tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32013609248285940202024-02-25T13:14:20.912-08:00Views From a Jagged OrbitBlogs on various subjects from Richard D. ErlichRichard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.comBlogger444125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-3104062606775130812023-06-29T21:31:00.004-07:002023-06-29T21:31:38.752-07:00Academic Bulimia, "We passed the exam"<p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p>I became aware of the problem early in my teaching career, in 1967 or so. We were doing a standard-definition exercise in a composition class, and a student was reading aloud her brief definition piece that began, “In the United States treason is” — and then merrily gave her own definition. “Whoa!” I said, “Time out!” and made the “time-out” gesture. “If ‘treason’ is the word you want to define, you can argue for all sorts of definitions, but if you start a sentence, ‘In the United States treason is,” you have to finish the sentence with the definition in the Constitution.” (It’s Article 3, section 3, but I just looked that up; I couldn’t have given the citation from memory in 1967, and didn’t. But back to the story).</p><p>Blank stares from the class. “It’s the one crime defined in the Constitution.” More blank stares. “You’ve got to know this!” I said; “You’ve all just passed an exam on the Constitution.” And indeed they had. I was teaching at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, and my class was 100 percent students from, mostly, Illinois, with a few from New York. They had to pass the Regents’ Exam in New York, or the Public Law 195 exam in Illinois to get their high school diplomas, demonstrating among other things working knowledge of the U.S. Constitution. </p><p>“Right,” one of my students replied, “we passed the exam.” “OK, so you have to know this,” I said. Giving me the sympathetic look we insensitive people give the pathetically slow, the student repeated, with more careful enunciation, “We passed the exam.” I had figured — like the legislators who mandated the exams — that high school graduates would pass a pretty thorough examination on the U.S. Constitution and, therefore, have a working knowledge of the Constitution. My student knew that they had passed the exam and, therefore, didn’t need to know the material any more, and probably wouldn’t. </p><p>I was starting to learn to take very, very seriously what has recently been called, “academic bulimia,” the process by which students “cram” for an exam and “regurgitate” the material on it. When you regurgitate, you get some poison or irritant or excess out of your system. Now an English-speaking student might, figuratively, chew on an idea, decide to swallow it, digest it and assimilate it. (We like eating metaphors for learning.) The easier method, though, is cram and regurgitate, and that was what the fully certified high school graduates in my class had done to get to a major university, and that was back when U.S. education was in good shape. They had figured out the system, played it and won: If not a top slot, they got a respectable niche in higher education.</p><p>The only problem is that they were U.S. citizens who had passed the exams and came out pretty much ignorant of the most basic way — an elegant theory, not messy political facts — their government worked. Students in the 21st century will be equally proficient in gaming the system of high-stakes exams, and nowadays the schools have money on the line, too, and many schools will help with the game. So, don’t expect much from high-stakes exams beyond more kids and their elders in the education business getting good at the various games of high-stakes exams. </p><p>What you can hope, wish and pray for is a change in American culture where education for citizenship and the life of the mind are respected by people important to kids, primarily by other kids. Don’t hold your breath while waiting.</p><div><br /></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /><br /></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><p></p>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-62498842111181577312023-03-23T16:06:00.001-07:002023-03-23T16:08:21.972-07:00You Say You Want Secularization, Well ...<p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">MORE SECULARISM, ANYONE?
ACCEPTANCE FOR ATHEISTS?</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">Recommended book: Ara Norenzayan's _<a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2013-39310-000">Big Gods</a>: How Religion
Transformed Cooperation and Conflict_ (Princeton UP, 2013). </span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">You may put "science" in quotation marks with
"social science(s)," but Norenzayan takes a scientific approach to
religion in human history, asking the Darwinian Question, "What's it good
for?" One answer is always the "null case": in this case that
humans have been so successful since getting good at basket-making and sewing,
dealing with fire and hunting and gathering — that we could and can afford
investment in, say, an anatomical appendix and often heavy investment in
religion (and the arts and such). Still, a cultural trait as long-lived and
widespread as what we'd call "religion" seems likely to be doing some
cultural heavy lifting.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">The more seriously philosophical, like the 20th-c. Atheistic
Existentialists (and some SF writers), will point out the handiness of God to
avoid despair in a <a href="https://www.academia.edu/11819234/THE_INCREDIBLE_SHRINKING_MAN_and_the_Rise_of_Modern_Fundamentalisms">humungous, heartless, material universe</a>; but few of us think
much about our triviality in the universe.
Nor do we often recognize how important Thomas Jefferson et al.'s conveniently
republican "Creator" is in the Declaration of (American) Independence
if we're to believe in human equality and (ahem) natural human rights.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">Norenzayan concentrates more on psychology (his field),
history, and practical matters for maintaining imagined communities too big for
people to know one another.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">Big gods, concerned with human morality — keeping promises, observing
contracts, not killing people who annoy you — are very useful for social trust;
and moralistic, loving (and punishing) big gods are useful for getting people
through bad times, and, in the religions that worship them, getting social
support-work done.</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">So: Those who want more secularism would do well to spend
less time poor-mouthing theists (and/or praising selfishness) and more working
with potential allies to "get to Denmark": i.e., establish a
competent, compassionate state that enforces contracts and good behavior,
provides support for those in need, and works to encourage trust among citizens
and those citizens' trust for their government.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">+++++++++++++++</span><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">(If you're a rigorous fundamentalist who believes humans are
essentially souls to be saved or damned, that by Faith and Faith alone — and
the *right* faith — shall those souls that can be saved be saved, and that each
soul is literally of infinite value: then just keep "doin' a-what comes
naturally" and oppose the welfare state, "deep state," and the
unarmed forces of government generally and on all levels.)</span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-52008094007667966472022-08-06T20:51:00.005-07:002022-08-06T21:09:23.634-07:00Vonnegut's Player Piano (1952): A Dystopia for the Worst of Our Times<p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A major threat to the U.S. Republic
as I write in summer of 2022 is a potential American Right-wing (White,
Christian) Nationalist Mass Movement led by Donald Trump or someone with more
demagogic talent than he has. And that movement might be able to block or
pervert the 2024 U.S. Presidential and other elections or have them be the last
real elections for a long while. <http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2018/12/background-for-jihad-and-d-j-trump-2017.html> <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Against such a Right-wing movement
we need a democratic united front of decent people with a variety of political
loyalties. As the cliché has it, effective politics means coalition politics,
and coalition politics requires people working together who disagree on a
number of things. <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My idea of the United States is a
diverse, secular, Federal Republic with some democratic institutions, aspects,
and aspirations, and my social- and other-media messages so far have been
directed primarily to my potential allies of a militant atheistic bent, telling
them to look at the damn statistics already and realize they're going to have
to work with the Religious Left and more generally, with decent religious individuals.
There are no insurmountable problems if allies have some profound disagreements
on basic beliefs, which can usually be ignored while people concentrate of
practical projects. What can't be handled is trying to cooperate with people
you openly and actively despise or have them work with you; and so I've asked
my militantly atheistic brethren and sistren to tone it down (already) on the
metaphysics, stick to immediate challenges — and practice some old-fashioned
mannerly "cool correctness" (and screw authenticity: just be
polite!). <</span><a href="http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2017/12/reprint-yo-secular-leftists-arguing.html"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif">http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2017/12/reprint-yo-secular-leftists-arguing.html</span></a><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif">></span> <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Well, polite and not so smugly
comfortable. Back in the day, with the atheistic Existentialists of mid-20<sup>th</sup>
c., atheists could recognize the old truth of <a name="108">"<span style="color: black;">unaccommodated man" as "no more but such a poor
bare,</span></a><span style="color: black;"> <a name="109">forked animal"</a>
as a guy mostly posing as a naked madman and beggar out in a storm — or newer
truths of humankind as just a more or less interesting experiment in enlarged
brains in a rather recently-evolved species on an unremarkable planet in an arm
of an unremarkable galaxy among "billions and billions of stars" and
other galaxies (as Carl Sagan used to say). <</span></span><a href="http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2015/04/the-incredible-shrinking-man-and-rise.html"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif">http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2015/04/the-incredible-shrinking-man-and-rise.html</span></a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif">></span></span><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif">* * *</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"> <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What I want to give you some time
with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">here</i> is on a smaller scale but
also likely to offend some liberals and those further Left: Kurt Vonnegut's <u>Player
Piano</u> (1952) — U.K. folk: your version is Michael D. Young's dystopia, <u>The
Rise of the Meritocracy</u> (1958) — glancing at a right to be angry on the
part of a lot of Americans whose work has been devalued and who feel that
they're held in casual contempt by various American elites. </span><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="color: #050505; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Hillary Clinton said it would be a gross overgeneralization, but
"you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the </span><a href="https://tinyurl.com/bd5x6pyt"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">basket of deplorables</span></a><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="color: #050505; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">": those sexists and racists et al. However the non-deplorables
susceptible to Trumpism include mediocre people (the majority of us are
mediocre at most things) whom opponents of Trumpism may be able to peel off
from Trump — but first need to understand a bit and treat with more respect.
Such people can be doing okay and be in many ways privileged <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> have legitimate grievances.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"> It may
seem odd at a time of low unemployment — hell, it may seem like another
panicked <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite">neo-Luddite</a>
panicked over automation — but however automation to AI figures in important
things are going on with the education-levels (or at least years of schooling) of
US voters, and have been going on in a trend that may go 1952-2016. The
Republicans have been losing highly schooled White folk; Americans without
college degrees are very much in play and moving toward Republicans and to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/opinion/trump-white-voters.html">Donald
Trump</a>. <<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/opinion/trump-white-voters.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/opinion/trump-white-voters.html</a>>
And this is something decent folk need to look at.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"> To move
toward such a project, I give below some texts from <u>Player Piano</u>, and I
have posted on "Views From a Jagged Orbit a </span><a href="http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2022/05/study-guide-for-kurt-vonnegut-jrs.html"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif">study guide</span></a><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"> at least some of my students
found useful (and, what the hell, I have it). <br /><br />For now: Gang, if you've got a doctorate and you're not in the healing or spiritual arts — medical doctor, veterinarian, "Reverend Doctor ______," dentist — if you don't need the charisma of the title to do your job helping people, go with "Mister" or "Ms." or your elected title ("Senator," "Supervisor") or maybe even "Citizen" or just your first name. To rephrase an old line, "If you've got it, hide it, until you need it." <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"> <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif">##########################</span><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif">For
background you might want to see one or more of the following books:</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"> </span><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;">Braverman, Harry.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Labor
and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century</i>.</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: black; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: black; font-size: 10pt;">New York: Monthly
Review P, 1974.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"> Buchanan, Ben, and Andrew Imbrie.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The New Fire: War, Peace, and Democracy
in the Age of AI</i></span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">. Cambridge, MA, and London, UK: The MIT Press,
2022.<https://www.clockworks2.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_New_Fire:_War,_Peace,_and_Democracy_in_the_Age_of_AI></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Faludi, Susan. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man</i>.</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> NYC: Harper Collins, 1999.(Follow-up
to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Backlash: The Undeclared War Against
American</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Women</i> (Crown Publishing 1991).</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><http://susanfaludi.com/stiffed.html></span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Hoffer, Eric.</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> <b><i><span style="color: #202122;">The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass
Movements</span></i><span style="color: #202122; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">. </span></b><span style="color: #202122; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">NYC:
Harper & Brothers, 1951: Part 2, </span>Potential Converts. <https://tinyurl.com/5eunakxx></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Young, Michael. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Rise of the Meritocracy: 1870-2033: </i></span></b><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">An essay on education
and society. </span></i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">London:
Thames and Hudson, 1958. NYC: Random House, 1959. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial Rounded MT Bold",sans-serif" style="color: #c00000; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">__________________________<br />(For Vonnegut's male-centered, sometimes sexist views, read
carefully — there's more subtlety here than usual in satire — note era of
composition and date of publication, and cut him some, not much, but some slack.
Ditto for other areas of insensitivity.)</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">(Excerpts;
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">bold face emphasis</b>, where it comes
through, is Erlich's))</span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style> <b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. <i>Player
Piano</i></span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: black; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> (vt </span><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Utopia 14</span></i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: black; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">). New
York: Scribner's, 1952. New York: Dell, 1974.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: black; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span style="font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Foreword</span></u><span style="font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
book is not a book about what is, but a book about what could be. […] ¶ It is
mostly about managers and engineers. At this point in history, 1952 A.D. [i.e.
"Anno Domini," Year of Our/The Lord" (Note: KV is a gentle
atheist)], our lives and freedom depend largely upon the skill and imagination
and courage of our managers and engineers, and I hope that God will help them
to help us all stay alive and free. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 1</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Opening</u>:
Ilium, New York is divided into three parts.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>In
the northwest are the managers and engineers and civil servants and a few
professional people; in the northeast are the machines; and in the south […] is
the area known locally as Homestead, where almost all of the people live. (p.
9)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Some
people […] had talked in the old days as though engineers, managers, and
scientists were an elite. […] But not many had taken the idea of an elite to
heart. […] But now <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">this elite business,
this assurance of superiority, this sense of rightness about the hierarchy
topped by managers and engineers — this was instilled in all college graduates</b>.
[***]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Objectively
Paul [Proteus: protagonist] tried to tell himself, things really were better
than ever. For once, after the great bloodbath of the war, the world really was
cleared of unnatural terrors — mass starvation, mass imprisonment, mass
torture, mass murder. Objectively, know-how and world law were getting their
long-awaited chance to turn earth into an altogether pleasant and convenient
place in which to sweat out Judgment Day. (p. 14) </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Rudy
Hertz </u>(machinist whose movements recorded for machines to replace
machinists): Rudy, the turner-on of power, the setter of speeds, the controller
of the cutting tool. This was the essence of Rudy as far as his machine was
concerned, as far as the economy was concerned, as far as the war effort had
been concerned. The [recording] tape was the essence distilled from the small,
polite man with the big hands and black fingernails […]. ¶ Now, by switching in
lathes on a master panel and feeding them signals from the tape, Paul could
make the essence of Rudy Hertz produce one, ten, a hundred, or a thousand of
the shafts [that Rudy had machined]. (p. 18)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>Industrial Revolutions</u></b>: "It
seemed very fresh to me [Katharine Finch, Paul's secretary] — I mean the part
where you say how <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the First Industrial
Revolution devalued muscle work</b>, then the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">second one devalued routine mental work</b>. […]." / "
Norbert Wiener […] said all that way back in the nineteen-forties." [***]
[Paul:] "A third one? What would that be like? […] I guess the third one's
been going on for some time, if you mean thinking machines. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">That would be the third revolution, I guess
— machines that devalue human thinking.</b>"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(pp. 21-22)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 2</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> (Roman
numerals in Dell edition, which I've changed to Hindu/Arabic)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[The
Shah of Bratpuhr, on U.S. tour, through his nephew and translator, Khashdrahr
Miasma] "The Shah," said Khashdrahr, "he would like, please to
know who owns these slaves we see all the way up from New York City." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Not
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">slaves</b>," said [Doctor Ewing J.]
Halyard [U.S. Dept. of State], chuckling patronizingly, "<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Citizens</b>, employed by government. […]
Before the war, they worked in the Ilium Works, controlling machines, but now
machines control themselves much better. […] And any man who cannot support
himself by doing a job better than a machine is employed by the government,
either in the Army or the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps." (pp.
26-27 ["Reconstruction & Reclamation": "Reeks &
Wrecks" in slang]) *** (p. 27)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Ahhhhh,"
said the Shah, "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ci-ti-zen</i>."
He grinned happily. "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Takaru —
citizen. Citizen — Takaru</i>." ¶ "No <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Takaru!</i>" said Halyard. ¶ Khashdrahr shrugged. "In the
Shah's land are only the Elite and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Takaru</i>."
* * * [Moving around R&R road crew] "Thanks! It's about time!"
said Halyard as the limousine eased past the man. / <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"You're welcome, Doc," said the man, and he spat in Halyard's
face. </b>(p. 29)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter<u> 3</u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There
were a few men in Homestead — like this bartender, the police and firemen,
professional athletes, cab drivers, specially skilled artisans — who hadn't
been displaced by machines. They lived among those who had been displaced, but
they were aloof […]. The general feeling across the river [among the elite] was
that these persons weren't too bright to be replaced by machines; they were
simply in activities where machines weren't economical. (p. 33). </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Lie, but story of possible boy turning 18, time
of the Tests</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[To
Paul in a bar] Well, as long as such a smart man as you is here, maybe I could
get you to give me some advice for the boy. He just finished his National
General Classification Tests. He just about killed himself studying up for
them, but it wasn't any use. He didn't do nearly well enough for college. There
were only twenty-seven openings and six hundred kids trying for them […]. I
can't afford to send him to a private school, so now he's got to decide what
he'd going to do with his<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>life, Doctor:
what's it going to be, the Army or the Reeks and Wrecks?" [* * *] ¶ "Doctor,"
said the man, desperately now […], "isn't there something the boy could do
at the [Ilium] Works? He's awfully clever with his hands. He's got a kind of
instinct with machines. […] / "<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">He's
got to have a graduate degree</b>," said Paul. […] "That's policy
[…]. Maybe he could open a repair shop." / […] How many repair shops you
think Ilium can support, eh? […] We're all so clever with our hands, so we'll
all open repair shops. One repairman for every broken article in Ilium.
Meanwhile, our wives clean up as dressmakers — one dressmaker for every woman
in town." (pp. 36-37</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 5</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After
coffee and a liqueur, Paul gave a brief talk on the integration of the Ilium
Works with other industry under the [U.S.] National Manufacturing Council
fourteen years before. And then he went into the more general subject of what
he called <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Second Industrial
Revolution</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[…] Machines were doing
America's work far better than Americans had ever done it. There were better
goods for more people at less cost, and who could deny that that was
magnificent and gratifying. [… Paul is interrupted by his boss — and boss to a
lot of people — who wishes to expand on Paul's (quite standard) point:]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Kroner]
"One horsepower equals about twenty-two manpower — <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">big</i> manpower. If you convert the horsepower of one of the bigger
steel-mill motors into terms of manpower, you'll find that the motor [sic] does
more work than the entire slave population of the United States at the time of
the Civil War could do — and do it twenty-four hours a day." […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Paul]
"And that, of course, simply applies to the First Industrial Revolution,
where machines devalued muscle power. The second revolution, the one we're now
completing, is a little tougher to express in terms of work saved. If there
were some measure like horsepower in which we could express annoyance or
boredom that people used to experience in routine jobs — but there isn't."
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"You
could measure rejects […] said [partner to Kroner in running the Eastern
Division of US industry] Baer, "and the darnedest, stupidest mistakes
imaginable. The waste, the stoppages, the lemons! […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Yes,"
said Paul, "but I was thinking of it from the worker's point of view. The
two industrial revolutions eliminated two kinds of drudgery, and I was looking
for some way of estimating just how much the second revolution had relieved men
of."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"I
work," said Baer [at the engineering parts of running Eastern Division].
Everyone laughed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"The
others — across the river," said Paul.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"They
never did work," said Kroner, and again everyone laughed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And
they're reproducing like rabbits," said Anita [Paul's wife]. (pp. 56-57)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 8</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Katharine
Finch, Paul's secretary on Bud Calhoun, ace inventor — to Paul Proteus]
"Bud wants a job."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Bud
wants a job? He's got the fourth-highest-paid job in Ilium now. […]."
[***]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Ah
haven't got a job any more," said Bud. "Canned."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"[…]
What on earth for? […] What about the gadget you invented for —"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"That's
it," said Bud with an eerie mixture of pride and remorse. "Works.
Does a fine job. […] Does it a whole lot better than Ah ever did it."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"It
runs the who operation?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Yup.
Some gadget."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And
so you're out of a job."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Seventy-two
of us are out of jobs," said Bud. […] Ouah job classification has been
eliminated. Poof."[…] ¶ […] Now, personnel machines are over the country
would be reset so as no longer to recognize the job as one suited for men. The
combination of holes and nicks [on an «IBM card»] that Bud had been to
personnel machines would no longer be acceptable." [...] ¶ "They
don't need [people classified] P-128s any more," said Bud bleakly,
"and nothing's open above or below. Ah'd take a cut and go back to P-129
or even P-130, but it's no dice. Everybody's full up." <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(pp. 75-76) [***] </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Kroner often said, eternal vigilance was
the price of efficiency. And the machines tirelessly riffled through their
decks again and again and again in search of foot draggers, free riders, and
misfits. […] ¶ [Paul to Bud] "You should be in design."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Got
no aptitude for it," said Bud. "Tests proved that." ¶ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">That</i> would be on his ill-fated card,
too. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">All his aptitude-test grades were
on it — irrevocably, immutable, and the card knew best.</b> "But you <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i> design," said Paul." […] ¶
But the tests says no," said Bud. ¶ "So the machines say no,"
said Katharine. ¶ So that's that," said Bud. [* * *]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Uh-huh,"
said Paul, looking at the familiar graph with distaste. It was a so-called <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Achievement and Aptitude Profile, and every
college graduate got one along with his sheepskin. And the sheepskin was
nothing and the graph was everything. (p</b>p. 76-77)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 9</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[James
J. Lasher speaking of back when he was a Protestant minister taking to his
congregation or one or more congregants:] "I used to tell them that the
life of their spirit in relation to God was the biggest thing in their lives,
and that their part in the economy was nothing by comparison. Now, you people [engineering/managerial
elites] have engineered them out of their part in the economy, in the market
place, and they're finding out — most of them — that what's left is about zero.
[…] For generations they've been built up <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">to
worship competition and the market, productivity and economic usefulness, and
the envy of their fellow men</b> — and boom! It's all yanked out from under
them. […] Maybe the actual jobs weren't taken from the people, but the sense of
participation, the sense of importance was. […] as far back as World War II,]
Even then there was a lot of talk about know-how winning the war of production
— <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">know-how</i>,
not the people, not the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mediocre</i>
people running most of the machines</b>. And the hell of it was that it was
pretty much true." (p. 92)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Strange
business," said Lasher. "This crusading spirit of the managers and
engineers, the idea of designing and manufacturing and distributing being sort
of a holy war: all that folklore was cooked up by public relations and
advertising men to make big business popular in the old days, which it
certainly wasn't in the beginning. Now, the engineers and managers believe with
all their hearts the glorious things their forebears hired people to say about
them. Yesterday's snow job become today's sermon." (p. 93)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Lasher:]
"<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Things, gentlemen, are ripe for a
phony Messiah</b>, and when he comes, it's sure to be a bloody business. […] <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">At the bottom of it will be a promise of
regaining the feeling of participation, the feeling of being needed of earth —
hell, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dignity</i></b>. The police are
bright enough to look for people like that, and lock them up under the
antisabotage laws. But sooner or later someone's going to keep out of sight long
enough to organize a following." [***]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>"I
think it's a grave mistake to put on public record everyone's I.Q. […] the
first thing the revolutionaries would want to do is knock off everybody with an
I.Q. over 110, say." ¶ "Then he 100's would go after the 110's, the
90's after the 100's and so on," said [Ed] Finnerty [friend of Paul].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>"Maybe.
Something like that. Things are certainly set up for a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">class war based on conveniently established lines of demarcation. [….]
The criterion of brains is better than the one of money, but </b>— he [Lasher]
held his thumb and forefinger about a sixteenth of an inch apart — about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i> much better." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>"<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">It's about as rigid a hierarchy as you can
get</b>, " said Finnerty. "How's someone going to up his I.Q.?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>"Exactly,"
said Lasher. "And it's built on more than just brain power — it's built on
special kinds of brain power. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Not only
must a person be bright, he must be bright in certain approved, useful
directions: basically, management or engineering</b>." (pp. 93-95). </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 11</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> (in the
cavern with EPICAC XIV)<br />
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>EPICAC XIV […] was already at
work, deciding […] how many everything America and her customers could have and
how much they would cost. And it was EPICAC XIV who would decide […] how many
engineers and managers and research men and civil servants, and of what skills
would be needed in order to deliver the goods; and what I.Q. and aptitude
levels would separate the useful men from the useless ones […]. (p. 117) </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 14</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Paul
Proteus, Doctor of Science, engineer and manager, thinking of what would later
be called "dropping out":] Again uneasiness crept up on him, the fear
that there was far too little of him to get along anywhere outside the system
[…]. He might go into some small business […]. But he would still be caught in
the mesh of the economy and its concomitant hierarchy. The machines wouldn't
let him into that business, anyway, and even if they would, there'd be no less
nonsense and posturing. […]. (pp. 143-44).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Farming
— now there was a magic word. [… But] There were no longer farmers but only
agricultural engineers. (p. 144)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 15</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">[Paul Proteus and the realtor, Dr. Pond, at the
Gottwald farm, farmed by Mr. Haycox, son of former owner]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Doctor
Proteus — this is Mr. Haycox."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"How
are you?" said Paul.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Do,"
said Mr. Haycox. "What kind of doctor?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Doctor
of Science," said Paul.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mr.
Haycox seemed annoyed and disappointed. "Don't call that kind a doctor at
all. Three kinds of doctors: dentists, vets, and physicians. You one of
those?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"No.
Sorry."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Then
you ain't a doctor."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"He
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> a doctor," said Doctor Pond
earnestly, "He knows how to keep machines healthy." He was trying to
build up <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the importance of graduate
degrees</b> in the mind of this clod.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Mechanic,"
said Mr. Haycox. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Pond:]
"The modern world would grind to a halt if there weren't men with enough
advanced training to keep the complicated parts of civilization working
smoothly."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Um,"
said Mr. Haycox apathetically. "What do you keep working so
smoothly?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Doctor
Pond smiled modestly. "I spent seven years at the Cornell Graduate School
of Realty to qualify for a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Doctor of
Realty degree</b> and get this job. [***] I think I can say […] that I earned
that degree," said Doctor Pond coolly. "My thesis was the third
longest in any field in the country that year — eight hundred and ninety-six
pages, double-spaced, with narrow margins."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Real-estate
salesman," said Mr. Haycox." […] "I'm doctor of cowshit,
pigshit, and chickenshit," he said. "When you doctors figure out what
you want, you'll find me out in the barn shoveling <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my</i> thesis." [***]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Pond:]
"Doctor Proteus is buying the farm."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Haycox:]
"<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My</i> farm?" [***]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"The
Gottwald estate's farm," said Doctor Pond.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"That
a man?" [***] "Well, I'm a man. As far as men go, this here is my
farm more'n it's anybody else's. I'm the only man who ever cared about it, ever
did anything about it." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Paul
Proteus will keep Haycox on.] (pp. 150-52)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 18</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">[Paul Proteus to his wife:] "In order to
get what we've got, Anita, we have, in effect, traded these people [the
under-schooled and un- or under-employed] out of what was the most important
thing on earth to them — <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the feeling of
being needed and useful, the foundation of self-respect</b>." (p. 169) * *
*</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"That's
just it: things haven't always been that way. It's new, and it's people like us
who've brought it about. Hell, everybody used to have some personal skill or
willingness to work on something he could trade for what he wanted. Now that
the machines have taken over, it's quite somebody who has anything to offer.
All most people can do is hope to be given something."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"If
someone has brains," said Anita firmly, "he can still get to the top.
That's the American way, Paul, and it hasn't changed." She looked at him
appraisingly. "Brains and nerve, Paul."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And
blinders." (p. 177)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 19</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Paul
reflected that Baer [chief engineer of Eastern Division] was possibly the most
just, reasonable, and candid person he'd ever known — remarkably machine-like
in that the only problems he interested himself in were that brought to him,
and in that he went to work on all problems with equal energy and interest,
insensitive to quality and scale. (p. 187)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 20</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Geneva",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">[Homer Bigley, trimming hair of Shah and delivering
a monolog in English the Shah can't understand]: "Now they say barbering
isn't a profession, but you take the other professions that got too big for
their breeches since the Middle Ages and look down on barbering. You take
medicine, you take the law. Machinery.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Doctor
doesn't use his head and education to figure out what's the matter with you.
Machines go over you — measure this, measure that. Then he picks out the right
miracle stuff, and the only reason he does is on account of the machines time
him that's what to do. And the lawyers! […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Used
to be sort of high and mighty, sort of priests those doctors and lawyers and
all, but they're beginning to look more and more like mechanics. Dentists are
holding up pretty good though. They're the exception that proves the rule, I
say. And barbering — one of the oldest professions on earth, incidentally — has
held up better than all the rest. Machines separated the men from the boys, you
might say. (pp. 195-96) * * *</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"These
kids in the Army now, that's just a place to keep 'em off the streets and out
of trouble because there isn't anything else to do with them. And the only
chance they'll ever get to be anybody is if there's a war. That's the only
chance in the world they got of showing anybody they lived and died […].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Used
to be there was a lot of damn fool things a dumb bastard could do to be great,
but the machines fixed that. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Now
the machines take all the dangerous jobs, and the dumb bastards just get tucked
away in big bunch of prefabs […] or in barracks, and there's nothing for them
to do […]. Or maybe hope — but they don't say so out loud because the last one
was so terrible — for another war. Course there isn't going to be another one.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And,
oh, I guess machines have made things a lot better. [… Though] It does seem
like the machines took all the good jobs […]. And I guess I'm just about the
end of a race, standing here on my own two feel" (p. 198)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">[Next section of the monolog, Bigley tells how
a barber so feared the invention of a barber machine that he dreamed about it
and ended up inventing one himself: p. 199.]</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 21</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">[Propaganda play at "The Meadows"
retreat for rising engineers and managers, and executives. "John
Averageman":] "Well, sir, it hurts a man a lot to be forgotten. You
know — to have the fellers in charge, the engineers and managers, just sort of
look right through him […]." (p. 205)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"The
play was virtually the same play that had begun every Meadows session […].
Twenty years ago, Paul's father had brought him up here, and the play's message
had been the same: that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the common man
wasn't nearly as grateful as he should be for what the engineers and managers
had given him</b>, and that the radicals were to cause of the ingratitude"
(p. 211).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 22</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">[On </span><u><span face=""Geneva",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Dr. Francis Eldgrin
Gelhorne</span></u><span face=""Geneva",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">: Successor to George Proteus, hence, the
second National Industrial, Commercial, Communications, Foodstuffs, and
Resources Director (183). For all practical purposes, the human ruler of the US
economy, hence, of the US:] </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
war became certain and the largest corporations were looking about for new
manufacturing facilities, Gelhorne had delivered his prosperous community of
plants to General Steel, and became an officer of that corporation. The
rule-of-thumb familiarity he had with many different industries […] had been
broader than that of any executives General Steel had […], and Gelhorne was
soon spending all his time at the side of the corporation's war-rattled
president.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There
he'd come to the attention of Paul's father […], and Paul's father had made
Gelhorne his general executive manager when the whole economy had been made one
flesh. When Paul's father died, Gelhorne had taken over.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
could never happen again. The machines would never stand for it. (pp. 218-19)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">[Gelhorne to Paul:] "Show me a specialist,
and I'll show you a man who'd so scared he's dug a hole for himself to hide in.
[…] <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Almost nobody's competent</b>, Paul.
It's enough to make you cry to see how bad most people are at their jobs. If
you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're the one-eyed man in the kingdom
of the blind." (p. 219)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 24</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">[Halyard of State Department with a first-time
hooker he's almost completed procuring for the Shah:]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Anyway,"
said the girl, my husband's book was rejected by the Council."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Badly
written," said Halyard primly. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Beautifully
written," she said patiently. "But it was twenty-seven pages longer
than the maximum length; its readability quotient was 26.3, and —"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"No
[book] club will touch anything with an R.Q. above 17," explained Halyard.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And,"
the girl continued, "it had an antimachine theme." [***]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"He
sounds very <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">maladjusted</b>," said
Halyard [… who recommends psychotherapy ***].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"[…]
He watched his brother find peace of mind through <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">psychiatry</b>. That's why he won't have anything to do with it.<br />
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"I don't follow. Isn't
his brother happy?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Utterly
and always happy. And my husband says somebody's just <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">got</i> to be maladjusted; that somebody's got to be uncomfortable
enough to wonder where people are, where they're going […]. That was the
trouble with his book. It raised those questions, and was rejected. So he was
ordered into <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">public relations duty</b>
[… which he refused, cutting him off from his gov't supports].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"I
was wandering around town, wondering what on earth a girl could do these days
to make a few dollars. There aren't many things."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Halyard:]
"This husband of yours, he'd rather have his wife a — Rather have her
—" Halyard cleared his throat — "than go into <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">public relations</b>?" </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"I'm
proud to say, said, the girl, "that he's one of the few men on earth with
a little self-respect left." </span><span face=""Abadi MT Condensed Light",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">{NOTE: Vonnegut was a PR flack for General Electric
for a bit, after he returned from World War II. Erlich definitely appreciates
the joke since for a summer job he looked in at a PR operation and had to leave
because he was starting to gag; he took a job doing hospital work and wasn't
queasy there.}</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 26</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">[Paul Proteus on an "All automatic"
train:] […] Paul wondered at what thorough believers in mechanization most
Americans were, even when their lives had been badly damaged by <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">mechanization</b>. The [former train]
conductor's plaint, like the lament of so many wasn't that it was <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">unjust to take jobs from men to give them
to machines</b>, but that the machines didn't do nearly as many human things as
good designers could have made them do. (p. 241)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> [Army guys on train observed by Paul Proteus
with Paul's thoughts, or the Narrator's:]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Paul
shook his head slightly as he listened to the sergeant's absurd tale [of a
generator "moonlight requisitioned" (i.e., stolen) and put to use
powering up the automated weaponry that butchered attackers]. That, then, was
the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">war</b> he had been so eager to get
into at one time, the opportunity for basic, hot-tempered, hard-muscled heroism
he regretted having missed. There was plenty of death, plenty of pain […]. But
men had been called upon chiefly to endure by the side of the machines, the
terrible engines that fought with their own kind for the right to gorge
themselves on men. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Gosh!
Sarge, how come you never went after a commission?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Me
go back to college at my age? […] Getting' that B.S. was enough for me. Two
more years and an M.A. for a pair of lousy gold bars [of a U.S. Army second
lieutenant]? Naaaaaah!" (pp. 242-43)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">[Paul getting off train at Ilium station and
seeing in a standard-satiric list, shortened here:] […] The automatic ticket
vendor, the automatic [chewing] gum vendor, the automatic book vendor, […] the
automatic Coke vendor […]. (p. 245)]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 27</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">[Paul — having quit his job/been fired (plot
stuff), watching day-time TV: the standard show. Kid to mom on why he was in a
fight:]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[…]
but he said my <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">I.Q.</b> was 59, Ma! […]
And he said Pop was a 53." [… And] It's true. I went down to the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">police station and looked it up</b>!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[…] He turned his back, and his voice was a
bitter whisper: "And you with a 47, Ma. A 47." [***] </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Jimmy,
I.Q. isn't everything. Some of the unhappiest people in the world are the
smartest one." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Since
the start of his week of idleness at home Paul had learned that this, with
variations, was the basic problem situation in afternoon dramas, with diseases
and injuries of the optic nerve and locomotor apparatus a close second. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"You
mean — a plain fellow like me […] folks like us, Ma, you mean we're as good as,
as, as, well, Doctor Gorson, the Worlds Manager?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Doctor
Gorson, with his 169 I.Q. Doctor Gorson, with his PhD. [sic on no periods],
D.Sc., and his Ph. And D. […] Him?" […] Jimmy […], have you seen the lines
in his face? He's carryin' the world around on his shoulders, Jimmy That's what
a high I.Q. got him […]. Do you know how old he is? […] He's ten years younger
than your Pa, Jimmy. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">That's</i> what
brains got him." (p. 248)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 28</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">[Thoughts of, "Doctor Harold Roseberry, PE-002,"
head coach of Cornell U football, which has paid for several new campus
buildings] and four new professorial chairs: The Philosophy of Creative
Engineering, Creative Engineering History, Creative Public Relations for
Engineers, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">and Creative Engineering and
the Captive Consumer</b>. (pp. 258-59)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> [Informal competition between Roseberry and one
of the Elite (quite drunk) from the Meadows, for the soul and abilities of Buck
Young, an IM football champion for Delta Upsilon, being offered $35K a year to
play for Cornell — or he can continue his studies: university athletes are pro
athletes, not students.] </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Identifying
himself:] "Doctor, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor</i>, mind
you, Edmond L. Harrison of the Ithaca works. […] He appealed to Buck, whose
exit [from the campus bar of this scene]. Doctor Roseberry represents one road,
and I the other. I am you, if you continue on your present course [of studying
for a degree], five years from now. […] If you are good," he said,
"and if you are thoughtful, a fractured pelvis on the gridiron will pain
you less than a life of engineering and management. In that life, believe me,
the thoughtful, the sensitive, those who can recognize the ridiculous, die a
thousand deaths." […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"The
best man I knew at the Meadows —"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"The
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Meadows</i>?" said Buck in
awe."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"The
Meadows," said Harrison, "where men at the head of the procession of
civilization demonstrate in private [with their competition at camp games] that
they are ten-year-olds at heart, that they haven't the vaguest notion of what
they're doing to the world."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"They're
opening new doors at the head of the procession!" said Buck hotly, shocked
by the near-sabotage talk. […]"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Slamming
doors in everybody's face," said Harrison. "That's what they're
doing." (pp. 264-65)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> [Harrison talks of quitting and leaving
civilization.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And
do what?" said Buck, baffled.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Do?"
said Harrison. "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Do?</i>" That's
just it, my boy. All the doors have been closed. There's nothing to do but find
a womb suitable for an adult, and crawl into it. One without machines would suit
me particularly."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"What have you got against
machines?" said Buck.</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"They're slaves."</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Well,
what the heck, said Buck. "I mean, they aren't people. They don't suffer.
They don't mind working."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"No.
But they compete with people."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"That's
a pretty good thing, isn't it — considering what a sloppy job most people do of
anything?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"Anybody that competes with slaves
becomes a slave," said Harrison thickly,</b> and he left. (p. 266)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 29</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">[Paul Proteus, having been taken captive by the
revolutionaries of The Ghost Shirt Society, whose goal is stated by Ed
Finnerty, and the interview with/initial indoctrination of the drugged Paul
continues:]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"That
the world should be restored to the people." […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"You're
going to help" [as figure-head and/or Messiah-figure]. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"What's
a ghost shirt?" murmured Paul […].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Toward
the end of the nineteenth century," said Lasher [movement leader, former
Christian minister, quite realistic and pragmatic fanatic], a new religious
movement swept the Indians in this country, Doctor." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"The
Ghost Dance, Paul," said Finnerty.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"The
white man had broken promise after promise to the Indians, killed off most of
the game, taken most of the Indians' land, and handed the Indians bad beatings
every time they offered any resistance," said Lasher. […]. […] the Indians
found out that all the things they used to take pride in doing […] all the ways
[…] they used to justify their existence — they found all those things were
going or gone. […]"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"[…]
Indian ways in a white man's world were irrelevant. […] They only thing they
could do in the changed world was to become second-rate white men or wards of
the white men."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Or
they could make one last fight for the old values," said Finnerty with
relish.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And
the Ghost Dance religion," said Lasher, "was the last, desperate
defense of the old values." [***]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"They
were going to ride into battle one last time," said Lasher, "in magic
shirts that white men's bullets couldn't go through." (pp. 272-73)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Don't
you see, Doctor [Proteus]" said Lasher. "<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The machines are to practically everybody what the white men were to
the Indians. […] People have no choice but to become second-rate machines
themselves or wards of the machines.</b>" [***] </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"[…]
If a Messiah shows up now [Lasher says] with a good, solid, startling message,
and if he keeps out of the hands of the police, he can set off a revolution —
maybe one big enough to take the world away from machines, Doctor, and give it
back to the people." ([And Paul is their choice.] pp. 274-75)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 30</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">[On their inability to recruit a character seen
earlier, Alfy Tucci, who] "[…] never joined anything […]." […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Lasher
smiled sadly. "<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The great American
individual</b>," he said. "Thinks he's the embodiment of liberal thought
throughout the ages. Stand on his own two feet, by God, alone and motionless.
He'd make a good lamp post, if he'd weather better and didn't have to
eat." (pp. 281-82)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> [Plan for the Revolution and difference from
our times: those social organizations (Kiwanis, Elks, General Federation of
Women's Clubs, Order of the Eastern Star — although KV doesn't note the women's
groups) vs. our "Bowling Alone"]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"A
special meeting of every chapter of every big social organization in the
country, outside of the engineers' and managers', will have been called. At the
meetings, our people, big men in the organizations, will tell the members that
all over the country men are marching through the streets on their way to wreck
the automatic factories and give America back to the people. Then they put on
their ghost shirts and lead whoever will follow, starting with a few more of
our people planted around." […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"How many do you suppose will
follow?" said Paul.</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"As many people as are bored to
death or sick of things the way they are," said Lasher. […]</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And then what?" said
Paul.</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And then we get back to basic
values, basic virtues!" said Finnerty. Men doing men's work, women doing
women's work. People doing people's thinking." </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>[Which
leads to a discussion of EPICAC.] (pp. 282-83).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 31</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> [Paul
captured by police]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
the police had identified Paul, they had been embarrassed by his I.Q., and his
rank in the criminal hierarchy: the archcriminal, the would-be king of the
saboteurs. There was no comparable rank in the Ilium police force, and the
police had, out of humbleness and lifelong indoctrination, sent for inquisitors
with adequate classification numbers and I.Q.'s. (p. 289)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 32</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> [Paul's
testimony at his trial, while hooked up to a lie detector with a very public
response indicator.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"The
witness will please tell what he considers to be a lie," said the judge.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Every new piece of scientific
knowledge is a good thing for humanity," said Paul. […]</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Now
a truth," said the judge.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"</b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The
main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">," said
Paul, "<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">not to serve as appendages
to machines, institutions, and systems</b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">." </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(p. 297, Erlich's
emphasis of a line important for Vonnegut)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> [Prosecutor says, with some truth according to
the lie detector on Paul's responses, that Paul's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">real</i> motivation for leading the rebellion was hatred of his
father.] "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury and the television audience: I
submit that this man before you is a little more than a spiteful boy, to whom
this great land of ours […] has become a symbol of his father! A father whom,
subconsciously, he would have liked to destroy. […] Call it Oedipus complex, if
you will. He's a grown man now, and I call it treason!" (p. 298)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Paul
responds with an important argument against not just 1950s Freudian
psychologizing but the much older and more deeply-rooted Roman/Christian
over-emphasis on people's motives.] </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>"But,
even if there weren't this unpleasant business between me and the memory of my
father, I think I would believe in the arguments against the lawlessness of the
machines. […] What hate does, I think, is to make me not only believe, but want
to do something about the system. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">I suspect that all people are motivated by
something pretty sordid,</b> and I guess the clinical data bears me out on
that. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sordid things, for the most part,
are what make human beings, my father included, move</b>. That's what it is to
be human […]. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"What
the prosecutor has just done is to prove what everything about this world we've
made for ourselves seems determined to prove, what the Ghost Shirt Society is
determined to disprove; that I'm no good; you're no good, that we're no good
because we're human." (p. 299)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 33</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">[Ewing J. Halyard of the US State Department
hadn't passed the PE requirement for his Cornell Bachelor's degree. He's given
his makeup tests by Harold Roseberry, whom he has offended.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Wondering
at the mechanics of being a human, mechanics far beyond he poor leverage of free
will, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mr. </i>Halyard found himself representing the fact of no rank as
plainly as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor</i> Halyard had once
represented a great deal of rank. […]</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
Halyard had recovered [from his make-up PE tests, as administered by Dr. Coach
Roseberry], and changed […] into street clothes, he had seen in the mirror, not
a brilliantly fashionable cosmopolite, but an old, overdressed fool. Off had
come the boutonniere, the contrasting waistcoat, the colored shirt. Accessory
by accessory, garment by ferment, he'd stripped away the symbols of the
discredited diplomat. Now he was, spiritually and sartorially, whites, grays,
and blacks. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[…]
The State Department's personnel machines, automatically, with a respect for
law and order never achieved by human beings, had started fraud proceeding
against him, since he had never been entitled to his Ph.D., his classification
numbers, or, more to the point, to his pay check. (pp. 300-301)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> In the limo, with Halyard trying to get through
the crowds of the revolt. Halyard to driver:]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"I
don't know what's going on, and neither do you. Now drive to the police
station, do you understand?" said Halyard.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"You
think you can order me around just because you've got a Ph.D. and I've got
nothing but a B.S.?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Do
as he says," hissed Khashdrahr, placing the point of his knife in the back
of the driver's neck again. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
limousine moved down the littered, now-deserted streets toward the headquarters
of Ilium's keepers of the peace.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
street before the police station was snow-white, paved with bits of punctured
pasteboard: the fifty-thousand-card deck with which the Ilium personnel and
crime-prevention machines had played their tireless games — shuffling, dealing,
off the bottom, off the top, out of the middle, palming, marking, reading,
faster than the human eye could follow, controlling every card, and implacably
protecting the interests of the house, always the house, any house. (p. 305)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 34</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> [The day
after the Revolution; the authorities have surrounded Ilium and demanded the
leaders of the Revolution, plus total surrender or face a siege for six months.
The leaders here, a little drunk]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"You
know," said Paul at last, "things wouldn't have been so bad if they'd
stayed the way they were when we first got here [to Ilium and the Ilium Works]
Those were passable days, weren't they?" He and Finnerty were feeling a
deep melancholy rapport now, sitting amid the smashed masterpieces, the brilliantly
designed, beautifully made machines. A good part of their lives and skills had
gone into making them, making what they'd helped to destroy in a few hours.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Things
don't stay the way they are," said Finnerty. "It's too entertaining
to try to change them. Remember the excitement of recording Rudy Hertz's
movements, then trying to run automatic controls from the tape?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"It
worked!" said Paul.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Damn
right!"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And
then putting lathe group three together," said Paul. "Those weren't
our ideas of course."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"No,
but we got ideas of our own later on. Wonderful ideas," said Finnerty.
"Happiest I ever was, I guess, Paul; so damn engrossed. I never looked up
to notice anything else."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Most
fascinating game there is, keeping things from staying the way they are."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"If
only it weren't for the people, the goddamned people," said Finnerty,
"always getting tangled up in the machinery. If it weren't for them, earth
would be an engineer's paradise."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Let's
drink to that."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>They
did. (pp. 312-13)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"What
became of the Indians?" said Paul. […] ¶ The original Ghost Shirt Society
[…]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Lasher:]
They found out the shirts weren't bulletproof, and magic didn't bother the U.S.
Cavalry at all."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"So
—?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"So
they were killed or gave up trying to be good Indians […]."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And
the Ghost Dance movement proved what?" said Paul.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"That
being a good Indian was as important as being a good white man — important
enough to fight and die for, no matter what the odds. The fought against the
same odds we fought against: a thousand to one, maybe, or a little more."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Paul
and Ed Finnerty looked at him incredulously.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"You
thought we were sure to lose?" said Paul huskily.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Certainly,"
said Lasher, looking at him as though Paul had said something idiotic.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"But
you've been talking all along as though it were almost a sure thing," said
Paul.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Of
course, Doctor," said Lasher patronizingly. "If we hadn't talked that
way we wouldn't have had that one chance in a thousand. But I didn't let myself
lose touch with reality."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Lasher,
Paul realized, was the only one who hadn't lost touch with reality. He, alone
of the four leaders, seemed unshocked by the course of events […] even,
inexplicably, at peace. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Finnerty
was covering his initial surprise at Lasher's statement, so perfect an apostle
was he. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Lasher
was fully awake now […]. "It doesn't matter if we win or lose, Doctor
[Proteus]. The important thing is that we tried. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">For the record, we tried!" […]</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"What record?" said Paul.</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Suddenly
Lasher underwent a transformation. He showed a side of himself he had
mentioned, but which Paul had found impossible to imagine.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
with the transformation, the desk became a pulpit.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Revolutions
aren't my main line of business," said Lasher, his voice deep and rolling.
"I'm a minister, Doctor, remember? First and last, I'm an enemy of the Devil,
a man of God!" (p. 314)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Chapter 35</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
brains of the Ghost Shirt Society were touring the strongpoints on the
frontiers of their Utopia [in Ilium]. And everywhere they found the same
things: abandoned posts, mounds of expended ammunition, and riddled machinery.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
four had come to an exciting decision: during the six months of blockade
threatened by the authorities, they would make the ruins a laboratory, a
demonstration of how well and happily men could live with virtually no
machines. They saw now the common man's wisdom in wrecking practically
everything. (p. 316). </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">[Next
scene: Characters we've seen before getting some remaining machines working
again.]</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(pp. 317-19)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> [The four Ghost Shirt leaders passing a liquor
bottle, on their way to surrender; Lasher toasts:]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"[…]
— to the record."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
bottle went around the group [to Finnerty and Prof. Ludwig von Neumann, former
PoliSci instructor and the fourth leader, both toasting the record …]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Paul
took the bottle and studied Lasher for a moment […]. Lasher, the chief
instigator of it all, was contented. A lifelong trafficker in symbols, he had
created the revolution as a symbol, and was now welcoming the opportunity to
die as one.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
that left Paul. "To a better world," he started to say, but he cut
the toast short, thinking of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the people
of Ilium, already eager to recreate the same old nightmare</b>. He shrugged.
"To the record," he said, and smashed the empty bottle on a rock.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Von
Neumann considered Paul and then the broken glass. "This isn't the end,
you know," he said. "Nothing ever is, nothing ever will be — not even
Judgment Day."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Hands
up," said Lasher almost gaily. "Forward March [sic]." (p. 320,
end of novel)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
++++++++++++++++++++++<br />
In case the embedded link doesn't work: <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Study
Guide for Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s <u>Player Piano</u></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2022/05/study-guide-for-kurt-vonnegut-jrs.html></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-43989459066269781852022-07-04T21:42:00.001-07:002022-07-04T21:42:26.920-07:00Revolutionary Republicanism: 1776<div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 11pt;"><span> </span><span> <span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In 1976, for the US Bicentennial Celebration at Miami University (Oxford, Ohio), I was asked to speak on … well something relevant. At the speech, I looked out at an audience far larger than I’d expected — at least one Speech teacher had required attendance — and started out with a thoroughly-rehearsed ad lib on how I was from Chicago and Chicagoans rejected the elitist concept that one had to be an expert to talk usefully on a subject, “OR, Chicagoans rarely let our ignorance get in the way of shooting off our mouths. And tonight I’m going to shoot my mouth off on the Declaration of Independence as a revolutionary document, far more revolutionary than most of us recognize.”</span></span></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span><br /></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"><span> </span><span> </span>And I proceeded to talk about something I did know about: from around Shakespeare’s time the Homily — a canned sermon — on Obedience to </span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: #0563c1; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://forums.anglican.net/threads/homily-1-10-homily-on-obedience.1978/" style="color: #954f72; text-decoration: underline;">Authority<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></a></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;">and “An Exhortation concerning good Order, and </span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: #0563c1; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://individual.utoronto.ca/mmilner/history2p91/primary/exhortationtoobedience.html" style="color: #954f72; text-decoration: underline;">obedience to Rulers and Magistrates</a></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;">.” </span></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span><span> </span><span> </span>On the basis of Holy Scripture and Natural Law, the writers of the Homilies were convinced that</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 2cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "avenir next condensed", sans-serif;">Almighty God has created and appointed all things in heaven and on earth and all about, in a most excellent and perfect order. In heaven, he has appointed distinct and several orders and states of Archangels and Angels. In earth he has assigned and appointed Kings, Princes, with other governors under them, in all good and necessary order. […] The sun, moon, stars, rainbow, thunder, lightning, clouds, and all the birds of the air, keep their order. The earth, trees, seeds, plants, herbs, corn, grass, and all manner of beasts keep themselves in order […].<br /><br />Human beings also have all parts both within and without, like soul, heart, mind, memory, understanding, reason, speech, with all and singular corporal members of our body in a profitable, necessary, and pleasant order: every degree of people in their vocation, calling and office, is appointed to them their duty and order: some are in high degree, some in low, some Kings and Princes, some inferiors and subjects, priests, and layfolk, masters and servants, fathers, and children, husbands and wives, rich and poor, and everyone needs the other, so that in all things God, in good order, is lauded and praised, without which no house, city or commonwealth can continue, endure or last. For where there is no right order, there reigns abuse, carnal liberty, enormity, sin and Babylonian confusion.<br /><br />Take away Kings Princes, Rulers, Magistrates, Judges, and such estates of God's good order, and no one shall ride or go by the highway un-robbed, no one shall sleep in their own house or bed un-killed, no one shall keep their spouse, children, and possession in quietness, all things shall be in-common, and there must needs follow all kinds of mischief, and utter destruction of souls, bodies, goods and social well-being. But blessed be God, that we in this realm of England, feel not the horrible calamities, miseries, and wretchedness, which all they undoubtedly feel and suffer, who lack this godly order: and praised be God, that we know the great excellent benefit of God shown towards us in this behalf, God has sent us his high gift, our most dear Sovereign Lord the King, with a godly, wise and honourable counsel, with other superiors and inferiors, in a beautiful and godly order.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;"></span><br /></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "avenir next condensed", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "futura medium", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><span> </span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span> </span>I have no doubt that somewhere in the back of a church or two, some rebellious soul was mouthing silently the subversive old rime, from </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: #0563c1; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ball_(priest)#Biography" style="color: #954f72; text-decoration: underline;">John Ball</a></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 11pt;">, and the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, “When Adam delved and Eva span, / Who was then the gentleman?” I.e., when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden to earn their livings by toil like digging and spinning — “From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude,” serfdom and exploitation, “came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men” (“naughty” was a much more powerful word back then). Still, the orthodox, non-heretical, traditional, <i>obvious</i> view was that the universe was a Great Chain of Being, running from the hand or footstool of God down through the orders of the angels to the stars and planets, and then humans in our order, and down through plants and animals to the minerals and down to your basic rock. Everything in its order, held together by the love of God for all and the love of each conscious creature for those above and below, and by our sense of different obligations to those above and below.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 11pt;"><span> </span><span> </span>This “most excellent and perfect order” had been obvious among the educated (and otherwise privileged) since the time of Aristotle.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 11pt;"><span> </span><span> </span>Human hierarchy was part of this “godly order”; human love and obligation was <i>natural</i>.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 11pt;"><span> </span><span> </span>It’s a beautiful and useful view, especially from the top. From the bottom … well looking up, the human part might look more like a multistory outhouse, if one were so privileged as to own an outhouse. And if you lost faith in that “godly order,” well you were “an heretic,” and if you acted or even spoke aloud that loss of faith, you were open to a charge of treason and finding yourself, if male</span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: #0563c1; text-decoration: underline;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanged,_drawn_and_quartered" style="color: #954f72; text-decoration: underline;">, hanged, drawn, and quartered</a></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 11pt;">, or, if female, burned alive. So if there were any doubts, most people probably kept them quiet, and they were lost to history; and this orthodox view of hierarchical society came down to the time of the American Revolution, and parts last to this day.</span></span></div><span> </span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 11pt;"><span> </span>Seriously.</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 11pt;"><span> </span><span> </span>If you play Twenty Questions, you begin with “Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral?,” <i>and in that order</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>because, ultimately, that is the order in the Great Chain of Being. If you talk of “higher” and “lower” animals, higher and lower in terms of <i>what</i>? Possibly in terms of a simplistic idea of evolution, more likely in terms of the Great Chain of Being and the possibility of drawing a firm line and making radical distinction between humans as “the paragon of animals” and “a little lower than the angels” — and the rest, many of whom you probably want someone to kill and skin and cook or pluck and cook and feed you, without your feeling guilt. (Well, unless you prefer cooking, or killing them, yourself.)<br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><span> </span><span> </span>Against such well-established doctrine, it’s difficult to argue, and Thomas Jefferson and the guys didn’t bother. Instead, in the subversive tradition of John Ball, they offer a competing creation myth, if not for the universe, then for human society — and like John Ball find justification for rebellion against “the unjust oppression of naughty men.”<br /><br />So now, please read again:<br /></span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></div><div class="SetoffQuotation" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 2cm; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Lobster;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.</span></span></span></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><br />Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-61665988507500569772022-06-12T19:39:00.002-07:002022-06-13T15:36:42.873-07:00Uvalde, Buffalo, Babi Yar, a Fictional Future Red Bank, NJ — And Mass Murder<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As I write, the last two large-scale
multiple murders in the United States were at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde,
Texas, following "<span style="color: black;">roughly a week after a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/12/senators-strike-bipartisan-gun-safety-agreement-00039019">racist mass shooter</a> killed 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y."</span> People
ask how such horrors can happen, and some parts of the answer are straight-forward
and often repeated: to start with, too many angry, sometimes suicidal Americans
with too easy access to rapid-fire firearms with large-capacity magazines.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Another part can be summed up with
the names of some locations: <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Wounded-Knee-Massacre">Wounded Knee</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre">Katyn Forest</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar">Babi Yar</a>, <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/my-lai-massacre-1">My Lai</a>, and
many, far too many, locations of truly <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1941_Odessa_massacre">massive mass shootings and mass burials</a>
in pits, with some 22,000 Polish officers and other POWs killed by the Soviet
NKVD (mostly) at Katyn in spring of 1940 and "some 33,771 Jews "
murdered at the Babi Yar Ravine in Kyiv, 29–30 September 1941.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Significant here, the murders at
Babi Yar were carried out not only by specialists of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Einsatzgruppen"><i>Einsatzgruppe</i></a> C but
by more ordinary men of the German "Order Police," <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/wehrmacht"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wehrmacht</i></a>, and the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police.
And the victims, as at My Lai (March 1968), included — in the words of a once-famous
<a href="https://alphahistory.com/vietnamwar/paul-meadlo-my-lai-massacre-1969/">interview</a> of US Army Pfc Paul Meadlo by Mike Wallace <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>— "Men, women, children, babies."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Basic principle: Under some
circumstances human beings are capable of committing large-scale atrocities, and have done so.<br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But these historical shooters were men in
social circumstances that might explain their behavior: being in a group and
all men for one thing, in wartime (or close to it at Wounded Knee), usually under
military discipline and ordered to kill, and, in the case of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD">NKVD</a> and Nazis
feeling — if thoroughly indoctrinated — that the murders were necessary in a
life-and-death struggle for class or race survival, doing the patriotic dirty
work for a better world ("You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs"
/ "Look at the baby, not at the blood"). The shooters in 20<sup>th</sup>-
and 21<sup>st</sup>-century America have been in different circumstances; and
so we need more general analysis.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Here's an indirect suggestion from a
book you should know for other reasons: one of the great mid-20<sup>th</sup>-century
dystopias, Frederik Pohl C. M. Kornbluth's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Space Merchants</i> (1952/53). The setting is mostly America on a near-future
Earth: overpopulated, polluted, and run by Advertising Agencies whose leaders
and workers worship (figuratively) "the god of Sales." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"><span style="font-size: small;">Mitch</span> Courtney
of Fowler Schocken Associates is being held prisoner by the rival Taunton
agency (the rivalry including competing for the Venus project: bringing
Ad-Agency rule to our so-far unexploited sister planet). Regaining
consciousness Mitch complains to his most immediate guards, </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I struggled again. "They'll
brainburn you, I said. Are you people crazy? Who wants to be brainburned?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The face said nonchalantly:
"You'd be surprised." […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>B. J. Taunton lurched in, drunk.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span>Taunton expresses his anger at Mitch for avoiding
getting killed in their earlier attempts, and then disappearing (which wasn't
Mitch's doing: this is the second time he's been kidnapped).</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>His glassy eyes glared at me:
"You bastard!" he said. "Of all the low-down, lousy, unethical,
cheap-jack stunts ever pulled on me, yours was the rottenest. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I —</i>" he thumped his chest […].
