(Possibly) Minor (Possible) Emergency

As I along with the other tenants in my building have been aware was possible, this property and the one next door have now been sold. I just received a letter (dated January 7) informing us of the change in ownership and management.

At the end of the letter, we're told that all rent payments -- beginning with the January rent (!!!) -- should be made out and mailed to the new management company.

Which is swell and all, but since the last thing I want is any trouble with any management company and having to move (which would be an impossible nightmare for me at this point, for many reasons), I always make sure to send the rent payment for the next month at the end of the previous month. So I sent the January rent payment to the old management company at the end of December. I always send a money order. I still have a checking account, but I never use it for transactions in amounts greater than a hundred dollars or so. The reason is simply that, if there were substantial funds in my checking account ... well, let's just say that other parties would almost certainly claim a "right" to them. (See the previous post, particularly the part about Thoreau and related matters, if you want to connect the dots. This is one of the costs I incur because of my "disobedience," but it is a comparatively very minor one, one of inconvenience more than anything else. Some of the other costs are far more substantial.)

I've called both the old and new management companies, telling them about the payment I've already made and asking them to figure out what's happened to it. In the ordinary course of things, my payment would simply be transferred to the new management company in one way or another. But very little in my life has been "ordinary" in the last few years, and given the general level of competence one is likely to encounter these days... (And I am not favorably impressed by a letter dated January 7 instructing me how to pay January rent, when rent is almost always due on the first of the month.)

So my concern at the moment is that I may have to get a new money order, while the various parties involved figure out how to handle the old one. Again, I just don't want any problems with the new management company, including trouble resulting from what they might consider, wrongly in this case, a "late" payment. I'll do everything possible to make certain that I get credit for the payment already made, or a refund for the money order if necessary, but who knows how quickly that will happen, or not. Since I only have a few hundred dollars after paying the rent (yes, I paid it, dammit!) and other first of the month bills, I can't get a new money order. So I guess I better put out a low level alert now, to try to gather together around $1,000, just in case. (I don't need all of the $1,000 for rent, but food, etc.) If no problem with the rent payment materializes (I can hope, and it shouldn't unless the world has gone mad, but then...), I'll need some additional funds all too soon in any case (and both cats need to visit the vet, too, so there's that).

I'm very sorry to have to ask for donations so early in the New Year, but circumstances conspire against me. (For the details of my general situation, please see this from a few months ago.)

My very great thanks for your attention and consideration. Now, I must return to my work eviscerating the foreign policy views of Mr. Hagel...

Taking It Personally

It is very odd indeed that one truth about Barack Obama's presidency thus far is widely accepted by both the right and left (using those terms broadly, and as they are commonly used to describe American political affiliations). The truth I refer to is the fact that what had once been controversial policies when first implemented by George W. Bush -- indefinite detention without charges and warrantless, virtually unlimited surveillance, to name just two obvious examples -- have been continued by Obama, despite the fact that Obama as candidate sometimes protested against them. Most observers also agree that Obama has not only continued these policies, but normalized and institutionalized them (and sometimes expanded their reach), thus seeking to make them a permanent part of the State apparatus going into the future.

Since those on the right (with rare exceptions) supported these policies when Bush pursued them, they are relieved and happy that Obama has chosen this course. Such people can therefore be granted recognition for demonstrating consistency with regard to their professed beliefs. The same cannot be said for those on the left (again, with rare exceptions). They vehemently denounced the policies when a Republican adopted them; when Obama continued, institutionalized and occasionally expanded them, they rationalized his actions (always seeking to divest Obama of moral agency and responsibility in one way or another), or chose to remain silent. Those on the left continue this approach today. We can therefore say, speaking generally, that those on the right believe something -- that is, they believe that power should be used to pursue certain ends, and not others -- while those on the left believe in nothing but power, power for its own sake, power as an end in itself.

I've made this argument for many years. And even though one might be tempted to say that those on the right are marginally better, insofar as they believe in something beyond power for its own sake and thereby remain somewhat recognizably human, while those on the left who choose to engage in perpetual Obama apologetics have rendered themselves into formless, unthinking blobs of meaningless matter, I think that conclusion is an error. We cannot forget what those on the right believe -- and since what they believe requires the brutalization, suffering and death of innocent human beings, they are finally as thoroughly detestable as those on the left. Nonetheless, I think this observation from that long-ago post is also true: "But in a psychological sense, I probably would have to say the Democrats (and certain of their apologists) are worse: to say you recognize evil to any extent at all, yet to fail to oppose it or, which is still more reprehensible, to act for its furtherance, consigns one to the lowest rung of Hell."

Distinctions of this kind may be a subject of great interest (I myself find it fascinating), but we are speaking here of the potentials of human life, of the possibilities for joy and happiness, and of their destruction. At this juncture, both right and left are committed to the destruction of life, and of joy and happiness, and there is finally nothing to choose between them.

What is so extraordinarily peculiar about the widespread agreement on Obama's continuation and institutionalization of Bush's policies is that the attitude of agreement on this point is not agreement alone: it is acceptance. It is as if most commentators (and most Americans) have said: "All our leaders of every political persuasion support these policies. I guess that will be the way of the world for us now. And they are our leaders, after all. I suppose they know best." Even if a particular observer is unwilling to grant that "they know best," his attitude is likely to be: "Yes, it's terrible. It's ghastly. But what can we do?" Such an observer might content himself with tinkering around the edges while registering his protest, and he may vaguely hope that an alternative to the current system will somehow appear somewhere at an indeterminate future date, but his life will essentially go on as before. He will go to work, he will spend time with family and friends, he will faithfully pay his taxes and file his tax returns.

Yet some people choose a different path. Certain individuals -- Thoreau was one -- do not pay their taxes when they conclude that doing so would support an evil that they find absolutely unacceptable. Some people refuse to pay taxes, and their refusal sometimes stretches over decades. I regularly ask, "Why do you support?" I have asked that question for over five years. My query -- which, as I hope is obvious, encompasses much more than paying taxes -- is not an empty rhetorical exercise, at least it is not for me.

But I recognize that the costs of disobedience of this kind can be very high, sometimes prohibitively so. (I am very painfully and personally aware of this fact, and need no reminders of it.) Moreover, I am in full agreement with Thoreau's observation in Civil Disobedience that: "I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.” The ultimate purpose of any individual's life is to live it, not to reform the world. And honorable people may loathe their government and nonetheless choose to obey what they consider deeply unjust laws, because they know too well what the consequences of refusal might be -- and this is especially true when they fear the consequences not for themselves, but for their families and particularly for their children (for whom, of course, the adult is responsible until the children themselves are adults). Yet I will also offer this observation, one based on reading a great deal of political commentary over the last decade: to the extent one remains a participant in the affairs of the State, to the extent one complies with the State's requirements in their multitude of forms, to that extent one's criticisms of the State will necessarily be diluted and weakened. I would say that one's criticisms and one's dissent will necessarily be compromised, but that conveys a negative moral judgment which may not always be merited (although it frequently is). But actively supporting the State -- obeying the laws, paying taxes, etc. -- must certainly dilute and weaken one's criticisms. How could it possibly be otherwise?

