Fake President

Donald Trump refers to any real news he doesn't like as "fake news."  As most of us can see, he's only projecting what's true about himself onto public information he wishes to discredit.
                                            
Here's my button:

Gender is a Spectrum

A report on MSNBC on National Geographic’s new documentary on the issue of transgenderism reminded me of this: 

How about we clear up the popular misconception that gender is a binary. It is not. It is a spectrum, with extremes of masculinity and femininity at both ends and various blends of each in between. 

As for biological sex, a study on the incidence of congenital anomalies in newborns found only 2 “ambiguous” sex births (not clearly male or female) out of 4,454. That’s a percentage of 0.04490345. Thus, for all practical purposes, we can safely say that sex is a binary, not a spectrum, whereas gender can easily be recognized as a spectrum. Also, while sex is biologically determined, gender results from a mix of both biology and cultural, societal conditioning, or constructs. In any case, how about not conflating gender with biological sex? 

The problem is, our culture presents gender as a binary. When gender becomes conflated with sex as a binary, where an either-or, male/female imperative rules thinking (“You’re either male or female gender”), and masculinity and femininity must align with biological sex identity, then we’re going to see confusion and dysphoria in sensitive, vulnerable people. 

10-year-old Barron Trump says, “Daddy doesn’t know I took this picture. He’ll kill me for this!”

I doubt it, but you can understand why a little 10-year-old would fear THAT daddy.

See, normally Donald Trump’s face resembles an angry slab of red meat topped with a garnish of spaghetti squash. It’s true!

But is that fair? Just remember— he must spend every moment of his waking life bolstering the facade of a hard-charging tycoon with the fearless heart of a honey badger, and so, naturally, he looks a little, well, catawampus. 

Remember too, hiding within every bully is a fragile, wounded child who still sucks his thumb when nobody’s looking.

Presidential Election 2016 in the Land of Oz

It’s a hopeful tale: Tim Kaine, the Cowardly lion, despite his previous support for fracking & Wall Street, will find the courage to oppose those; Bill, despite his Nafta heartlessness, will find a heart and convince Hillary to oppose the TPP; Kissenger, still arm-in-arm with the Clintons, and the scariest scarecrow ever, will find his brain at last, and realize he’s a war criminal. And Hillary will find her way home, as President of the United States. At least we can pretend, until it happens for real.

2016 GOP CONVENTION: OFFERING TO THE MOB, THE RED MEAT OF FEAR AND HATE

Donald Trump’s Secret Weapon

“GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump's campaign released a written statement on Monday calling for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."

Unlike your average politician whose mouth is only a mouth (kinda like some cigars) used mostly for speechifying, delivering sound bites to the media, and guzzling beer with the rest of us, Donald Trump’s mouth is a multipurpose orifice of suprahuman versatility. Not only can his mouth speak, eat and pout like other humans’ mouths, but it can also lay an egg, projectile poop, squirt bile, fart toxic gasses, breed bollocks, blow bubbles of hot air, and often do all of it simultaneously.

In short, Donald Trump’s mouth is not a mouth at all. Hello, it’s a cloaca. This would be consistent with my previous suspicions that he may be more reptilian than human. 

And that’s not all. Very much like the humble, though attractively shaped, Echiura, or spoon worm, Trump’s brain is housed in his proboscis, or, more colloquially, his nose.  But that’s okay. It’s a very small brain and doesn’t need much room for the minimal tasks he demands of it.

Only yesterday, his cloaca extruded this smelly bit of paranoid fantasy: “...there is something going on with him that we don’t know about,” in reference to President Obama’s refusal to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism;” and that reminds us all of Trump’s previous questioning Obama’s birthplace and false claiming that the President practices Islam.

So, there you have it, for now. I’m sure there’s more to come, given the nature of his speech impediment, or “secret weapon,” if you prefer.

By the way, no apologies: In previous incarnations, I have railed against the dehumanization of the enemy. But see, the enemy has to start out as human, before it can be dehumanized. And anyway, I allow myself a bit of inconsistency here and there: “consistency is not really a human trait,” as the great hippy philosopher, Dame Marjorie "Maude" Chardin, told Harold in Harold and Maude.


[See comments over at http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2015/12/donald-trump’s-secret-weapon

My STOLEN Flush Rush Quarterly Piece: 

"RUSH LIMBAUGH HERE, Broadcasting from Rome, circa Jesus of Nazareth”

Fool that I am, way back when I sent a piece I'd written to the now-defunct Flush Rush Quarterly and immediately forgot about it. Later, however, I happened to pick up an old copy of the rag, turned a few pages, and there it was— my piece, intact and unedited, except for the author's name: they'd published it UNDER SOME MAN'S NAME!   How shrewd of the editors.  A humorist by the name of "Henry Kesselmann" didn't exist —I searched and searched— but, as everyone knows, "women don't write satire," and so what else could the editors do?

Well, here it is, just for the record. It's a Christmas story, folks. Nothing much, but it's MINE!

How ironic too, how the editors placed evidence of Rush Limbaugh's sexism on the same page: See the box: "TAKE THE VOTE FROM WOMEN," just as they themselves had taken my authorship from me on the same page!

Poem: God's Teacup

I have often wondered what folks who pray or converse with their god imagine how that god deals with the information and what makes them think “He” wants or needs their pleas and supplications.

If one's god is omniscient, doesn't one's god already know one's heart and what one needs?

