FREE SPEECH, HATE SPEECH, AND THE CHOICES WE MAKE

By (O)CT(O)PUS

Our country is unique in practicing the most liberal form of free speech in the world. Yet, the right to free speech is by no means absolute. With freedom comes responsibility. Civil and criminal laws govern our conduct. The right to free speech does not include fraud, imminent incitement, perjury, theft of intellectual property, sedition, slander, smut, or breaches of national security.

European nations guarantee free speech with a few notable exceptions. Invasions of privacy, hate speech against ethnic or racial minorities, any infringement of human rights, or Holocaust denial … these are prohibited and punishable by law.

In America, bigots may denigrate any nationality or minority group with impunity. Holocaust denial - no matter how repugnant - is legal. There is no statutory right to privacy in our Constitution.

Political speech removes many constraints imposed by civil law. Appeals to prejudice. Character assassination. Deception. Defamation. Racism. The derogation of women and disabled persons. Bombast and vulgarity have become standard operating procedure. In America of 2016, political discourse has devolved into a contest of madmen for the primacy of the sewer where no smear goes to waste.

Cyberspace is the most lawless place of all. Anonymous trolls will commandeer online discussions. Scammers will spam your email box with cons and malware. Hackers seek ways to steal your identity. Bullies have driven vulnerable teenagers to suicide. Everywhere in Cyberspace, there are predators and stalkers, sadists and sociopaths.

Years ago, Kathy Sierra, a popular author of computer books, was forced to cancel all public appearances after a group of men — calling themselves the “Mean Kids” — threatened her with gang rape, violence, and death.

Last month, Illma Gore, a Los Angeles based artist, received thousands of death threats after her controversial portrait of Donald Trump went viral on the Internet. Last week, she was ambushed and savagely beaten by an unknown assailant.

Last month, Marcus Owens, an honor student at the University of Iowa, was assaulted by three white men yelling racial epithets. He sustained multiple injuries including deep gashes, broken teeth, and a damaged eye socket. 

Intimidation is not free speech when minorities, women, and other targeted groups are menaced in their homes and forced to live in fear. Negative stereotypes create toxic environments that compromise the rights, opportunities, and freedom of innocent people.

In every community, there are unhinged hotheads hooked on adrenaline who will lash out in anger, often without provocation. Taunts and threats serve only one purpose: To manipulate and dominate those whom they hate and condemn them to silence. Here is a point to keep in mind: Any threat of assault is tantamount to real assault — and the province of law enforcement.

No community is immune to controversy. In Florida last month, students from Vero Beach High School distributed a racist flier with a Confederate flag. The Indian River County School Board rejected calls to ban the flag and amend the School Code of Conduct. “We can’t legislate morality,” claimed Superintendent Mark Rendell.

Yes, we can. Rendell and the Board used bad faith arguments to kick the perennial can down the road. Thousands of years of human history — from Hammurabi and Moses to the present — teach this lesson: Codes and commandments are the oldest forms of behavioral modification.

How can a symbol of racial hatred and persecution engender a positive and safe learning experience? It can’t. After the murder of nine parishioners in Charleston last year, the South Carolina legislature voted overwhelmingly to remove the Confederate flag from state grounds. In contrast, local officials chose moral cowardice and fiduciary incompetence. 

With each passing year, we drive all standards of civility and honesty further into a savage wilderness. We equate freedom with excess and excess with freedom. We covet freedom but spurn responsibility. Reckless rhetoric and sleazy soundbites are the signature traits of self-styled demagogues who abuse the institutions of democracy and undermine democracy itself.  

As parents, citizens, and voters, we have a mutually shared responsibility to raise the standards of public discourse. We can start by making better choices.

Child Donald to the Dark Tower Came*

MY 1 first thought was, he lied in every word 

 That hoary cripple, with malicious eye

 Askance to watch the working of his lie

 On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford

 Suppression of the glee, that purs’d and scor’d

 Its edge, at one more victim gain’d thereby.

It's remarkable how the "crooked Clinton" meme has survived the many failed and incredibly expensive attempts to pin some crime on them, but then the funds behind the defamation are nearly limitless and untraceable. From Whitewater to Benghazi, I can't think of any more vicious and relentless program of defamation that wasn't the product of a religion.  Perhaps we should see the Republican party as a sort of religious entity, looking at the way people give their faith and trust to it despite an unbroken progression of broken promises and prophecies and prognostications that never come true.

Of course crooked Donald has picked up the stained and sticky baton and refers to the former Secretary of State as "Crooked Hillary" as though the title Crooked Trump couldn't serve as the title of his biography, real estate scams, infidelities, fake colleges and all.  It's apparent though that the question of honesty is of concern to the dumb bastards that support this circus clown manque with a smile as sincere as that other criminal clown, John Wayne Gacy.

I listened to a dinner conversation between two rather wealthy, self-made millionaire types recently. The consensus was that Trump was "beginning to make sense" and he seemed the more trustworthy of the choices as he was rich enough to finance his own campaign and would not be beholden to anyone if elected.  Neither would Vladimir Putin or El Chapo Guzman for that matter, but I didn't suggest it, choosing to keep my temper and my dinner behind clenched teeth. Of course if there was any beginning here it was that he may beginning to read speeches written by others rather than rambling like a bad drunk in an empty bar; raving about how China is "raping" us by buying Treasury bonds.

Motivated conjecture seems to trump all in our dumpster-diving political discussion. Flimsy attempts at character assassination easily  outweigh a sterling career while a character good enough at self-incrimination to make smearing him redundant, raves on unquestioned. Am I being overly cynical by observing that when facts or logic or any acknowledgement of reality enters into political discourse it's only as a gilded frame for our infantile and usually baseless prejudices?

What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guess’d what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch ’gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

* With apologies to Robert Browning

Can I Get a Witness?

One of the contributing factors in the difficulty (I almost wrote impossibility) of  that "discussion" about race in America we're constantly told we need to have is that victims in America have tended to set themselves above advice or criticism  and thereby gain the right to direct any conversation in it's course or conclusions. "for are we not victims and are not our critics all evil?"  I'm sure that by this sentence the gavel is already descending on the verdict that I'm a racist,  But enough of that, lets talk specifics.

I read in the Daily Kos just now that African American poet Crystal Valentine was deeply offended by Megyn Kelly's assertion that Jesus was a white man. Now any statements about Jesus  need to be qualified as to whether we're talking about Jesus of Nazareth, the failed Jewish revolutionary or Jesus Christ of myth.  Obviously Megyn and Crystal are engaged in equivocation, or more specifically, the fallacy of equivocation.  Those are two different characters.  Those who come to Jesus through Sunday school or through Christian education are talking about  someone either half god or entirely god or even, like Gilgamesh of Uruk, one third divine. He was a man of peace come to mysteriously erase inherited sin that without him could never otherwise be erased.  He died and was resurrected, although the family of myths diverges in the details.

There's absolutely no historical evidence for this Jesus so perhaps one can call him Chinese or a Swede or African with equal authority.  If I were part of that "conversation" I might have pointed out that the Jesus that might actually have been wasn't Celtic or blond, he was a Jew without any physical feature we know of to distinguish him from other Jewish men at the time.

It is this mythological Jesus Ms. Valentine refers to when she says:

“How can she says Jesus was a white man when he died the blackest way possible? With his hands up, with his mother watching."

The answer is easy and history gives weight to her statement, all the poetry and passion, all the sound and fury notwithstanding. It's just as valid and more so to say he died in the most Jewish way possible. In fact the notion that only descendants of American slaves have ever been persecuted and oppressed and no one elses experience can be referenced or compared  is a bit obnoxious. Jewish lives matter.

So I'm sorry, all poetic references to the child saint of Ferguson notwithstanding, Jesus was a Jew from the Northern Kingdom and likely from a tiny hamlet called Nazareth and came to Jerusalem to oust the Romans and their collaborators with divine help.but we really can't be sure.  He may be fictional, he may be a composite of the many rebels seeking God's help by purifying the people.  His ethnic background is not irrelevant, it's essential and the image of him as a persecuted ex American slave is poetic license with no power to influence objective views of history.  Jesus the man belongs to the Jews, Jesus the Savior is anyone's because we make him up as we go along, whether or not you call myth as a witness, and by doing so se forfeit the right to claim that he was or was not anything at all.   