"<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i> figured out a way to commit a
safe commercial murder, and you played possum like a scared yellow rat. You ran
like a rabbit, you dog." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>[…]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He sat down unconcernedly. [….] With
an expansive gesture B. J. Taunton said to me: "Courtenay, I am
essentially an artist."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>[…]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Essentially," he brooded,
"essentially an artist. […]" "I wanted Venus […], and I shall
have it. Schocken stole it from me, and I am going to repossess it. Fowler Schocken's
management of the Venus project will stink to high heaven. No rocket under
Schocken's management is ever going to get off the ground, if I have to corrupt
every one of his underlings and kill every one of his section heads. For I am
essentially an artist."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Mr. Taunton," I said
steadily, "you can't kill section heads as casually as all that. You'll be
brainburned. They'll give you <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cerberin</i>.
You can't find anybody who'll take the risk for you. Nobody wants twenty years
in hell."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He said dreamily: "I got a
mechanic to drop that 'copter pod on you, didn't I? I got an unemployable bum
to plug at you through your apartment window, didn't I? Unfortunately both
missed. And then you crossed us up with that cowardly run-out on the
glacier."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I didn't say anything. The run-out
on the glacier had been no idea of min. God only knew whose idea it had been to
have [a rival, Matt] Runstead club me, shanghai me, and leave a substitute corpse in my place.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Almost you escaped,"
Taunton mused. "If it hadn't been for a few humble loyal servants […]. But
I have my tools, Courtenay." [* * *] You say to me: 'Nobody wants to be
brainburned.' That is because you are mediocre. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i> say: '<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Find</i> someone who
wants to be brainburned and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">use </i>him.'
That is because I am great."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Wants to be brainburned,"
I repeated stupidly. "Wants to be brainburned."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Explain," said Taunton to
one aide." […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One of his men told me dryly:
"It's a matter of population, Courtenay. Have you ever heard of Albert
Fish?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"No."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"He was a phenomenon of the
dawn; the earliest days of the Age of Reason — 1920 or thereabouts. Albert Fish
stuck needles into himself, burned himself with alcohol-saturated wads of
cotton, flogged himself — he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">liked</i>
it. He would have liked brainburning, I'll wager. It would have been twenty
delightful subjective years of being flayed, suffocated, choked, and nauseated.
It would have been Albert Fish's dream come true.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"There was only one Albert Fish
in his day. Pressures and strains of a very high order are required to produce
an Albert Fish. It would be unreasonable to expect more than one to be produced
out of the small and scattered population of the period — less than three
billion. With our vastly larger current population there are many Albert Fishes
wandering around. You have only to find them." […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It had a bloodcurdling truthful ring
to it. Our generation must be inured to wonder. The chronicles of fantastic
heroism and abysmal wickedness that crowd our newscasts — I knew from research
that they didn't have such courage or such depravity in the old days. The fact
had puzzled me. We have such people as Malone, who quietly dug his tunnels for
six years and then one Sunday morning blew up Red Bank, New Jersey. A Brink's
traffic cop had got him sore. Conversely we have James Revere, hero of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">White Cloud</i> disaster. A shy, frail,
tourist-class steward, he had rescued on his own shoulders seventy-six
passengers, returning again and again into the flames […]. It was true. When
there are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">enough</i> people you will
always find somebody who can and will be any given thing." (pp. 94-96; ch.
11)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif">Very basic
principle: With enough pressure on enough people with few social supports, "you
will always find somebody who […] will be any given thing" and a small percentage,
but enough, people who will <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i> "any
given thing," including great good and great evil. Including shooting their own grandmother, and then children.<br /><br />(And on US regulation of firearms, Babi Yar and the history of the Stalinists and Nazis cuts at least two ways. The Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising could have used more guns; more guns in the hands of the general European population could have been just more guns killing Jews and others over the burial pits.)<br /></span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-25105076054323726322022-06-05T15:24:00.001-07:002022-06-05T15:24:30.567-07:00No Excuses on Climate Change<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> At least where I was, in Champaign County Illinois, Spring 1970, the frontispiece or prolog to <i>The Whole Earth Catalog</i> for Earth Day (I) was Don Marquis's column on "<a href="http://donmarquis.com/home/2011/10/26/what-the-ants-are-saying/">what the ants are saying</a>," delivered through his spokes-insect, archy the cockroach (from <i>archy does his part</i>, 1935). </span></p><p style="margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The lower-case letters are correct; archy types his messages and can't hold down the shift key, so <i>of course</i> it's all lower-case.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: small;">What the ants say is, basically, </span></span></p><p style="margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">it wont be long now it wont be long</span><br style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">man is making deserts of the earth</span><br style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">it wont be long now</span><br style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">before man will have used it up</span><br style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">so that nothing but ants</span><br style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">and centipedes and scorpions</span><br style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">can find a living on it</span><br style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">man has oppressed us for a million years</span><br style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">but he goes on steadily</span><br style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">cutting the ground from under</span><br style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">his own feet making deserts deserts deserts</span></span></blockquote><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68); color: #444444; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"></span></span><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: small;"> In the 1930s, they knew about making deserts: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl">the Great American Dust Bowl</a> and all. And some knew the Dust Bowl was nothing uniquely new. Here's from my old (and I mean old when I bought it in my youth) Thompson & Johnson <i>Introduction to Medieval Europe: 300-1500 </i>(NYC: Norton, 1937) — one attempt to explain the phenomenal conquests of the Arabs in the decades following the death of Mohammed (old spelling)<span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">. After rejecting theories of Islamic fanaticism in the period, and noting the weakness of the Persian and Roman Empires, the first issue is the initial rapid movement out of Arabia: "The expansion of the Arabs is best understood in the light of previous movements out of the desert into the neighboring Fertile Crescent. These were constant phenomena, to be explained by the vicissitudes of climatic conditions, which always drove nomadic people outwards. [...] The peninsula itself was experiencing a periodic desiccation, which made life within it ever more unbearable and drove its inhabitants to seek relief elsewhere" (p. 166; ch. 7, "The Empire of the Arabs"). What was to be called "the desert pump" had pumped out one of its most historically significant armies. </span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span> </span>James Westfall Thompson of the U of California and Edgar Nathaniel Johnson of the U of Nebraska over-simplified and may've over-stressed migrations and the role of "nomads," but they were writing in the 1930s, and were still ahead of those who today talk of the origin of medieval Europe in, figuratively speaking, "Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem" and then throw in the Germanic tribes. Medina and Mecca, as similar figures of speech, come in here, as well as the later great cities in "The Empire of the Arabs" — the lands of Islam — that kept high civilization going when it wasn't doing very well on the </span></span></span><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">peninsula of Eurasia that for a long while there was "darkest Europe." And these two historians from the American west knew about marginally fertile land becoming deserts and deserts becoming uninhabitable by humans. </span></span></span> </span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The idea of climatic influence was around and went in and out of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period#Research">fashion</a>.</span></span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0.5em 80px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span></span></p><blockquote><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0.5em 80px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">In 1965,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Lamb" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Hubert Lamb">Hubert Lamb</a>, one of the first<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatologists" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Paleoclimatologists">paleoclimatologists</a>, published research based on data from<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botany" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Botany">botany</a>, historical document research, and meteorology, combined with records indicating prevailing temperature and rainfall in England around<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><abbr style="border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; cursor: help;" title="circa">c.</abbr><span style="white-space: nowrap;"> 1200</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and around<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><abbr style="border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; cursor: help;" title="circa">c.</abbr><span style="white-space: nowrap;"> 1600</span>. He proposed, "Evidence has been accumulating in many fields of investigation pointing to a notably warm climate in many parts of the world, that lasted a few centuries around<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><abbr style="border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; cursor: help;" title="circa">c.</abbr><span style="white-space: nowrap;"> 1000</span>–<abbr style="border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; cursor: help;" title="circa">c.</abbr><span style="white-space: nowrap;"> 1200</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>AD, and was followed by a decline of temperature levels till between<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><abbr style="border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; cursor: help;" title="circa">c.</abbr><span style="white-space: nowrap;"> 1500</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><abbr style="border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; cursor: help;" title="circa">c.</abbr><span style="white-space: nowrap;"> 1700</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>the coldest phase since the last ice age occurred."</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0.5em 80px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The warm period became known as the [<a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/medieval-warm-period">Medieval Warm Period</a>] MWP, and the cold period was called th<span style="color: black;">e <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age">Little Ice Age<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></a>(</span>LIA). However, the view that the MWP is a global event was challenged by other researchers.</span></span></p></blockquote><p><span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And is currently <a href="https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2019/07/24/climate-epochs-that-werent/">challenged by more</a> and is "out." The point here is that, if anything, earlier periods of warming and desiccation were overstated geographically, but it has been understood that they could have profound affects on humans. The full title of Brian Fagan's 2008 book is <a href="https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.3099580"><i>The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations</i></a>, and there are enough hot, dry places in danger in our world that we need to pay attention if they're getting hotter and drier and less able to support human habitation. </span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span> </span>The scientific argument over earlier periods of warming, ocean-rise, and desiccation is intertwined with politics and the highly plausible idea that large-scale climate-change in </span></span><span><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span class="ILfuVd"><span class="hgKElc">preindustrial</span></span> times is unlikely to have been caused by humans — plus the false conclusion in many places that people must accept the idea of "<a href="https://www.vcstar.com/story/opinion/readers/2017/09/13/just-say-climate-change/664619001/">anthropogenic climate change</a>" to take serious action to slow it down. </span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span> </span>Which brings me to some of my long-delayed recent reading and a source I didn't expect: Carl Sagan's <i>Broca's Brain</i> (essays and such, 1974-79), in a paperback copy I have from the Miami University Library, which means I had to have bought it on some duplicates sale when I was still at Miami U, i.e., before 2006-7. I don't recall why I bought the book, but one reason I <i>should</i> have is because it has significant discussions of </span></span><span face="arial, sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36); color: #202124; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Velikovsky">Immanuel Velikovsky</a> and (primarily), Velikovsky's <i>Worlds in Collision </i>(1950). And I should have caught up on "the Velikovsky Affair," which I had once taught as a unit in a course at the U of Illinois in "The Rhetoric of the Life Sciences." <br /></span><br /><span> <span style="color: black;"> </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: small;">Okay, Velikovsky's basic thesis, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worlds_in_Collision">Wikipedia entry </a>nicely summarizes, was </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">"that around the 15th century BC,</span><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> the planet Venus</span><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>was ejected from<span class="Apple-converted-space"> Jupiter</span></span><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>as a comet</span><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>or comet-like object and passed near<span class="Apple-converted-space"> Earth</span></span><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(an actual collision is not mentioned). The object allegedly changed<span class="Apple-converted-space"> Earth's orbit</span></span><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and axis</span><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">, causing innumerable catastrophes that are mentioned in early<span class="Apple-converted-space"> mythologies</span></span></span></span><span face="sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and religions from around the world." So the "Affair" was primarily about astronomy and physics, but there was enough biology involved — a form of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/catastrophism-geology">catastrophism</a> is mainstream science for the extinction of the dinosaurs — enough biology was involved that the unit was almost legitimate: and the debate over Velikovsky's ideas was sufficiently vociferous to be irresistible for a topic in academic rhetoric of recent times (academics are much more polite nowadays than earlier centuries, at least in public). And I knew about Velikovsky because I'd taken an undergrad seminar on D. H. Lawrence and wrote a term paper on "<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40753934">Catastrophism and Coition</a>: Cosmic and Individual Development in <i><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Women-in-Love">Women in Love</a>.</i>"</span></span></span></span></p><p style="margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Dosis;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><u>Comic digression</u>: I lightly revised the "Catatsrophism" essay and sent it to <a href="https://www.mla.org/Publications/Journals/PMLA"><i>PMLA</i></a>, the premiere journal in the LitCrit field at the time (my elders advised me to start at the top and work down). I did <i>not</i> have the usual complaint of authors' having to wait months for a response from a journal: my manuscript was returned to me in my nice, big, self-addressed stamped envelope within a couple weeks. I stomped down our steep stairs toward the letter-carrier, who was trying to get the returned manuscript into our mailbox; and I must have been muttering louder than I thought since the mailman, without looking up, raised his hand and said, "I only return them; I don't read them" — which cracked me up and put me into the right mood to read the first rejection <i>letter</i>, no less, of what was to become my rather impressive collection. Very few or no rejection <i>slips</i>: the editors wanted to make clear to me why my efforts, though much appreciated, "do not meet our needs at the present time" (or ever, or at least until the sun goes nova). In this case: "Very interesting opening paragraph," said the referee's comment the editor wished to share with me, "before the whole thing" — and a substantial-size essay it was — "falls flat." I immediately got back on my hobbyhorse, and sent the (unrevised? probably) essay to what I was told was the second choice for something on D. H. Lawrence, <i>TSLL</i>: <i>Texas Studies in Literature and Language</i>. It was accepted with one revision the editor would make with or without my permission (titles can fall under "Editor's Prerogative"): re-subtitling to "<b>Universal</b> and Individual Development [...]": I had the required alliteration and a colon, but three words alliterated exceeded the bag-limit. But I have digressed.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span face="sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: small;">And so I had published an essay in a respectable journal with the word "Catastrophism" in the title, which even back then (1967) was quite enough to get me on at least one Looney-Tunes mailing list, Velikovsky division. And reading Sagan on Velikovsky brought me to this:</span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span face="sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"></span></span></span></p><blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">Velikovsky writes [...] that his claim of a high surface temperature [on Venus] was "in total disagreement with what was known in 1946." This turns out to be not quite the case. The dominant figure of Rupert Wildt again looms over the astronomical side of Velikovsky's hypothesis. Wildt [...] predicted correctly that Venus and not Mars would be "hot." In a 1940 <a href="https://history.aip.org/climate/Venus.htm#N_4_">[... "Note on the Surface Temperature of Venus"]</a> in the <i>Astrophysical Journal </i>[91: 266-68], Wildt argued that the surface of Venus was much hotter than conventional astronomical opinion had held, because of a carbon-dioxide greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide had recently been discovered spectroscopically in the atmosphere of Venus, and Wildt correctly pointed out that the observed large quantity of CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 </span>would trap infrared radiation given off by the surface of the planet until the surface temperature would be almost 400º K, or around the normal boiling point of water. (p. 136; ch. 7, "Venus and Dr. Velikovsky," Problem VIII, "The Temperature of Venus")</span><br /></blockquote></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: small;"> <span style="font-family: helvetica;">Later in <i>Broca's Brain</i> — again, from the 1970s — Sagan rather immodestly notes a now</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"></span></p><blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="font-size: small;">fashionable suggestion, which I first proposed in 1960, [...] that the high temperatures on the surface of Venus are due to a runaway greenhouse effect in which water and carbon dioxide in a planetary atmosphere impede the emission of thermal infrared radiation from the surface to space; the surface temperature then rises to achieve equilibrium between the visible sunlight arriving at the surface and the infrared radiation leaving it; the higher surface temperature results in a higher vapor pressure of the greenhouse gasses, carbon dioxide and water; and so on, until all the carbon dioxide and water vapor is in the vapor phase, producing a planet his high atmospheric pressure and high surface pressure.</span></span></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="margin-left: 80px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span><span> </span><span> </span><span style="font-size: small;">Now, the </span>reason that Venus has such an atmosphere and Earth does not seems to be a relatively small increment of sunlight. Were the sun to grow brighter or Earth's surface and clouds to grow darker, could Earth become a replica of the classical vision of Hell? Venus may be a cautionary tale for our technical civilization, which has the capability to alter profoundly the environment of Earth. (pp. 180-81; ch. 10, "The Sun's Family") </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span> <br /></p></blockquote><p>Sagan repeats the point in "The Climates of Planets," from 1975, ch. 14 in <i>Broca's Brain</i>. The upside of climate change for humans:</p><blockquote><blockquote><p>We may owe our [...] existence to climatic changes that on the average amount to only a few degrees. Such changes have brought some species into being and extinguished others. The character of life on our planet has been powerfully influenced by such variations, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the climate is continuing to change today. (pp. 222-23)<br /></p></blockquote></blockquote><div><p></p><p>By 1975 there had been "almost a hundred different theory of climatic change on Earth," of which Sagan selects three for closer consideration. </p><blockquote><blockquote><p>The first involves a change in celestial mechanical variable: the shape of the Earth's orboit, the tilt of its axis of rotation, and the precession of that axis [...]. Detailed calculations of the extent of such variations show that they can be responsible for at least a few degrees of temperature variation, and with the possibility of positive feedbacks this might, by itself, be adequate to explain major climatic variation. </p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><p> A second class of theories involves <a href="https://tinyurl.com/3anefbw9">albedo</a> variations. One of the more striking causes for such variations is the injection into the Earth's atmosphere of massive amounts for dust — for example, from a volcanic explosion such as Krakatoa's in 1883. While there has been some debate on whether such dust heats or cools the Earth, the bulk of present calculations show that the fine particulates [...] increase the Earth's albedo and therefore cool it. [...]<br /></p></blockquote></blockquote><p> <span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> Finally, there is the possibility of variations in the brightness of the Sun. (pp. 226-27) [...]</span></span></p><p><span></span></p><blockquote><blockquote><span> Some evidence on the trend of global temperature seems to show a very slow increase from the beginning of the industrial revolution to about 1940, and an alarmingly steep decline in global temperatures thereafter, This pattern has been attributed to the burning of fossil fuels, which has two consequences — the liberation of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere, and the simultaneous injection into the atmosphere of fine particles, from the incomplete burning of the fuel. The carbon dioxide heats the earth; the fine particles, through their higher albedo, cool it. It may be that until 1940 the greenhouse effect was winning, and then the increased albedo is winning.<br /></span></blockquote></blockquote><p></p><p></p><blockquote><blockquote><span><span style="color: red;"><span> </span>The ominous possibility that </span><span style="color: red;">human activities may cause inadvertent climate modification makes the increasing interest in planetary climatology rather important</span> [...]. (pp. 227-28)<br /></span></blockquote></blockquote><span>And whatever might be the main driver of climate change manifested as global warming, makes knowledge of the greenhouse effect crucial. The tilt of the Earth or energy production of the sun is beyond human power to affect; greenhouse gasses we can do something about, and should. And, clearly, I think, should have by the 1980s.</span></div><div><span> </span></div><div><span>Young people coming to age in the next couple of decades will have good reason to be angry with their elders. </span> <br /><p> </p><p> </p><p><https://history.aip.org/climate/Venus.htm#N_4_> <br /></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span face="sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span face="sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span face="arial, sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36); color: #202124; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> <br /></span></p></div>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-56140425330645188932022-05-21T18:51:00.003-07:002022-05-21T18:52:36.765-07:00<p>
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif">Vonnegut's <u>Player Piano</u>
(1952): A Dystopia for the Worst of Our Times</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A major threat to the U.S. Republic
as I write in May of 2022 is a potential American Right-wing (White, Christian)
Nationalist Mass Movement led by Donald Trump or someone with more demagogic
talent than he has. And that movement might be able to block or pervert the
2024 U.S. Presidential and other elections or have them be the last real
elections for a long while. <http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2018/12/background-for-jihad-and-d-j-trump-2017.html></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Against such a Right-wing movement
we need a democratic united front of decent people with a variety of political
loyalties. As the cliché has it, effective politics means coalition politics,
and coalition politics requires people working together who disagree on a
number of things. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My idea of the United States is a
diverse, secular, Federal Republic with some democratic institutions, aspects,
and aspirations, and my social- and other-media messages so far have been
directed primarily to my potential allies of a militant atheistic bent, telling
them to look at the damn statistics already and realize they're going to have
to work with the Religious Left and more generally, with decent religious individuals.
There are no insurmountable problems if allies have some profound disagreements
on basic beliefs, which can usually be ignored while people concentrate of
practical projects. What can't be handled is trying to cooperate with people
you openly and actively despise; and so <a href="http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2017/12/reprint-yo-secular-leftists-arguing.html">I've asked my militantly atheistic
brethren and sistren to tone it down (already)</a> on the metaphysics, stick to
immediate challenges — and practice some old-fashioned mannerly "cool
correctness" (and screw authenticity: just be polite!). </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Well, polite and not so smugly
comfortable. Back in the day, with the atheistic Existentialists of mid-20<sup>th</sup>
c., atheists could recognize the old truth of <a name="108">"<span style="color: black;">unaccommodated man" as "no more but such a poor
bare,</span></a><span style="color: black;"> <a name="109">forked animal"</a>
as a guy mostly posing as a naked madman and beggar out in a storm — or newer
truths of humankind as just a more or less interesting experiment in enlarged
brains in a rather <a href="http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2015/04/the-incredible-shrinking-man-and-rise.html">recently-evolved species on an unremarkable planet in an armof an unremarkable galaxy</a> among "billions and billions of stars" and
other galaxies (as Carl Sagan used to say). </span></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif">* * *</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What I want to give you some time
with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">here</i> is on a smaller scale but
also likely to offend some liberals and those further Left: Kurt Vonnegut's <u>Player
Piano</u> (1952) — U.K. folk: like Michael D. Young's dystopia, <u>The Rise of
the Meritocracy</u> (1958) — glancing at a right to be angry on the part of a
lot of Americans whose work has been devalued and who feel that they're held in
casual contempt by various American elites. </span><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="color: #050505; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Hillary
Clinton said it would be a gross overgeneralization, but "you could put
half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the <a href="https://tinyurl.com/bd5x6pyt">basket of deplorables</a>": those
sexists and racists et al. However the non-deplorables susceptible to Trumpism
include mediocre people (the majority of us are mediocre at most things) whom
opponents of Trumpism may be able to peel off from Trump — but first need to
understand a bit and treat with more respect. Such people can be doing okay and
be in many ways privileged <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> have
legitimate grievances.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif" style="color: #050505; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif">For such
a project, I give below some texts from <u>Player Piano</u>, and I have posted
on "Views From a Jagged Orbit a <a href="http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2022/05/study-guide-for-kurt-vonnegut-jrs.html">study
guide</a> at least some of my students found useful (and, what the hell, I have
it). </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif">For
background you might want to see one or more of the following books:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Roman",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;">Braverman, Harry.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Labor
and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century</i>.</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: black; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: black; font-size: 10pt;">New York: Monthly
Review P, 1974.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;">Buchanan, Ben, and Andrew Imbrie.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The New Fire: War, Peace, and
Democracy in the Age of AI</i></span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: black; font-size: 10pt;">. Cambridge, MA,
and London, UK: The MIT Press, 2022.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><https://www.clockworks2.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_New_Fire:_War,_Peace,_and_Democracy_in_the_Age_of_AI></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Faludi, Susan. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man</i>.</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> NYC: Harper Collins, 1999.
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">(Follow-up
to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Backlash: The Undeclared War Against
American</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Women</i> (Crown Publishing 1991).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><http://susanfaludi.com/stiffed.html></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Hoffer, Eric.</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> <b><i><span style="color: #202122;">The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass
Movements</span></i><span style="color: #202122; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">. </span></b><span style="color: #202122; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">NYC:
Harper & Brothers, 1951: Part 2, </span>Potential Converts. <https://tinyurl.com/5eunakxx></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Young, Michael. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Rise of the Meritocracy: 1870-2033: </i></span></b><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">An essay on education
and society. </span></i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">London:
Thames and Hudson, 1958. NYC: Random House, 1959. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Next Condensed",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">(For Vonnegut's male-centered view, note era of
composition and cut him some, not much, slack.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">++++++++++++++++++++++++</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">++++++++++++++++++++++++
(Excerpts; <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">bold face emphasis</b>, where
it comes through, is Erlich's))</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;">Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. <i>Player Piano</i></span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: black; font-size: 10pt;"> (vt </span><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;">Utopia 14</span></i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: black; font-size: 10pt;">). New York: Scribner's, 1952.
New York: Dell, 1974.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: black; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: black; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Foreword</u> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This book is not a book about what
is, but a book about what could be. […] ¶ It is mostly about managers and
engineers. At this point in history, 1952 A.D. [i.e. "Anno Domini,"
Year of Our/The Lord" (Note: KV is a gentle atheist)], our lives and
freedom depend largely upon the skill and imagination and courage of our
managers and engineers, and I hope that God will help them to help us all stay
alive and free. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
1</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Opening</u>: Ilium, New York is
divided into three parts.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>In the northwest are the
managers and engineers and civil servants and a few professional people; in the
northeast are the machines; and in the south […] is the area known locally as
Homestead, where almost all of the people live. (p. 9)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Some people […] had talked in the
old days as though engineers, managers, and scientists were an elite. […] But
not many had taken the idea of an elite to heart. […] But now <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">this elite business, this assurance of
superiority, this sense of rightness about the hierarchy topped by managers and
engineers — this was instilled in all college graduates</b>. [***]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Objectively Paul [Proteus:
protagonist] tried to tell himself, things really were better than ever. For
once, after the great bloodbath of the war, the world really was cleared of
unnatural terrors — mass starvation, mass imprisonment, mass torture, mass murder.
Objectively, know-how and world law were getting their long-awaited chance to
turn earth into an altogether pleasant and convenient place in which to sweat
out Judgment Day. (p. 14) </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Rudy Hertz </u>(machinist whose
movements recorded for machines to replace machinists): Rudy, the turner-on of
power, the setter of speeds, the controller of the cutting tool. This was the
essence of Rudy as far as his machine was concerned, as far as the economy was
concerned, as far as the war effort had been concerned. The [recording] tape
was the essence distilled from the small, polite man with the big hands and
black fingernails […]. ¶ Now, by switching in lathes on a master panel and
feeding them signals from the tape, Paul could make the essence of Rudy Hertz
produce one, ten, a hundred, or a thousand of the shafts [that Rudy had
machined]. (p. 18)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>Industrial
Revolutions</u></b>: "It seemed very fresh to me [Katharine Finch, Paul's
secretary] — I mean the part where you say how <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the First Industrial Revolution devalued muscle work</b>, then the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">second one devalued routine mental work</b>.
[…]." / " Norbert Wiener […] said all that way back in the
nineteen-forties." [***] [Paul:] "A third one? What would that be
like? […] I guess the third one's been going on for some time, if you mean
thinking machines. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">That would be the
third revolution, I guess — machines that devalue human thinking.</b>"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(pp. 21-22)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
2</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">
(Roman numerals in Dell edition, which I've changed to Hindu/Arabic)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[The Shah of Bratpuhr, on U.S. tour,
through his nephew and translator, Khashdrahr Miasma] "The Shah,"
said Khashdrahr, "he would like, please to know who owns these slaves we
see all the way up from New York City." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Not <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">slaves</b>," said [Doctor Ewing J.] Halyard [U.S. Dept. of State],
chuckling patronizingly, "<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Citizens</b>,
employed by government. […] Before the war, they worked in the Ilium Works,
controlling machines, but now machines control themselves much better. […] And
any man who cannot support himself by doing a job better than a machine is
employed by the government, either in the Army or the Reconstruction and
Reclamation Corps." (pp. 26-27 ["Reconstruction &
Reclamation": "Reeks & Wrecks" in slang]) *** (p. 27)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Ahhhhh," said the Shah,
"<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ci-ti-zen</i>." He grinned
happily. "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Takaru — citizen. Citizen
— Takaru</i>." ¶ "No <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Takaru!</i>"
said Halyard. ¶ Khashdrahr shrugged. "In the Shah's land are only the
Elite and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Takaru</i>." * * * [Moving
around R&R road crew] "Thanks! It's about time!" said Halyard as
the limousine eased past the man. / <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"You're
welcome, Doc," said the man, and he spat in Halyard's face. </b>(p. 29)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter<u>
3</u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There were a few men in Homestead —
like this bartender, the police and firemen, professional athletes, cab
drivers, specially skilled artisans — who hadn't been displaced by machines.
They lived among those who had been displaced, but they were aloof […]. The
general feeling across the river [among the elite] was that these persons
weren't too bright to be replaced by machines; they were simply in activities
where machines weren't economical. (p. 33). </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Lie,
but story of possible boy turning 18, time of the Tests</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[To Paul in a bar] Well, as long as
such a smart man as you is here, maybe I could get you to give me some advice
for the boy. He just finished his National General Classification Tests. He
just about killed himself studying up for them, but it wasn't any use. He
didn't do nearly well enough for college. There were only twenty-seven openings
and six hundred kids trying for them […]. I can't afford to send him to a
private school, so now he's got to decide what he'd going to do with his<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>life, Doctor: what's it going to be, the Army
or the Reeks and Wrecks?" [* * *] ¶ "Doctor," said the man,
desperately now […], "isn't there something the boy could do at the
[Ilium] Works? He's awfully clever with his hands. He's got a kind of instinct
with machines. […] / "<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">He's got to
have a graduate degree</b>," said Paul. […] "That's policy […]. Maybe
he could open a repair shop." / […] How many repair shops you think Ilium
can support, eh? […] We're all so clever with our hands, so we'll all open
repair shops. One repairman for every broken article in Ilium. Meanwhile, our
wives clean up as dressmakers — one dressmaker for every woman in town."
(pp. 36-37</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
5</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After coffee and a liqueur, Paul
gave a brief talk on the integration of the Ilium Works with other industry
under the [U.S.] National Manufacturing Council fourteen years before. And then
he went into the more general subject of what he called <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Second Industrial Revolution</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>[…] Machines were doing America's work far better than Americans had
ever done it. There were better goods for more people at less cost, and who
could deny that that was magnificent and gratifying. [… Paul is interrupted by
his boss — and boss to a lot of people — who wishes to expand on Paul's (quite
standard) point:]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Kroner] "One horsepower equals
about twenty-two manpower — <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">big</i>
manpower. If you convert the horsepower of one of the bigger steel-mill motors
into terms of manpower, you'll find that the motor [sic] does more work than
the entire slave population of the United States at the time of the Civil War
could do — and do it twenty-four hours a day." […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Paul] "And that, of course,
simply applies to the First Industrial Revolution, where machines devalued
muscle power. The second revolution, the one we're now completing, is a little
tougher to express in terms of work saved. If there were some measure like
horsepower in which we could express annoyance or boredom that people used to
experience in routine jobs — but there isn't." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"You could measure rejects […]
said [partner to Kroner in running the Eastern Division of US industry] Baer,
"and the darnedest, stupidest mistakes imaginable. The waste, the
stoppages, the lemons! […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Yes," said Paul,
"but I was thinking of it from the worker's point of view. The two
industrial revolutions eliminated two kinds of drudgery, and I was looking for
some way of estimating just how much the second revolution had relieved men
of."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"I work," said Baer [at
the engineering parts of running Eastern Division]. Everyone laughed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"The others — across the
river," said Paul.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"They never did work,"
said Kroner, and again everyone laughed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And they're reproducing like rabbits,"
said Anita [Paul's wife]. (pp. 56-57)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
8</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Katharine Finch, Paul's secretary
on Bud Calhoun, ace inventor — to Paul Proteus] "Bud wants a job."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Bud wants a job? He's got the
fourth-highest-paid job in Ilium now. […]." [***]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Ah haven't got a job any
more," said Bud. "Canned."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"[…] What on earth for? […]
What about the gadget you invented for —"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"That's it," said Bud with
an eerie mixture of pride and remorse. "Works. Does a fine job. […] Does
it a whole lot better than Ah ever did it."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"It runs the who
operation?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Yup. Some gadget."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And so you're out of a
job."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Seventy-two of us are out of
jobs," said Bud. […] Ouah job classification has been eliminated.
Poof."[…] ¶ […] Now, personnel machines are over the country would be
reset so as no longer to recognize the job as one suited for men. The
combination of holes and nicks [on an «IBM card»] that Bud had been to
personnel machines would no longer be acceptable." [...] ¶ "They
don't need [people classified] P-128s any more," said Bud bleakly,
"and nothing's open above or below. Ah'd take a cut and go back to P-129
or even P-130, but it's no dice. Everybody's full up." <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(pp. 75-76) [***] </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Kroner often said, eternal vigilance was
the price of efficiency. And the machines tirelessly riffled through their
decks again and again and again in search of foot draggers, free riders, and
misfits. […] ¶ [Paul to Bud] "You should be in design."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Got no aptitude for it,"
said Bud. "Tests proved that." ¶ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">That</i>
would be on his ill-fated card, too. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">All
his aptitude-test grades were on it — irrevocably, immutable, and the card knew
best.</b> "But you <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i>
design," said Paul." […] ¶ But the tests says no," said Bud. ¶
"So the machines say no," said Katharine. ¶ So that's that,"
said Bud. [* * *]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Uh-huh," said Paul,
looking at the familiar graph with distaste. It was a so-called <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Achievement and Aptitude Profile, and every
college graduate got one along with his sheepskin. And the sheepskin was
nothing and the graph was everything. (p</b>p. 76-77)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
9</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[James J. Lasher speaking of back
when he was a Protestant minister taking to his congregation or one or more congregants:]
"I used to tell them that the life of their spirit in relation to God was
the biggest thing in their lives, and that their part in the economy was
nothing by comparison. Now, you people [engineering/managerial elites] have
engineered them out of their part in the economy, in the market place, and
they're finding out — most of them — that what's left is about zero. […] For generations
they've been built up <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">to worship
competition and the market, productivity and economic usefulness, and the envy
of their fellow men</b> — and boom! It's all yanked out from under them. […]
Maybe the actual jobs weren't taken from the people, but the sense of
participation, the sense of importance was. […] as far back as World War II,]
Even then there was a lot of talk about know-how winning the war of production
— <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">know-how</i>,
not the people, not the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mediocre</i>
people running most of the machines</b>. And the hell of it was that it was
pretty much true." (p. 92)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Strange business," said
Lasher. "This crusading spirit of the managers and engineers, the idea of
designing and manufacturing and distributing being sort of a holy war: all that
folklore was cooked up by public relations and advertising men to make big
business popular in the old days, which it certainly wasn't in the beginning.
Now, the engineers and managers believe with all their hearts the glorious
things their forebears hired people to say about them. Yesterday's snow job
become today's sermon." (p. 93)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Lasher:] "<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Things, gentlemen, are ripe for a phony Messiah</b>, and when he comes,
it's sure to be a bloody business. […] <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">At
the bottom of it will be a promise of regaining the feeling of participation,
the feeling of being needed of earth — hell, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dignity</i></b>. The police are bright enough to look for people like
that, and lock them up under the antisabotage laws. But sooner or later
someone's going to keep out of sight long enough to organize a following."
[***]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>"I think it's a
grave mistake to put on public record everyone's I.Q. […] the first thing the
revolutionaries would want to do is knock off everybody with an I.Q. over 110,
say." ¶ "Then he 100's would go after the 110's, the 90's after the
100's and so on," said [Ed] Finnerty [friend of Paul].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>"Maybe. Something
like that. Things are certainly set up for a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">class war based on conveniently established lines of demarcation. [….]
The criterion of brains is better than the one of money, but </b>— he [Lasher]
held his thumb and forefinger about a sixteenth of an inch apart — about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i> much better." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>"<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">It's about as rigid a hierarchy as you can
get</b>, " said Finnerty. "How's someone going to up his I.Q.?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>"Exactly,"
said Lasher. "And it's built on more than just brain power — it's built on
special kinds of brain power. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Not only
must a person be bright, he must be bright in certain approved, useful
directions: basically, management or engineering</b>." (pp. 93-95). </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
11</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> (in
the cavern with EPICAC XIV)<br />
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>EPICAC XIV […] was already at
work, deciding […] how many everything America and her customers could have and
how much they would cost. And it was EPICAC XIV who would decide […] how many
engineers and managers and research men and civil servants, and of what skills
would be needed in order to deliver the goods; and what I.Q. and aptitude
levels would separate the useful men from the useless ones […]. (p. 117) </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
14</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Paul Proteus, Doctor of Science,
engineer and manager, thinking of what would later be called "dropping
out":] Again uneasiness crept up on him, the fear that there was far too
little of him to get along anywhere outside the system […]. He might go into
some small business […]. But he would still be caught in the mesh of the economy
and its concomitant hierarchy. The machines wouldn't let him into that
business, anyway, and even if they would, there'd be no less nonsense and
posturing. […]. (pp. 143-44).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Farming — now there was a magic
word. [… But] There were no longer farmers but only agricultural engineers. (p.
144)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
15</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[Paul
Proteus and the realtor, Dr. Pond, at the Gottwald farm, farmed by Mr. Haycox,
son of former owner]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Doctor Proteus — this is Mr.
Haycox."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"How are you?" said Paul.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Do," said Mr. Haycox. "What
kind of doctor?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Doctor of Science," said
Paul.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mr. Haycox seemed annoyed and
disappointed. "Don't call that kind a doctor at all. Three kinds of
doctors: dentists, vets, and physicians. You one of those?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"No. Sorry."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Then you ain't a doctor."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"He <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> a doctor," said Doctor Pond earnestly, "He knows how
to keep machines healthy." He was trying to build up <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the importance of graduate degrees</b> in the mind of this clod.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Mechanic," said Mr.
Haycox. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Pond:] "The modern world would
grind to a halt if there weren't men with enough advanced training to keep the
complicated parts of civilization working smoothly."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Um," said Mr. Haycox
apathetically. "What do you keep working so smoothly?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Doctor Pond smiled modestly.
"I spent seven years at the Cornell Graduate School of Realty to qualify
for a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Doctor of Realty degree</b> and
get this job. [***] I think I can say […] that I earned that degree," said
Doctor Pond coolly. "My thesis was the third longest in any field in the
country that year — eight hundred and ninety-six pages, double-spaced, with
narrow margins."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Real-estate salesman,"
said Mr. Haycox." […] "I'm doctor of cowshit, pigshit, and
chickenshit," he said. "When you doctors figure out what you want,
you'll find me out in the barn shoveling <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my</i>
thesis." [***]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Pond:] "Doctor Proteus is
buying the farm."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Haycox:] "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My</i> farm?" [***]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"The Gottwald estate's
farm," said Doctor Pond.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"That a man?" [***]
"Well, I'm a man. As far as men go, this here is my farm more'n it's
anybody else's. I'm the only man who ever cared about it, ever did anything
about it." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Paul Proteus will keep Haycox on.]
(pp. 150-52)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
18</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[Paul
Proteus to his wife:] "In order to get what we've got, Anita, we have, in
effect, traded these people [the under-schooled and un- or under-employed] out
of what was the most important thing on earth to them — <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the feeling of being needed and useful, the foundation of self-respect</b>."
(p. 169) * * *</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"That's just it: things haven't
always been that way. It's new, and it's people like us who've brought it
about. Hell, everybody used to have some personal skill or willingness to work
on something he could trade for what he wanted. Now that the machines have
taken over, it's quite somebody who has anything to offer. All most people can
do is hope to be given something."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"If someone has brains,"
said Anita firmly, "he can still get to the top. That's the American way,
Paul, and it hasn't changed." She looked at him appraisingly. "Brains
and nerve, Paul."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And blinders." (p. 177)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
19</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Paul reflected that Baer [chief
engineer of Eastern Division] was possibly the most just, reasonable, and
candid person he'd ever known — remarkably machine-like in that the only
problems he interested himself in were that brought to him, and in that he went
to work on all problems with equal energy and interest, insensitive to quality
and scale. (p. 187)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
20</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Geneva",sans-serif" style="font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">[Homer Bigley, trimming hair of Shah and delivering
a monolog in English the Shah can't understand]: "Now they say barbering
isn't a profession, but you take the other professions that got too big for
their breeches since the Middle Ages and look down on barbering. You take
medicine, you take the law. Machinery.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Doctor doesn't use his head
and education to figure out what's the matter with you. Machines go over you —
measure this, measure that. Then he picks out the right miracle stuff, and the
only reason he does is on account of the machines time him that's what to do.
And the lawyers! […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Used to be sort of high and
mighty, sort of priests those doctors and lawyers and all, but they're
beginning to look more and more like mechanics. Dentists are holding up pretty
good though. They're the exception that proves the rule, I say. And barbering —
one of the oldest professions on earth, incidentally — has held up better than
all the rest. Machines separated the men from the boys, you might say. (pp.
195-96) * * *</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"These kids in the Army now,
that's just a place to keep 'em off the streets and out of trouble because
there isn't anything else to do with them. And the only chance they'll ever get
to be anybody is if there's a war. That's the only chance in the world they got
of showing anybody they lived and died […].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Used to be there was a lot of
damn fool things a dumb bastard could do to be great, but the machines fixed
that. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Now the machines take all the
dangerous jobs, and the dumb bastards just get tucked away in big bunch of
prefabs […] or in barracks, and there's nothing for them to do […]. Or maybe
hope — but they don't say so out loud because the last one was so terrible —
for another war. Course there isn't going to be another one.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And, oh, I guess machines have
made things a lot better. [… Though] It does seem like the machines took all
the good jobs […]. And I guess I'm just about the end of a race, standing here
on my own two feel" (p. 198)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[Next
section of the monolog, Bigley tells how a barber so feared the invention of a
barber machine that he dreamed about it and ended up inventing one himself: p.
199.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
21</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[Propaganda
play at "The Meadows" retreat for rising engineers and managers, and
executives. "John Averageman":] "Well, sir, it hurts a man a lot
to be forgotten. You know — to have the fellers in charge, the engineers and
managers, just sort of look right through him […]." (p. 205)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"The play was virtually the
same play that had begun every Meadows session […]. Twenty years ago, Paul's
father had brought him up here, and the play's message had been the same: that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the common man wasn't nearly as grateful as
he should be for what the engineers and managers had given him</b>, and that
the radicals were to cause of the ingratitude" (p. 211).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
22</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[On
</span><u><span face=""Geneva",sans-serif" style="font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Dr. Francis Eldgrin Gelhorne</span></u><span face=""Geneva",sans-serif" style="font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">:
Successor to George Proteus, hence, the second National Industrial, Commercial,
Communications, Foodstuffs, and Resources Director (183). For all practical
purposes, the human ruler of the US economy, hence, of the US:] </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When war became certain and the
largest corporations were looking about for new manufacturing facilities,
Gelhorne had delivered his prosperous community of plants to General Steel, and
became an officer of that corporation. The rule-of-thumb familiarity he had
with many different industries […] had been broader than that of any executives
General Steel had […], and Gelhorne was soon spending all his time at the side
of the corporation's war-rattled president.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There he'd come to the attention of
Paul's father […], and Paul's father had made Gelhorne his general executive
manager when the whole economy had been made one flesh. When Paul's father
died, Gelhorne had taken over.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It could never happen again. The
machines would never stand for it. (pp. 218-19)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[Gelhorne
to Paul:] "Show me a specialist, and I'll show you a man who'd so scared
he's dug a hole for himself to hide in. […] <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Almost nobody's competent</b>, Paul. It's enough to make you cry to see
how bad most people are at their jobs. If you can do a half-assed job of
anything, you're the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind." (p. 219)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
24</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[Halyard
of State Department with a first-time hooker he's almost completed procuring
for the Shah:]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Anyway," said the girl,
my husband's book was rejected by the Council."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Badly written," said
Halyard primly. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Beautifully written," she
said patiently. "But it was twenty-seven pages longer than the maximum
length; its readability quotient was 26.3, and —"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"No [book] club will touch
anything with an R.Q. above 17," explained Halyard.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And," the girl continued,
"it had an antimachine theme." [***]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"He sounds very <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">maladjusted</b>," said Halyard [… who
recommends psychotherapy ***].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"[…] He watched his brother
find peace of mind through <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">psychiatry</b>.
That's why he won't have anything to do with it.<br />
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"I don't follow. Isn't
his brother happy?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Utterly and always happy. And
my husband says somebody's just <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">got</i>
to be maladjusted; that somebody's got to be uncomfortable enough to wonder
where people are, where they're going […]. That was the trouble with his book.
It raised those questions, and was rejected. So he was ordered into <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">public relations duty</b> [… which he
refused, cutting him off from his gov't supports].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"I was wandering around town,
wondering what on earth a girl could do these days to make a few dollars. There
aren't many things."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Halyard:] "This husband of
yours, he'd rather have his wife a — Rather have her —" Halyard cleared
his throat — "than go into <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">public
relations</b>?" </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"I'm proud to say, said, the
girl, "that he's one of the few men on earth with a little self-respect
left." </span><span face=""Abadi MT Condensed Light",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">{NOTE: Vonnegut was a PR flack for General Electric
for a bit, after he returned from World War II. Erlich definitely appreciates
the joke since for a summer job he looked in at a PR operation and had to leave
because he was starting to gag; he took a job doing hospital work and wasn't
queasy there.}</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
26</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[Paul
Proteus on an "All automatic" train:] […] Paul wondered at what
thorough believers in mechanization most Americans were, even when their lives
had been badly damaged by <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">mechanization</b>.
The [former train] conductor's plaint, like the lament of so many wasn't that
it was <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">unjust to take jobs from men to
give them to machines</b>, but that the machines didn't do nearly as many human
things as good designers could have made them do. (p. 241)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[Army
guys on train observed by Paul Proteus with Paul's thoughts, or the
Narrator's:]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Paul shook his head slightly as he
listened to the sergeant's absurd tale [of a generator "moonlight
requisitioned" (i.e., stolen) and put to use powering up the automated
weaponry that butchered attackers]. That, then, was the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">war</b> he had been so eager to get into at one time, the opportunity
for basic, hot-tempered, hard-muscled heroism he regretted having missed. There
was plenty of death, plenty of pain […]. But men had been called upon chiefly
to endure by the side of the machines, the terrible engines that fought with
their own kind for the right to gorge themselves on men. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Gosh! Sarge, how come you
never went after a commission?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Me go back to college at my
age? […] Getting' that B.S. was enough for me. Two more years and an M.A. for a
pair of lousy gold bars [of a U.S. Army second lieutenant]? Naaaaaah!"
(pp. 242-43)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[Paul
getting off train at Ilium station and seeing in a standard-satiric list,
shortened here:] […] The automatic ticket vendor, the automatic [chewing] gum
vendor, the automatic book vendor, […] the automatic Coke vendor […]. (p. 245)]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
27</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[Paul
— having quit his job/been fired (plot stuff), watching day-time TV: the
standard show. Kid to mom on why he was in a fight:]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[…] but he said my <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">I.Q.</b> was 59, Ma! […] And he said Pop
was a 53." [… And] It's true. I went down to the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">police station and looked it up</b>!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>[…] He turned his back, and his voice was a bitter whisper: "And
you with a 47, Ma. A 47." [***] </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Jimmy, I.Q. isn't everything.
Some of the unhappiest people in the world are the smartest one." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Since the start of his week of
idleness at home Paul had learned that this, with variations, was the basic
problem situation in afternoon dramas, with diseases and injuries of the optic
nerve and locomotor apparatus a close second. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"You mean — a plain fellow like
me […] folks like us, Ma, you mean we're as good as, as, as, well, Doctor
Gorson, the Worlds Manager?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Doctor Gorson, with his 169
I.Q. Doctor Gorson, with his PhD. [sic on no periods], D.Sc., and his Ph. And
D. […] Him?" […] Jimmy […], have you seen the lines in his face? He's
carryin' the world around on his shoulders, Jimmy That's what a high I.Q. got
him […]. Do you know how old he is? […] He's ten years younger than your Pa,
Jimmy. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">That's</i> what brains got
him." (p. 248)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
28</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[Thoughts
of, "Doctor Harold Roseberry, PE-002," head coach of Cornell U
football, which has paid for several new campus buildings] and four new
professorial chairs: The Philosophy of Creative Engineering, Creative
Engineering History, Creative Public Relations for Engineers, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">and Creative Engineering and the Captive
Consumer</b>. (pp. 258-59)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[Informal
competition between Roseberry and one of the Elite (quite drunk) from the
Meadows, for the soul and abilities of Buck Young, an IM football champion for
Delta Upsilon, being offered $35K a year to play for Cornell — or he can continue
his studies: university athletes are pro athletes, not students.] </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Identifying himself:] "Doctor,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor</i>, mind you, Edmond L. Harrison
of the Ithaca works. […] He appealed to Buck, whose exit [from the campus bar
of this scene]. Doctor Roseberry represents one road, and I the other. I am
you, if you continue on your present course [of studying for a degree], five
years from now. […] If you are good," he said, "and if you are
thoughtful, a fractured pelvis on the gridiron will pain you less than a life
of engineering and management. In that life, believe me, the thoughtful, the
sensitive, those who can recognize the ridiculous, die a thousand deaths."
[…]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"The best man I knew at the
Meadows —"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Meadows</i>?" said Buck in awe."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"The Meadows," said
Harrison, "where men at the head of the procession of civilization
demonstrate in private [with their competition at camp games] that they are
ten-year-olds at heart, that they haven't the vaguest notion of what they're
doing to the world."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"They're opening new doors at
the head of the procession!" said Buck hotly, shocked by the near-sabotage
talk. […]"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Slamming doors in everybody's
face," said Harrison. "That's what they're doing." (pp. 264-65)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[Harrison
talks of quitting and leaving civilization.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And do what?" said Buck,
baffled.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Do?" said Harrison.
"<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Do?</i>" That's just it, my
boy. All the doors have been closed. There's nothing to do but find a womb
suitable for an adult, and crawl into it. One without machines would suit me
particularly."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"What have you got against machines?" said
Buck.</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"They're slaves."</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Well, what the heck, said
Buck. "I mean, they aren't people. They don't suffer. They don't mind
working."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"No. But they compete with
people."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"That's a pretty good thing,
isn't it — considering what a sloppy job most people do of anything?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"Anybody
that competes with slaves becomes a slave," said Harrison thickly,</b> and
he left. (p. 266)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
29</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[Paul
Proteus, having been taken captive by the revolutionaries of The Ghost Shirt
Society, whose goal is stated by Ed Finnerty, and the interview with/initial
indoctrination of the drugged Paul continues:]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"That the world should be
restored to the people." […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"You're going to help" [as
figure-head and/or Messiah-figure]. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"What's a ghost shirt?"
murmured Paul […].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Toward the end of the
nineteenth century," said Lasher [movement leader, former Christian
minister, quite realistic and pragmatic fanatic], a new religious movement
swept the Indians in this country, Doctor." </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"The Ghost Dance, Paul,"
said Finnerty.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"The white man had broken
promise after promise to the Indians, killed off most of the game, taken most
of the Indians' land, and handed the Indians bad beatings every time they
offered any resistance," said Lasher. […]. […] the Indians found out that
all the things they used to take pride in doing […] all the ways […] they used
to justify their existence — they found all those things were going or gone.
[…]"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"[…] Indian ways in a white
man's world were irrelevant. […] They only thing they could do in the changed
world was to become second-rate white men or wards of the white men."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Or they could make one last
fight for the old values," said Finnerty with relish.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And the Ghost Dance
religion," said Lasher, "was the last, desperate defense of the old
values." [***]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"They were going to ride into
battle one last time," said Lasher, "in magic shirts that white men's
bullets couldn't go through." (pp. 272-73)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Don't you see, Doctor
[Proteus]" said Lasher. "<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The
machines are to practically everybody what the white men were to the Indians.
[…] People have no choice but to become second-rate machines themselves or
wards of the machines.</b>" [***] </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"[…] If a Messiah shows up now
[Lasher says] with a good, solid, startling message, and if he keeps out of the
hands of the police, he can set off a revolution — maybe one big enough to take
the world away from machines, Doctor, and give it back to the people."
([And Paul is their choice.] pp. 274-75)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
30</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[On
their inability to recruit a character seen earlier, Alfy Tucci, who] "[…]
never joined anything […]." […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Lasher smiled sadly. "<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The great American individual</b>," he
said. "Thinks he's the embodiment of liberal thought throughout the ages.
Stand on his own two feet, by God, alone and motionless. He'd make a good lamp
post, if he'd weather better and didn't have to eat." (pp. 281-82)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[Plan
for the Revolution and difference from our times: those social organizations
(Kiwanis, Elks, General Federation of Women's Clubs, Order of the Eastern Star
— although KV doesn't note the women's groups) vs. our "Bowling
Alone"]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"A special meeting of every
chapter of every big social organization in the country, outside of the
engineers' and managers', will have been called. At the meetings, our people,
big men in the organizations, will tell the members that all over the country
men are marching through the streets on their way to wreck the automatic
factories and give America back to the people. Then they put on their ghost
shirts and lead whoever will follow, starting with a few more of our people
planted around." […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"How many do you suppose will follow?" said
Paul.</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"As many people as are bored to death or sick of
things the way they are," said Lasher. […]</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And then what?" said Paul.</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And then we get back to basic values, basic
virtues!" said Finnerty. Men doing men's work, women doing women's work.
People doing people's thinking." </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>[Which leads to a
discussion of EPICAC.] (pp. 282-83).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
31</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">
[Paul captured by police]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When the police had identified Paul,
they had been embarrassed by his I.Q., and his rank in the criminal hierarchy:
the archcriminal, the would-be king of the saboteurs. There was no comparable
rank in the Ilium police force, and the police had, out of humbleness and
lifelong indoctrination, sent for inquisitors with adequate classification
numbers and I.Q.'s. (p. 289)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
32</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">
[Paul's testimony at his trial, while hooked up to a lie detector with a very
public response indicator.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"The witness will please tell
what he considers to be a lie," said the judge.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Every new piece of scientific knowledge is a good
thing for humanity," said Paul. […]</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Now a truth," said the
judge.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"</b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being
human beings</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">,"
said Paul, "<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">not to serve as
appendages to machines, institutions, and systems</b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">." </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">(p. 297, Erlich's emphasis of a line important
for Vonnegut)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[Prosecutor
says, with some truth according to the lie detector on Paul's responses, that
Paul's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">real</i> motivation for leading
the rebellion was hatred of his father.] "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury
and the television audience: I submit that this man before you is a little more
than a spiteful boy, to whom this great land of ours […] has become a symbol of
his father! A father whom, subconsciously, he would have liked to destroy. […]
Call it Oedipus complex, if you will. He's a grown man now, and I call it
treason!" (p. 298)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Paul responds with an important
argument against not just 1950s Freudian psychologizing but the much older and
more deeply-rooted Roman/Christian over-emphasis on people's motives.] </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>"But, even if there
weren't this unpleasant business between me and the memory of my father, I
think I would believe in the arguments against the lawlessness of the machines.
[…] What hate does, I think, is to make me not only believe, but want to do
something about the system. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">I suspect that all people are motivated by something pretty sordid,</b>
and I guess the clinical data bears me out on that. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sordid things, for the most part, are what make human beings, my father
included, move</b>. That's what it is to be human […]. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"What the prosecutor has just
done is to prove what everything about this world we've made for ourselves
seems determined to prove, what the Ghost Shirt Society is determined to
disprove; that I'm no good; you're no good, that we're no good because we're
human." (p. 299)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
33</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[Ewing
J. Halyard of the US State Department hadn't passed the PE requirement for his
Cornell Bachelor's degree. He's given his makeup tests by Harold Roseberry,
whom he has offended.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Wondering at the mechanics of being
a human, mechanics far beyond he poor leverage of free will, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mr. </i>Halyard
found himself representing the fact of no rank as plainly as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor</i> Halyard had once represented a
great deal of rank. […]</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When Halyard had recovered [from his
make-up PE tests, as administered by Dr. Coach Roseberry], and changed […] into
street clothes, he had seen in the mirror, not a brilliantly fashionable cosmopolite,
but an old, overdressed fool. Off had come the boutonniere, the contrasting waistcoat,
the colored shirt. Accessory by accessory, garment by ferment, he'd stripped
away the symbols of the discredited diplomat. Now he was, spiritually and
sartorially, whites, grays, and blacks. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[…] The State Department's personnel
machines, automatically, with a respect for law and order never achieved by
human beings, had started fraud proceeding against him, since he had never been
entitled to his Ph.D., his classification numbers, or, more to the point, to
his pay check. (pp. 300-301)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">In
the limo, with Halyard trying to get through the crowds of the revolt. Halyard
to driver:]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"I don't know what's going on,
and neither do you. Now drive to the police station, do you understand?"
said Halyard.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"You think you can order me
around just because you've got a Ph.D. and I've got nothing but a B.S.?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Do as he says," hissed
Khashdrahr, placing the point of his knife in the back of the driver's neck
again. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The limousine moved down the
littered, now-deserted streets toward the headquarters of Ilium's keepers of
the peace.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The street before the police station
was snow-white, paved with bits of punctured pasteboard: the
fifty-thousand-card deck with which the Ilium personnel and crime-prevention
machines had played their tireless games — shuffling, dealing, off the bottom,
off the top, out of the middle, palming, marking, reading, faster than the
human eye could follow, controlling every card, and implacably protecting the
interests of the house, always the house, any house. (p. 305)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
34</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> [The
day after the Revolution; the authorities have surrounded Ilium and demanded
the leaders of the Revolution, plus total surrender or face a siege for six
months. The leaders here, a little drunk]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"You know," said Paul at
last, "things wouldn't have been so bad if they'd stayed the way they were
when we first got here [to Ilium and the Ilium Works] Those were passable days,
weren't they?" He and Finnerty were feeling a deep melancholy rapport now,
sitting amid the smashed masterpieces, the brilliantly designed, beautifully
made machines. A good part of their lives and skills had gone into making them,
making what they'd helped to destroy in a few hours.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Things don't stay the way they
are," said Finnerty. "It's too entertaining to try to change them.
