Per the Rutland Herald: Racine considers run for governor:
“I have in recent weeks had a number of friends encourage me to think about a campaign,” Racine said. “I continue to be interested in being governor of the state of Vermont someday. With that encouragement I am thinking about it again.”
Doug: do it.
Crossposted to Daily Kos
Today I’m continuing that theme, discussing how Zimbardo’s Prisoner Experiment at Stanford shows us similar trends.
First, a summary of the prisoner experiment, for those of you unfamiliar with it.
If you’re not interested in the YouTube version, Wikipedia has a great summary as well.
Here’s the simple version:
When we set up bad structures, we end up with people who do bad things.
That’s it. It’s that simple. What Zimbardo mentions (more in this recent interview) is that, in his experiment, the “guards” boiled down to two kinds: “good “guards and “bad” guards. The “bad” guards are the ones who engaged in brutal behaviors against the “prisoners.” The good “guards” are the ones who didn’t.
But none of those “good” guards tried to stop it.
In the Stanford experiment, we weren’t dealing with people who had a moral right to be guards. We weren’t dealing with prisoners who had done anything wrong. Everyone was randomly assigned to a role. And yet, still, we had prisoners breaking down. We had guards deliberately demeaning and abusing prisoners.
Does this ring a bell?
Without proper leadership, people in authority tend towards chaos. Without proper controls and accountability, people in authority do damage.
Without a proper idea as to who the enemy is, soldiers don’t know what to do.
So they behave badly.
And, like I mentioned yesterday, we don’t want to acknowledge this:
I’m going to mention another concept that I’ve talked about before: cognitive dissonance — the condition that exists when our behavior contradicts our beliefs. When dealing with cognitive dissonance we sometimes change our behavior, but we sometimes also change our beliefs.
We do not want to think of ourselves as a country which supports or promotes torture. It contradicts our beliefs. So when we see that we have, in fact, engaged in torture, we have some choices:
- we can change our beliefs to convince ourselves that we think torture is ok;
- we can say “this has to stop” and change our behavior;
- we can say “this has to stop” and then convince ourselves that we’ve changed our behavior without actually doing it;
- we can say “we oppose torture” and then reclassify everything we do as something that’s not torture.
We’re so focused on this idea of supporting our troops that we refuse to acknowledge the reality: by failing to hold them accountable and by refusing to hold them to a higher standard, we are doing them damage. We’re so focused on choosing option #3 above– pretending we’re solving things without actually doing so– that we’re risking serious long-term damage.
A few weeks ago, in another post, I wrote about the problems facing our soldiers:
In the meantime, as IAVA reports, the professional component of this is far from adequate:
90% of military psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers reported no formal training or supervision in the recommended PTSD therapies, and there is a general shortage of trained mental health professionals in the military. The Pentagon screens returning troops for mental health problems via an ineffective system of paperwork. Studies have shown that many troops are not filling out their mental health forms, that there are serious disincentives for troops to fill the form out accurately, and that those whose forms indicate they need care do not consistently get referrals.
Both guards and prisoners in the Stanford experiment suffered mental damage as a result of it. And this was fake.
Imagine yourself placed in a situation where the rules are unclear and you don’t know what you’re supposed to do, but that your basic role is “guard.” You don’t know who the enemy is. Or you don’t know what your prisoners have done. Or you don’t know why you’re there or what your mission is.
And you’re there, in this prison, guarding people whom you don’t understand, who don’t understand you, and you’re there guarding this scene where you’re the “good” guard. You’re not the one strapping someone to a table. You’re not the one holding the suffocation hood. You’re not the one doing the waterboarding.
But you’re there. And you’re supposed to be keeping everything in order. You’re one of the 92% who won’t intervene when someone in the room with you is killing someone. Because you’re just following orders.
Imagine this insanity happening around you and you being part of it and yet also just a casual observer who had the power to intervene and prevent atrocities and failed to do so.
Now imagine that you think of yourself as a good person, but are connected with this.
Remember the concept of “cognitive dissonance” that I reference earlier?
