Let’s start with a simple test:

Please do this before reading further, as it provides the foundation for the rest of the piece.

We can talk about metaphors– missing the forest for the trees, or vice versa.  We can talk about why the video above was problematic for so many people.  About half of us, when watching it, miss the big, obvious aspect of it.  

It’s also why I missed this at first:

If you don’t get it, look at it for a moment.  It will come to you…

Got it yet?

Thought so.

And the fact of the matter is, it’s easy to miss big things.  Let’s, for example, talk about Cognitive Dissonance.  There are two words I’m going to explain here– many of you understand them, but some don’t, and better safe than sorry.

Cognitive comes from the same root word as “cognition.”  It pertains to the process of thought.  I think most of us understand that term.

Dissonance is a musical term.  It’s two root words– “dis” / “dys” meaning badly formed or structured, such as in dysfunctional or dystopia (opposite of “utopia”) and “sonnance” which refers to sounds (as in “sonics”) come together to imply two notes which don’t sound right together.  

Cognitive Dissonance is the same concept applied not to music but to thought.  Cognitive Dissonance is produced when we can’t make clear sense out of what we’re perceiving or doing.  

The classic cognitive dissonance experiment involves giving people an incredibly boring task and then telling them that as part of the experiment they have to lie to other people and tell them it was very exciting.

The lie, for most people, produces a certain level of dissonance.  However, here’s where it gets really interesting: we don’t just lie.  We either want to convince ourselves that we didn’t lie, or we want to feel justified in having lied.

So what happens later when you’re asked to evaluate the incredibly boring task yourself?

If you don’t have any reason for having lied to other people about it, you actually convince yourself that it’s less boring than it was.  You actually claim that it was kind of fun, which is exactly the lie you’ve been telling other people.

In other words, you’ve lied so much to other people that you have to lie to yourself to justify that lie.

IF… on the other hand, you were paid money to lie… you don’t adjust your own beliefs about the task.  You are more comfortable having lied because you had a reason to lie.  You were paid to lie so you’re okay with it and your own beliefs don’t shift.

At this point, you might be thinking “hey, what about that crazy video I watched?  That kind of freaked me out!”

Well, cognitive dissonance needs resolution– when our brains can’t make sense out of things, we find ways to cope.  One way is to lie.  Another way is for the brain to simply ignore that which does not suit it.  This is why Lea Delaria, as she notes, had to keep coming out to her parents.  Delaria describes how she came out to her parents and then came over for dinner a few months later and there was a man she didn’t know there.  Turns out they were trying to fix her up with “Steve.”  This, by the way, is Lea Delaria (there are some gratuitous lesbian sexual references, but if those bother you, they’ll probably go right over your head):

So back to this dissonance.  You can only ignore this dissonance for so long– there’s generally a breaking point if it pushes too much.  Think of it like a rubber band being stretched out– on one hand there’s what you think, and the other side is what you do or see.  When you stretch far enough either one side or the other has to slide towards the one that’s harder to move.  If you stretch it too far, it breaks and the illusion you’ve created for yourself collapses.

What’s interesting is that it’s often easier for us to, at least to a point, change our attitudes than change our behavior.  I’ve written a bit here about internalized racism and my own struggles with it– I don’t think what I’ve discussed is uncommon, except in the sense that I’ve studied enough about psychology to have some conscious sense about these things that are largely unconscious to most of us.  

But for a lot of people, when they say something racist, and are called on it, their first response is defensive and/or justifying.  That’s because the idea “I’m not racist” combined with the behavior “I just used the phrase ‘jew ’em down’ ” doesn’t fit.  So instead, we often try to find ways to move them closer.  Since we’ve already made the statement, that’s fixed and immobile, so instead our beliefs budge.  We try one of several approaches:

1. we insist that the person making the accusation of racism is ignorant, hostile, or “other.” (i.e., belittle the idea that there’s anything wrong with what we did);


2. we insist that the incident of racism doesn’t mean what it does;


3. we claim that we were just joking;


4. we pretend like we never said it in the first place.

Similarly, when you are fans of a show (or public figure) which urges violence against public figures, it’s easy to dismiss that talk of violence as just rhetoric, not serious, done in jest, etc.  It’s easy to claim that those who object to it are paranoid or delusional.  It’s easy to mock an cajole in response.   This all is in the interest of resolving cognitive dissonance.  I’m a good person, so I would never urge violence against other people, but I like this show which urges violence against other people.  So this show must not really urge violence against other people.  When he says “shoot them in the head” he must be talking metaphorically.

Or… alternately… if your grasp on reality is a little more tenuous, you may find yourself thinking “this man is right.  I need to go shoot these people in the head.  I have to do it or they’ll shoot me in the head first.”  That response, of course, is extremely rare, and may not even exist.  

But when you’ve been promoting this sort of language, this argument for justifiable homicide, and someone does get shot in the head, once again this places the strain of cognitive dissonance on your psyche.  You have to make choices, and they’re not fun choices.  

You can choose to convince yourself that it’s all unrelated, that everything happens in a vacuum and that there is no problem with a media figure urging violence against others and that couldn’t possibly influence everyone.

You can choose to convince yourself that there might be a connection somewhere but that it’s not that big a deal anyway and that everyone gets threats from time to time and it’s just part of being in politics so don’t worry yourself about it.

You can choose to convince yourself that these threats are the fault of the politicians who are trying to do bad things or that they clearly didn’t take the threats seriously because they didn’t have security follow them everywhere.