Remember the excitement of recording Rudy Hertz's movements, then trying to run
automatic controls from the tape?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"It worked!" said Paul.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Damn right!"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And then putting lathe group
three together," said Paul. "Those weren't our ideas of course."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"No, but we got ideas of our
own later on. Wonderful ideas," said Finnerty. "Happiest I ever was,
I guess, Paul; so damn engrossed. I never looked up to notice anything
else."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Most fascinating game there
is, keeping things from staying the way they are."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"If only it weren't for the
people, the goddamned people," said Finnerty, "always getting tangled
up in the machinery. If it weren't for them, earth would be an engineer's
paradise."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Let's drink to that."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>They did. (pp. 312-13)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"What became of the
Indians?" said Paul. […] ¶ The original Ghost Shirt Society […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Lasher:] They found out the shirts
weren't bulletproof, and magic didn't bother the U.S. Cavalry at all."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"So —?"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"So they were killed or gave up
trying to be good Indians […]."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"And the Ghost Dance movement
proved what?" said Paul.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"That being a good Indian was
as important as being a good white man — important enough to fight and die for,
no matter what the odds. The fought against the same odds we fought against: a
thousand to one, maybe, or a little more."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Paul and Ed Finnerty looked at him
incredulously.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"You thought we were sure to
lose?" said Paul huskily.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Certainly," said Lasher,
looking at him as though Paul had said something idiotic.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"But you've been talking all
along as though it were almost a sure thing," said Paul.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Of course, Doctor," said
Lasher patronizingly. "If we hadn't talked that way we wouldn't have had
that one chance in a thousand. But I didn't let myself lose touch with
reality."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Lasher, Paul realized, was the only
one who hadn't lost touch with reality. He, alone of the four leaders, seemed
unshocked by the course of events […] even, inexplicably, at peace. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Finnerty was covering his initial
surprise at Lasher's statement, so perfect an apostle was he. […]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Lasher was fully awake now […].
"It doesn't matter if we win or lose, Doctor [Proteus]. The important
thing is that we tried. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">For the record,
we tried!" […]</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"What record?" said Paul.</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Suddenly Lasher underwent a
transformation. He showed a side of himself he had mentioned, but which Paul
had found impossible to imagine.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And with the transformation, the
desk became a pulpit.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Revolutions aren't my main
line of business," said Lasher, his voice deep and rolling. "I'm a
minister, Doctor, remember? First and last, I'm an enemy of the Devil, a man of
God!" (p. 314)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Chapter
35</span></u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The brains of the Ghost Shirt
Society were touring the strongpoints on the frontiers of their Utopia [in
Ilium]. And everywhere they found the same things: abandoned posts, mounds of
expended ammunition, and riddled machinery.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The four had come to an exciting
decision: during the six months of blockade threatened by the authorities, they
would make the ruins a laboratory, a demonstration of how well and happily men
could live with virtually no machines. They saw now the common man's wisdom in
wrecking practically everything. (p. 316). </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[Next scene: Characters
we've seen before getting some remaining machines working again.]</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">(pp.
317-19)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">[The
four Ghost Shirt leaders passing a liquor bottle, on their way to surrender;
Lasher toasts:]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"[…] — to the record."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The bottle went around the group [to
Finnerty and Prof. Ludwig von Neumann, former PoliSci instructor and the fourth
leader, both toasting the record …]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Paul took the bottle and studied
Lasher for a moment […]. Lasher, the chief instigator of it all, was contented.
A lifelong trafficker in symbols, he had created the revolution as a symbol, and
was now welcoming the opportunity to die as one.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And that left Paul. "To a
better world," he started to say, but he cut the toast short, thinking of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the people of Ilium, already eager to
recreate the same old nightmare</b>. He shrugged. "To the record," he
said, and smashed the empty bottle on a rock.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Von Neumann considered Paul and then
the broken glass. "This isn't the end, you know," he said.
"Nothing ever is, nothing ever will be — not even Judgment Day."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Hands up," said Lasher
almost gaily. "Forward March [sic]." (p. 320, end of novel)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><br />
++++++++++++++++++++++<br />
In case the embedded link doesn't work: <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Study
Guide for Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s <u>Player Piano</u></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2022/05/study-guide-for-kurt-vonnegut-jrs.html></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style> <br /></p>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-23151811354504918882022-05-21T18:36:00.001-07:002022-05-21T18:36:10.783-07:00Study Guide for Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s Player Piano<p>
</p><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Rich Erlich, Utopias/Dystopias, SF, Mod.
Fiction</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">StGd <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Player
Piano</i><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Draft 2.3: 2003 /
Uploaded Views May 2022</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p align="center" class="StudyGuides" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Chicago; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Study
Guide for Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Player
Piano</i></span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">1. I'll try to give citations to chapters
whenever possible and convenient. Citations by page will be to <u>Player Piano</u>
(1952; rpt. NY: Dell, 1974). For bibliographic work on secondary material for
Vonnegut, see recent issues of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">PMLA</i>
annual bibliography, the volume on Vonnegut in the 21st Century Authors series,
and me. You can try the Web, but I suggest going through King Library,
reachable through Miami's Home Page. </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">2. <u>Allusions in the text</u> (except for
names, which are handled below): </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>p.
9; "Ilium, New York, is divided into three parts" (ch. 1): Julius
Caesar's commentaries on the wars in Gaul ("All Gaul is divided into three
parts").</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>p.
63: "Why did it have to happen?" "The Lord giveth, and the Lord
taketh away" (ch. 5): Job, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">passim</i>
and 1.20-21: "Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head [in
mourning for his children, who were killed by the Adversary], and fell down
upon the ground and worshipped; and he said:</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Naked
came I out of my mother's womb,</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>And
naked shall I return thither;</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>The
LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away;</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Blessed
be the name of the LORD."</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(Remember the «death» of Checker Charley for
the comic motif of mechanocide [genocide against machines] at the end of the
novel.)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>p.
114: "To live in a house by the side of a road . . ." (ch. 10): 2nd
stanza "House by the Side of the Road"—</span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Let me
live in a house by the side of the road</span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Where
the race of men go by—</span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The men
who are good and the men who are bad, </span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">As good
and as bad as I. </span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I would
not sit in the scorner's seat </span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Nor hurl
the cynic's ban—</span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Let me
live in a house by the side of the road</span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">And be a
friend to man. [* * * Etc.]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>Samual
Walter Foss (public domain 1899)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">http://www.ipoet.com/ARCHIVE/ORIGINAL/Foss/House.html</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The allusion contrasts with Paul's vision of
being a revolutionary Messiah, if not with the real development of Messiahs and
other heroes, who frequently withdraw from the world for a while before
beginning their careers. </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>p.
148: "After us the deluge" (ch. 15): This is a line by Mme De
Pompadour (1721-64), mistress to King Louis XV of France. The deluge came on
schedule under Louis XVI (in 1789).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>p.
157: "—that a man was a man for all that" (ch. 17): slight
modification of the key line in Robert Burns, "For A' that and A'
That"—a poem setting forth the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity
(and which may be based in part on Tom Paine's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rights of Man</i>).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>p.
179: "<u>Gott mit uns</u>" (ch. 19): German for "(If) God is
with us" or "God be with us"—a standard line when going off to
war. To translate and paraphrase: The Blue Team is going to win — God be with
us.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>pp.
197-98: "This above all, be true to yourself, and you can't be false to
anybody else" (ch. 20): Shakespeare's Polonius: last lines in his farewell
to his son, Laertes, go</span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">This
above all; to thine own self be true,</span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">And it
must follow, as the night the day,</span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Thou
canst not then be false to any man. . . .</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span>(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hamlet </i>1.3.78-81)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hamlet</i>
and in <u>Piano</u> these lines are quite ironic, including that in both
contexts this moldie-oldie cliché <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>is</u></i>
good advice.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>p.
206: "Star of wonder, star of might; star of wondrous beauty bright"
(ch. 21): Direct quote from a Christmas carol; the star in the carol is the
wondrous star of Bethlehem, leading the wise men to the Christ child.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>p.
215: "the packing up of troubles in old kit bags" (ch. 22):
Paraphrase of line in a World War I song (another moldie oldie by 1952)—</span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Pack up
your troubles in your old kit bag</span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">And
smile, smile, smile.</span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">While
you've a lucifer [= match] to light your fag [= cigarette],</span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Smile
boys all the while. . . . (Quoted from memory)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>p.
216: <u>De mortuis nil nisi bonum</u> (ch. 22): Latin, "Say nothing about
the dead, unless it's something good." This is a traditional response when
asked for a comment on a dead person you think ill of.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>p.
243: "Horatio on the bridge" and "Roland and Oliver" (ch.
26): "<u>Horatius Cocles</u>, a Roman hero traditionally of the late 6th
century BC but undoubtedly legendary, who first with two companions and finally
alone defended the Sublician bridge (in Rome) against . . . the
entire Etruscan army, thereby giving the Romans time to cut down the bridge. He
then threw himself into the Tiber to swim to the other shore. Versions differ
as to whether he reached safety or was drowned" (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ency. Brit., III</i>, Micropaedia, vol. V). Roland is the star of the
medieval French epic poem, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Song of
Roland</i>; Oliver is his second in command. The poem tells us that
"Roland is brave and Oliver is wise," so Roland + Oliver would give
us a hero (bravery + wisdom, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fortitudo et
sapientia</i>), and the two are types for courage and military prowess.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>p,
251: Jim Thorpe: James Francis Thorpe (1886-1953), "one of the most
accomplished all-around athletes in history" (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ency. Brit., III</i>, Micropaedia, vol. IX).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>p.
253: "Should of stuck with your dog and your mother": Referring to
the clichés, "A boy's best friend is his mother" and "A dog is a
man's best friend" (ch. 27). Also: "A boy's best friend is his
dog."</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>p.
289: "Blessed are fetishists. Inherited earth" (ch. 31): In the
Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall
inherit the earth" (Matthew 5.5).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>p.
298: "Oedipus complex" (ch. 32): Direct reference to Freud's idea
that little boys want to kill their fathers and coit with their mothers. (The
best known source of the Oedipus story is Sophocles's tragedy, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oedipus Tyrannos</i>.) Freudian psychology
was big in the 1950's.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">3. <u>Ilium, New York</u>: "Ilium"
is both the ancient name of Troy and a bone in the pelvic girdle (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ency. Brit., III</i>, Micropaedia, vol. V). Upstate
New York is famous for pretentious place-names (Ithaca, Rome etc.). To the best
of my knowledge, there is no Ilium, New York.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">4. <u>CAST (in order of appearance</u>) with
comments and important page numbers for their development (Dell edn.)—including
page of first appearance: </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Paul
Proteus</u>: The most famous Paul is St. Paul, the "apostle to the
Gentiles." Paul started out as a nice Jewish boy named Saul, who picked up
an excellent education in both Judaism and Greek philosophy and literature. He
was also a Roman citizen, a major status symbol among more sophisticated (if
less zealous) Jews. He was a persecutor of Christians until he was converted to
Christianity on the road to Damascus. He was eventually martyred for spreading
what the Roman authorities saw as Christian subversion, dying well: "I
have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the
faith" (second Letter to Timothy 4.7). Proteus is a character in Greek
mythology: "a prophetic sea divinity, son of either Poseidon or Oceanus,
who would foretell the future to those who could seize him. When caught, he
would assume all possible varying forms so as to avoid prophesying, but when
held fast despite it all, he assumed his usual form of an old man and told the
truth" (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Putnam's Concise
Mythological Dict.</i>). Introduced on p. 9 (1st p. of text); Paul is the
protagonist (and hero?) of <u>Piano</u>.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>George
Proteus</u>: Father to Paul, former National Industrial, Commercial,
Communications, Foodstuffs, and Resources Director of the USA; he's dead by the
time the novel starts, but his spirit marches on (9-10).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Katherine
Finch</u>: Paul's secretary, lover of Bud Calhoun (10); she eventually joins
the Ghost Shirt Society (276).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Anita
Proteus</u>: Paul's wife until she throws him over for L. Shepherd and Paul
gives her solid grounds for divorce. (Introduced on p. 10.) "Anita"
was an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in</i> name in the early 1950's.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Bud
Calhoun</u>: An engineer at the Ilium Works; a mechanical genius who eventually
invents himself out of a job. He joins the Ghost Shirt Society. (See pp. 12, 75,
276.)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Lawson
Shepherd</u>: Second in command to Paul at the Ilium Works; becomes lover to
Anita; a stereotypical competitor (16 & <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">passim</i>).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Rudy
Hertz</u>: A master machinist whose movements Paul, Shepherd, and Ed Finnerty
immortalized on tape, putting Hertz and his comrades out of jobs. (Introduced
on p. 18.)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Kroner
and Baer</u>: "manager and chief engineer, respectively, of the entire
Eastern Division, of which the Ilium Works was one small part" (23). Baer
represents the engineering competence and tinkering genius that keeps the
system going; Kroner represents the faith that holds together the intellectual
elite. Kroner knew Paul's father and acts as a father figure for Paul. Baer
quits his job after he reads the letter from the Ghost Shirt Society. (See pp.
48 f., 292.)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Ed
Finnerty</u>: Friend of Paul's, former member of the National Industrial
Planning Board (24). He becomes a friend of Lasher and goes on to serve as one
of the Thought Chiefs in the revolution.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Shah
of Bratpuhr</u>: A foreign potentate visiting in the USA (26). The name of his
country may be a pun: brat-poor, "lacking in brats." If this is the
case, it'd be an implicit contrast with the USA: a country rich in
"brats" (i.e., childish adults). The Shah is the standard satiric
figure of the naive visitor who is still smarter than his sophisticated hosts. Note
well the questions he asks and his comments.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Ewing
J. Halyard</u>: State Dept. Protocol man showing around the Shah (26). "Halyard":
"a rope or tackle for hoisting and lowering"; "Ewing J.":
WASPish sounding names, appropriate to Halyard's status in life at the
beginning of the novel. Note Halyard's fall and his integrity.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Khashdrahr
Miasma</u>: Nephew of and interpreter for the Shah (26). "Khashdrahr":
"cash-drawer," I assume. "Miasma": "a vaporous
exhalation formerly believed to cause disease, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">broadly</i>: a heavy vaporous emanation."</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Mom</u>:
Kroner's wife (50).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Fred
Berringer</u>: Arrogant numbskull working for Paul; Kroner respects the
Berringer bloodlines (50).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>PFC.
Elmo C. Hacketts, Jr.</u>: Everyman as soldier (67, 244).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Luke
Lubbock</u>: A perennial joiner of organizations that allow him to wear
uniforms —ending in his joining the Ghost Shirt Society (89, 95-96, 276). Consider
how much there is to Lubbock, naked.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Rev.
James J. Lasher</u>: "Chaplain, Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps"
(91); minister of God, maker of messiahs and revolutions; becomes one of the
four Thought Chiefs of the Ghost Shirt Society (89, 271 f., 314f.).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Alfy
Tucci</u>: TV shark, "master of silent television," stereotypical
individualist (99, 281-82). His kid brother is <u>Joe Tucci</u> (255-56).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>EPICAC
XIV</u>: The ultimate computer, or, just another false god (115f.). From:
Ipecac, an emetic.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Jonathan
Lynn</u>: Former TV personality, now President of the US (117).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Fred
Garth</u>: Paul's competition for the post in Pittsburgh; the guy who
ringbarked the sacred Oak at the Meadows (127, 183 f., 252 f., 289 f.).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Dr.
Pond</u>: Realtor handling Gottwald place (144 f.). Note him on titles; note
well his brand of integrity.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Mr.
Haycox</u>: Farmer on Gottwald place; member of Ghost Shirt Society (148 f.,
276). Haycox seems to be the last holdover from the Good Old Days when men were
men and worked the soil and got their hands dirty. </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Edgar
R. B. Hagstrohm</u>: Statistically average man (except for his two initials and
possibly his fondness for Tarzan), host to the Shah (155 f.); husband to <u>Wanda</u>;
lover to <u>Marion Frascati</u>. He eventually runs amok (250).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Dr.
Francis Eldgrin Gelhorne</u>: Successor to George Proteus, hence, the second
National Industrial, Commercial, Communications, Foodstuffs, and Resources
Director (183). For all practical purposes, the human ruler of the US economy,
hence, of the US.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Homer
Bigley</u>: Barber who trims Shah and delivers monolog on Progress (194 f.). "Homer"
= Ancient Greek poet.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Edward
L. Harrison</u>: Young engineer at the Ithaca Works who befriends Paul and
tells Buck Young to go into the football business (225 f. & 264 f.).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Lou
MacCleary</u>: Executive Manager of National Industrial Security; chief
security officer for American industry. Attends meeting at Meadows where Paul
is "fired" and quits (215 f.).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Harold
Roseberry</u>: Head football coach at Cornell U; the man who gives Halyard his
PE test (257 f.).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Buck
Young</u>: IM football player for Delta Upsilon, hotly desired by Coach
Roseberry for the Cornell football team (260 f.). "Buck Young" =
simple inversion of "young buck."</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Ludwig
von Neumann</u>: Former PoliSci instructor, the 4th Thought Chief of the Ghost
Shirt Society (277f.). He's an intellectual who gets into revolution as much to
perform an experiment as to save the world. (Possible Allusion: John von
Neumann, mathematician important for, among other things, the theory of games
[important for mathematical economics] and the development of computers.)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Harold
?:</u> Black dude sharing cell with Paul; eventually becomes a specialist at
blasting traffic safety education boxes (288 & 311).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">5. <u>Satire</u></span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Try
to figure out what and who is being satirized. </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>The
Foreword mentions "managers and engineers" of the future, not, of
course, ours; look for managers and engineers as two butts (= targets) of
attack. </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>As
a Mode of narrative, Satire is conservative, after its fashion, tending to
reject all formal ideologies. Some forms of Rightist satire, however, attack
various aliens: Jews and others from the East in ancient Rome, Blacks "In
White America" (to use a play title), the various "wogs" of the
Earth—"not our kind (and inferior)." And sometimes satire is just
racist. Since most satire is written by males, it's sometimes misogynist or at
least bigoted against women; and sometimes it's just sexist (an ideology of
radical difference between men and women, with men as the norm and women
consistently and systematically inferior). </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Is
<u>Player Piano</u> sexist? </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>It's
from 1952, and was written before that: just after the "boys" were
coming back from World War II and wanted (back) the good jobs that women had
taken during the war. How do you make Rosie the Riveter give up her job to some
guy? Part of the way was redefining "femininity" yet again, to make
the ideal a middleclass woman who worked only in the home, raising the kids and
being, not a housekeeper but a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">home maker</i>.
Even an author radical in many other ways, may not be capable of seeing what's
happening to women right in front of his eyes. Indeed, even into the 1960s,
Leftists weren't all that much better on women's issues than the Right, which
helped inspire the revival of the Women's Movement. </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Alternatively
or additionally, does <u>Piano</u> (also) open up for investigation—for you,
anyway, possibly by angering you — the question of what "women's
work" might be in an age of machines labor? If you find the lives of the
women of <u>Piano</u> empty and meaningless, might that be a point in the novel
about the ideal and actualities of women's lives in America in the late 1940s,
early 1950s? If there are no kids, and machines can do the housework, and
homemaking is all there is for women to do . . . ? (See Betty
Friedan, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Feminine Mystique</i>
[published 1963 f.].)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Women
don't come through very well in <u>Piano</u>, but, then, how do men come
through? Satire is rarely fair, but it ought to be evenhanded in choosing
victims. </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>Is
it an insult to group _____ if they're left out of a satire?</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>Is
it a bigger insult to be included, but only in small numbers, so that all in
the group look evil and/or silly? </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides" style="margin-left: 127.6pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(Consider Chaucer's Pilgrims or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Simpsons</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">South Park</i>: fine satires featuring a broad range of people to laugh
at [and sometimes with].)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>Is
Anita as dumb as Paul sometimes thinks she is? When is she right and he wrong? Do
Anita and the other women make <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rational</i>
choices given their options? </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides" style="margin-left: 1.75in;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">This is an important point: many
people who preach that other people should take responsibility for their
actions try to slough off their own choices and actions, including inaction,
that contribute to a world where crime and other evils are rational choices for
many people. </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>We
learn what Mom Kroner looks like, and it's not good. Do we learn what men look
like (e.g., Dr. Francis Eldgrin Gelhorne [217; ch. 22])? Is it any better? Are
their looks more or less important for their status in life than that of Mom
Kroner or Anita? </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides" style="margin-left: 1.75in;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A very ugly stand-up comedian
(male) joked that women say looks aren't important to them, "that what
they're interested in is personality," e.g., having a sense of humor,
"which explains why [handsome] Tom Cruise is always getting trampled by
women running after Buddy Hackett," a short, dumpy, ugly comedian, who
used his usual voice for the sea gull in DisneyCorp's <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">The Little Mermaid</span>. Women may be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">more </i>typed and trapped by their looks than men are, but that leaves
plenty of room for men to be typed and trapped. The serious political question
isn't, I think, whether or not men and women differ in their evaluations of
appearance but whether or not members of different groups have to care what
others think of their appearance. </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>Do
the women in <u>Piano</u> come to happy endings? Anita gets a soul-mate for
marriage in Shepherd. What happens to the other women? </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>Do
the women in <u>Piano</u> get to hold positions of power in the Revolution? If
not, why not? If not, note that for the 1960s. </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">6<u>BRUTE FORCE CRITICISM</u>:</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Political
System Background</u>: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Washington
Post Weekly Edition</i> for August 19-25, 2002 (?) letter by Anna Kasten Nelson
of Washington, DC, titled "Securing the Homeland"</span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Fred Hiatt reminded us in his July
22-25 op-ed column, "Truman's Rose-Colored Reforms," that attempts to
unify the armed services were time consuming and fr[a]ught with jealousy. Nor
were the National Security Council and CIA spared the "turf wars" of
1947 when Congress finally agreed to pass the National Security Act. </span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He omitted, however, the fourth agency
created by the act—the National Security Resources Board (NSRB). It is this
failed agency that serves as both a model and warning to the creators of the
Department of Homeland Security." </span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The NSRB was the centerpiece of the
plan to protect national security. Both of the major 20th-century wars had
found the United States unprepared for mobilization. NSRB was designed to solve
this problem. […]</span></p>
<p class="quote"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Because it had to coordinate the
evaluation of natural and industrial resources, including manpower, seven of
the eight Cabinet departments in place in 1947 were involved in its work. Success
would have required the cooperation of all involved. [* * *]</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">— Which
didn't happen. The NSRB "was abolished in 1953," according to Ms.
Nelson, giving it a "brief lifetime," but one which included much of
the time of composition, and copyright date, of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Player Piano</i>. NSRB is cited in US government documents on the Web
(example given below). So in projecting a future "National Industrial,
Commercial, Communications, Foodstuffs, and Resources" directorate (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Player Piano</i> 10; ch. 1), Vonnegut was
doing very modest science-fiction extrapolation from and satiric exaggeration
of an existing agency and current trends. </span></p>
<p class="quote" style="margin-left: 85.05pt; tab-stops: 113.0pt 310.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><http://envirotext.eh.doe.gov/data/eos/truman/19510308.html><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"></i></span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Foreword</u>:
<u>Piano</u> was written during the Korean conflict and was published at the
height of McCarthyism (Joseph McCarthy was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1946,
re-elected in 1952, and not censured until 2 December 1954). For all of
Vonnegut's references to God, note that he is an atheist.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
1</u>: Anita is described as barren (10) — which is interesting, since all the
Narrator might tell us was that the marriage was barren (i.e., Paul might be
sterile; both might be fertile — but not with each other). </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Contrast
Bud's car with Paul's.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Contrast
the old inhabitants of Building 58 with the new ones: especially the two kinds
of sweepers (15-16, 20-21) and the cat.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Note
the "essence" of Rudy Hertz, as "far as his machine was
concerned" (18).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>The
death of the cat catches rather nicely a major theme (or, the theme) of <u>Piano</u>:
the organic and the mechanical are opposed, and in a conflict between the two
the organic is going to lose; still, it's important to fight the good fight.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Note
the order in which Paul and Anita declare their loves. On p. 25, it's "I
love you, Paul" and "I love <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you</i>,
Anita"; on p. 165 it's "I love you, Anita" and "I love <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you</i>, Paul."</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
2</u>: The Shah thinks that American society is based on slavery or (and?)
communism; Halyard, of course, corrects him (27-29). Whose idea of America is
closer to the truth? In America are there also "only the Elite and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Takaru</i> [slaves]" (29)?</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
3</u>: Note Narrator on Paul's thoughts on Reeks and Wrecks vs. the Army (31). There's
an important point here on inner hollowness and the usefulness of clothes to
cover that hollowness.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>We
get in this chapter the first of at least three bar scenes in Homestead: note
well the feelings of all involved (34 f.).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>We
also get introduced to the player piano (37) and to the Rev. Mr.—or should I
say <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor </i>— Lasher (the unnamed man,
on pp. 36 f., who claims to have a job-seeking son). Try to figure out what
that piano represents.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
4</u>: <u>Piano</u> uses 3rd person "limited omniscient"
"over-the-shoulder" narration (the second quoted phrase is mine; the
first is a useful oxymoron). I.e., the Narrator may see all and know all, but
he tells us mostly what his protagonist sees, hears, and thinks. The Narrator
seems to like Paul, but he is also well aware of Paul's weaknesses and gives us
some hints about them. Case in point: "Paul began to suspect that
Finnerty's way of life wasn't as irrational as it seemed; that it was, in fact,
a studied and elaborate insult to the managers and engineers of Ilium, and to
their immaculate wives. Why Finnerty has seen fit to offend these gentle people
was never clear to Paul, who supposed the aggressiveness, like most
aggressiveness, dated back to some childhood muddle" (40). In ch. 3 we've
seen Homestead and have learned of the evil these "gentle people" are
doing; we've also seen some of the "psychopathology" of the everyday
life of Paul Proteus (the pistol, the jacket) and may begin to wonder if
there's some "childhood muddle" behind some of Paul's behavior (see
p. 298).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Still,
the Narrator likes Paul and so does Vonnegut: and we see Paul's beginning to
ask the right questions and starting to feel properly alienated (41-43). Finnerty
introduces the Meadows, the system, and the possibility of just quitting (44);
he implies strongly what we've started to suspect: the system is something to
be opposed, not adjusted to (45).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Note
Finnerty on Anita-as-machine. On p. 237 she'll quote this, as an accusation
against Paul.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides" style="margin-left: 1.75in; tab-stops: 28.0pt 55.0pt 86.0pt 310.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Do <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> identify Vonnegut with Finnerty or
Paul Proteus, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i> remember that
Anita is a whole lot smarter and more sophisticated than she seems to Paul (for
one thing, she gets what she wants). Still, <u>Piano</u> may definitely not
transcends its times on gender matters, and Vonnegut, in contemporary terms,
may have been, and may have remained for a long while, pretty sexist. </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
5</u>: Note Kroner as father figure: "It was as though Paul stood in the
enervating, emasculating presence of his father again" (48). In the theory
of the Oedipus complex the little boy worries that Daddy will find out what the
kid wants and will castrate him to prevent it. The Oedipus complex business,
however, is less important for the novel than the motif of adults/children. We
see very few real children in the story; on the other hand, we see a lot of
people over the age of majority acting like kids, being treated like kids, etc.
There may be a theme of paternalism in the novel — also a theme of the arrested
emotional/moral development that allows such paternalism.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Note
Baer and Kroner as 1/2men (49); it may be quite important at the end of the
novel that Baer quits his job.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fred Berringer is important as an example of
the ways in which the god of efficiency is sometimes flouted; note other
instances when the rules are gotten around for the satisfaction of the elite of
the elite, especially male egos (50).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides" style="margin-left: 127.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A number of hardheaded businessmen
follow(ed) highly inefficient customs: "perfect copy" demanded in
single-spaced letters produced on typewriters, wearing clothes to work that one
would never really <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">work</i> in (suits are
not practical for physical labor), offices, travel arrangements, and other
amenities much, much beyond what they need to just do their jobs. </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Note
the first round in the Paul/Shepherd/Anita contest: pp. 52 f.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Party
and Checker Game</u>: Note Finnerty's comment that "Somebody always wins,
and somebody always loses" (61). Does Finnerty learn a different
philosophy when he becomes Lasher's disciple?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The "death" of Checker Charley
prefigures the war against the machines later in the novel. Note Finnerty's
sympathies and his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sic semper tyrannis <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>("Thus always with tyrants");
note that Paul is the only one to laugh (64).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Chapter
6</u>: Another theory popular back in the 1950s was that many of us want to
return to the peace and comfort of the womb; this theory is used here and later
with a speech by Ed Harrison (64 and 266).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finnerty and Finnerty's quitting juxtaposed to
the picture of Paul's father — a picture Anita uses to goad Paul on (66).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Narrator tells us that "Paul missed
what made his father aggressive and great: the capacity to really give a
damn" (67). How are we to feel about Paul's inability to give a damn about
the Ilium Works, the Meadows, and all? Should we rejoice later, when Paul
learns to give a damn about the revolution?</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter 7</u>: Note the patriotic
citizens/slaves "confusion."</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Chapter
8</u>: In the unnamed Reek and Wreck and in the fired Bud we can see how the
System fails to reward creativity and tinkering genius (73-75). Note the satire
against (mechanical) aptitude tests. Note Bud's utter passion to mechanize the
world (79 f.); remember this for the morning after the revolution Bud helped to
make. (Also: note Paul's suggestion that they could just "tack a memo
about policy on the guardhouse wall" [p. 80]. Bud's getting kidded a
little here.)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Chapter
9</u>: Paul's comments here about not knowing his father may be every bit as
truthful as his comments later, at his trial. I.e., Paul may be ticked at his
father because Old Man Proteus never had time for Paul; this seems just as
likely as any Oedipus complex — esp. since we learn nothing about Paul's mother
(85).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>psychiatrist</u>:
More center/edge business, with infinity thrown in (86-87). In the 1950's and
even later, many psychiatrists felt that it was their job to get people to
adjust to society. (Indeed, the precursors of school psychologists in Chicago
were called "adjustment teachers.") Overreacting to that bit of
stupidity, many intellectuals began to talk favorably of neuroses. This, of
course, also fits in with the old literary theme of "reason in
madness," fools speaking Truth, blind seers, etc. etc. </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><u>Sugar/Infinity</u>:
Note question in <u>Piano</u> of what people might be for, our purpose, and the
probability that Vonnegut answers that our purpose is to be the best human
beings we can. OK, what does it mean to be human, in <u>Piano</u>, mostly
humans as opposed to machines? Perhaps, among other things,</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span>(1)
We should be like a cat, rather than like a machine: emotional, striving to get
the hell out of a mechanized environment (opening of novel).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span>(2)
We should be reasoning creatures, perhaps like future computers, but using
fuzzy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">human reason</i>, rather than
rigid, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">machine</i> reason.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span>(3)
We should be able to conceive of infinity and (emotionally) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">care</i> about the infinite; in that sense,
anyway, we should be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">spiritual beings</i>.
(Vonnegut was an atheist, but a-theism [being without God or gods] doesn't
require denial of spirituality in all its senses.)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>"<u>rebirth</u>":
First used by Paul on p. 87: "I guess I looked forward to some sort of rebirth
too." Note that this word comes right after the discussion of shrinks and
after the Narrator has mentioned infinity and love. Is Paul moving toward a
rebirth?</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>bar
scene at Homestead</u>: ("Homestead": cite of the famous Homestead
Strike of July 1892: Andrew Carnegie; union busting; and a Presidential
election — a real classic bit of downhome American violence.)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Luke</u>:
Note his need for costumes and the possibility that he's hollow inside. That's
particularly important, given that Luke is actually one of the more positive
characters in <u>Piano</u>.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Lasher</u>:
Note that he has no son (or any other kids). Consider carefully the Socratic
(91) dialog we get in this scene: From Plato to B. F. Skinner right up to
Ursula K. Le Guin much of the action of dystopian and utopian literature has
served to put people into positions where they could have long conversations. Note
that Lasher is both a Protestant Minister and "an anthropologist with a
masters degree" (91). Most of the time we'll see him as a scientific,
detached revolutionary; never forget, though, that this basic motivation is
service to God. (Vonnegut, the atheist, might respect that service — when it
provides the energy to get something done; cf. Paul Proteus's comments at his
trial on sordid motivations.)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Revolution</u>:
Lasher here gets the refrain "My glass is empty" and seems to speak
pretty theoretically about the needed Messiah. Try to determine just how far
along his subversion is at this stage of the game. Note Lasher's insightful
"Yesterday's snow job becomes today's sermon" (93). And, perhaps,
today's messiahs, disciples, and martyrs will be the bringers of tomorrow's
world. (Lasher in this scene may be like Jesus at about 30 years old, just
beginning his ministry.)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Science</u>:
Lasher says that science is OK; his only problems are with technology (93). This
may be a good strategy on Vonnegut's part: take on one enemy at a time. Still,
though, science (and scholarly research) can't be as neutral as Lasher
describes it. (See ch. 32, p. 297).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>IQ
Hierarchy</u>: Cf. Michael Young, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870-2033: The New Elite of Our Social Revolution</i>
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1958; NY: Random, 1959). In the early 1970's (or
late 1960s) this idea was recycled yet again and got some play in the media:
the worst sort of class structure would be the more or less rational one based
on merit, especially if "merit" were quantified with something like
IQ (see <u>Piano</u> 94-95).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Identity</u>:
Paul gets the idea that he's getting one (102-3); note how Paul's first
movements toward dissent are undercut by his farcical actions as a drunk. "'Friends,
my friends!' he cried. 'We must meet in the middle of the bridge!' The frail
table suddenly lurched beneath him. He heard the splitting of wood, cheers, and
again — darkness" (105). Note that at the end of the scene Paul has lost
Finnerty (who is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lashing</i> away at the
player piano) to Lasher (106).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
10</u>:</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Anita/Shepherd</u>:
See Shepherd's line on doing things right (107) and compare it with Anita's
line on p. 113. Paul is really slow in not catching on to what Anita and
Shepherd have in common.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note Anita in her kitchen: the truth of the
scene and what Paul would like to make of it (110-11).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note that Anita wants Paul to tell her that he
copulated with one of the Homestead women; but she's appalled at the idea that
Shepherd might have seen them (112-13).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Paul/Alfy</u>:
Paul starts to identify with Alfy here (a bit), and Alfy comes to represent
Individualism. It's possible that this fits in with Paul's switch from
messianic meeting in the middle of the bridge to a desire for withdrawal (114).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
11</u>:</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>President</u>:
Reigns but doesn't rule (118-19); sort of a symbol to all them other
"plain folks" out there in TV land. Note that "plain folks"
is a technical term for the standard technique of propaganda that Pres. Lynn's
script writers are using.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>EPICAC
XIV</u>: The real ruler of the USA. but <u>not</u> the Messiah—it can't answer
the Shah's riddle (121). Anyone know the answer to the riddle?</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
12</u>:</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Kroner</u>:
He's in the (literary) tradition of the Victorian industrialist, esp. as dealt
with by such satirists as Charles Dickens (with maybe a touch of G. B. Shaw's
arms merchant in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Major Barbara</i>). Note
Kroner's home, portrait (122), and family life (123).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note the juxtaposition of progress and guns. Note
Kroner as both father figure and tempter in this scene.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Paul</u>:
He quotes Anita pretty exactly in responding to the Pittsburgh offer (127 and
114; see also p. 81).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note that only Paul really appreciates how
grotesquely the scene ends (132), but he sings along. You need to picture this;
it's funny. </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
13</u>: Note integrity as the key moral norm of <u>Piano</u>. (It is not,
however, the political norm: people on both sides have integrity; others on
both sides lack integrity.)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The informer business is, indeed, "about
as basic as an attack on integrity could be" and would be justified in the
novel on esthetic grounds alone (132). Still, Vonnegut didn't get his
reputation as a satirist by being a stickler for New Critical canons of the
artsy-craftsy, and the informer business has direct relevance to Joe McCarthy
and the US House of Representative's Committee on un-American Activities
(HUAC). The basic temptation offered by these un-American committees (the pun
is Harry Truman's) was to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">name names</i>:
i.e., you could get off the hook by informing on others, by turning in your
friends (thereby showing your loyalty to the State). </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides" style="margin-left: 127.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Recently, alumni (so to speak) of
the Red Scare have stressed the ritual aspect to "naming names": the
FBI <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">knew</i> the names already and had
plenty of names, as did the relevant committees of the Congress (etc.); lots of
people were Communists or fellow-travelers during the 1930s and the War years. Cf.
American forgiveness nowadays for repentant sinners from the 1960s: "Yes,
I was a radical, but I outgrew it" — OK. "Inhale? Hell, I chugged the
bhong water!" — OK (the guy who said it is now a conservative, and I think
he got re-elected to Congress). But I'd get into trouble if I said, "Well,
I was a McGovern Democrat in the 1960s, and socially quite conservative when it
came to sex and drugs; and I sincerely regret I wasn't more radical across the
board."—Buzzzz! Wrong answer! A good way to press the point that one must
repent and repudiate the past is to make someone betray his former friends. </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note how Anita has started to talk like
Shepherd (or, always has, but Paul didn't notice). Note Anita and his status as
about all there is to Paul—followed by "Anita, I love you" and
"I love <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you</i> Paul" (133-34).
This may be the first time Paul declares his love first.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
14</u>:</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Outdoor
heroes</u> (135 & 143): See pp. 232-33 for how the publishing business
works in modern America. Note "wife" as just another item in the
catalog of things Paul has learned how to grip. (Catalogs are standard satiric
devices; note where Vonnegut's Narrator uses them.)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Finnerty</u>:
May be something of a "true believer" (in Eric Hoffer's phrase): a
person who lacks integrity, real being, and must therefore look around for
causes to justify his/her existence. Such people make good disciples, since
they <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">must</i> stick with the cause — at
least until they're converted to another cause. Contrast Paul's skepticism:
"Paul reflected that the big trouble, really, was finding something to
believe in" (140). Consider the possibility that Paul and Lasher represent
Vonnegut's norm better than Finnerty does.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
15</u>: Pond, in his comically perverse way, may have more integrity (at this
stage of the novel) than either Paul or Ed Finnerty (147-48). Note, though,
that this world <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">needs</i> the cleansing
deluge (a standard image in revolutionary rhetoric) that would be brought by
the collapse of the "vast and faulty dike" of civilization (148).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How correct is Paul about the way Anita will
respond to a real colonial house? Is he any more correct about the magical
"out" of returning to nature? (This could be the 2nd temptation for
Paul: dropping out.)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note Mr. Haycox on "Dr."; he may be
a walking cliché, but Haycox says things the audience has wanted said for
several chapters. We like Haycox, even as we recognize that he was an
old-fashioned character long before Jefferson wrote about the American Agrarian
Ethic. (Haycox goes back to, at least, Piers Plowman characters in medieval
English satire and to the "good man" [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vir bonus</i>] of Latin satire.) Note also, Haycox on legal fictions as
opposed to men (151): "machinery" can include the law and
bureaucracies as well as physical machines.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
17</u>: Note that the slaves have something in common with the elite — Hagstrohm
reads Tarzan; Paul reads even less respectable adventure tales.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note very well the lot of women in lower-class
America; they are no more liberated than their upper-class sisters. Is this a
failure of imagination on Vonnegut's part? Is Vonnegut saying that the world he
describes would have different kinds of slavery for men and women? </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note Hagstrohm's $30 as the "tiny atom of
the economy under his control"—and that he's going to spend it on a
socially disreputable purpose (and that he sympathizes with the guy who bought
the electric organ). Is this Vonnegut's individualist-capitalist streak showing
through? (Satirists tend to be conservatives, and even left-wing satirists
often have some conservative or reactionary traits. E.g., the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">National Lampoon's</i> article on Richard M.
Nixon's "Linguistic Engineers" took a position on language slightly
to the right of Jonathan Swift in the 18<sup>th</sup> century.)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consider the paradox of being enslaved to
leisure.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
18</u>: So much for dropping out, down on the farm. Still, there <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">should</i> have been some sort of turning
point here, and we are left with a situation that can't continue (in art): Paul
kind of regresses to boyhood.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
19</u>: The chapter opens with an explicit statement about Paul's inertia and
the impending crisis (178-79).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Meadows</u>:
Rumor has it that Vonnegut's picture of old boys at summer camp is fairly close
to what actually went on at corporate retreats in the 1940's and 1950's. It's
intriguing that Vonnegut picked this way to show us the Enemy. We're going to
laugh at them, but we're not going to hate these guys. (It undermines
revolutionary ardor if you're thinking that an enemy should be taken out and
shot — and then start giggling because you realize it'd be more appropriate to give
him a "time out.")</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Garth</u>:
Keep your eye on him as (1) a lover of the system, (2) a competitor that the
Anita-Shepherd theory would condemn to destruction, (3) a father of kids who
aren't going to do that well on their tests.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Gelhorne</u>:
Note that he's called the Old Man (e.g., p. 185). He's the ultimate father
figure in a sense: the major incarnation in <u>Piano</u> of the Old Man
archetype.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Comedy</u>:
(1) That damn loudspeaker; (2) the roughhousing; speech, eulogywise, for Ernie;
(5) the photographer; (6) "the boy who yelled at memorial service"
and his failed life.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
20</u>: Barber's monolog. There's some exposition here, but it seems to be
mostly a summing up of what we've seen. (In satire, subtlety isn't a major
virtue.) Note well the barber's lines on the army and on integrity. As in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hamlet</i>, the old cliché about being true
to yourself is laughable in context but nonetheless true (197-98).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
21</u>: We can be sure that Paul is "half tight." How sure can we be
that "as of the afternoon, he was his own man"? (210).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Keynote
play</u>: Note various people's reactions to it. Note the idea that John
Averageman would be perfectly happy if it weren't for those damn radicals. (Trivia:
I think Vonnegut meant "ultraviolet" when he wrote
"infrared." Vonnegut was never big on looking up such stuff.)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Meeting</u>:
Paul is at a low point just before it starts: "An awakening conscience,
unaccompanied by new wisdom, made his life so damned lonely, he decided he
wouldn't mind being dead" (212).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Background for meeting: Oath of the new
"braves" — real camp stuff — with Luke being the most moved by the
"pomp and circumstance"; the saloon being opened; the different
responses of Harrison and Berringer to the arrowhead.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
22</u>:</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Meadows</u>:</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><u>Meeting</u>:
Note "no need to hurry" as a repeated refrain (e.g., p. 216).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>First
reference to Ghost Shirt Society: p. 217.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note well Gelhorne and his rise—and how that
rise would be impossible in the modern world that Gelhorne runs (218-20). Note
carefully what Gelhorne looks like. Is his appearance important? Is it
appropriate for where he is? For who he is? (For judging Vonnegut's description
of women?)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note Paul's "I quit" (221). They
don't believe him, of course, but the gesture was nice (222).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Plot</u>:
My old calculator tells me that we're 69.375% of the way through <u>Piano</u>
before we really get into what plot there is. What's Vonnegut's Narrator been
doing all this time? Have you been bored? (If the novel's been working for you,
you haven't been bored; Vonnegut's Narrator spent a lot of those 220+pp. telling
us about the rotten world of the future. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All</i>
worlds in art are imaginary and need to be sketched in a bit; still, writers of
fantasy or SF makes fewer assumptions of continuity between their imaginary
worlds and the readers' world[s]—and the writers of utopias and dystopias are
primarily concerned with the worlds they present. Dystopian fiction, like <u>Piano</u>,
will spend a lot of time on the world before and while getting into the plot.)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
23</u>: Note Paul as animal/machine in swinging at the bartender (224) — this
is a fascinating idea for Vonnegut's Narrator — and Vonnegut; he returns to it
often.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note Harrison's charity (225-26), and
friendship-as-integrity (226).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note the weird image of roots rooted in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">home </i>— and the juxtaposition of this image
with the sabotaging of the Oak (a life symbol of the engineering elite). Real
Question: Who says "Beware the Ghost Shirt!" (228)?</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
24</u>: Note Public Relations as greater prostitution than whoring. Note the
discussion of "art" and literature and the "Big demand for that
bare-chested stuff" that Paul's been reading (233). </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides" style="margin-left: 127.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The PR bit is a joke, a serious
one, repeated later in Vonnegut's work: Vonnegut was a PR flack for General
Electric for a bit, after he returned from World War II.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
25</u>: The would-be whore and her husband are juxtaposed to Anita and Paul. Note
that the woman does <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i>, finally, put
out for the Shah — and may be saved from prostitution (entirely? for a while?)
by the Shah's gift. Anita has been involved with Shepherd, unfaithful to her
marriage to Paul whether she and Shepherd copulated or not.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note very well: Anita's accusation that Paul's
treated her like a machine, a sex machine (237). </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Note
also: "I love you" shifts to "I like you" (238). Paul is
totally stripped here: he becomes the "Doctor Paul Proteus, an
unclassified human being," that we see at the beginning of the next
chapter. (Reaching such a low point is a common motif in conversion stories; in
eutopian/dystopian works from the 1950s, cf. and contrast Robert A. Heinlein's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Starship Troopers</i> and Frederik Pohl and
C. M. Kornbluth's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Space Merchants</i>.)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
26</u>: The old conductor is insufficiently radical for both Paul and the
Narrator: both would make technology serve people (241).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note modern warfare and how there's no heroism
there, not even in suffering and dying (242-43).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
27</u>: Paul is now his own man, the Narrator tells us, but he's alone,
"in his own house," not at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">home</i>
(246).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note the little joke in "incitement to
conspire to advocate sabotage" (cf. Jonathan Swift's passage in "A Modest
Proposal," climaxing with "a little bordering on cruelty"; note
real-world complaints about "Conspiracy: The darling of prosecutors"
and recent complaints about loss of American rights in the name of State — oops,
sorry, Homeland — security.).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note how long Paul's farming experiment lasts.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note day-time TV.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Things start moving toward climaxes in this
chapter: Hagstrohm cuts up his M-17 home (250); Garth goes to jail for
ringbarking the Oak; and Paul gets his Mickey and proceeds to his real new
life.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
28</u>: Games and education are important to any culture, so a satirist ought
to get them in. As far as the plot goes, this is the climax of Halyard's story
and the end of Ed Harrison's story. (Why Cornell? Well, it is in upstate New
York; it's Vonnegut's undergrad alma mater; and it was a real rah-rah school in
the 1940s and 1950s.) Note Harrison's "Anybody that compete with slaves
becomes a slave" (266).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
29</u>: Paul's interview (under </span><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Sodium Pentothal™</span><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">). Note Lasher (?) trying to get Paul
to say "evil" and Paul's settling on "pointless" (271). Note
very well the simile 19th century Indians/Whites = just about Everybody
nowadays/machines (272-74).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note well the change of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">values</i> brought about by the machines. </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
30</u>: Note Paul as animal (276) and who is in the revolution. Why did
Vonnegut's Narrator wait until now to introduce L. von Nuemann (277), the 3rd
Thought Chief? Note well the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">motivations</i>
for revolution.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>The
lines on Alfy Tucci are important: they define the limitations of classic
rugged individualism and some significant American forms of liberalism
(281-82).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note that Lasher talks about "people . .
. bored to death or sick of things the way they are"; his disciple Finnerty
talks of the morning after the revolution and return to basic values (282). Note
"Paul's" letter. Note Lasher's use of "bandwagon" (286) — a
technical term in propaganda.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
32</u>: Paul belongs now and has something to believe in — and the lie detector
tells us when he's lying (293-94); so now is a really good time to get Paul's
views and those of the Ghost Shirt Society — and maybe the norms for this
novel.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Trial</u>:
Trials are very effective in theater and literature: they give us debates,
ceremony, and one of the most classic forms of the formal struggle (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">agon</i>). Here you have a dedicated
prosecutor vs. our hero, Paul, and they can argue out the justice of the
revolution and Paul's participation in it. (Cf. and contrast trial in playlet
at the Meadows. Perhaps these trials form two poles in the plot of <u>Piano</u>.)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Revolution</u>:
Paul recognizes that it's treason (295). Note that the revolutionary theory is
good; we'll soon see how the revolution works out in practice.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Lie/Truth</u>:
Paul goes beyond Lasher's position early in the novel; Paul denies that all
scientific knowledge is good.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>"</span><span style="font-family: "Arial Black",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The
Main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings</span><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">"
(297) — at least one critic has taken this line as central to Vonnegut's
philosophy from <u>Piano</u> (1952) to (at least) <u>Slaughterhouse-Five</u>
(1969).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Motivation</u>:
Vonnegut is on to a very important point here. Even after the 1950s people
tried to discredit ideas by pointing out the sordid motivations of the holders
of those ideas. That's a logical no-no (a personal attack, technically, the
rhetorical foul of "poisoning the well"), but it also seems to be a
nearly irresistible impulse. Paul gives the correct answer to this sort of
attack: "Sordid things, for the most part, are what make human beings
. . . move. That's what it is to be human . . ."