Also, what reaction do they imagine “HE” has to our suffering? Considering the egregious and never-ending pain and harm done by humans to other humans on this plane of existence, one must —if “HE” is truly an all-powerful entity— deduce a wildly sadistic, sociopathic spirit watching over all.

It reminds me of this, humbly from me, from a lifetime ago:

God's Teacup

Last summer she gathered stones along the path up the mountain and scattered her tiny drawings on the floor of the shack where she stayed alone week after week. 

She practiced silence there, even at the stream where she laid her blouse, cotton skirt, the letter to her father, and went barefoot in the shallow rapids that washed past her toes and ankles and entered her like mantras, like cool wet syllables awakening within her.

When he pushed her through the doorway, when he raped her, when he apologized and left —when she scraped semen off her thighs with a knife, like scales off fish, or when she woke within a jabbering of angels— did her god peek over the rim of his teacup, his pinky rising in salute, his eye winking through the mist, his Great Nostril flaring?

“Hogwash!" and Other Down-to-Earth Observations

Do you believe in ghosts, channeling the dead,
zombies, possession by Satan, the Law of Attraction
and other mythologies of the magical-thinking kind?

Well, HOGWASH!

But don’t get too upset with me. I know how humorless you true believers can be. For the evidence, consider the following:

From skeptic.com:Challenging Psychics is Deadly Serious BusinessUK-based Sally Morgan, known by her moniker “Psychic Sally,” has become embroiled this week in another dispute with skeptics. Earlier today an undercover video was released showing rather disturbing threats being made against a skeptic from people who apparently work for the psychic performer.

The video is below, but first some background is in order. A skeptic named Mark Tilbrook has been handing out leaflets outside Ms. Morgan’s appearances as a form of skeptical activism since earlier this year. These leaflets offer some questions for attendees to consider to make “sure you are not tricked or misled into something that may not be real” along with some hyperlinks to skeptical resources online.

Ms. Morgan’s team took a dim view of this campaigning…

…As you can see, two representatives of Morgan’s come out and threaten Tilbrook not only with legal action, but also with physical violence. They also make a number of anti-gay slurs against him and several other people who have campaigned against Morgan. Quite disgraceful on every level.

Furthermore, psychics sure know how to report the deaths of folks who aren't even dead yet.

The thing is, the world needs more skeptics. Where, for example, were the skeptics when victims of misogyny, rape and oppression could have benefited from their ability to reason effectively? As an example, consider how one insular religious community killed even the possibility of critical thinking from the get go and reaped the consequences of hogwash gone wild:

For a while, the residents of Manitoba Colony thought demons were raping the town’s women. There was no other explanation. No way of explaining how a woman could wake up with blood and semen stains smeared across her sheets and no memory of the previous night. No way of explaining how another went to sleep clothed, only to wake up naked and covered by dirty fingerprints all over her body. No way to understand how another could dream of a man forcing himself onto her in a field—and then wake up the next morning with grass in her hair.

For Sara Guenter, the mystery was the rope. She would sometimes wake up in her bed with small pieces of it tied tightly to her wrists or ankles, the skin beneath an aching blue...

And then we have all the other examples of such hogwash gone wild... ad infinitum.

(Originally posted at Thomhartmann.com. See the on-going conversation here: http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2014/11/“hogwash-and-other-down-earth-observations )

Women and the Symbolic Garb of Repression: Whether Taliban or Western Slut Fashion, Women Lose

Awhile back Thom Hartmann* asked a question on his show: "Does slut-shaming mark the return of the Christian Taliban?” Interesting, but I didn’t hear anything resembling my opinion on the subject, so I thought I’d bring it up here.

The framing of Thom’s question assumes a choice of Yes or No: either slut-shaming reflects puritannical, Christian repression, or it doesn’t, and slut fashion gets a pass on behalf of Western women’s liberation. But wait— maybe there’s another choice. Maybe slut fashion deserves a critical look from the progressive feminist’s point of view. It may be possible, given that neither Taliban patriarchy nor Western patriarchy get a five-star rating for women’s equality or liberation, slut fashion represents repression as well, that is to say, it’s the other side of the coin of religious repression.

If, in America, women learn to hide their intelligence and their unique personhood underneath a heavy mask of make-up and clothing designed to define them according to their sexuality alone, can we seriously insist that slut-pride and slut-fashion represent true liberation?

If women define themselves outwardly solely by their value as sexual ornaments, haven’t they cooperated in their own represson; haven’t they agreed to wear the symbolic garb of male rule and patriarchy?

Don’t get me wrong— I get the standard feminist argument against slut-shaming: Slut-shaming works by a double standard. Men not only do not have to present themselves in society as sexual ornaments, but they also will not be shamed for being sexual. Men are “studs;” women are “sluts.”  It’s an old story, and it’s an infuriating one. Inspired in part by fear and hatred, and, yes, loathing, of female sexuality, it shames women for owning their sexuality, for celebrating it, and for being shameless about it. Shamelessness, after all, is among the worst of sins a woman can commit— “You shameless hussy you!” We’re supposed to behave ourselves, and strutting our stuff still inspires shudders among those who would control women, as it enrages the would-be-rapists. Thus, the Slut Walks appear, where “sluts” resist the sexist paradigm in a defiant celebration of the body and its wholesome meaning.

Also, slut-shaming puts the responsibility for male behavior onto women, rather than where it belongs— on men.

I get it. And, yes, that argument has validity. It works for me too.