And you can choose to convince yourself that these politicians deserve what they got.  

Put more succinctly:

The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his

  deception, the one who lies with sincerity.

–Andre Gide, “Journal of the Counterfiters”

…or…

I meant to do that.

–Pee Wee Herman

I’m writing this because it’s my belief that we need to find better ways to communicate with the people whose cognitive dissonance leaves them open to having it challenged.  I’m talking about the people who think that what happened to Giffords was just horrible, but how is that possibly Glenn Beck’s fault?  I’m talking about the people who believe in civil unions, but not same sex marriage.  I’m talking about the people who are against racism but think it’s largely a thing of the past. I’m talking about the people who don’t want any government takeover of their medicare.  I’m talking about the people who make barely enough money to sustain themselves yet object to more taxes for the rich.  

When we engage people, understanding psychology and understanding the way our minds work is a crucial step to effecting change.  Given what I’ve just told you about cognitive dissonance, I’m going to give a one question quiz:

You are part of a project designed to influence people to become more energy efficient.  Which of these approaches will be more effective?

Scenario A:  You give homeowners a quiz about their belief in energy efficiency and a list of ways they can improve it.

Scenario B: You give homeowners a quiz about their belief in energy efficiency and, for those who indicate support for efficiency, tell them how their energy usage may differ from their claimed support for it

Note: I originally wrote this for a non-Vermont audience, so I cover material that’s known to people here on GMD but didn’t want to reedit it completely –julie

per today’s Burlington Free Press:

Vermont can fix its health-care system by moving to a single-payer plan that would provide all residents with health coverage, end the claims chaos for doctors and cost most employers and workers less, a consultant told the Legislature on Wednesday.

For those unfamiliar, Vermont’s got three viable political parties: Democrat, Republican and Progressive.  We currently have Democrats running the Governor’s office and with sizable majorities in both the Senate and House.  When you combine those numbers with the progressive, those majorities grow.  In the Senate, it’s 22 Democrats to 8 Republicans (Pie Chart).  In the House it’s 94 Democrats, 5 Progressives, 48 Republicans, and 3 Independents (Pie Chart).  

Here’s what’s important to remember about such sizable Democratic majorities in Vermont: not all politics here run directly across party lines.  We overrode a Governor’s veto of same sex marriage with the help of a few prominent Republicans and we lost one Democrat on that veto override (he didn’t have the courage to vote against it– he just didn’t bother to show).

That said, we are in a different position now than we were two years ago.  When we passed same-sex marriage, we had a Republican governor and needed an override.  Now that Peter Shumlin, one of the Senators who pushed really hard to get same-sex marriage passed, is governor, we no longer have to think in terms of super majorities and overrides.  We have to think in terms of leadership in the House and Senate, and committee chairs.  If this is going to be stopped anywhere, it will be there.  

Before I go on, I want to clarify a couple things here: there is solid opposition to any form of single payer plan.  People will oppose “government health care,” and despite the fact that this is a complete misnomer (single payer is not single provider), it’s one of those cries that gets people kind of crazy.  So messaging is important on this.  

We have the tea party in Vermont, just like everyplace else, and they will show up to protest and harass and they’ll write incoherent letters and gin up controversy and try to corner you and explain the Federal Reserve to you.  It’s not a pretty sight.  

But they don’t have the foothold that they have in other parts of the country.  Presuming to speak on behalf of the many Vermonters who have some amount of sanity left, I’ll just note that we’d like it to stay that way.  They may cause trouble, but they also tried to primary one of those Republicans who supported same-sex marriage and it kind of failed, spectacularly, so I’m not too worried about them at this juncture.

I’m, frankly, much more concerned about Democrats right now.  Democrats hold all the power in this scenario.  Governor Shumlin wants this, and campaigned on it.  

Currently, the plan most in favor is a “public/private hybrid plan.”  The full draft of the report presented yesterday is available here, though there seems to be something wrong with the file at the moment ’cause I opened it and it makes no sense.  An extremely vague summary is available here as well.  Neither of these things are helpful.  I primarily posted the draft link so that when a more useful version pops up, we have it for reference.

There are a couple pitfalls with the plan as I currently understand it, and I’d like to see how these are addressed.

First, the idea is to use payroll taxes and taxes on businesses to pay for the plan.  I have no problem with this, but on a state level, how will it work?  If I live in Vermont but work in New Hampshire, will my wages be taxed additionally?  If I work in Vermont, but live in New York, will I have extra taxes taken out without any benefit?  These are small questions, but not unimportant ones and without the ability to review the plan in detail, they will persist.  They will also be the sort of questions that people opposed to single payer will use to pick away at it, so the messaging on this sort of thing needs to be clear a.s.a.p.

Secondly, do we have the infrastructure to implement the plan?  The suggestion is that we contract out the claims processing system through a private bid.  We do a lot of outsourcing our IT in Vermont and I think it’s a mistake when we go out of state or even out of state government for this sort of thing. We pay ridiculous numbers of dollars to companies who charge us thousands to fix small problems and hold us hostage to their demands because we’ve invested so much in the inferior software they’ve built for us that we have to continue.  I’d much rather see us spend less money, hire a small IT team in-house and build it from inside.  This involves a more hands on approach, but it also requires that the people involved in building it be invested and accountable to their own community.

