Don't hear that very often, do you?

On the other hand, how often does a racist dog like Trent Lott announce he's retiring from the Senate?

Just as a reminder, here's what he said:

 Lott said Mississipppi voters were proud to have supported Thurmond when he ran for president on a segregationist platform in 1948, and added: “If the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either.”

This has been cross-posted to Daily Kos

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Think about how we perceive: you see a bird flying. This gives information to your brain through the eyes. Your eyes transmit that information through the retina, through the optic nerve to the occipital lobe and, eventually, to the frontal lobe.

Now think about this picture.  What do you see here?  What does your brain do with the conflicting information you receive from it?

This picture is an ambigram, an image which can be viewed in more than one way depending on how you perceive it.

The thing about this sort of image, in particular, is that it manages to convince you visually that you’re looking at two completely contradictory views at the exact same time.

What does this tell you about perception, and the way our brain processes conflicting stimuli? Can you see it as both images simultaneously, or merely as one, then the other, alternating based on how you squint or tip your head?

I’m going to talk a little today about what’s called “The Binding Effect” and tie it into some of the confusion we have with social identity and cultural identity.

Think about this for a moment: have you ever had the experience of seeing something and not being able to comprehend it for a moment? A part of you understands that you’ve seen it, but doesn’t understand that you have seen anything at the same time. This happens when you see something that just doesn’t fit your world, like a clown walking down the street or your grade school teacher in the grocery store. There’s a moment of confusion there, and that’s that delay between sight and consciousness.

But there’s more to it in this. You see that bird and you have a name to connect to it. The name may simply be “bird!” (as opposed to “American Robin,” “glossy ibis” or “black-crowned night heron”). So you have this word, and that word comes from your temporal lobe, communicated to the frontal lobe.

But, again, there’s more… that bird is in motion. Another part of your brain, the parietal lobe, investigates the pattern of motion that the bird traverses. This, too, is communicated to your frontal lobe.

Your frontal lobe has basic roles here– if you speak that it’s a bird, your frontal lobe (which contains the motor strip) aids in that vocalization.

But it’s got a much more important role– that of central organizer.

What the frontal lobe does here is take all this information from all the other parts of your brain and organize it in a fashion which, from our point of view, seems absolutely integrated and instantaneous– it’s smooth enough and fast enough that, for most of us, we’re not even conscious that it happens.

And yet, transparent process is a fundamental part of our consciousness. We couldn’t serve as integrated human beings if we were incapable of processing information quickly and easily, even if the process isn’t perfect.

But… we still are not entirely clear as to what consciousness is? What does it mean if the nature of our being can be fundamentally altered by an injury to the frontal lobe? What does it say about our identity? Are we simply machines that can be turned off or reprogrammed, or are we something more elaborate and complicated than that?

There is no simple answer to this question.

As a country, we experience both the ambigram problem and the binding effect on a collective level.  We want to see ourselves as the good guys, so we come up with words (temporal lobe) that define us in certain ways.  So we use words like “freedom fighters” to define our friends and allies and “terrorists” to define our enemies.  We (as in people with money who help shape public opinion, not anyone who’s reading or writing this blog entry) get people like Frank Luntz to find language which supports unpopular ideas and reframes them as though they are popular. 

So you end up with “pro-life” groups who have opponents who are “pro-abortion” and “pro-choice” groups with opponents who are “anti-choice.” 

So we end up with this use of language, that when we hear it creates some implications that may even contradict what we actually see.

In one piece of research, people were shown films of an accident in which a car collided with a telephone poll.  They were then asked a series of questions about the accident.  One question was “how fast do you think the car was going when it __________ into the pole?”  In place of the blank would be one of two words.  Those who were asked how fast is was going when it “bumped” estimated a much slower speed than those who were asked how fast it was going when it “crashed.”

Let me reiterate this: people gave different answers to virtually the same question when being asked to describe an event they witnessed based on the difference of a single word in the question.

So think about that word “torture.”  We’ve made a science out of finding ways to explain how we don’t torture.  A simple google search on the phrase combination “we don’t torture” + bush yields over 68,000 results.  One of these results is this New York Times piece:

President Bush, reacting to a Congressional uproar over the disclosure of secret Justice Department legal opinions permitting the harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects, defended the methods on Friday, declaring, “This government does not torture people.”

So we have language being used to contradict what people have seen.  The article continues, quoting Bush:

“I have put this program in place for a reason, and that is to better protect the American people… when we find somebody who may have information regarding a potential attack on America, you bet we’re going to detain them, and you bet we’re going to question them, because the American people expect us to find out information – actionable intelligence so we can help protect them. That’s our job.”

Never mind the reality– never mind what our brains our telling us on certain levels.  What we’re hearing are the words which make things simpler: we do not torture.  We only question them.  Aggressively.  “That’s our job.”

But it gets better.  The Times continues:

In two separate legal opinions written in 2005, the Justice Department authorized the C.I.A. to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

The memorandums were written just months after a Justice Department opinion in December 2004 declared torture “abhorrent.”

Torture: abhorrent.  So we don’t torture.  But all that other stuff?  Hey, that’s not torture.  Why not?  As Paul Kiel puts it, “We Don’t Torture Because We Say We Don’t Torture.” Here’s Kiel, quoting from Dana Perrino’s press Gaggle on October 4th:

QUESTION: But is it not possible that some of these classified opinions may have changed the definition of “torture”?

PERINO: No. I don’t believe so. I have not seen them. But as everything was described to me, no, I don’t believe that’s possible….

So we live with this contradiction in the binding effect.  Our temporal lobe is receiving information that says “we do not torture.”  Our frontal lobe is telling us “this is illogical.  Of course we torture.”  Our occipital lobe hasn’t seen the torture (you know, except for all those horrible photos, but those were just “a few bad apples.”).  Our parietal lobe is pretty much sitting this one out, which is just as well because we’d just as soon not have it involved in anything connected with torture (it’s where we receive pain and other sensory input).

And in the meantime, I wonder about damage: what sort of damage this does to our collective psyches?  What kind of damage this lie we tell ourselves is doing to us, as a nation and a people.  It’s one thing to feel as though your country does bad things from time to time.  It’s another to pretty much know it while being given excuses not to admit it.  It’s one thing to know that sometimes the agents of our government overstep their boundaries.  It’s another thing to realize that we’re doing it as a matter of policy.

We live with this ambigram of who we are as a people, what we do with that information, and how we self identify.  We do not torture, because we’re the good guys, and only evil people torture. 

But if we use “enhanced interrogation?”  Will that give us the excuse we need to pretend that there is no real torture supported by this government?

I wish it wouldn’t. 

But I think it’s fairly obvious that it does.

A couple weeks back, word came out that Bill Lofy was discontinuing his communications consulting for the House and Senate Leadership in Vermont, and taking on a job in New Hampshire. Lofy only arrived on the Vermont scene a few years ago after working many years for the late Paul Wellstone, even authoring a book about him. His arrival was much ballyhooed in Democratic circles, and he went on to run the Party's Coordinated Campaign in between consulting gigs for the Democratic caucuses. His presence was immediately felt, as under his guidance, the Dems retook control of the health care debate (before losing it again after the session… but for one brief shining moment, Douglas was not unilaterally setting the agenda).

With Lofy arriving on the scene like a communications messiah, it was hard for him not to be oversold. But despite that, it's clear that the guy was good – and more than simply being good, he was a genuine progressive. Had his heart in the right place.

It's also clear that his advice was not always heeded. Whether or not that led to his departure, I have no idea. But its hard to put yourself in his shoes and not imagine jumping at something else. In any event, his departure has only increased my concern about the grassroots/legislature relationship going into the session.

Lofy always struck me as a pro stuck between scylla and charybdis, or perhaps more accurately, between the irresistable force of Senator Shumlin's political impulsiveness and the immovable object that is Speaker Symington's refusal to work outside her political and personal comfort zone. With Lofy gone, so goes his limited mitigating or moderating influences on these two leaders that so often seem to be slaves to their most basic natures, often at the expense of political success.

So once again, we're all stuck with each other – activists with leadership that seems to consistently take them for granted at best, and condescendingly treat them as a captive constituency at worst, and leaders looking at a base so jaded and cynical, they can't be counted on to support the leadership on policy. The relationship is still poisonous and the stakes high, as the leadership will need support, and we as activists, need them to be successful.

It won't be enough to simply call a truce, these two groups need to actively reach out to each other. The reason some of these issues reach the boiling point, causing activists to get in the legislators' faces, is that there's a sense that that's what it takes. The impeachment issue is a perfect example – activists were treated like morons. Shined on. Told there wasn't time, or that the committee process made action impossible, etc. It was incredibly patronizing and it served to ramp up tempers well beyond the boiling point.

And on the other side, plenty of impeachment advocates were not willing to accept any explanation for legislators not wanting to move forward besides complicity with Bush or utter cowardice. Simple disagreement was off the table.

In both cases, people felt they were above those on the other side. Activists came into any legislative contact believing themselves to be the most moral people in the room (sometimes the only moral people in the room), while legislative leaders believed themselves to be the smartest people in the room (sometimes the only smart people in the room).

With a dynamic like that, why bother?

So the dynamic needs to be scrapped, and that means there needs to be some reaching out – and given the power dynamic, it has to start with the legislature. They're the ones invested with the authority, after all.

If we're gonna play on the same team and have a winning synergy for an election year, everybody is going to have to work outside their comfort zones. For some activists, that means trusting that legislative leaders are on their side. For some legislative leaders, that means scrapping the bunker mentality and – most important – being willing to make some accomodation to the wishes of their constituents, or at least, deal with them as equals.

What does it mean to deal with someone as an equal?

Here's what I suggest:

Don't suggest activists are too dumb to “get” an issue. Don't make excuses that sound so paper-thin, it feels insulting to be expected to swallow them. Talk directly to people you have a developing conflict with (before it fully develops), instead of trying to get messages to them through intermediaries such as the media or “comfortable” constituency groups or individuals. Show us you're reasonable people, and honestly open to modifying your approach and your priorities without us having to get angry and make a big stink. Even if you don't agree with advocates at the end of the day, if you're genuinely open to the possibility of modifying your approach and your priorities, people are naturally empathic enough to sense that – and it makes all the difference.

And sure, take advantage of forums like this one. You're not “above” them any more than the rest of us are.

We'd like you to be leaders, sure – but the trust needs to be rebuilt before many of us are willing to be your followers. That means step one, is to be colleagues. Collaborators. Show us we're all on the same team by bringing us into the making of the game plan, and sitting down with us on the bench. It may be a drag sometimes, and it will certainly take you outside your comfort zone. But, frankly,your comfort zone is simply not our responsibility – and if you really believe that your comfort zone is so important that it trumps success, then you're probably in the wrong line of seasonal work.

It won't be easy, but if you want to be successful, you'll do it.

During the day, I'm basically a grunt worker for an advocacy group, and I don't diary about what they advocate. Seems disrespectful both to GMD readers and my employer. Frankly, as a hobbyist (at both this blog and through my involvement in my County Democratic Committee), policy matters aren't so much my bailiwick anyway – electoral stuff is. It makes for a nice personal symmetry that way, as my employer doesn't do the electoral thing at all.

So, wearing my electoral-observer hat, I can't help but look at the Climate Commission report, and the Governor's decision to ignore 90% of it, and wonder if the partisan electoral interests in the legislature and the Democratic Party structure aren't seeing what I'm seeing:

That is: George Bush's 9-11 Commission report. 

Bush was somewhat forced into creating the 9-11 Commission from public and Congressional outcry, and likewise chose to ignore 90% of it. In doing so, he created one of the most potent weapons to use against him – and that use came to a head when the Democratic Congress put him in a corner by working to pass legislation to enact all of the Commission's recommendations, leaving Bush caught between a rhetorical rock and a hard place. Now it's hard to believe that the Vermont legislative Democrats could muster the focus, leadership, teamwork and follow-through to create that sort of legislation around this commission.

But man, would it have the potential to turn the election year on its head if they did. I know I'd be breaking out the popcorn for a good show…

I’ve been putting a lot of work into tying all my diaries specifically into politics, even when discussing my more creative pursuits.

For Thanksgiving Day, however, I’m putting politics aside and just talking about art.

Well, maybe.  We’ll see. 

So, anyway, about the picture… 

This is not a Photoshop effect.  It’s a light drawing, in which I used a hand held light source to create patterns over the course of a very long night exposure.  In this particular case, the exposure was one minute and 25 seconds.  (for the photographers out there, all these photos have been done using a sigma 17-70mm zoom lens @17mm, at f22).

This is not something I invented.  This idea came originally from Eric Staller (visit his web site– he’s got some amazing works there, and if you can afford it, buy his book– it’s expensive, but a great read, and it supports a very original and creative lefty artist).  As Staller himself puts it:

9/11 shook loose in me a need to write this memoir. I wanted to give the reader an intimate look at my creative process;to show how my life and loves, my places and times, have been inseparable from my 35 years of art making.

And if you’re wondering, this isn’t a Rudy “9/11 changed everything” piece of nonsense.  This is about him realizing a lot of things that are wrong with the world and moving back into thinking of ways to change it.  Okay, so there’s a little political content in this post.  Back to the art.

When Staller was doing his work, he built a lot of his own devices and understood a lot more about mechanics and electronics than I do.  Today, there are all sorts of ready made light sources that I can play with to create all sorts of effects.

The effect in the picture shown, for example, was produced with, of all things, light sabers.  There are these light sabers which have a strobe effect, changing colors multiple times each second.  So, I thought, what would happen if the camera captured an object in motion throughout the process of that strobe effect?  (Now I know).

This picture was taken the first night I played with these light sabers, and I’ve done quite a few photos using them since.  (clicking here will get you to a list of thumbnails of my favorites).

There’s a neat Zen quality to doing these photos; I never quite know how they’ll come out but it’s at the point now where I have the general idea.  It’s giving me the opportunity to learn more about how light works over time, and giving me a better understanding of this particular camera and lens.

But more importantly, it’s a lot of fun. 

My plan for this winter is to play a lot more with this medium and subject matter, ideally incorporating groups of people to create patterns, shapes and lights in the air through group interaction.  Who knows if it will work; it’s definitely been fun trying to organize this sort of thing. 

Where is it going from here beyond that?  No idea.  But sometimes it’s neat to just delve into a project.  All I’m hoping for now is that someone enjoys the work I’ve done so far.  And if anyone volunteers to let me photograph them while juggling fire, that’s cool too 🙂

So, anyway, I hope everyone has a good holiday.  Soon enough I’ll get back to talking about why John Edwards would make a better president than any of the other options we’ve got, why it’s so important to fight for what you believe in, even when everyone thinks you’re nuts for doing so, and why Democrats don’t just need a spine replacement, but they need some morality infusion as well, but for today, I’m okay with just talking art, photography, creativity and fun.
I’ll end with one more photo, a 2 minute, 18 second exposure.

This one involved a small light wand which I manipulated in two different ways.  First, I slowly backed up, moving it and holding it briefly each step of the way.  Then, I switched it to solid red and started spinning it from a string, letting it circle several times and then moving forward.

Last night was particularly fun because I finally started discovering how I can leave the exposure open long enough to capture the surroundings without making it over exposed.  Apparently, on a night with a half moon, 2-3 minutes is the trick.

Okay.  I’m done for now.  Hope you all enjoy the photos.

Have a happy Exploitation of Native Cultures and Land day, everybody!

Happy Thanksgiving week, folks. Since this is a travel week, traffic will be down – which makes me want to save the hard-hitting stuff for next week when the audience is back.

But in the meantime, let's have some fun at Charity Tensel's expense. Charity's been picking on us a bit of late, what with slaps at my post knocking Rob Roper for calling Angelo Dorta a liar on the VTGOP site, and another about the National GOP's attacks on a ten year old boy and his family, but I've generally not hit back. But how about a volley, just as a topic for discussion.

Charity has been the longtime host of a public access, right wing TV show in the Burlington area. Here's what Public Access TV comes from:

In 1984, the Cable Communications Policy Act stated that local governments could require cable operators to provide one or more channels for public use. This is how public access television was born.

Ideally, I believe that government is best which governs least. 

In conversations about liberty and less government, someone inevitably brings up the big, bad Big Business. Obviously without government regulation, big business would take over the world. And since we can't vote Big Business out of office, we won't be able to do anything about it.

This is the justification for allowing the government power that it was not granted in the constitution

First, I have to point out, you will not likely find me with an inconsistent ideology. I am nothing if not consistent.

It's ballot time, y'all, and the Edwards campaign is looking to get their man on the Vermont ballot. To qualify, he needs 1000 verified signatures. The goal, then, is to generate 2000 as a comfortable margin of error, given that many will inevitably be disqualified because the signer isn't actually a registered voter, they already signed another presidential ballot (you can only sign one in Vermont, which sucks, quite frankly…), or whatever…

As this is an all-volunteer effort in the state, there is a need for people to help circulate petitions. If you're a supporter, and can help, just leave a comment and I can look up the email address you registered with to get one sent your way.

I would remind folks that – like any national election – this aint just about the candidate. In fact, for me personally, its barely about the candidate at all. It's about responding to the clear, specific and aggressive progressive policy message Edwards has been delivering. We need to show the country that this sort of rhetoric wins elections. That a pro-labor, green, equal justice platform is what people want to hear – even expect to hear – and that other politicians should follow suit (and in doing so, move the center of debate in this country to the populist left). That's largely what the blogs themselves are all about, after all.

So, lemme know and I'll be in touch… 

My first contact with Stephen “Donny the Punk” Donaldson began in the 1990s when I was running an e-mail group for bisexuals when no other such group existed at the time. 

This was a man who spoke eloquently and openly about issues that generally make us uncomfortable.  Donny was a peace activist who, after having been arrested for a peaceful White House protest, suffered numerous sexual assaults over the course of his incarceration.

When he would send e-mails, the direct and up front nature of his activism was immediately visible.  Whereas many users would send e-mails with their own name attached, he would add a tag in his.  All his e-mails came from Stephen Donaldson — “Stop Prisoner Rape”.

I only corresponded with Donny for a brief couple of years before he died from complications related to the HIV that infected him as a result of those prison rapes.  But his work as an activist had a profound effect on me.

The news this morning that most prisons will not give condoms to inmates has got me thinking about Donny, [a]moral idiocy and what we do in the name of “justice.”

It’s common to see jokes about prison rape in movies and television.  Sometimes the jokes are subtle and sometimes much more direct, but they all have something in common: they dismiss the seriousness of the problem and make light of it in a way which suggests that it’s not worth real consideration.

But the reality is different.  The social environment of prisons blurs the line between rape and sex, and it blurs the line between consent and coercion.  Even though it may, on the surface, seem as though it has something to do with homosexuality, the topic is actually entirely distinct from sexual orientation.  Sex, in confinement, whatever you may think about it, is primarily about power.

But even sex connected with power doesn’t need to be a death sentence for the people involved.  Countless prisoners dealing with rape in prisons suffer a great deal of additional damage beyond their incarceration.  While the topic may be uncomfortable, sexual intercourse does happen in prisons and without a proper means to protect those prisoners (especially the non-violent offenders who are sometimes at mercy from the more violent in the groups), we end up introducing a much greater risk factor of STD transmission both into prisons and into the population at large.

The response to the idea, however, has been less than stellar:

Despite such warnings, recent efforts to expand behind-bars condom access have gone almost nowhere. Prison officials contend that condoms can be used to conceal drugs, and law-and-order politicians scoff at what they depict as a step that would encourage both consensual and coercive sex.

“Removing the freedoms of criminals is in itself a deterrent,” said California Assemblyman Paul Cook. “Allowing condoms into prisons simply sends the wrong message and confirms what we all suspect: Our prison system has serious and severe behavioral and inmate-control issues.”

So let’s stipulate something: I have no problem with acknowledging that “our prison system has serious… inmate-control issues.”  This is because we don’t have the resources to control every single aspect of every prisoner’s life while in prison.  We don’t have the ability to watch over them every single second of their time and, furthermore, we don’t have the interest in doing so.  It is ridiculous to assume that prisoners will not have sex and it’s ridiculous to assume that many of them want to have unsafe sex.