(299).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
33</u>: Revolution and tying the story up. Note that Halyard and the Shah get
to Ilium about the time Paul is rescued . The major plot and the subplot don't
really meet, but at least they pass each other closely.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Halyard</u>:
Note his integrity in defeat (302).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Shah</u>:
Asks a major question: What are people for? (302).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Revolution</u>:
It's funny. Note the mock heroic aspects (including the epic catalog) of human
beings committing mechanocide. Note the costumes (always important in battles).</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><u>Real
Questions</u>: (1) Does Vonnegut believe that adulthood is possible for
Americans? The prosecutor calls Paul a boy; Finnerty calls the Moose and Elks
babies (307); and we don't seem to see a whole lot of grownups in the whole
country. (2) "Where are the women?" Shriners and Moose and Elks,
patriarchal organizations that/though they be, have women's auxiliaries. Why
not make full use of your supporters? Since 1789 at least — probably throughout
human history — women have been important in revolutions. </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
34</u>: The morning after the revolution. Note the injuries to the four Thought
Chiefs.</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Change</u>:
Are Finnerty and Paul really against change? Is Vonnegut coming out in favor of
the status quo here? Just what are we to make of Finnerty's line, "Things
don't stay the way they are . . . . It's too entertaining to try to change
them" (313)?</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>People</u>:
Note how they screw up revolutions and engineers' paradises (313). Are we to
approve of people even with such problems? Are we to approve of human
mediocrity? (Such approval runs counter to the elitist theory of, say, Robert
A. Heinlein's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Starship Troopers</i> [1959]
and other works. It also runs counter to the PR flacks who present every
third-rate university student body as "the best and the brightest,"
and the accompanying third-rate faculty as "prestigious." And it runs
counter to the insult most Americans hear in "third-rate," even when
"third-rate" isn't doing badly at all. [If Universities of/in Oxford
and Cambridge and Stanford and Berkeley and the Ivy League (generally) are
first-rate, and the big-time Big-Ten schools and U of Chicago second rate, then
Miami U in Ohio, where I worked for some 35 years, is about third-rate and
doing quite well, thank you.])</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><u>Revolution</u>:
Note the reactions to what happened to the Indians and to Lasher's commenting
that he figured they'd lose. Recall that Lasher is an anthropologist, but
foremost a minister: "First and last, I'm an enemy of the Devil, a man of
God!" (314-15). How does Vonnegut, the gentle atheist, want us to take his
godly revolutionary? And if "seriously" is part of the answer, as it
is, what should we see as "the Devil" as manifested in the world of
the novel? (Put differently, what are the primary satiric targets?)</span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-family: "Geneva",sans-serif; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u>Chapter
35</u>: Note the catalog of "carnage" (315-16). Note the hopelessness
of Utopians: people will re-establish dystopia as soon as it is destroyed. Still,
is it enough to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">somebody</i> (320)? Is
it enough to be recorded as good on the "record" — even if there is no
God to read the record? Do we have a happy ending?</span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-26908859610895154322022-02-03T15:04:00.004-08:002022-02-03T15:04:36.912-08:00Aesop on "The North Wind and the Sun," Old Rabbis on Stolen Bricks — and Junk Mail<p> </p><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="1ajf7" data-offset-key="1sl0e-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="1sl0e-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="1sl0e-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><span> </span>I grew up on Aesop's fable of "The North Wind and the Sun" and the rabbinical parable of the bricks. In the fable, the North Wind and the Sun get into a contest to see who can get a man to remove his cloak. </span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="1ajf7" data-offset-key="dfvdt-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="dfvdt-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="dfvdt-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="1ajf7" data-offset-key="4cv7j-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="4cv7j-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="4cv7j-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><span> </span>The North Wind blows and blows and then blows some more and harder, and the man just wraps his cloak more and more tightly. Then it's the Sun's turn, and the Sun turns up the heat, and the man takes off his cloak. MORAL: The same as the one that went into English as "You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar," which I'll throw in since what interests me isn't that MORAL but the behavior of the North Wind: failing in a ploy and then repeating it and repeating it more strongly.</span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="1ajf7" data-offset-key="1sbnt-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="1sbnt-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="1sbnt-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="1ajf7" data-offset-key="4mngk-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="4mngk-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="4mngk-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><span> </span>The rabbinic parable has a guy thinking about moving into a city and meeting and being treated very nicely by his future neighbors. So he decides to build a house there and gets materials, including a large pile of bricks. Then the night before he's to start construction, the neighbors come over and each one steals a brick — one brick — until the pile is gone, or pretty much. Next day the guy comes over, sees the theft, and laments the loss and demands tracking down the thief. The neighbors come by and ask, rhetorically, "What thief?" And the first one adds, "I took one brick. Surely you're not such a petty cheapskate you'd make a big deal over one lousy brick?!" No simple MORAL here, but a traditional conservative view about social responsibility and how little misdeeds for individuals can add up to a significant social evil. (Also an important idea for questioning the right of each individual gas-station owner to determine who may or may not use his toilets if the upshot is that Black families had problems finding convenient toilets when driving, say, from Florida to DC. Or each arguably legitimate refusal to cooperate with a public health measure if the cumulative upshot is the spread of disease.)</span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="1ajf7" data-offset-key="96n0h-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="96n0h-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="96n0h-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="1ajf7" data-offset-key="ff2m4-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="ff2m4-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="ff2m4-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><span> </span>There's much less at stake here. Here it's my repeated complaint about the repeating and repeating and repeating of individually okay or even admirable e-mail and US-mail appeals for money and support if the cumulative upshot is to overwhelm people (e.g., me). In my case, with rare exceptions, I've just stopped responding, tossing them all (all such mail: into paper recycling or MacTrash): doing without in the case of commercial appeals; just repeating my past donations with charitable appeals; and putting almost all my political money into a local political group that doesn't often bother me for money (and has long since sold my contact information). </span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="1ajf7" data-offset-key="bh9pb-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="bh9pb-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="bh9pb-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="1ajf7" data-offset-key="a66d7-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="a66d7-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="a66d7-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><span> </span>So: Sending me more electronic or hard-copy junk-mail appeals isn't going to help you, gals and guys — you're just doing the North Wind thing. Plus kind of the opposite of stealing bricks: piling up (figuratively burying a guy in) appeals.</span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="1ajf7" data-offset-key="98i25-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="98i25-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="98i25-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="1ajf7" data-offset-key="ckcfi-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="ckcfi-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="ckcfi-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><span> </span>I see no solution here, although it's another reason for better public financing of public services so we need fewer charities, plus public financing of elections, with spending limits. Well, and the US Postal Service should charge junk-mailers more than publications, people mailing bills, and actual letter-writers — and there's got to be some way to charge people per item of electronic mass mailings.</span></div><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="ckcfi-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="ckcfi-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="ckcfi-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="ckcfi-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><span> </span>Taking as a funding model the idea of Constant Contact — actual name of actual firm — may not work so well. </span></div></div>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-1792753903991881762022-02-03T14:48:00.002-08:002022-02-03T14:48:35.009-08:00Yes, I Would Teach Flat-Earth Theory ....<p><span class="" data-lexical-text="true" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span> </span>About 1970 or so I taught a course at the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) in the Rhetoric 108 program: theme-based college comp courses for students who did well on the incoming-frosh writing sample but not well enough to place out of introductory. writing entirely or who wanted (or whose major department wanted them) to take a writing course. The course's theme was "The Rhetoric of the Life Sciences," and we looked at the debate over evolution (of course), but also "spontaneous generation," the structure of DNA, and a bit at related matters: plate tectonics for one, and another on a bit of weirdness with Immanuel Velikovsky, author of <i>Worlds in Collision</i> (1950), which presented a theory of the catastrophism variety, which got us into the catastrophism vs. uniformitarianism debate.</span><br class="" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br class="" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span class="" data-lexical-text="true" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">(My first published essay was, "Catastrophism and Coition: Universal and Individual Development in [D. H.] Lawrence's <i>Women in Love</i>" [1967] — which got me on the mailing lists of some serious whack-jobs.)</span><br class="" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br class="" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span class="" data-lexical-text="true" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">Velikovsky was worth studying:</span><br class="" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span class="" data-lexical-text="true" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span> </span>• Why he was popular, and convinced even two of my pretty prestigious senior colleagues in English.</span><br class="" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span class="" data-lexical-text="true" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span> </span>• The fact that however much Velikovsky was a charlatan and nut, Catastrophism vs. Uniformitarianism had been a serious debate, which had gotten resolved in favor of Uniformitarianism — until catastrophes made a comeback.</span><br class="" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span class="" data-lexical-text="true" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span> </span>• That Velikovsky was wrong about the comet, but had some good points to make on the political implications of Uniformitarianism: a theory that served, however unconsciously, conservatives and moderates (though Catastrophism was, I'd think, ambiguous for radicals and revolutionaries). </span><br class="" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br class="" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span class="" data-lexical-text="true" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span> </span>Relevant here: The question, "Well, would you teach flat-Earth theory?!" should be a real question, not just rhetorical. And yes, I would, starting with what is meant by "teach." Jews can refer to "Our teacher Moses," where the teaching (Torah) includes a good deal of laying down the law. "Our teacher Socrates" refers to a pain-in-the-ass who raised questions. For most of us, most of there time, our senses indicate Earth as lumpy but basically flat. Why did large numbers of educated people quite early on come to believe that Earth was a ball? What's the evidence that they did come to that belief? What's the evidence without complicated instruments that Earth <i>is</i> round? How was it that a literally ancient scientist or two could get Earth not only spherical but could estimate the circumference? And why believe the planet a perfect sphere when it's an oblate spheroid? </span><br class="" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br class="" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span class="" data-lexical-text="true" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span> </span>That gets you into art history, history of science, how science actually operates, and how semi-conscious or explicit philosophical ideas can condition scientific ideas (spheres as a perfect form, appropriate for heavenly bodies — not some deflating ball from kids' games).</span><br class="" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br class="" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span class="" data-lexical-text="true" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span> </span>And then there's the psychology of Flat-Earthers. Anyway, <i>actually</i> "teaching the debate" can help critical thinking a whole lot more than laying down the law — how to fill in the "bubbles" on Scantron exams — with the right answers to questions of little immediate relevance for most of us most of the time.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span class="" data-lexical-text="true" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">* * *<br /></span></p><p><br class="" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span class="" data-lexical-text="true" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span> </span>A graffito in a stall in a men's room in the Business school at Miami University (Oxford, OH [the older Miami]) gave as "The Secret of Success: Find out who Big Brother is; / Find out what Big Brother wants; / Do it." Under that in a different handwriting, "Marry Big Brother's daughter," but that's not relevant here. What <i>is</i> relevant is the meta-lesson behind Big Brother's laying down the law on whether Earth is round or flat, whether species evolved or were created, Uniformitarianism vs. Catastrophism, whether or not life can arise in our world spontaneously. That lesson: Part of The Secret of Success is filling in the bubbles — or even responding to essay exam "prompts" — to reflect Big Brother's doctrines. And Leftist teachers who lay down the law in their classrooms help drive home the meta-lesson, which will be of use to Right-wing little brothers in the business world, who control a lot more of what makes for Success than do folks on the Left.</span><br class="" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" /></p><div class="" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; letter-spacing: normal; line-break: after-white-space; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"></div></div>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-47390479994866808232022-01-21T17:20:00.002-08:002022-01-21T17:23:49.784-08:00Media Are a Plural (Noun [So is "Data"]): On Not Making the Job Easier for Right-Wing Propagandists<p><span style="font-size: small;"> <span> In his flawed, old, and still-totally-essential study, <i>The True Believer</i> (1951), Eric Hoffer talks about devils and their ideal number for politics and propaganda.</span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: small;"><span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-US" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">It seems that, like the ideal deity, the ideal devil is one. We have it from Hitler—the foremost authority on devils—that the genius of a great leader consists in concentrating all hatred on a single foe, making “even adversaries far removed from one another seem to belong to a single category.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: blue; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> When Hitler picked the Jew as his devil, he peopled practically the whole world outside Germany with Jews or those who worked for them. […] Stalin, too, adheres to the monotheistic principle when picking a devil. […] (§ 67)</span></span> <br /></span></span></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span>This is a bit of an overstatement, but useful: If your goal is demonization, it's best to have a conglomerate target, where your audience won't get confused and/or resistant with thinking up exceptions. If your target for demonization is "the Jew," the people you want to move aren't tempted to think of Jews (plural) they might know who are not demons. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span><span> </span>Nowadays, most of us don't talk of "the Jew" or "the Black" or "the White Man" (although you can still hear a Canadian Jew use the last term in THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ — now streaming! — from 1974); and this is progress. We still, though, too often lump together large and disparate groups and talk about "the Americans," for example, in ways too casual for discussing the neighbors as actual people in an actual "the neighborhood."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span><span> </span>And many of us talk and write about "the media ... it," a singular.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span><span> </span>First off, an old, Leftist magazine like <i>The Nation</i> just isn't<i> </i>the respectable Right-wing <i>National Review</i>, much less Fox News or Rupert Murdoch's UK tabloid <i>The Sun</i>; and none of them are <i>Pravda</i> under Stalin or <i>Sports Illustrated</i> — or graffiti or movies or talk-radio.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span><span> </span>More relevant here, keeping "media" a plural makes it just a little bit harder for demagogues and their operatives to lump the media all together, demonize them as an It — and get the demagogues' True Believer followers to believe only the demagogues and their operatives. <br /><br /><span> <span style="font-family: times;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: times;">"Data" is more subtle. Hoffer talks about how an effective mass movement in its active phase — think of a very large cult, on the move — takes a potential True Believer and makes him (mostly males at this stage) fanatically loyal to the cause. One technique is "</span></span><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">interposing a fact-proof screen between him and reality</span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span>"</span></span></span><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"> (§ 43). But this is for the hard-core and usually requires <i>doctrine</i> and indoctrination. </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span> </span>For us in the United States in the 2020's, conscious evil doctrines — though serious — may be less of an immediate threat than just a general impatience with facts and impatience with a scientific/critical attitude and approach to the world. This gets complicated, including how cold and alienating the <a href="http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2015/04/the-incredible-shrinking-man-and-rise.html">facts of the human condition in the universe</a>. One simple thing, though, is that people would be less pushed toward impatience if they didn't hear about a singular "data" from which "Science" makes clear, consistent, and rarely-changing pronouncements. In the messy real world, workers in various sciences work with varying sets of data to try to make sense of those (plural) data. New and different data: different hypotheses, different advice (and, yes, I'm thinking about CoViD-19 and complaints about inconsistency and changing rules/advice). </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span> </span>So plural for "data," please, and let's use "Science" pretty rarely and for one way humans ask questions of the universe — a philosophical sort of thing — and "science<i>s</i>" when getting to the nitty-gritty of dealing with something as complex and very messy as a pandemic. <br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></span></p>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-37105268628371636972021-11-25T19:35:00.002-08:002021-11-25T19:35:51.899-08:00Votes, Guns, and Coming of Age in America, Fall 2021<p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <span> </span><span> </span>On Sunday, Nov. 21,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i class="">Ventura County Star</i><span class="" style="font-style: normal;"> reprinted an editorial from the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i class="">St. Louis Post-Dispatch</i><span class="" style="font-style: normal;"> starting from the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and the raising of the US drinking age to 21, to argue that (using the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i class="">Star</i>’s headline) "National age floor of 21 needed for guns."</span></span></p><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There are issues I’d like to look at and an alternative to propose.</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In two books in the 1990s, Michael Males argued that in terms of social pathologies — crime, for example — older US teens are a normal US adult population, and usually doing better than their elders; older teens had become, as stated in these titles, a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i class="">Scapegoat Generation,</i><span class="" style="font-style: normal;"> targets in a process of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i class="">Framing Youth</i><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">. </span></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;"> </span></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-style: normal; white-space: pre;"> </span>The problem isn’t "What’s the matter with kids today?" but more generally with normal adult US populations, and solutions need to be more general, including with guns.</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Such an argument can seem more likely when we note the many times (as in the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i class="">Post-Dispatch</i> piece) we see the phrase "raging hormones" and how seldom we see numbers for actual measurements of hormone levels at various ages. It is definitely plausible and it was my experience to have what felt like hormone fluctuations going through puberty. After that what seems to be crucial to the experience is whether or not people are "having sex" regularly and settling down, and in the modern US we have the issue of delayed marriage and fairly long periods in which older teens are not invited to engage in socially-endorsed sex or adult domesticity. Let’s have some numbers on testosterone and other hormones at different ages and correlations with, say, violence and crime, including the more subtle kinds.</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-style: normal; white-space: pre;"> </span>More recently, there is the idea that "Young people’s brains are still developing," which I do not doubt. But it’s safe to assume young brains have been developing through recorded history and across human cultures, and the argument needs historical and cross-cultural context. The example cuts both ways, but Alexander the Great came to the throne at 20, and by the time he was old enough to be US President he’d been dead for 2-3 years and had conquered and ruled fairly well much of his world. Octavius Caesar was doing major politics at 17 or 18; Elizabeth Tudor survived her teenage years — and all sorts of young people worked and married and lived as young adults for millennia.</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Whatever is happening with young brains, we need sensible gun laws for everyone.</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And as long as we’re going to have young men eligible for getting guns from the government — conscription — at 18, the rule is still, "Old enough to fight; old enough to vote. Old enough to vote, old enough to drink alcohol" and own guns under the same (<i class="">sensible</i><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">) laws as their elders.</span></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;"> </span></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What we need in the USA is an "age of majority" — full adulthood — across the board, with enforced adult expectations, and some sort of rite of passage: perhaps a few months or up to a year of military or other public service at 18 or so, to the extent the USA can afford it. </span></span></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><br /></span></span>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-68331858373954855062021-11-14T17:22:00.000-08:002021-11-14T17:22:15.553-08:00EXISTENTIAL THREATS<p> </p><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;"><br /></div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;">By definition, the United States as an aspirational democratic-Republic will not survive an authoritarian takeover. Since our main authoritarians are self-described Nationalists, the American nation, as they define it, will. </div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;">CoViD-19 may get horrific. However, Eurasian civilization and perhaps half or more of its people survived Bubonic Plague and The Black Death, and its harming European feudal society was on balance a good thing. We'll survive CoViD-19, but it's caused by a pretty robust zoonotic virus with the potential for mutations that could ravage large populations. </div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;">Climate change from (basically) global warming is a major threat, but civilization and most humans and other organisms — including some large ones — will survive and some may prospser (those of us in hot, dry places, or near oceans, are in serious danger).</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;">As Daniel Ellsberg shows in his much praised, popularly ignored book <i>The Doomsday Machine</i> (2017), Stanley Kubrick did his homework and DR. STRANGELOVE is farcical in tone but documentary in substance. Kubrick's one major error was saying the official policy of the US was that we wouldn't initiate nuclear warfare: our official policy since at least Eisenhower is that, under some conditions, we would (source: Ellsberg and my MilSci courses in the early 1960s). Kubrick got right:</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;">• The public policy of the US is that the US President has "sole authority" over use of nuclear weapons (and can use that authority at any time for any reason: think about that with your least-favorite US President). However, to assure 2nd strike capability, presidents since Eisenhower have delegated authority — or at least have been believed by the relevant people to have done so — to "lower echelon commanders." Whatever their dedication to Central Control, since the Carter and Reagan buildup (and as far as we know continuing since the more recent build-down), the "Ruskies" have done the same. And for the same reasons: credible threat of retaliation in case of "decapitation." In a number of highly unlikely but possible scenarios, any remaining "Launch on Warning" missiles might *be* launched.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;">• "General Nuclear War" — all-out and thermonuclear — could destroy civilization in the Northern Hemispheres, starting with all those cities that are the root of the word "civilization."</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;">• General Nuclear War with a significant number of ground-burst nuclear and thermonuclear weapons threatens to start a global winter leading to global famines (etc.) and threatening civilization world-wide, and, if sufficiently prolonged, large-scale extinctions of many species of animals and plants and other organisms dependent on sunlight.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;">The EXISTENTIAL THREAT to humans and a number of other species remains nuclear warfare.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;">But no b.s. on "destroying the planet" or "destroying life on Earth." "Earth abides," as Ecclesiastes and a post-apocalyptic novel title has it, and life on Earth will survive: the vast majority of living things are non-vertebrates, a number of whom don't need sunlight. Or will survive until the sun goes nova or other cosmic calamity. We might not; a whole lot of vertebrates and fancy-bodied eukaryotes might not. What we arrogantly call "prokaryotic" — like Nature was just chomping at the bit to evolve cells with nuclei — what we think of as primitive life forms will make it through yet again. They were here before us by billions of years, and they well may outweigh us in biomass and/or outnumber us in genes.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;">But for us, as we think of us, Nukes remain the only Weapons of Mass Destruction and Existential Threat. Let's pay more attention.</div></div>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-69560788061010082202021-09-05T21:38:00.000-07:002021-09-05T21:38:03.673-07:00<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span> <span>Abortion: Analysis and a "Technological-Fix" Thought Experiment</span></span></span></b></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span>(From 14 February 2009) </span><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><br /></span></p><p>
</p><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The medical problems of
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg remind us that the lull we're experiencing in the
culture wars will soon be over. Before the figurative wars, and very literal
tempers, flare up again, I'd like to discuss (calmly) the two most-opposed
positions. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My over-riding points are the
unoriginal ones that both sides have their logic and morality, that because of these
different "logics" and moralities the most-opposed positions are
irreconcilable — but that the majority of Americans can, very messily,
compromise. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For a "Pro-Choice"
position in one pure form, note that whatever human beings are includes our
bodies, and that control of one's body is central to freedom. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Your soul belongs to
Jesus," the movie drill instructor yells, "but your ass belongs to
me!" So military draftees know a thing or two about bodily freedom and the
lack thereof, as do prisoners, slaves, gays, and other oppressed guys. Women
know more: control of women by men has rested on control of women's bodies,
primarily control of sex and reproduction. Therefore women's liberation
requires that women assert control over their bodies, most especially over sex
and reproduction. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If women are to be free, they
must be able to avoid pregnancy through contraception and free to terminate
unwanted pregnancies, especially those caused by rape or by being denied
contraception. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For one coherent
"Pro-Life" position, human beings are essentially souls, in
traditional Christianity souls to be saved or damned. In Catholic teaching,
such humanity begins at conception: when sperm and egg combine to form a unique
human zygote, a new human individual, with a soul. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As a fact, not a position,
"There's always a death in an abortion"; the serious question is
"What dies?" In the theory of souls, a human being dies, an unborn
human baby, and, for many, an unbaptized human being, releasing a soul laden
with Original Sin. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>With both of these clear and
coherent positions, abortion is not open to compromise. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Continued subordination of
women will not be allowed by those who want women free of male domination. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The damnation of a single soul
is an infinite loss, and even lowering the stakes to bodily life and death, it
is immoral to bargain with the lives of babies. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So most people
who are logically consistent and rigorous on abortion have trouble accepting
the trimester compromise of Roe versus Wade: <span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">"The Court ruled that the state cannot restrict a woman's right to
an abortion during the first trimester, the state can regulate the abortion
procedure during the second trimester 'in ways that are reasonably related to
maternal health', and the state can choose to restrict or proscribe abortion as
it sees fit during the third trimester when the fetus is viable ('except where
it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the
life or health of the mother')"
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade>.</span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Most of us, though, are fuzzy in our logic,
unphilosophical, and conflicted on abortion. And that is where there is hope
for a political resolution.</span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For most of us, a human being is, among
other things, a complex animal with a backbone and brain. And one translation
of Ecclesiastes 11.5 in the Bible suggests that how a soul gets into the
growing "limbs within the womb of the pregnant woman" — and I assume
when — is a formula for something people cannot know. For most Americans, a
single-celled zygote with human genetics, or a sphere of human cells (a
"blastula") isn't a human being with human rights. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And so for most Americans, even those who
believe in souls, the deaths of zygotes and very early embryos are not a major
problem. We can accept stem cell research and contraception that involves the
death of very early embryos. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But also, for most of us, abortion becomes increasingly
a problem as embryos become fetuses and develop toward viable and visible
humanity. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The logically consistent will be left out
of the compromise, but most of us can live with something like Roe v. Wade
along with the long-standing goal of abortion as legal, safe, available, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rare</i>.
</span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>With luck and vigorous programs encouraging
contraception, unwanted pregnancies can become so rare that the issue can be
resolved, logically messily and only eventually, with a technological fix that
allows terminating pregnancies without killing embryos or fetuses: removing and
preserving embryos and fetuses for implantation into the wombs of women who
want them. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To spell that out: I'm suggesting </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">a still
science-fictional quick fix since, if nothing else, as a thought-experiment it
helps clarify the issues.</span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
seriously unwanted pregnancies occur only with a failure in robust
contraception and are very rare and soon discovered, then they can be
terminated by removing the embryo or fetus from the mother and preserving it
alive until it can be transplanted into the womb of a willing mother or allowed
to gestate in an artificial womb and "decanted" <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brave New World</i> fashion and adopted. As the allusion to Aldous
Huxley's anti-utopia suggests, this idea raises serious ethical questions but
none as severe as those raised by abortion; such a quick fix would reduce the
problem to the technical and, very much, the political, including the politics
of contraception.</span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span face=""Verdana",sans-serif" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Where the couple — and I definitely
include the male here — has failed to use robust contraception, perhaps they
should pay back the State (partially at least) for removing, preserving, and potentially
implanting the embryo or fetus. Not with money, which would privilege the rich,
but by public-service labor such as assigned for misdemeanors</span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
</span></span><p class="StudyGuides"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Meanwhile, for the foreseeable future, we
need vigorous programs encouraging contraception, prenatal health, and adoption
are important public health and population policies, and having abortion legal,
safe, available, and rare is a worthy goal most Americans can support.</span></span></span></p><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></span></p>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-56648589340839548482021-09-05T21:08:00.000-07:002021-09-05T21:08:01.601-07:00<p> </p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.3456px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span class="s2" style="font-family: "Avenir Book"; line-height: 18.3456px;">Abortion and Such</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "Avenir Book"; line-height: 18.3456px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Yet Again</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "Avenir Book"; line-height: 18.3456px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></b></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 15.288px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.3456px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">(January</span><a name="_GoBack"></a><span class="s2" style="font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>2016</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">, re-posted 5 September 2021)</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 15.288000106811523px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"> </span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 15.288000106811523px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 18.345600128173828px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">Once or twice a year I write on the abortion controversy, usually in a small-city<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://www.journal-news.com/news/lifestyles/philosophy/richard-erlich-stars-and-planets-align-to-clarif-1/nNZXg/"><span class="s4" style="color: blue; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; text-decoration: underline;">newspaper</span></a><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>or a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2015/03/abortion-rant-early-summer-2013-30-june.html"><span class="s4" style="color: blue; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; text-decoration: underline;">blog post</span></a><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">Sometimes, I'm just pedantically correcting<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">the question,</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>"When does life begin?" That formulation is<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">forgivable</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>since common, but pretty useless</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">:</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>one thing the Bible and biology since the late 19</span><span class="s5" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 7px; line-height: 8.40000057220459px; vertical-align: super;">th</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>century agree on is that life doesn't begin, but<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s6" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">began</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and has been transmitted ever since. So eggs and sperm are alive, as are zygotes, embryos, and fetuses. "There is always a death in an abortion" — and death with each menstruation and miscarriage and millions of deaths<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">(over<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://www2.oakland.edu/biology/lindemann/spermfacts.htm"><span class="s4" style="color: blue; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; text-decoration: underline;">100</span><span class="s4" style="color: blue; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; text-decoration: underline;"> million</span></a><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in humans</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">)</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>with each ejaculation. The relevant and crucial question is "What dies?"<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">and following from that,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">"Is that<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s6" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">what</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">to be<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">a human person</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>under the law</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">?"<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 15.288000106811523px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 18.345600128173828px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">My most serious agenda (which I'll follow here in a short form) is to<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">demonstrate</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>that<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">the set of issues surrounding abortion i</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">s unresolvable in any philosophically respectable way<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">and recommend a messy, intellectually incoherent, vulgarly pragmatic political compromise.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">E.g., we may be able to get what looked like might follow from<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s6" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">Roe v. Wade</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">. Building upon the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s6" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">feeling</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>of many<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">ordinary<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">Americans that early abortions are okay while late ones are not,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">and that contraception is a good idea</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">,</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">what we<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s6" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">could</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>get<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">are strict restrictions on late-term abortions while contraceptive use by women — and fertile girls and men and boys — is encouraged, along with "Plan B's" of various sorts, plus readily available, safe and legal<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s6" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">early</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>abortion as needed, with the goal of making the need<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">for any abortions<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">increasingly rare.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 15.288000106811523px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 18.345600128173828px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">Meanwhile we'll engage in cycles of unresolvable arguments<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">stemming from radically different premises and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">competing but<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">complexly</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">-</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">related histories. On the one side,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">are</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">the history of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">patriarchal<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">oppression</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and the control of women's bodies</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">,</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and the resistance<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">to patriarchy and control</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">. On the other side, this:</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 15.288000106811523px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"> </span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 15.288000106811523px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 18.345600128173828px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">If "People are the riches of a nation" and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">a large and growing populatio</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">n</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>the source of a nation's strength</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and prosperity</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">, then policies of "pronatalism" (also just called "</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalism"><span class="s4" style="color: blue; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; text-decoration: underline;">natalism</span></a><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">") are essential</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">,</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">and society and State must act aggressively to<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">encourage live births, with the kids raised to where they can be militarily and economically useful, and ready to produce another generation.</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">One obvious way</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">to this goal</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">: harness sex to reproduction by<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">striving to<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">prevent all sex outside of the reproductive and reproductive in a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">stable<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">social unit (long-term families) in which the kids can get raised. Under this approach, the sexual "abominations in Leviticus" etc. make sense as do secular-based prohibitions on contraception.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 15.288000106811523px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 18.345600128173828px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span style="line-height: 18.345600128173828px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">(</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">Whether pronatalism is a good idea in a world of over<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">7 billion<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">people facing another and particularly serious period of climate change and resource depletion — that's something we need to discuss.</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">)</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"> </span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 15.288000106811523px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"> </span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 15.288000106811523px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 18.345600128173828px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">If the goal (</span><span class="s6" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">finis</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s6" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">telos</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">) of sex is reproduction, it is unnatural to engage in sex that is nonreproductive. If Nature is part of God's plan, such unnaturalness is sinful. If the State should get involved in prohibiting unnatural acts and/or various kinds of sin, then laws against contraception make sense (and condoms when and where I was a kid<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">were quite properly</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>legally "</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">SOLD<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">FOR THE<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-02-25/news/8701160597_1_condom-advertising-aids-epidemic-stations"><span class="s4" style="color: blue; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; text-decoration: underline;">PREVENTION OF DISEASE</span></a><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>ONLY</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">").</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 15.288000106811523px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"> </span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 15.288000106811523px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 18.345600128173828px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">If a human being is essentially a soul, and if that soul is of infinite value; if that soul enters a zygote at the moment of conception, then anything that destroys a zygote or embryo or fetus is a variety of murder</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">. Worse — maybe infinitely worse —<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">if/since the victim</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">s</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">are</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>unbaptized<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">they will</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">join the</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>other unbaptized infants and miscarriages in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">damnation: perhaps in a Limbo, if that theology comes back into fashion, or in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">"the easiest room in hell,"<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">as in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">Michael<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">Wigglesworth's</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">teaching-poem,</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>"The Day of Doom" (</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">the Year of the Lord</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>1662</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>[</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">the date<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">for the poem, not the Apocalypse</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">]</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">).</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 15.288000106811523px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"> </span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 15.288000106811523px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 18.345600128173828px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">Given the US First Amendment and at least a fair amount of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s6" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">de facto</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">separation of Church and State, we're not going to have<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">much </span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">honest debate on the theology of contraception and abortion and the politics<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">that debate</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>implies. Nor are we going to have an open and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">vigorous</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>debate on population policy and its implications<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">for and involvement in</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>climate change, resource allocation, immigration, who pays for old people, and tax breaks for families.</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"> (Some Americans who are all for population control in theory still want tax deductions for their children, even third and fourth and fifth kids.)</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 15.288000106811523px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"> </span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 15.288000106811523px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 18.345600128173828px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">There has been some social progress on these issues, certainly with<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">gay<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">rights and, maybe more relevantly here,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">condoms</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">:</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>which are now advertised, required in LA-produced up-scale<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">professional<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">pornography, and apparently encouraged in some areas of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">amateur porn upload sites — uh, or so I have heard. On the other hand, there is the logic of abortion = murder, hence large-scale abortion = mass murder, hence … well, hence bombing an abortion clinic or shooting abortion providers can be<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">admitted</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>as an act of terrorism<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">but then</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>defended as a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">"</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">lesser evil.</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">"</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">On the other side,</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>if one just rejects the whole idea of souls and ensoulment and follows a rigorous materialism, then it becomes fairly easy to justify even a late-term abortion but more difficult to condemn killing older human organisms, especially before or after<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">they can talk rationally or after you've been forced to admit that there may be little justification in nature to put so much value on speech or reason or consciousness that<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">"mind"</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>become a kind of stand-in for "soul."</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 15.288000106811523px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"> </span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 15.288000106811523px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.345600128173828px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="line-height: 18.345600128173828px; padding-left: 36px;"></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">I hope Americans will say</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>on the abortion debate and other sex<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">issues</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">, "Screw ideology and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">intellectual</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>rigor folks! Let's cut a political deal on abortion and sex stuff and move on." As much as Americans are generally anti-intellectual, though, I expect the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">opposing logic</span><span class="s6" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;">s</span><span class="s3" style="color: #303539; font-family: "Avenir Book"; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18.345600128173828px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>of the abortion debate to continue robust and dangerous — and we'll be cycling back to the topic for the rest of my life.</span></p>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-32359079231499967712021-05-30T18:37:00.004-07:002021-05-30T18:38:56.832-07:00The Meaning of "Life"<p>I'm the compiler of <www.Clockworks2.org>, <a href="http://www.Clockworks2.org">a wiki on "The Human/Machine Interface in SF,"</a> which is based on <i><a href="https://products.abc-clio.com/abc-cliocorporate/product.aspx?pc=B2098C">Clockworks</a>: A Multimedia Bibliography of Works Useful for the Study of the Human/Machine Interface in SF</i> — that "Multimedia Bibliography" phrase is the publisher's; we called it a "List" (Greenwood Press, 1993). </p><p>The end of the 20th century was a time when literary studies were getting a heavy dose of Philosophy, and respectable scholars by God were to <i>Define your terms! </i>My writing partner, Thom Dunn, and I hadn't always done so and had taken a little guff for the failure. So in the Introduction to <i>Clockworks</i>, toward the end of our Introduction, pretty safe from the eyes of most readers and, we figured, all those unpaid academic reviewers, we wrote this, defining the last part of our subtitle: <br /></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><u>In SF.</u> In our Abbreviations, we differentiate between "SF" and "S.F." "S.F." is "science fiction," and SF is "science fiction" plus related genres such as eutopias, dystopias, some fantasy, and some horror. In our earlier volumes <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mechanical-God-Machines-Science-Contributions/dp/0313222746"><u>The Mechanical God</u></a> [Greenwood 1982] and <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/clockwork-worlds-thomas-p-dunn/1132776433;jsessionid=C202FEFEFBD16F51AEABF4359210DB0E.prodny_store01-atgap12?ean=9780313230264"><u>Clockwork Worlds</u></a> [GP 1983], we declined to define "science fiction" and noted the comparable inability of biologists to define "life," of attorneys to define "tort" let alone <u>Justice</u>, of mathematicians to define "point" — and we noted the generations of literary critics who have discussed comedy and tragedy without ever coming up with standard definitions of those terms. Here, we recommend a definition of "life" Erlich heard somewhere and liked: "The process by which entropy is reversed, locally and temporarily, in a volume both in contact with and set off from surrounding space-time"; but we still decline to define "science fiction."<br /></p><p>Although we did give some indications of where we set the SF borders.</p><p>It was a joke, with a bit of a "Screw you" to the pedants: we won't define "science fiction," but we will tell you The Meaning of Life.</p><p>Over the years, a close friend or two with strong backgrounds in the relevant sciences, and strong tendencies toward the wise-ass, has or have suggested an example or two that fit the definition but are obviously inorganic (crystals forming in a sack or "sac" that's a semi-permeable membrane ... and such). </p><p>Okay, but this much in my defense, sort of, and to complete the story with the probable source of the biology-lore I passed along. From Jessica Riskin's <b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.699999809265137px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><i><a href="https://www.clockworks2.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_Restless_Clock:_A_History_of_the_Centuries-Long_Argument_over_What_Makes_Living_Things_Tick">The Restless Clock</a></i></b><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.699999809265137px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><i>: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument over What Makes Living Things Tick</i></span>, a work I'm annotating for the wiki: "'When is a piece of matter said to be alive? When it goes on 'doing something,'" and that "the most salient 'something' that organisms characteristically did was to resist entropy, to avoid decay into equilibrium" (<i>Restless Clock</i>, p. 369; ch. 10). And the sou<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: times;">rce of the quote? Edwin Schr<em style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">ödinger's <i>What Is Life?</i></em><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> (Cambridge U Press, 1944). <br /><br />Ah ha! Sort of. At least the lore I passed on — and I got it as academic folklore, word-of-mouth, a kind of rumor — at least the lore I passed on had a respectable genealogy. <br /></span><em style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"></em></span></span></p><p><br /></p>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-36102246982887205322021-03-26T22:35:00.004-07:002021-03-30T13:10:03.008-07:00Race and the Politics of Suffering<p style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span><a name="4.3.66" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, </a>good and<br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" /><a name="4.3.67" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">ill together [...]. — <i>All's Well that Ends Well </i>(4.3</a>)</span></span></p><p style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span>Effective popular politics are coalition politics. — Traditional <br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: right;"><span> <br /></span></p><p><span> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I'm going to sidle in on my topic, starting with a hint or two on, as we used to say, Where I'm coming from. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><u>Sidle 1</u><br /> Part of Where I'm coming from is Chicago ca. 1960 ,when at 17 or so I peaked out, not sexually, as the folklore has it, but in terms of achievement and status. At 17, I was elected President of the high-school charity group, the Merton Davis Memorial Foundation for Crippling Diseases of Children, and since we incorporated shortly thereafter, I may've been the youngest legally-established charitable foundation president in the area, or maybe in the USA. or world.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> It was a transition time for the group, since it had been a long time since Mert Davis had died — long in high-school years — and none of us or our constituents had known him, and enthusiasm was running low.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> And so my first speech to the executive board was a kind of pep talk where I said that I was grateful for the altruism and sense of civic duty they brought to their job but hoped that they also wanted to work on the board for status and an entry on their college applications and other baser motives: because we had a long haul ahead of us, and they'd need all the motivation they could get, and ambition and self-interest are strong motives.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Year's later I would read T. S. Eliot's <i>Murder in the Cathedral</i> and see the justifying context of the line — martyrdom and Christian sainthood — but I knew from a blurb on a book I'd read the lines, "The last temptation is the greatest treason: / To do the right deed for the wrong reason"; and I said at the time, "Bullshit." Outright hypocrisy is pretty nauseating, but I felt then and think now that the key thing always is to <i>do</i> the right thing. And I knew that motives will be mixed and that the tackier ones can be useful.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><u>Sidle 2</u><br /> A striking point, mentioned I believe by Timothy Snyder's in <i>Bloodlands</i> and by others elsewhere, is that people who sheltered Jews during the Hitlerian Holocaust usually downplayed their efforts when asked about them, and said that they only did what anybody would do: simple decency. That's beautiful and reaffirms the possibility of heroic decency, but it's blatantly incorrect. People doing the decent thing were rare, and a constant and urgent question is how to get more people to act decently, especially when they can do so with far less danger than in defying the Nazis.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span> I</span>n terms of what can be done with words, among the most powerful motivating statemen</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ts is that by <span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></span><span style="color: black;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Niem%C3%B6ller" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-image: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" title="Martin Niemöller">Martin Niemöller</a></span><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #f8f9fa; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">, rendered in English in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...#Text">one version</a>,</span></span></span></p><blockquote class="templatequote" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; border-left-style: none; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 1em 0px; orphans: auto; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px 40px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em;">First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—<br /> Because I was not a socialist.</p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;">Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—<br /> Because I was not a trade unionist.</p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;">Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—<br /> Because I was not a Jew.</p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px;">Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.</p></blockquote><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span>This is a fine call for human solidarity; it is also an appeal for behaving decently as a matter of self-interest.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><u>Sidle 3, Getting <a href="http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2015/03/remembrance-of-horrors-past-18-may-2013.html">Repetitious</a> but Closer</u><br /> </span></span><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 13.2px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;">My cousin (of some degree) Joy Erlichman Miller organized the Holocaust memorial in Peoria, Illinois, and tried to make the body-count more understandable by collecting buttons: eleven million of them. The strategy of collecting buttons is brilliant, and, more to the point I'm slowly moving toward, the number is correct. Humans aren't wired to understand deaths in even the hundreds or thousands, but the sight of millions of buttons can aid our imaginations. More, having kids collect everyday items like buttons is a good way to get them to relate to the extraordinary human costs of slaughters such as the Nazi Holocaust.</span></span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> The number, though, may also be unfamiliar to you. The Peoria committee used the figure of approximately eleven million murders, and they were wise to do so: both truthful to the best estimates, and politically prudent. Some five to six millions Jews were murdered in the Nazi extermination programs, plus some five to six million Roma ("Gypsies"), Communists, homosexuals, unionists, and other "inferiors," or real or imagined enemies of the Reich. That adds up to eleven million people, approximately, not the more frequently heard figure of six millions. Some six million Jews died, and even if the actual figure is "only" five million, it is a number to remember in itself and is central to the exterminations: "The Final Solution of the Jewish Problem" was the impetus for large-scale, systematic,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">routinized</i><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>massacres. </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span> </span>Still, if the Shoah is uniquely Jewish and unique in more than just the technical sense applicable to all historical events — if it's literally and absolutely<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">unique</i><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">, "sui generis," one of a kind — then the Shoah is of only limited usefulness for historical understanding: There aren't many lessons to be learned from a literally unique event. If it is "</span><i style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The</i><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Holocaust," and that is that, there is little to be learned beyond "Sh*t can really happen to the Jews." Using the eleven million figure teaches that once a program of genocide gets started, all sorts of people can be sucked in and destroyed. And that point is crucial; if the Shoah just happened to Jews, why should non-Jews do more than sympathize? Fitting the Hitlerian Holocaust into a larger pattern of massacres, as Hannah Arendt does in detail in</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: #888888; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span><i>Origins of Totalitarianism</i></span></span></a></span></span><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 13.2px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;">, makes it historically and politically relevant for many people, and aids building "Never Again" coalitions.</span></span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> <br /></span></span></p><p><span> </span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;">It is also useful for "Stop Now" coalitions.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span>And here I am going to give some free advice, which can be received with, "And worth every penny we paid for it," or as a free gift, freely given, to accept, modify, or reject.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span>When we get serious and start talking reparations, who suffered what at the hands of whom will be contentious. For now, though, and outside of politics, suffering is not a zero-sum horror, and books like Nell Irvin Painter's popular study, <i><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/books/review/Gordon-t.html">The History of White People</a></i> (2010), can be useful for Black Lives Matter and other parts of the the continuing movement for Black liberation.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The year 1616 was not the beginning of slavery in the Americas, African slavery was not America's Original Sin (dispossession and extermination of Indians preceded), some Whites as well as many Blacks were kidnapped to the New World and unfree in British America and the early United States — Painter's calls attention to classifications of Whites in the first couple of US censuses: and such points can be useful in expanding support for Black liberation. On the solid grounds that who gets exploited by whom shifts over history and it takes an only mildly enlightened perception to catch on that it is in the self-interest of most people most of the time to disassemble systems of exploitation and oppression. Check out the numbers: the usual rule is a large class of the exploited supporting a small group of the elite. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span> But note that</span> elites over the centuries have evolved ways to make the system more subtle, primarily a hierarchy that — in its most respectable form — became a Great Chain of Being that put human society within Nature and a divine order, and provided a place for everyone and everyone in their places: some high and some low, as a couple famous sermons had it, some rich and some poor, some in authority and some in subjection/subjugation — but most <a href="http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2017/03/">poor, and many (often a majority) unfree</a>. At that best, in theory, it was a truly Great Chain held together by love; at its more usual worst, what nasty-minded guys of my generation recommended we picture as a multistory outhouse, with most people well-trained to kiss up and shit down. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span>Parallel to this, there were tribalisms and nationalisms and most recently hierarchies of races that allow people to feel themselves parts of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_race#Etymology"><i>Arya</i></a><i>, </i>the noble people, the <i>Herrenvolk</i>: one Master Race or another. Except, as usual, of course, most members of the group were not masters at all. Most people, most of the time, would do better with equality, equality under the law, to start with, and then more social equality. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span>And why has equality even just at law been so rare in human history? That old conservative, in most ways, Sir (and Saint) Thomas More could think through to an answer both traditional and revolutionary, as that fictional traveler Raphael Hythloday tells us in the conclusion of <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2130/2130-h/2130-h.htm"><i>Utopia</i></a> (1516), about a country where there was imperfect but wide-spread equality.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span face="-webkit-standard" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">I cannot think but the sense of every man’s interest, added to the authority of Christ’s commands [...] would have drawn all the world over to the laws of the Utopians, if pride, that plague of human nature, that source of so much misery, did not hinder it; for this vice does not measure happiness so much by its own conveniences, as by the miseries of others; and would not be satisfied with being thought a goddess, if none were left that were miserable, over whom she might insult. Pride thinks its own happiness shines the brighter, by comparing it with the misfortunes of [others ...]. </span> <br /></span></span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Translating out of the Hebrew and Greek, "Raphael Hythloday" means something like "speaker of healing nonsense," and More in <i>Utopia</i> is both ironic and quite serious ... and logical and politically astute, what might be called in the time of More (more or less), "politic."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span>My free advice, freely given (and, like most unsolicited advice, arrogantly given) is that Black Lives Matter and others striving for Black liberation, and reparations, should make that appeal to self-interest. That History of White People includes many Whites who were enslaved or "enserfed," indentured or transported for crimes — and remained in servitude for life: given in British America how many people expired — as in <i>died</i> — before the expiration of their indentures. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span>"White" in a racial sense has been a flexible term over time, usually taking in more people over time, but subject to change over time. And what gets defined as race, and as <i>human</i> can change radically and quickly, as the Nazis and others have demonstrated quite strongly. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span>In the US and the colonies before that, mostly, "They came for the Blacks"; but some poor Whites early on were kept in subjection, and radical immigrant Whites later on were lynched. This should be understood by First Peoples-Americans (Indians), massacred and removed, and by Chinese, once excluded, and Japanese, once interned. (Jews who don't get it are a special kind of stupid.)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span><span> </span>To recycle and redirect my rhetorical question on Jews, the Holocaust, and non-Jews: If the massacre of Jews was a uniquely Jewish problem, why, beyond decency, should others care a whole lot, and why not take Jewish suffering as a pressing reason to remain silent and safe? If racism in the US is a uniquely Black problem and systemic; if racism is based in privilege that profits all Whites — why, beyond decency, should others care a whole lot? </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span> <span> </span>As much of the history of the Hitlerian Holocaust teaches, and the history of race in America teaches for a longer period — don't count heavily on the power of decency and the higher virtues. </span><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <span> </span>If there is White privilege and hegemony, and racism is systemic, then the answer to why Whites should help probably lies in some combination of the sacrifice of a lot of young Blacks in attempts to force Whites to concede power — and in less costly ways to get large numbers of Whites to see that greater freedom and equality for all, as a general principle, is in their enlightened self-interest long term, and quite possibly in their self-interest pretty immediately. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span>Crudely put, there's very little room at the top of that multi-story outhouse. More elegantly put, there are the words of Martin </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Niemöller (or the fine animation, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqziaQxAsMA"><i>The Hangman</i></a>). </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span> </span>Patriotism to American ideals, however poorly realized; decency, morality, ethics: all these demand support of the principle that Black Lives Matter. So does self-interest. </span><span><a name="4.3.66" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">That "web of our life is of a mingled yarn, </a>good and <a name="4.3.67" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">ill together [...]," and the combination shouldn't bother us. When something is right to do, and pretty directly in our interest, then we should bloody-well just do it. So while stressing the right, do bring in when you can, self-interest.</a></span><br /><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br /><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span> <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #f8f9fa; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #f8f9fa; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> </span></span> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><u> </u> <br /><span></span></span></p><p><br /><span></span></p>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-85181734618079462522021-02-26T16:29:00.002-08:002021-02-26T16:29:13.235-08:00CoViD-19, School Re-Opening, 55 MPH Speed Limit, and "Acceptable Casualties"<p> </p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(48, 48, 48); color: black; font-family: "Georgia Pro", Georgia, "Droid Serif", serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 14px 0px; orphans: auto; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">Responding to a letter to the editor of my local newspaper in south-central-coastal California (we're a big state)<br /></span></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(48, 48, 48); color: black; font-family: "Georgia Pro", Georgia, "Droid Serif", serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 14px 0px; orphans: auto; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;"><br /><br />SUBJECT:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><b class="">"What 'death rate' is acceptable?"</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i class="">Ventura County Star</i><span class="" style="font-style: normal;"> 20 Feb. 2021</span></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(48, 48, 48); color: black; font-family: "Georgia Pro", Georgia, "Droid Serif", serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 14px 0px; orphans: auto; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;"><br class="" /></span></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(48, 48, 48); color: black; font-family: Futura-Medium; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 14px 0px; orphans: auto; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="">Writing about opening schools in the time of the CoViD-19 pandemic, George Maguire of Ventura notes that he has "</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="">never heard of what death rate” is acceptable and asks if "someone" can write in and tell teachers and students what death rate is acceptable," adding that "That data is available somewhere" (February 20). </span></span></span></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(48, 48, 48); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 14px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I’m writing in to compliment Mr. Maguire on raising the old and important question I’ll call "acceptable casualties" and to note that relevant data are available for CoViD-19 and school re-opening but such questions are never just factual. To start, "Acceptable to whom?" and then on to "What values are to be applied?" with one big area, "What is the value of human life?"</span></span></p><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Here’s an example from the past that illustrates the point. From Wikipedia (and my memory): "<span class="" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">The </span><span class="" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">National Maximum Speed Limit</span><span class="" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"> </span><span class="" style="background-color: white;"><span class="" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">was a provision of the […] </span></span><span class="" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">1974 Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act that effectively prohibited </span><span class="">speed limits</span><span class="" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"> higher than 55 miles per hour. It was drafted in response to oil price spikes and supply disruptions during the </span><span class="">1973 oil crisis</span><span class=""> and remained the law until 1995.</span><span class="">" The data get complicated, but a case could be and was made that "</span><span class="">there was a decrease in [traffic] fatalities of about 3,000 to 5,000 lives in 1974, and about 2,000 to 4,000 lives saved annually thereafter through 1983 because of slower and more uniform traffic speeds since the law took effect.</span><span class="">"</span></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="" style="font-size: small;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The final repeal of the law in 1995 was very popular. </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="" style="font-size: small;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Now, let’s say the net savings in human life was a tenth of the estimates, some 300 lives a year: Would 300 additional dead people (and injured and maimed) be "acceptable casualties" for the additional convenience and efficiency of higher speed limits? Would the mere risk of avoidable deaths (injuries, maiming) be acceptable? Ethical decisions either way required making a conscious judgment, and among the Americans ethical enough to think it through — at least with Americans who accepted the conclusion of greater safety — a good number thought the casualties acceptable. </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><<a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law#Safety_impact">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law#Safety_impact</a>></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="" style="font-size: small;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Or we can look at drug legalization, such as the end of alcohol Prohibition in 1933, and the obvious costs of easier access to alcohol beverages, along with obvious benefits. Of those who think about it at all, most of us think ending capital "P" Prohibition was a good idea, and many would legalize other recreational drugs, with any increase in deaths (addiction, violence) acceptable when weighed against other gains.</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="" style="font-size: small;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It is necessary for practical ethics and politics to think humans special among all the life on Earth, and good to believe that "Every human life is sacred and of infinite value" — but actual ethical decisions in real-world politics often require doing bloody arithmetic, and infinities don’t work there. </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="" style="font-size: small;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We need a mature conversation on the gains and losses of opening schools to various degrees and in various ways, including what sometimes competing groups can agree would be "acceptable casualties" from doing so.</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></span></div>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-23630217280429276652020-12-04T15:52:00.005-08:002020-12-08T09:59:58.179-08:00Black Lives, The "War on Drugs/Crime," and Funding the Militarizartion of Police<p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 15.0pt; margin: 15pt 0in 7.5pt; mso-outline-level: 1;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #538135; font-size: 14pt; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 191;">"How did America's police become a military
force on the streets?"</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 7.5pt;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #538135; font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 191;">By Radley Balko, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ABAJournal</i>, 1 July 2013</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 7.5pt;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #538135; font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 191;"><https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/how_did_americas_police_become_a_military_force_on_the_streets><span style="text-transform: uppercase;"></span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #00b050;"> </span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #538135; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 191;">"At the time the Third Amendment was ratified, the
images and memories of British troops in Boston and other cities were still
fresh, and the clashes with colonists that drew the country into war still
evoked strong emotions. What we might call the 'symbolic Third Amendment'
wasn’t just a prohibition on peacetime quartering, but a more robust expression
of the threat that standing armies pose to free societies. It represented a
long-standing, deeply ingrained resistance to armies patrolling American
streets and policing American communities.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #538135; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 191;">And, in that sense, the spirit of the Third Amendment is
anything but anachronistic."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">=======================================</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #cc0000;">QUOTATIONS AND SELECTIONS FROM A BOOK FROM 2013/14 IMPORTANT FOR 2020/21 </span><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Balko, Radley. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rise of
the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces</i>. 2013. New
York: Public Affairs, 2014. © 2014 by Radley Balko<br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">Although some of the aims of professionalism may have been noble,
the story of early American policing is one of overcorrection. While the
professionalism reformers were able to end the patronage system, in some cities
they managed to insulate police departments from politics altogether, making it
difficult for mayors and city councils to hold police officials accountable. At
the level of individual cops, the use of squad cars and radios clearly brought
a lot of benefits, but could also isolate police officers from the residents of
the communities they patrolled. […] Police and citizens interacted only when
police were ticketing or questioning someone, or when a citizen was reporting a
crime. In poorer communities that could bring about an increasingly antagonistic
relationship […]. (p. 34; "Quick History," ch. 3)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Calls attention to William Parker of LA for
professionalization. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dragnet Style</i>
(as the ideal) and for bringing up Daryl Gates, who "did more to bring
about today's militarized American police force than any other single
person." Note also importance of LA's Watts riots, that "went a long
way toward scaring middle America about crime, to the point where they were
willing to embrace an all-out 'war' on crime and drugs to clean up the
cities" (p. 35; ch. 3).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">There are two forms of police militarization: direct and
indirect. Direct militarization is the use of the standing military for
domestic policing. Indirect militarization happens when police agencies and
police officers take on more and more characteristics of an army. Most of this
book will focus on the latter form of police militarization, which began in the
United States in the late 1960s, then accelerated in the 1980s. But the two
forms of militarization are related, and they have become increasingly
intertwined over the [35] last thirty years. (pp. 35-26; ch. 3). </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Discusses Depression Era Bonus March, beginning 28 July
1932, and what I (RDE) will call the after-action report of Major (at the time)
George S. Patton "recounting the lessons he had learned from the Bonus
March," including when Patton disobeyed a direct order of the President
"to stand down […] and went after the protesters […]" (p. 37; ch. 3).
</p>
<p class="MsoQuote">Titled "Federal Troops in Domestic Disturbances,"
it revealed a startling contempt [37] for free expression — and for civilians
in general. The paper first assesses periods of unrest throughout history.
Patton ridicules nations and empires that hesitated to use violence against
citizen upraises and praises those who did [cites officers of Louis XVI of
France vs. Napoleon's "whiff of grapeshot" saving the directorate. …]
Patton attributes the success of the Bolshevik Revolution to "the
hesitating and weak character of the Russian officers," which prevented
them from properly slaughtering the Communists while they were merely
protestors.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Most alarming
are Patton's own suggestions and recommendations on how the military should
handle domestic riots and uprisings. He calls the writ of habeas corpus
"an item that rises to plague us" and recommends shooting captured
rioters instead of turning them over to police to bring before "some
misguided judge." (p. 38; ch. 3)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>1968: King Assassination, Civil Rights, DNC-Chicago/Nixon,
Drugs</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Martin Luther
King's assassination on 4 April 1968 and the subsequent riots] In fact […] came
at a time when much of […] white, middle-class America began to sense that its
values and traditions were under attack from all sides. In his drug war history
<i>Smoke and Mirrors</i> [subtitle: <i>The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure</i>,
1996] , journalist Dan Baum points out that black homicide arrests doubled
between 1960 and 1967. At the same time, heroin deaths and overdoses were also
on the rise. The hippie, antiwar, and counterculture movements were in full
swing. All of this coincided with the rise [67] of the civil rights movement.
Nixon's Silent Majority began to see a link between drugs, crime, the
counterculture, and race. * * *</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Months later,
at the 1968 Democratic National Convention (DNC), police in Chicago would
instigate a riot and then indiscriminately beat liberal [etc.!] protesters.
Some of the beatings were aired live by the networks [….] [Notes Sen. Abraham
Ribicoff going off-script in McGovern nomination speech] to proclaim,
"With George McGovern we wouldn't have Gestapo tactics in the streets of
Chicago! With George McGovern we wouldn't have a National Guard!" <<a href="https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/abrahamribicoff1968dnc.htm">https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/abrahamribicoff1968dnc.htm</a>>
Chicago mayor Richard Daley, who had called up more than twenty thousand police
and National Guard troops for the convention, didn't do much to distance
himself from the Nazi smear. Lip readers later alleged he shouted up from the
convention floor, [68] "Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch! You lousy
motherfucker! Go home!"</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Nixon's
"ignored American" weren't the least bit troubled by what they saw
from Daley and the police. According to a Gallup poll taken a few weeks later,
56 percent of the country supported the crackdown, and just 31 percent were
opposed. Polls would also show Nixon surging into a comfortable lead over the
eventual Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey. (pp. 67-68; ch. 4)</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Nixon triumphant</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">The law-and-order campaign worked. Nixon won the 1968
election by a comfortable margin in the electoral college. (And when you factor
in the votes for George Wallace, Humphrey lost the popular vote by a wide
margin.) The Republicans also picked up five seats in the Senate and five in
the House. In four years, crime had become the most important issue in the
country. [70] * * * [Nixon, John Mitchell et al. …] decided that the
high-profile target of the new administration's promised anticrime effort would
be drug control. Drug use, they thought, was the common denominator among the
groups — low-income blacks, the counter culture, and the antiwar movement —
against whom Nixon had unified "ignored America." (pp. 70-71; ch. 4) </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The Nixonites
mulled a number of other constitutionally dubious drug war proposals in
addition to the preventive detention and no-knock proposals. They wanted to
authorize the use of "loose search warrants." These would have
allowed police to apply for a warrant for contraband, then search multiple
properties to find it. The idea came precipitously close to a writ of
assistance, but without the restrictions on nighttime service and
knock-and-announce. Combined with the no-knock provision, it would have
essentially authorized police to kick down the doors of entire neighborhoods
with a single warrant. Loose warrants didn't make the final crime bill, but the
idea was really only about ten years ahead of its time. Starting in the 1980s,
police would conduct raids of entire city blocks, housing complexes, and
neighborhoods. The Nixon administration also wanted to strip away
attorney-client privilege, as well as the privilege afforded to conversations
with priests and doctors, and to expand wiretapping authority. They even came
up with an early precursor to California's eventual "three strikes and
you're out" law. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>No one had any
idea if these policies would work, but in a way it didn't matter. The strategy
was about symbolism and making the right enemies as it was about effectiveness.
[***] </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On July 14,
1969, Nixon gave his first major address to Congress to outline his antidrug
program. He declared drugs a "national [72] threat." He set the tone
for a much more aggressive, confrontational federal drug fight. He described
the "inhumanity" of drug pushers, laying groundwork for the sort of
dehumanizing rhetoric that would be used for years to come to reduce drug users
and drug dealers to an enemy to be destroyed. [***]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In a few
areas, Nixon could move immediately, without waiting for money or authorization
from Congress. On such area was border enforcement." (pp. 72-73; ch. 4)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But the same
broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause that allowed the federal government
to integrate private business in the south gave [Attorney General John]
Mitchell and [President Richard] Nixon the authority to wage their war on crime
and drugs — a war that over the next forty years had some devastating
consequences for large swaths of black America. In the omnibus law [the
"omnibus narcotics bill," bringing together "the great crime
bill orgy of 1970" (86)], Mitchell would claim for his department all
authority to oversee the manufacture, distribution, export, import, and sale of
[87] addictive drugs. The bill created a classification system for illicit
drugs and vested the classification authority with the Justice Department. That
met with fierce resistance from researchers and medical organizations, who
believed that authority to determine which psychoactive drugs have medical
benefits and which cause harm should belong to the Department of Health, Education,
and Welfare or to an agency like the FDA instead of an agency whose primary
mission was law enforcement. Their pleas were in vain. A version of the [Thomas
J.] Dodd bill would later become the Controlled Substances Act, the law that
has authorized the war on drugs ever since. (pp. 87-88; ch. 5)</p><p class="MsoQuote"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"> * * * <br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #cc0000;">QUOTATIONS AND LONGER SELECTIONS FROM A BOOK FROM 2013/14 IMPORTANT FOR 2020/21</span> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Balko, Radley. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rise of
the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces</i>. 2013. New
York: Public Affairs, 2014. © 2014 by Radley Balko </p><p class="MsoNormal"> <br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u>Jerry Wilson as Head of DC Metro Police</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"During
the often heated [sic: no hyphen] antiwar protests of the early 1970s, Wilson
believed that an intimidating police presence didn't prevent confrontation, it invited
it."</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On no-knock
raids: "'I never really bought into the idea that police were getting
gunned down while serving warrants,' Wilson says [sic]. 'Drug pushers sold
drugs to make money. They might run. But there weren't many drug dealers who
were in the business to get into shootouts with narcotics officers.' Wilson
didn't find the destruction of evidence exception convincing either. 'We called
that the 'no-flush rule.' Again I just didn't think that warranted breaking
down a door. There were better ways to do it,' he says, referring to serving
drug warrants. You couldn't flush much pot down a toilet anyway. Cocaine or
heroin, you could flush a good amount. But then it was gone — off the [99]
street. They [no-knock proponents] wanted to make sure the evidence was
preserved to get a conviction. But a drug conviction wasn't worth the risk of a
no-knock raid.'" (ch. 5, pp. 99-100)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Nixon Admin. in Early 1970s</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So the White
House crime team came up with a plan. They would launch an all-out PR offensive
to scare the hell out of the public about crime, and to tie crime to heroin.
Once voters were good and terrified, they would push for reorganization to
consolidate drug policy and enforcement power within the White House. [Egil]
Krogh put together a quick-hitting but multifaceted strategy that included
planting media scare stories about heroin, publicly recalling ambassadors to
embarrass heroin-producing countries like Thailand and Turkey, and holding
high-level (but entirely staged) [103] strategy sessions that they'd invite the
media to attend. The plan culminated with a planned speech from Nixon that
would forge new frontiers in fearmongering. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The scare
strategy was executed as planned. Nixon's June 17, 1971, speech more than met
expectations. He declared drug abuse "public enemy number one" and
ask for emergency powers and new findings to "wage a new, all-out
offensive." Years later, both this speech and a similar one he gave the
following year would alternately be considered the start of the modern
"war on drugs." In a poll taken the following month, Americans named
drug abuse as the most urgent domestic problem facing the country. (ch. 5, pp.
103-104).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Death (early 1972) of Dirk Dickenson Mostly by Lloyd
Clifton (Berkeley PD to Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs [BNDD]) 4 April
1972</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Clifton had
a record of beating on civilians, including a young Black man arrested by
mistake and turned out to be the son of a California Superior Court judge (so
Clifton got a reprimand, pretty much the only punishment in his career).
"If this new federal initiative against street-level pushers was all about
projecting aggression and instilling fear, Clifton was a perfect fit" (ch.
5, pp. 108-16, quote here, p. 109).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"In
the end, a twenty-four-year-old man was chased from his own home by armed men
who had just emerged from an Army helicopter. They then shot him dead, from the
back, while he was unarmed and on his own property. The heavy-handed raid was
based on false pretenses and didn't turn up the criminal enterprise it was
supposed to find. No one would be held accountable for any of it. Dirk
Dickenson was collateral damage" (ch. 5, pp. 108-16, quote here, p. 116).
<https://humboldtherald.wordpress.com/2006/12/18/humboldt-trials-and-tribulations/></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Three dogs and a cat thrown outside by raiding officers:
"(Given the frequency of dog-shooting during raids in the coming years,
the […] pets got off easy" (ch. 5, p. 117).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"> * * * <br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #cc0000;">QUOTATIONS AND LONGER SELECTIONS FROM A BOOK FROM 2013/14 IMPORTANT FOR 2020/21</span> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Balko, Radley. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rise of
the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces</i>. 2013. New
York: Public Affairs, 2014. © 2014 by Radley Balko <br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Raids with Warrants and Warrantless, Early 1970s</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There months
after those raids, in 1972, the <i>New York Times</i> published the results of
its own investigations in the use of aggressive drug raids. The paper found
that "dozens" of botched raids had occurred across the country since
the 1970 federal crime bills and similar bills in the states became law. Agents,
"often acting on uncorroborated tips from informants," were "bashing
down the doors to a home or apartment and holding the residents at gunpoint
while they ransack the house." The paper found that the botched raids <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">were usually on lower-class families and
were "tied intimately to the veritable explosion of government drug
enforcement activities</b> in recent years," thanks to <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Nixon's "total war" on drugs</b>.
Some victims told the paper that they hadn't come forward because narcotics
officers had threatened them. Others had remained silent because "in their
hatred for drugs they condoned the tactics but not the specific
incidents." Two weeks earlier, the Associated Press had published its own
investigation, which came to similar conclusions. […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Between April
1972 and May 1973, ODALE [The <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Office of
Drug Abuse Law Enforcement</span>] strike forces conducted 1,439 raids. It's
unclear how many were knock-and-announce and how many were no-knock, but even
by 1973 the difference between the two kinds of raids had already begun to
blur. "You might whisper 'Police! Open up!'" one agent told the <i>Times</i>.
"Or you could yell it the instant before you hit the door."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Nixon's dehumanization and demonization of
drug offenders</b> had been a (literally) smashing success. Tactics like these
had rarely been used in the United States, even against hardened criminals. Now
they were being used against people suspected of non-violent crimes, and with
such wanton disregard for civil rights and procedure that the occasional wrong
door or terrorized family could be dismissed as "an insignificant
detail" or as cops "just trying to do their job." […] These men
were rounding up "the very vermin of humanity," after all. Surely the
country understood that some collateral damage would be inflicted in the
process. (ch. 5, pp. 121-22)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Cops vs. Public</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Don Santarelli
— father of the federal no-knock raid […]. When asked to reflect on the legacy
of Nixon's drug war in an interview for this book […] says it set in motion an
animosity between police officers and the public that may now be beyond repair.
"When you speak to a police officer today, you're terrified that you're
going to offend him, and that he's going to arrest you and take you off to
jail. Sure, a judge will let you out and drop the charges in a few days. But
you've spent those days in jail. And now you have and arrest record. There's
just no accountability for excessive force." He adds that his old boss's
war rhetoric, later taken up by President Ronald Reagan and his successors, is
to blame. "There has always been confrontation between the rational,
educated way to look at policy and the escalation of language to make a
political point. If politicians can get away with calling it a '<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">war on crime</b>' or a '<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">war on drugs</b>,' then they will. And yes,
that's going to make law enforcement more willing to push the envelope when it
comes to use of force.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After Nixon
left office in the fall of 1984, the federal drug war went into a brief period
of détente. But the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">SWAT concept</b>
would continue to gain momentum, independent of the break in the drug war. The
two institutions would finally merge in the 1980s with Reagan's revival of the
Nixonian drug war, applied more literally [125] than even Nixon could have
imagined. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">No-knock</b> raids would
return in full force, this time with no room for shame or remorse. (ch. 5, pp.
125-26)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>S.W.A.T.</u></i><u>
ABC-TV, Starting 24 Feb. 1975</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The first
season did well, and ABC ordered a second. Milton Bradley soon put out a
S.W.A.T. board game. Kids could take their sandwiches to school in S.W.A.T.
lunch boxes. There were S.W.A.T. action figures […], and die-cast miniatures of
the S.W.A.T. mobile. […].</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>SWAT had hit
popular culture.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At the same
time, real SWAT teams were spreading throughout the country. [132 * * *]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Some police
officials feared that the SWAT trend, particularly in smaller cities and towns,
would succumb to what the philosopher Abraham Kaplan called "the Law of
the Instrument": when you're carrying a hammer, everything looks like a
nail. "There are some cops who want to solve all society's problems with
an M-16," one police chief told the paper. "[…] And if you set
yourself up to use heavy firepower the danger exists that you will use it at
the first opportunity, and over-reaction — the opposite of what the [SWAT]
concept is about — becomes a real danger."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Big-city SWAT
teams were getting training in paramilitary tactics and weapons, but that
training was balanced by an emphasis on negotiation and deescalation [sic] and
the use of violence only as the last possible option. In the smaller agencies
around the country, not only did the SWAT team not get that sort of training,
but the teams were staffed by part-timers […]. The risk was that the entire
police department could succumb to a culture of militarism. In some quarters,
it was already happening. Within a decade, the SWAT proliferation would
accelerate. The emphasis on deescalation [sic] would all but disappear. Soon,
just about every decent-sized city police department was armed with a hammer.