Some of the opposition is going to complain about job loss, claiming that people responsible for medical claims processing will lose work and it will put people out of business.  So I have a suggestion for neutralizing those complaints: as part of the new system, offer an incentive for people to rehire those displaced.  I.e., if we do use a private partner for claims processing, give them a credit for hiring people who already work in claims processing, such as paying 50% of the first three months salary of any Vermonter displaced by this plan during the first five months of its implementation.  It will mute opposition and keep people employed in Vermont.

The strongest benefits of this plan are fairly straightforward:

Universal care:  if done right, this will provide health care for everyone in Vermont.  That alone is tremendous.

Better business climate:  people will tell you that business are opposed to single payer.  Not all are, and some see the value of it.  This is Paul Millman, president of Chroma in Bellows Falls, VT, being introduced by Bernie Sanders, and assisted by Peter Shumlin:

Shorter version: we’d rather spend our money on taxes than spend it on health care costs.

Moving away from a profit model: we’ve got no reason to make profit a part of health care, but that’s our system.  Insurance companies are therefore invested in their bottom line and not the care of their people.  That needs to change, and it needs to change today.

I want to just note: this is not a done deal.  We have conservative Democrats in Vermont, and some of them have positions of power in the House and Senate.  We need to push them, and push them hard at times.  This is a battle, and it’s not going to be won by wishing or hoping it happens.  It takes work, effort and planning.  As we should all know by now, having Democrats in power is no guarantee of anything, but it’s am important step.

Per today’s Burlington Free Press:

MONTPELIER – State Auditor Tom Salmon… confirmed Tuesday that he is considering running for the U.S. Senate next year against independent incumbent Bernie Sanders.

[…]

He said he would announce his decision by March 5, the birthday of the U.S. Navy Seabees, with whom Salmon served in the Reserves in Iraq. He chose that date, he said, because the Seabees are predicated on a can-do attitude.

[…]

“He’s out of balance,” Salmon said. “We need someone who can operate from the center.”

So…

I think I just have to say how much I love this idea.  Not only will it make the Senate race far more interesting than I expected (in that it will be interesting in any sense of the word whatsoever), it will give us a shot at getting someone into the auditor’s office who (1) has some sense of what the job actually entails and who (2) does not think it’s appropriate to use the position of Auditor to evade a DUI.  (Please, Mr. Salmon.  It’s not like you’re Governor.  At least people know what a Governor does.  “Auditor” won’t get you out of a ticket any more than “High Bailiff” will)

So, please, please, please, Tom.  Run.  Run like you’ve never ran before.  Go for that brass ring and ring that bell!  

Go for it.

Please?

I’m spring boarding this from this excellent piece, about racism and white privilege, regarding an ongoing conflict between him and his partner regarding which deli to go to:

But finally I just confronted him. “What’s up? Why don’t you ever want to shop at Deli A? It’s nicer. It’s cleaner. I like it better.”

He told me, “The owner of Deli A watches me like a hawk. He follows me around. He thinks because I’m black I’m going to shoplift.”

In my teens, I was dark.  I was in the sun all the time, and I lived in mostly white parts of the Midwest.   Though I’m not a wasp by any stretch (I’m Italian and Jewish) when I was younger, I was taken for a wide variety of ethnic groups, most often from the Mideast.

But since I had a basically whiteish ethnic identity, it took me some time to realize that not everyone got eyed nervously by store security.  I was also kind of a stereotype breaker even for people who thought I was non-white: I would add up the prices of everything I was purchasing in my head and have exact change ready before the cashier told me the price, so any store where they knew me realized I was probably a risk to myself, but not anyone else.  But new stores?  New places?  I was tailed routinely.

I learned Clark’s lesson in reverse– my experience being white(ish) led me to think that white and black people alike were mistrusted by authority and looked on suspiciously.  But it also led me to think that once someone got to know me, they’d realize I wasn’t a threat, and that that would ring true for everyone.

Of course, that’s not the case– something I learned as an adult.  

In high school, I was moved from an urban, primarily black, town to one that was almost entirely white.  I went from fitting in with the people around me to being one of the darkest skinned people for more than a hundred miles.  There were only two people at my high school who were darker than me.  They were sisters, and their father was black.  Knowing the younger of these sisters was what started to show me the difference.

For them, they understood a lot of things I did not about race, because they’d learned it fairly early on that the treatment of them based on their race was a permanent thing.  Even if they wanted to, neither could ever have passed for white.  I had the choice to change my appearance fairly easily.  I could never pass for thin, and that came with its own problems, but if I wanted to pass for white, I could do so fairly easily.  In my case, as I noted before, whatever prejudice I felt about my race to that point wasn’t something I recognized as being about race as much as it was just about things that happened to everyone, but seeing what all three of us experienced in an almost entirely white environment?  

I was told, on multiple occasions by classmates, to “go back to Mexico.”  The younger of the two sisters had doors slammed in her face by people.  She didn’t like to talk about this much– I know that worse happened, but she never told me what it was.  She did, after all, perceive me as one of the white kids.  She wasn’t wrong about that.  I was one of the white kids, even if I didn’t quite get what that meant.  

I had friends at the school– we all did.  But no one really stuck up for those that were perceived as ethnic minorities.  It was uncharted territory for them.  A bunch of white kids (myself included) don’t generally learn about what it means to be black and what sort of lasting damage their prejudice can do.  They weren’t bad people.  They were just out of their depths.

This is something I let kids off the hook for.  I’m not as inclined to do so with the adults that perpetuate the problem and turn a blind eye to it.