What do you think this does to a person?
I’m horrified by what I see, but I get that pretending its not there is worse.
I want to support my country, but I can’t do so in a way that ignores the truth.
I want to support the troops, but I can’t do so without knowing who they are and what their limitations are.
I want what we’re doing overseas to stop. It doesn’t just do damage to other countries and other people. It does damage to us. It destroys the hearts of everyone involved: prisoner, guard, soldier, civilian.
It destroys the minds and it destroys the souls.
Crossposted to Daily Kos
It was his belief that only a select few people would engage in acts which could serious harm to others when ordered to do so. His belief was shared by the students he polled.
They were wrong.
Milgram’s experiment was a simple one that involved three people:
The experiment was set up as follows:
“E” would show up in a white coat and explain to two individuals that one of them would be playing the part of the teacher and one would be the learner and explain the rules. Then he would hand a slip of paper to each one. One would say “Teacher” and the other would say “Learner.” The learner (L) would move to another another room and the teacher (T) would stay with the Experimenter.
Then they would get to work.
The Teacher would, through a microphone, read a question to the Learner. If the Learner got the question wrong, T would administer a shock. Each time the shock was administered, T would increase the voltage a little for the next time and L would scream in pain.
The dial went up to “450 volts.” In many cases, this was marked as “DANGER” or “LETHAL.”
The thing is, this experiment was a ruse. The “Learner” was part of the experiment, an actor along with the Authority figure. No one was shocked. No one was in pain. L wasn’t being tested.
T was.
The idea of the experiment was to discover what our limitations are in terms of what we’d be willing to do to harm another, and how authority can influence those limitations. I’ll get to the results soon, but first I have to explain something:
In social psychology, we talk about Diffusion of Responsibility, a problem that often occurs when people don’t feel adequately responsible for the circumstances around them. Having an authority figure available to tell us what to do provides an immense amount of diffusion of responsibility.
In Milgram’s experiment, E didn’t use threats or cajole. If T didn’t want to engage in the experiment, the experimenter would first say “please continue.” If that failed, the next statement would be that “the experiment requires that you continue.” If that didn’t do the trick, E would say that “it is absolutely essential that you continue,” and finally, “you have no other choice, you must go on.”
If T still refused after those four statements, the experiment would end.
If the experiment didn’t end through refusal, it would end after three “shocks” at the maximum level of 450.
There were no threats to E. There was no danger. No loss to refusal. It was merely those statements on the part of the experimenter.
It’s easy for us to look at this and think, “I wouldn’t ever go that far.” It’s easy for us to say “I’d never do that.”
But the fact of the matter is, in Milgram’s work and studies that have replicated it have shown a remarkable consistency: more than 60% of the sample has stuck with the study until the very end, even though they believed at the time that they might be doing serious harm to another human being.
So yes, I’d love to be able to say “I’d never do a thing like that.” But I know enough about psychology and self-deception to understand fully well that I can’t be certain how I’d behave if faced with such a dilemma. On the surface, it seems like a no-brainer and I honestly can’t conceive of doing anything but walking out. But I don’t know that I’m that much different from so many people who go along with the experimenter. I don’t know that I’m better than they are and I don’t know that I’m that strong a person.
I hope I am.
But I’m also fine with not knowing that I’m one of that 60+% who would buckle under the dread of the words “it is absolutely essential that you continue.”
So.
Now you know about Milgram’s work. Some of you knew all this already. Some of you didn’t.
But that’s not the point of this piece.
The point is to talk about where we go from here.
In 1974, Milgram wrote an article for “Harpers,” “The Perils of Obedience:”
The problem of obedience is not wholly psychological. The form and shape of society… have much to do with it. There was a time, perhaps, when people were able to give a fully human response to any situation because they were fully absorbed in it as human beings. But as soon as there was a division of labor things changed… The breaking up of society into people carrying out narrow and very special jobs takes away from the human quality of work and life. A person does not get to see the whole situation but only a small part of it, and is thus unable to act without some kind of overall direction. He yields to authority but in doing so is alienated from his own actions.