Fear and Loathing in The Ladies Room

Are these the best or worst of times?  Probably the answer is yes, but I have to argue that they are the craziest of times.  Is it a symptom of this  national insanity that any organization with the word Liberty or Freedom or Patriot in the title is mostly about extremist politics?  Of course I have an example:  it's the Liberty Counsel * which of course has nothing to do with Liberty and  advocates for special powers and legal exemptions for evangelical Christians.  Now, when you really think about it, it really isn't about Christianity as that family of religions usually likes to be defined, but about restricting personal liberty when it comes to matters of sex or gender or whatever language is approved by other organizations that aren't about what they're calling themselves.  No, the Liberty Counsel is about restricting personal liberty and substituting a rigid code of behavior derived from. . . well from them actually.

So it's no surprise to read that the president of this august body, one Anita Staver is raving about bringing a gun into the public restrooms at Target.  Target, guns, ha ha ha.   And although in just about any State there's no law against doing that if you have a carry permit, Target has a 'no guns' policy in their stores, so Mrs. Liberty here is openly ignoring the Liberty of Target and private property rights in general and possibly engaging in Armed Trespass in particular.   Of course the Target Crapper Patrol would have to see that gun as well as they would have to see the gonads of  an alleged gender bender and neither is likely to happen as things stand in toilets everywhere.  There's never been a problem except in the evil minds of  the New Inquisition.

But the question isn't the legality but the alleged necessity of doing so, now that Target has made it their policy to allow transgendered people to use the loo of choice.  Yes, I know, there has never been a problem with that. Department store washrooms during business hours are not a dangerous place and  transgendered  or androgynous or even scary people with tattoos  have always used them and you never noticed. I'd worry more about Christ-Crazy gonad obsessed old women with guns and a heart full of hate.

No this grandstand play is about nothing other than a power play by Christo-Nazis who oppose equal rights under the law for people they choose to hate for religious reasons. They have gone to court to protect the right of pubic employees to get paid for a job they refuse to do because of their  twisted religion.  No, It's a threat of armed violence designed to create an atmosphere of fear and face it, Target has as much right to say who uses their toilets as they do to call the cops on old quick draw Staver, and Rupaul has the same right to keep and bear arms as anybody else.

So let me say this about that as Nixon used to say:  I just may begin to frequent the liberty Council and the other organizations it controls: **

• Luke 18:27 Foundation, Inc.
• Liberty Counsel Action, Inc.
• Liberty Counsel Action
• Freedom Federation, Inc.
• Liberty Action PAC, Inc.
• Salt and Light Council

And when I do, I'm going to carry a concealed weapon or two.  And why not?  You're all about Liberty aren't you? That's right Anita, I'm coming soon to a crapper near you and  no telling what I might be wearing or bearing.


* Listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.

** Also affiliated with Liberty University Law School, which was founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Liberty Counsel.

Study This!

Seek, and ye shall find, it says in the Gospels, much to the cynical amusement of those looking for things they never seem to attain, or acquire. If it's freedom you're seeking, your not going to find it if the Gospel Growlers can help it. Freedom is dangerous and so is Democracy and we have studies to show it.

I'm sure Utah Governor Gary Herbert is going to find what  he's seeking in the studies he's using taxpayer money to fund: studies to prove that pornography is a public health hazard which creates a "toxic environment." Of course it's all an attempt to preach religion from the Governor's office and nothing more.  But it's good to know that there is, at last, some notice of toxic environments in Utah, even if  he's not actually talking about the environment we call air or water or land or even  a toxin that actually poisons anything or any one.  No, those nebulous but harmful effects need to be created, hence the study.  We need to start studying  pornography keeping in mind that it's bad, very bad: it's

"a public health hazard leading to a broad spectrum of individual and public health impacts and societal harms."

It reminds me of Richard Nixon's studies of Marijuana intended to back up the bogus claims used to criminalize it.  When the studies showed no harm to the stuff, he fired the researchers.  But this isn't a medical or scientific study and it assumes the conclusion that grows out of the toxic environment we call religion.  Truth by assertion is unassailable. Support by evidence produced by fake studies is simply window dressing. When it comes to research; those "studies" we always hear about find  only what he who pays for them is seeking.  These studies tend to be the building blocks of marketing if not also the bricks paving the road to hell. You pays yer money and you gets your study, complete with an actor in a lab coat and a clipboard. If it's freedom you're seeking, your not going to find it if the Gospel Growlers can help it.