At this point I should probably explain something: I am an extremely perceptive person.  I can look at interactions, look at situations and circumstances, and see things that no one else seems to get.  I am wicked smart, often too smart for my own good, because I get stuck in following ideas and thoughts to the point where I get excited bout learning something new without always thinking that I might be blurting something out that someone else doesn’t want to hear.  This is, on occasion, socially awkward and has led to serious problems between me and friends.  I don’t have a religion, but I do believe in authenticity and honesty.  I think we’re kind of lost without them.  

I mention this because I can be extremely obtuse as well, and when I am emotionally involved, my ability to be objective and perceptive can go out the window.  This means that when I am, for example, attracted to someone, I find it more difficult to assess whether or not they are lying to me.  I can do it, but I have to kind of push myself to do in a way that feels very uncomfortable.

So at that point, in the thick of this sea of prejudice, while also trying to find my way through a new school and deal with all the crazy stuff that happens in high school, I found it very complicated to understand everything that was going on at the time.  A lot of what I’m perceiving about it now is from introspection and afterthought, not stuff I could see fully when it was going on.

But even some things I get pretty quickly, even being in the thick of it.  

The older of the two sisters had an injury of some sort to her foot which caused her to be late to school a couple times.  She got called into the guidance office about it along with their mother.  Her guidance officer told her mother “I know she has problems with her feet because white and black feet are different and when you mix them there can be trouble, but…”

I knew that racism existed before I heard that story.  I’d read history.  I’d even seen some fairly nasty examples of it, but that was the first time it clicked with me that it was, in contemporary times, still part of our ongoing story, and direct and personal.  I think it was the first time that it clicked with me that it was so incredibly stupid, but that’s a whole other story.  

I’ve written a bit already, but this is all intended as prelude to give you a little background into my perspective here.  As I’ve written before, I developed (unconsciously) some of my own racist attitudes during this time as well.  It was easy to do– if people perceived me as non-white but treated me like a white person once they got to know me, why couldn’t other ethnic groups do the same.  In some ways, it’s easy seeing the world in such simple ways because it prevents you from being forced to acknowledge that you’re full of crap.  There’s also an emotional investment for many people in seeing the world as better, more just and more fair than it is.  If I think of the world as generally “fair,” I find it harder to admit that racism exists.  Even it if does exist, I find it harder to admit that it can’t be overcome, which falls into a very easily racist trap that translates to “other ethnic groups overcome racism and find success so why can’t blacks?”  Not once in that logic is the possibility that white people hate blacks more than they do other ethnic groups recognized, nor is the possibility that there’s a big difference between ethnic groups who come here by choice and those who are brought here involuntarily.

I’m not suggesting that we need to bring slavery into every discussion involving African Americans.  I’m just suggesting that we sometimes seem to have a pathology about even acknowledging the possibility that not only did we royally screw a whole lot of people, that in our effort to avoid responsibility for that, we’re still screwing them.

In the broader sense, I think the whole tea party, big picture, Obama hating crapfest we’ve been subjected to over the past two years was something we probably should have seen coming.  I think the blindness we had to it was similar to the blindness I had about race when I was younger.  It’s not just that– it’s that, as white people, I think a lot of us hoped that the election of Obama would somehow help us move past racism.  We weren’t stupid– we knew racism would continue to exist, but at least I had hoped that it would be moved to the back burner, something that was treated as more of an a fading foolishness that would be gone in 30 years.  

Of course, that was unrealistic, but I don’t think I got how unrealistic it was.  But I think non-white people did.  Every friend of mine who was part of an ethnic minority saw trouble coming with the tea party long before I did.  They saw the race baiting not as an extinction burst (i.e., the sort of frantic ramping up of a virus before it finally dies) but the continuation of something they’d seen their whole lives.  

And, once again, when I can step back and be objective, it’s kind of obvious and I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming.  

I don’t think many politicians are necessarily racist.  They might be, but I don’t know.  I don’t even care that much.  What I do know is that some of them are smart enough to know that their constituents are racist (though most would never admit it).  So when, for example, the word “Macaca” is used, it’s one of those things that dehumanizes non-whites in ways that are usually subtle enough to access white racism while slipping beneath the radar.  Similarly, the anti-Harold Ford “I met Harold at the playboy party” ad, plays off of white fears of blacks.  

And even with all that, I didn’t see that there was so much outright hatred and hostility towards blacks that would become so visceral and vivid on a national scale.

I feel pretty damned stupid for that.

I urge everyone to take a moment to read this piece on Daily Kos.  An excerpt:

If you maintain a blog or website, and you post blockquoted text, photos, and images from copyrighted sources such as newspaper websites, you could unknowingly find yourself served with a lawsuit by Righthaven or another firm like Righthaven. Here’s how Righthaven operates specifically:

They purchase the copyright to an article or image from the newspaper that they represent. Then they search the Internet for websites, blogs, and forums where those articles or images were posted without authorization. They find out the identity of the owner of the website or the identity of the blogger or forum member. Then they serve that individual or organization with a lawsuit for copyright infringement. Actually, there is another step that they do between steps two and three, but I will get to that later.

It’s common practice for us, as bloggers, to quote small excerpts of pieces for argument, elucidation and sometimes just plain amusement value.   This is, of course, entirely legal, but if a group such as Righthaven chooses to go after us, many of us don’t have the resources to hire an attorney or defend ourselves in court.  Common practice is for people to end up settling out of court to make the lawsuit go away.  Part of the problem with this is not the lawsuits, but the way it creates an atmosphere in which less information is shared because we are unwilling to risk it.