Even Eichmann was sickened when he toured the concentration camps, but he had only to sit at a desk and shuffle papers. At the same time the man in the camp who actually dropped Cyclon-b into the gas chambers was able to justify his behavior on the ground that he was only following orders from above. Thus there is a fragmentation of the total human act; no one is confronted with the consequences of his decision to carry out the evil act. The person who assumes responsibility has evaporated. Perhaps this is the most common characteristic of socially organized evil in modern society.
Let me tell you a story. A woman I know has a son who, in September of 2001, was in his early teens. He was at home with his father, when the first tower fell. They were watching TV at the time, glued to the set.
When the tower fell, his first comment was “cool!”
There was an awkward pause and at first he didn’t understand what he’d just said.
Then there was a moment of realization on his part. He looked at his father, confused, and said “wait– that was real, wasn’t it?”
This kid– a perfectly ordinary kid in so many ways– no delusions, no dissociative disorders, no disconnect from reality– said “cool” when one of the towers fell. He said this not because he was mean, or cruel or inhuman.
He said it because it happened on television. And when big, dramatic, things happen on television, they happen because of effects, because of writers, because of cameras and tricks and angles and stunt performers.
I’m going to break from this for a moment, because something big is going on:
As I write this diary, there’s a hostage situation over at one of the Clinton campaign offices in New Hampshire. I don’t know much more than that. No one seems to know much more at the moment. I wonder how many people watching it are feeling separated from it, and how many are taking it like it’s something real and profound. Judging from a quick scan of freerepublic.com (I will not link there), there are definitely people who seem to take it as though it’s a game, and something worthy of jokes. I don’t mean the sort of jokes that people make when nervous or disturbed. I mean the sort of jokes that people make when they are, in fact, completely separated from humanity.
I don’t know what to say about this. I sometimes forget how bad the comments over there can be sometimes, and I shouldn’t be bothered by them, but I just find it disturbing. I think we need to find a way to bring these people to light without allowing ourselves to be sucked into their twisted world. I have yet to figure out a way of doing that.
Obviously, I’m not going to be posting this diary at the time I expected to. There’s no point at all in posting something like this until the current crisis is resolved, so by the time you’re reading all this, we’ll all know a lot more about what’s going on here.
So, anyway: more from Milgram’s article:
I will cite one final variation of the experiment that depicts a dilemma that is more common in everyday life. The subject was not ordered to pull the lever that shocked the victim, but merely to perform a subsidiary task… while another person administered the shock. In this situation, thirty-seven of forty adults continued to the highest level of the shock generator. Predictably, they excused their behavior by saying that the responsibility belonged to the man who actually pulled the switch. This may illustrate a dangerously typical arrangement in a complex society: it is easy to ignore responsibility when one is only an intermediate link in a chain of actions.
I’m going to mention another concept that I’ve talked about before: cognitive dissonance — the condition that exists when our behavior contradicts our beliefs. When dealing with cognitive dissonance we sometimes change our behavior, but we sometimes also change our beliefs.
We do not want to think of ourselves as a country which supports or promotes torture. It contradicts our beliefs. So when we see that we have, in fact, engaged in torture, we have some choices:
It’s not a difficult argument to make that we, as a nation, have adopted a combination of #s 3 & 4. We’ve not only moved our debate to treat torture as though it is worth a discussion over whether or not it’s an acceptable approach, not through an open discussion but through a redefining of torture into something that ignores the reality behind it.
This denial of the reality behind it is so severe that someone who’s experienced torture actually got lectured by, of all people, Mitt Romney on how he defines torture.
Here’s the reality as I see it:
We need a wave of action about this, pushing our media to reflect a truthful and accurate narrative about this. Therefore, every time we see a “news” article which:
we need to write letters. We need to bombard these papers with letters reminding them of the truth. We need to not let them get away with rewriting the narrative to dismiss torture. We need to eliminate diffusion of responsibility by forcing us front and center into the reality of what’s gone on.
Research on obedience has shown that we comply easily when we feel removed from the situation. We ignore the reality of things we can not easily control, assuming that someone else will take responsibility. We find it easier to push a button that will kill someone five miles away than to pull a trigger that will kill someone who will look into our eyes. We find it easier to ignore an act of atrocity and pretend it is not our problem than to take responsibility for it.
Torture can only be supported through obfuscation and lies. We will not stop this until every one of us choose to actively challenge these lies and until we push ourselves to not just bemoan the use of torture but fight it, every of the way. Fight it when someone claims we need it to get information. Fight it when someone pretends it isn’t real. Fight it when someone refuses to acknowledge it. Fight it when someone obscures its meaning.
Never.
Stop.
Fighting.
Torture.
I don’t know anything more than any of you know about this:
http://politicalticker.blogs.c…
But, really, wtf!
This has been cross-posted to Daily Kos
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.
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!
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.
The picture here is a light drawing I created Tuesday night. It’s not a Photoshop effect; it’s me waving a pair of light wands around for a long-exposure shot. Clicking on the picture brings you to a whole set of thumbnails of light drawings.
CIDER LIE
EVIL LIME
EVER ONCE
You have three clues as to the answer. One clue is an anagram. An other is the same structure of consonants and vowels. The third is the same number of letters in each word. The trick is figuring out which is which;
HOC JAM FELIX
MOMENTS I CRY
MAD HOE STRAP
Note– spoilers may appear in the comments section. Read them at your own risk.
On August 18th, 1950, Pete Seeger was called to testify before the House Unamerican Activities Committee. But first, just because it’s amazing, here’s Pete Seeger on the Smothers Brothers show from 40 years ago.
The relevance? I’ll get to it, after the fold.
First, a sidenote: I do not sing, because I know my strengths and I know my weaknesses. But I’m an evil genius with the guitar and stick to the things I know. But the title of this diary is still appropriate because Seeger never gave up on his music or his activism.
Seeger’s been a protester and an activist for his entire life, and that activism got him blacklisted in 1950’s. When he was called before the House Unamerican Activities Committee, he gave them quite a run, being serious, while still being funny, and refusing to ever give them a thing they wanted, without ever being anything but civil and polite.
Bear with me. This quote is a bit long, but the original testimony is a bit longer:
[…]
MR. TAVENNER: You said that you would tell us about the songs. Did you participate in a program at Wingdale Lodge in the State of New York, which is a summer camp for adults and children, on the weekend of July Fourth of this year?(Witness consulted with counsel.)
MR. SEEGER: Again, I say I will be glad to tell what songs I have ever sung, because singing is my business.
MR. TAVENNER: I am going to ask you.
MR. SEEGER: But I decline to say who has ever listened to them, who has written them, or other people who have sung them.
MR. TAVENNER: Did you sing this song, to which we have referred, “Now Is the Time,” at Wingdale Lodge on the weekend of July Fourth?
MR. SEEGER: I don’t know any song by that name, and I know a song with a similar name. It is called “Wasn’t That a Time.” Is that the song?
CHAIRMAN WALTER: Did you sing that song?
MR. SEEGER: I can sing it. I don’t know how well I can do it without my banjo.
CHAIRMAN WALTER: I said, Did you sing it on that occasion?
MR. SEEGER: I have sung that song. I am not going to go into where I have sung it. I have sung it many places.
CHAIRMAN WALTER: Did you sing it on this particular occasion? That is what you are being asked.
MR. SEEGER: Again my answer is the same.
CHAIRMAN WALTER: You said that you would tell us about it.
MR. SEEGER: I will tell you about the songs, but I am not going to tell you or try to explain-
CHAIRMAN WALTER: I direct you to answer the question. Did you sing this particular song on the Fourth of July at Wingdale Lodge in New York?
MR. SEEGER: I have already given you my answer to that question, and all questions such as that. I feel that is improper: to ask about my associations and opinions. I have said that I would be voluntarily glad to tell you any song, or what I have done in my life.
CHAIRMAN WALTER: I think it is my duty to inform you that we don’t accept this answer and the others, and I give you an opportunity now to answer these questions, particularly the last one.
MR. SEEGER: Sir, my answer is always the same.
MR. SEEGER: I shall he glad to answer about the song, sir, and I am not interested in carrying on the line of questioning about where I have sung any songs.
MR. TAVENNER: I ask a direction.
CHAIRMAN WALTER: You may not he interested, but we are, however. I direct you to answer. You can answer that question.
MR. SEEGER: I feel these questions are improper, sir, and I feel they are immoral to ask any American this kind of question.
MR. TAVENNER: Have you finished your answer?
MR. SEEGER: Yes, sir.
MR. TAVENNER: I desire to offer the document in evidence and ask that it be marked “Seeger exhibit No.4,” for identification only, and to be made a part of the Committee files.
MR. SEEGER: I am sorry you are not interested in the song. It is a good song.
MR. TAVENNER: Were you present in the hearing room while the former witnesses testified?
MR. SEEGER: I have been here all morning, yes, sir.
MR. TAVENNER: I assume then that you heard me read the testimony of Mr. [Elia] Kazan about the purpose of the Communist Party in having its actors entertain for the henefit of Communist fronts and the Communist Party. Did you hear that testimony?
MR. SEEGER: Yes, I have heard all of the testimony today.
MR. TAVENNER: Did you hear Mr. George Hall’s testimony yesterday in which he stated that, as an actor, the special contribution that he was expected to make to the Communist Party was to use his talents by entertaining at Communist Party functions? Did you hear that testimony?
MR. SEEGER: I didn’t hear it, no.
MR. TAVENNER: It is a fact that he so testified. I want to know whether or not you were engaged in a similar type of service to the Communist Party in entertaining at these features.
(Witness consulted with counsel.)
MR. SEEGER: I have sung for Americans of every political persuasion, and I am proud that I never refuse to sing to an audience, no matter what religion or color of their skin, or situation in life. I have sung in hobo jungles, and I have sung for the Rockefellers, and I am proud that I have never refused to sing for anybody. That is the only answer I can give along that line.
Think for a minute about this: here’s a man with everything to lose. A working musician who knew who and what he was facing and just decided he was going to do exactly what the right thing was. What’s more, he did it with humor, with passion, with grace and with dignity.
Can you imagine going before Congress and offering to sing for them when they ask you about a song, and when they question your patriotism, telling them you’re sorry they’re not interested in the song?
And he suffered consequences for this::
Seeger, Arthur Miller, and six others were indicted for contempt of Congress by an overwhelming vote in the House of Representatives. In 1961 he was found guilty of contempt and on April 2 he was sentenced to ten years in prison. The following year his ordeal ended when the case was dismissed on a technicality.
The video clip above is from Seeger, years after these events. Blacklisting, contempt charges, threats, intimidation, and yet still…
I saw Pete Seeger at Clearwater a few years ago. A tall, skinny, grizzled old man without the voice he used to have and without the banjo chops or the vocal resonance he once had, but still present, powerful and magnificent.
Seeger is pushing 90, but his voice, his power, his resonance make a difference today.
Even something as simple as coming onto a prime time TV show and singing about war and being accurate about war and what people are like during it, paying attention to history– I don’t think we see much of that any longer and it’s something that saddens me– it’s not just that Seeger’s anti-war: he’s anti war, and incredibly articulate about it.
And Seeger’s refusal to bow to HUAC– this is relevant, because he was willing to stand up to them and take the challenge directly to them. He refused to plead the fifth in front of HUAC. He instead pled the 1st: freedom of speech and freedom of association. This was a much bigger challenge to the committee than simply refusing to self-incriminate. As Jim Musselman put it:
…Everyone else had said the Fifth Amendment, the right against self-incrimination, and then they were dismissed. What Pete did, and what some other very powerful people who had the guts and the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the committee and say, “I’m gonna invoke the First Amendment, the right of freedom of association….” “
“…The case of Seeger v. United States… changed my life, because I saw the courage of what he had done and what some other people had done by invoking the First Amendment, saying, “We’re all Americans. We can associate with whoever we want to, and it doesn’t matter who we associate with.” That’s what the founding fathers set up democracy to be. So I just really feel it’s an important part of history that people need to remember.”
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 Seeger showed us was that any one of us can challenge the power of the system around us. Any one of us can stand up and say “we have the right to be who we are, speak to the issues that are relevant to us and the government has no business intervening in any peaceful act.”
Seeger may not be with us a lot longer (like I said, he’s 88), but he’ll be a part of my life long after he’s gone.
Crossposted to Daily Kos:
“I believe in a sacred contract between our country and America’s veterans and military families. We must stand by those who stand by us. When our service men and women sacrifice so much to defend our freedom and secure peace around the world, we have a moral obligation to take care of them and their families.”– John Edwards
Our Veterans are in serious trouble. Their suicide rates are way up. Paul Rieckhoff has been posting about this, and CBS is finally giving it some necessary attention:
In the meantime, there’s a lot, as laypeople, we can do to help veterans, even when they’re dealing with serious mental illness.
This is a metaphor I commonly use when talking about mental illness:
Think of the human psyche as something which needs to be supported in order to avoid falling into an abyss. Most of us have support of some sort, both internal and external. We have a great deal which we need to balance, so picture someone on a platform above this abyss which needs balance and structure to keep us from falling off when small things (minor gusts of wind) and major things (hurricanes and tornadoes) threaten our sense of balance and self.
Most of us have strong mechanisms. We not only have the platform, but we have guy wires holding it in place, and keep it well maintained and patched (internal mechanisms). We also have external support (nets and ladders) which can catch us when we do fall, (as any one of us is bound to do from time to time, no matter how well designed our platform).
People with mental illness have that platform, but it’s not well-maintained. The effort of maintaining it is too complicated for them, so they can fall through the holes more easily. The platform itself is patchy, and they can fall off it from time to time, but from day to day, many of them manage fine. If, however, a small wind blows by, it’s more of a threat than it is to the rest of us. If a large gust comes by, it could mean major trouble.
There’s always a ladder, and when trouble comes, there are ways to climb out, but not everyone has the skills to find that latter or to know how to get back out of that abyss again. Some are so scared of everything that the ladder itself is seen as a threat. A rare few are so scared of the stability that they leave the platform willingly and never intend to come back to it.
Mental illness happens for a variety of reasons, and it manifests itself in multiple ways. But at its core, it’s almost always about finding ways to cope with the complexities of the world around us, and not everyone knows how to do that.
This connects with the concept of Psychological Adequacy: the ability to handle and withstand various stresses that come at us from time to time. Not everyone can handle the same kind of stress in the same way, but with good support and the right kind of assistance, anyone’s ability to withstand external pressures can be improved.
As a society, we find physical injuries disquieting at times, but we are used to seeing them. Once, when giving a presentation to a group of medical students, one of the other presenters was a veteran who’d lost both his arms in an electrical accident some decades earlier. He showed up, went to introduce himself to me and held out one of his metal appendages to shake my hand. This was a new experience for me but I shook his “hand” and didn’t think much of it after the fact.
Later, when talking to the group, he mentioned how he does that as a matter of routine. People meet him and think “do I talk about the hook? Do I look at the hook? Do I avoid the hook?” They don’t know what to do or say about it, so he just puts it right up to them so they can actually touch it for a moment and just get the whole “what do I do/say/think about the hook” thing out of the way and over with. He was right — it worked perfectly well. I was completely at ease around him from the moment I actually touched the prosthetic.
Physical injuries are complicating to social interaction, but once you get past them, they’re not very complicated at all.
Mental issues are infinitely more complex, and they tend to touch a certain fear and lack of confidence inside of us and make it much harder to progress. But really, they’re just injuries: damage from experience, chemistry, genetics, etc.
The problem is that they’re injuries which are easy to hide, which most of us prefer not to think about, and which can take time to manifest, sometimes surprising the victim as well as everyone else, and sometimes our first instincts as humans do little to solve the problems.