I have to wonder if the public health "impacts"  they most assuredly will find will be restricted to Utah, since they don't seem to appear in places where pornography is everywhere and I wonder if the "impact" of  rampant abuse of women and young girls that is ignored or tolerated or swept under the rug in Utah will come under review here.  I suppose it won't yet we can be sure there will be "links" to all sorts of  health risks even if we have to invent consequences to be linked to. Something will be needed if the study bothers to examine countries whe

After all we can start with the premise that "pornography is rape" thanks to extremists of another stripe and after that the only hard part is not to talk about old Mormon men with harems of little girls and other forms of Latter Day female slavery in Utah and elsewhere.

But I don't want to blame it all on Mormons.  The GOP has been straightjacket-worthy for decades, ignoring the real problems threatening our health and well-being, our freedom and survival, in favor of ranting about dirty pictures.  The Tampa GOP convention in 2012 was quite obsessive on getting "tough" about pornography and I'm sure we can remember Ken Starr from previous campaigns attempting to criminalize even medical terminology concerned with sex on the internet.  It's the Republican disease as much as a Christian disease but of course today there isn't enough difference to make it seem constitutional.

I might suggest that Evangelicals, religious fanatics of all sorts and the Republican Party are the real public health hazards: obfuscating public health programs, opposing individual liberty, thwarting science and supporting the oppression of  "gentiles."

Isn't it funny - and by funny I mean tragic - that as a free country we encourage things that have no place in a free country?

On the Money

Sure it's time for a change.  I've been commenting for years that other countries have artists, authors, poets and scholars on their money while we have government officials, symbols of authority.  I've long suggested that Andrew Jackson be the first to go: a miserable racist who deported thousands of people in brutal fashion to miserable concentration camps because he simply didn't want them East of the Mississippi.  Many American Indians have compared him to a certain German leader it's impolitic to name here.

I wish however that there could have been a calm, scholarly but public discussion of  just who most merits becoming the face of the twenty dollar bill, that denomination that dominates the wallets of America.  I know, that's naive. This is America and discussion in America sounds much like the wilds of Montana at night during a full moon.

Harriet Tubman won't be the first female on our currency, that distinction has been had by mythological figures for a long time and of course Sacagawea ( and a baby boy) had a run on a now defunct  dollar coin even though we have no idea what she actually looked like.

So it's mousy, plain and un-heroic looking  Harriet Tubman. we have photographs to prove it.  Of course real heroes hardly ever look the part and for her efforts to save people from slavery at great personal risk, she certainly is as much of one as men like Oskar Schindler and probably greater since she took so many terrible risks with her life.   Good for her. She stood for something, just like George Washington even if she didn't have a white horse to ride on. She not only stood for something truly moral, she broke laws to do it and essentially went to war, which come to think of it was what our founding fathers did even though those were British laws..  I just wish it didn't feel so much like pandering because I know full well every time someone pulls out a twenty in America, there's going to be some comment, some grimace and I'm going to have to distance myself from people even further.  I just don't want to listen to it - idiots demanding that we boycott the twenty. I can see the stickers on all the ATMs.  I just wish it didn't absolutely have to be a woman and a black women, even though  it does, doesn't it?

The Tempest

Wall Street - Main Street: how many times can you use a synecdoche before you become a cynic dochebag?  Or are these mawkish clichés rather more like  metonyms, if the street is used to stand for something much larger than the establishments found there or the men and women working in the neighborhood?  They sell hot dogs on Wall Street too.

When we use those straw men, for that's what they really are, are we distracting from something much bigger, a trend, a phenomenon like the agricultural revolution or the industrial revolution or the deregulation of past years that isn't being noticed as we search for the packaged scapegoats provided by political campaigns?  And we need those scapegoats you know, to focus the public mind the way you ask a kid to look at the birdie and not at the unattractive photographer.

Some of this is so childish as to make us think more of Sesame Street than any other avenue with terrycloth puppets in business suits or is it more a Punch and Judy show: Bernie Sanders hammering on a top hat wearing, hand wringing stereotype?   Is it all there to distract us from the nearly a quarter trillion dollars in fines already paid by "Wall Street" and to prompt us to  clamor for additional punishment which although emotionally satisfying, doesn't pay the bills?

I think we're seeing a bit of a passion play and I have to recall the menacing and grimacing faces common to medieval paintings and street theater, of Jesus being tormented by an angry crowd.  Does "breaking up" large institutions produce salubrious results ?  Are there examples? I'm not hearing any discussion at all.  Is "greed" an apt description for the profit motive or is it a word chosen for emotional complexity?  It conjures up all sorts of historical unpleasantness and far more than the word "ambition" does.