Similarly, there’s some concern about this:

Cosponsored by state Rep. Carolyn Partridge (D-Rockingham), the bill would expand Vermont’s “disturbing the peace” statute to include electronic communications that “knowingly and intentionally” cause “false and defamatory” postings to be made on a website. The crime would be punishable by a fine of up to $250 and up to three months in jail; on second offense, the fine and jail time increase to $500 and six months.

My concern with this, however, is not nearly as great as with the former case.  In the former case, someone is abusing the cost of the legal system to get people to cough up money to protect themselves.  In the latter, the problem is primarily that this bill doesn’t actually do anything new.  We’ve already got a law on the books about disturbing the peace that includes electronic communication:

§ 1027. Disturbing peace by use of telephone or other electronic communications

(a) A person who, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass or annoy, makes contact by means of a telephonic or other electronic communication with another and (i) makes any request, suggestion or proposal which is obscene, lewd, lascivious or indecent; (ii) threatens to inflict injury or physical harm to the person or property of any person; or (iii) disturbs, or attempts to disturb, by repeated anonymous telephone calls or other electronic communications, whether or not conversation ensues, the peace, quiet or right of privacy of any person at the place where the communication or communications are received shall be fined not more than $250.00 or be imprisoned not more than three months or both. If the defendant has previously been convicted of a violation of this section or of an offense under the laws of another state or of the United States which would have been an offense under this act if committed in this state, the defendant shall be fined not more than $500.00 or imprisoned for not more than six months, or both.

All that Obie’s suggested change does is to clarify that “electronic communication” includes anonymous posts on web sites.

I agree that freedom of speech is critical, but there’s a big difference between freedom of speech and freedom to harass or intimidate people.  We’ve kicked people from Green Mountain Daily for attempting to invade the personal lives of group members, and with good reason.  Anonymous or not, posting about someone’s employer, posting about their family?  That’s all illegal under the law I’ve just posted, and should remain so.  That’s a far cry from posting things that piss people off, or responding in kind to posts that are made here in which both members are kind of going after one another (not that anything like that ever happens) in a personal way.

I want us to be vigilant about freedom of speech, but privacy and the right not to be harassed, slandered or libeled are important as well, and we can strike a good balance.  What Righthaven does clearly crosses that line.  What we, as bloggers, do, generally doesn’t, especially since our primary targets are public officials and people working with government.  Obie’s legislation, while redundant, doesn’t seem to change current legislation except by making clear that defamation is part of the statute and clarifying online communications.  I don’t actually see a problem with this.  

I, of course, welcome arguments to the contrary and look forward to seeing you guys tell me how wrong I am.

When I was young, I used to play with balance.  I started with railroad tracks, and moved on to fences and other objects: anything I could do to stabilize myself on a thin, small surface was fun to me.  I even would walk on top of guardrail fences on cliff edges.  I was that confident about it, not that I would never fall, but that if I did fall, I could control the direction of the fall.

And I was really good at falling.

There’s a metaphor I like to use when I discuss mental illness with my students to try to get them a better sense of what mental illness is and how it works:

Imagine that everyone’s relative state of mind exists on a plateau: the stronger, more solid the plateau, the more robust our mental state and the more able we are to cope with change.

The plateau has ladders and ropes hanging from it.  Even when we’re buffeted and accosted enough to get thrown, we have ways of climbing back up and maintaining stability again.  

But not everyone has the same quality of ladders and ropes.  Some people have ladders which are weaker.  Rungs may snap off if grabbed to quickly.

Some people have a solid, level surface on top.  Others have slants and crags, ready to trip them up in emergencies.  A lot of times, those cracks grow deeper when things go badly.

Different events and circumstances in our lives make things better or worse.  Strong personal ties?  Friendships?  Those can be part of the ladder or make it more resilient.  Being bullied or emotionally dismantled?  Those do harm, make the mountaintop harder to navigate.

For some of us, it’s all about order: if you can plan your moves, think about them, and work them through, you can get through anything, but introduce noise, distraction, frustration?  That makes everything more complicated.

For most of us, this isn’t about illness as much as it is about stress and responding to it.  But for the ones that fall, and fall hard, some of them don’t know how to find their way back up.  They don’t even know which direction “up” is.  Some of them get help, and learn how to find it.  Some figure it out on their own, eventually.  Others just fall from the gentle graces of sanity and never find their way back.

Different factors affect how this works.  For some of us, falling and climbing makes us better climbers and makes us better at finding our way back to ourselves.  For others it gets more difficult with every fall.

Some of us have platforms that seem as solid as a rock but one major stress factor takes them off and the platforms shatter and burst.  

Others seem completely unstable their whole lives, but manage to live comfortably throughout it all, never really falling or even being in danger of it, as though their proximity to the fall is what keeps them from falling.  Or, as Delerium phrased it in the Sandman story “Three Septembers and a January,” “He’s not mine, is he?  His madness… His madness keeps him sane.”

This metaphor only goes so far– there are so many kinds of mental illness out there.  Some fit this framing better than others and some don’t fall into it at all, but it’s a start.

I mention all this because sometimes it feels as though, as a culture, we’ve gone off the rails.  The frequency of public commentary which is tainted with violence imagery or suggestions of harm?  That’s a problem.  It may or may not trigger people who are mentally ill to do horrendous acts.   But it adds stress.  It buffets us.  

