on whatever they use instead of newspapers these days. Over and over again, they will come to associate those people with crime.
Crime rates will go up, there. The crime may be low or no different from anywhere else, but simply because there are more cops there, there will be more citations and arrests. After a time, real crime might even go up, as the longer one's record, the harder it is to find a job. Freedom of association again. Or it might even continue to be illusory. It will be hard to tell, as the cops already know that this is where you find crime.
The cycle goes on. No, to be sure, it's not about those people. It's about criminals, and just look at the statistics. It's not bigotry, of course. It's simply realistic.
We're not racist, or sexist, or whateverist. We're just looking at the facts.
So it goes.
It is, of course, fun to come up with elaborate reasons for discrimination, bigotry, and oppression. It is also a great deal of fun to blame people. Still, I find this idea intriguing, as it can explain what we see without resort to the assumption of evil intent of people. Only a small perception of weirdness can escalate to overt bigotry and oppression by the motion of the Invisible Hand Job. It is not necessary to call people names (though this can be fun as well). Simple free market forces can make this happen. It is hard to see what natural factor would prevent it.
Those with more elaborate explanations may be right, and even if not completely right, have some good ideas. Still, I find elementary explanations interesting. They provide a nice null hypothesis that other ideas can use as a starting point.
This, I think, is the reason for anti-discrimination laws. They are usually instituted only way after the fact, when discrimination is overt and requires the establishment of a "protected class." They can, however, prevent the cascade and positive feedback loop from starting in the first place. The time to implement them is before things get to the point of overt racism etc. to prevent the social problems that inexorably come later. Few people other than real-estate speculators and undertakers, I think, want to see riots and theft and burning buildings, though many will find a moral justification after the fact.
To me, this is cold comfort and very small beer.
Friday, March 13, 2015
Saturday, October 13, 2012
The Man with No Belt
This book is about my time spent in the Parkplace crisis unit in Kissimmee, Florida, where I was involuntarily confined under Florida's Baker Act.
The degree of trauma from this experience surprised me. I have had quite a few traumatic experiences in my life—the deaths of my parents (one due to medical incompetence), various abusive relationships including with cutters, a handgun being pointed at me when I was in 3rd grade, suicides of friends, sexual battery, and many other things too painful to recount—yet this affected me far more than I expected.
It was surprising because, in a way, it was not that bad. The food was decent. The beds were not good, hard rubberized pallets 18 inches from the floor,, but I have paid money to stay at worse places, and at least there were no bedbugs. None of the staff ever treated me abusively in any overt way, and I still believe that they all meant well. There were none of the blatant abuses that one knows from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey.
I am extremely strong, yet felt a pull into darkness from that place in a mere six days. I have suffered far more in my life than I did there; why did it affect me so much? If I can be so affected, what about the myriad others who have been in and out, under circumstances worse than mine? I have worked hard to come to grips with this, and the result is this book.
I think I can summarize the effects in one word: insidious. The system works to enfeeble people by enlisting them in the process.
I do not think it was designed this way. I think that everyone involved meant well, though there was a great deal of incompetence. More importantly, I don't think that any one person is smart enough to understand, let alone of being able to design, the entire system. The effects of the system are emergent properties, like the V formation of Canada Geese or the mass trampling on pilgrimages that emerge from the behavior of individuals, acting upon simple local rules. Yet the results are bad and, to a large extent, the system creates the problems it ostensibly is to solve.
This book is about my coming to grips with and analyzing the reasons for this trauma
It is also about a belt.
I have a nice belt, black metal with a simple, robust, silver buckle. I think I found it in the trash of a rich kid in a University town. It has lasted me 30 years. I do not think I could afford such a belt, if I knew where to buy one.
It has eight holes, plus one I punched. I have used all of them. It chronicles my struggles with my weight, formerly too much but now too little. It's a kind of microcosm of my life. It works well with jeans and a suit and even coattails and white tie.
They take away your belt. Also earrings, necklaces, and everything else, leaving you only clothes that you can wear for a few days until you can persuade people on the Outside to bring you more. They also take away your cell phone, wallet, identification, laptop.
I suppose that taking away all of these things can be justified on an ad hoc basis. Cell phones might be stolen. Belts might be used for violence. I still can't figure out how they justified taking away an old woman's dentures and expected her to eat without. Whatever the justifications, the net effect is to strip away one's identity, all of the symbols that make one a person.
I believe that there is some awareness of the symbolic role of clothing, albeit perhaps unconscious, because the staff wear extra clothing. I saw staff wearing scarves and other accoutrements unusual in Florida. I do not know that this is deliberate, but there is a message, perhaps unconscious: I am unlike you.
The House of God by Samuel Shem describes medical culture in a way that most medical professionals recognize but few are willing to admit. All physicians and nurses should read it. There are 13 laws of the House of God. Number 4 reads "The patient is the one with the disease.”