And the drug war would ensure there were plenty of nails around for pounding.
(ch. 5, pp. 132-33)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Carter to Reagan Transition: Sam Ervin in the Senate</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The lull in
the fighting [for the Castle Doctrine] didn't last long. Before Carter left the
White House, he'd face allegations that pot-smoking was common among his staff
and that two senior-level aides were cocaine users — and that one of them was
his drug czar. The Reagan administration would soon come in to staff the drug
policy positions with hardened culture warriors.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Ervin's
wins were important but ultimately ephemeral. The drug war and police militarization
trends were about to merge. By the time Sam Ervin died in April 1985, the
California National Guard was sending helicopters to drop camouflaged-clad
troops into the backyards of suspected pot growers in Humboldt County; the
justice Department was wiretapping defense attorneys; and Daryl Gates was using
a battering ram affixed to a military-issue armored personnel carrier to smash
his way into the living rooms of suspected drug offenders. (ch. 5, p. 136)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"> * * * <br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #cc0000;">QUOTATIONS AND LONGER SELECTIONS FROM A BOOK FROM 2013/14 IMPORTANT FOR 2020/21</span> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Balko, Radley. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rise of
the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces</i>. 2013. New
York: Public Affairs, 2014. © 2014 by Radley Balko <br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>Ch. 6: The 1980s —
Us and Them</u></b></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>William French
Smith set the tone for the Reagan administration early on. In one of the first
cabinet meetings, the new attorney general declared, "The Justice
Department is not a domestic agency. It is the internal arm of the national
defense."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This would be
a rough decade for the Symbolic Third Amendment. Reagan's drug warriors were
about to take aim at <i>posse comitatus</i>, utterly dehumanize drug users,
cast the drug fight as a biblical struggle between good and evil, and in the
process turn the country's cops into holy soldiers.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Smith
surrounded himself with a crew of prosecutors who called themselves the
"hard chargers." One was Rudy Giuliani […]. (ch. 6, p. 139)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span color="windowtext"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The very first</span> change in public policy that Reagan
pushed through the Congress with the 1981 Military Cooperation with Law
Enforcement Act, a proposed amendment to the Posse Comitatus Act that would
carve out a much larger rule for the military in the drug war. […] The amended
law encouraged the Pentagon to go further [than indirect assistance, as Navy
tipping off Coast Guard] and give local, state, and federal police access to
military intelligence and research. It also encouraged the opening up of access
to military bases and equipment, and explicitly authorized the military to
train civilian police in the use of military equipment. The law essentially
permitted the military to work with drug cops on all aspects of drug
interdiction short of making arrests and conducting searches. <span color="windowtext"></span></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The next year
Reagan pushed for more. He wanted the Posse Comitatus Act amended yet again,
this time to allow solders to both arrest and conduct searches of US citizens.
He also made official his desire to repeal the Exclusionary Rule, which would
essentially free police to violate the Fourth Amendment at will. (ch. 6, p.
145)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Reagan also pressed for — and got — expanded asset
forfeiture: "The Democrats were eager to eliminate the perception that
they were softer on crime than the Republicans. Senators Joe Biden and Hubert
Humphrey preempted the White House-sponsored bill with a bill of their own. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Biden-Humphrey bill</b> gave Reagan
everything he wanted. ¶ On September 30, 1982, the crime bill loaded up with
most of the provisions Reagan wanted passed the Senate 95-1" (ch. 6, p.146).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"The government [of the United States] <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sent U-2 spy planes</i> to the state of
California to search for marijuana. Then they sent the helicopters. In all,
thirteen California counties were invaded by choppers, some of them blaring
Wagner's 'Ride of the Valkyries' as they dropped Guardsmen and law enforcement
officers armed with automatic weapons, sandviks, and machetes in the fields of
California" (ch. 6, p. 148).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Campaign Against Marijuana Production (CAMP, 1983 f.[in
California])</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote">The officials running the operation [in California] made no
bones about the paramilitary tactics they were using. The considered the areas
they were raiding to be war zones. In the interest of "officer
safety," they gave themselves permission to search any structures
relatively close to a marijuana supply, without a warrant. Anyone coming
anywhere near a raid operation was subject to detainment, usually at gunpoint. [148]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Describing the
1984 [sic!] operation, the journalist Dan Baum writes, "For a solid month,
the clatter of helicopters was never absent from Humboldt County. CAMP
roadblocks started hauling whole families out of cars and holding them as
gunpoint while searching their vehicles without warrants. CAMP troops
. . . went house to house kicking in doors and ransacking homes,
again without warrants.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In his book <i>The
Great Drug War</i>, Arnold Trebach writes that in 1983 and 1984 [William]
Ruzzamenti claimed that the entire town of Denny, California, was so hostile to
the drug warriors that he'd need "to virtually occupy the area with a
small army. […] When CAMP left, a military convoy drove out of the small
village, guns trained on the townspeople. The couple ["Denny residents
Eric Massett and his wife Rebecca"] told Trebach that one of them was
waving a .45 as the others chanted, "War on drugs! War on drugs!"</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But CAMP was
just the marijuana eradication program in California. The Reagan administration
had begun similar federal-state programs all over the country. In 1984 the
federal-state marijuana eradication efforts conducted twenty thousand raids
nationally, resulting in the destruction of 13 million plants (many of them
wild) and around five thousand arrests. (ch. 6, pp. 148-49)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Asset Forfeiture: 1984 f.</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Because 1984
was an election year, it would need to have an omnibus crime bill of its own.
Polls showed that crime was the most pressing domestic issue with the public
[…]. [151]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote">At this point, there wasn't any real debate about crime
policy. It was really only about which party could come up with the most
creative ways to empower cops and prosecutors, strip suspects of their rights,
and who they were more committed to the battle than their opponents were. The
most significant provision in the newest crime bill again dealt with <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">asset forfeiture</b>. […] Under the new
law, the Justice Department would set up a fund with the cash and auction
proceeds from its investigations. After the lead federal agency took its cut,
any state or local police agencies that had helped out would also get a share.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The measure
was considered uncontroversial at the time, but it is difficult to overstate
the effect it would have on drug policing over the next thirty years.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[…] After it
passed for example, the CAMP raids and those like them in other parts of the
country were no longer just about putting on a good show and terrorizing the
counterculture. Now the raids could generate revenue for all the police
agencies involved. The DEA's Ruzzamenti was rather frank [identifying land
seizure as central …]. "[…] Basically, people have to prove that they
weren't involved and didn't know about [marijuana cultivation on their land].
Just the act of having marijuana grown on your land is enough to tie it up;
then you have to turn around and prove you're innocent. It reverses the burden
of proof." (ch. 6, p. 152)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Because it was
much easier to win land through civil forfeiture than to win a conviction in
criminal court, federal prosecutors often offered to drop the criminal charges
if the landowners agreed to hand their property over to the federal government.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Those sorts of
offers exposed just how fraudulent the government's justification for its
terror tactics really were. Allegedly, these pot growers were the dregs of
humanity, greedily poisoning America's children with their sinister harvest.
They were dangerous enough that the government had to send virtual armies to
occupy entire towns, buzz homes and chase children with helicopters, set up
roadblocks to search cars and gunpoint, and strip suspects and innocents alike
of their Fourth Amendment rights. These growers were <i>that</i> dangerous.
However, if they were willing to hand over their land, the government was more
than happy to let them go free.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Because of the
new forfeiture law, police agencies now had a strong incentive to
"find" a connection between valuable property and drug activi ty,
even if there was none. They now had an incentive to conduct drug busts inside
homes when the suspects could just as easily – and more safely – have been
apprehended outside the house. They now had a strong financial incentive to
make drug policing a higher priority […] than to investigating other crimes.
(ch. 6, p. 153).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"These
forfeiture policies would soon help fund the explosion of SWAT teams across the
country — forging yet another tie between the escalating drug war and
hypermilitarized policing" (ch. 6, p. 154).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Gates, LAPD, and Forcible Entry</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In a suit
by the ACLU against the LAPD, "The court found the ram [on an APC] to be
so excessive as to violate the Fourth Amendment requirement that searches be
reasonable, and it ruled that prior to each raid the LAPD would need to get
special permission from a judge before using a battering ram. (In the same
case, the court also ruled that city police did <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> need a judge's permission to use flash-bang grenades)"
(ch. 6, p. 156). </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Drugs and Nat'l Security</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Under Reagan, "At the national level, the once-separate
trends of militarization and the war on drugs continued to converge. On April
8, 1986, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 221,
which designated illicit drugs a threat to US national security. […] The
declaration put pot, cocaine, and heroin at nearly the same class of enemy as
any nation against whom the United States had fought a conventional war"
(ch. 6, p. 157).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. William Crowe went
further, stating that with new antidrug offensive, 'you're probably going to
have to infringe on some human rights.' In testimony before Congress, Darryl
Gates proclaimed that casual drug use was 'treason,' then recommended that
users be 'taken out and shot.' It was especially odd comment given that Gates's
own son had a history of problems with drug abuse" (ch. 6, p. 166).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"> * * * <br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #cc0000;">QUOTATIONS AND LONGER SELECTIONS FROM A BOOK FROM 2013/14 IMPORTANT FOR 2020/21</span> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Balko, Radley. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rise of
the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces</i>. 2013. New
York: Public Affairs, 2014. © 2014 by Radley Balko </p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Final Reagan Years, 1988 Crime Bill</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial Rounded MT Bold",sans-serif">[<span style="color: #222222;">H.R. 5210 (100<sup>th</sup>): Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988
/ </span><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: black;">The Edward Byrne Memorial
State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Program, a matching grant program
authorized under the 1988 federal </span></span><a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/100/hr5210"><span face=""Arial Rounded MT Bold",sans-serif" style="color: #00a0d2;">Anti-Drug
Abuse Act</span></a><span face=""Arial Rounded MT Bold",sans-serif" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: black;">.]</span><span face=""Arial Rounded MT Bold",sans-serif"></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 15.3pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span face=""Arial Rounded MT Bold",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></h1><p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The Byrne
grant program gave the White House another way to impose its crime policy on
local law enforcement. As local police departments were infused with federal
cash, members of Congress got press release fodder for bringing federal money
back to the police departments in their districts. No one gave much thought to
the potential unintended consequences because there was no reason to — for
everyone who mattered the program was a winner. The program's losers would
become apparent in the 1990s. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[…] One of the
few voices of sanity in the Reagan years was Secretary of Defense Caspar
Weinberger, who spoke out against his own boss's attempt to enlist the military
in drug policing. Bush's secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, had no such
reservations. He'd write in a DoD publication a few years later, "the
detection and countering of the production, trafficking, and use of illegal
drugs is a high priority national security mission of the Department of Defense."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Democrats in
Congress savaged [William] Bennett and Bush's drug plan — <i>for not going far
enough</i>. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Joe [167] Biden</b> told the Associated Press that, […] the
Bush-Bennett plan "is not tough enough, bold enough, or imaginative enough
to meet the crisis at hand." […] The most pointed criticism came from <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Representative Charlie Rangel</b> of New
York. A March 1989 profile of Rangel in <i>Ebony</i> magazine ran under the
headline, "Charles Rangel: The Front-Line General in the War on
Drugs." Rangel told the magazine: "All these people are talking about
protecting the world against communism and the Soviets. … How dare they let
this happen to our children and not scream with indignation!" It isn't
clear just whom Rangel was criticizing. Just about everyone running for office
had been screaming with indignation for ten years. Yet Rangel called the
federal drug war "lackadaisical" and "indifferent" and said
that it suffered from "a lack of commitment." He damned methadone
treatment as "a crime" and snapped that anyone who even mentioned
legalization was committing "moral suicide." (ch. 6, pp. 167-68;
italics in original). </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>By the late
1980s, the policies, rhetoric, and mind-set of the Reagan-Bush all-out antidrug
blitzkrieg had fully set in at police departments across the country. Nearly
every city with a population of 100,000 or more either had a SWAT team or was
well on its way to getting one. The tactics that ten years earlier had been
reserved for the rare, violent hostage-taking or bank robbery were by now
employed daily by large police departments from coast to coast. "I wonder
where the United States is heading," Federal District Court judge Richard
Matsch, a Nixon appointee, told <i>USA Today</i> in 1989. "My concern is
that the real victim of the war on drugs might be the United States
Constitution." Another federal <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>judge,
Reagan appointee John Conway, worried that "police practices of this
nature raise the grim specter of a totalitarian state." (ch. 6, p. 168) </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The public appeared
to side with [Drug "Czar" William] Bennett. In a September 1989 poll
conducted by the <i>Washington Post</i> and ABC News, 62 percent of the country
said they would "be willing to give up a few of the freedoms we have in
this country if it meant we could greatly reduce the amount of illegal drug use."
Another 52 percent agreed that police should be allowed "to search without
a court order the houses of people suspected of selling drugs, even if houses
of people like you are sometime searched by mistake." </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In Boston,
police cracked down with […] "stop-and-frisk" searches […] of any
suspected drug offenders "who cause fear in the community," a broad
enough justification to let them search anyone at well. Suffolk County Superior
Court judge Cortland Mathers described the new policy as, "in effect, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">a proclamation of martial law in Roxbury
for a narrow class of people, young blacks</b>." A <i>Boston Globe</i>
article in September 1989 described how what was <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">essentially an occupation of some neighborhoods</b> was degrading an
entire generation's opinion of police. (ch., 6, p. 169)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>The Numbers</u></b><u>"</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Number of
drug raids conducted in 1987 by the San Diego Police Department: 457</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Number of
drug raids conducted by the Seattle Police Department in 1987: approximately
500</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Value of assets
in the Justice Department's forfeiture fund by 1985: $27 million</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Value of
assets in the Justice Department's forfeiture fund by 1991: $644 million</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage of US cities with populations of 50,000 that had a SWAT team in
1982: 59 percent.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1989: 78 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1995: 89 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage of those SWAT teams that trained with active-duty military
personnel: 46 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Average
annual number of times each of those SWAT teams was deployed in 1983: 13</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1986: 27</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1995: 55</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage of those deployments in 995 that were only to serve drug warrants:
75.9</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage of cities with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 that had a SWAT
team in 1980: 13.3 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1984: 25.6 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1990: 52.1 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Average
number of times each SWAT team in a city with a population between 25,000 and
50,000 was deployed in 1980: 3.7</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1985: 4.5</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1990: 10.3</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1995: 12.5 (ch. 6, p. 175)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"> * * * <br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #cc0000;">QUOTATIONS AND LONGER SELECTIONS FROM A BOOK FROM 2013/14 IMPORTANT FOR 2020/21</span> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Balko, Radley. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rise of
the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces</i>. 2013. New
York: Public Affairs, 2014. © 2014 by Radley Balko <br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Chapter 7, "The 1990s — It's All About the Numbers</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Headnote: "Why serve an arrest warrant to some crack
dealer with a 38? With full armor, the right shit, and training, you can kick
ass and have fun." — US military officer who conducted training seminars
for civilian SWAT teams in the 1990s (ch. 7, p. 177)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">In 1989 in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Portland,
Oregon</b>, Herb Robinson of the <i>Seattle Times </i>noted, fully armed Guard
troops had recently been stationed in front of suspected drug houses in a
series of drug raids. In Kentucky local residents became so enraged by frequent
Guard sweeps in low-flying helicopters that they blew up a radio tower used by
the Kentucky State Police. In Oklahoma, Guard troops dressed in battle garb
rappelled down from helicopters and fanned out into rural areas in search of
pot plants to uproot. (ch. 7, p. 179)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 1992, University
of Minnesota law professor Myron Orfield sent a questionnaire to Chicago
judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys to determine the state of the Fourth
Amendment in that city. Even cynics would find the results dispiriting. More
than one-fifth of Chicago judges believed that police lie in court more than
half the time when questioned about searches and seizures. <i>Ninety-two
percent</i> of judges said that police lie "at least some of the
time," and 38 percent of judges said that they believed that police
supervisors encouraged subordinates to lie in court. More than 50 percent of
respondents believed that at least "half of the time" the prosecutor
"knows or has reason to know" that police fabricate evidence. Another
93 percent of respondents (including 89 percent of the prosecutors) reported
that prosecutors have knowledge of perjury "at least some of the
time." Sixty-one percent of respondents, including half of the surveyed
prosecutors believed that prosecutors know or have reason to know that police
fabricate evidence in case reports, and half of prosecutors believed the same
to be true when it comes to warrants. Prosecutors also described the unspoken
understandings they have shared with cops, including prosecutors articulating
cases to police in terms like, "If this happens, we win. If that happens,
we lose." Yet Chicago judges went on approving search warrants with little
or no scrutiny. Orfield asked one more question, Did the Exclusionary Rule
really deter police misconduct. Every judge, every defense attorney, and every
prosecutor but one answered yes.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Former
narcotics cop Russ Jones says it wasn't always like that. "When I first
started writing search warrants, I had to take it to the DA, who would
thoroughly review it. Then I'd take it to the judge, who'd also give it a close
look. Then the judge always read the warrant, always asked questions. By the
time I left law enforcement, and certainly since, it had gotten to the point
where the DEA no longer needed to have warrants reviewed by a federal
prosecutor, and often the judge wouldn't even read it. It just became a rubber
stamp process. And I understand it's happening more and more. (ch. 7, p. 184)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After the
botched raid that ended the life of Ismael Mena in 1999, the <i>Denver Post</i>
looked into how judges in the Mile High City handled request for no-knock
warrants. Again, the results were unsettling. Over a twelve-month period,
police in Denver request 163 no-knock warrants. The city's judges granted 158
of them. Defense attorneys told the paper they were surprised […] that the
judges had rejected even five. Perhaps Denver police had come to the judges
with more than adequate probable cause. Perhaps. But the paper also found that,
astonishingly, many of the city's judges would sign off on no-knock warrants <i>even
though the police hadn't request one</i>. […] The paper also found that in
eight of ten raids over that period, police assertions in affidavits that they
would find weapons […] turned out to be wrong. In only seven of the 163
no-knock affidavits did police present any evidence that the suspect had been
seen with a gun. Of those seven raids, just two turned up an actual weapon. The
Denver Police Department requires that all no-knock raids be preapproved by the
DA's office. In about one-third of the raids, that never happened." (ch.
7, p. 185)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The early
1990s weren't kind to the father of SWAT. In response to the Rodney King
beating of May 1991, Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley asked Warren Christopher to
chair a commission looking in the LAPD's use of excessive force. The
commission's report was damning. It found that a small but significant group of
police officers within the department regularly used excessive force — and that
LAPD leadership did little to stop them. [… Notes lawsuits lost by city on
issue] The commission [186] found that even though officer misconduct in those
cases has often been egregious, it had usually resulted in "light and
often nonexistent discipline. The commission reviewed radio transmissions of
LAPD officers referring to a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">drug
roundup in a black neighborhood</b> as "monkey slapping time" or
fantasizing about driving down one particular street with a flamethrower —
"We would have a barbecue."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The comments
themselves would have been bad enough. Even worse was the fact that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">a culture existed within the department</b>
in which officers felt free to make them over police radio. The LAPD's focus of
reacting to crime instead of preventing it, the commission found, had isolated
officers from the communities they patrolled. Cops were rewarded for putting up
impressive arrest statistics and for being "hard-nosed." The report
found that drug and gang sweeps of the late 1980s had alienated LAPD cops from
the community, creating reciprocal hostility and resentment. The LAPD did a
poor job of screening applicants for violent backgrounds, and the department's
training put far too much emphasis on force and too little on communication n
and problem solving. The commission found that when academy student west out in
the field, they were quickly schooled to view the world from a
"we/they" perspective. It also found that many of the field training
officers who gave new cops their first experiences on the street themselves had
histories of misconduct or excessive use of force. (ch. 7, pp. 186-87)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In Colorado,
the Denver Post ran an article in 1995 about three area deaths from no-knock
drug raids in the area in thirty-three months — including a sixteen-year-old
boy, a deputy sheriff, and a fifty-four-year-old grandfather of eight.
"Such raids are very dangerous," said Pitkin County sheriff Robert
Braudis. "The are the closet thing I can think of to a military action in
a democratic society." Braudis explained that it was far safer to conduct
surveillance, to learn a suspect's routing, and then do "a quick, quiet
arrest then a suspect is in the open." As for possible destruction of
evidence, he said that his department would have the water shut off before
serving a warrant (by knocking at the door and waiting for an answer). In some
cases, they had arranged for a plumber to set up a "catch net" to
capture anything flushed after police arrived to serve the warrant. But Braudis
said that his concern went beyond the SWAT tactics. "The 'war on drugs' is
an abysmal failure," he said. "Even the term creates a dangerous war
mentality." (ch. 7, p. 192)</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In one case
[in Albuquerque in the later 1990s …] a SWAT officer said to his colleagues,
Let's go get the bad guy," just before the team went to confront
thirty-three-year-old Larry Walker. The "bad guy" wasn't a terrorist,
a killer, or even a drug dealer, but a depressed man whose family had called
the police because they feared he might be contemplating suicide. The SWAT team
showed up in full battle attire, including assault rifles and flash-bang
grenades. They found Walker "cowering under a juniper tree" […], then
shot him dead from forty-three feet away. The city brought in Sam Walker, a
well-regarded criminologist at the University of Nebraska, to evaluate the
police department's use [192] of lethal force. Walker was astounded by what he
found. "The rate of police killings was just off the charts," Walker
told the Times. The city's SWAT team, he said, "had an organizational structure
that led them to escalate situations upward rather than de-escalate. The city
then brought in […] Jerry Galvin to take over its police department. Galvin
immediately disbanded the SWAT team, toned down the militarism, and implemented
community policing policies. He told the Times, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"If cops have a mindset that the goal is to take out a citizen, it
will happen."</b> (ch. 7, pp. 192-93)</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><u><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Clinton Years, 1992-2000</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Bill] Clinton
and his appointees weren't as bellicose as Reagan and Bush or Meese and
Bennett, but the policies that Clinton implemented showed littler understanding
or appreciation of the Symbolic Third Amendment [keeping the US military out of
policing Americans]. In 1993, for example, he Justice Department and the
Defense Department entered into a formalized technology and equipment sharing
agreement. Not only were American police forces becoming more militarized, the
thinking went, but in places like Korea the US military was taking on more of a
policing role. […] Attorney General Janet Reno explained this strategy in a
speech to defense and intelligence specialists. "So let me welcome you to
the kind of war our police fight every day," Reno said. (ch. 7, p. 193)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Ruby Ridge, Idaho, 1992; Waco, Texas, 1993</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The Ruby Ridge
fiasco began in 1989 when Randy Weaver sold and ATF informant two sawed-off
shotguns that had been cut shorter than was allowed under federal law.
[* * *]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On August 21,
1992, a team of US marshals dressed in camouflage and carrying M-16s went to
Weaver's home on a reconnaissance mission to determine an appropriate place and
manner to capture him. Once there, the marshals threw rocks at the Weaver cabin
to see how the family's dogs would react. The dogs went nuts. Hearing them,
Weaver's fourteen-year-old son Sammy went out with family friend Kevin Harris
to see what the commotion was about. Accounts differ here, but at some point
one of the agents shot and killed one of the Weavers' dogs. Sammy Weaver
responded by firing his own gun at the source of the gunfire, then fled toward
the house. One of the marshals then shot him in the back as he ran. Sammy
Weaver was dead. Harris then exchanged fire with the marshals, killing one of
them. [200]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A twelve-day
siege ensured, featuring hundreds of cops, agents, and troops from the ATF, the
FBI, the US Marshals, the Idaho State Police, the local sheriff's department,
the National Guard, and — for some reason — the US Border Patrol. On day two of
the siege, FBI sniper teams were told that their rules of engagement were,
basically to shoot on sight […]. When Randy Weaver left the house to visit the
body of his son […] an FBI sniper shot him in the chest. As Weaver, Harris, and
one of Weaver's daughters fled back into the house, the agent fired again at
the front door. That bullet went through the door, then through Vicki Weaver's
head, killing her instantly. She was holding her ten-month-old daughter at the
time. The baby fell to the floor. Weaver and Harris were eventually tried in
federal court for murder, attempted murder, and other felonies. They were acquitted
on all the serious charges. The federal government eventually settled with the
Weaver family for over $3 million, and with Weaver for $380,000. (ch. 7, pp.
200-01)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The raid in
Waco the next year involved many of the same agencies — indeed, many of the
same agents. The ATF was investigating the Branch Davidians and their leader,
David Koresh, for weapons violations, Koresh went jogging every day and could
conceivably have been picked up peacefully. Instead, the agency drew up plans
for a heavily armed raid on the Branch Davidian compound, even knowing that
there were women and children inside. In fact, ATF officials learned ahead of
time from an agent who had infiltrated the compound that Koresh and his
followers knew the raid was coming. Their plan depended on the element of
surprise. They went through with it anyway. (ch. 7, p. 201)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The subsequent
siege went on for six weeks. Finally, on April 19, Attorney General Janet Reno
gave order to flush the Branch Davidians out of the compound. Federal agents
used tanks to smash holes in the building. […] In all, seventy-six Davidians
died, including twenty-six children.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Waco and Ruby
Ridge made militarization a political issue. Perhaps counterintuitively, the
laws the agents were enforcing — federal gun control laws — put conservatives
in the unprecedented role of criticizing federal cops for overkill, and
liberals in the position of defending the aggressive tactics. (One fact about
Waco that conservative ATF critics often overlook: the military presence at the
compound was only made possible by the drug war. The ATF told the leaders of
Joint Task Force 6 — one of the many military-civilian police antidrug task
forces set up during the Reagan and Bush administrations — that David Koresh
was running a methamphetamine operation. The evidence for this was suspect at
best.) (ch. 7, p. 202)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">The ATF abuses that came to light in the 1990s were a good
indication that the warriorlike, us-against-them mentality wasn't limited to
drug policing. Those police actions also gave some momentum to a new militia
movement — of at least caused the media to take notice of them. The militia
movement was vast and fairly diverse, but most groups had views about
government, guns, and property that were well to the right of the rest of the
country. Very few espoused violence, but the new attention on the few that did,
along with anger from the National Rifle Association (NRA), Gun Owners of
America, and the rants of right-wing personalities like [G. Gordon] Liddy,
inspired more reactionary opposition from the left [sic]. Then, of April 19,
1995, Timothy McVeigh set off a fertilizer bomb outside the Arthur Murrah
Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 164 people. McVeigh claimed that he
bombed the building in retaliation for the events at Waco. (ch. 7, p. 203)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Starting 1989, involving Peter Kraska, U of Eastern Kentucky
criminologist. "One Coast Guard officer flatly admitted to Kraska that the
procedure" of using US Navy personnel and vessels to spot and
"intercept boats or ships that fit drug courier profiles" and have
them boarded and any police work done by the Coast Guard "was a way of
getting around the Navy's policy prohibiting its personnel from participating
in civil police actions."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[…] Kraska
began looking into indirect militarization: the rise of SWAT teams and other
paramilitary police teams; what might be called the criminal-justice-industrial
complex; and the increasing tendency of public officials to address social
problems with martial rhetoric and imagery and to suggest military-like solutions,
[206[ from the "wars on crime and drugs, to the heavy weaponry and
vehicles that police were beginning to use, to the proposals that juvenile
offenders be punished in "boot camps."</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Kraska got funding and produced the data for "The
Numbers" table ending ch. 6 (reproduced above, p. 12), with the
proliferation of SWAT teams in small cities and larger towns summed up in
Kraska's phrase "'the militarization of Mayberry.'" Additionally,
"In the early 1980s, the aggregate number of SWAT deployments was just under
3,000. By 1995, it was just under 30,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>[…] What was precipitating the surge in SWAT activity? The drug war,
almost exclusively." Balko asks and answers, "What does a SWAT team
do in a city with no violent crime? It creates violence out of nonviolent
crime" (ch. 7, p. 207). </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Kraska tells of SWAT commanders telling him how their people
were instructed by "special forces folks who have come right out of the
jungles of Central and South America" and how "We've had teams of
Navy Seals and Army Rangers come here and teach us everything. We just have to
use our judgment and exclude the information like: 'at this point we bring in
the mortars and blow the place up" (ch. 7, p. 208). Kraska's informant
tells of a four-star general writing him expressing concern over such training.
Summarizing such concerns:</p>
<p class="MsoQuote">Back in the 1850s, the Cushing Doctrine had allowed federal
marshals to summon US troops to enforce domestic law. More than a hundred years
after the controversial policy was repealed by the Posse Comitatus Act, federal
marshals were now soliciting elite US military personnel again — not to enforce
domestic law themselves, but to teach civilian police officers how to enforce
the laws <i>as if they</i> were in the military. [p. 208]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Perhaps most
disturbing was Kraska's finding that these paramilitary police teams and
aggressive tactics were increasingly being used for regular patrols. By 1997,
20 percent of the departments he surveyed used SWAT teams or similar units for
patrol, mostly in poor, high-crime areas. This was an increase of 257 percent
since 1989.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>SWAT
proponents argued that all of this buildup was in response to a real problem —
after all, violent crime had soared in the 1980s and early 1990s. But the SWAT
teams weren't generally responding to violent crime. They were usually serving
drug warrants. [… Kraska and his colleague Louie Cubellis] found that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">only 6.63 percent of the rise in SWAT
deployments could be explained by the rising crime rate</b>. (ch. 7, pp.
208-09)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">As had been happening throughout the drug war, this mass
militarization brought with it a new wave of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">dehumanization</b>. In one follow-up interview to his survey, a SWAT
commander told Kraska, referring to the use of his team for routine patrols,
"When the soldiers ride in, you should see those blacks scatter."
Former San Jose police chief Joseph McNamara told <i>National Journal</i> in
2000 that in a recent SWAT conference he had attended, "officers
. . . were wearing these very disturbing shirts. On the front, there
were pictures of SWAT officers dressed in dark uniforms, wearing helmets, and
holding submachine guns. Below was written: 'We don't do drive-by shootings.'
On the back there was a picture of a demolished house. Below was written: 'We
stop.'"</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Kraska found
more evidence of the mind-set problem in a separate ethnography study he
conducted. […] But before the police officers arrived [for a possibly illegal
training session with actual military personnel], Kraska talked to the trainers
about the proliferation of SWAT teams. "This shit is going on all
over," one f them said. ""Why serve an arrest warrant to some
crack dealer with a 38? With full armor, the right shit, and training, you can
kick ass and have fun." The other trainer jumped in. "Most of these
guys just like to play war; they get a rush out of search-and-destroy missions
instead of the bullshit they do normally. (ch. 7, p. 212)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Other style statements on trainees: a T-short with "a
picture of a burning city with gunship helicopters and the caption 'Operation
Ghetto Storm'" (ch. 7, pp. 212-13). Also Oakley wraparound sunglasses and
flattops or crew cuts of the military variety: "The Oakleys and crew cuts
were part of a muscle-bound, mechanistic look popular with younger police
officers. The look was usually accessorized with sensory-enhancement gear like
night-vision goggles to achieve what Kraska calls a 'techno-warrior' image. He
notes that one purveyor of SWAT gear and clothing calls its line 'Cyborg 21<sup>st</sup>'"
(ch. 7, p. 213)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"> * * * <br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #cc0000;">QUOTATIONS AND LONGER SELECTIONS FROM A BOOK FROM 2013/14 IMPORTANT FOR 2020/21</span> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Balko, Radley. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rise of
the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces</i>. 2013. New
York: Public Affairs, 2014. © 2014 by Radley Balko </p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">COMMUNITY POLICING</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, crime in America was
still climbing. The concept of <i>community policing</i> was growing
increasingly popular. […] Rather than taking a "call-and-response"
approach to policing […] cops walk regular beats. They go to community
meetings. They know the names of the principals of the schools in their
districts […].</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 1994
Clinton started a new grant program under the Justice Department called
Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS. For its inaugural year, Clinton
and leaders in Congress (most notably <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sen.
Joe Biden</b>) funded it with $148.4 million. [* * *]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The style of
community policing embraced by officials like [Nick] Pastore [in New Haven, CT]
and [Norm] Stamper [in San Diego] aims to make police a helpful presence in the
community, not an occupying presence. But theirs is not the only way to be
proactive about law enforcement. Street sweeps, occupation-like control of
neighborhoods, SWAT raids, and aggressive anti-gang policies are also
proactive. These police activities are aggressive, often violent, and usually a
net loss for civil liberties, but they <i>are</i> proactive. [218]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When Clinton, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Biden</b>, and other politicians touted the
COPS program, they did so in language that evoked the Peace Corps approach
(though both <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Clinton</b> and Biden also
supported policies that promoted militarization). Although Clinton described
the goal of COPS as "build[ing] bonds of understanding and trust between
police and citizens," it wasn't clear if he or any other politician really
believed this. The majority of the funding in COPS grants was given simply to <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">hire more police officers</b>. The program
said little about how those officers should be used, or what sort of attitude they
should bring to the job. […] And so as the COPS program threw billions at
police departments under the pretense of hiring whistling, baton-twirling
Officer Friendlies to walk neighborhood beats […] many police agencies were
actually using the money to militarize (ch. 7, pp. 218-19).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Portland, </u>OR: </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">From work by Paul Richmond, 1997 article in "the
alternative newspaper <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">PDXS</i>":</p>
<p class="MsoQuote">"The unfortunate truth about community policing as it is
currently being implemented is that it is anything but community based
[…]." Instead […] in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Portland</b>
[OR] the grants had resulted in "increased militarization of the police
force." Richmond also found in Portland that […] a federal program touted
as a way to encourage local police to get more involved with local communities
was actually federalizing local law enforcement. At the same time Clinton was
pushing COPS, the administration and Democrats in Congress were pushing
policies like "troops to cops" bills, management training programs
for police agencies based on federal models of policing, and a bill that would
allow local police departments to fund community policing programs with asset
forfeiture money obtained through the Justice Department's Equitable Sharing
Program — the program that allows [219] local police to ignore state forfeiture
laws by teaming up with the federal government. (ch. 7, pp. 219-20)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Richmond found
that while the overall cops-to-citizens ratio fell in the early 1990s, in
Portland, [OR,] between 1989 and 1994, the number of officers in the city's
tactical operations department jumped from two to fifty-six. The two officers
in charge of the city's tactical teams had formerly been in charge of the
city's Department of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Community Policing.
Richmond also obtained a copy of the city's "Community Policing Strategic
Plan," passed by the city council in 1994. Among the plan's objectives was
to increase the police department's involvement with the federal ATF and the
Oregon National Guard. It included implementing at a local level Clinton's
"one strike and you're out" plan for drug use in public housing,
which allowed for raids on public housing tenants, followed by their possible
eviction, based on no more than an anonymous tip. Richmond was alarmed that so
many progressives in the city were embracing the community policing plan based
on little more than its pleasant-sounding name and that it was coming from a
Democratic administration in Washington and administered by a progressive city
government. The devil was in the details, and no one had bothered to look at
the details. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Little of this
would have surprised Peter Kraska. All of the police departments he surveyed
that had a SWAT team "also claimed to place high emphasis on the
democratic approach to community policing." Kraska found that when most
law enforcement officials heard "community policing," they thought of
the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">militarized zero-tolerance model</b>.
(ch. 7, p. 220)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Wisconsin</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 2001, a <i>Madison
Capital Times </i>investigation found that sixty-five of Wisconsin's
eighty-three local SWAT teams had come into being since 1980 — twenty-eight of
them since 1996, and sixteen in just the previous year. In other words, more
than half of the state's SWAT teams had popped up since the inaugural year of
the COPS program. The newer tactical units had sprung up in absurdly small
jurisdictions like Forest County (population 9950), Mukwonago (7,519), and Rich
Lake (8,320). Many of the agents who populated these new SWAT teams […] had
been hired with COPS grants. A local criminologist was incredulous:
"Community policing initiatives and stockpiling weapons and grenade
launchers are totally incompatible." Perhaps that was true in theory, but
not in how community policing was being practiced. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Of course,
Byrne grants* and the 1033 program** had also contributed to the SWAT-ification
of the Dairy State. The paper found that in the 1990s, Wisconsin police
departments hauled in over 100,000 pieces of military equipment valued at more
than $1.75 million. Some of the bounty was benign, items like computers and
office equipment, but it also included "11 M-16s, 21 bayonets, four boats,
a periscope, and 41 vehicles […]."Columbia County also received
"surveillance equipment, cold water gear, tools<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>battle dress uniforms, flak jackets, [and]
chemical suits." The county put its tactical team to use by sending it to
"Weedstock" in nearby Saulk County, an event where cops in full SWAT
attire intimidatingly stood guard while "hundreds of young people
gather[ed] peacefully to smoke marijuana and listen to music." (ch. 7, p.
221)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Byrne_Memorial_Justice_Assistance_Grant_Program></span></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">**
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Enforcement_Support_Office></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This is how
the game is played. Drug arrests brought in federal money. Federal money and
1033 [Law-Enforce Support] let police departments buy cool battle garb to start
a SWAT team, which they justify to local residents by playing to fears of
terrorism, school shootings, and hostage takings But those sorts of events are
not only rare, they don't bring in any additional money. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Drug raids</b> bring in more federal funding, plus the possibility of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">asset forfeiture</b>. All in the name of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">community policing</b>.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>During the
2008 campaign, Barack Obama and Joe Biden — but especially <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Joe Biden</b> — credited the COPS program as the reason behind
America's historic crime drop that began in 1994. Biden's campaign website
during the 2008 primaries exclaimed, "In the 1990s the Biden Crime Bill
[an incarnation of the final bill establishing COPS] added <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">100,000 cops</b> to America's streets. As a result, murder and violent
crime rates went down eight years in a row." </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">The Justice Department's inspector general put the new cops
number closer to 60,000, and a Heritage Foundation analysis found that,
accounting for attrition [sic], the total number of cops on the streets
increased between 6,000 and 40,000 [sic]. More to the point, there's little
evidence that the crime drop was a result of the program. A 2005 report by the
Government Accountability Office found that while the violent crime rate
dropped 32 percent between 1993 and 2000, at most, the COPS program accounted
for 2.5 percent of that decrease, and at a cost of $8 billion. A 2007 analysis
in the peer-reviewed academic journal <i>Criminology</i> concluded that
"COPS spending had little to no effect on crime." (ch. 7, p. 222)</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 2007 I was
asked to speak about police militarization at a "crime summit" hosted
by Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, the Democratic chairman of the House
Subcommittee on Crime. During a question-and-answer session, someone asked
about community policing and the possibility of restoring full funding to the
COPS grants. (The Bush administration had phased the program out.) Everyone
seemed to be in favor of the "Peace Corps" model of community
policing, and they also seemed to believe that this was what the COPS grants
were funding. Pointing to the Madison Capital Times investigation and [Peter]
Kraska's research, I explained that these idealized visions of community
policing didn't appear to have much to do with how the grants were actually
being used. Representative Scott stopped me.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Are you
telling me that our community policing grants are being used to start and fund
. . . SWAT teams?"</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I responded
that, yes, that was what Kraska and the Madison paper had found.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Scott replied,
with a bit of whimsy, "Well, <i>that's</i> not really what we
intended."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The room had a
good chuckle. The next year the Democrats increased funding to the COPS program
by $40 million. The following year, with Obama in the White House, the
program's budget increased 250 percent, to $1.55 billion. (ch. 7, p. 223)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">Joseph McNamara at a "groundbreaking drug policy
conference in 1997 at the Hoover Institution," where McNamara was a
fellow. He'd worked as police chief in Kansas City and San José (spelled in <i>Warrior</i>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>w/o the accent). "Among cities with
a population of 400,000 or more, San Jose also had the lowest crime rate in the
country for the last three years of McNamara's tenure. […] McNamara pulled this
off with one of the smallest per capita police departments in America."
This — plus generally conservative politics — gave McNamara "clout with
the right, despite his vocal criticism of the war on drugs, police abuse, and
police militarization." McNamara lays out a hypothetical starting with a
tip on crack at a house.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After laying
out the hypothetical […] McNamara turned to Chief [Bernard] Parks [LAPD]. What
was his next move. Parks responded that he'd attempt to verify the tip. If it
checked out, he'd send in the SWAT team. McNamara asked what sort of ammunition
the SWAT team used. Weren't their bullets capable of going through walls?
"They'll go through a car engine two blocks away," Parks answered.
McNamara then changed the hypothetical. What if it wasn't crack but marijuana?
Would he still send in an armed-to-the-teeth SWAT team? Parks said he would.
What if it was a shipment<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of bootlegged
Valium. Still with the SWAT team. Black market booze? SWAT team. (ch. 7 p. 225)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The police
chief of the second-largest city in America [Bernard Parks, LAPD] had just told
the audience that he was willing to use extraordinary force to confiscate a
supply of illegal drugs. It was a level of force that could well result [in]
death or injury to innocents — and indeed by that point [1997] already had,
countless times. What's more, he added that what drug he was pursuing and how
much actual harm that particular drug caused <i>had no relevance</i> on the
amount of force he elected to use. Every public official on the panel who had
the power to check that decision then told the same audience that they had no
interest in second-guessing him. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"It
really showed the extent of the problem," McNamara said. "You get
this robot mentality with these officials. The mayor said she knew nothing
about these raids and didn't want to know anything about them until they were
over. The judge wasn't interested in scrutinizing the raid until it was over —
when any damage would already be done. Everyone else said it wasn't their job
to worry about it. And so you end up with this dangerous decision made by
people of lower rank with little training, with little incentive to care much
about constitutional rights, with no oversight — no checks or balances..
Collateral damage is just part of the game." (ch. 7, p. 227)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>North Hollywood Shoot-out 28 February 1997</u>: bank
robbery by heavily armed and armored perpetrators, Larry Phillips Jr. and Emil <span style="color: #404040; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 191;">Mătăsăreanu</span></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the fifteen
years since it happened, the North Hollywood Shoot-out has become the go-to incident
for proponents of police militarization. For years now it has been regularly
cited as the prime example of why cops need bigger guns, and why police
departments need SWAT teams. There's some merit to these arguments. A strong
argument could be made, for example, for allowing patrol officers to store
powerful weapons in the trunks of their squad cars in the event that they're
the first on the scene of such an incident — and the SWAT team is still ten or
twenty minutes away. But the incident isn't an argument for proliferation of
SWAT teams to small towns, for more militarized uniforms, or for using
increasingly militarized tactics for increasingly petty crimes.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[…] That the
best anecdote defenders of police militarization can come up with is fifteen
years old may attest to the rarity of such incidents. In any case, even most
critics of the SWAT phenomenon acknowledge that there are some situations were
a paramilitary police response is appropriate — and a heavily armed bank
robbery would be right at the top of that list. The criticism of SWAT
proliferation is that the overwhelming majority of SWAT deployments today are
to break into private residences to serve search warrants for nonviolent
crimes. (ch. 7, p. 230)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado, 20 April 1999</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre.
></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The other
major incident from the late 1990s that proponents of militarization often cite
in justifying SWAT teams is the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School
[…]. Columbine is a particularly unfortunate example. Though there were
eventually eight hundred police officers and eight SWAT teams in the Columbine
campus, the SWAT teams held off from going inside to stop shooters Dylan
Klebold and Eric Harris because they deemed the situation too dangerous [i.e.,
for the police]. A spokesman for the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department
justified the SWAT team's [sic: singular] actions after the shooting. "A
dead police officer would not be able to help anyone." Added SWAT team
leader Donn Kraemer, "If we went in and tried to take them and got shot,
we would be part of the problem." David Kepel of the Independence
Institute in Colorado explained how that panned out for the victims:</p>
<p class="InternalBlocjkQuote">While one murder after another was being
perpetrated, a dozen police officers were stationed near [the] exit. These
officers made no attempt to enter the building, walk 15 steps, and confront the
murderers. (According to police speaking on condition of anonymity, one Denver
SWAT officer did begin to enter but was immediately "ordered down" by
commanders.)</p>
<p class="InternalBlocjkQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Twenty
minutes after the rampage began, three SWAT officers <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>were finally sent into the building — on the
first floor, on the side of the building furthest from […] where killings were
in progress. Finding students rushing out of the building, they decided to
escort students out, rather than track down the killers. This began a police
program to "contain the perimeter."</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 103.5pt; tab-stops: 1.75in;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Instead of
confronting the killers, then, the <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>SWAT
team frisked the victims [… and] then passed on another chance to confront
Harris and Klebold. (ch. 7, pp. 231)</p>
<p class="InternalBlocjkQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Students
in the [cafeteria] room had called 911 and the line was open, so again the
killers' location was known. Many officers were massed near the cafeteria door.
They knew where the murderers were. They knew that the murderers were
attempting to get into a room to kill more people. The police stood idle. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">Columbine was precisely the sort of incident for which the
SWAT team had been invented. It was the sort of incident often cited by
defenders of SWAT teams to justify their existence. And it was the sort of
incident for which even critics of SWAT teams concede the use of a SWAT team
would be appropriate. Yet not only did the SWAT teams at the scene not confront
the killers, potentially costing innocent lives, but the most respected SWAT
team in the country then reviewed the Jefferson County team's actions and found
their actions were appropriate. (ch. 7, p. 232)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[…T]hough they
make huge headlines and spark weeks of breathless coverage, school shootings
(and mass shootings in general) are exceedingly rare. University of Virginia
psychologist and education professor Dewey Cornell, who studies violence
prevention and school safety, has estimated that the typical school campus can
expect to see a homicide about once every several thousand years — hardly
justification to rush out to get a STAT team. Yet many college campuses now
have their own paramilitary police teams, and many cited Columbine and Virginia
Tech as the reason they needed one. (ch. 7, p. 233)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
"Battle for Seattle" [1999]is commonly considered the start of the
modern antiglobalization movement. But it was also a landmark event in the way
police and city officials react to protests. In spite of the fact that there
were few injuries and no fatalities, the images that emerged from Seattle
depicted a city that had lost control. Going forward, "control would be
the prevailing objective for police handling protests. In the years to come,
the Darth Vader look would become the standard police presence at large
protests. Cities and police officials would commit mass violations of civil and
constitutional rights and deal with the consequences later. There would be
violent, preemptive SWAT raids, mass arrests, and sweeping use of police [236]
powers that ensnared violent protesters, peaceful protesters, and people who had
nothing to do with the protest at all.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That's why
[Seattle Police Chief Norm] Stamper calls his decisions in Seattle "the
worst mistake" of his career. He's seen how the police response to protest
has changed since 1999. "We gassed fellow Americans engaged in civil
disobedience," Stamper says. "We set a number of precedents [not
counting the Civil Rights Movement, and other 1950/60s actions — RDE], most of
them bad. And police departments across the country learned all the wrong
lessons from us. […] I mean, look at what happened to those Occupy protesters
at UC Davis, where the cop just pepper sprays them down like he'd watering a
bed of flowers, and I think that we played a part in making that sort of thing
so common — so easy to do now." (ch. 7, pp. 236-37)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Numbers (ch. 7, pp.
237-38)</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Number of
SWAT raids conducted by the Minneapolis Police Department in 1987: 36</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Number of
SWAT raids conducted by the Minneapolis Police Department in 1996: over 700</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Number of
raids carried out by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms from 1993 to
1995: 523</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage of these ATF raids that used dynamic entry: 49 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage of these ATF raids that turned up weapons of any kind: 18 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Approximate number of paramilitary police raids in the United States in 1980:
3,000</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Approximate number of paramilitary police raids in 2001: 45,000</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Number of
SWAT deployments in Orange County, Florida, from 1993 to 1997: 619</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage of those SWAT deployments undertaken to serve drug warrants: 94
percent [237]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></i>• Number of police officers in
the tactical operations branch of the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Portland,
Oregon</b>, Police Department in 1989: 2</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Number of
Portland police officers in the tactical operations branch in 1994: 56</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage of police departments in cities of 100,000 or more that had a SWAT
team in 1982: 59 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• … in
1995: 89 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></b>• Average number of times each
of those SWAT teams was deployed in 1980: 13</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1989: 38</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1995: 52</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage increase in the number of police departments using tactical units
for proactive patrol from 1982 to 1997: 292 percent.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"> * * * <br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #cc0000;">QUOTATIONS AND LONGER SELECTIONS FROM A BOOK FROM 2013/14 IMPORTANT FOR 2020/21</span> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Balko, Radley. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rise of
the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces</i>. 2013. New
York: Public Affairs, 2014. © 2014 by Radley Balko <br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>Chapter 8,
"The 2000s — A Whole New War</u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Betty Taylor, detective in sheriff's department in Lincoln
County, Missouri (rural), drafted into SWAT team (ch. 8, pp. 239-40). After a
raid in November 2000 —</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Taylor was
shattered. "Here I come in with all my SWAT gear on, dressed in armor from
head to toe, and this little girl looks up at me, and her only thought is to
defend her little brother. I thought, How can we be the good guys when we come
into the house looking like this, screaming and pointing guns at the people
they love? How can we be the good guys when a little girl looks up at me and <i>wants
to fight me</i>? And for what? […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[TAYOR:]
"Good police work has nothing to do with dressing up in black and breaking
into houses in the middle of the night. And the mentality changes when they get
put on the SWAT team. I remember a guy I was good friends with, it just
completely changed him. The <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">us-versus-them</b>
mentality takes over. You see that mentality in regular patrol officers too.
But it's much much worse on the SWAT team. They're more concerned with the
drugs than they are with innocent bystanders. Because when you get into that
mentality, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">there are no innocent people</b>.
There's <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">us and there's the enemy</b>.
Children and dogs are always the easiest casualties. (ch. 8, p. 241)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">Police militarization would accelerate in the 2000s. […
Federal funding for anti-terrorism equipment. Plus:] The 1990s trend of
government officials using paramilitary tactics and heavy-handed force to make
political statements or to make an example of certain classes of nonviolent offenders
would continue, especially in response to political protests. The battle gear
and aggressive policing would also start to move into more mundane crimes –
SWAT teams have recently been used even for regulatory inspections.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But the last
few years have also seen some trends that could spur some movement toward <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">reform</b>. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Technological advances</b> in personal electronic devices have armed a
large percentage of the public with the power to hold police more accountable
with video and audio recordings. The rise of social media has enabled cities to
get accounts of police abuses out and quickly disseminated. [242]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[…] Over just
the six years I've been covering this issue, I've noticed that media accounts
of drug raids have become less deferential to police. Reporters have become
more willing to ask questions about the appropriateness of police tactics and
more likely to look at how a given raid fits into broader policing trends, both
locally and nationally. Internet commenters on articles about incidents in
which police may have used excessive force also seem to have grown more
skeptical about police actions, particularly in botched drug raids. (ch. 8, pp.
242-43)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">Perversely, actual success in reducing crime is generally not
rewarded with federal money, on the presumption that the money ought to go
where it's most needed — high crime areas. So the grants reward police
departments for making lots of easy arrests (i.e., low-level drug offenders)
and lots of seizures (regardless of size), and for serving lots of warrants.
When it comes to tapping into federal funds, whether any of that actually reduces
crime or makes the community safer is irrelevant — and in fact, successfully
fighting crime could hurt a department's ability to rake in federal money. (ch.
8, p. 243)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As a result
[of a series of court decisions and policies, including the U.S. Federal Byrne
grant program], we have roving squads of drug cops, loaded with SWAT gear, who
get more money if they conduct more raids, make more arrests, and seize more
property, and they are virtually immune to accountability if they get out of
line. In 2009 the Justice Department attempted a cost-benefit analysis of these
[primarily narcotics] task forces but couldn't even get to the point of
crunching the numbers. The task forces weren't producing any numbers to crunch.
"Not only were data insufficient to estimate what take forces
accomplished," the report [cited p. 360 n.2] read, "data were
inadequate to even tell what the task forces did for routine work."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Not
surprisingly, the proliferation of heavily armed task forces that have little
accountability and are rewarded for making lots of busts has resulted in some
abuse.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The most
notorious scandal involving these task forces came in the form of a massive
drug sting in the town of Tulia, Texas. On July 23, 1999, the task force donned
black ski-mask caps and full SWAT gear to conduct a series of coordinated
predawn raids across [244] Tulia. By 4:00 AM, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">forty black people — 10 percent of Tulia's black population — and six
whites were in handcuffs</b>. The <i>Tulia Sentinel</i> declared "We do
not like these scumbags doing business in our town. [They are] a cancer on our
community, it's time to give them a major dose of chemotherapy behind
bars." The paper followed up with the headline<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"Tulia's Streets Cleared of Garbage."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The raids were
based on the investigative work of Tom Coleman, a sort of freelance cop who, it
would later be revealed, had simply invented drug transactions that had never
occurred. [Later, "Coleman was […] named Texas lawman of the year.] […] In
2005, Coleman was convicted of perjury. […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The following
year, it all happened again. In November 2000, SWAT teams from Byrne-funded
South Central Texas Narcotics Task Force rolled int Hearne, a town of about
five thousand people […], to wage another series of coordinated raids. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The raids netted twenty-eight arrests —
twenty-seven of the suspects were black. One of them was Regina Kelly </b>[245 …].</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In part because
of Kelly's courageous refusal to accept a plea bargain for a crime she didn't
commit, we now know that all twenty-eight indictments were based on the word of
a single confidential informant. […] At the civil trial for the lawsuit brought
by Kelly and other defendants, the informant testified that [District Attorney
John] Paschall had given him a list of twenty black men. He promised leniency
for the informant's own burglary charge if he helped Paschall convict the men
on the list. The informant also testified he was promised $100 for every
suspect he helped convict beyond that list of twenty. The lawsuit was settled
in 2005. Of the twenty-eight people charged, seventeen were later exonerated.
The 2008 movie <i>American Violet</i> was based on Kelly's experience after she
was arrested.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But similar
mass round-up raids had been going on in Hearne [Texas] for fifteen years.
"They come on helicopters, military-style, SWAT style [….] In the
apartments I was living in, in the projects, there were a lot of children
outside playing. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">They don't care</b>.
They throw kids on the ground, put guns to their heads. They're kicking in
doors. They just don't care." (ch. 8, pp. 245-46)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"> * * * <br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #cc0000;">QUOTATIONS AND LONGER SELECTIONS FROM A BOOK FROM 2013/14 IMPORTANT FOR 2020/21</span> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Balko, Radley. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rise of
the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces</i>. 2013. New
York: Public Affairs, 2014. © 2014 by Radley Balko <br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Bush into Obama/Biden Years</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the
following years, there were numerous other corruption scandals, botched raids,
sloppy police work, and other allegations of misconduct against the federally
funded task forces in Texas. Things got so [bad?] that by the middle of the
2000s Gov. Rick Perry began diverting state matching funds away from the task
forces to other programs. The cut in funding forced many task forces to shut
down. The stream of lawsuits shut down or limited the operations of others. In
2001 the state had fifty-one federally funded task forces. By the spring of
2006, it was down to twenty-two.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Funding for
the Byrne grant program had held steady at about $500 million through most of
the Clinton administration. Just as it had done with the cops [COPS?] program,
the Bush administration began to pare the program down […]. This was more out
of an interest in limiting federal influence in law enforcement than concern
for police abuse or drug war excesses.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But the
reaction from law enforcement was interesting. In March 2008, Byrne-funded task
forces across the country staged a series of coordinated drug raids dubbed <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Operation Byrne Blitz</b>. The intent was
to make a series of large drug seizures to demonstrate how important the Byrne
grants were to fighting the drug war. In Kentucky alone, for example, task
forces uncovered 23 methamphetamine labs, seized more than 2,400 pounds of
marijuana, and arrested 565 people for illegal drug use. Of course, if police
in a single state could simply go out and find 23 meth labs and 2,400 pounds of
marijuana in twenty-four hours just to make a political point about drug war
funding, that was probably a good indication that twenty years of Byrne grants
and four decade of drug warring hadn't really accomplished much. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>During the
2008 presidential campaign, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Barack Obama</b>
criticized Bush and the Republicans for cutting Byrne, a federal police program
beloved by his running mate <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Joe Biden</b>.
Despite Tulia, Hearne, a growing pile of bodies from botched drug raids, and
the objections of groups as diverse as the ACLU, the Heritage Foundation, La
Raza, and the Cato Institute, Obama promised to restore full funding to the
program, which, he said, "has been critical to creating the anti-gang [247]
and anti-drug task forces our communities need." He kept his promise. The
2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act resuscitated the Byrne grants with
a whopping $2 billion infusion, by far the largest budget in the programs
twenty-year history. (ch. 8, pp. 247-48)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>13 September 2000</u>: Alberto Sepulveda killed in raid
in a series around Modesteo, CA</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Back in
the early 1970s, nationwide outrage over a series of wrong-door drug raids had
inspired furious politicians to hastily call congressional hearings; as a
consequence, the law that had authorized those raids was repealed. Now, in
2000, an eleven-year-old boy had just been obliterated at close range with a
shotgun as his parents and siblings lay on the ground beside him. And even that
wasn't enough to stop his <i>own town</i> from discontinuing the aggressive
tactics that caused his death" (ch. 8, pp. 249-50).</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><u><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote">The George W. Bush Administration quickly made it clear that
the drug war would once again be fought as a culture war. […] But when the 9/11
attacks happened eight months after Bush was inaugurated, they presented a new
opportunity. Instead of exploiting the fear of crime or tapping into what
remained of anti-counterculture sentiment, they could now exploit the fear of
terrorist attacks. They would use the 9/11 attack for drug war propaganda.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And so,
starting in the February following the attacks [i.e., 2002], the Office of
National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) started the "I helped …"
campaign, which consisted of commercial and print ads claiming that casual drug
users in the United States were supporting the very sort of terrorists that had
attacked America. The television commercials featured a series of young people
portrayed as casual drug users. One by one, the young actors rattled off the
varieties of atrocity allegedly funded by recreational drug use. "I helped
kill a policeman," one said. "I helped murder families," said
another. […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The campaign
was not only shamefully exploitive, it was simply false. The claim that casual
drug users supported terrorism was dubious at best. To the extent that black
market drug purchases in the United State did support terror groups, it was the
"black market" part that made it possible. Nearly all the terror
attacks listed on the DEA's website at the time had been attacks by
drug-smuggling groups related to the drug trade, and nearly all had taken place
in Latin America and Mexico. The only widely used drug in the United [250]
States with any tangible connection to terrorism was heroin, and even that link
was tenuous. (ch. 8, pp. 250-51)</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If anything,
there was a stronger argument that the country's <i>antidrug</i> efforts were
sponsoring terrorism. In May 2001 […,] the US State Department announced a $43
million aid gift to Afghanistan, which at the time was ruled by the Taliban.