I mentioned before that I was good at falling.  In the strictly literal sense, I’m not so good at balance as I used to be– I’ve had injuries over the years that have affected the flexibility of my body to respond.  My legs are slightly uneven and I’m currently living with a great deal of what I hope is temporary pain.  But that’s beside the point.  

But in the metaphorical sense, I’ve fallen a lot of times in my life, and I’ve always climbed out again.  I think it’s made me stronger, and I think it’s made me saner to be so close to the edges from time to time that I can see the abyss and know what it is and choose not to dwell on it.  I still know how to walk with balance and I still know how to fall with grace.  

My world changed Saturday, ever so much.  I think for anyone who’s paying any sort of attention, it had to have.  Even people who would deny it do so primarily out of fear.  For some people it changed in much more direct, drastic

There’s a young man in jail right now who, for whatever reason, doesn’t know what up is, does not know how to fall, and has managed to swan dive off that platform and leave a body count behind.  I will not recount the factors that led to this.  I’m talked to death about all of it.  I will, however, just note in passing that without such easy access to automatic weapons, that body count might not have been so bad.  

As a culture and as a society, I think our language matters, not in the sense that anyone using eliminationism is necessarily directly responsible when the mentally unstable who experience auditory hallucinations can’t tell the difference between the voices in their own heads and the voices in the media.  But it sure as hell doesn’t help matters when that’s the case.  

Right now, as a country, we’re on the balance.  We’ve just seen into that abyss and where it can lead– we’ve got people trying to find someone to blame for it all, and we’ve got people lashing out because they feel partially responsible.  

And right here, right now, we have a choice: do we step back from that cliff side?  Do we choose to continue in the direction we’ve been going?  Do we embrace more rhetoric, more talk of violence, more talk of the “bullseye” painted on politicians?  Or do we say “enough” and give ourselves a little room to recover from this, to use it as an opportunity to change our world for the better?

I count myself among the lucky ones that I can think clearly about this sort of thing without losing my anger over what happened, without feeling bitter.  I can feel sad about it without falling into depression and I can be enraged over it without considering violence as a serious option.  I know others who do not do so so easily.

I don’t have a clear lesson to take from all of what’s happened except to say that there are a series of stories that came out of this event, some tragic, some heartbreaking and others inspiring and wonderful.  I’m making a choice to learn from all of it, and to take the best I can from it and to try to find a better world tomorrow.

I, along with a small group of Vermont reporters, participated in a press conference with Welch this morning.  Here are some selected notes & quotes, which may include typos:

Welch started in Congress in the same year as Giffords, and they’re fairly close.  Welch is talking about what a great listener she is and how passionate her work is: “in these times when things are so controversial and heated she was always gentle but direct, clear and warm in what she conveyed when she was taking a very clear view… showing enormous respect for whomever it was she was speaking with.”

“This is an absolute catastrophe for the people who knew Gabby… really for all of us.”

“You fight hard for your point of view, but there’s no final legislative victories.  All of us should have some humility…  What I’ve seen in Vermont is that Vermonters know that civility really matters.  It’s creating a culture of mutual respect.  You can contest highly contested ideas.  The challenges that face any state or country are serious… issues motivate people and get them extremely animated… they care about it.  

There’s different points of view on every issue.  The only way you can make progress is… you do it always with the restraint that the person with the other point of view is motivated with the same high ideals.”

Now talking about the respect shown in his race with Rainville in 2006.  “At the end of the day, Vermonters who didn’t vote for me felt it was a fair race.”

“Civility is not about manners– it’s about creating a culture where the people can effectively correct problems.”

“The Vermont approach, where civility is the foundation of our politics is the foundation of America.”

Now reporters are asking questions so I’ll follow up in the comments.

Reading a piece on Think Progress about Giffords, I noticed the “related stories” list at the end.  In some cases, I followed the links.  In others, I went directly with the original story.  here’s a sampling.  More after the fold:

• After Obama’s Election, Right-Wing Extremists ‘May Be Gaining New Recruits’;


• Woman stomped on the head outside Conway-Paul debate;


• Republican candidate says violent overthrow ‘on the table’;


• Man posts bomb instructions on Facebook, is charged in plot;


• Boehner embraces tea party, admitting some are “anarchists who want to kill all of us in public office”;


• Tea Party Sells ‘America’s Most Wanted’ Playing Cards With Pictures Of Federal Lawmakers;


• Democratic Party offices vandalized across the country;


• Pentagon Shooter Was Right-Wing, Anti-Government Terrorist ;


• Rep. King Justifies Suicide Attack On IRS: Sympathizes With Hatred Of IRS, Hopes For Its Destruction ;


• GOP congressional candidate pretends to shoot at Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. ;


• Calls For Violence Repeatedly Stoked By Conservative Voices ;


• FBI Arrests White Supremacist Blogger Hal Turner For Threatening To Kill Federal Judges;

I am livid, beyond belief, and having trouble forming coherent thoughts about this.  So I will just say two things.  This is a comment I left in another piece:

The more pictures of someone you have with a target over their face, the more rhetoric you use indicating that someone is a Manchurian candidate, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, etc., the more chance there is that when some random person goes off the deep end, they’ll pick the target that you marked.

You don’t need to pull the trigger. You don’t need to be directly responsible. You just have to say the right things in enough places and coyly claim you were just being rhetorical before someone with easy access to a weapon decides to pull the trigger.