Inside, you know who has the disease. The ones with no belts have the disease. The ones with belts are sane.
Everything Inside is about this. Every human behavior is pathologized. It is almost impossible to look at someone and not see a disease. I have seen far worse behaviors in High School, but Inside, it is all about pathology.
I have come to realize how hard this is to describe to anybody who has not been in that environment. Definition is everything, and people who have not experienced this want to believe in the definitions. That is the point. These definitions are more important than the actual conditions people have, and certainly than the people themselves.
On being admitted, I became the Man with No Belt, and everything changed.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
When Progressives Screw the Pooch
I'm always frustrated when progressives/liberals screw the pooch. I don't mind so much when modern conservatives do, because for the most part I want them to lose, and the stupider they act, the happier I am. I like it when they shoot themselves in the foot, and I am happier when they switch to full auto.
Progressives/liberals are a different story. I consider myself one of them. As Rachael Maddow pointed out, that means that I largely agree with the Republican party platform during the Eisenhower years. Until Phyllis Schlalfly came along, they supported the Equal Rights amendment, and the Democratic Party was the real racist party of the time.
It is because I am progressive that it bothers me when progressives screw the pooch. I am well aware that this is a tiny minority position. Most people seem not only to overlook the fatuities and idiocies of "their own" but even become outraged and call "traitors" people who point them out. I do not sympathize with this behavior, but I have to acknowledge that it is dominant.
The reason that I do not think the same way, I think, is the same as the reason that I do not sympathize. I have a mindset, a Weltanschauung, and a (small) set of metaphysics that are different from the majority. Even when we come to the same overall political conclusions, the reasons may be very different. These world-views affect not only particular opinions but also cause very different basic perceptions of the same phenomena.
This is extremely important to understand and can provide significant improvements to arguments, if it were possible to persuade anybody to try. More on that later, perhaps in another entry.
The examples I pick come mostly from Facebook and the like. I make no apologies for this. Public political discourse from candidates and the like is, to me, is so far abstracted from what ordinary walking-around type people think that it is entirely useless as a barometer of opinion.
It also helps that I personally know and count as friends most of the people (mostly women) who are engaging in such vapidities. These are not abstract, unknown crazies in the public eye. They are people whom I like, respect, and sometimes admire, and they are of generally high intelligence except for the following.
The Republican War on Women
Most progressive stupidity that I've seen lately is around the current Presidential race between Obama and Romney with auxiliary bits around various Republican congressmen. This is sometimes called "The Republican War on Women." I'm calling it that not because I agree with it as a designation (in fact I strongly disagree), but that's what people know as a code.
According to this story, women (all of them) are huddled, constantly oppressed by The Patriarchy™which manifests as Straight White Men, or, Republicans. These men, of course, just want to go around raping and killing and controlling women for their own vanity. (Why men would particularly want to do this is left unexplained, but in the modern era it is probably some sort of gender essentialism, no doubt genetic.) All is not lost, however. The women have the potential to rise up Amazon-like and throw off the shackles imposed unilaterally by men. I'll call this The Story.
This is a fantastic story. It's straight out of Hollywood. You have the Zoroastran forces of Good and Evil doing battle, setting up an opportunity for the defeat of Evil. I can see why people like it. Hey, I enjoy movies like this, too.
It's really, really fun to see all sorts of sex- class- and race-based conspiracies in the world. As the Scissor Sisters say, I'm willing to admit that it feels good to be a victim sometimes. It gives me personal mythological satisfaction according to my life as the eternal outsider. Sometimes I even pick a more conventional approach with me as the Jew, but that's not quite as much fun, even if it allows some cheaper and easier rhetoric.
The only problem is that, when applied to reality, it is just so much pablum down the bib.
The Abortion Question
I'm going to focus primarily on abortion. That's because it's probably the sharpest issue, and the one on which one would expect to see the most polarized exchanges. I don't think it's quite as easy to get worked up over pap smears or mammograms or any of the other elements of what is called "women's sexual health issues."
Public attitudes toward abortion rights have been extremely well studied. There are many well done polls and studies. The following graphic is from The Society Pages at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/10/22/public-opinion-on-abortion-by-party-and-gender/
I've been doing research on abortion since the middle 1970s, when in High School Forensics, I did a pro-legality oratory. (My chief accidental opponent was a girl from a Catholic school. Oh, the dirty looks she gave me!) This graphic is not only quite clear but very accurate. The numbers correspond well with the studies. The same basic pattern exists in every poll I've seen back to the 1970s, which is as far as I went
There is, of course, the expected result that Democrats are more likely to be in favor of legality than Republicans, by a substantial amount. It also shows that there is no significant difference between men and women. A few points, all within the errors of polling. Sometimes you see a slight difference in favor of women; sometimes (as in the 1980s) a slight one in favor of men. The differences, however, are always pretty small.