If one views the State as vile, even evil, at its foundation and in many of its effects, one will recoil from any and all involvement in its activities, which is the conclusion Thoreau reached through the logic of his argument. A simple, stark example suffices to make the point: one does not effectively protest a gratuitous murder by proclaiming that the murder is unjustified and evil, while simultaneously handing the murderer the knife with which he will stab his victim to death. Even if you repeatedly say the State commits evil, your participation in its acts, however attenuated, means that you think the evil is one that can still be countenanced, that it can somehow be accommodated. If you did not think that, you would say, "No," and you would mean it.

A further aspect of the attitude of acceptance of the Bush-Obama policies should be noted. It is no accident that such acceptance is guided and shaped by those who themselves are for the most part (and often entirely) immune from the worst consequences. This is obviously true of political leaders (as well as members of the ruling class in general), who are secure in the knowledge that the laws they devise for others will rarely, if ever, be applied to them. And the same is true of "opinion leaders," in which category I include newspaper writers, television commentators and hosts, and the more prominent bloggers. There is an inverse correlation between such individuals' success within the existing system and the threat they represent to that system: the more successful they are, the less of a threat they constitute. Those who represent the least threat will be very successful; those who are a serious threat will be known to very few -- or, if they do become widely known, it will be as a person who is persecuted and/or imprisoned, as in the case of Bradley Manning. These observations also apply to those who style themselves "dissenters" (see here for a recent example, and here for an earlier one).

You can see a related category of these same dynamics in momentary controversies like the one that erupted over the genuinely offensive comments offered by an idiot who goes by the name Erik Loomis; some sensible commentary about that will be found here and here. Loomis is a made man in the current system; he will do very well (and far better than most) regardless of whether he keeps one particular job. This is not to say that he should be fired for making idiotic comments, the first amendment, blahblahblah (although why any university would want to hire such an idiot remains an open question, along with why anyone would wish to attend a university that does) -- but honestly, all the talk about eternal Constitutional verities with regard to Loomis is asinine and even obscene, when you consider the plight of Manning, as just one example. (And I confess that I have more than a sneaking suspicion that Loomis is most annoyed by the fact that he hasn't been fired. That book would have been a bestseller, and maybe even a movie. It still might be, just on the basis of his "persecution." Oy.) But the Loomis controversy, and all the similar controversies that arise with sickening regularity, demonstrate the perverse priorities of this moment: people scream and yell about supposedly horrifying threats to liberty and the sacred "American way of life" with regard to people who are in no danger at all -- when actual horrors go entirely unremarked and, still worse, when actual horrors are accepted.

This brings us to the greatest horror of all. It is not enough that Obama has continued, institutionalized and even broadened what so many people proclaimed to be unacceptable evils when adopted by Bush. America has proven steadfast in its determination to be "exceptional," so its lauded president has publicly proclaimed his assertion of absolute power -- and almost no one notices, and almost no one cares:

As I have written before: "the claim of a 'right' to dispense death arbitrarily -- the claim that the State may murder anyone it chooses, whenever it desires -- constitutes a separate category altogether, a category of which this particular claim is the sole unit. When death is unleashed, all possibility of action is ended forever." For this reason -- and it is the only reason required -- it is not "perfectly rational and reasonable" to decide that "the evils of their candidate [Obama] are outweighed by the evils of the GOP candidate."

There is no evil beyond the claimed "right" to murder by arbitrary edict, to murder anyone, anywhere, anytime. If you support this particular evil -- and if you vote for Obama, you support it -- then you will support anything.

As I explained in "Accomplices to Murder," all those who voted for Romney support evil in the same manner. In the last election, 120 million Americans voted for evil. This particular evil -- which is of necessity the greatest evil possible, since death forever precludes all other possibilities of every kind -- is fine with them. They accept it, and they support it. Most other Americans appear to have chosen to remain unaware of the State's assertion of absolute power and what it means. It is not that the information is unavailable to them, for the State proclaims its adoption of evil regularly in the nation's most prominent newspapers. Evil has arisen in the manner of a gargantuan statue in the largest public gathering place in America -- and almost all Americans walk by it every day, carefully averting their gaze, refusing to see the massive edifice that has been erected directly in front of their unseeing eyes.

Obama regularly and systematically orders the murders of innocent human beings -- human beings he knows to be innocent. The president of the United States is a serial murderer. The president of the United States boastfully proclaims his status as a serial murderer to all the world. This monumental fact -- and it is a fact, one which Obama and his fellow criminals repeat to us over and over, to make certain we hear it, even if we refuse to understand it -- matters only to a vanishingly small number of Americans.

This is the point where you and every person desperately needs to take it personally. This is not a charade or a carefree patriotic parade with colorful floats and banners, although that is exactly how almost every public voice speaks about it, if they bother to speak about it at all This is, all too literally, a matter of life and death. I made a similar point many years ago, when I was attempting yet again to reach those who refused to acknowledge the significance of Bush's policies:

To put the point the other way, which will hopefully penetrate the wall of resistance erected by so many people: the only reason you aren't in a concentration camp right now is because Bush hasn't decided to send you to one -- yet. But he claims he has the power to do so -- and there are almost no voices of any prominence to dispute the contention. What is even worse than the loss of liberty is the fact that most Americans aren't even aware that the loss has occurred.

We can now edit that passage, but only slightly, to bring us into accord with the precepts of the Glorious Age of Obama:

The only reason you aren't dead right now is because Obama hasn't decided to kill you -- yet. But he claims he has the power to do so -- and there are almost no voices of any prominence to dispute the contention.

You need to think of Obama ordering a drone strike on your wife or husband, or your lover, or your children -- or you. Imagine it in every detail. Then tell me how "accepting" you are of this monster. Then tell me how you justify having voted for him, if you did. As I indicated, the same is true for all those who voted for Romney, and for all those millions who think it doesn't matter.

I have highlighted these issues again for two reasons. First and most importantly, these are the matters of greatest significance for our present, as well as for our future, which is almost certain to be bleak and horrifying beyond anything we can now imagine. These are the matters that must always be kept in mind when analyzing and evaluating any and every political issue of national significance.

Second, as I indicated yesterday, I want to discuss the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense. Keeping in mind the full meaning of Obama's assertion of absolute power, that is, Obama's claim that he has the "right" to murder anyone he chooses, for any reason he wishes or invents, or merely because he feels like it, we must first restate the obvious: Hagel has been selected for this post by Obama. He has been nominated as Defense Secretary by a serial murderer, who regularly and systematically orders the murder of innocent human beings. Would you want to work for a serial murderer? If you hesitate for even a moment, please go away and don't ever come back. I have no idea why you're here in the first place. Any person of decency and integrity, any individual who possesses a minimal amount of human feeling and compassion would immediately refuse. It should be inconceivable for any remotely healthy human being to consider working for a serial murderer even for an instant.

And that leads to an equally obvious, closely related point: Hagel affirmatively wants the job. Hagel wants to work for a serial murderer -- and not only that, he wants to work for him in one of the most critical positions in the administration. As Secretary of Defense, he will take orders from a serial murderer.