And I will end on a note of hope and possible inspiration: an intern with the campaign, who’d been there for just five days, may have saved Giffords life by running directly towards the gunfire and applying emergency medical care.

So, as the Rachel Maddow show blog noted:

…the Constitution will be read in its most modern, amended form. This will prevent lawmakers from having to recite politically uncomfortable portions, notably the provisions on the “three-fifths compromise” under which slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of taxation and representation.

This happens just as we learn that Mark Twain is being censored as well.

I shall now paraphrase what should be a familiar phrase, and say that those who attempt to rewrite history are bound to repeat it.

Here’s the thing: we are a messy nation, with a deep and consistent history of racism, one that neither easily escaped nor simply remedied.

But we have choices how to respond to that.  We can:

1. ignore the bigotry and hope it fades away;


2. accept the bigotry and figure it’s all in the past;


3. accept the bigotry and remember that there’s still work to be done.

#1 is a problem for me.  It clearly hasn’t worked, and when you completely ignore your history it tends to creep back up again.  It’s like ignoring sand at a nude beach.  You can pretend it’s not there and you can ignore it for a time, but at some point, you have to acknowledge that you’ve managed to get the sand in the strangest of places.

#2 is something I can understand, but fact teaches us otherwise.  Just do a Google image search for “Obama racist images” and you’ll see what I mean.  

Which leaves us with #3.

There is argument in support of removing the n-word from Huck Finn.  But this isn’t it:

It wouldn’t be considered a classic… If it insulted jews.  Jewish people protect themselves very well, ask Rick Sanchez.  I’ve often thought if Black Americans would want to consider a Big Brother mentor race we would look to the Jews.   A slave race that has not forgotten it’s roots in slavery and are able to be proud of it.  No one ever thinks that the Romans were good guys.  No one is still walking around doing balls celebrating Nazism like they do the confederacy.  All those things pile up on a Black American.  Then when we say ouch this hurts, the overwhelming reaction seems to be, yeah well no one solved anything by making it less ugly.  That’s real easy when the ugliness isn’t at you.

I’m not posting this to judge the perspective in the above quote– I’m not able to speak to whether or not it’s right for anyone to support the censorship of Mark Twain.  I’m writing this, however, to respond to the claim of fact made, and to question the conclusions that have been derived as such.

Because classic works of literature include comments hostile towards pretty much everyone.  

Take, for example, this classic work by John Donne:

Spit in my face you Jews, and pierce my side,

Buffet, and scoff, scourge, and crucify me,

For I have sinned, and sinned, and only he

Who could do no iniquity hath died:

But by my death can not be satisfied

My sins, which pass the Jews’ impiety:

They killed once an inglorious man, but I

Crucify him daily, being now glorified.

Oh let me, then, his strange love still admire:

Kings pardon, but he bore our punishment.

And Jacob came clothed in vile harsh attire

But to supplant, and with gainful intent:

God clothed himself in vile man’s flesh, that so

He might be weak enough to suffer woe.

Now– I want to be clear: I think Donne is a fantastic poet, but he’s a product of his times, and I would not have us teach Donne while pretending that this poem does not exist.

If you’re familiar with the classic Noir detective work “The Maltese Falcon,” both the movie and the book use the term “gunsel.”  Gunsel is not generally used today, but at the time that Hammett was writing, it was a derogatory term used to reference effeminate gay men.  If you want more examples of classic works that demonize lesbians and gay men, you should watch “The Celluoid Closet.”  

The fact that the Hichcock classic film “Rebecca” has a lesbian villain who is portrayed in a creepy and disturbing fashion is, again, something that shouldn’t be ignored, but it shouldn’t be a cause for censoring the movie either.  It’s an important film, and a very good film.  But it’s a film that has a bigoted premise, that’s a product of its time.

What about Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” or Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind?”  Both these stories (I’ve read the Rand book and seen the film version of Mitchell’s) not only have critical scenes which involve rape, they actively glorify it.  In both stories, the rape is a crucial moment which frees and inspires the woman being raped.

Again– this is a criticism of these works, but I would not have us print versions of them which pretended the rape did not exist or toned them down to be more “polite” versions.  

When we whitewash our own history, it doesn’t mean that we’ve gotten past these past grievances.  It doesn’t mean we’ve escaped it.  It just means we are pretending it didn’t happen.  

And indeed, this can be done with good intent.  There are words that are deeply offensive and I totally understand why they are offensive.  But I also understand that there are ways in which we give that language more power by hiding it, by moving it into the shadows and refusing to challenge it directly.

And for me, it boils down to this: if we’re going to teach Mark Twain, we should teach Mark Twain.  We shouldn’t teach a whitewashed, watered down version of it.  If you’re going to censor it, censor it openly, by putting black marks across the word rather than replacing it with “slave” (which, for some reason, is oddly not considered offensive).  

I will convey two stories, both of which involve Richard Prior, though not for the same reasons:

In an interview with Mel Brooks, he talks about the movie “Blazing Saddles,” which makes prolific use of the N-word, such as in this scene:

When Mel Brooks was writing this film, he made a point of hiring Richard Pryor to be on the writing team because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to judge for himself what was crossing the line in terms of satire.  I have this fear, when I see stories about us whitewashing the constitution and Mark Twain, that someday someone will produce a new version of Blazing Saddles which dubs the word “African American” into every moment with the offending word.  