Just the same, looking at these with-and-without-make-up pics of porn stars, I see a contrast between the real and the fake, between individuals —whole persons with unique characteristics— and standardized dummies fabricated according to the values of our culture, values which do not include the freedom of women to be independent of the demands of men.

When women dress in “the slut look,” —and don’t tell me that’s not a costume— don’t they leave out an awful lot about themselves? Don’t they wear a sign saying, “Hey guys, I’m not a person; I’m an object,” and don’t they express their submissiveness in doing so? Haven’t they hidden themselves behind the metaphorical burqa required by the most sexist of male standards and preoccupations?

It doesn’t matter that they haven’t had to hide themselves, head-to-toe, under fabric; they’re still hidden.

So, even while Western society shames women for their sexuality, Western society also, as represented by advertising, violent pornography and other media, relentlessly presents women as low-status sexual beings, or as beings predominantly useful as status symbols (women on Hefner’s arm along with his fancy car and mansion), as creatures solely intended for male amusement or abuse, or as second-class decorative elements: Is that not the Western version of a burqa?  Moreover, where women buy into it, can women be blamed entirely?  (See The Codes of Gender / documentary.) 

When women feel pressure, or even the desire, to have breast implants, nose jobs, lip injections and the rest of what passes for face and body enhancement, that is, to the point where all evidence of the unique person they once were disappears, and what is left can only be described as Barbiesque for young and old alike, what is that if not a Western burqa?

For example: Nicole Kidman before, au naturale; and after, in her American, or Western, burqa.

Most disturbing of all, commercial indoctrination in slut-conformity begins quite early: One Google group dedicated to the subject of kids, a girl/woman posted this question and comment: “Can anyone fill me in on this Junior Slut fashion for Girls?... Geez.  "Junior Slut?"  What next?”

How about a happy medium? Anybody for wholesome, self-respect and dignity that does not deny one’s sexuality but also does not allow it to define oneself entirely?  How about starting early with that; how about Disrupting the Pink Aisle!?

(related topic: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/pressure-mounts-bbc-over-sexist-gaffe-presenter-135855559.html   )

(* website note: http://www.thomhartmann.com/bigpicture/slut-shaming-digital-age)

The Steubenville Syndrome

The Steubenville Syndrome: A culture-bound, collective psychological phenomenon, where perpetrators of rape receive immunity from blame by virtue their higher status compared to rape victims, and where the victims are blamed by communities instead and/or receive no sympathy or proper justice for their suffering.

Sometimes the Steubenville Syndrome results in silence, the silence of whole communities and groups, of those in authority, or of news media. But now we’re seeing more and more instances of outrageous community reaction, after rapes by football players, against the rape victims!

The latest case:

...But like Steubenville before it, the town of Maryville revolted against the facts in the case.

Days after the incident became public knowledge, students at the high school began attacking Daisy and her family. On social media, fellow Maryville students began threatening Daisy, tweeting that she would “get whats comin.” Daisy’s older brother Charlie, who was himself an athlete for Maryville, was booed by his own classmates during a wrestling meet. Her mother, a veterinarian, was fired from her job two weeks after the incident without so much as an explanation, only later learning that her boss feared that her presence “was putting stress” on her other employees.

Meanwhile, members of the community rallied behind Barnett and the other perpetrators. In March, just over two months after the alleged rape took place, the most serious charges of sexual assault and sexual exploitation of a minor were dropped without an explanation.

Daisy’s family moved away to avoid the threats and harassment they faced since her story first came to light. But the trouble didn’t end. Six months ago, their old house burned down mysteriously.  http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/10/14/2777431/maryville-missouri-rape/

From Dave Zirin, The Nation:

 The Verdict: Steubenville Shows the Bond Between Jock Culture and Rape Culture

...We learned at the Steubenville trial that not only did a small group of football players commit a crime, but fifty of their peers, men and women, saw what was happening and chose to do nothing, effectively not seeing a crime at all...

...On colleges, there is reason to believe that the same teamwork, camaraderie and “specialness” produced by sports can be violently perverted to create a pack mentality that either spurs sexual violence or makes players fear turning in their teammates. A groundbreaking 1994 study showed that college athletes make up 3.3 percent of male students but 19 percent of those accused of sexual assault. One of the studies authors, Jeff Benedict, said, “Does this study say participation in college sports causes this? Clearly, no. We’re not saying that. We just think that at some point there is an association between sports and sexual assault…. the farther you go up, the more entitlements there are. And one of those entitlements is women.” 

The signs and characteristics of the Steubenville Syndrome: hero worship; uber-masculinity valued; power and status inequities; misplaced sympathy for rapists; group think and conformity; general acceptance of male dominance and sexual entitlements; pervasive view of women and girls as things; bullying. 

Remember the story, The Lottery? I do believe it speaks to this syndrome. One can see how, in cases where football plays a huge role in community pride and enthusiasm, blaming the victims of rapes by football players could represent a kind of human sacrifice to the gods of football.  

What’s the Matter with Supernaturalism?

A funny thing happened on the way home from Oz.  We discovered that clicking the heels of your ruby slippers and repeating, “There’s no place like home,” can’t get you there —it was just a dream— and whether wicked or good, of the North, East or West, witches with true supernatural powers do not exist.

Birds may fly over the rainbow, but humans without airplanes can’t. Why, oh why? Alas, you’ll get the same answer from Mother Nature that you heard from your own mother— “Because I said so!”

Regardless, behold the website Afterlife101*.   Note well the website’s claim: Spirits freed of their mere human bodies by physical death —“spirit guides”— dictated its text to mediums here on Planet Earth. See how the website presents advice on living our lives, yet offers no wisdom beyond anything offered to us already by human voices past and present, and without the superior eloquence you might expect from the spiritual realm, nor even respect for proper grammar!* 

"...in the spiritual world we know there is no such things as war and hatred and anger and fear and distrust..."

This website cannot be serious, I say to myself. Yet, hold on— 21% of Americans believe that people can communicate mentally with the dead, and three out of four believe in the paranormal, generally.    Furthermore, 74 percent of us believe that there is a heaven, at least according to a 2007 Pew study.   

That is to say, three out of four Americans engage in magical thinking... and will defend it to the death, I might add.

So, what’s the matter with that? Witch hunts are long-gone (except in some places), so what’s wrong with a little harmless supernaturalist entertainment? Well, not an insignificant number things, according to the eloquent words of one living human being whom I consider to be among the most perspicacious social critics of our time, Chris Hedges, writing in Empire of Illusion:

"Pseudo-events, which create their own semblance of reality, serve in the wider culture the same role creationism serve for the Christian Right. Pseudo-events destabilize truth. They are convincing enough and appear real enough to manufacture their own facts . . . The use of pseudo-events to persuade rather than overtly brainwash renders millions of us unable to see or question the structure and systems that are impoverishing us and in some cases destroying our lives. The flight into illusion sweeps away the core values of the open society. It corrodes the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense tell you something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to grasp historical facts, to advocate for change, and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways, and structures of being that are morally and socially acceptable. A populace deprived of the ability to separate lies from truth, that has become hostage to the fictional semblance of reality put forth by pseudo-events, is no longer capable of sustaining a free society.

Those who slip into this illusion ignore the signs of impending disaster. The physical degradation of the planet, the cruelty of global capitalism, the looming oil crisis, the collapse of financial markets, and the danger of overpopulation rarely impinge to prick the illusions that warp our consciousness. The words, images, stories, and phrases used to describe the world in pseudo-events have no relation to what is happening around us. The advances of technology and science, rather than obliterating the world of myth, have enhanced its power to deceive. We live in imaginary, virtual worlds created by corporations that profit from our deception. Products and experiences – indeed, experience as a product – offered up for sale, sanctified by celebrities, are mirages. They promise us a new personality. They promise us success and fame. They promise to mend our brokenness...

...Blind faith in illusions is our culture’s secular version of being born again. These illusions assure us that happiness and success is our birthright. They tell us that our catastrophic collapse is not permanent. They promise that pain and suffering can always be overcome by tapping into our hidden, inner strengths. They encourage us to bow down before the cult of self. To confront these illusions, to puncture their mendacity by exposing the callousness and cruelty of the corporate state, signals a loss of faith. It is to become an apostate. The culture of illusion, one of happy thoughts, manipulated emotions, and trust in the beneficence of power, means we sing along with the chorus or are instantly disappeared from view like the losers on a reality show."

I bring this up not to attack religion. Religion has its place, where metaphor, myth and mystery serve the spiritual, psychological and emotional well-being of believers. Like art, religion is one way to meaningfully encounter the central questions of our lives— love, beauty, existence, loss, suffering, and our connection to the world. But like art, it belongs in the mythos side of things and should remain there, in the realm of what Hedges refers to as the “non-rational,” rather than attempting to squeeze it into the box of literal truth.

In this humble blogger’s view, the essential mistake of New Age mysticism and Spiritualism is that it attempts to render the mysterious real, to yank it out of the mythos side of things and into the logos side of things. Rather than allowing the dead to rest in peace in a realm unknown and unknowable to the living, that is, in the realm of the mysterious, Spiritualists insist on reviving the dead to a literal place, where our dearly departed’s lives continue energetically and without end, in merciless conscious awareness.

Rather than accepting the mystery of our lives and our ultimate vulnerabilities, New Age mystics grant literal mass, force and power to human brain waves, believing delusionally that such “vibrations” can literally control destiny. In particular, the Law of Attraction, a pet theory advanced by the likes of Oprah Winfrey, claims that our thoughts emit energy strong enough to create events and attract either good or bad into our lives. Most disturbingly, believers employ pseudoscience and misinterpretations of real science to bolster their delusions. This would be a harmless popular phenomenon, except that it develops into a kind of tyranny, which puts the onus of disaster and disease on victims for their “negativity,” as opposed to demonstrating understanding, compassion and sympathy. 

Additionally, the attitude becomes an ideology of intolerance, with contempt for the “weak” being one of its characteristics. That is, no New-Age mystic or positivity cultist, likes a person whose “vibrational frequency” is apparently too low to be read as human, or who criticizes belief in the supernatural. It’s like how nobody likes a wet dog, or “bitch,” especially when she shakes off the water in your face.

Barbara Ehrenreich learned this, when she sought solace on a website for breast cancer survivors. Rather than receiving comfort, sympathy and validation from her fellow BC survivors when she expressed anger over the cancer industry and treatments, she incurred hostile and patronizing suggestions that, among other rejecting responses, she needed to adopt a more positive attitude or get therapy, because, as the majority of this group inaccurately believed, “cancer is fed by anger.” (completely untrue) Well, that painful experience resulted in the book, “Bright-Sided, How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America.”  Thus, out of decidedly negative responses from the positivity junkies, came a hugely positive book— that is, if you consider factual insights into a particularly irrational craze in the U.S. to be positive, as I do. 

The point is, despite what looks superficially like the life-affirming perspective of New Age religions, such as Science of Mind and Spiritualism, the practical effect becomes one of unloving and careless rejection of those who do not subscribe to the ideology.  That is to say, “love” becomes something to be enjoyed by one’s fellow true-believers, while outsiders get the shaft.

"Mass culture is a Peter Pan culture. It tells us that if we close our eyes, if we visualize what we want, if we have faith in ourselves, if we tell God that we believe in miracles, if we tap into our inner strength, if we grasp that we are truly exceptional, if we focus on happiness, our lives will be harmonious and complete. This cultrual retreat into illusion, whether peddled by positive psychologists, Hollywood, or Christian preachers, is a form of magical thinking...

...The world that awaits us will be painful and difficult. We will be dragged back to realism, to the understanding that we cannot mold and shape reality according to human desires, or we will slide into despotism...

But even if we fail to halt the decline, it will not be the end of hope...no tyranny in history has crushed the human capacity for love. And this love—unorganized, irrational, often propelling us to carry out acts of compassion that jeopardize our existence—is deeply subversive to those in power...” —Chris Hedges

capital crimes

capital crimes

what if I lusted after time

instead of money—

or love—

what if

I am happier being nobody, skipping

into paradise while peeling

an orange—

what if

I settled for the slow, ambling

cello I would later

weep over   —what if

I wept—

what if I suffered no sophisitcates,

preferring instead the company

of plants —seedlings

weeds,   tiny   insignificant

populations—  what if I

mostly loved a turtle, as shy

as myself       —what if I

undid the pawl of parent

preachings, letting fly

the mechanism of my life—

what if all I owned was less

than sparse, from days roused

in solitude, within a humble terrain

of contentment—

what if all I ever risked was

everything  —for a life

who would be my judge—&
who would be my executioner?

Manning’s Moral Leadership

By virtue of his personal sacrifice on behalf of freedom and democracy, Bradley-Chelsea Manning has demonstrated moral leadership of a kind rarely seen these days, when official leadership is so commonly characterized by cowardice and corruption.

The government may think it’s making an example of Manning to discourage whistleblowing. Instead, Manning makes an example for everyone to follow, an example for ethical behavior— this is what an intact ethical compass looks like, people.

Make no mistake— Manning is a national treasure.

The Anti-choice Movement and Its Spirit of Kitch

 Milan Kundera:

“Kitsch" is a German word born in the middle of the sentimental nineteenth century, and from German is entered all Western languages. Repeated use, however, has obliterated its original metaphysical meaning: kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and figurative sense of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence. [Zenzoe bold]

If the anti-abortion zealot’s mental picture of the fetus is anything, it’s kitsch, that is, a visual and verbal conglomeration of shit-denying sentimentality. Disregarding whatever dire circumstance a fetus may inhabit, the fetus is, according to the abortion foe, innocent, defenseless, precious, helpless, unable to speak for herself, sacred, pure and nearly as holy and supreme as a human person can get. Certainly, as human persons go, its personhood surpasses that of its mother, if she can be said to be a person at all.

In keeping with the Spirit of Kitch, something called the “International Pro-Life Memorial and National Life Center” in Wichita promises to cast a spell of wonderment and awe in the hearts of all anti-choice zealots. Most thrilling, it “will be operated as a tax exempt 501C3 entity!”  Even more goosebump-inspiring, it will stand before a broad lawn decorated with a constellation of crosses, each representing a million dead fetuses.

It’s no surprise Christians claim the painter Thomas Kinkade, the King of Kitsch, as a “Christian ‘painter of light.’” Too bad he didn’t do a painting of the “unborn” in an idealized landscape, sleeping peacefully in the crook of the branch of a tree, surrounded by gentle waters and adorable creatures —and don’t forget the rainbow— all caught in a glowing atmosphere of light and dazzle.

That glowing atmosphere is exactly what the extreme Right yearns for, a world where women self-sacrifice to the needs of men and children, where proper women aren't sexual, where there's a place for everything and everything's in its place. The place for a fetus is in a uterus, and no fetus should be removed from its place; the place for women is in the kitchen or flat on her back either submitting to her husband or giving birth. Anything else is too messy and disgusting to contemplate.

Milan Kundera: 

Whenever a single political movement corners power, we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch. When I say “totalitarian,” what I mean is that everything that infringes on kitsch must be banished for life: every display of individualism (because a deviation from the collective is a spit in the eye of the smiling brotherhood); every doubt (because anyone who starts doubting details will end by doubting life itself); all irony (because in the realm of kitsch everything must be taken quite seriously); and the mother who abandons her family or the man who prefers men to women, thereby calling into question the holy decree “Be fruitful and multiply.”  http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Milan_Kundera

After all, it is the brotherhood of white men we're talking about here and now, and the individualism inherent in the pro-choice position.

Healing from the Wars: Whatever It Takes

Picture this: I'm sitting on a chair this morning in the front office of Advanced Auto & Electric. I'm there to get the final repair and test needed after my first smog test failed. On my head sits my orange baseball cap, the one that reads, "01.20.09 - Bush's Last Day." Behind the chair on the wall hangs a bulletin board with all sorts of notes, pictures, keys, whatever, and placed boldly at center a poster reads, OBAMA YOU ARROGANT KNOW IT ALL/DON'T APOLOGIZE FOR/ THIS GREAT COUNTRY/THOSE OF US WHO SERVED AND DIED/DON'T DESERVE IT.

 As I wait for my car, I am reading Chris Hedges' book The World as It Is, Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress, a compilation of his TruthDig posts; and I'm on the chapter entitled, They Kill Alex. As I read, the ironic concurrency of me, my cap's message and that of the poster occurs to me. I'm thinking, someone should take a picture.

When I first noticed the poster and its message, I affiliated the guy behind the counter with it and felt contempt for his ignorance about that whole "Obama apologized for America" lie Romney told over and over, and I hoped to get a chance to correct him. However, as I sat reading about Carlos Arredondo and his grief-stricken response to his son's death in Iraq, my imagination went to the second half of that poster's message, "...those of us who served and died don't deserve it," and I began to feel compassion for it. The reports about Obama's "apology" had no basis in fact; regardless, can you blame the vets and their families for needing to feel good about what to them was done for all the good reasons their country had given them for their sacrifices? I have compassion for that: denial on behalf of sanity, for to know the truth would mean soul-defeating dishonor. Only the most courageous manage to face the truth, and if some cannot face it, I'm not going to condemn them.

At home, I made a sandwich and sat down to see what C-Span was up to. Fittingly, a Senate Affairs Committee was holding a hearing on "Veterans Mental Health Care." The subject— PTSD and what to do about it.  I'd missed most of the questions and answers by the panel of experts, but I saw enough to know the most important suggestion never came up: If you want to heal American vets of the post-traumatic stress of war, STOP SENDING THEM THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!

PTSD is not a "disorder;" it's a natural reaction to an abnormal situation. It's the WAR, stupid!

Women in Combat— This is Equality?

This is no joke, and yet the Facebook website proudly displaying this poster, a website dedicated to ground troops, received 629 “Likes” and 149 “Shares,” as of this writing, alongside a number of comments taking it as a joke. One comment suggested a backlash against women in combat to come, and I won’t be surprised if that backlash comes in the form of increased rapes, adding to the present epidemic of sexual assaults in the military. But let’s be clear: it’s not women in combat that will be responsible. The responsibility will be with men in combat with antiquated, macho, misogynistic attitudes, and a military system that bolsters them.

Women who join the military have another think coming if they think the military values equality. As it is in reality, the military is the last place a woman can expect to be treated as an equal. 

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57566084/pentagon-battling-military-rape-epidemic/

http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/bernard-will-the-military-finally-address-the-epidemic-of-sexual-assault-1.4504483

Steampunked

Beauty or Truth: Will I be Beautiful, or True?

 A beautiful person I know posted the following article at Facebook. My response, too long and contrary for Facebook, follows this brief quote:

“I've started telling my daughters I'm beautiful...

There are a lot of people like me. Women who know things. Women who have seen things. Women with diseases in their livers. There are a lot of women with scars on their arms and words that carry themselves like sparrows. There are women who were too big for this town, who had their backs bent carrying things like religion and a history that originated somewhere in the crook of a branch that extended over a stream. A place where a patch of the sky was visible through the leaves, where a little girl let her bare leg dangle too far down.

There are a lot of people like me, because we're all the same. We're all blood and electricity. We're lonely under the gaze of god. We're all wet with dew and swallowing hard against DO THIS, CONSUME, SHUT UP and BE AFRAID to die.

All of you women with lines on your brow, with cracks between your fingers… it's been a long winter. All of you, you are beautiful and so am I.”

And now for some stinkin’ thinkin’ because that’s what I’m good at and what’s beautiful about me.

Well, I admit the article brought a tear to the eye on first go ‘round, but then, because “denial ain't just a river in Egypt,” I decided it was nothing but Stuart Smalley on estrogen: “I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggonit, I’m beautiful!”

Right: So we may not make the same money men make doing the same job; we may not have an Equal Rights Amendment yet; maybe glass ceilings still exist in two-thirds of companies across America; and perhaps some of us have scars across our chests where breasts used to be, because some big-Pharma poophead decided menopause needed a pill— but not to fret, we can always tell ourselves we’re beautiful. And that’s because, to quote another SNL fave, Fernando, “It is better to look good than to feel good."  Except that in this case, looking good IS feeling good, and if you can lie to yourself, you’re all the more appealing to the rest of us. That way we don’t have to think about all those other pesky realities, or feel guilty for not doing so; but, especially, that way we don’t have to kill you for being negative.

In womanland these days, the ultimate sin is negativity. You may imagine when you admit to a flaw you’re going to earn points for humility, honesty and transparency, but, sorry, it doesn’t work that way. Instead, you’re going to lose points: In this world, honesty equals negativity, and negative people just “bring us down.” That is to say, if you admit to not exactly being Perfection Unlimited, but, rather, that for you the beauty train long ago left the station, then everybody else will risk facing their own imperfections. After all, we’re holding on by the most tentative of threads to a self-esteem scratched into the wall of second-class citizenship. Unless we bolster ourselves with phony affirmations, thinking to outsmart the opposition, we’ll be unable to manage. But that way we tempt the evil eye, only to drop to the ground like Wile E. Coyote, having outsmarted ourselves instead.

Of course, yes, the “beautiful” word means beauty in spirit and deed. But why lie about that too? Sometimes I am not beautiful in that sense either. I’d say it’s better to feel good despite our imperfections, than to pretend we’re perfect. I’d say the author’s daughters would be better off hearing, “Mommy’s plump and saggy, sometimes cranky and complaining, but being perfect is not something humans do so well. What’s beautiful is to know that real perfection is always flawed, and that “beauty is truth, truth beauty,” as a wise poet named John Keats once wrote."

Beauty is so central to humans’ most cherished beliefs and pursuits, that Keats’s forceful lines seem to challenge important aspects of our very selves. Once the reader moves beyond this reaction, though, it becomes possible to see that Keats’s truth is liberating. If humans no longer need to strive to create the perfect beautiful form in whatever medium, then it frees them to be imperfect. Imperfection, in turn, liberates humans to make and remake art, and to recognize that one form dies with each individual death, and is then born again with each new birth– a common theme in poetry from the Romantic period. Bloom and Trilling refer to this realization as Keats’s “gift of tragic acceptance” (495), which the poet hands to the reader and urges him or her to accept and then contemplate. — http://www.articlemyriad.com/analysis-ode-grecian-urn-keats/

My own mother was Vivian-Leigh-beautiful, or as beautiful as any movie star I've ever seen. But she never felt the need to remind me of it. Instead, she seemed wholly unaware of her beauty, and I remember the advice she gave me once when I was in high school and getting ready for a party: "Fix yourself up, but then forget all about yourself once you get there."  I think her example served us far better than an "I am beautiful" attitude would have.  In her case, the truth was self-evident; to say more than that would have been bragging.

Discussion of "Killing Us Softly" Talk by Jean Kilbourne

 (This is part of a general discussion at Hartmann's forum on the objectification of women.)

http://thoughtmaybe.com/advertising-and-the-image-of-women/

Zenzoe wrote:

I could have used the video in my conversation with D_NATURED.  She makes lots of points that are relevant to that conversation about "tight young ass," "pussy," and the entire subject of the sexual objectification of women and girls; and in particular the influence advertising and media have on shaping and creating female sexual objectification as if it's normal. Her point that sex is both more important and less important than the media suggests is something I'd like to discuss further, given more time. Also, how the objectification of women in advertising correlates with violence against women.  That's important too, obviously.

D_NATURED wrote:

The video is utterly irrelevant to our conversation, Z. First of all, I've never advocated violence against women.

Zenzoe wrote:

Of course you don’t, and never did, advocate violence against women. But that you, in particular, are not violent toward women, nor do you advocate it, nor do you even ignore it as an issue, does not mean that sexist advertising does not correlate with violence against women.

Still, because I mentioned you and the terms you have used in the same paragraph where, at the end, I mention how advertising correlates with VAW, perhaps you felt the sting of yourself being associated with such. I’m sorry if such clumsy juxtaposition of words and ideas set you against the video from the get-go. I think, if you could bring yourself to take a second look at it, you might come away with a different impression. To my mind, she manages to give us the forest despite the trees, if you will: She gives us an insight about our own culture, one that is only possible if you stand far back and think critically about the culture she's showing you.

Thus, I disagree that the video is “utterly irrelevant to our conversation.” And by “our conversation” I don’t mean you, D., personally. I’m talking about the objectification of women generally. It’s only coincidence that you happened to defend the use of A.’s term “tight young ass,” but I understand your defense, and your attitude, and I accept that you don’t see such objectification as toxic in any way.

We have simply used such verbiage to move on to a more general discussion about our culture and its objectification of women. Please don’t take it as a personal attack. What we see in advertising is who we are as a distinct culture, one with ideals and messages wholly specific to ourselves as a society. It’s important to look at that objectively, but I think you know that.

D_NATURED wrote:

Secondly, the desire to have sex with attractive women pre-existed advertising and rightfully so. Sex is a biological necessity, advertising is a capitalist one. The only question is whether or not any woman feels she needs to live up to the ideal. That's a struggle to which many women are immune. Advertising merely attempts to tell us WHAT is "attractive" (and I agree, by the way, that much of it is impossible to attain, for the average woman), and is often in contrast to what nature would require.

Zenzoe wrote:

Well, here I have to remind you that “the ideal” is our culture’s ideal, and not the multiple ideals of femininity as manifested in various cultures around the world historically. That’s the understanding one needs to adopt while viewing the video. Behind the discussion about advertising must be the recognition of, the knowledge of, other cultures, and even our own culture’s varied and evolving notions of the ideal feminine.

You may recall that in ancient China the ideal of femininity had women binding their feet to conform to that culture’s male preferences. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding  In other cultures, a long neck on a woman signifies the feminine ideal, and so the women wear neck rings to elongate their necks.  In European cultures, hairy armpits are feminine, but here they're not.  In Peter Paul Ruben’s day, the heftier female was the ideal, and in that culture and other cultures our skinny ideal would have provoked revulsion and concern.

Remember Marilyn Monroe? (how could we forget?) Simone Signoret, the author, said Marilyn, in her off-camera life, rarely dressed in what she described as her “Marilyn getup.” There’s an anecdote where once Marilyn and two friends were walking through the streets of New York and Marilyn turned to her friends and said, “Do you want me to be her?” and then she took on the M.M. personality, and suddenly strangers on the street started to recognize her.

So there you have what some people refer to as the “female impersonation” that women have had to adopt to conform to male preferences within our own patriarchal culture. And we are still a patriarchal culture, D., in case you haven’t noticed.