The grant was intended to be used to compensate Afghan farmers who had been
hurt by a Taliban edict (encouraged by the United States) banning the
cultivation of heroin poppies. Of course, the edict didn't really stop the
heroin from flowing out of Afghanistan. It simply enabled the Taliban to
consolidate heroin production so that more of the revenue went directly to the
regime. The United States had also given aid to support a drug war in Thailand
that included government "death squads" that human rights groups
accused of carrying out as many as four thousand extrajudicial executions of
suspected drug offenders. US aid had also gone to right-wing paramilitary
groups in Colombia that were accused of mass human rights abuses.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>From a broader
view, the ads weren't all that different from prior attempt <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">to associate drugs and intoxicants with
whatever bogeyman the country happened to be facing at the time</b>. But by
tying even casual drug users to terrorism so soon after one of the most
horrific attacks on US soil in the country's history — particularly an attack
that took the lives of so many police officers — the federal government
afforded drug cops <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">yet more license to
treat suspected drug offenders as enemy combatants</b> not as citizens with
rights. (ch. 8, p. 251)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The trendy new
drug throwing the media and politicians into hysterics was Ecstasy. Raves were
the new, weird, and different dance parties where teenagers were allegedly
taking this crazy sex drug. Cue the moral panic, political grandstanding, and
ensuing aggressive crackdown. Prior to the raid in Racine [2 Nov. 2002], <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sen. Joe Biden</b> of Delaware seemed
particularly obsessed with rave parties. Politicians seemed to think that any
party with techno music, pulsing lights, and neon inevitably degenerated into
underage kids getting high on Ecstasy and engaging in mass orgies. In the
summer of 2002, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Biden was pushing his
RAVE Act</b>, an absurdly broad law that would have made venue and club owners
liable for running a drug operation if they merely sold the "paraphernalia"
common to parties where people took <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ecstasy</b>
— accessories like bottled water and glow sticks. After attempting to sneak the
bill through Congress with various parliamentary maneuvers, Biden was finally
able to get a slightly modified version folded into the bill that created <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the Amber Alert</b> for missing children.
Once again a politician had demagogued worries over a mostly harmless drug into
a climate of fear. And once again that fear led to aggressive, whole disproportionate
crackdowns across the country. (ch. 8, p. 257)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Next Condensed",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">{Balko
misses the point that Amber Alerts — if in themselves useful — participate in another<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>moral panic: "</span><span face=""Avenir Next Condensed",sans-serif" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The publicity and
horror associated with extreme cases of child kidnapping create a socially
constructed perception that such crimes are pervasive and can induce “moral
panic” about predatory threats to children. This often leads to arguably
irrational and excessive policy responses.</span><span face=""Avenir Next Condensed",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">"</span> <span face=""Avenir Next Condensed",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=245226>.}</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Spanish Fork Canyon, </u>Utah: August<u> </u>2005, rave
raid by > 90 cops + SWAT against 1500 at an outdoor dance party</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The other new
concept at work in Racine and Spanish Fork was the willingness to subject large
groups of people to commando tactics in hopes of catching even a few offenders.
By the late 2000s, SWAT teams were increasingly called out to raid entire bars
and nightclubs for drug activity. […] In November 2003, police in Goose Creek,
South Carolina, raided an entire high school, conducting a blanket
commando-style raid on Stratford High School. Students were ordered at gunpoint
to lie face-down on the floor while police searched their lockers and persons
for drugs. Some were handcuffed. […] The raid turned up no illicit drugs, and
the police made no arrests. (ch. 8, p. 258)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Abadi MT Condensed Light",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><</span><a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/1527912/settlement-reached-in-suit-over-2003-high-school-drug-raid/"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">http://www.mtv.com/news/1527912/settlement-reached-in-suit-over-2003-high-school-drug-raid/</span></a><span face=""Abadi MT Condensed Light",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Largely
black student "caught up" in raid: </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Abadi MT Condensed Light",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><</span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/09/us/raid-at-high-school-leads-to-racial-divide-not-drugs.html"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/09/us/raid-at-high-school-leads-to-racial-divide-not-drugs.html</span></a><span face=""Abadi MT Condensed Light",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One particularly
aggressive action peppered with war rhetoric occurred in April 2006, when
police in Buffalo, New York, staged a series of drug raids throughout the city
under the moniker Operation Shock and Awe. [* * *]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>City leader
were furious, not because city police had just terrorized innocent people with
fruitless SWAT raids, but because so many petty offenders were let off. City
officials demanded tougher drug laws, and discussed the possibility of sending
drug cops and SWAT teams out with housing code inspectors to clean up suspected
crack houses without those pesky Fourth Amendment warrant requirements. (ch. 8,
p. 259).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the 2000s,
the US Supreme Court somehow managed to inflict more damage on the already
crippled <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Castle Doctrine</b>. […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 2003 the Supreme
Court unanimous ruled that fifteen to twenty seconds is sufficient time for
police to wait after knocking before forcing entry. […] The opinion, written by
Justice David Souter [….] indicated that even shorter wait times might be
justified in narcotics cases because of the disposableness of the evidence.
Here again, a US Supreme Court opinion had taken a position that makes it
easier to use <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">violent dynamic-entry tactics</b>
on low-level drug offends than major ones (because smaller quantities are
easier to destroy than larger ones) and for nonviolent offenses like drugs or
gambling (where the incriminating evidence is generally disposable) than for
crimes like weapons violations or murder (guns and bodies being tougher to
destroy quickly). (ch. 8, p. 260)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">[…T]he knock-and-announce rule arose out of the common-law
tradition and the Castle Doctrine valued so highly by the American Founders. To
protect the sanctity of the home, the police were obligated to give a homeowner
the opportunity to grant them entrance in order to prevent a violent
confrontation, the destruction of the door and property, and the infliction of
terror upon him and his family. Souter's direction to police to consider <i>disposal
time</i> instead of the time it would take an occupant to come to the door not
only does away with the notion that the purpose of the knock-and-announce rule
is to give citizens the opportunity to avoid a violent confrontation, it all
presupposes that <i>all</i> drug suspects are guilty. […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In [<i>United
States vs.</i>] <i>Banks</i> [2003], a unanimous Court decided that preserving
the evidence needed to convict people suspected of nonviolent, consensual drug
crimes was more important than protecting innocent people from the violence of
a paramilitary-style police raid. Thirty years after it began, the modern drug
war had finally killed the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Castle
Doctrine</b>. (ch. 8, p. 261)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Alberto Spruill</u>: 57-year-old described as
"'devout churchgoer'"; Harlem, 16 May 2003, "no-knock
warrant" (p. 263) and "'flash-bang' grenade" (p. 264).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Timothy Brockman</u>: "a frail, sixty-eight-year-old
former Marine" (violent raid; p. 264)</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In its own
follow-up piece, the <i>Village Voice</i> found that reports of botched
no-knocks had been pouring into the NYPD for years. "Until Spruill's
death, the NYPD had done nothing to stem the number of incidents,' the <i>Voice</i>
wrote, "despite receiving a memo from the Civilian Complaint Review Board
in January noting the high number of raid complaints. Last March the NAACP also
approached NYPD commissioner Raymond W. Kelly about the raids." The raids
were straining already tense relations between police and minority communities.
One of the wrongly raided, Orlando Russell, told the Voice that while he had
once been an "upstanding citizen," he was fed up with the number of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">no-knock raids on low-income and minority
communities</b>. (ch. 8, pp. 264-65)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Assault Weapons Ban expiring 2004 / National Institute
for Justice Study</u>: assault weapons and violent crime (p. 269)</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The NIJ study
was used by gun rights groups to argue against renewing the assault weapons
ban. But it was also a strong piece of evidence undercutting the common
argument from law enforcement officials that SWAT teams and military gear were
essential because the police were in a nonstop arms race with drug dealers and
other criminals — call it the North Hollywood Shoot-out argument [North
Hollywood Shoot-out 28 February 1997: bank robbery by heavily armed and armored
perpetrators].</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And in fact
the 2004 NIJ study was only the most recent to cut against that argument. In
1995 the Justice Department had released a study showing that 86 percent of
violent gun crimes in the United States involved a handgun. […] Just 3 percent
of murders in 1993 were committed with rifles, and just 5 percent with
shotguns. […] A five-year investigation in Orange County, Florida, in the
mid-1990s likewise found that just 13 percent of SWAT raids turned up weapons.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 2007 I
asked David Doddridge, a retired narcotics cop and LAPD veteran, about the
argument that SWAT tactics are necessary because drug dealers are increasingly
well armed. "It just isn't true," he said. "In twenty-one years
at LAPD, I never once saw any assault weapons on a drug raid. Drug dealers
prefer handguns, which are easier to conceal. Occasionally you'll find a shotgun.
But having a bunch of high-powered weaponry around is just too much trouble for
them. […]" Doddridge's experience isn't universal, but it is common among
drug cops I've talked to. There do seem to be more higher-powered arms around
the border, and obviously cops who investigate the sale and smuggling of
illegal guns will tend to find a greater quantity of more powerful weapons in
the course of their work. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But even when
the crime rate was peaking in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was little
evidence that murderers were using high-powered weapons. In a 1991 paper for
the Independence In-[270]statute (a libertarian think tank), researchers David
Kopel and Eric Morgan ran a survey of dozens of American cities and found that,
in general, fewer than 1 percent of the weapons seized by police fit the
definition of an "assault weapon." Nationally, they found that fewer
than 4 percent of homicides involved rifles of any kind. And fewer than
one-eighth of 1 percent of homicides involved weapons of military caliber. Even
fewer homicides involved weapons commonly called "assault" weapons.
The proportion of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">police fatalities</b>
caused by assault weapons was around 3 percent, a number that remained
relatively constant throughout the 1980s.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[* * *]
But more generally, the argument that well-armed criminals have made cop's jobs
more dangerous than ever just isn't backed up by the data. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The job of police officer has been getting progressively safer for a
generation</b>. The number of officer fatalities peaked in 1974 and has been
steadily dropping since. In fact, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">2012
was the safest year for police officers since the 1950s</b>. According to the
FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, the homicide rate for police officers in 2010 […]
was about 7.9 per 100,000 officers. That's about 60 percent higher than the
overall homicide rate in America, which is 4.8. But it's lower than the
homicide rates in many large cities, including Atlanta (17.3), Boston (11.3),
Dallas (11.3), Kansas City (21.1), Nashville (8.9) […] and Tulsa (13.7). In
fact, of the seventy-four US cities with populations of 250,000 or more,
thirty-six have murder rates higher than that of police in America. You are
more likely to be murdered just by living in these cities than the average
American police officer is to be murdered on the job. (ch. 8, pp. 270-71)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Flash-Bang Grenades</u> killed an officer in his car,
plus other cops</p>
<p class="MsoQuote">Every day SWAT teams across the country use the very same
explosives that inured [these] agents […] — and they use them against American
citizens. Granted, they aren't deployed in quite as tight an area as an
enclosed car. But garages [as with one cop casualty]? Certainly. Also bedrooms,
kitchens, hallways, and living rooms. […] [T]he vast majority of the time
they're used in service of warrants for nonviolent crimes — and not even
against people convicted of those crimes, but people merely suspected of them.
They're also used against anyone else who happens to be in the house at the
time of the raid. And against the victims of wrong-door raids. (ch. 8, p. 276)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>By the end of
the decade, state and local SWAT teams were regularly being used not only for
raids and poker games and gambling operations but also for <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">immigration raids</b> (on both businesses and private homes) and raids
on massage parlors, cat houses, and unlicensed strip clubs. Today the sorts of
offenses that can subject a citizen to the SWAT treatment defy caricature. If
the government wants to make an example of you by pounding you with a wholly
disproportionate use of force, it can. It's rare that courts or politicians
even object, much less impose consequences.<br /><br />
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"> * * * <br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #cc0000;">QUOTATIONS AND LONGER SELECTIONS FROM A BOOK FROM 2013/14 IMPORTANT FOR 2020/21</span> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Balko, Radley. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rise of
the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces</i>. 2013. New
York: Public Affairs, 2014. © 2014 by Radley Balko <br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Child Porn and Killing Dogs</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Another
example is the use of these tactics on people suspected of downloading <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">child pornography</b>. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Because people
suspected of such crimes are generally considered among the lowest of the low,
there's generally little objection to using maximum force to apprehend them.
But when police use force to demonstrate disgust for the crimes the target is
suspected of committing, three's always a risk of letting disgust trump good
judgment. [… 286]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There have
been several instances in recent years of police waging child porn raids on
people after tracing IP addresses, only to learn after the fact that the
victims of the raid had an open wireless router that someone else had used to
download the pornography. Inevitably, the lesson drawn by police and by the
media covering these stories is not that a SWAT team may be an inappropriate
way to arrest someone suspected of looking at child porn on a computer, or that
police who insist on using such tactics should probably factor the possibility
of an open router into their investigation before breaking down someone's door,
but rather that we should all make sure our wireless routers are password
protected — so we don't get wrongly raided by a SWAT team, too. (ch. 8, pp.
286-87)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the 2000s talking about the raid on the Branch Davidians
and lack of sympathy Tim Lynch of Cato Institute found among his audience:
"[…] he finds that people are somewhat sympathetic to the argument that
the government overreacted, but that they still can't get past the weirdness of
the Branch Davidians themselves — their stockpile of weapons and the claims of
sexual abuse and drug distribution in the community. Even the children who died
are sometimes [289] dismissed with guilt by association." But —</p>
<p class="MsoQuote">But when he mentions that the ATF agents killed the Davidians'
dogs […] people become visibly angry. I have found the same thing to be true in
my reporting on drug raids.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At first, that
may seem to indicate that people callously value the lives of pets more than
the lives of people. But the fact that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">killing
the dogs</b> during these raids has become nearly routine in many police
agencies demonstrates just how casually these agencies have come to accept drug
war collateral damage. When I started logging cop-shoots-dog incidents on my
blog (under the probably sensational term "puppycide"), people began
send me new stories as they happened. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Cops
are now shooting dogs at the slightest provocation</b>. As of this writing, I'm
sent accounts of a few incidents each week. (ch. 8, pp. 289-90) </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">What is clear is that police are almost always cleared of any
wrongdoing in these shootings. An officer's word that he felt a dog posed a
threat to his safety is generally all it takes. Whether or not the officer's
fear was legitimate doesn't seem to matter. Thanks to smart phones and surveillance
cameras, a growing batch of these incidents have been caught on video and have
shown that officers' claims [290] that the dog was threatening often aren't
matched by the dog's body language. In recent years, police officers have shot
and killed chihuahuas, golden retrievers, labs, miniature dachshunds, Wheaton
terriers, and Jack Russell terriers. In 2012 a California police officer shot
and killed a boxer and pregnant chihuahua, claiming the boxer had threatened
him. The chihuahua, he said, got caught in the crossfire. Police officers have
also recently shot dogs that were chained, tied, or leash, going so far as to
kill pets while merely questioning neighbors about a crime in the area, cutting
across private property in pursuit of a suspect, and after responding to false
burglar alarms.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It is possible
that these incidents could just be attributed to rogue cops. But the fact that
the police are nearly always excused in these cases — even in the more
ridiculous examples — suggests there may be an institutional problem. (ch. 8,
pp. 290-91)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Possibility of institutional problem reinforced by the fact
that "both the ASPCA and the Humane Society […] offer such training [in
reading and responding to dogs] to any police department that wants it, while
few take advantage of the offer. Joseph Pentangelo, the ASPCA's assistant
director for law enforcement [… and veteran of NYPD] told me, 'New York is the
only state I know of that mandates formalized training, and that's during
academy. There are some individual departments in other parts of the country
that avail themselves of our training, but not many, not enough." To which
Balko contrasts USPS, where such training is common (ch. 8, p. 291). </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The fact that
the Postal Service offers such training and most police departments don't lends
some credence to the theory that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">dog
shootings</b> are part of the larger problem of a battlefield mentality that
lets police use lethal force in response to the slightest threat […]. It's an
evolving phenomenon," says Norm Stamper, the former Seattle police chief.
"It started when drug dealers began to recruit pit bulls to guard their
supply. These dogs weren't meant to attack cops. They were meant to attack
other drug dealers who came to rob them. But of course they did attack cops.
And yes, that's awfully scary if one of those things latches on to your
leg."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But Stamper
says that like many aspects of modern policing, dog shootings have had a
legitimate origin, but the practice has since become a symptom of the mind-set
behind a militarized police culture. "[…] These guys think that the only
solution to a dog that's yapping or charging is shooting and killing it. That's
all they know. It goes with the notion that police officers have to <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">control every situation</b>, to control all
the variables. That's an awesome responsibility, and if you take it on, you're
caving to delusion. You no longer exercise discrimination or discretion. You
have to control, and the way you control is with <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">authority, power, and force</b>. With a dog, the easiest way to take
control is to simply kill it […], especially if there are no consequences for
doing so." (ch. 8 p, 292)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Protests</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>2009 G20,
Pittsburgh, David L. Lawrence Convention Center</p>
<p class="MsoQuote">The most egregious police actions seemed to take place on the
Friday evening before the summit, around the university [of Pittsburgh], when
police began ordering student who were in public places to disperse, despite
the fact that they had broken no laws. Students who moved too slowly were
arrested, as were students who were standing in front of the dormitories where
they lived.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A University
of Pittsburgh spokesman later said that the tactic was to break up crowds that
"had the potential of disrupting normal activities, traffic flow, egress
and the like.... Much [sic] of the arrests last [294] night had to do with
failure to disperse when ordered." Note that no one needed to have broken
any actual laws to get arrested. The potential to break a law was more than
enough. That standard was essentially a license of the police to arrest anyone,
anywhere in the city, at any time for any reason. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Pennsylvania
ACLU legal director Vic Walczak said the problem was that police didn't bother
to attempt to manage the protests. They simply suppressed them. In the process,
they rounded up not only innocent protesters but innocent students who had
nothing to do with the protests at all. In all 190 people were arrested. […]
The police presence "seemed to focus almost exclusively on peaceful
demonstrators," Walczak said. "On [Friday] night they didn't even
have the excuse of property damage […] or any illegal activity. It's really
inexplicable."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Inexcusable
perhaps, but not inexplicable. Since Seattle, this had become the template. At
the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, police conducted <i>peremptory</i>
raids of the homes of protesters before the convention had even started. (ch.
8, pp. 294-95)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There were
similar problems at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Police in Denver
showed up for the protests decked out in full riot gear. One particularly
striking photo from Denver [295] showed a sea of cops in shiny black armor,
batons in hand, surrounding a small, vastly outnumbered group of protesters.
The most volatile night of the convention featured one incident in which
Jefferson County, Colorado deputies unknowingly clashed with and then
pepper-sprayed undercover Denver cops <i>posing as violent protesters</i>. The
city later paid out $200,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging that a Denver SWAT
team was making indiscriminate arrests, rounding up protesters and bystanders
alike.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Perhaps the
best insight into the mentality of the police brought to the DNC protests could
be found on the T-shirts the Denver police union had printed up for the event.
The shirts should a menacing cop holding a baton. The caption: DNC 2008: <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">We Get Up Early to Beat the Crowds</span>.
Police were spotted wearing similar shirts at the 2012 NATO summit in Chicago.
At the 1996 DNC convention in Chicago, cops were seen wearing shirts that read <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">We kicked your father's ass in 1968 … Wait
'till you see what we do to you!</span></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The default
militaristic response to protest of overkill was then given an extended
national stage during the Occupy protest of 2011. In the most infamous incident
[…] Lt. John Pike of the University of California—Davis campus police casually
hosed down a peaceful group of protesters with a pepper-spray canister. But
that was far from the only incident. […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One thing the
Occupy crackdowns did seem to do was focus renewed attention on police tactics
and police militarization. Big-picture stories about the Pentagon buildup,
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding for antiterror gear, and the
proliferation of SWAT teams started streaming out of media outlets, giving the
militarization issue the most coverage it had received since Kraska's [296]
studies came out in the late 1990. Part of that was due to social media. The
ubiquity of smart phones and the viral capacity of Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr,
and blogs were already bringing unprecedented accountability to police
misconduct and government oppression […]. But the Occupiers, who tended to be
young, white, and middle- to upper-middle-class knew social media like few
other demographics. (ch. 8, pp. 295-97)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The political
reaction to the Occupy crackdowns was interesting to watch. In the 1990s, it
had been the right wing — particularly the far right — that was up in arms over
police militarization. Recall the outrage on the right over Waco, Ruby Ridge,
and the raid to seize Elián González. The left had largely either remained
silent or even defended the government's tactics in those cases. But the
right-wing diatribes against jackbooted thugs and federal storm-troopers all
died down once the Clinton administration left office, and they were virtually
nonexistent after September 11, 2001. By the time cops started cracking heads
at the Occupy protests, some conservatives were downright gleeful. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The militarization of federal law
enforcement certainly didn't stop, but the 9/11 attacks and a friendly
administration seemed to quell the conservatives' concerns. So long as law
enforcement was targeting hippie protesters, undocumented immigrants, suspected
drug offenders, and alleged terrorist sympathizers, they were back to being
heroes. </b>(ch. 8, p. 297)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"As
long as partisans are only willing to speak out against aggressive, militarized
police tactics when they're used against their own and are dismissive or even
supportive of such tactics when used against those whose politics they dislike,
it seems unlikely that the country will achieve enough of a political consensus
to begin to slow down the trend" (ch. 8, p. 300).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Just as with
Bill Clinton, there was hope among progressives that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Barack Obama</b> would take a more conciliatory, less militaristic
approach to the drug war. And just as with Bill Clinton, Obama has come up
short. According to a tally by Current TV, by [300] the end of his first term,
Obama had overseen more <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">federal raids on
medical marijuana dispensaries</b> in four years than George W. Bush had
presided over in eight. Obama also stepped up <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">immigration raids</b> and continued the raids on doctors and pain
clinics suspected of overprescribing <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">opioids</b>.
He continued to encourage Mexico's policy (aided by US foreign aid and weapons)
of fighting its drug war with the military, despite the horrifying carnage
cause by that policy. And as previously discussed Obama and Democratic leaders
in Congress <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">refunded Byrne grant </b>and
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">COPS programs</b> that contributed to
the rise in SWAT teams and multi-jurisdictional anti-drug and anti-gang task
forces — and at record levels.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1033 program</b> gas also soared to new
heights under Obama [… leading to more military becoming cops and more]
Pentagon giveaways […]. (ch. 8, pp. 300-01)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>The Numbers [for 1980s]</u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Number of
drugs raids in New York City in 1994: 1,447 … in 1997: 2,977 … in 2002: 5,117</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Approximate number of raids each year by the Toledo, Ohio, SWAT team, as of
2008: 400</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage of towns between 25,000 and 50,000 people with a SWAT team in 1984:
25.6 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1990: 52.1 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 2005: 80 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Approximate number of SWAT raids in the United States in 1995: 30,000</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 2001: 45,000</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 2005: 50,000-60,000</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Total
number of federal agencies employing law enforcement personnel in 1996: 53</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 2008: 73</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Total
number of federal law enforcement officers as of 1996: 74,000 (28 per 100,000
citizens)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 2008: 120,000<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>(40 per 100,000
citizens)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Number of
SWAT teams in the FBI alone in 2013: 56</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Unlikely
federal agencies that have used SWAT teams: US Fish and Wildlife Services,
Consumer Product Safety Commission, National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, Department of Education, Department of Health and Human
Services, US National Park Service, Food and Drug Administration</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Value of
surplus military gear received by Johnston, Rhode Island, from the Pentagon in
2010-2011: $4.1 million</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Population of Johnston, Rhode Island, in 2010: 28,769</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Partial
list of equipment given to the Johnston police department: 30 M-16 rifles, 599
M-16 magazines containing about 18,000 rounds, a "sniper targeting
calculator," 44 bayonets, 12 Humvees, and 23 snow blowers. (ch. 8, pp.
307-308)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"> * * * <br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #cc0000;">QUOTATIONS AND LONGER SELECTIONS FROM A BOOK FROM 2013/14 IMPORTANT FOR 2020/21</span> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Balko, Radley. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rise of
the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces</i>. 2013. New
York: Public Affairs, 2014. © 2014 by Radley Balko </p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>Chapter 9, Reform</u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Maryland (more dogs)</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Cheye Calvo, part-time job of mayor of Berwyn Heights,
Maryland. Raid 29 July 2008. Lived with wife, mother-in-law, and two black
Labradors (Payton and Chase). "In 2004, at thirty-three, he was the
youngest elected mayor in Prince George's County, Maryland" (ch. 9, p.
309. Calvo upstairs, changing clothes for a meeting.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The next thing
Calvo remembers is the sound of his mother-in-law screaming. He ran to the
window and saw heavily armed men clad in black rushing his front door. Next
came the explosion. He'd later learn that this was when the police blew open
his front door. Then came the gunfire. Then boots stomping the floor. Then more
gunfire. Calvo, still in his boxers, screamed, "I'm upstairs, please don't
shoot!" He was instructed to walk downstairs with his hands in the air,
the muzzles of two guns pointed at him. He still didn't know it was the police.
He described what happened next at a Cato Institute forum six weeks later.
"At the bottom of the stairs, they bound my hands, pulled me across the
living room, and forced me to kneel on the floor in front of my broken door. I
thought it was a home invasion. I was fearful that I was about to be
executed." I later asked Calvo what might have happened if he'd had a gun
in his home for self-defense. His answer: "I'd be dead." In another
interview, he would add, "The worst thing I could have done was defend my
home." </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Calvo's
mother-in-law was face-down on the kitchen floor, the tomato-artichoke sauce
she was preparing still sitting on the stove. Her first scream came when one of
the SWAT officers pointed his gun at her from the other side of the window. The
police department would later argue that her scream gave them the authority to
enter the home without knocking, announcing themselves, and waiting for someone
to let them in.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Rather than
obeying the SWAT team demands to "get down" as they rushed in,
Georgia Porter simply froze with fear. They pried the spoon from her hand, put
a gun to her head, and shoved her to the floor. [310 …]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Calvo's dogs
[…] were dead by the time Calvo was escorted to the kitchen. Payton had been
shot in the face almost as soon as the police entered the home. One bullet went
all the way through him and lodged in a radiator, missing Porter by only a
couple of feet. Chase ran. The cops shot him once, from the back, then chased
him into the living room and shot him again.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Calvo was
turned around and put on his knees in front of the door the police had just
smashed to pieces. He heard them rummaging through his house, tossing drawers,
emptying cabinets.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Calvo and
Porter were held for four hours. Calvo asked to see a search warrant. He was
told it was "en route." […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Even after
they realized they had just mistakenly raided the mayor's house, the officers
didn't apologize to Calvo or Porter. Instead they told Calvo that they were
both "parties of interest" and that they should consider lucky that
they weren't arrested. Calvo in particular they said, was still under suspicion
because when armed men blew open his door, killed his dogs, and pointed their
guns at him and his mother in law, he hadn't responded "in a typical
manner."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Trinity Tomsic
came home […] to find a blur of flashing police lights and a crowd gathering on
her front lawn. She was told that her husband and mother were fine. Then she
was told that her dogs were dead. She broke down in tears. When she was finally
able to enter her home, she found her dogs' blood all over her house. The
police had walked through the two large pools of blood that collected under
Payton and Chase, then tracked it all over the home. Even once the police
realized they had made a mistake, they [311] never offered to clean up the
blood, to put the house back together, or to fix the front door. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As Calvo and
Porter were being interrogated, one of Calvo's own police officers saw the
lights and stopped to see what was going on. Berwyn Heights officer Amir
Johnson knew this was his mayor's house, but had no idea what the commotion was
about because the Prince George's County Police Department hadn't bothered to
contact the Berwyn Heights police chief, as they were required to do under a
memorandum of understanding between the two agencies. Johnson told the Washington
Post that an officer on the scene told him "Th guy in there is crazy. He
says he is the mayor of Berwyn Heights."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Johnson
replied, "That is the mayor of Berwyn Heights."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Johnson then
called Berwyn Heights police chief Patrick Murphy. Eventually, Murphy was put
in touch with the supervising officer, Det. Sgt. David Martini. Murphy recounted
the conversation to the Post. "Martini tells me that when the SWAT team
came to the door, the mayor met them at the door, opened it partially, saw who
it was, and then tried to slam the door on them" […]. "And at that
point, Martini claimed, they had to force entry, the dogs took aggressive
stances, and they were shot."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If that indeed
was what Martini told Murphy, he was either lying or repeating a lie told to
him by one of his subordinates. There was never any further mention of Calvo
shutting the door on the SWAT team — because it never happened . Falco later
had his dogs autopsied — the trajectories the bullets took through the dogs
bodies weren't consistent with the SWAT team's story.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But the lies,
obfuscation, and stonewalling were only beginning. (ch. 9, pp. 311-12)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Perhaps even
more baffling, officials continued to insist that the raid [on Mayor Calvo's
house] <i>shouldn't </i>have happened any other way. […] In 2010 Sheriff
Michael Jackson [sic] was asked during his campaign for Prince George's County
executive if he had any regrets about the raid. [… He had none.] Or, as Jackson
put it [8 September, ~ 5 weeks after the raid and the cops being cleared by an
internal investigation], "the guys did what they were supposed to do. [A
second investigation by Jackson's office also cleared the deputies. …]<br />
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The officials in Prince George's
County, two of them elected, openly and without reservation stated that they
had no problem with the collateral damage done to the Calvo family. It was part
of the war against getting high — which even they had to know is a war that
can't be won. […] As Calvo himself pointed out on several occasions, this<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>isn't a problem that can be laid at the feet
of the police officers who raided his home. This problem can't be fixed by
firing the police involved. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">This is a
political problem. It's a policy problem. </b>(ch. 9, pp. 314-15).</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As Calvo
continued to advocate for reform, he started to hear from other victims of
mistaken police raids, both in Prince George's County and around the state of
Maryland. Several included <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the routine,
sometimes callous killing of the family dog</b>. Within a week of the raid, for
example, Prince George's County residents Frank and Pam Myers came forward to
say that they too were raided by sheriff's department deputies. […] When the
couple told the deputies that the address on the warrant was two doors down, the
police refused to leave. They continued to look around the couple's house for
another forty-five minutes. Then two shots rang out from the backyard. A deputy
had gone into the backyard and shot the couple's fie-year-old oxer, Pearl. He
claimed that he feared for his life. Pam Myers told a local news station,
"I said, 'You just shot my dogg.' I wanted to go our and hold her a bit.
They wouldn't even let me go out." (ch. 9, p. 316)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A series of
police raid horror stories from Howard Count, Maryland, also emerged. Kevin and
Lisa Henderson said they were the victims of a mistaken raid. At 10:00 PM the
night of January 18, a raid team opened the family's unlocked door. Inside were
the couple, a twenty-eight-year-old houseguest, their two teenage sons, and their
sons' friend. The police first met the family dog, a twelve-year-old lab/Rottweiler
mix named Grunt. According to the lawsuit, one officer distracted the dog while
another shot it point-bland in the head. When one of the couple's sons asked
why they had shot the dog, one officer pointed his gun at the boy's head and
said, "Ill blow your fucking head off if you keep talking." The
police found marijuana in a jacket pocket of the Hendersons' house guest. He
was arrested. Four days later, after Lisa Henderson called to complain about
the raid, she and her husband were also arrested for possession of marijuana,
even though the police hadn't found any drug anywhere else in the house. Ten
months later, a state judge acquitted the couple of all charges. The Hendersons
believe that the police intended to raid a different house in the neighborhood
that looked a lot like their own. A subsequent raid on that house turned up
marijuana, scales, and cash.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Karen Thomas,
also a resident of Howard County, told a Maryland State Senate hearing in 2009
that police shot and killed her dog during a mistaken raid on her home in
January 2007. Even after they had surrounded her in her bedroom, she said they
still hadn't yet identified themselves, and she though the gunshot had been directed
at her son. "In my mind, terrorists had just killed my son, and they were
going to kill me next." (ch. 9, p. 317) </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">For the last half of 2009, SWAT teams were deployed 804 times
in the state of Maryland, or about 4.5 times a day, In Prince George's County
alone, which has about 850,000 residents, a SWAT team was deployed about once a
day. According to an analysis by the <i>Baltimore Sun</i>, 94 percent of the
state's SWAT deployments were to serve search or arrest warrants, leaving just
6 percent that were raids involving barricades, bank robberies, hostage
takings, and other emergency situations. Half of Prince George's County's SWAT
deployments were for what were called "misdemeanors and nonserious
felonies." More than one hundred times over a six-month period, Prince
George's County sent police barreling into private homes for nonserious,
nonviolent [319] crimes. Calvo pointed out that the first set of figures
confirm what he and others concerned about these tactics have suspected: SWAT
teams are being deployed too often as the <i>default</i> way to serve search
warrants, not as a last resort. (ch. 9, pp. 319-20)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>How do we
return to a more robust embrace of the Castle Doctrine, the Fourth Amendment,
and an unbreachable divide between the police and the military? Overcoming a
trend that has extended across two possibly three, generations sounds like an
impossibly difficult task. […] Donald Santarelli, the no-regretful father of
the no-knock raid, say, "I don't think it's possible to roll any of this
back now. … It would take serious leadership, probably from nobody less than
the president. It would take a huge scandal, which doesn't seem likely. … But
we're not given to revolutionary action in this country. Each generation is a
little more removed from the deep-seated concerns about liberty of the
generation before. We just don't seem to value privacy and freedom
anymore." (ch. 9, p. 320)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"> * * * <br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #cc0000;">QUOTATIONS AND LONGER SELECTIONS FROM A BOOK FROM 2013/14 IMPORTANT FOR 2020/21</span> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Balko, Radley. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rise of
the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces</i>. 2013. New
York: Public Affairs, 2014. © 2014 by Radley Balko <br /><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"The Drug War"</b></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But just
ending the federal drug war and the federal incentives toward militarization
would help. SWAT teams would probably continue to exist and, at least in the
short term, would find other, probably equally objectionable missions. But
ending the federal drug war could begin to unwind the violent paramilitary task
forces and the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">us-versus-them,
black-and-white</b> [sic] drug-war mentality. If the federal government were to
end the Byrne grants, cut off federal funding tied to drug enforcement, end the
Pentagon giveaway program, and get rid of the federal equitable sharing program
that lets local police departments get around state asset forfeiture laws, and
makes drug warring more lucrative (and therefore a higher priority), we'd see
more of these tactical teams begin to disband because of the expense of
maintaining them. We'd almost certainly see the multi-jurisdictional task
forces start to dry up, since they're often funded exclusively through federal
grants and forfeiture. Those tactical teams that remained would no longer be
incentivized to go on drug raids. […W]ithout the money to [321] lure them, it
seems likely that the expanse of deploying them would persuade police
departments to reserve them for the sorts of missions for which they were
originally intended.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At the very
least, the federal government should respect the states that have already
expressed a desire to ease up on the drug war and stop sending in heavily armed
battle teams to raid medical marijuana dispensaries and growers who are
licensed and regulated under state law.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Legislatures
or city councils could also pass laws restricting the use of SWAT teams to
those limited, rare emergencies in there's an imminent threat to public safety.
They could prohibit the use of no-knock raids or even forced entry to serve
warrants people suspected of violent crimes [non-violent?]. Failing that,
policymakers could simply put more restrictions on search warrants. For
example, they could prohibit the use of dynamic-entry tactics for any warrant
obtained with only the word of an informant. (ch. 9, pp. 321-22)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"Halt the
Mission Creep"</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"There is no need for regulatory agencies at any level
to be conducting SWAT raids" (ch. 9, p. 322). Etc. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"Transparency"</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"Legislatures should pass laws that not only clearly
establish a citizen's right to record on-duty cops but provide an enforcement
mechanism so that citizens wrongly and illegally arrested have a course of
action. As even many police officials have pointed out, such policies not only
expose police misconduct […] but can also provide exonerating evidence in cases
where police officers have been wrongly accused.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>All
forced-entry police raids should be recorded in a tamper-proof format, and the
videos should be made available to the public through a simple open records
request. (ch. 9, p. 323)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Community
Policing</b>"</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"Police departments and policymakers should embrace
real community policing. [… This] means taking cops out of patrol cars to walk
beats and become a part of the communities they serve. It means ditching
statistics-driven policing, which encourages the sorts of petty arrests of low-level
offenders and use of informants the foment anger and distrust" (ch. 9, p.
325).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Changing Police
Culture</b>"</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Changing a
culture sounds like a tall order. And it probably is. "I think there are
two critical components to policing that cops today have forgotten," says
the former Maryland cop Neill Franklin. "Number one, you've signed on to a
dangerous job. That means that you've agreed to a certain amount of risk. You
don't get to start [325] stepping on others' rights to minimize that risk you
agreed to take on. And number two, your first priority is not to protect
yourself, it's to protect those you've sworn to protect. But I don't know how
you get police officers today to value those principles again. The 'us and
everybody else' sentiment is strong today. It's very, very difficult to change
a culture." […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"It's
really about a lack of imagination and a lack of creativity," says Norm
Stamper. "When your answer to every problem is more force, it shows that
you haven't been taught and trained to consider other options."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The thing is,
when law enforcement officials face suspect who present a genuine threat to
officer safety, they <i>do</i> tend to be more creative.[Example given:
capturing Whitey Bulger in 2010, a truly dangerous man brought in by a bit of
research of his habits.] […][326]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Why can't
investigators handle common drug offenders the same way. A big reason is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">lack of resources</b>. […] A second reason
is that drug offenders simply aren't all that likely to shoot at cops, and it's
easier to use violent tactics against people who aren't going to fire back.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Police today
are also given too little training in counseling and dispute resolution, and
what little they do get in the academy is quickly blotted out by what they
learn on the street in the first few months on the job. When you're given an
excess of training in the use of force but little in using psychology, body
language, and other noncoercive means of resolving a conflict, you'll naturally
gravitate toward force. "I think about the notion of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i>command presence</i></b>, Stamper says. […] What I see today is that
this well-disciplined notion of command presence has been shattered. Cops today
think you show command presence by yelling and screaming. In my day, if you
screamed […] you had failed in that situation as a cop" (ch. 9, pp.
325-27).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Accountability</b>"</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In numerous
states […] police unions have lobbied legislatures to pass variations on a
"law enforcement bill of rights." [… These vary, but] the general
thrust of these laws is to afford police officers accused of crimes additional
"rights" abouve and beyond what regular citizens get. Or as Reason
magazine's Mike Riggs puts it, the intent of such laws is "to shielf cops
from the laws they're rapid to enforce." These laws have made it nearly
impossible [328] to fire bad cops in many jurisdictions, and worse, they have
instilled in them the notion that they're above the law — and above the regular
citizens they're supposed to serve. […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[…] When city
officials make it more difficult to fire bad cops, they are rarely affected
[…]. At worst, a lawsuit might take a bite out of a city budget. But no cops
will be harassing or beating the politicians themselves. That happens to other
people.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Police unions
also help enforce the "Blue Code of Silence." The unwritten rule that
police officers never rat out or testify against other police officers. [Cites
case in 2006 of Albuquerque police officer Sam Costales, who testified against
sheriff dept. deputies, who were not disciplined — Costales was. And his union
rep apologized to the disciplining police admin. For Costales's actions.
329].[…]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Only in law
enforcement would a union rep apologize to the management for the actions of
one of its members. Former narcotics cop Russ Jones says that unions reinforce
the notion among cops that it's just them and their brother cops against the
world. […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Perhaps the
biggest problems with police unions, however, is that they present a major
obstacle to real reform. […] Democrats don't cross them because of the
traditional alliance of unions and public employees. Republicans rarely cross
them because of the party's law-and-order reputation. […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Good ideas for
accountability policies include civilian review boards, but only if they have
subpoena power, are granted the authority to impose discipline, and can't be
overruled by arbitrators. […][330]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The most
productive accountability policy — and thus the most controversial and least
likely to be adopted — would be to impose more liability on police officers who
make egregious errors. Under the qualified immunity from civil lawsuits
currently afforded to police under federal law, a police officer can't be sued
for mere negligence — or even for gross negligence that results in a fatality.
To even get into court against a police officer, a plaintiff must show not only
that a police officer intentionally violated the plaintiff's constitutional
rights, but that said rights were well established at the time they were
violated. With this protection, police officers aren't required to keep
informed on the latest court decisions that pertain to their job. In fact, in a
perverse way, it even discourages police departments and officers from doing
so. A cop who is aware he was violating someone's rights is much more likely to
be found liable than a cop who isn't.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Some
commentators […] have suggested that SWAT teams that conduct forced-entry raids
be held to a strict liability standard. […] Such a policy would be difficult to
apply in many cases. […] Still, adopting the policy just for cases of clear,
unambiguous mistakes would probably encourage more caution, more restraint, and
fewer errors. (ch. 9, pp. 328-31)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Final appeal, for the sine qua non: "The public needs
to start caring about these issues" (ch. 9, p. 331). <br /><br />
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"> * * * <br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #cc0000;">QUOTATIONS AND LONGER SELECTIONS FROM A BOOK FROM 2013/14 IMPORTANT FOR 2020/21</span> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Balko, Radley. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rise of
the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces</i>. 2013. New
York: Public Affairs, 2014. © 2014 by Radley Balko <br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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ul
{margin-bottom:0in;}</style></p>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-25395079968558818232020-11-22T17:01:00.001-08:002021-04-23T13:45:45.389-07:00Black Lives Matter, The Biden/Harris Administration, and RISE OF THE WARRIOR COP (2014)<p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 15pt 0in 7.5pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span face=""Arial", sans-serif">Among the many issues facing the Biden/Harris Administration are some raised by, and/or in the background of, the Black Lives Matter protests. I excerpt below some passages from Radley Balko's <i>Rise of the Warrior Cop </i>for some useful context. My "teaser" for them is asking you to consider such prompts and provocations as these:<br /><span> • Most contentious issues in US politics are at least "inflected by" race, and many rooted in a history of racism. Still, if racism were to magically disappear tomorrow, there would still be problems with policing in America.<br /><span> • "Defund the Police" was a powerful but politically imprudent slogan, <i>and</i> in some instances just wrong. There are areas in which more money is needed for police-work appropriate for a liberal Republic with democratic aspirations: e.g., surveillance before non-violently serving warrants, training police to de-escalate tense situations, training police to know when they should call in others.<br /><span> </span>• Police should do <i>police</i> work. They are not mental-health workers, nor public health workers; in many cases, police can only serve usefully as emergency auxiliaries. In a liberal democratic Republic, the police are also not warriors, set apart from "civilians" and used as occupation forces.<br /><span> </span>• If you declare war on abstractions like Terrorism, Crime, or Drugs, expect little success: Just who is to surrender? If you "Bring the War Home," expect casualties at home and, in people's homes. Especially with that War on Drugs, expect the "collateral damage" of busting down some wrong doors and, on occasion, unnecessarily killing your fellow citizens and, rather routinely, their dogs.<br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 15pt 0in 7.5pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span face=""Arial", sans-serif"><span><span>* * * * *<span><span> </span></span> </span></span></span></span></span><b><span face=""Arial", sans-serif" style="color: #538135;"><br /></span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 15pt 0in 7.5pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><span face=""Arial", sans-serif" style="color: #538135;"> </span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 15pt 0in 7.5pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><span face=""Arial", sans-serif" style="color: #538135;">"How did America's police become a military
force on the streets?"</span></b></span></p><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 7.5pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span face=""Arial", sans-serif" style="color: #538135;">By Radley Balko, <i>ABAJournal</i>, 1 July 2013</span></span></p><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 7.5pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span face=""Arial", sans-serif" style="color: #538135;"><https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/how_did_americas_police_become_a_military_force_on_the_streets><span style="text-transform: uppercase;"></span></span></span></p><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span></div><p style="margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #00b050;"> </span></span></p><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span></div><p style="margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #538135; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 191;">"At the time the Third Amendment was ratified, the
images and memories of British troops in Boston and other cities were still
fresh, and the clashes with colonists that drew the country into war still
evoked strong emotions. What we might call the 'symbolic Third Amendment'
wasn’t just a prohibition on peacetime quartering, but a more robust expression
of the threat that standing armies pose to free societies. It represented a
long-standing, deeply ingrained resistance to armies patrolling American
streets and policing American communities.</span></span></p><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span></div><p style="margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt; text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #538135; mso-themecolor: accent6; mso-themeshade: 191;">And, in that sense, the spirit of the Third Amendment is
anything but anachronistic."</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">=======================================</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Balko, Radley. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rise of
the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces</i>. 2013. New
York: Public Affairs, 2014.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">Although some of the aims of professionalism may have been noble,
the story of early American policing is one of overcorrection. While the
professionalism reformers were able to end the patronage system, in some cities
they managed to insulate police departments from politics altogether, making it
difficult for mayors and city councils to hold police officials accountable. At
the level of individual cops, the use of squad cars and radios clearly brought
a lot of benefits, but could also isolate police officers from the residents of
the communities they patrolled. […] Police and citizens interacted only when
police were ticketing or questioning someone, or when a citizen was reporting a
crime. In poorer communities that could bring about an increasingly antagonistic
relationship […]. (p. 34; "Quick History," ch. 3)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Calls attention to William Parker of LA for
professionalization. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dragnet Style</i>
(as the ideal) and for bringing up Daryl Gates, who "did more to bring
about today's militarized American police force than any other single
person." Note also importance of LA's Watts riots, that "went a long
way toward scaring middle America about crime, to the point where they were
willing to embrace an all-out 'war' on crime and drugs to clean up the
cities" (p. 35; ch. 3).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">There are two forms of police militarization: direct and
indirect. Direct militarization is the use of the standing military for
domestic policing. Indirect militarization happens when police agencies and
police officers take on more and more characteristics of an army. Most of this
book will focus on the latter form of police militarization, which began in the
United States in the late 1960s, then accelerated in the 1980s. But the two
forms of militarization are related, and they have become increasingly
intertwined over the [35] last thirty years. (pp. 35-26; ch. 3). </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Discusses Depression Era Bonus March, beginning 28 July
1932, and what I (RDE) will call the after-action report of Major (at the time)
George S. Patton "recounting the lessons he had learned from the Bonus
March," including when Patton disobeyed a direct order of the President
"to stand down […] and went after the protesters […]" (p. 37; ch. 3).
</p>
<p class="MsoQuote">Titled "Federal Troops in Domestic Disturbances,"
it revealed a startling contempt [37] for free expression — and for civilians
in general. The paper first assesses periods of unrest throughout history.
Patton ridicules nations and empires that hesitated to use violence against
citizen upraises and praises those who did [cites officers of Louis XVI of
France vs. Napoleon's "whiff of grapeshot" saving the directorate. …]
Patton attributes the success of the Bolshevik Revolution to "the
hesitating and weak character of the Russian officers," which prevented
them from properly slaughtering the Communists while they were merely
protestors.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Most alarming
are Patton's own suggestions and recommendations on how the military should
handle domestic riots and uprisings. He calls the writ of habeas corpus
"an item that rises to plague us" and recommends shooting captured
rioters instead of turning them over to police to bring before "some
misguided judge." (p. 38; ch. 3)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>1968: King Assassination, Civil Rights, DNC-Chicago/Nixon,
Drugs</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Martin Luther
King's assassination on 4 April 1968 and the subsequent riots] In fact […] came
at a time when much of […] white, middle-class America began to sense that its
values and traditions were under attack from all sides. In his drug war history
<i>Smoke and Mirrors</i> [subtitle: <i>The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure</i>,
1996] , journalist Dan Baum points out that black homicide arrests doubled
between 1960 and 1967. At the same time, heroin deaths and overdoses were also
on the rise. The hippie, antiwar, and counterculture movements were in full
swing. All of this coincided with the rise [67] of the civil rights movement.
Nixon's Silent Majority began to see a link between drugs, crime, the
counterculture, and race. * * *</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Months later,
at the 1968 Democratic National Convention (DNC), police in Chicago would
instigate a riot and then indiscriminately beat liberal [etc.!] protesters.
Some of the beatings were aired live by the networks [….] [Notes Sen. Abraham
Ribicoff going off-script in McGovern nomination speech] to proclaim,
"With George McGovern we wouldn't have Gestapo tactics in the streets of
Chicago! With George McGovern we wouldn't have a National Guard!" <<a href="https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/abrahamribicoff1968dnc.htm">https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/abrahamribicoff1968dnc.htm</a>>
Chicago mayor Richard Daley, who had called up more than twenty thousand police
and National Guard troops for the convention, didn't do much to distance
himself from the Nazi smear. Lip readers later alleged he shouted up from the
convention floor, [68] "Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch! You lousy
motherfucker! Go home!"</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Nixon's
"ignored American" weren't the least bit troubled by what they saw
from Daley and the police. According to a Gallup poll taken a few weeks later,
56 percent of the country supported the crackdown, and just 31 percent were
opposed. Polls would also show Nixon surging into a comfortable lead over the
eventual Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey. (pp. 67-68; ch. 4)</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Nixon triumphant</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">The law-and-order campaign worked. Nixon won the 1968
election by a comfortable margin in the electoral college. (And when you factor
in the votes for George Wallace, Humphrey lost the popular vote by a wide
margin.) The Republicans also picked up five seats in the Senate and five in
the House. In four years, crime had become the most important issue in the
country. [70] * * * [Nixon, John Mitchell et al. …] decided that the
high-profile target of the new administration's promised anticrime effort would
be drug control. Drug use, they thought, was the common denominator among the
groups — low-income blacks, the counter culture, and the antiwar movement —
against whom Nixon had unified "ignored America." (pp. 70-71; ch. 4) </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The Nixonites
mulled a number of other constitutionally dubious drug war proposals in
addition to the preventive detention and no-knock proposals. They wanted to
authorize the use of "loose search warrants." These would have
allowed police to apply for a warrant for contraband, then search multiple
properties to find it. The idea came precipitously close to a writ of
assistance, but without the restrictions on nighttime service and
knock-and-announce. Combined with the no-knock provision, it would have
essentially authorized police to kick down the doors of entire neighborhoods
with a single warrant. Loose warrants didn't make the final crime bill, but the
idea was really only about ten years ahead of its time. Starting in the 1980s,
police would conduct raids of entire city blocks, housing complexes, and
neighborhoods. The Nixon administration also wanted to strip away
attorney-client privilege, as well as the privilege afforded to conversations
with priests and doctors, and to expand wiretapping authority. They even came
up with an early precursor to California's eventual "three strikes and
you're out" law. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>No one had any
idea if these policies would work, but in a way it didn't matter. The strategy
was about symbolism and making the right enemies as it was about effectiveness.
[***] </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On July 14,
1969, Nixon gave his first major address to Congress to outline his antidrug
program. He declared drugs a "national [72] threat." He set the tone
for a much more aggressive, confrontational federal drug fight. He described
the "inhumanity" of drug pushers, laying groundwork for the sort of
dehumanizing rhetoric that would be used for years to come to reduce drug users
and drug dealers to an enemy to be destroyed. [***]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In a few
areas, Nixon could move immediately, without waiting for money or authorization
from Congress. On such area was border enforcement." (pp. 72-73; ch. 4)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But the same
broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause that allowed the federal government
to integrate private business in the south gave [Attorney General John]
Mitchell and [President Richard] Nixon the authority to wage their war on crime
and drugs — a war that over the next forty years had some devastating
consequences for large swaths of black America. In the omnibus law [the
"omnibus narcotics bill," bringing together "the great crime
bill orgy of 1970" (86)], Mitchell would claim for his department all
authority to oversee the manufacture, distribution, export, import, and sale of
[87] addictive drugs. The bill created a classification system for illicit
drugs and vested the classification authority with the Justice Department. That
met with fierce resistance from researchers and medical organizations, who
believed that authority to determine which psychoactive drugs have medical
benefits and which cause harm should belong to the Department of Health, Education,
and Welfare or to an agency like the FDA instead of an agency whose primary
mission was law enforcement. Their pleas were in vain. A version of the [Thomas
J.] Dodd bill would later become the Controlled Substances Act, the law that
has authorized the war on drugs ever since. (pp. 87-88; ch. 5)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Jerry Wilson as Head of DC Metro Police</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"During
the often heated [sic: no hyphen] antiwar protests of the early 1970s, Wilson
believed that an intimidating police presence didn't prevent confrontation, it invited
it."</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On no-knock
raids: "'I never really bought into the idea that police were getting
gunned down while serving warrants,' Wilson says [sic]. 'Drug pushers sold
drugs to make money. They might run. But there weren't many drug dealers who
were in the business to get into shootouts with narcotics officers.' Wilson
didn't find the destruction of evidence exception convincing either. 'We called
that the 'no-flush rule.' Again I just didn't think that warranted breaking
down a door. There were better ways to do it,' he says, referring to serving
drug warrants. You couldn't flush much pot down a toilet anyway. Cocaine or
heroin, you could flush a good amount. But then it was gone — off the [99]
street. They [no-knock proponents] wanted to make sure the evidence was
preserved to get a conviction. But a drug conviction wasn't worth the risk of a
no-knock raid.'" (ch. 5, pp. 99-100)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Nixon Admin. in Early 1970s</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So the White
House crime team came up with a plan. They would launch an all-out PR offensive
to scare the hell out of the public about crime, and to tie crime to heroin.
Once voters were good and terrified, they would push for reorganization to
consolidate drug policy and enforcement power within the White House. [Egil]
Krogh put together a quick-hitting but multifaceted strategy that included
planting media scare stories about heroin, publicly recalling ambassadors to
embarrass heroin-producing countries like Thailand and Turkey, and holding
high-level (but entirely staged) [103] strategy sessions that they'd invite the
media to attend. The plan culminated with a planned speech from Nixon that
would forge new frontiers in fearmongering. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The scare
strategy was executed as planned. Nixon's June 17, 1971, speech more than met
expectations. He declared drug abuse "public enemy number one" and
ask for emergency powers and new findings to "wage a new, all-out
offensive." Years later, both this speech and a similar one he gave the
following year would alternately be considered the start of the modern
"war on drugs." In a poll taken the following month, Americans named
drug abuse as the most urgent domestic problem facing the country. (ch. 5, pp.
103-104).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Death (early 1972) of Dirk Dickenson Mostly by Lloyd
Clifton (Berkeley PD to Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs [BNDD]) 4 April
1972</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Clifton had
a record of beating on civilians, including a young Black man arrested by
mistake and turned out to be the son of a California Superior Court judge (so
Clifton got a reprimand, pretty much the only punishment in his career).
"If this new federal initiative against street-level pushers was all about
projecting aggression and instilling fear, Clifton was a perfect fit" (ch.
5, pp. 108-16, quote here, p. 109).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"In
the end, a twenty-four-year-old man was chased from his own home by armed men
who had just emerged from an Army helicopter. They then shot him dead, from the
back, while he was unarmed and on his own property. The heavy-handed raid was
based on false pretenses and didn't turn up the criminal enterprise it was
supposed to find. No one would be held accountable for any of it. Dirk
Dickenson was collateral damage" (ch. 5, pp. 108-16, quote here, p. 116).
<https://humboldtherald.wordpress.com/2006/12/18/humboldt-trials-and-tribulations/></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Three dogs and a cat thrown outside by raiding officers:
"(Given the frequency of dog-shooting during raids in the coming years,
the […] pets got off easy" (ch. 5, p. 117).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Raids with Warrants and Warrantless, Early 1970s</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There months
after those raids, in 1972, the <i>New York Times</i> published the results of
its own investigations in the use of aggressive drug raids. The paper found
that "dozens" of botched raids had occurred across the country since
the 1970 federal crime bills and similar bills in the states became law. Agents,
"often acting on uncorroborated tips from informants," were "bashing
down the doors to a home or apartment and holding the residents at gunpoint
while they ransack the house." The paper found that the botched raids <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">were usually on lower-class families and
were "tied intimately to the veritable explosion of government drug
enforcement activities</b> in recent years," thanks to <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Nixon's "total war" on drugs</b>.
Some victims told the paper that they hadn't come forward because narcotics
officers had threatened them. Others had remained silent because "in their
hatred for drugs they condoned the tactics but not the specific
incidents." Two weeks earlier, the Associated Press had published its own
investigation, which came to similar conclusions. […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Between April
1972 and May 1973, ODALE [The <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Office of
Drug Abuse Law Enforcement</span>] strike forces conducted 1,439 raids. It's
unclear how many were knock-and-announce and how many were no-knock, but even
by 1973 the difference between the two kinds of raids had already begun to
blur. "You might whisper 'Police! Open up!'" one agent told the <i>Times</i>.
"Or you could yell it the instant before you hit the door."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Nixon's dehumanization and demonization of
drug offenders</b> had been a (literally) smashing success. Tactics like these
had rarely been used in the United States, even against hardened criminals. Now
they were being used against people suspected of non-violent crimes, and with
such wanton disregard for civil rights and procedure that the occasional wrong
door or terrorized family could be dismissed as "an insignificant
detail" or as cops "just trying to do their job." […] These men
were rounding up "the very vermin of humanity," after all. Surely the
country understood that some collateral damage would be inflicted in the
process. (ch. 5, pp. 121-22)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Cops vs. Public</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Don Santarelli
— father of the federal no-knock raid […]. When asked to reflect on the legacy
of Nixon's drug war in an interview for this book […] says it set in motion an
animosity between police officers and the public that may now be beyond repair.
"When you speak to a police officer today, you're terrified that you're
going to offend him, and that he's going to arrest you and take you off to
jail. Sure, a judge will let you out and drop the charges in a few days. But
you've spent those days in jail. And now you have and arrest record. There's
just no accountability for excessive force." He adds that his old boss's
war rhetoric, later taken up by President Ronald Reagan and his successors, is
to blame. "There has always been confrontation between the rational,
educated way to look at policy and the escalation of language to make a
political point. If politicians can get away with calling it a '<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">war on crime</b>' or a '<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">war on drugs</b>,' then they will. And yes,
that's going to make law enforcement more willing to push the envelope when it
comes to use of force.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After Nixon
left office in the fall of 1984, the federal drug war went into a brief period
of détente. But the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">SWAT concept</b>
would continue to gain momentum, independent of the break in the drug war. The
two institutions would finally merge in the 1980s with Reagan's revival of the
Nixonian drug war, applied more literally [125] than even Nixon could have
imagined. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">No-knock</b> raids would
return in full force, this time with no room for shame or remorse. (ch. 5, pp.