The other story is from an interview with Gene Wilder on Terry Gross’ Fresh Air about the film Silver Streak.  There is a scene in this movie in which Gene Wilder puts on black face to evade the police.  Prior was visibly upset over this, and considered backing out of the movie.  The two of them had a conversation about it and they actually reworked the scene together.  The result was still a scene which included black face, but took it in a different direction than the original skit.  They turned the joke around on all the white characters, making it about how incredibly absurd Wilder’s use of black face was and basically about the complete racial cluelessness of the white characters– the mere idea that Gene Wilder could pass for black in this scene is completely ridiculous, but it’s played for laughs:

I bring these examples up because it would be easy to confuse the two clips above with racism when, in fact, they’re poking fun at racism, at racist history and at our own country’s attitudes towards race, just as the clip at the end of this piece does.

I guess all I’m saying is that it’s easy to pretend that this racism and bigotry in our history doesn’t exist, and it’s easy to pretend it doesn’t hurt, but both these things are true.  Twain came from a background that used language differently from how we use it today and used language that is considered beyond the pale in most polite company today.  So I get the urge to avoid it, to hide from it, but I don’t think that this, in the long run, serves us well.  I’m not saying we need to accept it or think of it as appropriate.  I’m saying that when we hide it, just as when we hide the fact that the constitution as originally written included the 3/5ths rule by omitting it without acknowledgment from public readings of the document, it diminishes our history.  

If we refuse to teach John Donne because of his derogatory reference to Jews, who are we serving?  If we stop teaching Shakespeare because of Merchant of Venice, does it enrich our culture?  What if we refuse to teach works which use the words “queer” or “bitch?”  Is it worth us to ban classic works because they are offensive?  I don’t think it is, and I don’t think it serves us to do so.

For what it’s worth, I’m just going to end with this, which has the added benefit of being not quite as funny when the words are all bleeped, but still pretty damned funny.

It’s intensely easy for people to slip through the cracks when things get bad.  This is one of the immense values of the Greater Falls Warming Shelter, an overnight shelter that helps the homeless survive through the cold and sometimes deadly, Vermont winters. As a result, I’ve organized a benefit show:

BENEFIT CONCERT TO BENEFIT GREATER FALLS WARMING SHELTER

When:   Saturday, Feb. 5 at 7:30 p.m

Where: Immanuel Episcopal Church (the Stone Church) in Bellows Falls, VT

Contact: Greater Falls Warming Shelter (bfwarmingshelter@yahoo.com / (802) 463-2567)

-or

Julie Waters (julie@riverartsproject.com / 802.451.1947)

BELLOWS FALLS, VT. – A group of local musicians will be blending

their harmonies to benefit the new Greater Falls Warming Shelter.

The Greater Falls Warming Shelter is a valuable resoruce in Bellows

Falls.  According to the Brattleboro Commons, “in its first year, the

center served 44 individuals for 371 bed nights during the 93 nights

it was open. More than 75 volunteers stayed overnight at the shelter

or provided some kind of support such as laundering, cleaning,

donating furniture, providing supplies or helping with the fundraising

concert. Monetary contributions to the shelter may be sent to the

shelter’s fiscal agent, Southeastern Vermont Community Action (SEVCA),

at 91 Buck Dr., Westminster, VT 05158.

Here’s a sample of what Jesse and I play when we jam together:

Other links, remainder of press release, plus another video below the fold.

     The concert is the brainchild of Julie Waters, a local artist and

musician who believes that part of the mission of arts is to support

and give back to the community that allows it to thrive.

   “So many artists deal with trying times and fall from the common

graces of society at various points on their paths.  For some of us,

the craft or artistry is what separates us from going off the edge.

To me, it’s the other side of the coin.  We can’t live as artists

without having a respect for those whose lives do not easily fall

into the box of a comfortable home and a warm place to live.” she

said. She said the response from the other musicians was practically

instantaneous when she asked them to participate.

   In addition to Waters, Jesse Peters and Ali Chambliss will be

headlining the show.

 Julie Waters is a folk artist in the truest tradition, weaving

stories, motion and rhythm, creating lyrical poetry through the

strings of her guitar. With more than simply a creative approach to

music, her performances turn on a dime, first evoking ancient modal

melodies, and then suddenly sliding into a rock and roll beat that

morphs straight into the 21st century.

   Jesse Peters blends all his formative experiences into a musical

approach that includes many different styles. He is flexible enough

to play instrumental dinner music one day and jazz-rock with his trio

the next. His writing style is similarly broad, with modern groove

numbers interspersed with more traditional finger-picked tunes and a

few rockers thrown in for good measure. Mixing it up like that keeps

it interesting for both him and his audience.

   Ali Chambliss is one woman, with a guitar, an array of songs and a

tremendous voice.  Her original songs are crafted from a well of

emotion deep and challenging as it is beautiful and poignant.

   Suggested donation is $10.

   The Greater Falls Warming Shelter opened November 22nd at 83

Westminster Street (behind Athens Pizza) to provide a temporary spot for

an overnight stay. It will remain open until April and is staffed seven

nights a week by volunteers who serve in two shifts from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m.

and 1 a.m. to 7 a.m. New volunteers are urged to contact the shelter at

bfwarmingshelter@yahoo.com or leave a message at (802) 463-2567 to learn

about the shelter and the on-going training provided. Members of the

shelter steering committee will also be at the concert to provide

information.

Facebook link for the concert

News about the shelter

Julie Waters Web Site

Downloadable/printable poster for the show

Video of the sort of music Jesse and I play when we jam together:

And here’s a piece I expect to perform: