The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by bellatrys:

Also: "Don't go anywhere alone" is totally good advice for everyone, always, in all circumstances.

--Everyone should go everywhere accompanied at all times? Even men? Really?

Even if that were a possibility for all of us - which it isn't - it's hardly necessary. I can't afford a 24/7 bodyguard, myself, but I refuse to be a housebound prisoner in my hometown, and in 14 years of living alone (and traveling all across the Northeast and parts of the West Coast and Europe) I have never been offered violence, day or night, city or country, though I am a small woman usually without visible armament.

All of the "Be totally and unremittingly afraid of potential rapists at all times" advice is like advising people never to step outside unless they're wearing hip-waders over ski pants under a down-filled parka, a mackintosh over the parka, lined gloves, earmuffs, a fisherman's hat, and a balaclava - whether or not it's midsummer with nary a cloud in the sky. Not just foolish, but a good way to die of heat-stroke, just as lethal as hypothermia - assuming you could actually move enough under all that to stir outside the house.

If men wouldn't accept living under such strictures themselves, they shouldn't try to impose them on the rest of us in the name of Protection (which goes with "Racket"...) It's a Golden Rule kind of thing. What's needed is a realistic threat assessment process, not a mandatory omniphobia - which tends to make a person blind to real dangers, not just rape either. Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear actually does offer realistic and useful advice dealing with potential rapists and other dangerous sorts - chief among his recommendations being, in a word, Trust your instincts, and don't talk yourself out of them or let social pressure convince you that you're being paranoid if you're getting weirded out by a person or situation. (When he was a child his mother shot his stepfather, so he had a certain vested interest in trying to figure this stuff out.)
----
From a 2000 interview with Guns Magazine:

GdeB: [...] but it is very important to remember that kids have a fear system of their own in any event. They're afraid of a wide variety of things. And generally speaking, in life, the way to reduce fear is to learn about the topic.

GUNS: Fear is a product of the unknown?

GdeB: The more you can enhance their ability to understand human behavior, the better. With regard to a 14-year-old girl, I believe at 14 there is no information whatsoever that a girl need be protected from. Because information is her armor. At this point, she's already a sexual object. She's already in the category of the most victimized group in the American culture: teenage girls. Potential outcomes of violence are what frighten people. You do not need to say to a child. "You could be killed if you don't do such and such." That's not instructive. What they need to learn about is the process of victimization, not the outcome.
----

I chanced across The Gift of Fear in a bargain bin at Borders many years ago and began flipping through it. It was, as the Buddhists say, a thunderbolt moment: one of those sudden clarifying events which put into perspective what had seemed irrational and random before, but now makes sense - in this case, why I [perfectly rationally] had felt more afraid as a child in my parents' house all those years (it was a nearer thing than I even realized at the time, even though every day I expected to come home from school to flashing lights and yellow tape in the driveway for most of junior high and high school) than I ever did in Boston, or Rome, or London, or LA, or any large city where I was alone, and often a minority of one or more sorts. Home was a violent, dangerous place where people were out to get me, and even moreso, each other, and being a bystander wasn't safe; on the train platform or in the bus station, even in a metropolis, nobody cared who I was, and the odds of being targeted by a social predator were only slightly higher than being hit by lightning, especially since I wasn't looking for a fight. I'm safer living alone than many women living with male protectors: it just took me a while - and reading national rape/DV statistics from the DOJ and elsewhere - to realize it.

(A typical American wouldn't insult the President by calling him a dog, either.

Au contraire--

S.O.B.

Q.E.D.

Aside: "civilized" meaning either "society economically based around cities" or "behaves in a manner I/we feel appropriate for humans to behave" makes it rather a useless term of description without some further qualification, like "inhuman" as a pejorative or "culture" to mean only "high" culture specifically. No civilizations (def 1) have ever really been civilized (def 2) no matter how anyone is defining "appropriate" behavior - alas, Babylon!

Iraq doesn't strike me as part of the civilized world. Not in the practical sense Teresa was implying, and not in a moral sense-- Iraqis are way too willing to arbitrarily kill other Iraquis.

I guess Europe has only been part of the civilized world for 60 years, according to you - and America still isn't.

Or is it only if Iraqis are way too willing to kill other Iraqis that it's bad?

He was being silly.

Insert obligatory remarks about Humorless Liberals (TM)...

With a monarchy you have a statistically measurable chance that the throne might go to someone who is fundamentally decent and isn't willing to do whatever it takes to get and keep power.

Zander, can you provide historical roof of that? Myths & legends don't count.

(I myself was raised to believe, and proclaim, the same thing. Then I read a bunch of history - not the approved conservative Catholic triumphalist versions, but ones that included lots of first-hand sources, and came to the conclusion that, like the credal belief that Landowners Having More Vested Interest In Society Will Likely Make Better Rulers, this was a myth like the one that boiling water will become icecubes faster than room-temperature water...)

Likewise the Angelic Doctor had something to say about legitimate authority, if I remember my long-ago Metaphysics course readings correctly.

Why on earth is venerating Authority in the abstract supposed to be a good thing?

IIRC, G.K. Chesterton had some pretty strong things to say about that. And he wasn't exactly a stereotypical Farleftecularhumanistliberal out to destroy Western Civilization (TM) per se...

So should we be surprised we finally see the same behavior in the US? No, we should be angry, and sad for our country for going down this well-traveled road, but not surprised. There's very little that happens "only in America."

'Finally,' Bruce?

I guess you missed McCarthyism? "There are 91 known perverts in the State Department" etc, not to mention the whole business with Emma Goldman amd anarchists back when. To tip icebergs, a little.

Only in America, perhaps, could someone say "finally" of authoritarianism openly displayed...

We start with the supposition that something is wrong and go looking for it.

Clearly this is all the sign of Bad Will, the lack of a Can-Do Attitude, and a perverse desire to See Good Things Fail.

[/snark, from someone who eventually gave up trying to point out the inherent problems in boss-ly enthusiasms due to the fact that nobody *ever* remembers that Cassandra did, in fact, say so before things went beyond all recognition, even when the circumstances are awfully similar to last time...]

The law (positive law, as opposed to the laws of nature) is not handed down from on high by angels, it is the construction of myriad fallible, frequently dishonest, always self-interested (not merely the lawyers among them) and (alas) often-uninterested in anyone else's welfare, individual human beings across the timespace continuum.

I do not worship The Law - although I consider the Platonic Ideal of a lawful society to be generally (that is to say, in a qualified way) a good thing and am likewise generally a law-abiding person - because I do not worship my fellow human beings, not even en masse and down through history, nor any of their works nor promises; nor am I willing to hand over my conscience entire to any other's custody, any longer. (If this sounds like the corollary of CSL's "Why I am a democrat" it probably is. And WFB was a perfect example of what happens when you combine the Inquisitor with the Robber Baron...)

I don't know about this time - I didn't have time to go to any events let alone volunteer, this winter - but in 2004 there were plenty of the Serious Guys (and Gals) in Dark Suits with earpieces, sunglasses, and guns getting out of Govt-plated SUVs around Edwards; if they weren't Secret Service they were doing a darn good imitation of them. And they were standing at his elbow during all the handshaking and crowd mingling.

But I'm not sure what good someone at ground level courageously jumping in front of their assigned candidate is going to do against a sniper shooting down from a third or fourth story of an overlooking building...let alone the worry of C4 in a coat-pocket.

ObSFRef - discussions of leaders pulling security or leaving lax precautions from political adversaries as an official handwashing figure prominently in Cherryh's first Foreigner trilogy from the mid-90s - not a new concept in fiction as in history.

My only experiences here in Manchester were not encouraging - first with a John Edwards event in Manchester, where I volunteered. It was outdoors, held in a park downtown (Victory) - which is surrounded on 3 of 4 sides by tall overhanging buildings, including yes, a library, and even worse, a big parking garage. I was extremely concerned in that the security people there hadn't closed off any of them - I know exactly how to get on top of the library and the arts center through back ways without being noticed (having worked in one and taken classes in the other), the garage is dark and mazelike and offers excellent views of the park, the historical society building was closed for renovations, which is going to stop everyone who obeys a no-tresspassing sign - and yes there are trees but they're not everywhere around the central theatre area.

I mentioned my concerns to one of the Secret Service men and they shrugged it off, which I trusted meant they had people up there, because I couldn't get away to go check myself at that point.

The Edwards campaign staffers were only concerned with checking incoming attendees for being clandestine Bushies - we were told to screen for Bush pins, Bush signs folded up and carried, etc, and exclude these people. And we volunteers were the only ones checking entrants.

Later, at the Kerry rally in front of City Hall, (also surrounded by tall buildings, not impregnable) there were metal detectors and they did afaik make everyone go through them - but they didn't catch my bronze 7" long hairpin which I had forgot I was wearing. So I don't know how well they were working. And people were allowed to go right up to the rail, and shake hands, and I didn't see any security personnel monitoring the whole area like I have at sports events or, indeed, the country fairs here.

Both times I was distracted throughout from what the candidates were saying and how audiences were responding because I was so worried about a Manchurian Candidate scenario, and I heard other people in the crowd express concerns, too.
Fortunately there were only normal protestors, but it seemed very sloppy.

Okay, Raphael, thanks for confirming that you're using "mediterranean" in an entirely Humpty-Dumpty way, as a bit of American Renaissance-style code for your racism.