One can see the same thing from looking at individuals. The aforementioned Phyllis Schlafly is probably the one person most responsible for pushing an anti-legality position on abortion over the past 50 years. While I have no personal knowledge and would rebel at what I would have to do to find out, I think it is safe to assume that she is female, just as it is safe to assume that Alan Alda, her primary public opponent at the time, is male.
This has been true for decades. It hasn't been hidden. It's been plastered all over the place. There is absolutely no excuse short of pithing or organic brain damage to be unaware of it. Yet millions of progressives, in service to The Story, insist that it cannot be true. I have even heard claims, by otherwise sane and intelligent people, that nearly all opponents of legal abortion are men.
Note that it is not necessary to come up with an ideology or story to explain why this is. It's just a plain fact. Pure empiricism works just fine here. Just go look.
This is not quantum physics. This is talking to people and counting them. The polls have carefully worded, unloaded questions. One has to work extremely hard to be oblivious to what is obvious. Inevitably, though, The Story always wins.
As the late Christopher Hitchens once said, our adrenal glands are too large, and our neocortices are too small. The Story is powerful. When it makes the adrenaline squirt, it can turn a reasonably intelligent person into a sub-moron in nothing flat.
Why Don't They Speak?
There is one observed variable that is well supported. Though men are about as likely as women to favor the legality of abortion, you don't see many men at high levels saying this.
Apart from extremely obnoxious men like me, and the aforementioned Alan Alda (who always seemed to me more than a bit hypocritical anyway), one does occasionally see men talking at progressive meetings and rallies. I've seen a few, and I've seen transcripts of more.
When they do, their talks are always about The Story. If anything, they argue for it more strongly than women do. Perhaps they just like it, or perhaps only men who show that ability get allowed to talk at such rallies. In any event, the apparent irony that they are men is usually dealt with by one of two tactics:
One is that they are gay. This doesn't make much realistic sense: I've met oodles of very gay, very conservative, very anti-legality men. The Story, however, is not about reality. It is about mythology and stereotypy. Being gay, well, you might be male and even white, but at least you aren't straight, so you might not be as evil. For some reason.
The other is that they are Macho Men. They are of the aggressive, loud, threatening, "protect the wimminfolk" types who enjoy putting down other men anyway, possibly always at the back of their mind with the goal of attracting groupies. I find it eye-wateringly embarrassing when people fall for this one.
Whatever the cover, this behavior could be construed as creating a hostile environment for men. To do so, however, would be to fall prey to hand-waving about social conditioning, which happens far too often and seems a bit weak to me. Fortunately (or unfortunately) there is a clearer, more obvious, better supported answer.
Progressive Women Tell Them To Shut Up
The following little info-graphic has been making the rounds lately:
I have seen this posted by many. For the most part, these are women who are friends (even dear ones) who have never said anything bad about me as a man. They aren't really militant, insane, or even too radical (except in ironic ways).
It's just one graphic, but it represents an attitude that I have seen all my life. Men should just shut up.
It is a fantastic solution to a problem that conservatives haven't made a dent in. Remember that the majority of men support legal abortion. This hasn't changed, even through the fundamentalism epidemic, the Reagan years, or the hard right the country took after 9/11. Consistent support for legal abortion is just something that isn't being affected significantly by rhetoric. Maybe a little, but not enough.
However, you can shame and harass them into shutting up. For some reason, women just love to do this, and the Macho Men will gladly help in order to distinguish themselves from other men. It works great. You don't have to convince men to stop being in favor of legal abortion. You just have to harass and shame them until they don't care. They will be as much in favor of legal abortion as always, probably, but you can convince them to become ineffectual.
It works on liberal and progressive men, because they are the ones listening to women. Conservative men and women are more likely to take their marching orders from their beliefs about God, so they aren't likely to listen.
You start out with four groups:
1) Pro-legality men
2) Pro-legality women
3) Anti-legality men
4) Anti-legality women
Without intervening, groups 1 and 2 together outnumber 3 and 4, and abortion is legal. You can change the odds by shaming 1, thus taking them out of the equation. For a hat trick, you can enrage 4 by pretending they don't exist or by telling them they are traitors to their sex. That will make them more likely to speak out.
It's a wonderful trick, and it's probably the only way to kill abortion rights in any big way in the US. Without that help, conservatives can only nibble away at them. What makes it truly excellent, what make it worthy of Machiavelli and Stalin and McCarthy, is that you can always give the impression that you are working for legality rather than against it, especially if you tell The Story.
Greg Egan once suggested that modern progressivism was a CIA plot. Feminism was working, racism was getting resolved, and things were getting better. This could not be tolerated. So a group of government employees, cunning linguists all, devised progressivism, including postmodernism and criticism. It was seeded into universities, where it was taken up gladly by the left, and the rest is history.
Now, this is getting more and more over-the-top. No, the CIA probably wasn't involved in any big way. However, that shaming men is stupid is so incredibly obvious that it calls for an explanation.
Why Do They Do It?
The simplest, most obvious possible explanation is that progressives are stupid. That is, pace Terry Pratchett, their hearts are in the right place, but their brains are somewhere with a lot of dust and spiders that doesn't get much light. It's not out of bounds, as I've seen progressives call conservatives stupid many times. One can easily gather evidence in favor. William of Ockham would have loved it.
Still, I balk at the idea. Maybe I'm being stupid, too. Feminists have been trying to convince me that women are stupid and do not deserve respect for decades, leveling charges more severe than any conservative. Conservatives may occasionally tell me that women are flighty creatures, but none has ever told me that logic and reason themselves are male traps, as Mary Daly and Robin Morgan tried to do.
I know that skeptics will mock my use of anecdotal evidence, but I just have too much personal experience that women, progressives, and progressive women are smart. Plus, as I pointed out, I am extremely obnoxious, and when so many people tell me something, I'm inclined to think they are wrong. It is possible I am overly optimistic, but still I think another explanation is called for.
I cannot take credit for it. I heard it from Alan Dershowitz. It's extremely bizarre, but it feels like the kind of bizarre that I have learned is often right.
The idea is as follows. Roe v. Wade took the question of abortion out of the legislative/executive arena and into the judicial one. The constitutional argument is solid enough that it is reasonably secure. Once such an argument is made, it is not really part of the democratic process any more, so it doesn't matter what most people think.
This enabled the recrudescence of the American right. Most people did want abortion to be available, at least as a last resort, perhaps even more than would be willing to come out and say so. So they had a tendency to vote for the Eisenhower and Goldwater kinds of Republicans who were not really that big on moralistic ranting.
Tucking it away in the judiciary made it possible for conservatives to rant and rail as much as they want to make Baby Jesus happy, secure in the knowledge that whatever they do would not have much of an effect. (However, stacking the Supreme Court to one that could overturn it has become a risk, albeit rather slowly).
Similarly (though Dershowitz did not suggest it), progressives may feel secure in having all the fun they like with The Story, chest-beating, foot-shooting, and shaming their supporters into shutting up, knowing that it won't affect what the Supreme Court justices think.
That is, it just doesn't matter. The Supreme Court will protect our rights, even as they become overrun with conservative Catholics (which will accelerate under Romney/Rand). They were responsible for Bush v. Gore which, according to Dershowitz again, may have been motivated by a desire to let Sandra Day O'Connor retire and ensure a conservative replacement. But they also did Lawrence v. Texas, an opinion that was far more progressive than they strictly needed to have to overturn the sodomy laws, so there may be hope.
In the mean time, while the rights exist and are being protected, it's safe to rant, vent, have drama, be outraged and incensed, and generally dance around like a bunch of monkeys, which is a really good time. I say this without any irony at all.
I just hope they are right.
Progressives/liberals are a different story. I consider myself one of them. As Rachael Maddow pointed out, that means that I largely agree with the Republican party platform during the Eisenhower years. Until Phyllis Schlalfly came along, they supported the Equal Rights amendment, and the Democratic Party was the real racist party of the time.
It is because I am progressive that it bothers me when progressives screw the pooch. I am well aware that this is a tiny minority position. Most people seem not only to overlook the fatuities and idiocies of "their own" but even become outraged and call "traitors" people who point them out. I do not sympathize with this behavior, but I have to acknowledge that it is dominant.
The reason that I do not think the same way, I think, is the same as the reason that I do not sympathize. I have a mindset, a Weltanschauung, and a (small) set of metaphysics that are different from the majority. Even when we come to the same overall political conclusions, the reasons may be very different. These world-views affect not only particular opinions but also cause very different basic perceptions of the same phenomena.
This is extremely important to understand and can provide significant improvements to arguments, if it were possible to persuade anybody to try. More on that later, perhaps in another entry.
The examples I pick come mostly from Facebook and the like. I make no apologies for this. Public political discourse from candidates and the like is, to me, is so far abstracted from what ordinary walking-around type people think that it is entirely useless as a barometer of opinion.
It also helps that I personally know and count as friends most of the people (mostly women) who are engaging in such vapidities. These are not abstract, unknown crazies in the public eye. They are people whom I like, respect, and sometimes admire, and they are of generally high intelligence except for the following.
The Republican War on Women
Most progressive stupidity that I've seen lately is around the current Presidential race between Obama and Romney with auxiliary bits around various Republican congressmen. This is sometimes called "The Republican War on Women." I'm calling it that not because I agree with it as a designation (in fact I strongly disagree), but that's what people know as a code.