He wants to do it. If you trust such a man, if you believe he may do "good" in some vague, unspecified way, if you think he may mitigate the evil which Obama has so enthusiastically embraced, you're a fool. I will not apologize for using the word "fool," for no other word will do. The situation would be vastly different if Hagel had offered even some halfhearted criticism of Obama's Murder Program, and of the loathsome "disposition matrix." I'm not aware of any such statements. To the contrary, Hagel believes and accepts every central principle guiding Obama's national defense policy, as we shall shortly see.*

But even before we examine Hagel's own stated beliefs, we can conclude that either of these already known facts is dispositive: that it is Obama who selected him for the job, and that Hagel wants it. In a sane, healthy country, Obama would be in jail. If Hagel is confirmed, he will deserve to join him there after a single day as Secretary of Defense.

As matters stand at present, we are unable to change our course because we refuse to recognize the truth of our condition. Once before, I quoted Sven Lindqvist:

You already know enough. So do I. It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions.

Next time, we will draw some further conclusions, when we consider Hagel's beliefs concerning Iran. There is far, far less there than some of Hagel's defenders want to believe. In fact, Hagel fully adopts every idea that may well lead us directly to catastrophe.

Until then.

* Hagel's confirmation hearings might provide a few moments of interest if someone dares to ask him what he thinks of Obama's Murder Program. If the past election is any guide -- when Obama's adoration of drones was mentioned only once to my knowledge, and then only so that everyone could agree how fantastically wonderful they are -- it won't even come up. But if it does, does anyone seriously think that Hagel will even question it in any meaningful manner, let alone denounce it as the monstrous evil that it is? Please. I expect most of Hagel's hearings to be devoted to fervent declarations of how specially special Israel is, how we should try diplomacy first with Iran -- but only diplomacy and talks on our terms, of course, and so long as our goals are fully realized, and if diplomacy doesn't result in everything that we want, well ... Oh, yes: there will also be many statements about how specially special all us queers are. And then: confirmation! Now you can skip the news for the next month.

This Is the Deadly Serious Part

I will offer a detailed argument concerning Obama's nominations of Brennan and Hagel (for CIA Director and Defense Secretary, respectively) in the next post. I'm still collecting my thoughts and organizing the material -- and steeling myself to deal with an absolutely colossal amount of dumbass shittery from nominally "dissenting" writers. One way of expressing the bottom line is this: the ruling class is far more expert and much cleverer at these games than most alleged "dissenters," who consistently do nothing to ameliorate the evils that beset us, but only make them worse by playing directly into the ruling class's hands. As I sometimes note, they do not constitute the ruling class because they're stupid. Remember: they're the ruling class. You're not. See how that works? Of course, writers (to say nothing of MSNBC hosts) who unwittingly (or not) provide immense aid to the ruling class thereby become very useful adjuncts to the elite (and thus enjoy all the lovely perks that accompany that status). As I said about Chris Hayes (and the observation applies to many more people):

"Dissent" like this is indispensable to the brutal, crushing system that is killing people around the world, and killing more and more of us here at home. The system allows for "dissent" of this kind and counts on it. It helps to foster the illusion of choice, and the illusion that the system can be "reformed from within." It makes people believe in the legitimacy of Hayes' sacred "democracy." And it represents no threat whatsoever to those in power.

The ruling class loves dissent like this. It's not "dangerous" in the smallest detail. If "dissenters" like Hayes didn't exist, the ruling class would have to invent them.

About Brennan, I will here note the following: told you so. In that entry, which was the first one I wrote about Petraeus's resignation, I explained why "it's never the sex." See a still earlier post for the fuller explanation as to why such concocted scenarios are only the cover stories for what is actually happening. I find it utterly amazing, as well as endlessly depressing, that writers who bring enormous skepticism to most other pronouncements from government officials voluntarily retire every analytic ability they possess when it comes to the subject of sex. As I pointed out, this is precisely why sex scandals are so popular throughout history, and why the ruling class regularly employs them. To believe that Petraeus resigned because of an affair puts one in the ranks of those who enthusiastically believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Toward the conclusion of that post concerning Petraeus, I offered two possible explanations concerning where the truth might lie. About the second explanation, I wrote:

But I consider the following of possibly much greater significance. From the end of the New York Times story:

Among those who might replace Mr. Petraeus permanently is John O. Brennan, the president’s adviser for domestic security and counterterrorism. Mr. Brennan was considered for C.I.A. director before Mr. Obama’s term began but withdrew among criticism from some of the president’s liberal supporters. Another possibility is Michael G. Vickers, the top Pentagon intelligence policy official and a former C.I.A. officer who is highly regarded by the White House.

John Brennan. My, my. What a conveniently small world it is.

If Brennan were to succeed Petraeus at the C.I.A., the White House would not only install Obama's first choice in that office, no small matter in itself. Of far greater importance is the fact that, aside from Obama himself -- and in certain respects, probably more than Obama -- Brennan is the single most critical person in the design and implementation of the government's Murder Program, as I recently discussed. If Brennan does finally head the C.I.A., do you think that would be a coincidence? I do not for a moment believe in coincidences of that kind, especially not with an administration as determined in its lethality as this one.

Think of it: John Brennan, who now is Obama's chief adviser on domestic security and counterterrorism goes to head the C.I.A. I'll tell you what that means to me: Obama and his fellow murderers are absolutely determined to bring the Murder Program home to America, and probably even more quickly that I had previously thought. I described the steps by which that might happen in the second half of the preceding post. [Please do take a look at that. You might find it instructive.] The unfolding nightmare that I described might very well lie in your future, America -- and in the not too distant future at that. Do you care?

To be sure, the administration could achieve the same end with another candidate if it wished, Vickers for example. But to be able to unleash the Murder Program on an even greater scale with the man who knows everything about it, and from his lofty perch at the C.I.A. ... it's a dream come true for these bastards. And that may well be the reason they decided to get rid of Petraeus.

I described further idiocies of the sex scandal cover story here.

Well. I'll have much more about this in the next day or two, when I will also discuss the Hagel nomination.

We often hear about the great values to be derived from "experience." We're told over and over about how crucial "experience" is to our efforts to understand and navigate the world. Among other things, many of the "dissenters" who now champion the Hagel nomination conclusively demonstrate that they have learned nothing from the last four years, including the many lessons they might have absorbed from the career of one Barack Obama. And that's most often the terrible problem of "experience": it's usually entirely wasted.

If it weren't so tragic in this case, and if it weren't far too likely to lead to still greater brutalization, destruction and death, it would be terribly funny. Perhaps we shall be able to extract a few moments of black comedy from our examination of these latest horrors. We'll see....to be continued.

An UnChristmas Story, 2012

"Yes, sir. We've been tracking them for the last week. They've been traveling through an area controlled by that terrorist group we're watching. Every night, they've stayed at the homes of people who are family relations or friends to someone we suspect of being a terrorist. All of them are involved with those protests about taxes, the land appropriation policy, and the forced labor program. As you know, sir, some of those protests have been very violent."

"Tell me again what they look like."

"Well, sir, as best we can tell, they're pretty scraggly and dirty. And swarthy, you know? They certainly don't look like regular folks or decent people, you know, not like us. And of course, they're carrying those suspicious looking packages."

"You still don't know what's in them?"

"No, sir. We haven't been able to figure it out for sure. We've caught glimpses of things that look like they might be drugs. And a few glints of something that might be precious metal. As you know, that all fits the terrorist profile."

"Yes, it certainly does. Anything else?"

"Some of the villagers have gone to the hut where the three men are now. From all the information we have, we think it must be a meeting of the local terrorist cell."

"And they're all together right now in that hut?"

"In the hut, or just outside it."

"I see. Aw, fuck it. Take 'em out."

"Yes, sir."

And lo, a drone was launched. It hit the designated target with perfect precision. That was unusual, but miracles happen sometimes. The three scraggly-looking men who had traveled so far, approximately 20 villagers who had gathered at the hut (which also happened to be a stable), and the new-born baby were all killed. And the baby's parents.

So there never was a Christmas.

Or Christianity.

Or history, at least the history you know for the last two thousand years.

Stop with your pathetic whining. You wanted to be safe from terrorists. Those people were terrorists! All the recognized authorities said so. And that baby would have caused a whole lot of trouble. Might have advocated for the poor, hated the big finance guys, God knows what. Hey, God. What's the story with that mofo? Talk about trouble-makers.

So, once the matter was brought to the attention of superior officers (and even of Dear Leader, known to all for his weepy compassion and astonishingly gentle soul), and because the exact coordinates of God's location proved to be somewhat difficult to determine, a series of drone strikes was launched.

At which point, God said, to coin a phrase, "Aw, fuck it." And He smote the whole fucking world. He didn't even need a drone. He later insisted that Earth had only been a rough draft, an experiment that perhaps hadn't been planned with sufficient care, and He also emphasized that He had never said He was perfect. During his appearance before the Council of Superior Beings, He would acknowledge only that, "Mistakes were made..."

God as the Ultimate Ass-Covering Bureaucrat. You knew it was going to turn out like that, didn't you? Yeah, baby.

Happy Unholidays.

Passing Thoughts, Proudly Offered with No Supporting Argument

One of the more horrifically amusing aftereffects of the Newtown murders is the spectacle of self-identified "libertarians" supporting involuntary commitment (e.g., here and here). Because, ya know, they're all about liberty and freedom. Maybe somebody should have asked them: liberty and freedom from what? It can't be freedom from bullets or murder, because these same people lovelovelove murder, conquest, exploitation, etc., etc. when the U.S. government pursues an aggressive and criminal foreign policy. But now we're told that, if "experts" agree and present "sufficient" evidence to the State demonstrating that an individual is an "imminent danger" to himself and/or others, we should start locking people up. And forcefeeding them drugs that are more than likely to make them "crazy" even when they weren't before, for "diseases" that for the most part don't exist except in the calculations of drug companies intent on amassing huge amounts of wealth (um, that is, even huger amounts of wealth), a task on which a compliant government is enthusiastically willing to collaborate. And very often, those in key governmental positions vis-a-vis the drug companies are those who have worked or will work for the drug companies themselves. Surely you didn't think the "mental health" industry escaped the corporatism that rules every other aspect of economic life in these glorious Yewnited States, didja? Surely not. It's all about the bucks, baby. And now Obamacare makes it even easier!

And liberals and progressives were happyhappyhappy to provide Obamacare! And they want to make sure insurance covers "mental health" problems ever more comprehensively -- so that, ya know, still more people will take drugs that are more than likely to make them "crazy," etc. and so on. And almost everyone believes, for example, that certain "mental illnesses" are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, and that the magic drugs correct those imbalances. Which is sweet and all, but actually there is scant to no evidence whatsoever to support those notions. Nope, most of what people believe on this subject is a pack of lies. It just happens to be a pack of lies that makes certain select companies and individuals fantastically rich. It's the American way! (That book has tons of facts and arguments, so I smuggled some in despite my headline. Ha!)

But people believe all that shit because Establishment "experts" tell them it's true. Honestly, have people learned absolutely nothing in the last ten years? What did foreign policy "experts" tell you about Iraq? What do they tell you about Iran? And what do Establishment "experts" on the economy tell you? Do you believe those experts? But when an expert has a medical degree and calls his opinions "science" (for which opinions he is frequently very handsomely paid by, tada!, the drug companies), almost everyone swallows all of it. (For a discussion of "experts" generally, see Part II, "The Claim to 'Special' Knowledge and Expertise," in this article. More smuggling!)

Well, all those drugs do accomplish one very important goal: they smooth out all the rough edges, deaden emotions and impair the brain (and lead to regrettable, regular episodes where people commit suicide, murder and other acts of violence, but oh well, eggs, omelettes, and all that) -- and they make people much more compliant and obedient. For an obedience culture, that's a big plus! That obedience trick works especially well with children, which is why more and more children are forced to take drugs -- but "scientific" ones! -- with every year that passes. Gotta get them early, you know.

I will have more to say on some of these points soon. But I have to wait for the nausea to subside. Hey, I'm sure there's a drug I can take for that! And I am feeling kinda blue. Aw, that's sweet. I've already received three emails from "medical experts" offering to write me prescriptions. They say the drugs will help with my "anger" issues, too. Obviously, in a country where the ruling class is intent on the destruction of vast numbers of people both at home and abroad, a country led by a deeply compassionate, weepy president who just happens to have a goddamned Kill List, there's absolutely nothing to be angry about, for heaven's sake. No sirree! God, I love this country! See, I'm better already.

Honest to Christ, folks. Are people ever going to WAKE THE FUCK UP? Oh, gee. I guess that sounded kinda angry, huh? Medicate me!

That is all for now.

God Damn You, America, and Your White, Privileged Grief

I debated whether to use what some will find a deeply offensive title, or to employ a safer, anodyne one. The debate did not last long, and it was finally settled, for me at least, when I read this:

President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Newtown, Conn., the close-knit town rocked by tragedy, after a gunman stormed into Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday and shot 20 children at least twice each with a high-powered rifle.

Officials revealed Saturday the gunman executed some children at close range and killed adults who tried to stop the carnage.

Obama will meet privately with victims' families on Sunday before attending a church service.

I also remembered the headline of a NYT story yesterday: "Nation Reels After Gunman Massacres 20 Children at School in Connecticut." "Nation Reels..."

We've had Cool Obama, and No Drama Obama. Now we have Weeping Obama. Does Weeping Obama "meet privately" with the families of those he has ordered murdered in Pakistan, or Somalia, or Yemen? Does he even acknowledge those murders -- murders that he himself ordered? Does the "nation reel" in response to these regular, systematic murders of innocent human beings -- many of them children? Does the "nation reel" in response to the Obama administration's repeated public announcements of its Kill List and its Murder Program, a program which intentionally, repeatedly murders innocent people? Does America react with horror to the fact that Obama and his administration claim the "right" to murder anyone they want, anywhere in the world, for any reason they choose or invent out of nothing?

I have written countless articles on the theme of the sacred, irreplaceable value of a single human life. At this point, and at least insofar as an honest reader is concerned, one who has read even a handful of my essays, I do not need to demonstrate my sincerity and commitment on this issue. (This is hardly to say that I am thereby protected from baseless, utterly unjustified attacks with regard to this issue, or many others. But I regard such attacks as entirely worthless and undeserving of any response, beyond my pointing to earlier pieces and saying: Read these, and then shut the hell up.) When I first heard of the tragedy in Newtown, my reaction was certainly one of horror. But it was not different in nature or intensity from my reaction to all the needless murders committed by the United States government in recent years.

And my reaction quickly shifted from horror at the murders in Newtown to a sickened disgust at the purposes for which the general public reaction was immediately utilized. I certainly do not question the genuineness of the reaction of those immediately affected by this immense tragedy. I made precisely the same point in connection with the murders in Aurora, Colorado. But that is not all I had to say:

I do not wonder about the terrible, life-altering grief felt by those individuals immediately affected by these ghastly events: the families and friends of those who were killed and injured, as well as those who were trapped in the theater during those terrifying and endless minutes, together with those who live in Aurora.

But I do wonder about the national paroxysm of grief, the generalized scream of pain offered by every politician and public official from president to trash collector, the public lamentation and wailing, the sickening enthusiasm shown by political tribalists from every point in the spectrum for scoring disgustingly cheap points off the blood-spattered corpses of the victims. Yet that isn't honest of me: I don't wonder about such public displays at all. I view them with deep loathing and contempt. I consider them, without exception, to be the symptoms of irretrievably damaged, narcissistic psychologies. Those who engage in such public displays and political positioning are vile and despicable in a manner that is close to impossible to capture in words. I emphasize again that I am speaking here not of those immediately affected by this tragedy, but of those people who have no direct connection of any kind to the victims and their families.

In that earlier essay, I explained the reasons for my judgment, speaking primarily of the horrors committed by the U.S. government in pursuit of a deeply evil foreign policy. After detailing the specifics in support of my conclusion, I wrote:

[M]any Americans hurl themselves with fundamentally false, deeply disturbed enthusiasm into public demonstrations of grief over the needless deaths of some human beings -- those human beings they see as being much like themselves, when the deaths happen in what could be their own neighborhood. As for all the murders committed by their government with a systematic dedication as insane as that of any serial killer: silence.

But every murder committed by the United States government, every murder ordered by Obama, represents a tragedy exactly like Aurora to someone. But it is not someone most Americans happen to know or recognize -- even if only to recognize the person as a fellow human being -- and it is therefore as if it never occurred.

These particular connections are overly familiar by now, for this pattern has been repeated an indecent number of times. This particular pattern of avoidance carries the stench of the decaying, rotting corpse of one of Obama's own countless victims.

Now I want to draw your attention to several other issues that will never be mentioned during the current exercise in national mourning. I again emphasize that I exclude from this analysis those persons and families directly affected by these events. My concern here is the national immersion in this story. This enthusiasm, and there is no other word to describe it, for demonstrating how deeply one is affected, how vast is one's grief, how completely shattered everyone is by these deaths -- everyone, that is, who is supposedly "decent" and "caring," and who is grief-stricken and shattered by these deaths but not by many thousands of other deaths -- is a symptom of a culture that is profoundly disturbed. It is another instance of a dynamic I recently identified in discussing the "feel-good" story about the NY policeman who gave a new pair of boots to a homeless man:

The fundamentally unjustified and highly selective focus -- on feel-good stories on one hand, and on only narrowly delimited evils on the other -- always seeks to achieve a whitewash of this kind: it attempts to obliterate the reality of the obviously related, but unacknowledged greater evils in the broader system. In this sense, all such efforts are cover-ups, they are intellectually dishonest, and they are always lies.

The "narrowly delimited evil" in the current story is, obviously, the murders in Connecticut. Because the majority of the victims were very young children, we have been repeatedly told by everyone how especially awful these murders are. The victims were those who are unquestionably innocent, and who are the most defenseless among us. Everyone has gone on to assert how desperately concerned we all are to protect "our" children, and to always, always keep them safe from harm.

This is a fantastic lie, and a lie that is truly spectacular in its scope. If "we" are all so deeply committed to always keeping "our" children safe from all conceivable harm, perhaps someone can explain the following to me:

[P]ublic displays of outrage and condemnation, particularly when engaged in with such unsettling eagerness, are to be distrusted. Anyone and everyone will rush to say, when the spotlight is on him, "No one could possibly care more about protecting children than I do!" The test of his sincerity is what happens when the spotlight moves on, when no one is looking -- no one, that is, except his own conscience and sense of humanity (and God, if he believes in such).

The test of his sincerity also includes what he does not say. I have yet to come across an article about what happened at Penn State that mentions this:

Thirty-one nations fully ban corporal punishment.

Sweden, in 1979, was the first to make it illegal to strike a child as a form of discipline. Since then, many other countries in Europe have also instituted bans, as have New Zealand and some countries in Africa and the Americas.

More than 70 additional nations have specific laws in place that prohibit corporal punishment in schools. You can sort through the table above to see where different countries stand on the issue.

In some cases, such as the United States, there are partial bans in place depending on either location or the age of the children.

For the U.S., corporal punishment is prohibited in public schools for 31 states and the District of Columbia. Two states, Iowa and New Jersey, extend their bans to private schools as well.

Thus, in the United States, corporal punishment is legal in public schools in 19 states, and in private schools in 48 states. In addition, corporal punishment is legal in every home.

I'll keep this simple. I'll put it in bold capital letters:

AN ASSAULT ON A HUMAN BEING IS AN ASSAULT ON A HUMAN BEING.

CHILDREN ARE HUMAN BEINGS.

CHILDREN ARE NOT PROPERTY.

I refer you to an article I wrote, God help me, in 2004: "From Mild Smacking to Outright Sadism, Torture and War: The Lie of 'Well-Intentioned' Violence." Here is the opening of that essay:

I had begun this essay with a different title: A New Law for Adults -- Moderate Assaults Now Permitted. Can you imagine for one moment that anyone would assent to a law of the kind suggested by that statement? Think about the howls of justified outrage that would greet a proposal to pass a law stating as follows:

After review of many studies and having consulted the opinions of numerous experts, we have concluded that it is sometimes acceptable for one spouse to smack the other, if he or she does so to inflict "moderate punishment" for disapproved behavior. However, we emphasize that this new law should not be taken as permission for any adult to go further. Any violence engaged in by one spouse which results in genuine physical or mental harm to the other will be prosecuted to the full extent permitted by other applicable laws.

Yet physical assaults on children are legal in public schools in 19 states and in private schools in 48 states, and in every home in the Glorious United States of America.

From the ACLU, three years ago:

More than 200,000 US public school students were punished by beatings during the 2006-2007 school year, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union said in a joint report released today. In the 13 states that corporally punished more than 1,000 students per year, African-American girls were twice as likely to be beaten as their white counterparts.

In the 125-page report, "A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in U.S. Public Schools," the ACLU and Human Rights Watch found that in Texas and Mississippi children ranging in age from 3 to 19 years old are routinely physically punished for minor infractions such as chewing gum, talking back to a teacher, or violating the dress code, as well as for more serious transgressions such as fighting. Corporal punishment, legal in 21 states, typically takes the form of "paddling," during which an administrator or teacher hits a child repeatedly on the buttocks with a long wooden board. The report shows that, as a result of paddling, many children are left injured, degraded, and disengaged from school.

"Every public school needs effective methods of discipline, but beating kids teaches violence and it doesn't stop bad behavior," said Alice Farmer, Aryeh Neier Fellow at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, and author of the report. "Corporal punishment discourages learning, fails to deter future misbehavior and at times even provokes it."

The report found that in the 13 southern states where corporal punishment is most prevalent, African-American students are punished at 1.4 times the rate that would be expected given their numbers in the student population, and African-American girls are 2.1 times more likely to be paddled than might be expected. There is no evidence that these students commit disciplinary infractions at disproportionate rates.

"Minority students in public schools already face barriers to success," said Farmer. "By exposing these children to disproportionate rates of corporal punishment, schools create a hostile environment in which these students may struggle even more."

Students with mental and physical disabilities are also punished at disproportionate rates, with potentially serious consequences for their development. In Texas, for instance, 18.4 percent of the total number of students who were physically punished were special education students, even though they make up only 10.7 percent of the student population.

...

The report documents several cases in which children were beaten to the point of serious injury. Since educators who beat children have immunity under law from assault proceedings, parents who try to pursue justice for injured children encounter resistance from police, district attorneys, and courts. Parents also face enormous, sometimes insurmountable, obstacles in trying to prevent physical punishment of their children. While some school districts permit parents to sign forms opting out of corporal punishment for their children, the forms are often ignored.

Since the time of that ACLU report, two more states have outlawed corporal punishment in public schools, so some progress is being made. But corporal punishment is still legal in public schools in 19 states, and in private schools in 48 states -- and in every home. I have yet to see even one of the many wonderful people expressing metaphysical outrage about the Penn State story mention this fact.

So I repeat:

AN ASSAULT ON A HUMAN BEING IS AN ASSAULT ON A HUMAN BEING.

CHILDREN ARE HUMAN BEINGS.

CHILDREN ARE NOT PROPERTY.

I spoke of the endlessly repeating pattern of momentary outrage followed by forgetfulness, a pattern which will doubtless occur still another time with the Penn State story. I wrote an article in October 2009 about the Roman Polanski controversy, which was just one more among countless "sensational" stories. Among my points was this one:

Most people, and certainly most people in the United States, will not condemn cruel behavior toward children by adults in anything approaching a consistent and meaningful manner. For an examination of emotional and psychological cruelty to children, see the discussion here and here (and follow the links for much more; you'll find still more links here). Very few people condemn such cruelty, for many people, and most parents, inflict such cruelty on children with great frequency. They consider such methods of childrearing to be "proper" and "correct," and they believe they treat children cruelly "for the child's own good."

This inconsistency becomes even more marked when we note how common physical cruelty toward children is. See "When the Demons Come," "The Search for Underlying Causes, and Why Spanking Is Always Wrong," and "From Mild Smacking to Outright Torture and War: The Lie of 'Well-Intentioned Violence.'" I also direct you to my discussion of the heated and fundamentally hypocritical Mark Foley controversy, and of corporal punishment in public schools: "The Politics of Lies: Suffer the Children." I emphasize: corporal punishment in public schools -- which means you pay for the torture of children. On the identical point, see the ACLU report here (pdf).

As noted, individuals are correct to condemn Polanski's actions, and they should condemn them. However, until and unless they demonstrate that they understand the much more common forms of cruelty toward children -- and until and unless they condemn that cruelty as well -- their condemnations of Polanski (and of similar behavior by others), however impassioned and even sincere they might be, represent nothing more than an isolated instance of happening to stumble upon the truth. It is very easy to condemn a figure such as Polanski: such condemnation involves no risk of any kind (indeed, for many people, the failure to condemn is much more likely to open them to criticism from those tribes with which they identify and to which they belong), nor does such condemnation imperil their belief systems.

A heinous crime such as rape -- rape of anyone, adult or child -- is comparatively rare. How often do adults treat children cruelly in the much more common ways I mention above, and that I have analyzed in detail in the past (and which I will soon analyze in still further detail)? Why, every minute of every day, all around you. Do you react with horror when the angry parent smacks a child at the supermarket? You should. Do you intercede to protect the child? I would not suggest that you should in every instance; it might be very inadvisable, for a number of reasons. But you should want to. Most people don't. Many people approve the parent's behavior, and many other parents treat their own children the same way.

For these reasons (and many more), while I regard the condemnations of Polanski as correct in a broad sense, I view them as largely insignificant. I also regard them as worse than insignificant in one crucial way: we are eager to condemn the most extreme crimes, especially when that condemnation carries no personal risk of any kind, precisely because we do not wish to confront and condemn cruelty that is much more widespread. The eager condemnation of the extreme particular instance allows us to avoid a much more threatening and fundamental truth.

In the midst of this latest national paroxysm of grief, have you heard even one mention of our longstanding national acceptance of corporal punishment of children? Can you recall the last time you heard corporal punishment discussed? Are any major national voices raised in a campaign to outlaw corporal punishment, for the same reasons we outlaw physical assaults on adult human beings? I repeat: CHILDREN ARE HUMAN BEINGS. They are not insensate hunks of matter on which you may unleash your repressed anger and hatred.

And do not wonder for even a second if or how widespread abuse of children continues to affect us when we become adults. For just one example, I turn to Alice Miller, in her article "The Origins of Torture in Endured Child Abuse":

Many people have claimed to be appalled by the acts of perversion committed by American soldiers on ADULT people, Iraqi prisoners. Amazingly, I have never heard of any such reaction in response to the occasional attempts to expose similar practices committed towards CHILDREN as for instance in British and American schools. There, these practices come under the heading of "education." But the cruelty is the same. The world appears to be surprised that such brutality should rear its head among the American forces. After all, America presents itself to the international public as the guardian of world peace. There is an explanation for all this, but hardly anyone wants to hear it.

It is definitely a good thing that light has been cast on the situation and that the media have exposed this lie for what it is. Basically it runs as follows: We are a civilized, freedom-loving nation and bring democracy and independence to the whole world. Under this motto the Americans forced their way into Iraq with devastating results and still insist that they are exporting cultural values. But now it turns out that alongside their bombs and missiles the well-drilled, smartly dressed soldiers are carrying a huge arsenal of pent-up rage around with them, invisible on the outside, invisible for themselves, lurking deep down within, but unmistakably dangerous.

Where does this suppressed rage come from, this need to torment, humiliate, mock, and abuse helpless human beings (prisoners and children as well)? What are these outwardly tough soldiers avenging themselves for? And where have they learnt such behavior? First as little children taught obedience by means of physical "correction," then in school, where they served as the defenseless objects of the sadism of some of their teachers, and finally in their time as recruits, treated like dirt by their superiors so that they could finally acquire the highly dubious ability to take anything meted out to them and qualify as "tough."

The thirst for vengeance does not come from nowhere. It has a clearly identifiable cause. The thirst for vengeance has its origins in infancy, when children are forced to suffer in silence and put up with the cruelty inflicted on them in the name of upbringing. They learn how to torment others from their parents, and later from their teachers and superiors. It is nothing other than systematic instruction by example on how to destroy others. Yet many people believe that it has no evil consequences. As if a child were a container that can be emptied from time to time. But the human brain is not a container. The things we learn at an early stage stay with us in later life.

The full article has more.

Yet we almost never discuss any of this.

In reaction to the Newtown tragedy, we have also heard a great deal about the unfathomable grief experienced by the families, and about the devastation suffered by those families. As I've already noted, the grief and devastation experienced by the families themselves is genuinely horrific. My question -- and my vehement criticism -- is directed at everyone else, and especially at those who claim to be so concerned with the families' suffering. If that concern is indeed genuine, why is there no mention of the following:

Obama’s mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that “the land of the free” has finally made good on its promise of equality. There’s an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you. If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you. Trust us. Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars. You, too, can get to the promised land.

Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand. Racial caste is alive and well in America.

Most people don’t like it when I say this. It makes them angry. In the “era of colorblindness” there’s a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we as a nation have “moved beyond” race. Here are a few facts that run counter to that triumphant racial narrative:

*There are more African Americans under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

*As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.

* A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The recent disintegration of the African American family is due in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers.

*If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80%.) These men are part of a growing undercaste -- not class, caste -- permanently relegated, by law, to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era.

Much more on this subject will be found in this article by Michelle Alexander, and in her very valuable book.

Somehow, "our" limitless concern with the well-being of families does not manage to include what Alexander has termed "The New Jim Crow," and the great evil of the War on Drugs.

Note the thread connecting the issues I've discussed above, those issues mentioned by virtually no one else in connection with the Newtown murders. The overwhelming majority of the victims of the behavior (and often the crimes) described above are non-white -- at least, they are not "white" in the way "we" recognize "whiteness." They are foreigners -- often darker-skinned, almost always poor, people who count for nothing as far as "we" are concerned -- or they are Americans, but most often African-Americans, and usually poor, certainly much, much poorer than all the public and media voices screaming at us about how much they "care."

And while there are references now and then in news stories to Newtown being a "wealthy" or "affluent" town, I haven't seen much highlighting of some easily available facts about Newtown: 95% of those who live in Newtown are white, and the estimated median household family income is around $120,000. This is one very small, enormously privileged fraction of America; it certainly is not representative of America in any general sense in the smallest degree.

And that makes it the perfect tragedy for the Age of Obama, and the perfect opportunity for Weeping Obama to make his appearance. Never mind those whom Obama orders to be murdered; don't give a thought to the children abused, humiliated and tormented in ways that will scar them for the rest of their lives; ignore the families destroyed by Obama's zealous pursuit of the monstrous War on Drugs. None of those victims are people like us, they're not human beings who actually matter. Who gives a damn what happens to them? These are among the hideous effects of the unrelentingly cruel and brutal reality America entered when it elected its first black president, a man who perfectly embodies the white authoritarian-corporatist-militarist State, and who ran as a white man. You elected -- and reelected -- a white man who is also a vicious killer. What did you expect?

Now that I've explained some of my reasons -- and there are many more, but these will do for the moment -- I come back to where I began. So I will say it again: God damn you, America.

ADDENDUM: I want to mention, but only very briefly, a closely related aspect of this awful business. Stories have already appeared depicting Adam Lanza in the terms typically employed in the wake of such tragedies: he was a "loner," he was "painfully shy and awkward" (the Daily Mail); he was generally weird, and he "seemed not to feel physical or psychological pain in the same way as classmates" (Yahoo News). And of course, the New York Times will never permit itself to be outdone on this score. The NYT leads with the obviously terrifying and ominous fact that Lanza "carried a black briefcase to his 10th-grade honors English class" (!!), goes on to note that he was "nervous and fidgety" -- and offers what is apparently damning in the extreme: "[His former classmates] said he always seemed like he was someone who was capable of that because he just didn’t really connect with our high school, and didn’t really connect with our town.” And all the stories include the general catchall "explanation": he was "mentally ill" in some form.

You may think all of that is unexceptional in this case -- but I point you to another NYT story from over two years ago. That story described another "loner" in remarkably similar ways -- but the subject of the earlier story was Bradley Manning.

Now, that's more than slightly interesting, wouldn't you agree? I have a great deal to say about it, and it will have to wait for a separate article. But the fact that a murderer and someone who sought to expose the monumental crimes of the United States government are portrayed in largely identical ways is a powerful indication of how profoundly diseased this culture is. I have to say that the Times story about Manning is remarkably disgusting even for the Times. I had meant to analyze that article in some detail, but never found the time to get to it. Tragically enough, it appears I will have to do so now.

The Vicious Lie Is, Indeed, Vicious

The previous post discusses the widely celebrated "feel-good" story concerning a NY police officer, Lawrence DePrimo, who gave a pair of new boots to a homeless man, Jeffrey Hillman. As more details about this story emerge, it turns out that Mr. Hillman is not homeless. Hillman has also received ongoing assistance and aid of various kinds, for the last several years at least.

My major argument in the earlier article was that stories of this general kind, and this particular story in its original version, which devote significant time and resources to what appears to be an act of kindness, primarily serve as a distraction and a means of avoidance. By selectively focusing on such acts of purported compassion, a society mired in brutality and cruelty -- a culture which, as I have noted, offers as a central lesson to all of us, including children, that, "You will be rewarded for cruelty: the crueler you are, the greater the reward" -- seeks to convince itself that it is actually a model of kindness of caring. Even though it is an issue mentioned by virtually no one with regard to the Hillman story, I am compelled to remark that it is more than extraordinary for Americans to claim they embody compassion and kindness to any extent at all, when roughly 120 million Americans recently voted for two candidates who support a program devoted to the unrestricted murder of completely innocent human beings. Moreover, one of those candidates is the man who has ordered the murder of such innocents on multiple occasions and seeks to institutionalize his Murder Program as a foundational element of national policy going forward. Such a country can be described as murderous, vicious, and evil with full justification; kind, just, and compassionate are not words that occur to a sane, healthy person when confronted with brazen, publicly declared evil on this scale.

I have to confess that whenever I mention this issue, I am almost overwhelmed by the deeply felt need to begin screaming. I ask you to consider the nature and meaning of the Murder Program once again: the most powerful officials in our national government routinely and systematically order the murder of human beings whom they must know, if they are minimally honest for even a second or two, to be entirely innocent. These same officials have told us this is what they are doing on multiple occasions; their proclamations have been detailed in the nation's leading newspapers. For almost all Americans, it is as if nothing at all has been said. I feel I have to scream because it seems there is no other way even to get people's attention on this subject. The U.S. government commits profoundly evil acts every day -- and almost no one notices. For several decades of my adult life, I have spent enormous amounts of time reading, studying and thinking about the varieties of methods people use to avoid and deny what should be shockingly obvious truths. Much of my writing here over the last ten years has been devoted to these issues. But I admit that avoidance and denial on this national scale, and particularly with regard to the plain meaning of the Murder Program, leave me feeling close to completely helpless and impotent. I am not sure there is any way to break through a wall of resistance that has been built and is maintained with such willful, deliberate intention. And I greatly fear that only spreading catastrophe will finally cause more people to begin to question the fabricated version of the truth they so fervently believe. If you reflect on this terrible predicament a bit longer, a further especially horrifying aspect of our situation should become clearer: this national exercise in virtually complete denial of what should be obvious -- and what should be resisted with all the strength of which we are capable -- all but guarantees that catastrophe in multiple forms will soon be visited upon us, perhaps much sooner than I myself had once thought.

Even though I think these are the paramount issues that ought to concern us at this moment, we can hold the nightmare in full focus only so long before we begin to go mad. Let us return to the much narrower subject of Mr. Hillman and his particular circumstances.

Remember the key elements of what had made this a "feel-good" story: a homeless and barefoot man is given a new pair of boots by a NY police officer. Now that we learn Mr. Hillman has an apartment and has received assistance through several programs, those who had eagerly celebrated this story are disappointed. After noting that Hillman might choose to go barefoot because "shoelessness might make for better panhandling," one story concludes:

Which would also go a long way toward explaining why Hillman refuses to wear those nice boots. We're not going to jump to any conclusions yet, except one: The Feel Good is leaking out of this story like air out of an increasingly depressing birthday balloon.

Another story expresses the same point this way:

The revelation that Hillman has a warm home and a bed to sleep in further complicated what at first seemed like a perfect feel-good tale for the holidays.

For the feel-good story to work, for it to be "perfect," Hillman must be genuinely wretched: he must be homeless and barefoot, entirely alone, and with no resources whatsoever available to him. The stories strongly hint at what they want to say, but they won't state it in unmistakable terms. Nonetheless, we get the message: This man is a rotten fraud. He tricked us. That wonderful police officer helped someone who didn't even need his help!

As I discussed before, the feel-good version of the story was used in very significant part to make those who celebrated it feel good about themselves. It was a way many people could convince themselves that we're good, that we care, that we don't like to see bad things happen to people. When President Obama and his fellow criminals routinely order the murders of innocent human beings -- and when these same people refuse to understand what that means or even that it's happening -- the need to reassure themselves that they're basically decent is one they feel very keenly. We may refuse to identify explicitly what is happening around us, but we absorb at least parts of that knowledge indirectly. The information is out there -- the government has made certain of that, and continues to tell us the truth even though we refuse to acknowledge it (and they count on that, too) -- and it seeps into our souls despite our strenuous efforts at resistance. In this manner, we are conditioned to accept the still greater horrors to come.

But the reaction to these new revelations about Hillman establishes with awful clarity that Hillman himself was incidental to the uses to which the story was put. Toward the conclusion of the earlier entry, I discussed the general problem of homelessness in New York City. That problem hasn't gone away, whether Hillman himself has an apartment or not. There are still tens of thousands of people who must rely on municipal shelters, just as there remain an undetermined number of additional people who are completely unsheltered. If people are so desperate for a feel-good story, they could make one happen themselves -- if that is what they genuinely want to do. But you see, that isn't what they genuinely want to do. The original version of the Hillman story provided them a feel-good story without their having to do a damned thing themselves. That is precisely why stories like this become so popular, and why they are widely celebrated. They are a means of instant self-worth and self-approval provided cost-free. (We should note that it is false self-worth and false self-approval.)

Although we are now provided with some additional details about Hillman's situation, there remains a great deal we don't know. We're told:

For the past year, Jeffrey Hillman has had an apartment in the Bronx paid for through a combination of federal Section 8 rent vouchers and Social Security disability and veterans benefits, officials said Monday.

The story puts its thumb heavily on the scales and later describes his apartment as "a warm home." But we don't know that it's "a warm home"; it might be an awful apartment, and to pay for heating bills might be beyond his means. Moreover, it is entirely possible that the benefits he receives don't provide enough for food and clothing, in addition to his rent (and electricity, if we assume he also pays for that). Perhaps he panhandles because he truly needs more money, and he knows no other way to get it.

The stories also try to make much of the fact that Hillman refuses help. He's not just a bum, he's an ungrateful bum. To appreciate an interesting connection as to how these dynamics work, recall how every loathsome politician made the same claim about those damned "ungrateful" Iraqis. Hillary Clinton is the loathsome politician in that example, but almost every other loathsome politician said the same. The United States bombs them, murders them in vast numbers, and utterly destroys their country -- and those rotten bastards won't even thank us for the great gifts we've given them. This is a theme of enduring popularity.

I will briefly mention another connection that I myself find quite intriguing. The highly selective focus on feel-good stories, in an effort to bolster our own deservedly faltering sense of self-worth, is the mirror image of our zealous condemnation of certain evils, but evils similarly defined only very selectively. We eagerly condemn certain isolated instances of evil out of the same desperately felt need to convince ourselves that we are actually good, decent people. I've discussed this in several different contexts: in "The Varieties of Pissing"; about the Polanski story, when that was the controversy of the moment; and in connection with the condemnations of torture. From that last link: "By seeking to localize the evil in only one aspect of the much broader and more fundamental evil involved and within a falsely delimited period of time, the torture obsessives would thus whitewash the American project as a whole." The fundamentally unjustified and highly selective focus -- on feel-good stories on one hand, and on only narrowly delimited evils on the other -- always seeks to achieve a whitewash of this kind: it attempts to obliterate the reality of the obviously related, but unacknowledged greater evils in the broader system. In this sense, all such efforts are cover-ups, they are intellectually dishonest, and they are always lies.

Returning to Hillman: the same dynamic with regard to "refusing" help might be at play in his case. A man who was a neighbor of mine for several years received Section 8 assistance. He used to tell me how much he dreaded the visits from the local housing inspector. She (it happened to be a she in this case) would always find some trivial issue to pick over with him: a few grease spots on the stove, a few spots in the bathtub. (He kept an exceptionally neat and clean apartment which I saw on numerous occasions, so I knew the complaints had to be trivial.) But this government bureaucrat loved the measly amount of power she had been granted over other human beings. She would point out my neighbor's supposedly grievous failures to comply with the government's demands (as she interpreted them), and the ominous threat of the withdrawal of the badly needed government assistance was conveyed in unmistakable terms. Is it any wonder that some people might choose to refuse "help" of that kind?

No, we don't know that is what happened in Hillman's case. That is my point: we don't know. But those who enthusiastically embraced this story when it provided reassurance as to "our" innate goodness refuse to acknowledge these further possibilities in Hillman's situation, just as they adamantly refuse to acknowledge the broader problem of homelessness -- and just as almost all Americans refuse to face the monstrous horror that is this country today.

And Jesus Christ (the man of the season, after all): not only does our government have a Murder Program, which ought to put a stop to all discussions of our "goodness" until such time (if ever) as such monumental evil is permanently ended and rejected. As I mentioned yesterday, New York is home to some of the greatest financial criminals of our era. These criminals have devastated the U.S. economy, destroyed countless lives, wreaked havoc in numerous ways -- and for all of this, they have not only not been punished in even the smallest degree, but have been rewarded in amounts of trillions of dollars. And some people are disappointed because one lonely man is desperately struggling to get by in perhaps the only way he knows how? Hillman has unforgivably deprived them of the feel-good story they so badly need? Seriously, fuck all these bastards -- and no, I'm not sorry in the least for using such language, for I know no other way to express my loathing for such miserable creatures -- and if they so badly need a feel-good story about gift-giving at this time of year, then read a genuinely wonderful one.

And then, please, please just shut the hell up.