Recently, I watched a favorite movie of mine from the 60’s again, a French movie that received an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film: A Man and a Woman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_and_a_Woman  It was a bit of a shock, however, to notice in the observant eyes of my 2012 perspective what I hadn’t noticed back in the mid-60s when I didn’t have the distance required to see this clearly: Anouk Aimee’s (female lead) tamped-down, shy portrayal of a woman (not portrayal of a shy woman), that is, her female impersonation. In her own way, Anouk produced an act exactly comparable to the Marilyn act—a feminine ideal for her times, a lá French and not so funny, one designed not to threaten males with female self-assertion, or bold, overt intelligence or gumption.

You have to understand, though, I’ve had the exhilarating experience of being exposed to portrayals of a more liberated femininity by some of our current American actresses. For example, Mary McCormack’s portrayal of U.S. Federal Marshal, Mary Shannon, in the TV series In Plain Sight. There, you may see blond and gorgeous, but you’re also going to have to contend with a smart-mouth, feminist, dry-wit, mocking and utterly not inclined toward the use of feminine wiles as leverage, unless for conscious sarcastic or ironical effect. I cannot tell you how refreshing it is to witness such a violation of the stereotype. 

D_NATURED wrote:

The vast majority of those ads appeared to be the kind found in women's magazines, though, which implies that women are equal consumers of and participants in their own objectification. Could that be because women need to know what IS attractive, so they can fulfill their own natural desire to be pursued by men for the same ultimate purpose as those pursuing? Is the assumption of mine that women want to be pursued a media suggestion? Can you blame men for what sells to everyone? If enough women object to what the ads are saying, will the market not respond?

During her speech, the camera panned out to an audience full of women in dresses and make up and jewelry. I suggest they weren't dressed by their husbands and boy friends that morning but, ultimately, by their mothers at childhood. Do you see where I'm going with this?

Zenzoe wrote:

Of course women are “equal consumers of and participants in their own objectification!” That’s the power of advertising. If it didn’t work on women, it wouldn’t be used by the men and women —advertisers— who consciously or unconsciously wish to demean women to sell products within this patriarchal, misogynistic culture.

And what IS attractive, again, is wholly determined by this culture at a very specific time and location within the history of human culture. What IS attractive, D., is determined by a vicious cycle of indoctrination and response, of wish, fantasy, and conformity.
The Barbie Doll didn’t evolve out of an empty context, after all. Barbie does not bear witness to a gender-neutral, liberated and equal society; just the opposite. It evolved not because of who and what we women really are, but who and what the chauvinist mind of capitalism and consumerism has projected as an ideal from its own perverted ideology. 

D_NATURED wrote:

I have no problem with recognizing the way we are manipulated by the media so that we can examine our own motivations and biases. Let us not ignore that some of our biases can not be intellectualized away or blamed on male oppression alone. I find it hard to believe that, even in Sweden, when a girl with an exceptional ass walks by, the men there do not care to look.

Zenzoe wrote:

I don’t know why you assume that (1) I think men are not biologically sexual and not sexually attracted to attractive women, and, (2), I blame all of this on male oppression, and, (3) that Sweden is not part of modern Western civilization, and (4) that I conflate men’s looking with men objectifying women. Sheesh, D., can you give me a break here? There’s a big difference between the two, and I wish you could see that. To look and enjoy is not necessarily to objectify. ;-)

D_NATURED wrote:

Besides, with all of these women on this planet that are not poreless size zeroes with perfect bone structure and giant tits, there is still an imperfect man who loves them. The fact that my wife, for instance, does not fit that ideal does not diminish my passion for her. She is still in possession of all of the things that make a woman sexually attractive as well as other intangibles. No ad can convince me that she does not deserve my love.

Zenzoe wrote:

Again, “poreless size zeroes with perfect bone structure and giant tits,” (and add to that unnaturally and dangerously thin), if it is an “ideal,” it is an ideal constructed within the context of a patriarchal, consumerist, sexist society; it is not an absolute, consistent-across-all-cultures ideal (thus, men and women are not wired biologically to love it). And furthermore, to address the issue of violence against women, it is an ideal that has dire consequences for girls and women. I first would suggest that even girls who starve themselves to the point of anorexia to live up to the ideal have had their self-esteem violated; the society that promotes the “ideal” of thinness also commits violence against women.

But let’s not pretend that consistent images in the media —and I absolutely disagree with the suggestion that the majority misogynistic advertising occurs in women’s magazines— of all the varied ways in which women can be degraded and even presented as prey, will not contribute to male violence against women. Consider Wrangler’s “We are Animals” ad campaign (Wrangler ads are found everywhere). http://www.ozonweb.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/wrangleranimals2.jpg http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2008/08/wranglerad2.png 
 
So, there you see the notion of “we are animals,” not as a celebration of our mutual, erotic enjoyment within a context of sensuality and pleasure, but as a promotion of men as killers and women as prey; or men as killing animals and women as their dead prey. (and to think that ad campaign won all sorts of awards!) How much of this stuff, D., do you think springs naturally from the male psyche, rather than from the psyche of our deeply sick society?

And what makes you think images of that sort don’t register on the minds of less-ethical men than yourself, granting permission to them to violate women in the most horrific ways?

It’s wonderful that you’re able to rise above this crap. It’s great that you manage a fulfilling relationship with a real woman, that you’re not a superficial man who treats his wife as an object designed for his purposes alone. But your particular, individual case does not deny the truth the video presents, nor does it allow us to pretend that women and their objectification is not damaging to us all.