(If you don't think the Angry Young Men of England were terrifying in the 1960s and 1970s to the bourgeoise establishment types - and if you think it was just a bunch of writers venting - then you definitely need to brush up on your 20th-c Western History (and earlier, too! q.v. the Gordon Riots, for starters, to see what havoc disenfranchised impoverished residents of a country can wreak when they get going.)

I knew perfectly well what you were circumlocuting, but I wanted you to demonstrate it, and you did.

Am I missing something, or is Raphael (163) saying that "mediterranean-type cultures" [sic] are inherently/uniquely productive of Angry Young Men?

If so, won't the British be surprised!

And what are "mediterranean-type" cultures, anyway? Would Revere, MA, count as one (lots of Italian-descended Americans), and/or more so than Santa Barbara (lots of Spanish-descended Americans AND palm trees AND red tile roofs!)

These aren't new machines - they're the same scanners that have been used in all the past elections that I remember, going back to the mid '90s. They're freestanding optical readers (they don't hook into some central computer) that read the black dots like SAT tests, as the physical cards are slid in, and the ballots are done in large type with large ovals to fill in and lots of space between them, making it very difficult to have any kind of visual "hanging chad" situation.

The last presidential election, the turnout was (again) vastly higher than expected, and a number of townships had to do manual counts anyway, because they ran out of preprinted ballot cards and had to photocopy more, which were then too thin and flexible to be run through the readers. Most local election years at least one town and usually more has a manual recount, usually not changing results, but in the smaller towns it can come down to a single ballot making the difference, so IIRC it has happened.

In the biggest city in the state, the wards are still small enough that you almost always run into someone you know, either doing the honors (familiar faces every year, graying) or voting, or (during local elections) trying to convince you to vote for them (embarrassing when it's someone you babysat for, to say the least). There's a reason why the Republicans' attempts at vote fraud here - rather famously - involved Keep In The Vote phone jamming conducted from Virginia, rather than the methods employed elsewhere in the country like bizarre ballot designs, intimidation, etc. For one thing, it's AFAIK the only crime in the state that can cause you to lose your own voting rights permanently, if you get caught doing it.

In terms of energy and enthusiasm levels (and on the part of the Paulites, stupidity levels), the Kucinich and Paul supporters (staked out on opposéd corners of Elm St most days, ironically) far outweighed anyone else's for any other candidate, which may have given them the idea that they had more support (and, importantly, name recognition) than they really did. If they're paying for it, fine - but they have yet to realize that if wishes were horses, imo.

Hey, I *saw* a guy with a boot on his head last night as I was walking home down Elm Street. Just like something out of Far Side - maybe that was him?

I also saw some "Vermin Supreme" signs, but there were so many other Ironic Hipster Performance Art signs and stickers downtown by this point that I assumed this was more of the same ("US Outta My Mouth" by "disinformed citizens" was one I recall, tho' it's hard to tell the sincerely whacked from the hiply ironic, ofttimes.)

BTW, it's been an article of faith on the right that Europe is about to be overrun by the Muslim Hordes since at *least* middle of 1979, which is the latest possible date I could have read articles on the subject in The Wanderer and the former Triumph in that particular house and living room where I remember reading them, fulminating about how there were now mosques being built in Italy! and Spain! and in the shadow of Santiago de Compostella, the SCANDAL! and where was our new Charles Martel? and it was all the fault of The Pill and the Secular Humanists causing the Old Europeans to grow selfish and abandon their Catholic heritage, with invocations of the Chesterbelloc ad libitum. (It was probably even earlier, circa 1977, but I can't be absolute sure of that.)

This meme would alternate weekly with how Japan was shortly going to be emptied of all but decrepit senior citizens, due to their embrace of abortion, and how the US social security system was Doomed!Doomed! due to our declining birthrate (along with Western Civilization being Doomed!Doomed due to just about everything, from women wearing trousers to rock music to Neopaganism to the Godless Commies to Monty Python - and no, that last isn't a joke, they were calling for bans and boycotts of Life of Brian back when.)

This pump has been primed for a very, very long time, IOW - way before racist academic Samuel Huntingdon's Clash of Civilizations (1993) came out - and they finally got their chance to unleash all this hard-wrought rhetoric on the mainstream with 9/11.

Via Pandagon, someone has set up a clearinghouse blog for such rightwing email fwds:

My Right-Wing Dad

It's amazing how strange a construct they become when you look at them as agitprop: the apparent sincerity, the carefully-crafted faux naivete and "folksiness," from the multiple exclamation points right down to the superbly tacky art - it reminds me of the several times that well-educated right-wing writers have been caught sockpuppetting on liberal blogs, affecting poor grammar and bad spelling as part of their Archetypal Authentic Middle-American persona.

It's like someone was making a "Team America World Police" parody, only doing it sincerely (more or less) for an O'Brien-like end of The Greater Good, rather than as an Ironic Hipster thing.

Comment statistics for bellatrys on the Making Light blog

Total: 99 comments. View all these comments on a single page.