Looking Back, on words in a row.

I've been gradually dragging myself out of a serious writer's block, arising out of a sense of utter futility. On any number of issues, I feel as if what I write is of no value and has influenced nobody who would not already agree with me.


Well, that's not true, of course. And not in the sense of bragging. It's literally impossible for anyone who communicates with other people to avoid some degree of influence. And as I climb slowly out of what now seems to have been a rather profound depression that eventually forced me to take some time off, I look back at what I've written.


And some of it doesn't suck at all. Some of what I've written is pretty good. Some of it continues to bring traffic. If it does have any influence at all, it looks like it will have the sort of influence I would like. Aside from a few spelling and grammatical errors, I see nothing I OUGHT to have been embarrassed to have said in public. Even when moved to use rather rude words in a very consciously offensive way. 


Take this post about Bridget Keeney. My treatment of her was either more or less merciful than the rest of the blogosphere. I'm not entirely sure which, myself. But it's a wildly different way of looking at the situation, quite possibly unique, and refreshingly distinct from the partisan and ideological responses which, aside from the relative merits, we all should know by heart by now.

Erotic writer "Bridget Keeney" outed as South Carolina Republican.

Here at Graphictruth, any day that I have the journalistic duty to link to outright pornography is a good day.

When the reason I must do it is that the author of said hardcore fapfesting textviles is a right wing, social conservative who presumes to tell other people what their publicly educated children must and must not learn while home-schooling her own, it is not just a good day, it's a frigging good day. Via Fitsnews: (H/T The Progressive Puppy)

.......

Let me quote my wife, in the moments in which I or someone else manages to unconsciously reveal Total Catastrophic Thought Failure.

"Oh, HONEY!"

She manages to covey the recognition that one has committed a cognitive act not at all unlike a sudden failure of toilet training, but without any sense of attempting to shame the puppy.

There is deep sympathy for how very humiliating the situation must be for the poor creature - and she will go get a towel. Further, should the puppy be blessed with thumbs - as Kerstin is - she will hand the towel to the puppy, with the expectation that it do something more productive that attempting to pretend that it did not happen. Sadly, Kirstin has tried to pretend it didn't happen - by deleting every instance of her writing but two - thereby proving that she had access to the author's account.

That's not an actual cover-up, it's even worse than a failed cover up. There was an allegation these writings were yours, but it was all gossip and conjecture - UNTIL they were deleted. Now it's not just gossip and conjecture, it's a fact in evidence.

Yep, I'm pretty happy with that. And I attribute my different viewpoint rather directly to my rather different brain.


I'm aspy, of course. A person who can be usefully described as being an Asperger's Autistic. That is to say, regardless of whether you believe it's primarily a disability, or a difference; if you want an illustration of what that set of traits looks like in every-day life, take a picture of me - an encouragement and a cautionary example, all at once, I think. 

Hans Asperger on the prognosis for autistics.

 ..here's another Asperger quotation that is perhaps more to the point of the month:

We are convinced, then, that autistic people have their place in the organism of the social community. They fulfil their role well, perhaps better than anyone else could, and we are talking of people who as children had the greatest difficulties and caused untold worries to their care-givers. ^[3]

Yeah. What he said. I perhaps might add that one's success may well be inversely proportional to the degree with which worry and difficulty translates into "interventions" designed to minimize autistic distinctions that serve our distinct social purpose.


What is that, you may well ask?


Well, I'd have to say, if I were forced to explain my own role and generalize based on other aspies I know, it would be reality checking and social criticism. (Or systems analysis, looking at all sorts of different systems and rules sets.)


As children, our expectation that rules, strictures and diktats should make sense often gets us into a great deal of trouble, and as adults we tend to look back and try to make sense of it all.

He [Asperger] followed one child, Fritz V., into adulthood. Fritz V. became a professor of  astronomy and solved an error in  Newton’s work he originally noticed as a child.

I can just imagine how well that went over in a properly Germanic pedagogical context.

Of course, this means that when you wave your flag and loudly proclaim a set of ideals, I genuinely expect you to do your damedest to live up to them, in your own person. You don't get to pick and choose, for instance, which parts of the US Constitution you like, or what sorts of people are not "granted rights" under it.

It doesn't apply to anyone if it doesn't apply to everyone. And if that really cannot be enforced outside of the US borders, it's not due to a lack of military ability - it's because other countries have the duty to protect the human and natural rights of their own people, and some do a better job than others. However, the Constitution recognizes and celebrates natural rights, drawing very narrow and conditional exceptions as required in the specific. If you want to trumpet something about what makes America great - or what made it great in the past tense - that would be it.

Now that your rights and mine as recognized under US law are considered conditional and exceptional - when citizens are asked for their papers and the president can reserve the right to imprison or kill anyone they choose - that's no different than any other statist nation. Well, then. It comes down to competence and execution, for there's no moral high ground left to note.

Nowhere in the commonwealth has anyone ever considered "inalienable human rights." We have, however, learned that when you do alienate someone's rights, there's usually some sort of unintended consequence, and one had best budget for the expense.

I used to consider myself rather lucky to be both a Canadian and a US Citizen by birth. Over the years - and you can track that evolution on this blog - I went from being somewhat optimistic and patriotic about my US citizenship to the point where I am now, where I will not cross the border. Not as a matter of principle. I simply consider the risk to my liberty and my dignity to be more than I'm willing to accept.

This following post pretty much marks the turning point for me, the time when I folded the flag up and threw in the back of the closet, along with a few other relics of mis-spent idealism.

I'm Canadian; I Have No Time For This Bullshit

Would I grow pot, smuggle meth, steal cars or participate in a gang, if the alternative was starving alone in an alleyway in a cardboard box? If course. So would you. And hell, we are speaking of the foundations of civilization. People "ganged together" to ensure their mutual survival. If you exclude people from belonging to the "Ahumurikin" gang - because "poor people" don't deserve to belong - they won't just starve politely. They will band together to mess you up, take your stuff and, ultimately, do unto y'all what the Vandals and Visigoths did to Rome. And you will deserve it.

Not that I've given up HOPE for the nation of my youth - but I now think of myself as Canadian. I was born here, after all.  But more directly, all the things I truly value about Canada, the things that most of the world, and conspicuously all the things that US tourists marvel at when they visit; our courtesy, our clean and relatively non-violent culture, our  stable economy and our lack of visible poverty and despair - all of these things come directly from the things that US conservatives revile as inherent evils leading directly to The Killing Fields, or worse. That is to say, that as a people, we give a damn about what happens to other people. 


If this be "Socialism," make the most of it. And on this side of the line I shall stand against those who think we should remake ourselves in the image of the US. That is to say, a country that values a rich white, sociopathic thief over an honest, hard-working non-white taxpayer.


A Churchillian Fortitude

 There's yet much to be done - but one by one by one, we must take back the organizations and structures that they have polluted, the school boards, the charities, the political organizations, the precincts - and I don't just mean "along partisan lines." They need to be taken away from the crazy people, by sane people of all political and religious persuasions.

From what I see out there, from the near absence of intelligable voices from the Right - when it used to be the core of political intellect, councelling against emotionalism and populism as the greatest enemies of democratic representative republics - there are a whole lot of utterly disgusted Conservatives trying to pretend it will all go away.

Well, it won't. Not without your help, ladies and gentlemen. And if you fear being called a Liberal or a "RINO" for your stances - remember, you are being called that by people capable of calling Obama a Communist and a Nazi in the same paragraph. What they really mean is "poopy-head," and all it shows is that they are simply not capable of behaving as functional, responsible adults in public places.

It should not need to be said: And then they came for me...

Welcome to Canada!
Do you have any fruit, firearms
or implements of torture
to declare today?

HT Digby: Please click the digg link.

"First they tortured in ticking time bomb cases but I didn't mind because it was a clear and imminent danger..."

An obvious observation ... or it should be.

This deserves to be email-chained to everyone who's ever annoyed you with some damn-fool paranoid massmail forwarding.

I cannot even fathom what combination of fear and moral failure has allowed US Citizens to tolerate this - much less entrench it into a political philosophy! Nonetheless, this very phenomenon is directly related to why I chose to return to Canada.

It's not the whole of it, or even a huge part - but at some point, as a citizen of a nation, you have to ask yourself whether, if push came to shove, could you suck up your gut and say "My country, right or wrong?" I found that I could not honestly say that.

To me, that commitment has always depended on the balance of right versus wrong being a positive one. Somewhere during the Bush administration, it became clear to me that Bush was not an historical anomaly, but rather, the logical product of a political movement that prospered because good people chose to do nothing to oppose it.

At some point just prior to the election, even before the economic meltdown, I became convinced that it was entirely possible to envision circumstances in which Canada and the US would come to some parting of the ways. The issue of torture is certainly one issue that could bring this about, and there are a number of others, sovereignty being a very significant one.

Torture is a powerful issue, both in terms of symbolism and as practical evidence of an intolerable degree of ethical and moral failure at the highest levels.

If this does not inform the decisions of other world powers, including Canada, that is also a problem. You see, it goes to the very fundamental issues as to whether the United States can be trusted to act as a lawful power, if it can and will honor it's treaties and international obligations. Actions speak far louder than words.

I was blessed by birth with a choice; citizenship in two nations with remarkable history, people and potential. But of the two nations, one sees history, people and potential as a responsibility to be maintained and fulfilled and the other, sadly, sees it as an entitlement.

I regret being forced to chose. But I am not uncomfortable with the choice I have made. I hope that you, dear reader, are able to come to some acceptable terms with your own citizenship in the merciless light of conscience.

Illustrations:
Canada Above the Fray Rondel by EhCanada
Waterboarding saves lives by walraven

For want of a friend, a pair of shoes were lost...

Yellow Elephant Keychain by webcarve
Create your own personalized keychains On www.zazzle.com

The Dark Wraith Forums / Mortar Man

It's a story about an ordinary soldier being "stop-lossed," presumably because he's got a vital skill and nobody (Republican or otherwise) has stepped up to do their presumable duty in a time of legitimate war. So much for the republicans arguing from the home front that this war is vital and necessary - were that true, they'd be sending their own sons.

As they are not, ordinary Joes are sent time and time again, until they are dead or used up completely.

The story is best read in original context; this is one. Suffice it to say that all the really informative war stories are about people and the connections between them, both made and abruptly severed. Oh, and the fact that much can be made about which soldiers get sent where.

You see, the vital skill for this particular soldier is "Mortarman."

That's what we call "human intelligence" folks. We could use more of it in Washington. In ALL senses of the phrase.

On Praising McCain with Fainter Damns...

A Litmus Test For Hard-Core Conservatives:

"Although it is not on the agenda and I suspect a goodly number of CPAC members would deny it, the biggest issue facing this crowd is whether to embrace McCain, who has been the subject of vitriolic attacks by Coulter, among other right-wing demagogues, over not being conservative enough.

As I have written early and often, as the presumptive nominee, McCain cannot win the November election without at least the tacit support of CPACers."

You know, I like to think of myself as a Conservative-ish sort of person - but apparently that particular C-Word has become as slimy, slippery and difficult to apply as that other Big Cee word (the one with the very same litmus tests, it seems); "Christian."

Now, there are ways in which I think McCain is far too willing to compromise Conservatism; but all my caviats have to do with intrusive big government and foreign warfare - aside from being more of a flip-flopper than Kerry ever was.

As far as I am concerned, it's the very antithesis of Conservatism to pee in a cup for ANYONE, much less kneel holding it before self-appointed arbiters of Conservatism, such as Coulter and Malkin to delicately taste.

The only proper response to such a request is to pee on their shoes. Getting elected at the price of the ability to do anything consistent with any identifiable set of values - much less personal honor or integrity - is a price no Real Conservative - or indeed, any person of conscience - will abide. Of course, this will not put you in a place of power - but if you HAD to sell your concience and your own freedom, you won't really be in a place of power. You will simply be a shill - and not even a well-paid shill by modern standards.

Coulter, for one, makes more money for far less effort than even George Bush gets by with.

As the contest comes down to sussing out which candidate of all presented on each side has the most ... erm ... flexibility; the most room for interpretation of intent in their rhetoric, the less interested I am in throwing away my vote by voting.

Increasingly, as the field narrows, excluding those with principle in favor of those with corporate support and not even particularly well-hidden sponsorships, I'm losing interest. Well, the only way to vote "none of the above" is to not vote at all. That is the only way to deny a plurality to everyone who participated.

As I'm on the topic of the meaningless of the duties of citizenship, let me advocate a constitutional amendment that would require that 25% of the affected population must vote with a minimum of 90% confidence in the accuracy of the tally for the election to be valid.

If elections fail three times - a constitutional convention is called and the federal government is put in abeyance.

Yeah, wishful thinking.