According to this story, women (all of them) are huddled, constantly oppressed by The Patriarchy™which manifests as Straight White Men, or, Republicans. These men, of course, just want to go around raping and killing and controlling women for their own vanity. (Why men would particularly want to do this is left unexplained, but in the modern era it is probably some sort of gender essentialism, no doubt genetic.) All is not lost, however. The women have the potential to rise up Amazon-like and throw off the shackles imposed unilaterally by men. I'll call this The Story.
This is a fantastic story. It's straight out of Hollywood. You have the Zoroastran forces of Good and Evil doing battle, setting up an opportunity for the defeat of Evil. I can see why people like it. Hey, I enjoy movies like this, too.
It's really, really fun to see all sorts of sex- class- and race-based conspiracies in the world. As the Scissor Sisters say, I'm willing to admit that it feels good to be a victim sometimes. It gives me personal mythological satisfaction according to my life as the eternal outsider. Sometimes I even pick a more conventional approach with me as the Jew, but that's not quite as much fun, even if it allows some cheaper and easier rhetoric.
The only problem is that, when applied to reality, it is just so much pablum down the bib.
The Abortion Question
I'm going to focus primarily on abortion. That's because it's probably the sharpest issue, and the one on which one would expect to see the most polarized exchanges. I don't think it's quite as easy to get worked up over pap smears or mammograms or any of the other elements of what is called "women's sexual health issues."
Public attitudes toward abortion rights have been extremely well studied. There are many well done polls and studies. The following graphic is from The Society Pages at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/10/22/public-opinion-on-abortion-by-party-and-gender/
I've been doing research on abortion since the middle 1970s, when in High School Forensics, I did a pro-legality oratory. (My chief accidental opponent was a girl from a Catholic school. Oh, the dirty looks she gave me!) This graphic is not only quite clear but very accurate. The numbers correspond well with the studies. The same basic pattern exists in every poll I've seen back to the 1970s, which is as far as I went
There is, of course, the expected result that Democrats are more likely to be in favor of legality than Republicans, by a substantial amount. It also shows that there is no significant difference between men and women. A few points, all within the errors of polling. Sometimes you see a slight difference in favor of women; sometimes (as in the 1980s) a slight one in favor of men. The differences, however, are always pretty small.
One can see the same thing from looking at individuals. The aforementioned Phyllis Schlafly is probably the one person most responsible for pushing an anti-legality position on abortion over the past 50 years. While I have no personal knowledge and would rebel at what I would have to do to find out, I think it is safe to assume that she is female, just as it is safe to assume that Alan Alda, her primary public opponent at the time, is male.
This has been true for decades. It hasn't been hidden. It's been plastered all over the place. There is absolutely no excuse short of pithing or organic brain damage to be unaware of it. Yet millions of progressives, in service to The Story, insist that it cannot be true. I have even heard claims, by otherwise sane and intelligent people, that nearly all opponents of legal abortion are men.
Note that it is not necessary to come up with an ideology or story to explain why this is. It's just a plain fact. Pure empiricism works just fine here. Just go look.
This is not quantum physics. This is talking to people and counting them. The polls have carefully worded, unloaded questions. One has to work extremely hard to be oblivious to what is obvious. Inevitably, though, The Story always wins.
As the late Christopher Hitchens once said, our adrenal glands are too large, and our neocortices are too small. The Story is powerful. When it makes the adrenaline squirt, it can turn a reasonably intelligent person into a sub-moron in nothing flat.
Why Don't They Speak?
There is one observed variable that is well supported. Though men are about as likely as women to favor the legality of abortion, you don't see many men at high levels saying this.
Apart from extremely obnoxious men like me, and the aforementioned Alan Alda (who always seemed to me more than a bit hypocritical anyway), one does occasionally see men talking at progressive meetings and rallies. I've seen a few, and I've seen transcripts of more.
When they do, their talks are always about The Story. If anything, they argue for it more strongly than women do. Perhaps they just like it, or perhaps only men who show that ability get allowed to talk at such rallies. In any event, the apparent irony that they are men is usually dealt with by one of two tactics:
One is that they are gay. This doesn't make much realistic sense: I've met oodles of very gay, very conservative, very anti-legality men. The Story, however, is not about reality. It is about mythology and stereotypy. Being gay, well, you might be male and even white, but at least you aren't straight, so you might not be as evil. For some reason.
The other is that they are Macho Men. They are of the aggressive, loud, threatening, "protect the wimminfolk" types who enjoy putting down other men anyway, possibly always at the back of their mind with the goal of attracting groupies. I find it eye-wateringly embarrassing when people fall for this one.
Whatever the cover, this behavior could be construed as creating a hostile environment for men. To do so, however, would be to fall prey to hand-waving about social conditioning, which happens far too often and seems a bit weak to me. Fortunately (or unfortunately) there is a clearer, more obvious, better supported answer.
Progressive Women Tell Them To Shut Up
The following little info-graphic has been making the rounds lately:
I have seen this posted by many. For the most part, these are women who are friends (even dear ones) who have never said anything bad about me as a man. They aren't really militant, insane, or even too radical (except in ironic ways).
It's just one graphic, but it represents an attitude that I have seen all my life. Men should just shut up.
It is a fantastic solution to a problem that conservatives haven't made a dent in. Remember that the majority of men support legal abortion. This hasn't changed, even through the fundamentalism epidemic, the Reagan years, or the hard right the country took after 9/11. Consistent support for legal abortion is just something that isn't being affected significantly by rhetoric. Maybe a little, but not enough.
However, you can shame and harass them into shutting up. For some reason, women just love to do this, and the Macho Men will gladly help in order to distinguish themselves from other men. It works great. You don't have to convince men to stop being in favor of legal abortion. You just have to harass and shame them until they don't care. They will be as much in favor of legal abortion as always, probably, but you can convince them to become ineffectual.
It works on liberal and progressive men, because they are the ones listening to women. Conservative men and women are more likely to take their marching orders from their beliefs about God, so they aren't likely to listen.
You start out with four groups:
1) Pro-legality men
2) Pro-legality women
3) Anti-legality men
4) Anti-legality women
Without intervening, groups 1 and 2 together outnumber 3 and 4, and abortion is legal. You can change the odds by shaming 1, thus taking them out of the equation. For a hat trick, you can enrage 4 by pretending they don't exist or by telling them they are traitors to their sex. That will make them more likely to speak out.
It's a wonderful trick, and it's probably the only way to kill abortion rights in any big way in the US. Without that help, conservatives can only nibble away at them. What makes it truly excellent, what make it worthy of Machiavelli and Stalin and McCarthy, is that you can always give the impression that you are working for legality rather than against it, especially if you tell The Story.
Greg Egan once suggested that modern progressivism was a CIA plot. Feminism was working, racism was getting resolved, and things were getting better. This could not be tolerated. So a group of government employees, cunning linguists all, devised progressivism, including postmodernism and criticism. It was seeded into universities, where it was taken up gladly by the left, and the rest is history.
Now, this is getting more and more over-the-top. No, the CIA probably wasn't involved in any big way. However, that shaming men is stupid is so incredibly obvious that it calls for an explanation.
Why Do They Do It?
The simplest, most obvious possible explanation is that progressives are stupid. That is, pace Terry Pratchett, their hearts are in the right place, but their brains are somewhere with a lot of dust and spiders that doesn't get much light. It's not out of bounds, as I've seen progressives call conservatives stupid many times. One can easily gather evidence in favor. William of Ockham would have loved it.
Still, I balk at the idea. Maybe I'm being stupid, too. Feminists have been trying to convince me that women are stupid and do not deserve respect for decades, leveling charges more severe than any conservative. Conservatives may occasionally tell me that women are flighty creatures, but none has ever told me that logic and reason themselves are male traps, as Mary Daly and Robin Morgan tried to do.
I know that skeptics will mock my use of anecdotal evidence, but I just have too much personal experience that women, progressives, and progressive women are smart. Plus, as I pointed out, I am extremely obnoxious, and when so many people tell me something, I'm inclined to think they are wrong. It is possible I am overly optimistic, but still I think another explanation is called for.
I cannot take credit for it. I heard it from Alan Dershowitz. It's extremely bizarre, but it feels like the kind of bizarre that I have learned is often right.
The idea is as follows. Roe v. Wade took the question of abortion out of the legislative/executive arena and into the judicial one. The constitutional argument is solid enough that it is reasonably secure. Once such an argument is made, it is not really part of the democratic process any more, so it doesn't matter what most people think.
This enabled the recrudescence of the American right. Most people did want abortion to be available, at least as a last resort, perhaps even more than would be willing to come out and say so. So they had a tendency to vote for the Eisenhower and Goldwater kinds of Republicans who were not really that big on moralistic ranting.
Tucking it away in the judiciary made it possible for conservatives to rant and rail as much as they want to make Baby Jesus happy, secure in the knowledge that whatever they do would not have much of an effect. (However, stacking the Supreme Court to one that could overturn it has become a risk, albeit rather slowly).
Similarly (though Dershowitz did not suggest it), progressives may feel secure in having all the fun they like with The Story, chest-beating, foot-shooting, and shaming their supporters into shutting up, knowing that it won't affect what the Supreme Court justices think.
That is, it just doesn't matter. The Supreme Court will protect our rights, even as they become overrun with conservative Catholics (which will accelerate under Romney/Rand). They were responsible for Bush v. Gore which, according to Dershowitz again, may have been motivated by a desire to let Sandra Day O'Connor retire and ensure a conservative replacement. But they also did Lawrence v. Texas, an opinion that was far more progressive than they strictly needed to have to overturn the sodomy laws, so there may be hope.
In the mean time, while the rights exist and are being protected, it's safe to rant, vent, have drama, be outraged and incensed, and generally dance around like a bunch of monkeys, which is a really good time. I say this without any irony at all.
I just hope they are right.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Mac OS X One-Liners
From: epepke@acm.org (Eric Pepke)
Subject: Mac One-Liners January 15, 2003
Date: 15 Jan 2003 10:14:30 -0800
Here is a new version of the Mac One-Liners. Changes since last version:
Expanded with contributions from more people. Edited some.
Still looking for more Carbon stuff. Also, more non-programming (e.g. general
use) One-Liners are sought.
----------
Mac One-Liners, January 10, 2002
Copyright (C) 2002 by Eric Pepke, All Rights Reserved
Permission is granted for non-commercial copying and distribution of this
document in toto, including copyright notice, editor, and all contributors.
Editor: Eric Pepke (epepke@acm.org)
Contributors: Miro Jurisic, Kevin Reid, Peter Ammon, John C. Randolph,
David Stone, Tom Harrington
Introduction
The Macintosh One-Liners is a compact list of lore about using and programming
the Mac. Each One-Liner consists of 79 or fewer ASCII characters. The
purpose of the One-Liners is to encourage and facilitate painless use of
and development for the Mac. They generally contain either advice or
statements. They are kept short so that they are easier to scan with
the eye. When they do not tell the whole story, they at least give clues
that will help to find more information in other documentation.
I encourage contributions to this list. If you have experienced a problem
and solved it, consider writing a One-Liner. I will edit it if needed.
To suggest One-Liners to include here, post to the USENET groups
comp.sys.mac.misc or comp.sys.mac.programmer.help with a title that
includes "One-Liner." Your name or nickname will be included in the
document unless you request otherwise. I prefer that you post rather
than email, because it gives others an opportunity to comment and/or
correct.
The One-Liners
For Windows Users and Programmers
Options are called Preferences on the Mac.
Exit is called Quit on the Mac.
Ctrl-click works the same as the right mouse button.
OS X General
Command+Option+Esc brings up Force Quit.
To change the app that opens a type of file use Get Info/Open With/Change All
OS X Command Line Interface (CLI)
To copy a file with the resource fork use "ditto -rsrcFork" or "ditto -rsrc"
To get and set most application preferences use "defaults"
To edit and inspect HFS flags use "/Developer/Tools/SetFile" and "GetFileInfo"
To build a Project Builder project from the command line use "pbxbuild"
To run AppleScripts from the command line use "osascript"
To open files from the CLI as with a double-click in Finder use "open"
To see the full path of a file, drag it to a terminal window.
To inspect executables, use "atool"
To map memeory addresses to function names, use "atos"
To copy the contents of a file to the pasteboard use "/usr/bin/pbcopy"
To get the pasteboard, redirect or pipe the output of "/usr/bin/pbpaste"
To capture the screen to a PDF file, use "/usr/sbin/screencapture"
Don't set the root password. Use "sudo" instead. "sudo -s" gives a shell.
Get http://sourceforge.net/projects/fink for many free and open-source apps.
Power PC
Converting between integers and floating point accesses memory, so it's slow.
G4 Altivec code can easily be mixed with C; no assembly is required.
Functions typically start with mflr r0 (aka. mfspr r0, lr) and end with blr.
Programming General
To get the name of the default resource fork, use FSGetResourceForkName.
To find memory leaks try MallocDebug and ObjectAlloc.
For OpenGL debugging use OpenGL Profiler (10.2 and later)
The Project Builder suite produces executables for OS X only.
The low-end version of CodeWarrior (Development Studio) also is for OS X only.
Don't assume the initial working directory is the parent of your application.
The default resource fork is named "RESOURCE_FORK" with Unicode characters.
What Apple calls Unicode is really UTF-16.
Programming Cocoa
To put an image in a table column use [column setDataCell:[NSImageCell alloc]].
To draw sharp single-pixel NSBezierCurves add 0.5 to x and y.
To get a Finder icon use [[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] iconForFile:path].
To put something at the right of the menu bar use an NSStatusBar.
To scroll programmatically use [[aScrollView contentView] scrollToPoint:p].
[outlineView reloadItem:nil] doesn't work for root; use reloadData instead.
To use Carbon file functions make a file:// URL and use CFURLGetFSRef.
To make a text field scroll, not wrap Use [[textField cell] setScrollable:YES].
To shrink most controls use [[control cell] setControlSize:NSMallControlSize].
NSScroller, NSTabView, and NSProgressIndicator have their own setControlSize.
To do many UNIX-like file features like chdir, chmod, etc. use NSFileManager.
A file ending in ".mm" can contain Objective C and C++ code.
You can use "self" on the left side of an assignment.
Always use the return value of an initializer; it may be a new object or nil.
The GUI API isn't all thread-safe; only the main thread should use it.
An NSQuickDrawView may be much faster than using standard views.
Apple suggests the URL file:// form be preferred over file names.
NSBundle's localizedStringForKey returns the key if the value is not found.
An OpenGL view does not scroll like a normal NSView in an NSScrollView.
An object is responsible for release or autorelease of an object it creates.
If you can't find a feature in a control, look in its cell.
String attributes of nil uses 12 point Helvetica.
Cocoa programmers need to know Core Foundation, even if its docs say "Carbon."
Programming Carbon
To find where your app is use GetProcessBundleLocation(GetCurrentProcess())
To get the user's home directory use FindFolder(kCurrentUserFolderType)
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Why Conservatives Hate Capitalism
by Eric Pepke
The problem is this. People with money aren't doing the things they used to do with money. The "job-creators" aren't creating jobs, and the "lending institutions" aren't lending.
In 1999, I was working in Boca Raton. There was one restaurant I used to go to a lot. It was a fun place, well decorated, with cheerful employees. It was built entirely as a tax break. People with money didn't like paying high taxes, and so they did things to make themselves pay lower taxes.
Over the past decade, the push was to give those with a lot of money lower taxes without their having to do anything. The purported reason was that monied people were just fantastic people who would continue to build restaurants. Unsurprisingly, they didn't. There was no incentive to build restaurants and the like, so they didn't. They liked not having to do those things, because they'd rather not hire lawyers, accountants, construction workers, and waiters who, after all, cost them money.
Why should they? If the economy is depressed, employees are cheaper. If there are foreclosures, they you can buy them cheaper. It's like having more money without the number of dollars getting bigger. Are they going to give up these advantages for the public good? Hardly. Even Alan Greenspan admitted that the idea that the monied were just great people who were interested in keeping the game fair was wrong.
Of course, we could raise their taxes to give them incentives to do things to lower their tax burden again and improve the economy as a side-effect. They understand this. That's how money is made, and how they got their money in the first place. Yet given that they have the money, it's better for them to have everything else go to pot, because it makes the things they grudgingly pay money for (like land and workers) a lot cheaper. It's completely rational. This is by no means a failure of the economy. It's a fantastic deal if you have money.
They know that the economy isn't a zero-sum game for them. They got the money when it was flowing freely, in and out, and they collected some from the flow. The more the money flows, the easier it is to get. When the economy is growing, it's as if there's more and more money, especially with tricks like fractional reserve banking. Whether there actually is more money or not is a semantic parlor game. It's like the laws of thermodynamics, where the flow of heat is how you get useful energy, which is more important than the abstract concept of total energy.
Once you have deep pockets, zero- or negative-sum becomes attractive. When you have a lot, the formerly desirable flow becomes undesirable, because you get worried about flow out. Fortunately, once the economy gets bad enough, the flow out due to savings accounts and 401k's and things like that stops because they run out. If you still have money, you win.
This wouldn't work as easily if people figured it out. So you have to convince people that the economy really is a zero-sum game. Again, fortunately, for most people it is already a zero-sum game or, especially if the economy is bad, a negative-sum game. It isn't difficult to convince them, because people naturally go into zero-sum mode when things are bad to protect what little they have, but there is some art to it.
Formerly, you talked about a high tide raising all boats, trickle-down economics, and investment. Now, you talk about spending, the evils of socialism, and stealing. You misrepresent taxing the rich as a means of redistributing wealth (and in inane cases, punishing success), which it never has been. Running government it what the middle class has been for. It has always been a way to make it cheaper to lower the tax burden through dodges, loopholes, and havens than by buying politicians.
Then a miracle happens, because once people start thinking in terms of a zero-sum or negative-sum game, they don't stop. You start to get allies amongst the poor, though you never let on that they are helping you. This is easy, because if you don't want to lose what you have, they certainly don't want to lose what little they have. Even your ideological opponents will help. They will mock the idea of spending to improve the economy, and thus keep money flow down to a minimum. Socialists are your best friends. The last thing a critic of capitalism wants to see is people prospering under it. There has also been an exploitable tradition of Champagne and Caviar Communism, which if anything is more honest than these modern conservatives who pretend to be capitalists as an alibi for opposing capitalism.
It's quite brilliant. Totally rational, resulting from individual self-interest, with no need for a conspiracy at all. Rich and poor, right and left, all working together to make things suck.
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