125-26)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>S.W.A.T.</u></i><u>
ABC-TV, Starting 24 Feb. 1975</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The first
season did well, and ABC ordered a second. Milton Bradley soon put out a
S.W.A.T. board game. Kids could take their sandwiches to school in S.W.A.T.
lunch boxes. There were S.W.A.T. action figures […], and die-cast miniatures of
the S.W.A.T. mobile. […].</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>SWAT had hit
popular culture.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At the same
time, real SWAT teams were spreading throughout the country. [132 * * *]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Some police
officials feared that the SWAT trend, particularly in smaller cities and towns,
would succumb to what the philosopher Abraham Kaplan called "the Law of
the Instrument": when you're carrying a hammer, everything looks like a
nail. "There are some cops who want to solve all society's problems with
an M-16," one police chief told the paper. "[…] And if you set
yourself up to use heavy firepower the danger exists that you will use it at
the first opportunity, and over-reaction — the opposite of what the [SWAT]
concept is about — becomes a real danger."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Big-city SWAT
teams were getting training in paramilitary tactics and weapons, but that
training was balanced by an emphasis on negotiation and deescalation [sic] and
the use of violence only as the last possible option. In the smaller agencies
around the country, not only did the SWAT team not get that sort of training,
but the teams were staffed by part-timers […]. The risk was that the entire
police department could succumb to a culture of militarism. In some quarters,
it was already happening. Within a decade, the SWAT proliferation would
accelerate. The emphasis on deescalation [sic] would all but disappear. Soon,
just about every decent-sized city police department was armed with a hammer.
And the drug war would ensure there were plenty of nails around for pounding.
(ch. 5, pp. 132-33)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Carter to Reagan Transition: Sam Ervin in the Senate</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The lull in
the fighting [for the Castle Doctrine] didn't last long. Before Carter left the
White House, he'd face allegations that pot-smoking was common among his staff
and that two senior-level aides were cocaine users — and that one of them was
his drug czar. The Reagan administration would soon come in to staff the drug
policy positions with hardened culture warriors.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Ervin's
wins were important but ultimately ephemeral. The drug war and police militarization
trends were about to merge. By the time Sam Ervin died in April 1985, the
California National Guard was sending helicopters to drop camouflaged-clad
troops into the backyards of suspected pot growers in Humboldt County; the
justice Department was wiretapping defense attorneys; and Daryl Gates was using
a battering ram affixed to a military-issue armored personnel carrier to smash
his way into the living rooms of suspected drug offenders. (ch. 5, p. 136)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>Ch. 6: The 1980s —
Us and Them</u></b></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>William French
Smith set the tone for the Reagan administration early on. In one of the first
cabinet meetings, the new attorney general declared, "The Justice
Department is not a domestic agency. It is the internal arm of the national
defense."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This would be
a rough decade for the Symbolic Third Amendment. Reagan's drug warriors were
about to take aim at <i>posse comitatus</i>, utterly dehumanize drug users,
cast the drug fight as a biblical struggle between good and evil, and in the
process turn the country's cops into holy soldiers.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Smith
surrounded himself with a crew of prosecutors who called themselves the
"hard chargers." One was Rudy Giuliani […]. (ch. 6, p. 139)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span color="windowtext"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The very first</span> change in public policy that Reagan
pushed through the Congress with the 1981 Military Cooperation with Law
Enforcement Act, a proposed amendment to the Posse Comitatus Act that would
carve out a much larger rule for the military in the drug war. […] The amended
law encouraged the Pentagon to go further [than indirect assistance, as Navy
tipping off Coast Guard] and give local, state, and federal police access to
military intelligence and research. It also encouraged the opening up of access
to military bases and equipment, and explicitly authorized the military to
train civilian police in the use of military equipment. The law essentially
permitted the military to work with drug cops on all aspects of drug
interdiction short of making arrests and conducting searches. <span color="windowtext"></span></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The next year
Reagan pushed for more. He wanted the Posse Comitatus Act amended yet again,
this time to allow solders to both arrest and conduct searches of US citizens.
He also made official his desire to repeal the Exclusionary Rule, which would
essentially free police to violate the Fourth Amendment at will. (ch. 6, p.
145)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Reagan also pressed for — and got — expanded asset
forfeiture: "The Democrats were eager to eliminate the perception that
they were softer on crime than the Republicans. Senators Joe Biden and Hubert
Humphrey preempted the White House-sponsored bill with a bill of their own. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Biden-Humphrey bill</b> gave Reagan
everything he wanted. ¶ On September 30, 1982, the crime bill loaded up with
most of the provisions Reagan wanted passed the Senate 95-1" (ch. 6, p.146).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"The government [of the United States] <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sent U-2 spy planes</i> to the state of
California to search for marijuana. Then they sent the helicopters. In all,
thirteen California counties were invaded by choppers, some of them blaring
Wagner's 'Ride of the Valkyries' as they dropped Guardsmen and law enforcement
officers armed with automatic weapons, sandviks, and machetes in the fields of
California" (ch. 6, p. 148).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Campaign Against Marijuana Production (CAMP, 1983 f.[in
California])</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote">The officials running the operation [in California] made no
bones about the paramilitary tactics they were using. The considered the areas
they were raiding to be war zones. In the interest of "officer
safety," they gave themselves permission to search any structures
relatively close to a marijuana supply, without a warrant. Anyone coming
anywhere near a raid operation was subject to detainment, usually at gunpoint. [148]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Describing the
1984 [sic!] operation, the journalist Dan Baum writes, "For a solid month,
the clatter of helicopters was never absent from Humboldt County. CAMP
roadblocks started hauling whole families out of cars and holding them as
gunpoint while searching their vehicles without warrants. CAMP troops
. . . went house to house kicking in doors and ransacking homes,
again without warrants.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In his book <i>The
Great Drug War</i>, Arnold Trebach writes that in 1983 and 1984 [William]
Ruzzamenti claimed that the entire town of Denny, California, was so hostile to
the drug warriors that he'd need "to virtually occupy the area with a
small army. […] When CAMP left, a military convoy drove out of the small
village, guns trained on the townspeople. The couple ["Denny residents
Eric Massett and his wife Rebecca"] told Trebach that one of them was
waving a .45 as the others chanted, "War on drugs! War on drugs!"</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But CAMP was
just the marijuana eradication program in California. The Reagan administration
had begun similar federal-state programs all over the country. In 1984 the
federal-state marijuana eradication efforts conducted twenty thousand raids
nationally, resulting in the destruction of 13 million plants (many of them
wild) and around five thousand arrests. (ch. 6, pp. 148-49)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Asset Forfeiture: 1984 f.</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Because 1984
was an election year, it would need to have an omnibus crime bill of its own.
Polls showed that crime was the most pressing domestic issue with the public
[…]. [151]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote">At this point, there wasn't any real debate about crime
policy. It was really only about which party could come up with the most
creative ways to empower cops and prosecutors, strip suspects of their rights,
and who they were more committed to the battle than their opponents were. The
most significant provision in the newest crime bill again dealt with <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">asset forfeiture</b>. […] Under the new
law, the Justice Department would set up a fund with the cash and auction
proceeds from its investigations. After the lead federal agency took its cut,
any state or local police agencies that had helped out would also get a share.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The measure
was considered uncontroversial at the time, but it is difficult to overstate
the effect it would have on drug policing over the next thirty years.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[…] After it
passed for example, the CAMP raids and those like them in other parts of the
country were no longer just about putting on a good show and terrorizing the
counterculture. Now the raids could generate revenue for all the police
agencies involved. The DEA's Ruzzamenti was rather frank [identifying land
seizure as central …]. "[…] Basically, people have to prove that they
weren't involved and didn't know about [marijuana cultivation on their land].
Just the act of having marijuana grown on your land is enough to tie it up;
then you have to turn around and prove you're innocent. It reverses the burden
of proof." (ch. 6, p. 152)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Because it was
much easier to win land through civil forfeiture than to win a conviction in
criminal court, federal prosecutors often offered to drop the criminal charges
if the landowners agreed to hand their property over to the federal government.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Those sorts of
offers exposed just how fraudulent the government's justification for its
terror tactics really were. Allegedly, these pot growers were the dregs of
humanity, greedily poisoning America's children with their sinister harvest.
They were dangerous enough that the government had to send virtual armies to
occupy entire towns, buzz homes and chase children with helicopters, set up
roadblocks to search cars and gunpoint, and strip suspects and innocents alike
of their Fourth Amendment rights. These growers were <i>that</i> dangerous.
However, if they were willing to hand over their land, the government was more
than happy to let them go free.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Because of the
new forfeiture law, police agencies now had a strong incentive to
"find" a connection between valuable property and drug activi ty,
even if there was none. They now had an incentive to conduct drug busts inside
homes when the suspects could just as easily – and more safely – have been
apprehended outside the house. They now had a strong financial incentive to
make drug policing a higher priority […] than to investigating other crimes.
(ch. 6, p. 153).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"These
forfeiture policies would soon help fund the explosion of SWAT teams across the
country — forging yet another tie between the escalating drug war and
hypermilitarized policing" (ch. 6, p. 154).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Gates, LAPD, and Forcible Entry</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In a suit
by the ACLU against the LAPD, "The court found the ram [on an APC] to be
so excessive as to violate the Fourth Amendment requirement that searches be
reasonable, and it ruled that prior to each raid the LAPD would need to get
special permission from a judge before using a battering ram. (In the same
case, the court also ruled that city police did <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> need a judge's permission to use flash-bang grenades)"
(ch. 6, p. 156). </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Drugs and Nat'l Security</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Under Reagan, "At the national level, the once-separate
trends of militarization and the war on drugs continued to converge. On April
8, 1986, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 221,
which designated illicit drugs a threat to US national security. […] The
declaration put pot, cocaine, and heroin at nearly the same class of enemy as
any nation against whom the United States had fought a conventional war"
(ch. 6, p. 157).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. William Crowe went
further, stating that with new antidrug offensive, 'you're probably going to
have to infringe on some human rights.' In testimony before Congress, Darryl
Gates proclaimed that casual drug use was 'treason,' then recommended that
users be 'taken out and shot.' It was especially odd comment given that Gates's
own son had a history of problems with drug abuse" (ch. 6, p. 166).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Final Reagan Years, 1988 Crime Bill</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial Rounded MT Bold",sans-serif">[<span style="color: #222222;">H.R. 5210 (100<sup>th</sup>): Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988
/ </span><span style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: black;">The Edward Byrne Memorial
State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Program, a matching grant program
authorized under the 1988 federal </span></span><a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/100/hr5210"><span face=""Arial Rounded MT Bold",sans-serif" style="color: #00a0d2;">Anti-Drug
Abuse Act</span></a><span face=""Arial Rounded MT Bold",sans-serif" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: black;">.]</span><span face=""Arial Rounded MT Bold",sans-serif"></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 15.3pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span face=""Arial Rounded MT Bold",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The Byrne
grant program gave the White House another way to impose its crime policy on
local law enforcement. As local police departments were infused with federal
cash, members of Congress got press release fodder for bringing federal money
back to the police departments in their districts. No one gave much thought to
the potential unintended consequences because there was no reason to — for
everyone who mattered the program was a winner. The program's losers would
become apparent in the 1990s. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[…] One of the
few voices of sanity in the Reagan years was Secretary of Defense Caspar
Weinberger, who spoke out against his own boss's attempt to enlist the military
in drug policing. Bush's secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, had no such
reservations. He'd write in a DoD publication a few years later, "the
detection and countering of the production, trafficking, and use of illegal
drugs is a high priority national security mission of the Department of Defense."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Democrats in
Congress savaged [William] Bennett and Bush's drug plan — <i>for not going far
enough</i>. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Joe [167] Biden</b> told the Associated Press that, […] the
Bush-Bennett plan "is not tough enough, bold enough, or imaginative enough
to meet the crisis at hand." […] The most pointed criticism came from <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Representative Charlie Rangel</b> of New
York. A March 1989 profile of Rangel in <i>Ebony</i> magazine ran under the
headline, "Charles Rangel: The Front-Line General in the War on
Drugs." Rangel told the magazine: "All these people are talking about
protecting the world against communism and the Soviets. … How dare they let
this happen to our children and not scream with indignation!" It isn't
clear just whom Rangel was criticizing. Just about everyone running for office
had been screaming with indignation for ten years. Yet Rangel called the
federal drug war "lackadaisical" and "indifferent" and said
that it suffered from "a lack of commitment." He damned methadone
treatment as "a crime" and snapped that anyone who even mentioned
legalization was committing "moral suicide." (ch. 6, pp. 167-68;
italics in original). </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>By the late
1980s, the policies, rhetoric, and mind-set of the Reagan-Bush all-out antidrug
blitzkrieg had fully set in at police departments across the country. Nearly
every city with a population of 100,000 or more either had a SWAT team or was
well on its way to getting one. The tactics that ten years earlier had been
reserved for the rare, violent hostage-taking or bank robbery were by now
employed daily by large police departments from coast to coast. "I wonder
where the United States is heading," Federal District Court judge Richard
Matsch, a Nixon appointee, told <i>USA Today</i> in 1989. "My concern is
that the real victim of the war on drugs might be the United States
Constitution." Another federal <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>judge,
Reagan appointee John Conway, worried that "police practices of this
nature raise the grim specter of a totalitarian state." (ch. 6, p. 168) </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The public appeared
to side with [Drug "Czar" William] Bennett. In a September 1989 poll
conducted by the <i>Washington Post</i> and ABC News, 62 percent of the country
said they would "be willing to give up a few of the freedoms we have in
this country if it meant we could greatly reduce the amount of illegal drug use."
Another 52 percent agreed that police should be allowed "to search without
a court order the houses of people suspected of selling drugs, even if houses
of people like you are sometime searched by mistake." </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In Boston,
police cracked down with […] "stop-and-frisk" searches […] of any
suspected drug offenders "who cause fear in the community," a broad
enough justification to let them search anyone at well. Suffolk County Superior
Court judge Cortland Mathers described the new policy as, "in effect, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">a proclamation of martial law in Roxbury
for a narrow class of people, young blacks</b>." A <i>Boston Globe</i>
article in September 1989 described how what was <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">essentially an occupation of some neighborhoods</b> was degrading an
entire generation's opinion of police. (ch., 6, p. 169)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>The Numbers</u></b><u>"</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Number of
drug raids conducted in 1987 by the San Diego Police Department: 457</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Number of
drug raids conducted by the Seattle Police Department in 1987: approximately
500</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Value of assets
in the Justice Department's forfeiture fund by 1985: $27 million</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Value of
assets in the Justice Department's forfeiture fund by 1991: $644 million</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage of US cities with populations of 50,000 that had a SWAT team in
1982: 59 percent.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1989: 78 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1995: 89 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage of those SWAT teams that trained with active-duty military
personnel: 46 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Average
annual number of times each of those SWAT teams was deployed in 1983: 13</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1986: 27</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1995: 55</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage of those deployments in 995 that were only to serve drug warrants:
75.9</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage of cities with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 that had a SWAT
team in 1980: 13.3 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1984: 25.6 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1990: 52.1 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Average
number of times each SWAT team in a city with a population between 25,000 and
50,000 was deployed in 1980: 3.7</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1985: 4.5</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1990: 10.3</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1995: 12.5 (ch. 6, p. 175)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Chapter 7, "The 1990s — It's All About the Numbers</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Headnote: "Why serve an arrest warrant to some crack
dealer with a 38? With full armor, the right shit, and training, you can kick
ass and have fun." — US military officer who conducted training seminars
for civilian SWAT teams in the 1990s (ch. 7, p. 177)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">In 1989 in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Portland,
Oregon</b>, Herb Robinson of the <i>Seattle Times </i>noted, fully armed Guard
troops had recently been stationed in front of suspected drug houses in a
series of drug raids. In Kentucky local residents became so enraged by frequent
Guard sweeps in low-flying helicopters that they blew up a radio tower used by
the Kentucky State Police. In Oklahoma, Guard troops dressed in battle garb
rappelled down from helicopters and fanned out into rural areas in search of
pot plants to uproot. (ch. 7, p. 179)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 1992, University
of Minnesota law professor Myron Orfield sent a questionnaire to Chicago
judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys to determine the state of the Fourth
Amendment in that city. Even cynics would find the results dispiriting. More
than one-fifth of Chicago judges believed that police lie in court more than
half the time when questioned about searches and seizures. <i>Ninety-two
percent</i> of judges said that police lie "at least some of the
time," and 38 percent of judges said that they believed that police
supervisors encouraged subordinates to lie in court. More than 50 percent of
respondents believed that at least "half of the time" the prosecutor
"knows or has reason to know" that police fabricate evidence. Another
93 percent of respondents (including 89 percent of the prosecutors) reported
that prosecutors have knowledge of perjury "at least some of the
time." Sixty-one percent of respondents, including half of the surveyed
prosecutors believed that prosecutors know or have reason to know that police
fabricate evidence in case reports, and half of prosecutors believed the same
to be true when it comes to warrants. Prosecutors also described the unspoken
understandings they have shared with cops, including prosecutors articulating
cases to police in terms like, "If this happens, we win. If that happens,
we lose." Yet Chicago judges went on approving search warrants with little
or no scrutiny. Orfield asked one more question, Did the Exclusionary Rule
really deter police misconduct. Every judge, every defense attorney, and every
prosecutor but one answered yes.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Former
narcotics cop Russ Jones says it wasn't always like that. "When I first
started writing search warrants, I had to take it to the DA, who would
thoroughly review it. Then I'd take it to the judge, who'd also give it a close
look. Then the judge always read the warrant, always asked questions. By the
time I left law enforcement, and certainly since, it had gotten to the point
where the DEA no longer needed to have warrants reviewed by a federal
prosecutor, and often the judge wouldn't even read it. It just became a rubber
stamp process. And I understand it's happening more and more. (ch. 7, p. 184)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After the
botched raid that ended the life of Ismael Mena in 1999, the <i>Denver Post</i>
looked into how judges in the Mile High City handled request for no-knock
warrants. Again, the results were unsettling. Over a twelve-month period,
police in Denver request 163 no-knock warrants. The city's judges granted 158
of them. Defense attorneys told the paper they were surprised […] that the
judges had rejected even five. Perhaps Denver police had come to the judges
with more than adequate probable cause. Perhaps. But the paper also found that,
astonishingly, many of the city's judges would sign off on no-knock warrants <i>even
though the police hadn't request one</i>. […] The paper also found that in
eight of ten raids over that period, police assertions in affidavits that they
would find weapons […] turned out to be wrong. In only seven of the 163
no-knock affidavits did police present any evidence that the suspect had been
seen with a gun. Of those seven raids, just two turned up an actual weapon. The
Denver Police Department requires that all no-knock raids be preapproved by the
DA's office. In about one-third of the raids, that never happened." (ch.
7, p. 185)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The early
1990s weren't kind to the father of SWAT. In response to the Rodney King
beating of May 1991, Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley asked Warren Christopher to
chair a commission looking in the LAPD's use of excessive force. The
commission's report was damning. It found that a small but significant group of
police officers within the department regularly used excessive force — and that
LAPD leadership did little to stop them. [… Notes lawsuits lost by city on
issue] The commission [186] found that even though officer misconduct in those
cases has often been egregious, it had usually resulted in "light and
often nonexistent discipline. The commission reviewed radio transmissions of
LAPD officers referring to a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">drug
roundup in a black neighborhood</b> as "monkey slapping time" or
fantasizing about driving down one particular street with a flamethrower —
"We would have a barbecue."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The comments
themselves would have been bad enough. Even worse was the fact that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">a culture existed within the department</b>
in which officers felt free to make them over police radio. The LAPD's focus of
reacting to crime instead of preventing it, the commission found, had isolated
officers from the communities they patrolled. Cops were rewarded for putting up
impressive arrest statistics and for being "hard-nosed." The report
found that drug and gang sweeps of the late 1980s had alienated LAPD cops from
the community, creating reciprocal hostility and resentment. The LAPD did a
poor job of screening applicants for violent backgrounds, and the department's
training put far too much emphasis on force and too little on communication n
and problem solving. The commission found that when academy student west out in
the field, they were quickly schooled to view the world from a
"we/they" perspective. It also found that many of the field training
officers who gave new cops their first experiences on the street themselves had
histories of misconduct or excessive use of force. (ch. 7, pp. 186-87)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In Colorado,
the Denver Post ran an article in 1995 about three area deaths from no-knock
drug raids in the area in thirty-three months — including a sixteen-year-old
boy, a deputy sheriff, and a fifty-four-year-old grandfather of eight.
"Such raids are very dangerous," said Pitkin County sheriff Robert
Braudis. "The are the closet thing I can think of to a military action in
a democratic society." Braudis explained that it was far safer to conduct
surveillance, to learn a suspect's routing, and then do "a quick, quiet
arrest then a suspect is in the open." As for possible destruction of
evidence, he said that his department would have the water shut off before
serving a warrant (by knocking at the door and waiting for an answer). In some
cases, they had arranged for a plumber to set up a "catch net" to
capture anything flushed after police arrived to serve the warrant. But Braudis
said that his concern went beyond the SWAT tactics. "The 'war on drugs' is
an abysmal failure," he said. "Even the term creates a dangerous war
mentality." (ch. 7, p. 192)</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In one case
[in Albuquerque in the later 1990s …] a SWAT officer said to his colleagues,
Let's go get the bad guy," just before the team went to confront
thirty-three-year-old Larry Walker. The "bad guy" wasn't a terrorist,
a killer, or even a drug dealer, but a depressed man whose family had called
the police because they feared he might be contemplating suicide. The SWAT team
showed up in full battle attire, including assault rifles and flash-bang
grenades. They found Walker "cowering under a juniper tree" […], then
shot him dead from forty-three feet away. The city brought in Sam Walker, a
well-regarded criminologist at the University of Nebraska, to evaluate the
police department's use [192] of lethal force. Walker was astounded by what he
found. "The rate of police killings was just off the charts," Walker
told the Times. The city's SWAT team, he said, "had an organizational structure
that led them to escalate situations upward rather than de-escalate. The city
then brought in […] Jerry Galvin to take over its police department. Galvin
immediately disbanded the SWAT team, toned down the militarism, and implemented
community policing policies. He told the Times, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"If cops have a mindset that the goal is to take out a citizen, it
will happen."</b> (ch. 7, pp. 192-93)</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><u><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Clinton Years, 1992-2000</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[Bill] Clinton
and his appointees weren't as bellicose as Reagan and Bush or Meese and
Bennett, but the policies that Clinton implemented showed littler understanding
or appreciation of the Symbolic Third Amendment [keeping the US military out of
policing Americans]. In 1993, for example, he Justice Department and the
Defense Department entered into a formalized technology and equipment sharing
agreement. Not only were American police forces becoming more militarized, the
thinking went, but in places like Korea the US military was taking on more of a
policing role. […] Attorney General Janet Reno explained this strategy in a
speech to defense and intelligence specialists. "So let me welcome you to
the kind of war our police fight every day," Reno said. (ch. 7, p. 193)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Ruby Ridge, Idaho, 1992; Waco, Texas, 1993</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The Ruby Ridge
fiasco began in 1989 when Randy Weaver sold and ATF informant two sawed-off
shotguns that had been cut shorter than was allowed under federal law.
[* * *]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On August 21,
1992, a team of US marshals dressed in camouflage and carrying M-16s went to
Weaver's home on a reconnaissance mission to determine an appropriate place and
manner to capture him. Once there, the marshals threw rocks at the Weaver cabin
to see how the family's dogs would react. The dogs went nuts. Hearing them,
Weaver's fourteen-year-old son Sammy went out with family friend Kevin Harris
to see what the commotion was about. Accounts differ here, but at some point
one of the agents shot and killed one of the Weavers' dogs. Sammy Weaver
responded by firing his own gun at the source of the gunfire, then fled toward
the house. One of the marshals then shot him in the back as he ran. Sammy
Weaver was dead. Harris then exchanged fire with the marshals, killing one of
them. [200]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A twelve-day
siege ensured, featuring hundreds of cops, agents, and troops from the ATF, the
FBI, the US Marshals, the Idaho State Police, the local sheriff's department,
the National Guard, and — for some reason — the US Border Patrol. On day two of
the siege, FBI sniper teams were told that their rules of engagement were,
basically to shoot on sight […]. When Randy Weaver left the house to visit the
body of his son […] an FBI sniper shot him in the chest. As Weaver, Harris, and
one of Weaver's daughters fled back into the house, the agent fired again at
the front door. That bullet went through the door, then through Vicki Weaver's
head, killing her instantly. She was holding her ten-month-old daughter at the
time. The baby fell to the floor. Weaver and Harris were eventually tried in
federal court for murder, attempted murder, and other felonies. They were acquitted
on all the serious charges. The federal government eventually settled with the
Weaver family for over $3 million, and with Weaver for $380,000. (ch. 7, pp.
200-01)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The raid in
Waco the next year involved many of the same agencies — indeed, many of the
same agents. The ATF was investigating the Branch Davidians and their leader,
David Koresh, for weapons violations, Koresh went jogging every day and could
conceivably have been picked up peacefully. Instead, the agency drew up plans
for a heavily armed raid on the Branch Davidian compound, even knowing that
there were women and children inside. In fact, ATF officials learned ahead of
time from an agent who had infiltrated the compound that Koresh and his
followers knew the raid was coming. Their plan depended on the element of
surprise. They went through with it anyway. (ch. 7, p. 201)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The subsequent
siege went on for six weeks. Finally, on April 19, Attorney General Janet Reno
gave order to flush the Branch Davidians out of the compound. Federal agents
used tanks to smash holes in the building. […] In all, seventy-six Davidians
died, including twenty-six children.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Waco and Ruby
Ridge made militarization a political issue. Perhaps counterintuitively, the
laws the agents were enforcing — federal gun control laws — put conservatives
in the unprecedented role of criticizing federal cops for overkill, and
liberals in the position of defending the aggressive tactics. (One fact about
Waco that conservative ATF critics often overlook: the military presence at the
compound was only made possible by the drug war. The ATF told the leaders of
Joint Task Force 6 — one of the many military-civilian police antidrug task
forces set up during the Reagan and Bush administrations — that David Koresh
was running a methamphetamine operation. The evidence for this was suspect at
best.) (ch. 7, p. 202)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">The ATF abuses that came to light in the 1990s were a good
indication that the warriorlike, us-against-them mentality wasn't limited to
drug policing. Those police actions also gave some momentum to a new militia
movement — of at least caused the media to take notice of them. The militia
movement was vast and fairly diverse, but most groups had views about
government, guns, and property that were well to the right of the rest of the
country. Very few espoused violence, but the new attention on the few that did,
along with anger from the National Rifle Association (NRA), Gun Owners of
America, and the rants of right-wing personalities like [G. Gordon] Liddy,
inspired more reactionary opposition from the left [sic]. Then, of April 19,
1995, Timothy McVeigh set off a fertilizer bomb outside the Arthur Murrah
Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 164 people. McVeigh claimed that he
bombed the building in retaliation for the events at Waco. (ch. 7, p. 203)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Starting 1989, involving Peter Kraska, U of Eastern Kentucky
criminologist. "One Coast Guard officer flatly admitted to Kraska that the
procedure" of using US Navy personnel and vessels to spot and
"intercept boats or ships that fit drug courier profiles" and have
them boarded and any police work done by the Coast Guard "was a way of
getting around the Navy's policy prohibiting its personnel from participating
in civil police actions."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[…] Kraska
began looking into indirect militarization: the rise of SWAT teams and other
paramilitary police teams; what might be called the criminal-justice-industrial
complex; and the increasing tendency of public officials to address social
problems with martial rhetoric and imagery and to suggest military-like solutions,
[206[ from the "wars on crime and drugs, to the heavy weaponry and
vehicles that police were beginning to use, to the proposals that juvenile
offenders be punished in "boot camps."</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Kraska got funding and produced the data for "The
Numbers" table ending ch. 6 (reproduced above, p. 12), with the
proliferation of SWAT teams in small cities and larger towns summed up in
Kraska's phrase "'the militarization of Mayberry.'" Additionally,
"In the early 1980s, the aggregate number of SWAT deployments was just under
3,000. By 1995, it was just under 30,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>[…] What was precipitating the surge in SWAT activity? The drug war,
almost exclusively." Balko asks and answers, "What does a SWAT team
do in a city with no violent crime? It creates violence out of nonviolent
crime" (ch. 7, p. 207). </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Kraska tells of SWAT commanders telling him how their people
were instructed by "special forces folks who have come right out of the
jungles of Central and South America" and how "We've had teams of
Navy Seals and Army Rangers come here and teach us everything. We just have to
use our judgment and exclude the information like: 'at this point we bring in
the mortars and blow the place up" (ch. 7, p. 208). Kraska's informant
tells of a four-star general writing him expressing concern over such training.
Summarizing such concerns:</p>
<p class="MsoQuote">Back in the 1850s, the Cushing Doctrine had allowed federal
marshals to summon US troops to enforce domestic law. More than a hundred years
after the controversial policy was repealed by the Posse Comitatus Act, federal
marshals were now soliciting elite US military personnel again — not to enforce
domestic law themselves, but to teach civilian police officers how to enforce
the laws <i>as if they</i> were in the military. [p. 208]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Perhaps most
disturbing was Kraska's finding that these paramilitary police teams and
aggressive tactics were increasingly being used for regular patrols. By 1997,
20 percent of the departments he surveyed used SWAT teams or similar units for
patrol, mostly in poor, high-crime areas. This was an increase of 257 percent
since 1989.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>SWAT
proponents argued that all of this buildup was in response to a real problem —
after all, violent crime had soared in the 1980s and early 1990s. But the SWAT
teams weren't generally responding to violent crime. They were usually serving
drug warrants. [… Kraska and his colleague Louie Cubellis] found that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">only 6.63 percent of the rise in SWAT
deployments could be explained by the rising crime rate</b>. (ch. 7, pp.
208-09)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">As had been happening throughout the drug war, this mass
militarization brought with it a new wave of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">dehumanization</b>. In one follow-up interview to his survey, a SWAT
commander told Kraska, referring to the use of his team for routine patrols,
"When the soldiers ride in, you should see those blacks scatter."
Former San Jose police chief Joseph McNamara told <i>National Journal</i> in
2000 that in a recent SWAT conference he had attended, "officers
. . . were wearing these very disturbing shirts. On the front, there
were pictures of SWAT officers dressed in dark uniforms, wearing helmets, and
holding submachine guns. Below was written: 'We don't do drive-by shootings.'
On the back there was a picture of a demolished house. Below was written: 'We
stop.'"</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Kraska found
more evidence of the mind-set problem in a separate ethnography study he
conducted. […] But before the police officers arrived [for a possibly illegal
training session with actual military personnel], Kraska talked to the trainers
about the proliferation of SWAT teams. "This shit is going on all
over," one f them said. ""Why serve an arrest warrant to some
crack dealer with a 38? With full armor, the right shit, and training, you can
kick ass and have fun." The other trainer jumped in. "Most of these
guys just like to play war; they get a rush out of search-and-destroy missions
instead of the bullshit they do normally. (ch. 7, p. 212)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Other style statements on trainees: a T-short with "a
picture of a burning city with gunship helicopters and the caption 'Operation
Ghetto Storm'" (ch. 7, pp. 212-13). Also Oakley wraparound sunglasses and
flattops or crew cuts of the military variety: "The Oakleys and crew cuts
were part of a muscle-bound, mechanistic look popular with younger police
officers. The look was usually accessorized with sensory-enhancement gear like
night-vision goggles to achieve what Kraska calls a 'techno-warrior' image. He
notes that one purveyor of SWAT gear and clothing calls its line 'Cyborg 21<sup>st</sup>'"
(ch. 7, p. 213)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">COMMUNITY POLICING</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, crime in America was
still climbing. The concept of <i>community policing</i> was growing
increasingly popular. […] Rather than taking a "call-and-response"
approach to policing […] cops walk regular beats. They go to community
meetings. They know the names of the principals of the schools in their
districts […].</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 1994
Clinton started a new grant program under the Justice Department called
Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS. For its inaugural year, Clinton
and leaders in Congress (most notably <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sen.
Joe Biden</b>) funded it with $148.4 million. [* * *]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The style of
community policing embraced by officials like [Nick] Pastore [in New Haven, CT]
and [Norm] Stamper [in San Diego] aims to make police a helpful presence in the
community, not an occupying presence. But theirs is not the only way to be
proactive about law enforcement. Street sweeps, occupation-like control of
neighborhoods, SWAT raids, and aggressive anti-gang policies are also
proactive. These police activities are aggressive, often violent, and usually a
net loss for civil liberties, but they <i>are</i> proactive. [218]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When Clinton, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Biden</b>, and other politicians touted the
COPS program, they did so in language that evoked the Peace Corps approach
(though both <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Clinton</b> and Biden also
supported policies that promoted militarization). Although Clinton described
the goal of COPS as "build[ing] bonds of understanding and trust between
police and citizens," it wasn't clear if he or any other politician really
believed this. The majority of the funding in COPS grants was given simply to <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">hire more police officers</b>. The program
said little about how those officers should be used, or what sort of attitude they
should bring to the job. […] And so as the COPS program threw billions at
police departments under the pretense of hiring whistling, baton-twirling
Officer Friendlies to walk neighborhood beats […] many police agencies were
actually using the money to militarize (ch. 7, pp. 218-19).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Portland, </u>OR: </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">From work by Paul Richmond, 1997 article in "the
alternative newspaper <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">PDXS</i>":</p>
<p class="MsoQuote">"The unfortunate truth about community policing as it is
currently being implemented is that it is anything but community based
[…]." Instead […] in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Portland</b>
[OR] the grants had resulted in "increased militarization of the police
force." Richmond also found in Portland that […] a federal program touted
as a way to encourage local police to get more involved with local communities
was actually federalizing local law enforcement. At the same time Clinton was
pushing COPS, the administration and Democrats in Congress were pushing
policies like "troops to cops" bills, management training programs
for police agencies based on federal models of policing, and a bill that would
allow local police departments to fund community policing programs with asset
forfeiture money obtained through the Justice Department's Equitable Sharing
Program — the program that allows [219] local police to ignore state forfeiture
laws by teaming up with the federal government. (ch. 7, pp. 219-20)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Richmond found
that while the overall cops-to-citizens ratio fell in the early 1990s, in
Portland, [OR,] between 1989 and 1994, the number of officers in the city's
tactical operations department jumped from two to fifty-six. The two officers
in charge of the city's tactical teams had formerly been in charge of the
city's Department of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Community Policing.
Richmond also obtained a copy of the city's "Community Policing Strategic
Plan," passed by the city council in 1994. Among the plan's objectives was
to increase the police department's involvement with the federal ATF and the
Oregon National Guard. It included implementing at a local level Clinton's
"one strike and you're out" plan for drug use in public housing,
which allowed for raids on public housing tenants, followed by their possible
eviction, based on no more than an anonymous tip. Richmond was alarmed that so
many progressives in the city were embracing the community policing plan based
on little more than its pleasant-sounding name and that it was coming from a
Democratic administration in Washington and administered by a progressive city
government. The devil was in the details, and no one had bothered to look at
the details. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Little of this
would have surprised Peter Kraska. All of the police departments he surveyed
that had a SWAT team "also claimed to place high emphasis on the
democratic approach to community policing." Kraska found that when most
law enforcement officials heard "community policing," they thought of
the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">militarized zero-tolerance model</b>.
(ch. 7, p. 220)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; mso-highlight: yellow;">Wisconsin</span></u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 2001, a <i>Madison
Capital Times </i>investigation found that sixty-five of Wisconsin's
eighty-three local SWAT teams had come into being since 1980 — twenty-eight of
them since 1996, and sixteen in just the previous year. In other words, more
than half of the state's SWAT teams had popped up since the inaugural year of
the COPS program. The newer tactical units had sprung up in absurdly small
jurisdictions like Forest County (population 9950), Mukwonago (7,519), and Rich
Lake (8,320). Many of the agents who populated these new SWAT teams […] had
been hired with COPS grants. A local criminologist was incredulous:
"Community policing initiatives and stockpiling weapons and grenade
launchers are totally incompatible." Perhaps that was true in theory, but
not in how community policing was being practiced. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Of course,
Byrne grants* and the 1033 program** had also contributed to the SWAT-ification
of the Dairy State. The paper found that in the 1990s, Wisconsin police
departments hauled in over 100,000 pieces of military equipment valued at more
than $1.75 million. Some of the bounty was benign, items like computers and
office equipment, but it also included "11 M-16s, 21 bayonets, four boats,
a periscope, and 41 vehicles […]."Columbia County also received
"surveillance equipment, cold water gear, tools<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>battle dress uniforms, flak jackets, [and]
chemical suits." The county put its tactical team to use by sending it to
"Weedstock" in nearby Saulk County, an event where cops in full SWAT
attire intimidatingly stood guard while "hundreds of young people
gather[ed] peacefully to smoke marijuana and listen to music." (ch. 7, p.
221)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Byrne_Memorial_Justice_Assistance_Grant_Program></span></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">**
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Enforcement_Support_Office></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This is how
the game is played. Drug arrests brought in federal money. Federal money and
1033 [Law-Enforce Support] let police departments buy cool battle garb to start
a SWAT team, which they justify to local residents by playing to fears of
terrorism, school shootings, and hostage takings But those sorts of events are
not only rare, they don't bring in any additional money. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Drug raids</b> bring in more federal funding, plus the possibility of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">asset forfeiture</b>. All in the name of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">community policing</b>.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>During the
2008 campaign, Barack Obama and Joe Biden — but especially <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Joe Biden</b> — credited the COPS program as the reason behind
America's historic crime drop that began in 1994. Biden's campaign website
during the 2008 primaries exclaimed, "In the 1990s the Biden Crime Bill
[an incarnation of the final bill establishing COPS] added <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">100,000 cops</b> to America's streets. As a result, murder and violent
crime rates went down eight years in a row." </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">The Justice Department's inspector general put the new cops
number closer to 60,000, and a Heritage Foundation analysis found that,
accounting for attrition [sic], the total number of cops on the streets
increased between 6,000 and 40,000 [sic]. More to the point, there's little
evidence that the crime drop was a result of the program. A 2005 report by the
Government Accountability Office found that while the violent crime rate
dropped 32 percent between 1993 and 2000, at most, the COPS program accounted
for 2.5 percent of that decrease, and at a cost of $8 billion. A 2007 analysis
in the peer-reviewed academic journal <i>Criminology</i> concluded that
"COPS spending had little to no effect on crime." (ch. 7, p. 222)</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 2007 I was
asked to speak about police militarization at a "crime summit" hosted
by Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, the Democratic chairman of the House
Subcommittee on Crime. During a question-and-answer session, someone asked
about community policing and the possibility of restoring full funding to the
COPS grants. (The Bush administration had phased the program out.) Everyone
seemed to be in favor of the "Peace Corps" model of community
policing, and they also seemed to believe that this was what the COPS grants
were funding. Pointing to the Madison Capital Times investigation and [Peter]
Kraska's research, I explained that these idealized visions of community
policing didn't appear to have much to do with how the grants were actually
being used. Representative Scott stopped me.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Are you
telling me that our community policing grants are being used to start and fund
. . . SWAT teams?"</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I responded
that, yes, that was what Kraska and the Madison paper had found.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Scott replied,
with a bit of whimsy, "Well, <i>that's</i> not really what we
intended."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The room had a
good chuckle. The next year the Democrats increased funding to the COPS program
by $40 million. The following year, with Obama in the White House, the
program's budget increased 250 percent, to $1.55 billion. (ch. 7, p. 223)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">Joseph McNamara at a "groundbreaking drug policy
conference in 1997 at the Hoover Institution," where McNamara was a
fellow. He'd worked as police chief in Kansas City and San José (spelled in <i>Warrior</i>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>w/o the accent). "Among cities with
a population of 400,000 or more, San Jose also had the lowest crime rate in the
country for the last three years of McNamara's tenure. […] McNamara pulled this
off with one of the smallest per capita police departments in America."
This — plus generally conservative politics — gave McNamara "clout with
the right, despite his vocal criticism of the war on drugs, police abuse, and
police militarization." McNamara lays out a hypothetical starting with a
tip on crack at a house.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After laying
out the hypothetical […] McNamara turned to Chief [Bernard] Parks [LAPD]. What
was his next move. Parks responded that he'd attempt to verify the tip. If it
checked out, he'd send in the SWAT team. McNamara asked what sort of ammunition
the SWAT team used. Weren't their bullets capable of going through walls?
"They'll go through a car engine two blocks away," Parks answered.
McNamara then changed the hypothetical. What if it wasn't crack but marijuana?
Would he still send in an armed-to-the-teeth SWAT team? Parks said he would.
What if it was a shipment<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of bootlegged
Valium. Still with the SWAT team. Black market booze? SWAT team. (ch. 7 p. 225)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The police
chief of the second-largest city in America [Bernard Parks, LAPD] had just told
the audience that he was willing to use extraordinary force to confiscate a
supply of illegal drugs. It was a level of force that could well result [in]
death or injury to innocents — and indeed by that point [1997] already had,
countless times. What's more, he added that what drug he was pursuing and how
much actual harm that particular drug caused <i>had no relevance</i> on the
amount of force he elected to use. Every public official on the panel who had
the power to check that decision then told the same audience that they had no
interest in second-guessing him. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"It
really showed the extent of the problem," McNamara said. "You get
this robot mentality with these officials. The mayor said she knew nothing
about these raids and didn't want to know anything about them until they were
over. The judge wasn't interested in scrutinizing the raid until it was over —
when any damage would already be done. Everyone else said it wasn't their job
to worry about it. And so you end up with this dangerous decision made by
people of lower rank with little training, with little incentive to care much
about constitutional rights, with no oversight — no checks or balances..
Collateral damage is just part of the game." (ch. 7, p. 227)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>North Hollywood Shoot-out 28 February 1997</u>: bank
robbery by heavily armed and armored perpetrators, Larry Phillips Jr. and Emil <span style="color: #404040; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 191;">Mătăsăreanu</span></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the fifteen
years since it happened, the North Hollywood Shoot-out has become the go-to incident
for proponents of police militarization. For years now it has been regularly
cited as the prime example of why cops need bigger guns, and why police
departments need SWAT teams. There's some merit to these arguments. A strong
argument could be made, for example, for allowing patrol officers to store
powerful weapons in the trunks of their squad cars in the event that they're
the first on the scene of such an incident — and the SWAT team is still ten or
twenty minutes away. But the incident isn't an argument for proliferation of
SWAT teams to small towns, for more militarized uniforms, or for using
increasingly militarized tactics for increasingly petty crimes.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[…] That the
best anecdote defenders of police militarization can come up with is fifteen
years old may attest to the rarity of such incidents. In any case, even most
critics of the SWAT phenomenon acknowledge that there are some situations were
a paramilitary police response is appropriate — and a heavily armed bank
robbery would be right at the top of that list. The criticism of SWAT
proliferation is that the overwhelming majority of SWAT deployments today are
to break into private residences to serve search warrants for nonviolent
crimes. (ch. 7, p. 230)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado, 20 April 1999</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre.
></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The other
major incident from the late 1990s that proponents of militarization often cite
in justifying SWAT teams is the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School
[…]. Columbine is a particularly unfortunate example. Though there were
eventually eight hundred police officers and eight SWAT teams in the Columbine
campus, the SWAT teams held off from going inside to stop shooters Dylan
Klebold and Eric Harris because they deemed the situation too dangerous [i.e.,
for the police]. A spokesman for the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department
justified the SWAT team's [sic: singular] actions after the shooting. "A
dead police officer would not be able to help anyone." Added SWAT team
leader Donn Kraemer, "If we went in and tried to take them and got shot,
we would be part of the problem." David Kepel of the Independence
Institute in Colorado explained how that panned out for the victims:</p>
<p class="InternalBlocjkQuote">While one murder after another was being
perpetrated, a dozen police officers were stationed near [the] exit. These
officers made no attempt to enter the building, walk 15 steps, and confront the
murderers. (According to police speaking on condition of anonymity, one Denver
SWAT officer did begin to enter but was immediately "ordered down" by
commanders.)</p>
<p class="InternalBlocjkQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Twenty
minutes after the rampage began, three SWAT officers <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>were finally sent into the building — on the
first floor, on the side of the building furthest from […] where killings were
in progress. Finding students rushing out of the building, they decided to
escort students out, rather than track down the killers. This began a police
program to "contain the perimeter."</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 103.5pt; tab-stops: 1.75in;"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Instead of
confronting the killers, then, the <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>SWAT
team frisked the victims [… and] then passed on another chance to confront
Harris and Klebold. (ch. 7, pp. 231)</p>
<p class="InternalBlocjkQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Students
in the [cafeteria] room had called 911 and the line was open, so again the
killers' location was known. Many officers were massed near the cafeteria door.
They knew where the murderers were. They knew that the murderers were
attempting to get into a room to kill more people. The police stood idle. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">Columbine was precisely the sort of incident for which the
SWAT team had been invented. It was the sort of incident often cited by
defenders of SWAT teams to justify their existence. And it was the sort of
incident for which even critics of SWAT teams concede the use of a SWAT team
would be appropriate. Yet not only did the SWAT teams at the scene not confront
the killers, potentially costing innocent lives, but the most respected SWAT
team in the country then reviewed the Jefferson County team's actions and found
their actions were appropriate. (ch. 7, p. 232)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[…T]hough they
make huge headlines and spark weeks of breathless coverage, school shootings
(and mass shootings in general) are exceedingly rare. University of Virginia
psychologist and education professor Dewey Cornell, who studies violence
prevention and school safety, has estimated that the typical school campus can
expect to see a homicide about once every several thousand years — hardly
justification to rush out to get a STAT team. Yet many college campuses now
have their own paramilitary police teams, and many cited Columbine and Virginia
Tech as the reason they needed one. (ch. 7, p. 233)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
"Battle for Seattle" [1999]is commonly considered the start of the
modern antiglobalization movement. But it was also a landmark event in the way
police and city officials react to protests. In spite of the fact that there
were few injuries and no fatalities, the images that emerged from Seattle
depicted a city that had lost control. Going forward, "control would be
the prevailing objective for police handling protests. In the years to come,
the Darth Vader look would become the standard police presence at large
protests. Cities and police officials would commit mass violations of civil and
constitutional rights and deal with the consequences later. There would be
violent, preemptive SWAT raids, mass arrests, and sweeping use of police [236]
powers that ensnared violent protesters, peaceful protesters, and people who had
nothing to do with the protest at all.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That's why
[Seattle Police Chief Norm] Stamper calls his decisions in Seattle "the
worst mistake" of his career. He's seen how the police response to protest
has changed since 1999. "We gassed fellow Americans engaged in civil
disobedience," Stamper says. "We set a number of precedents [not
counting the Civil Rights Movement, and other 1950/60s actions — RDE], most of
them bad. And police departments across the country learned all the wrong
lessons from us. […] I mean, look at what happened to those Occupy protesters
at UC Davis, where the cop just pepper sprays them down like he'd watering a
bed of flowers, and I think that we played a part in making that sort of thing
so common — so easy to do now." (ch. 7, pp. 236-37)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Numbers (ch. 7, pp.
237-38)</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Number of
SWAT raids conducted by the Minneapolis Police Department in 1987: 36</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Number of
SWAT raids conducted by the Minneapolis Police Department in 1996: over 700</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Number of
raids carried out by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms from 1993 to
1995: 523</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage of these ATF raids that used dynamic entry: 49 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage of these ATF raids that turned up weapons of any kind: 18 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Approximate number of paramilitary police raids in the United States in 1980:
3,000</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Approximate number of paramilitary police raids in 2001: 45,000</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Number of
SWAT deployments in Orange County, Florida, from 1993 to 1997: 619</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage of those SWAT deployments undertaken to serve drug warrants: 94
percent [237]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></i>• Number of police officers in
the tactical operations branch of the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Portland,
Oregon</b>, Police Department in 1989: 2</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Number of
Portland police officers in the tactical operations branch in 1994: 56</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage of police departments in cities of 100,000 or more that had a SWAT
team in 1982: 59 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• … in
1995: 89 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></b>• Average number of times each
of those SWAT teams was deployed in 1980: 13</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1989: 38</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1995: 52</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage increase in the number of police departments using tactical units
for proactive patrol from 1982 to 1997: 292 percent.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>Chapter 8,
"The 2000s — A Whole New War</u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Betty Taylor, detective in sheriff's department in Lincoln
County, Missouri (rural), drafted into SWAT team (ch. 8, pp. 239-40). After a
raid in November 2000 —</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Taylor was
shattered. "Here I come in with all my SWAT gear on, dressed in armor from
head to toe, and this little girl looks up at me, and her only thought is to
defend her little brother. I thought, How can we be the good guys when we come
into the house looking like this, screaming and pointing guns at the people
they love? How can we be the good guys when a little girl looks up at me and <i>wants
to fight me</i>? And for what? […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[TAYOR:]
"Good police work has nothing to do with dressing up in black and breaking
into houses in the middle of the night. And the mentality changes when they get
put on the SWAT team. I remember a guy I was good friends with, it just
completely changed him. The <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">us-versus-them</b>
mentality takes over. You see that mentality in regular patrol officers too.
But it's much much worse on the SWAT team. They're more concerned with the
drugs than they are with innocent bystanders. Because when you get into that
mentality, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">there are no innocent people</b>.
There's <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">us and there's the enemy</b>.
Children and dogs are always the easiest casualties. (ch. 8, p. 241)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">Police militarization would accelerate in the 2000s. […
Federal funding for anti-terrorism equipment. Plus:] The 1990s trend of
government officials using paramilitary tactics and heavy-handed force to make
political statements or to make an example of certain classes of nonviolent offenders
would continue, especially in response to political protests. The battle gear
and aggressive policing would also start to move into more mundane crimes –
SWAT teams have recently been used even for regulatory inspections.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But the last
few years have also seen some trends that could spur some movement toward <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">reform</b>. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Technological advances</b> in personal electronic devices have armed a
large percentage of the public with the power to hold police more accountable
with video and audio recordings. The rise of social media has enabled cities to
get accounts of police abuses out and quickly disseminated. [242]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[…] Over just
the six years I've been covering this issue, I've noticed that media accounts
of drug raids have become less deferential to police. Reporters have become
more willing to ask questions about the appropriateness of police tactics and
more likely to look at how a given raid fits into broader policing trends, both
locally and nationally. Internet commenters on articles about incidents in
which police may have used excessive force also seem to have grown more
skeptical about police actions, particularly in botched drug raids. (ch. 8, pp.
242-43)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">Perversely, actual success in reducing crime is generally not
rewarded with federal money, on the presumption that the money ought to go
where it's most needed — high crime areas. So the grants reward police
departments for making lots of easy arrests (i.e., low-level drug offenders)
and lots of seizures (regardless of size), and for serving lots of warrants.
When it comes to tapping into federal funds, whether any of that actually reduces
crime or makes the community safer is irrelevant — and in fact, successfully
fighting crime could hurt a department's ability to rake in federal money. (ch.
8, p. 243)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As a result
[of a series of court decisions and policies, including the U.S. Federal Byrne
grant program], we have roving squads of drug cops, loaded with SWAT gear, who
get more money if they conduct more raids, make more arrests, and seize more
property, and they are virtually immune to accountability if they get out of
line. In 2009 the Justice Department attempted a cost-benefit analysis of these
[primarily narcotics] task forces but couldn't even get to the point of
crunching the numbers. The task forces weren't producing any numbers to crunch.
"Not only were data insufficient to estimate what take forces
accomplished," the report [cited p. 360 n.2] read, "data were
inadequate to even tell what the task forces did for routine work."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Not
surprisingly, the proliferation of heavily armed task forces that have little
accountability and are rewarded for making lots of busts has resulted in some
abuse.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The most
notorious scandal involving these task forces came in the form of a massive
drug sting in the town of Tulia, Texas. On July 23, 1999, the task force donned
black ski-mask caps and full SWAT gear to conduct a series of coordinated
predawn raids across [244] Tulia. By 4:00 AM, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">forty black people — 10 percent of Tulia's black population — and six
whites were in handcuffs</b>. The <i>Tulia Sentinel</i> declared "We do
not like these scumbags doing business in our town. [They are] a cancer on our
community, it's time to give them a major dose of chemotherapy behind
bars." The paper followed up with the headline<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"Tulia's Streets Cleared of Garbage."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The raids were
based on the investigative work of Tom Coleman, a sort of freelance cop who, it
would later be revealed, had simply invented drug transactions that had never
occurred. [Later, "Coleman was […] named Texas lawman of the year.] […] In
2005, Coleman was convicted of perjury. […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The following
year, it all happened again. In November 2000, SWAT teams from Byrne-funded
South Central Texas Narcotics Task Force rolled int Hearne, a town of about
five thousand people […], to wage another series of coordinated raids. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The raids netted twenty-eight arrests —
twenty-seven of the suspects were black. One of them was Regina Kelly </b>[245 …].</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In part because
of Kelly's courageous refusal to accept a plea bargain for a crime she didn't
commit, we now know that all twenty-eight indictments were based on the word of
a single confidential informant. […] At the civil trial for the lawsuit brought
by Kelly and other defendants, the informant testified that [District Attorney
John] Paschall had given him a list of twenty black men. He promised leniency
for the informant's own burglary charge if he helped Paschall convict the men
on the list. The informant also testified he was promised $100 for every
suspect he helped convict beyond that list of twenty. The lawsuit was settled
in 2005. Of the twenty-eight people charged, seventeen were later exonerated.
The 2008 movie <i>American Violet</i> was based on Kelly's experience after she
was arrested.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But similar
mass round-up raids had been going on in Hearne [Texas] for fifteen years.
"They come on helicopters, military-style, SWAT style [….] In the
apartments I was living in, in the projects, there were a lot of children
outside playing. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">They don't care</b>.
They throw kids on the ground, put guns to their heads. They're kicking in
doors. They just don't care." (ch. 8, pp. 245-46)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Bush into Obama/Biden Years</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the
following years, there were numerous other corruption scandals, botched raids,
sloppy police work, and other allegations of misconduct against the federally
funded task forces in Texas. Things got so [bad?] that by the middle of the
2000s Gov. Rick Perry began diverting state matching funds away from the task
forces to other programs. The cut in funding forced many task forces to shut
down. The stream of lawsuits shut down or limited the operations of others. In
2001 the state had fifty-one federally funded task forces. By the spring of
2006, it was down to twenty-two.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Funding for
the Byrne grant program had held steady at about $500 million through most of
the Clinton administration. Just as it had done with the cops [COPS?] program,
the Bush administration began to pare the program down […]. This was more out
of an interest in limiting federal influence in law enforcement than concern
for police abuse or drug war excesses.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But the
reaction from law enforcement was interesting. In March 2008, Byrne-funded task
forces across the country staged a series of coordinated drug raids dubbed <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Operation Byrne Blitz</b>. The intent was
to make a series of large drug seizures to demonstrate how important the Byrne
grants were to fighting the drug war. In Kentucky alone, for example, task
forces uncovered 23 methamphetamine labs, seized more than 2,400 pounds of
marijuana, and arrested 565 people for illegal drug use. Of course, if police
in a single state could simply go out and find 23 meth labs and 2,400 pounds of
marijuana in twenty-four hours just to make a political point about drug war
funding, that was probably a good indication that twenty years of Byrne grants
and four decade of drug warring hadn't really accomplished much. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>During the
2008 presidential campaign, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Barack Obama</b>
criticized Bush and the Republicans for cutting Byrne, a federal police program
beloved by his running mate <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Joe Biden</b>.
Despite Tulia, Hearne, a growing pile of bodies from botched drug raids, and
the objections of groups as diverse as the ACLU, the Heritage Foundation, La
Raza, and the Cato Institute, Obama promised to restore full funding to the
program, which, he said, "has been critical to creating the anti-gang [247]
and anti-drug task forces our communities need." He kept his promise. The
2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act resuscitated the Byrne grants with
a whopping $2 billion infusion, by far the largest budget in the programs
twenty-year history. (ch. 8, pp. 247-48)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>13 September 2000</u>: Alberto Sepulveda killed in raid
in a series around Modesteo, CA</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Back in
the early 1970s, nationwide outrage over a series of wrong-door drug raids had
inspired furious politicians to hastily call congressional hearings; as a
consequence, the law that had authorized those raids was repealed. Now, in
2000, an eleven-year-old boy had just been obliterated at close range with a
shotgun as his parents and siblings lay on the ground beside him. And even that
wasn't enough to stop his <i>own town</i> from discontinuing the aggressive
tactics that caused his death" (ch. 8, pp. 249-50).</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><u><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote">The George W. Bush Administration quickly made it clear that
the drug war would once again be fought as a culture war. […] But when the 9/11
attacks happened eight months after Bush was inaugurated, they presented a new
opportunity. Instead of exploiting the fear of crime or tapping into what
remained of anti-counterculture sentiment, they could now exploit the fear of
terrorist attacks. They would use the 9/11 attack for drug war propaganda.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And so,
starting in the February following the attacks [i.e., 2002], the Office of
National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) started the "I helped …"
campaign, which consisted of commercial and print ads claiming that casual drug
users in the United States were supporting the very sort of terrorists that had
attacked America. The television commercials featured a series of young people
portrayed as casual drug users. One by one, the young actors rattled off the
varieties of atrocity allegedly funded by recreational drug use. "I helped
kill a policeman," one said. "I helped murder families," said
another. […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The campaign
was not only shamefully exploitive, it was simply false. The claim that casual
drug users supported terrorism was dubious at best. To the extent that black
market drug purchases in the United State did support terror groups, it was the
"black market" part that made it possible. Nearly all the terror
attacks listed on the DEA's website at the time had been attacks by
drug-smuggling groups related to the drug trade, and nearly all had taken place
in Latin America and Mexico. The only widely used drug in the United [250]
States with any tangible connection to terrorism was heroin, and even that link
was tenuous. (ch. 8, pp. 250-51)</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If anything,
there was a stronger argument that the country's <i>antidrug</i> efforts were
sponsoring terrorism. In May 2001 […,] the US State Department announced a $43
million aid gift to Afghanistan, which at the time was ruled by the Taliban.
The grant was intended to be used to compensate Afghan farmers who had been
hurt by a Taliban edict (encouraged by the United States) banning the
cultivation of heroin poppies. Of course, the edict didn't really stop the
heroin from flowing out of Afghanistan. It simply enabled the Taliban to
consolidate heroin production so that more of the revenue went directly to the
regime. The United States had also given aid to support a drug war in Thailand
that included government "death squads" that human rights groups
accused of carrying out as many as four thousand extrajudicial executions of
suspected drug offenders. US aid had also gone to right-wing paramilitary
groups in Colombia that were accused of mass human rights abuses.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>From a broader
view, the ads weren't all that different from prior attempt <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">to associate drugs and intoxicants with
whatever bogeyman the country happened to be facing at the time</b>. But by
tying even casual drug users to terrorism so soon after one of the most
horrific attacks on US soil in the country's history — particularly an attack
that took the lives of so many police officers — the federal government
afforded drug cops <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">yet more license to
treat suspected drug offenders as enemy combatants</b> not as citizens with
rights. (ch. 8, p. 251)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The trendy new
drug throwing the media and politicians into hysterics was Ecstasy. Raves were
the new, weird, and different dance parties where teenagers were allegedly
taking this crazy sex drug. Cue the moral panic, political grandstanding, and
ensuing aggressive crackdown. Prior to the raid in Racine [2 Nov. 2002], <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sen. Joe Biden</b> of Delaware seemed
particularly obsessed with rave parties. Politicians seemed to think that any
party with techno music, pulsing lights, and neon inevitably degenerated into
underage kids getting high on Ecstasy and engaging in mass orgies. In the
summer of 2002, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Biden was pushing his
RAVE Act</b>, an absurdly broad law that would have made venue and club owners
liable for running a drug operation if they merely sold the "paraphernalia"
common to parties where people took <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ecstasy</b>
— accessories like bottled water and glow sticks. After attempting to sneak the
bill through Congress with various parliamentary maneuvers, Biden was finally
able to get a slightly modified version folded into the bill that created <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the Amber Alert</b> for missing children.
Once again a politician had demagogued worries over a mostly harmless drug into
a climate of fear. And once again that fear led to aggressive, whole disproportionate
crackdowns across the country. (ch. 8, p. 257)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Avenir Next Condensed",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">{Balko
misses the point that Amber Alerts — if in themselves useful — participate in another<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>moral panic: "</span><span face=""Avenir Next Condensed",sans-serif" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The publicity and
horror associated with extreme cases of child kidnapping create a socially
constructed perception that such crimes are pervasive and can induce “moral
panic” about predatory threats to children. This often leads to arguably
irrational and excessive policy responses.</span><span face=""Avenir Next Condensed",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">"</span> <span face=""Avenir Next Condensed",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=245226>.}</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Spanish Fork Canyon, </u>Utah: August<u> </u>2005, rave
raid by > 90 cops + SWAT against 1500 at an outdoor dance party</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The other new
concept at work in Racine and Spanish Fork was the willingness to subject large
groups of people to commando tactics in hopes of catching even a few offenders.
By the late 2000s, SWAT teams were increasingly called out to raid entire bars
and nightclubs for drug activity. […] In November 2003, police in Goose Creek,
South Carolina, raided an entire high school, conducting a blanket
commando-style raid on Stratford High School. Students were ordered at gunpoint
to lie face-down on the floor while police searched their lockers and persons
for drugs. Some were handcuffed. […] The raid turned up no illicit drugs, and
the police made no arrests. (ch. 8, p. 258)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Abadi MT Condensed Light",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><</span><a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/1527912/settlement-reached-in-suit-over-2003-high-school-drug-raid/"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">http://www.mtv.com/news/1527912/settlement-reached-in-suit-over-2003-high-school-drug-raid/</span></a><span face=""Abadi MT Condensed Light",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Largely
black student "caught up" in raid: </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Abadi MT Condensed Light",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><</span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/09/us/raid-at-high-school-leads-to-racial-divide-not-drugs.html"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/09/us/raid-at-high-school-leads-to-racial-divide-not-drugs.html</span></a><span face=""Abadi MT Condensed Light",sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One particularly
aggressive action peppered with war rhetoric occurred in April 2006, when
police in Buffalo, New York, staged a series of drug raids throughout the city
under the moniker Operation Shock and Awe. [* * *]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>City leader
were furious, not because city police had just terrorized innocent people with
fruitless SWAT raids, but because so many petty offenders were let off. City
officials demanded tougher drug laws, and discussed the possibility of sending
drug cops and SWAT teams out with housing code inspectors to clean up suspected
crack houses without those pesky Fourth Amendment warrant requirements. (ch. 8,
p. 259).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the 2000s,
the US Supreme Court somehow managed to inflict more damage on the already
crippled <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Castle Doctrine</b>. […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 2003 the Supreme
Court unanimous ruled that fifteen to twenty seconds is sufficient time for
police to wait after knocking before forcing entry. […] The opinion, written by
Justice David Souter [….] indicated that even shorter wait times might be
justified in narcotics cases because of the disposableness of the evidence.
Here again, a US Supreme Court opinion had taken a position that makes it
easier to use <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">violent dynamic-entry tactics</b>
on low-level drug offends than major ones (because smaller quantities are
easier to destroy than larger ones) and for nonviolent offenses like drugs or
gambling (where the incriminating evidence is generally disposable) than for
crimes like weapons violations or murder (guns and bodies being tougher to
destroy quickly). (ch. 8, p. 260)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">[…T]he knock-and-announce rule arose out of the common-law
tradition and the Castle Doctrine valued so highly by the American Founders. To
protect the sanctity of the home, the police were obligated to give a homeowner
the opportunity to grant them entrance in order to prevent a violent
confrontation, the destruction of the door and property, and the infliction of
terror upon him and his family. Souter's direction to police to consider <i>disposal
time</i> instead of the time it would take an occupant to come to the door not
only does away with the notion that the purpose of the knock-and-announce rule
is to give citizens the opportunity to avoid a violent confrontation, it all
presupposes that <i>all</i> drug suspects are guilty. […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In [<i>United
States vs.</i>] <i>Banks</i> [2003], a unanimous Court decided that preserving
the evidence needed to convict people suspected of nonviolent, consensual drug
crimes was more important than protecting innocent people from the violence of
a paramilitary-style police raid. Thirty years after it began, the modern drug
war had finally killed the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Castle
Doctrine</b>. (ch. 8, p. 261)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Alberto Spruill</u>: 57-year-old described as
"'devout churchgoer'"; Harlem, 16 May 2003, "no-knock
warrant" (p. 263) and "'flash-bang' grenade" (p. 264).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Timothy Brockman</u>: "a frail, sixty-eight-year-old
former Marine" (violent raid; p. 264)</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In its own
follow-up piece, the <i>Village Voice</i> found that reports of botched
no-knocks had been pouring into the NYPD for years. "Until Spruill's
death, the NYPD had done nothing to stem the number of incidents,' the <i>Voice</i>
wrote, "despite receiving a memo from the Civilian Complaint Review Board
in January noting the high number of raid complaints. Last March the NAACP also
approached NYPD commissioner Raymond W. Kelly about the raids." The raids
were straining already tense relations between police and minority communities.
One of the wrongly raided, Orlando Russell, told the Voice that while he had
once been an "upstanding citizen," he was fed up with the number of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">no-knock raids on low-income and minority
communities</b>. (ch. 8, pp. 264-65)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Assault Weapons Ban expiring 2004 / National Institute
for Justice Study</u>: assault weapons and violent crime (p. 269)</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The NIJ study
was used by gun rights groups to argue against renewing the assault weapons
ban. But it was also a strong piece of evidence undercutting the common
argument from law enforcement officials that SWAT teams and military gear were
essential because the police were in a nonstop arms race with drug dealers and
other criminals — call it the North Hollywood Shoot-out argument [North
Hollywood Shoot-out 28 February 1997: bank robbery by heavily armed and armored
perpetrators].</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And in fact
the 2004 NIJ study was only the most recent to cut against that argument. In
1995 the Justice Department had released a study showing that 86 percent of
violent gun crimes in the United States involved a handgun. […] Just 3 percent
of murders in 1993 were committed with rifles, and just 5 percent with
shotguns. […] A five-year investigation in Orange County, Florida, in the
mid-1990s likewise found that just 13 percent of SWAT raids turned up weapons.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 2007 I
asked David Doddridge, a retired narcotics cop and LAPD veteran, about the
argument that SWAT tactics are necessary because drug dealers are increasingly
well armed. "It just isn't true," he said. "In twenty-one years
at LAPD, I never once saw any assault weapons on a drug raid. Drug dealers
prefer handguns, which are easier to conceal. Occasionally you'll find a shotgun.
But having a bunch of high-powered weaponry around is just too much trouble for
them. […]" Doddridge's experience isn't universal, but it is common among
drug cops I've talked to. There do seem to be more higher-powered arms around
the border, and obviously cops who investigate the sale and smuggling of
illegal guns will tend to find a greater quantity of more powerful weapons in
the course of their work. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But even when
the crime rate was peaking in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was little
evidence that murderers were using high-powered weapons. In a 1991 paper for
the Independence In-[270]statute (a libertarian think tank), researchers David
Kopel and Eric Morgan ran a survey of dozens of American cities and found that,
in general, fewer than 1 percent of the weapons seized by police fit the
definition of an "assault weapon." Nationally, they found that fewer
than 4 percent of homicides involved rifles of any kind. And fewer than
one-eighth of 1 percent of homicides involved weapons of military caliber. Even
fewer homicides involved weapons commonly called "assault" weapons.
The proportion of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">police fatalities</b>
caused by assault weapons was around 3 percent, a number that remained
relatively constant throughout the 1980s.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[* * *]
But more generally, the argument that well-armed criminals have made cop's jobs
more dangerous than ever just isn't backed up by the data. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The job of police officer has been getting progressively safer for a
generation</b>. The number of officer fatalities peaked in 1974 and has been
steadily dropping since. In fact, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">2012
was the safest year for police officers since the 1950s</b>. According to the
FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, the homicide rate for police officers in 2010 […]
was about 7.9 per 100,000 officers. That's about 60 percent higher than the
overall homicide rate in America, which is 4.8. But it's lower than the
homicide rates in many large cities, including Atlanta (17.3), Boston (11.3),
Dallas (11.3), Kansas City (21.1), Nashville (8.9) […] and Tulsa (13.7). In
fact, of the seventy-four US cities with populations of 250,000 or more,
thirty-six have murder rates higher than that of police in America. You are
more likely to be murdered just by living in these cities than the average
American police officer is to be murdered on the job. (ch. 8, pp. 270-71)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Flash-Bang Grenades</u> killed an officer in his car,
plus other cops</p>
<p class="MsoQuote">Every day SWAT teams across the country use the very same
explosives that inured [these] agents […] — and they use them against American
citizens. Granted, they aren't deployed in quite as tight an area as an
enclosed car. But garages [as with one cop casualty]? Certainly. Also bedrooms,
kitchens, hallways, and living rooms. […] [T]he vast majority of the time
they're used in service of warrants for nonviolent crimes — and not even
against people convicted of those crimes, but people merely suspected of them.
They're also used against anyone else who happens to be in the house at the
time of the raid. And against the victims of wrong-door raids. (ch. 8, p. 276)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>By the end of
the decade, state and local SWAT teams were regularly being used not only for
raids and poker games and gambling operations but also for <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">immigration raids</b> (on both businesses and private homes) and raids
on massage parlors, cat houses, and unlicensed strip clubs. Today the sorts of
offenses that can subject a citizen to the SWAT treatment defy caricature. If
the government wants to make an example of you by pounding you with a wholly
disproportionate use of force, it can. It's rare that courts or politicians
even object, much less impose consequences.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Child Porn and Killing Dogs</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Another
example is the use of these tactics on people suspected of downloading <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">child pornography</b>. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Because people
suspected of such crimes are generally considered among the lowest of the low,
there's generally little objection to using maximum force to apprehend them.
But when police use force to demonstrate disgust for the crimes the target is
suspected of committing, three's always a risk of letting disgust trump good
judgment. [… 286]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There have
been several instances in recent years of police waging child porn raids on
people after tracing IP addresses, only to learn after the fact that the
victims of the raid had an open wireless router that someone else had used to
download the pornography. Inevitably, the lesson drawn by police and by the
media covering these stories is not that a SWAT team may be an inappropriate
way to arrest someone suspected of looking at child porn on a computer, or that
police who insist on using such tactics should probably factor the possibility
of an open router into their investigation before breaking down someone's door,
but rather that we should all make sure our wireless routers are password
protected — so we don't get wrongly raided by a SWAT team, too. (ch. 8, pp.
286-87)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the 2000s talking about the raid on the Branch Davidians
and lack of sympathy Tim Lynch of Cato Institute found among his audience:
"[…] he finds that people are somewhat sympathetic to the argument that
the government overreacted, but that they still can't get past the weirdness of
the Branch Davidians themselves — their stockpile of weapons and the claims of
sexual abuse and drug distribution in the community. Even the children who died
are sometimes [289] dismissed with guilt by association." But —</p>
<p class="MsoQuote">But when he mentions that the ATF agents killed the Davidians'
dogs […] people become visibly angry. I have found the same thing to be true in
my reporting on drug raids.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At first, that
may seem to indicate that people callously value the lives of pets more than
the lives of people. But the fact that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">killing
the dogs</b> during these raids has become nearly routine in many police
agencies demonstrates just how casually these agencies have come to accept drug
war collateral damage. When I started logging cop-shoots-dog incidents on my
blog (under the probably sensational term "puppycide"), people began
send me new stories as they happened. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Cops
are now shooting dogs at the slightest provocation</b>. As of this writing, I'm
sent accounts of a few incidents each week. (ch. 8, pp. 289-90) </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">What is clear is that police are almost always cleared of any
wrongdoing in these shootings. An officer's word that he felt a dog posed a
threat to his safety is generally all it takes. Whether or not the officer's
fear was legitimate doesn't seem to matter. Thanks to smart phones and surveillance
cameras, a growing batch of these incidents have been caught on video and have
shown that officers' claims [290] that the dog was threatening often aren't
matched by the dog's body language. In recent years, police officers have shot
and killed chihuahuas, golden retrievers, labs, miniature dachshunds, Wheaton
terriers, and Jack Russell terriers. In 2012 a California police officer shot
and killed a boxer and pregnant chihuahua, claiming the boxer had threatened
him. The chihuahua, he said, got caught in the crossfire. Police officers have
also recently shot dogs that were chained, tied, or leash, going so far as to
kill pets while merely questioning neighbors about a crime in the area, cutting
across private property in pursuit of a suspect, and after responding to false
burglar alarms.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It is possible
that these incidents could just be attributed to rogue cops. But the fact that
the police are nearly always excused in these cases — even in the more
ridiculous examples — suggests there may be an institutional problem. (ch. 8,
pp. 290-91)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Possibility of institutional problem reinforced by the fact
that "both the ASPCA and the Humane Society […] offer such training [in
reading and responding to dogs] to any police department that wants it, while
few take advantage of the offer. Joseph Pentangelo, the ASPCA's assistant
director for law enforcement [… and veteran of NYPD] told me, 'New York is the
only state I know of that mandates formalized training, and that's during
academy. There are some individual departments in other parts of the country
that avail themselves of our training, but not many, not enough." To which
Balko contrasts USPS, where such training is common (ch. 8, p. 291). </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The fact that
the Postal Service offers such training and most police departments don't lends
some credence to the theory that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">dog
shootings</b> are part of the larger problem of a battlefield mentality that
lets police use lethal force in response to the slightest threat […]. It's an
evolving phenomenon," says Norm Stamper, the former Seattle police chief.
"It started when drug dealers began to recruit pit bulls to guard their
supply. These dogs weren't meant to attack cops. They were meant to attack
other drug dealers who came to rob them. But of course they did attack cops.
And yes, that's awfully scary if one of those things latches on to your
leg."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But Stamper
says that like many aspects of modern policing, dog shootings have had a
legitimate origin, but the practice has since become a symptom of the mind-set
behind a militarized police culture. "[…] These guys think that the only
solution to a dog that's yapping or charging is shooting and killing it. That's
all they know. It goes with the notion that police officers have to <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">control every situation</b>, to control all
the variables. That's an awesome responsibility, and if you take it on, you're
caving to delusion. You no longer exercise discrimination or discretion. You
have to control, and the way you control is with <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">authority, power, and force</b>. With a dog, the easiest way to take
control is to simply kill it […], especially if there are no consequences for
doing so." (ch. 8 p, 292)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Protests</u></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>2009 G20,
Pittsburgh, David L. Lawrence Convention Center</p>
<p class="MsoQuote">The most egregious police actions seemed to take place on the
Friday evening before the summit, around the university [of Pittsburgh], when
police began ordering student who were in public places to disperse, despite
the fact that they had broken no laws. Students who moved too slowly were
arrested, as were students who were standing in front of the dormitories where
they lived.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A University
of Pittsburgh spokesman later said that the tactic was to break up crowds that
"had the potential of disrupting normal activities, traffic flow, egress
and the like.... Much [sic] of the arrests last [294] night had to do with
failure to disperse when ordered." Note that no one needed to have broken
any actual laws to get arrested. The potential to break a law was more than
enough. That standard was essentially a license of the police to arrest anyone,
anywhere in the city, at any time for any reason. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Pennsylvania
ACLU legal director Vic Walczak said the problem was that police didn't bother
to attempt to manage the protests. They simply suppressed them. In the process,
they rounded up not only innocent protesters but innocent students who had
nothing to do with the protests at all. In all 190 people were arrested. […]
The police presence "seemed to focus almost exclusively on peaceful
demonstrators," Walczak said. "On [Friday] night they didn't even
have the excuse of property damage […] or any illegal activity. It's really
inexplicable."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Inexcusable
perhaps, but not inexplicable. Since Seattle, this had become the template. At
the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, police conducted <i>peremptory</i>
raids of the homes of protesters before the convention had even started. (ch.
8, pp. 294-95)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There were
similar problems at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Police in Denver
showed up for the protests decked out in full riot gear. One particularly
striking photo from Denver [295] showed a sea of cops in shiny black armor,
batons in hand, surrounding a small, vastly outnumbered group of protesters.
The most volatile night of the convention featured one incident in which
Jefferson County, Colorado deputies unknowingly clashed with and then
pepper-sprayed undercover Denver cops <i>posing as violent protesters</i>. The
city later paid out $200,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging that a Denver SWAT
team was making indiscriminate arrests, rounding up protesters and bystanders
alike.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Perhaps the
best insight into the mentality of the police brought to the DNC protests could
be found on the T-shirts the Denver police union had printed up for the event.
The shirts should a menacing cop holding a baton. The caption: DNC 2008: <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">We Get Up Early to Beat the Crowds</span>.
Police were spotted wearing similar shirts at the 2012 NATO summit in Chicago.
At the 1996 DNC convention in Chicago, cops were seen wearing shirts that read <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">We kicked your father's ass in 1968 … Wait
'till you see what we do to you!</span></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The default
militaristic response to protest of overkill was then given an extended
national stage during the Occupy protest of 2011. In the most infamous incident
[…] Lt. John Pike of the University of California—Davis campus police casually
hosed down a peaceful group of protesters with a pepper-spray canister. But
that was far from the only incident. […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One thing the
Occupy crackdowns did seem to do was focus renewed attention on police tactics
and police militarization. Big-picture stories about the Pentagon buildup,
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding for antiterror gear, and the
proliferation of SWAT teams started streaming out of media outlets, giving the
militarization issue the most coverage it had received since Kraska's [296]
studies came out in the late 1990. Part of that was due to social media. The
ubiquity of smart phones and the viral capacity of Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr,
and blogs were already bringing unprecedented accountability to police
misconduct and government oppression […]. But the Occupiers, who tended to be
young, white, and middle- to upper-middle-class knew social media like few
other demographics. (ch. 8, pp. 295-97)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The political
reaction to the Occupy crackdowns was interesting to watch. In the 1990s, it
had been the right wing — particularly the far right — that was up in arms over
police militarization. Recall the outrage on the right over Waco, Ruby Ridge,
and the raid to seize Elián González. The left had largely either remained
silent or even defended the government's tactics in those cases. But the
right-wing diatribes against jackbooted thugs and federal storm-troopers all
died down once the Clinton administration left office, and they were virtually
nonexistent after September 11, 2001. By the time cops started cracking heads
at the Occupy protests, some conservatives were downright gleeful. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The militarization of federal law
enforcement certainly didn't stop, but the 9/11 attacks and a friendly
administration seemed to quell the conservatives' concerns. So long as law
enforcement was targeting hippie protesters, undocumented immigrants, suspected
drug offenders, and alleged terrorist sympathizers, they were back to being
heroes. </b>(ch. 8, p. 297)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"As
long as partisans are only willing to speak out against aggressive, militarized
police tactics when they're used against their own and are dismissive or even
supportive of such tactics when used against those whose politics they dislike,
it seems unlikely that the country will achieve enough of a political consensus
to begin to slow down the trend" (ch. 8, p. 300).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Just as with
Bill Clinton, there was hope among progressives that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Barack Obama</b> would take a more conciliatory, less militaristic
approach to the drug war. And just as with Bill Clinton, Obama has come up
short. According to a tally by Current TV, by [300] the end of his first term,
Obama had overseen more <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">federal raids on
medical marijuana dispensaries</b> in four years than George W. Bush had
presided over in eight. Obama also stepped up <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">immigration raids</b> and continued the raids on doctors and pain
clinics suspected of overprescribing <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">opioids</b>.
He continued to encourage Mexico's policy (aided by US foreign aid and weapons)
of fighting its drug war with the military, despite the horrifying carnage
cause by that policy. And as previously discussed Obama and Democratic leaders
in Congress <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">refunded Byrne grant </b>and
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">COPS programs</b> that contributed to
the rise in SWAT teams and multi-jurisdictional anti-drug and anti-gang task
forces — and at record levels.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1033 program</b> gas also soared to new
heights under Obama [… leading to more military becoming cops and more]
Pentagon giveaways […]. (ch. 8, pp. 300-01)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>The Numbers [for 1980s]</u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Number of
drugs raids in New York City in 1994: 1,447 … in 1997: 2,977 … in 2002: 5,117</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Approximate number of raids each year by the Toledo, Ohio, SWAT team, as of
2008: 400</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Percentage of towns between 25,000 and 50,000 people with a SWAT team in 1984:
25.6 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 1990: 52.1 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 2005: 80 percent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Approximate number of SWAT raids in the United States in 1995: 30,000</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 2001: 45,000</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 2005: 50,000-60,000</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Total
number of federal agencies employing law enforcement personnel in 1996: 53</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 2008: 73</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Total
number of federal law enforcement officers as of 1996: 74,000 (28 per 100,000
citizens)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>…
in 2008: 120,000<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>(40 per 100,000
citizens)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Number of
SWAT teams in the FBI alone in 2013: 56</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Unlikely
federal agencies that have used SWAT teams: US Fish and Wildlife Services,
Consumer Product Safety Commission, National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, Department of Education, Department of Health and Human
Services, US National Park Service, Food and Drug Administration</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Value of
surplus military gear received by Johnston, Rhode Island, from the Pentagon in
2010-2011: $4.1 million</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>•
Population of Johnston, Rhode Island, in 2010: 28,769</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>• Partial
list of equipment given to the Johnston police department: 30 M-16 rifles, 599
M-16 magazines containing about 18,000 rounds, a "sniper targeting
calculator," 44 bayonets, 12 Humvees, and 23 snow blowers. (ch. 8, pp.
307-308)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>Chapter 9, Reform</u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Maryland (more dogs)</u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Cheye Calvo, part-time job of mayor of Berwyn Heights,
Maryland. Raid 29 July 2008. Lived with wife, mother-in-law, and two black
Labradors (Payton and Chase). "In 2004, at thirty-three, he was the
youngest elected mayor in Prince George's County, Maryland" (ch. 9, p.
309. Calvo upstairs, changing clothes for a meeting.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The next thing
Calvo remembers is the sound of his mother-in-law screaming. He ran to the
window and saw heavily armed men clad in black rushing his front door. Next
came the explosion. He'd later learn that this was when the police blew open
his front door. Then came the gunfire. Then boots stomping the floor. Then more
gunfire. Calvo, still in his boxers, screamed, "I'm upstairs, please don't
shoot!" He was instructed to walk downstairs with his hands in the air,
the muzzles of two guns pointed at him. He still didn't know it was the police.
He described what happened next at a Cato Institute forum six weeks later.
"At the bottom of the stairs, they bound my hands, pulled me across the
living room, and forced me to kneel on the floor in front of my broken door. I
thought it was a home invasion. I was fearful that I was about to be
executed." I later asked Calvo what might have happened if he'd had a gun
in his home for self-defense. His answer: "I'd be dead." In another
interview, he would add, "The worst thing I could have done was defend my
home." </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Calvo's
mother-in-law was face-down on the kitchen floor, the tomato-artichoke sauce
she was preparing still sitting on the stove. Her first scream came when one of
the SWAT officers pointed his gun at her from the other side of the window. The
police department would later argue that her scream gave them the authority to
enter the home without knocking, announcing themselves, and waiting for someone
to let them in.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Rather than
obeying the SWAT team demands to "get down" as they rushed in,
Georgia Porter simply froze with fear. They pried the spoon from her hand, put
a gun to her head, and shoved her to the floor. [310 …]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Calvo's dogs
[…] were dead by the time Calvo was escorted to the kitchen. Payton had been
shot in the face almost as soon as the police entered the home. One bullet went
all the way through him and lodged in a radiator, missing Porter by only a
couple of feet. Chase ran. The cops shot him once, from the back, then chased
him into the living room and shot him again.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Calvo was
turned around and put on his knees in front of the door the police had just
smashed to pieces. He heard them rummaging through his house, tossing drawers,
emptying cabinets.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Calvo and
Porter were held for four hours. Calvo asked to see a search warrant. He was
told it was "en route." […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Even after
they realized they had just mistakenly raided the mayor's house, the officers
didn't apologize to Calvo or Porter. Instead they told Calvo that they were
both "parties of interest" and that they should consider lucky that
they weren't arrested. Calvo in particular they said, was still under suspicion
because when armed men blew open his door, killed his dogs, and pointed their
guns at him and his mother in law, he hadn't responded "in a typical
manner."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Trinity Tomsic
came home […] to find a blur of flashing police lights and a crowd gathering on
her front lawn. She was told that her husband and mother were fine. Then she
was told that her dogs were dead. She broke down in tears. When she was finally
able to enter her home, she found her dogs' blood all over her house. The
police had walked through the two large pools of blood that collected under
Payton and Chase, then tracked it all over the home. Even once the police
realized they had made a mistake, they [311] never offered to clean up the
blood, to put the house back together, or to fix the front door. </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As Calvo and
Porter were being interrogated, one of Calvo's own police officers saw the
lights and stopped to see what was going on. Berwyn Heights officer Amir
Johnson knew this was his mayor's house, but had no idea what the commotion was
about because the Prince George's County Police Department hadn't bothered to
contact the Berwyn Heights police chief, as they were required to do under a
memorandum of understanding between the two agencies. Johnson told the Washington
Post that an officer on the scene told him "Th guy in there is crazy. He
says he is the mayor of Berwyn Heights."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Johnson
replied, "That is the mayor of Berwyn Heights."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Johnson then
called Berwyn Heights police chief Patrick Murphy. Eventually, Murphy was put
in touch with the supervising officer, Det. Sgt. David Martini. Murphy recounted
the conversation to the Post. "Martini tells me that when the SWAT team
came to the door, the mayor met them at the door, opened it partially, saw who
it was, and then tried to slam the door on them" […]. "And at that
point, Martini claimed, they had to force entry, the dogs took aggressive
stances, and they were shot."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If that indeed
was what Martini told Murphy, he was either lying or repeating a lie told to
him by one of his subordinates. There was never any further mention of Calvo
shutting the door on the SWAT team — because it never happened . Falco later
had his dogs autopsied — the trajectories the bullets took through the dogs
bodies weren't consistent with the SWAT team's story.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But the lies,
obfuscation, and stonewalling were only beginning. (ch. 9, pp. 311-12)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Perhaps even
more baffling, officials continued to insist that the raid [on Mayor Calvo's
house] <i>shouldn't </i>have happened any other way. […] In 2010 Sheriff
Michael Jackson [sic] was asked during his campaign for Prince George's County
executive if he had any regrets about the raid. [… He had none.] Or, as Jackson
put it [8 September, ~ 5 weeks after the raid and the cops being cleared by an
internal investigation], "the guys did what they were supposed to do. [A
second investigation by Jackson's office also cleared the deputies. …]<br />
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The officials in Prince George's
County, two of them elected, openly and without reservation stated that they
had no problem with the collateral damage done to the Calvo family. It was part
of the war against getting high — which even they had to know is a war that
can't be won. […] As Calvo himself pointed out on several occasions, this<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>isn't a problem that can be laid at the feet
of the police officers who raided his home. This problem can't be fixed by
firing the police involved. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">This is a
political problem. It's a policy problem. </b>(ch. 9, pp. 314-15).</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As Calvo
continued to advocate for reform, he started to hear from other victims of
mistaken police raids, both in Prince George's County and around the state of
Maryland. Several included <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">the routine,
sometimes callous killing of the family dog</b>. Within a week of the raid, for
example, Prince George's County residents Frank and Pam Myers came forward to
say that they too were raided by sheriff's department deputies. […] When the
couple told the deputies that the address on the warrant was two doors down, the
police refused to leave. They continued to look around the couple's house for
another forty-five minutes. Then two shots rang out from the backyard. A deputy
had gone into the backyard and shot the couple's fie-year-old oxer, Pearl. He
claimed that he feared for his life. Pam Myers told a local news station,
"I said, 'You just shot my dogg.' I wanted to go our and hold her a bit.
They wouldn't even let me go out." (ch. 9, p. 316)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A series of
police raid horror stories from Howard Count, Maryland, also emerged. Kevin and
Lisa Henderson said they were the victims of a mistaken raid. At 10:00 PM the
night of January 18, a raid team opened the family's unlocked door. Inside were
the couple, a twenty-eight-year-old houseguest, their two teenage sons, and their
sons' friend. The police first met the family dog, a twelve-year-old lab/Rottweiler
mix named Grunt. According to the lawsuit, one officer distracted the dog while
another shot it point-bland in the head. When one of the couple's sons asked
why they had shot the dog, one officer pointed his gun at the boy's head and
said, "Ill blow your fucking head off if you keep talking." The
police found marijuana in a jacket pocket of the Hendersons' house guest. He
was arrested. Four days later, after Lisa Henderson called to complain about
the raid, she and her husband were also arrested for possession of marijuana,
even though the police hadn't found any drug anywhere else in the house. Ten
months later, a state judge acquitted the couple of all charges. The Hendersons
believe that the police intended to raid a different house in the neighborhood
that looked a lot like their own. A subsequent raid on that house turned up
marijuana, scales, and cash.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Karen Thomas,
also a resident of Howard County, told a Maryland State Senate hearing in 2009
that police shot and killed her dog during a mistaken raid on her home in
January 2007. Even after they had surrounded her in her bedroom, she said they
still hadn't yet identified themselves, and she though the gunshot had been directed
at her son. "In my mind, terrorists had just killed my son, and they were
going to kill me next." (ch. 9, p. 317) </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote">For the last half of 2009, SWAT teams were deployed 804 times
in the state of Maryland, or about 4.5 times a day, In Prince George's County
alone, which has about 850,000 residents, a SWAT team was deployed about once a
day. According to an analysis by the <i>Baltimore Sun</i>, 94 percent of the
state's SWAT deployments were to serve search or arrest warrants, leaving just
6 percent that were raids involving barricades, bank robberies, hostage
takings, and other emergency situations. Half of Prince George's County's SWAT
deployments were for what were called "misdemeanors and nonserious
felonies." More than one hundred times over a six-month period, Prince
George's County sent police barreling into private homes for nonserious,
nonviolent [319] crimes. Calvo pointed out that the first set of figures
confirm what he and others concerned about these tactics have suspected: SWAT
teams are being deployed too often as the <i>default</i> way to serve search
warrants, not as a last resort. (ch. 9, pp. 319-20)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>How do we
return to a more robust embrace of the Castle Doctrine, the Fourth Amendment,
and an unbreachable divide between the police and the military? Overcoming a
trend that has extended across two possibly three, generations sounds like an
impossibly difficult task. […] Donald Santarelli, the no-regretful father of
the no-knock raid, say, "I don't think it's possible to roll any of this
back now. … It would take serious leadership, probably from nobody less than
the president. It would take a huge scandal, which doesn't seem likely. … But
we're not given to revolutionary action in this country. Each generation is a
little more removed from the deep-seated concerns about liberty of the
generation before. We just don't seem to value privacy and freedom
anymore." (ch. 9, p. 320)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"The Drug War"</b></p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But just
ending the federal drug war and the federal incentives toward militarization
would help. SWAT teams would probably continue to exist and, at least in the
short term, would find other, probably equally objectionable missions. But
ending the federal drug war could begin to unwind the violent paramilitary task
forces and the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">us-versus-them,
black-and-white</b> [sic] drug-war mentality. If the federal government were to
end the Byrne grants, cut off federal funding tied to drug enforcement, end the
Pentagon giveaway program, and get rid of the federal equitable sharing program
that lets local police departments get around state asset forfeiture laws, and
makes drug warring more lucrative (and therefore a higher priority), we'd see
more of these tactical teams begin to disband because of the expense of
maintaining them. We'd almost certainly see the multi-jurisdictional task
forces start to dry up, since they're often funded exclusively through federal
grants and forfeiture. Those tactical teams that remained would no longer be
incentivized to go on drug raids. […W]ithout the money to [321] lure them, it
seems likely that the expanse of deploying them would persuade police
departments to reserve them for the sorts of missions for which they were
originally intended.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At the very
least, the federal government should respect the states that have already
expressed a desire to ease up on the drug war and stop sending in heavily armed
battle teams to raid medical marijuana dispensaries and growers who are
licensed and regulated under state law.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Legislatures
or city councils could also pass laws restricting the use of SWAT teams to
those limited, rare emergencies in there's an imminent threat to public safety.
They could prohibit the use of no-knock raids or even forced entry to serve
warrants people suspected of violent crimes [non-violent?]. Failing that,
policymakers could simply put more restrictions on search warrants. For
example, they could prohibit the use of dynamic-entry tactics for any warrant
obtained with only the word of an informant. (ch. 9, pp. 321-22)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"Halt the
Mission Creep"</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"There is no need for regulatory agencies at any level
to be conducting SWAT raids" (ch. 9, p. 322). Etc. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"Transparency"</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"Legislatures should pass laws that not only clearly
establish a citizen's right to record on-duty cops but provide an enforcement
mechanism so that citizens wrongly and illegally arrested have a course of
action. As even many police officials have pointed out, such policies not only
expose police misconduct […] but can also provide exonerating evidence in cases
where police officers have been wrongly accused.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>All
forced-entry police raids should be recorded in a tamper-proof format, and the
videos should be made available to the public through a simple open records
request. (ch. 9, p. 323)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Community
Policing</b>"</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"Police departments and policymakers should embrace
real community policing. [… This] means taking cops out of patrol cars to walk
beats and become a part of the communities they serve. It means ditching
statistics-driven policing, which encourages the sorts of petty arrests of low-level
offenders and use of informants the foment anger and distrust" (ch. 9, p.
325).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Changing Police
Culture</b>"</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Changing a
culture sounds like a tall order. And it probably is. "I think there are
two critical components to policing that cops today have forgotten," says
the former Maryland cop Neill Franklin. "Number one, you've signed on to a
dangerous job. That means that you've agreed to a certain amount of risk. You
don't get to start [325] stepping on others' rights to minimize that risk you
agreed to take on. And number two, your first priority is not to protect
yourself, it's to protect those you've sworn to protect. But I don't know how
you get police officers today to value those principles again. The 'us and
everybody else' sentiment is strong today. It's very, very difficult to change
a culture." […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"It's
really about a lack of imagination and a lack of creativity," says Norm
Stamper. "When your answer to every problem is more force, it shows that
you haven't been taught and trained to consider other options."</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The thing is,
when law enforcement officials face suspect who present a genuine threat to
officer safety, they <i>do</i> tend to be more creative.[Example given:
capturing Whitey Bulger in 2010, a truly dangerous man brought in by a bit of
research of his habits.] […][326]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Why can't
investigators handle common drug offenders the same way. A big reason is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">lack of resources</b>. […] A second reason
is that drug offenders simply aren't all that likely to shoot at cops, and it's
easier to use violent tactics against people who aren't going to fire back.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Police today
are also given too little training in counseling and dispute resolution, and
what little they do get in the academy is quickly blotted out by what they
learn on the street in the first few months on the job. When you're given an
excess of training in the use of force but little in using psychology, body
language, and other noncoercive means of resolving a conflict, you'll naturally
gravitate toward force. "I think about the notion of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i>command presence</i></b>, Stamper says. […] What I see today is that
this well-disciplined notion of command presence has been shattered. Cops today
think you show command presence by yelling and screaming. In my day, if you
screamed […] you had failed in that situation as a cop" (ch. 9, pp.
325-27).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Accountability</b>"</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In numerous
states […] police unions have lobbied legislatures to pass variations on a
"law enforcement bill of rights." [… These vary, but] the general
thrust of these laws is to afford police officers accused of crimes additional
"rights" abouve and beyond what regular citizens get. Or as Reason
magazine's Mike Riggs puts it, the intent of such laws is "to shielf cops
from the laws they're rapid to enforce." These laws have made it nearly
impossible [328] to fire bad cops in many jurisdictions, and worse, they have
instilled in them the notion that they're above the law — and above the regular
citizens they're supposed to serve. […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>[…] When city
officials make it more difficult to fire bad cops, they are rarely affected
[…]. At worst, a lawsuit might take a bite out of a city budget. But no cops
will be harassing or beating the politicians themselves. That happens to other
people.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Police unions
also help enforce the "Blue Code of Silence." The unwritten rule that
police officers never rat out or testify against other police officers. [Cites
case in 2006 of Albuquerque police officer Sam Costales, who testified against
sheriff dept. deputies, who were not disciplined — Costales was. And his union
rep apologized to the disciplining police admin. For Costales's actions.
329].[…]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Only in law
enforcement would a union rep apologize to the management for the actions of
one of its members. Former narcotics cop Russ Jones says that unions reinforce
the notion among cops that it's just them and their brother cops against the
world. […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Perhaps the
biggest problems with police unions, however, is that they present a major
obstacle to real reform. […] Democrats don't cross them because of the
traditional alliance of unions and public employees. Republicans rarely cross
them because of the party's law-and-order reputation. […]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Good ideas for
accountability policies include civilian review boards, but only if they have
subpoena power, are granted the authority to impose discipline, and can't be
overruled by arbitrators. […][330]</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The most
productive accountability policy — and thus the most controversial and least
likely to be adopted — would be to impose more liability on police officers who
make egregious errors. Under the qualified immunity from civil lawsuits
currently afforded to police under federal law, a police officer can't be sued
for mere negligence — or even for gross negligence that results in a fatality.
To even get into court against a police officer, a plaintiff must show not only
that a police officer intentionally violated the plaintiff's constitutional
rights, but that said rights were well established at the time they were
violated. With this protection, police officers aren't required to keep
informed on the latest court decisions that pertain to their job. In fact, in a
perverse way, it even discourages police departments and officers from doing
so. A cop who is aware he was violating someone's rights is much more likely to
be found liable than a cop who isn't.</p>
<p class="MsoQuote"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Some
commentators […] have suggested that SWAT teams that conduct forced-entry raids
be held to a strict liability standard. […] Such a policy would be difficult to
apply in many cases. […] Still, adopting the policy just for cases of clear,
unambiguous mistakes would probably encourage more caution, more restraint, and
fewer errors. (ch. 9, pp. 328-31)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Final appeal, for the sine qua non: "The public needs
to start caring about these issues" (ch. 9, p. 331). </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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{margin-bottom:0in;}</style></p>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-28376384837001377692020-10-12T15:34:00.000-07:002020-10-12T15:34:08.188-07:00Cultural Exchange: When It's Good, It's Good, and One of the Small Joys of Diversity<p class="MsoNormal"> <br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(Draft)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My one
significant contribution to the U.S. Bicentennial celebration was a speech I
gave on 19 May 1976 on "Revolutionary republicanism (with a small 'r')."
Vaguely relevant here — I'm sneaking up on my topic — I started out with a
small joke on how I was basically a Chicagoan and how most Chicagoans rejected
elitist ideas on expertise and didn't allow our ignorance to getting in the way
of shooting off our mouths … and that I was going to shoot my mouth off for
them on properly appreciating how revolutionary our Revolution was by looking
at some of the more memorable parts of the Declaration of Independence not from
our present looking back but from earlier times, so to speak, coming to the
Declaration with more Medieval and Renaissance ideas. So I tried to lead them
through an exercise in imagination coming to what to us are well-worn clichés,
to hear them with ears that had been brought up not on ideas of liberty and
equality and human rights but on "<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">An
<a href="http://individual.utoronto.ca/mmilner/history2p91/primary/exhortationtoobedience.html">Exhortation</a>
concerning good Order, and obedience to Rulers and Magistrates</span>" and
human society as part of a universal Great Chain of Being, and solidly
hierarchical. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The speech
went well, or at least I didn't embarrass myself that I noticed; still I was
nervous about speaking in public on an issue about which I knew more than your
average Ph.D. and assistant professor but still not a lot. I've been even more
hesitant about posting on the web comments on race and/or ethnicity, since at
least one of my former colleagues and Facebook friends is a regional if not
world-class expert on such matters.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I'll go
this far, though, with somethings (sic) positive and relatively personal
stemming from what was called in my lifetime "race mixing" and we can
see as part of diversity and not cultural appropriation but more useful
cultural exchange. (We also exchange diseases: useful for the pathogens; not so
good for us. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>(1) A few
days ago I got out of the house and shopped at the Port Hueneme, CA, Ralph's —
that's Kroger's in the U.S. West — and treated myself at Manhattan Bagel. I had
a classic bagel and lox, with cream cheese, tomato and onion and (increasingly
common) some capers, and, my addition, a leaf of lettuce. I chose a
dried-tomato bagel and had it toasted. It was a perfectly-made lox and bagel,
with my only objections the labelling: the objections of a Chicagoan with
relatives and friends in the Bronx and Brooklyn, who doesn't think of bagels as
particularly Manhattan. But more-so Manhattan than Port Hueneme; from our
on-line <a href="https://www.california-demographics.com/port-hueneme-demographics">demographics</a>:
"The largest Port Hueneme racial/ethnic groups are Hispanic (59.4%)
followed by White (26.1%) and Asian (5.8%)." We don't do Jews much in Port
Hueneme, and I was the only Ashkenazi in sight.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That
most-excellent lox and bagel was made by the local Manhattan Bagel manager, who
is Asian, giving instruction to a new employee, who is "Hispanic,"
i.e., in this part of California, Mexican-American. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Also: Max
Morenberg, the senior linguist at the time at Miami University (Oxford, OH),
told me that "lox" just might be the oldest word in English, going
back through Germanic to Indo-European — and one Wikipedia entry has it, even
Proto-Indo-European. And like chop suey, bagels-and-lox as a combination is <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bagels-and-lox-are-a-uniquely-american-creation-578/">American
(from New York City)</a>. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Neat! </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>(2) Before
they got down to more earnest analysis of the debate between Vice President
Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris, a couple of women commentators commented
on one facial expression Harris directed toward Pence, with the Black woman of
the pair saying that anyone who'd dealt with — or, maybe better, been dealt
with by — a Black mother knew what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i>
look meant. And they chuckled and ended the segment with the one word,
"Momala." </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>"Momala":
Our Indian/Jamaican-Black/African-American potential future VP and then U.S.
President, going by a kinda-Yiddish honorific from her step-kids. My
grandparents' generation might've joyously said, "Only in America,"
and their kids and grandkids would've smiled at them condescendingly. So, okay,
not just in America, but it's happening here, and the alte Kakers had a
point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>(3) During
the very later 1960s through 1970, I was a member of the Board of the Graduate
Student Association (GSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
And one day a grad student dropped by the office to introduce himself as new on
campus but, even so, a member of the Board of the U of I Black Graduate Student
Association (BGSA). </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This was
not this guy's first rodeo as they say, so we got past the niceties quickly and
actually got a little work done on the one bit of negotiation required each
year between the two groups: how much of the GSA appropriation we'd sub-appropriate
to the BGSA. We got in some of the posturing and bullshit required at least
among males, and generally enjoyed the sparring until he had to leave for
another stop.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On the way
out, he had a definitely non-business question he thought I could answer.
"What's this word 'schmuck' I keep hearing around here?" I told him
it literally meant "penis," but the usual use was figurative.
"Like calling someone a prick?" he asked. And I said, "Maybe;
it'd depend upon the context and tone of voice. But 'schmuck' can be used almost
affectionately — like calling someone 'poor, dumb schmuck.' If it's out-and-out
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">prick</i>, you'd probably use 'putz.'"
He thought that handy, and we agreed that parents would be thrilled about how
useful attendance at a major university could be for enlarging and sharpening
vocabulary.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>(3a) I've
been thinking about that adoption of "schmuck" by colleagues at the U
of I who came from subcultures at the cutting edge of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dozens">competitive invective</a>. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Specifically
I've been wondering whether or not I should feel guilty of cultural appropriation
in adding to my vocabulary a word I was looking for: a non-sexist, unisex, term
of abuse that hadn’t been over-used and drained of venom the way "asshole"
had been. I found it in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pendejo</i>:
literally "pubic hair" but with a rich history bringing with it implications
of immature punk-hood, ignorance, stupidity, and, well, asshole-etry. Plus,
apparently with the possibility of being used affectionately or with <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Pendejo">different
meanings</a> in different varieties of Spanish (though none exactly a
compliment). </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I've
decided not to feel guilty.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My people
gave the world <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">schmuck</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">putz</i> (and in the New York City
incarnation the combination of bagels and lox); I can appropriate <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pendejo</i>.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">* * *</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In a summer
job working with Black Chicagoans at Illinois Public Health, I also got
introduced to "Willy" stories, and one cartoon, primarily by a
colleague who described herself as "a respectable Black widow-woman" —
and told people to eat more slowly and sit up straight — and I inadvertently cracked
up the lunch group by asking if anyone had ever told her she'd make a fine
Jewish Mother. "Yeah — the Jew who had your job last summer!" But
that's for another blog post. </p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-25208516090107105112020-08-19T11:03:00.001-07:002020-08-19T11:03:16.841-07:00Supporting the Biden/Harris Ticket (but "I Don't Do Enthusiasm")<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="51dqk" data-offset-key="4eg36-0-0" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="4eg36-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="" data-offset-key="4eg36-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">I'm still plowing my way through Radley Balko's understandably well-documented but way too long <i>Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces </i>(2014) and learning more reasons why I should not be keen on Bill Clinton and Joe Biden as drug warriors.</span></span></div><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="4eg36-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="" data-offset-key="4eg36-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="4eg36-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="" data-offset-key="4eg36-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Politically. </span></span></div><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="4eg36-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="" data-offset-key="4eg36-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></div><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="4eg36-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="" data-offset-key="4eg36-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">As I've mentioned in a few <a href="http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2019/09/biden-and-bernie-in-2019-not-primary.html">places</a>, Biden is the only presidential candidate I've ever really talked with one-on-one so the only one for which "like" or "dislike" is a really relevant category for me. (Biden came a across as a nice guy, and he held his own at a conference on NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR in 1984, among a bunch of heavy hitters, of which I was not one). </span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="51dqk" data-offset-key="2mrq8-0-0" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="2mrq8-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="" data-offset-key="2mrq8-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="51dqk" data-offset-key="5rqkl-0-0" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="5rqkl-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="" data-offset-key="5rqkl-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">I take seriously the etymology of "enthusiasm" — that "possessed by the god" bit — and generally distrust it, along with bringing into politics the celebrity "worship" and passing excitements of fandom, as in sports or SF/F.</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="51dqk" data-offset-key="euoi3-0-0" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="euoi3-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="" data-offset-key="euoi3-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="51dqk" data-offset-key="bho8l-0-0" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="bho8l-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="" data-offset-key="bho8l-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">I'd have more ordinary people thinking and acting like the rich: voting and supporting candidates as one would hire servants, although with "Leadership" a desired talent. "What can they do for me and my group? What are they likely to do *to* us?"</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="51dqk" data-offset-key="dc5o-0-0" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="dc5o-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="" data-offset-key="dc5o-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="51dqk" data-offset-key="8kbrn-0-0" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="8kbrn-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="" data-offset-key="8kbrn-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">A fortunately unusual variation with Trump is this:</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="51dqk" data-offset-key="12phj-0-0" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="12phj-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="" data-offset-key="12phj-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="51dqk" data-offset-key="3sltt-0-0" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="3sltt-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="" data-offset-key="3sltt-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="51dqk" data-offset-key="f3tef-0-0" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="f3tef-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/3331"><span class="" data-offset-key="f3tef-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">5 U.S. Code § 3331. Oath of office</span></a></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="51dqk" data-offset-key="9amsv-0-0" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="9amsv-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="" data-offset-key="9amsv-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="" data-offset-key="c352r-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><blockquote>An individual, except the President, elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit in the civil service or uniformed services, shall take the following oath: “I, AB, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same [...]."</blockquote></span></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="51dqk" data-offset-key="c352r-0-0" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="c352r-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="" data-offset-key="c352r-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span class="" data-offset-key="c352r-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></div></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="51dqk" data-offset-key="8ajei-0-0" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="8ajei-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="" data-offset-key="8ajei-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">On a handful of occasions I've taken a similar oath (in writing for employment in Illinois and Ohio). The people administering the oath were not serious or sincere, but I take my word and words very seriously (I'm guilty of a kind of Stoical/Book-of-Job loving arrogance here). Donald J. Trump is a domestic enemy of the Constitution and American Republic, and in questioning the peaceful transfer of power an enemy of liberal democracy and civil government. The crucial issue is getting him out of office in as boring a way as possible. Biden is good for that, although in 2016 I supported Bernie Sanders and for policy still prefer him and Elizabeth Warren (my main qualms with Sanders are with him as a candidate and have to do with that kind of political *performance* and what it says about his stubbornness that he won't deal with performance as part of politics even for policy wonks).</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="51dqk" data-offset-key="ff5vi-0-0" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="ff5vi-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="" data-offset-key="ff5vi-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="51dqk" data-offset-key="560us-0-0" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="560us-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="" data-offset-key="560us-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">I hope Biden (and Harris) firmly renounce The War on Crime/War on Drugs. But I'm supporting him and hoping the election will be all that will be necessary for that "preserve, protect, and defend" bit.</span></span></div></div><p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-80014127558901407662020-08-16T15:50:00.003-07:002020-08-16T15:50:36.361-07:00Lives that Matter<p> </p><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="8ip7l-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="8ip7l-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="8ip7l-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">SLOGANS on my mind, and policy: </span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="4sihl-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="4sihl-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="4sihl-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="92jda-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="92jda-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="92jda-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">"A bumper sticker is not a philosophy, Charlie Brown," and a policy statement makes a poor bumper sticker. So let's try thinking of slogans like the 2x4 in the old story from across the political spectrum of the two farmers and the Missouri mule, with the farmer arguing for reasoning with a mule trying his way, after hitting the mule upside the head with the 2x4. Punchline: "Well, first you gotta get his attention." </span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="f32gl-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="f32gl-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="f32gl-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="be7ge-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="be7ge-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="be7ge-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Don't try this at home. Don't hit helpless animals. Get the joke: Even the best of causes might require some ... non-discursive attention-getting before we can have a useful argument about policy.</span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="ectl4-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="ectl4-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="ectl4-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="8ic2f-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="8ic2f-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="8ic2f-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">ALL LIVES MATTER: As with "All life is sacred," don't tell me this while you're eating a bacon-burger, or a carrot, or using a hand sanitizer. Actually, don't tell me any of these variations since in my brief time in microbiology I destroyed life by the billions and hundred of billions and feel no guilt. I do feel guilty for other lab work, where I killed a lot of rats, a cat, a rabbit or two, and helped kill a number of dogs: it's one of the reasons I avoid eating mammal meat.</span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="dlrvn-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="dlrvn-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="dlrvn-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="a2rsf-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="a2rsf-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="a2rsf-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">What people are talking about is <b><i>human</i></b> life and our belief that <i>human</i> life is special. Indeed part of the central myth of American culture is the one early in the US Declaration of Independence where Thomas Jefferson et al. tell us about a creator god making us all equal and endowing us with "certain unalienable rights," including life and liberty. That's a belief, a leap of faith, and either a self-evident "truth," or stupid-human, arrogant b.s.</span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="6mnr5-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="6mnr5-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="6mnr5-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="59atv-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="59atv-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="59atv-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">BLACK LIVES MATTER is centrally about White people's and various political and other systems' recognizing and realizing — as in "making real" — that Black people are people: full human beings, with whatever rights White's legitimately claim for them/ourselves. (People seriously serious about Whiteness don't accept me as White.) </span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="7f9qm-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="7f9qm-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="7f9qm-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="7jkis-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="7jkis-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="7jkis-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">BLACK LIVES MATTER (also) helps provide the Race part of a set of interlocking and overlapping sets of issues on policing in the USA, including the militarization of the police. We need to look at this super-set of issues, and I hope those working for BLM will allow that they've "got our attention" (see mule story above), and that we can move on to policy and wider politics.</span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="pd04-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="pd04-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="pd04-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="a13r4-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="a13r4-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="a13r4-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">And I think moving on a good idea in large part because I'm a Jew who specifies which holocaust I'm talking about and who uses the 11 million figure of total deaths in the Hitlerian Holocaust and not the 6 million figure for Jews: If "the Holocaust" were literally unique to Jews, it would have no usable lessons for anyone else, and only ethics and decency would motivate non-Jews to care. And if you know about the Hitlerian Holocaust, you know the limits of ethics and decency: far better the formula "First they came for" and get others to recognize that they have some potential-lamp-shade skin in the game.</span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="cfcp7-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="cfcp7-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="cfcp7-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="eavao-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="eavao-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="eavao-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Even so with the militarization of US police, thoroughly documented in Radley Balko's <i>Rise of the Warritor Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces </i>(2013). Blacks are far more likely than Whites to get beaten, maimed, or killed by American cops. "First they came for the Blacks" in using "the Justice System" for social control. But The War on Crime and especially The War on Drugs have had their White victims. Which is a good thing for BLM since they don't have to limit their appeal to the often-limited ethics and decency of non-Black people. </span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="8iuut-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="8iuut-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="8iuut-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br class="" data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="cihen" data-offset-key="2uq51-0-0" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="_1mj _1mf" data-offset-key="2uq51-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="" data-offset-key="2uq51-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">So: BLACK LIVES MATTER, HUMAN LIVES MATTER, The Rights of Americans Matter — and let's talk policy (and by, say, Fall of 2021 get around to restitution, reparations, and reconciliation: a policy slogan I definitely like is "Guilt isn't inherited, but the loot is.")</span></div></div>Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-26263804158976105072020-07-20T15:48:00.000-07:002020-07-20T15:48:24.718-07:00If I Were a Republican Black-Ops Operative (excerpt from 15 August 2017)<div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.199999809265137px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> If I were a Republican black-ops operative preparing for the elections of 2018 and 2020, an operative of "</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119229/quotes" style="color: #888888; text-decoration: none;">a certain ... 'moral flexibility</a>,'" I'd be putting money, incendiary tracts, and provocateurs into several of the more obscure and violent fascist groups<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>and</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>into the more ideologically ardent anarchists, Trotskyites, and any remaining Maoists or<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://tinyurl.com/yd73zzxk" style="color: #888888; text-decoration: none;">LaRoucheans</a>. When the struggle gets taken to the street — especially in our time of open-carry on those streets — when there's street fighting and riots and maybe firefights, it's thriving time for politicians of the "Law'n'Order" variety, and nobody in America does law and order appeals better than Republicans backed by operatives with the "moral flexibility" to paint any and all opponents as soft on crime and violence.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"><span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>This round of extremism, the Left is way behind the Right. Still, violence in the streets from just about any source is likely to help Republicans win elections. If they play their cards right — or wrongly enough —<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>street violence may help the more respectable-looking Right to a victory like Nixon over McGovern in 1972 and the backlash victories from 1968 on.</span><span lang="EN-US"></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /></span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"><span> </span>Older readers may here supply analogies, if we're really unlucky, with 1933.<br /><br />===================<br />Full essay <a href="http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2017/08/peace-pig-me-neo-nazis-1961-u-of-i.html">here</a>.</span></span></span></div>
Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3201360924828594020.post-28726295464865854862020-06-23T15:09:00.000-07:002020-06-23T15:13:45.212-07:00"Treason," Testing, Teaching — Citizenship<div class="clearfix" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; zoom: 1;">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Initially published as</span></span></h3>
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‘Academic bulimia’ and the test game</h2>
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<a class="_39g5" href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/global-village-school/academic-bulimia-and-the-test-game/351078701106/" style="color: #90949c; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;">March 8, 2010</a><span class="timelineUnitContainer" style="font-family: inherit;"></span></div>
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I became aware of the problem early in my teaching career, in 1967 or so. We were doing a standard-definition exercise in a composition class, and a student was reading aloud her brief definition piece that began, “In the United States treason is” — and then merrily gave her own definition.</div>
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“Whoa!” I said, “Time out!” and made the “time-out” gesture. “If ‘treason’ is the word you want to define, you can argue for all sorts of definitions, but if you start a sentence ‘In the United States treason is,” you have to finish the sentence with the definition in the Constitution.”</div>
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(It’s Article 3, section 3, but I just looked that up; I couldn’t have given the citation from memory in 1967, and didn’t. But back to the story).</div>
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Blank stares from the class.</div>
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“It’s the one crime defined in the Constitution.”</div>
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More blank stares.</div>
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“You’ve got to know this!” I said; “You’ve all just passed an exam on the Constitution.” And indeed they had.</div>
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I was teaching at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, and my class was 100 percent students from, mostly, Illinois, with a few from New York. They had to pass the Regents’ Exam in New York, or the Public Law 195 exam in Illinois to get their high school diplomas, demonstrating among other things working knowledge of the U.S. Constitution.</div>
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“Right,” one of my students replied, “we passed the exam.”</div>
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“OK, so you have to know this,” I said.</div>
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Giving me the sympathetic look we insensitive people give the pathetically slow, the student repeated, with more careful enunciation, “We passed the exam.”</div>
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I had figured — like the legislators who mandated the exams — that high school graduates would pass a pretty thorough examination on the U.S. Constitution and, therefore, have a working knowledge of the Constitution. My student knew that they had passed the exam and, therefore, didn’t need to know the material any more, and probably wouldn’t.</div>
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I was starting to learn to take very, very seriously what has recently been called, “academic bulimia,” the process by which students “cram” for an exam and “regurgitate” the material on it.</div>
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When you regurgitate, you get some poison or irritant or excess out of your system.</div>
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Now an English-speaking student might, figuratively, chew on an idea, decide to swallow it, digest it and assimilate it. (We like eating metaphors for learning.)</div>
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The easier method, though, is cram and regurgitate, and that was what the fully certified high school graduates in my class had done to get to a major university, and that was back when U.S. education was in good shape.</div>
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They had figured out the system, played it and won: If not a top slot, they got a respectable niche in higher education.</div>
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The only problem is that they were U.S. citizens who had passed the exams and came out pretty much ignorant of the most basic way — an elegant theory, not messy political facts — their government worked.</div>
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Students in the 21st century will be equally proficient in gaming the system of high-stakes exams, and nowadays the schools have money on the line, too, and many schools will help with the game.</div>
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So, don’t expect much from high-stakes exams beyond more kids and their elders in the education business getting good at the various games of high-stakes exams.</div>
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What you can hope, wish and pray for is a change in American culture where education for citizenship and the life of the mind are respected by people important to kids, primarily by other kids.</div>
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Don’t hold your breath while waiting.</div>
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Richard Erlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14838732246899520069noreply@blogger.com0