Treating everything as though it’s normal, for example, might not actually help. When people dealing with extreme trauma are thrust suddenly into an environment of extreme normalcy, it’s sometimes difficult for them to find their place. If the normalcy is so enforced (with the intent of making someone feel at home or comfortable), it can actually make things worse, playing off of the internal sense that if you don’t feel at home or comfortable that there’s something wrong with you.
In the meantime, as IAVA reports, the professional component of this is far from adequate:
90% of military psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers reported no formal training or supervision in the recommended PTSD therapies, and there is a general shortage of trained mental health professionals in the military. The Pentagon screens returning troops for mental health problems via an ineffective system of paperwork. Studies have shown that many troops are not filling out their mental health forms, that there are serious disincentives for troops to fill the form out accurately, and that those whose forms indicate they need care do not consistently get referrals.
Let’s talk again about that platform– even if you come out of combat completely intact from a physical level and never suffer a direct attack, you know you’re in danger while there. This weakens your platform. If you kill someone, even if you’re in no direct danger yourself, your psyche probably suffers some wounds. If your friend or a member of your unit is killed or injured, this does damage as well. If you’re injured and alone for a period of time, not knowing how it’s going to turn out, that’s got to cause problems.
But here’s the thing: all of these wounds are invisible and to people suffering from them, they can take on the form of unexplained fears, terrors and nightmares.
Think about what this means to someone who’s a trained soldier: you’ve got the experience to stare death in the face, but you can’t sit in a restaurant without having your back to the wall because your hands shake when you can’t see the whole room you’re in. You’ve survived 110 degree heat, sniper attacks, land mines, IEDs, but you get home and you almost go off the road when you hear a car backfire.
And you don’t want to talk about this with the people you love and care about because they’ve done so much to make you feel at home and you’re terrified and you don’t want them to be terrified, too, because you’re the strong one and you’ve always been the strong one.
But there’s nowhere for you to go because the VA doesn’t have the resources to provide you with adequate care and even if they could get you in right away, they’re not training their staff to recognize the symptoms.
And you don’t know enough about other soldiers who are surviving with the same thing you’re holding onto, holding in and your platform isn’t just weak now; it’s getting ready to collapse. But you don’t see it because you don’t want to see it and no one around you sees it because they want you to be well and happy and are so invested in you being well and happy that they just don’t have the ability to separate themselves out and be objective about it.
And it’s not just that you’re scared, but terrified of it.
So what do you do?
What’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan isn’t just about the damage to the thousands of soldiers who have died, or even those who suffer physical debilitating physical injury. It’s also about the tens of thousands who, whenever they eventually come home, will be facing their own demons. The more we avoid dealing with what’s to come, the worse it will be for our veterans, their families, their communities and their friends.
None of this happens in a vacuum. The damage on the soldiers is bad enough, but when you factor in the damage to families and communities, it’s incalculable.
I don’t have wisdom about this. I don’t have a magic solution. I don’t have a quick fix. I just know that unless we take it seriously, we’re in really big trouble.
I started this with a quote from John Edwards. He’s my favorite in this race, but I’m sure other Democrats have great positions on this, too, and I’m glad to see you all posting links to your own favorite candidates’ point of view in the comments, but I’m going to close with one more quote, from Edwards’ policy position on the treatment of PTSD:
Once our service members become veterans, we have to make sure the system doesn’t fail them. As president, Edwards will create a new national chain of care to ensure that no veteran again falls through the cracks. Because many veterans receive treatment outside the VA system, this chain will coordinate treatment and benefits in outreach centers and clinics in every county where a veteran resides, both within and outside the VA network. Edwards will also improve training for health personnel to recognize and treat PTSD; establish uniform standards for mental health care to address the wide range of quality of care; increase counseling resources within TRICARE and VA networks and permit access outside of the networks; and ensure that outreach is extended to family members who can help recognize symptoms. Caring for the newest generation of veterans must be accomplished without neglecting the continuing needs of veterans from previous generations.
It’s a damned fine start.