But our [a]moral police are, as usual, more interested in complaining about lack of compliance than in dealing with reality.

I should be clear: I admit fully, when I write about this, that I would, most likely, not even be thinking about much of it if it weren’t for Donny: one man who spoke eloquently and clearly about his experiences, his life and his expected death.  Prisoners?  Condoms?  Who cares, really?

When Donny died, it was not a shock to me.  It was an inevitability.  Sometimes, when someone you know dies, there’s a finality to it, as though you’ve lost all connection with that person and will never have it back again.

In Donny’s case, the activism he started clicked with me and has never really disappeared.  His courage and fearlessness in the face of his own death inspired me then and continues to inspire me today, more than a decade later. 

Recently, when talking about Pete Seeger, I wrote the following:

What we do today can cause ripples into the future.  The rights we stand up for today can influence the next generations, and the cowardice we show today will affect our children and our grandchildren.

What will you do next time you hear someone joke about rape and prisons?  Will you laugh?  Will you shrug it off?  Will you say something about it?

What we do today can cause ripples into the future.  People, innocent or otherwise, are arrested all the time.  They may or may not deserve incarceration.  They never deserve rape, and they never deserve the death sentence that comes with HIV.

Baruth quips: 

  “How long, Lord, how long? How long before 9/11 is allowed to rest in peace, rather than being pressed into service by every sweaty-palmed down-ballot Republican from Boise to Bangor?”

I’m with ya, Philip.  I’ve been suffering from a severe case of post-9/11 fatigue since the ’04 campaign cycle.

And it only took three times hearing Bush say, “September the 11th,” to get really, really sick of the unnecessary participle.

More people died in Bangladesh this week than we tragically lost 6 years ago.  And the number of deaths are likely to be lost in the aftermath of Cyclone Sidr than we’ve lost in Iraq.  \

Maybe we should start talking about, “November the 15th.” 

Terri Hallenbeck seems shocked and horrified that political parties track which citizens vote, which ones (based on polling data and personal references) are likely to be sympathetic to their views, and which ones are most likely to tell their candidates to go to hell. Gimme a freaking break. I guess she had to write something about the Democratic Party reorganization meeting, since the rumors of a floor challenge to Chair Ian Carleton never materialized, and there was no further gossip on candidates for Governor.

Larry Flynt has endorsed Dennis Kucinich. This should create a new kind of hybrid spam, combining the two flavors that currently fill up my inbox.

Baruth continues to lead on the Vermont Yankee issue. It seems every star is starting to align against its re-licensing, as opponents apparently have enough momentum that Entergy and the Governor are taking notice. Time to start planning for a post-yankee energy future now.

Belated Happy 52nd birthday, Morgan.

If you’re not scared about the future yet, read this post from Alex at Rip & Read. Here’s a sample:

The report, according to the article by Arthur Max, postulates that a shift in the world’s climate will give rise to bitter and bloody conflicts for water resorces, a scrabble for land, as sea levels rise, increased immigration to the United States (and conservatives, take note, these immigrants will NOT be coming because we offer political freedom- but because they want our water and our dry land- it’s your worst xenophobic nightmare come to life), and a proliferation of new diseases born of malnutrition, and nasty diseases able to expand their range…imagine, the return of malaria to Pennsylvania…won’t that be fun?

Tongue somewhat-in-cheek (or perhaps not), Minor Heresies is concerned about the spiraling cost of, er, non-perscription drugs, and waxes analytical about its impact on aging baby-boomers and the prospect of Canadian marijuana “reimportation” given local crackdowns. Why should the political class in Vermont care?

Let me address political time-servers and aspirants directly, in words that even a campaign consultant can understand. These boomers have a political conscience. You know and I know that anyone with a political conscience would have to be completely stoned to vote for you. They won’t be, if the price of marijuana is not brought under control.

Heh.

Update: iBrattleboro surpasses 10 million pages viewed!!!!! That’s pretty good for a citizen journo site dedeicated only to Brattleboro topics. Chris Grotke has the story. Go iBrattleboro!!!!