It's cheap politics, but parsimonious America spends little intellectual effort on analyzing major historical movements like the evolution of  economies.  Are we drifting or are we being steered?   Is the captain planning to jump ship as we head toward the rocks, or are we steaming away from the storm?  Is the production of  a large "surplus population" as inevitable as it was in previous revolutionary centuries and now that we don't have colonies to ship them to, will we have a revolution here instead an adjustment?

A tempest in a teapot or a campaign in a piss pot:  it remains to be seen. I'm too old to have expected a contest between reason and  deception, but still it involves holding one's nose when choosing a candidate and it's depressing to be so sure that America the Beautiful would not respond approvingly to anything else.  O brave new world, That has such people in't!

El Hermano Obama

Forgive my tardiness. Perhaps it is not too late to bring up this important chapter in the shared history of the Americas. Now that our common evolution regarding the Cold War, the epic struggle between our two world views and the disparate economic theories that have held court and battle in the punishing and unforgiving light of economic prosperity, can finally be written, I hope that this news is still fresh in your minds.

Initially, I was very excited and motivated. However, I soon bogged down in my own inadequate skills at translation. I have no excuse as to why I said nothing even after I had found the English language translation only a day or two later. Interested in the letter that the eighty-nine year-old Castro had addressed to our president, of course the first thing that I did was to googol a Spanish language, complete text of the letter. This was easy enough to find and took me to the website of the official news organ of the Cuban government, as some of you will remember, appropriately named Granma. This kept me busy for several days as I tested my skills at Spanish syntax and wording. Although my language skills were not lacking, even with the help of on-line translators, I was unable to arrive at the true meaning of Castro’s words.

Happily, upon returning to the newly discovered website, I noticed that the article was available in five languages. This is what I learned in my attempts to translate it independently from Castro’s words originally written in Spanish: I think that it was easy enough to understand the first sentence. We do not need the empire to give us anything. Where I first ran into trouble was the second sentence. Nuestros esfuerzos serán legales y pacíficos, porque es nuestro compromiso con la paz y la fraternidad de todos los seres humanos que vivimos en este planeta. I understood Castro’s commitment to world peace and accord with the brotherhood of human beings. But I misunderstood the word, esfuerzos, which simply means efforts. When Castro began talking about how the Spaniards, unable to quickly find gold, shamefully destroyed many of the river valleys in a frantic and vain search for the precious metal, I was already in over my head. I did understand the word, bochornosa as shameful or reproachful, and understood that he was talking about the lust for gold that caused the Spaniards to destroy the native habitat. I was unable to come up with a logical syntax for my own translation. What I found out along the way was of some significance.

The expression Hatos Circulares eventually brought me to a history of the colonization of Cuba in the Spanish language. While there were land grants given by the crown to Spanish families, these grants were large and were later subdivided. I learned two new words in Spanish, Repartir and Compartir. Repartir means to distribute or divide. Compartir means to share with another person. The large land grants in Cuba were sub-divided and apportioned to the privileged few. The Hatos Circulares refer to circular divisions of land that were exploited for the discovery of gold. The original meaning of Hato is simply a herd of animals, something that might be constrained or limited to a locality or a corral. Thus, the circular corrals that were divided between the landed Spaniards were stripped of their ecosystems in the vain attempt of Spain to reproduce the obscene wealth that they had procured from the Mexican, Central American and South American lands. The search for gold in Cuba proved fruitless. Eventually the island became a plantation economy populated with slave labor. What is significant about the communication between Castro and Obama is that Fidel Castro accuses Obama of only being concerned about the development of events subsequent to the colonization of the Americas; as if the history of the indigenous people were of no import. This is a valid criticism, although low-hanging fruit. I wonder if Obama privately felt any honor by being so named by Castro as a brother. Of course, this is neither flattery nor a compliment to be publicly acknowledged by our president. Castro has harsh judgment for Obama’s “honeyed” words as to leaving behind the past fifty years of the Cold War and looking forward together to a bright future. Castro mocks Obama. Yet he values him as he never has any president in the past. He takes note of Obama’s natural intelligence. He confesses that he has hoped for wisdom from our president. He has sent a message to every American of intelligence. For me it is entirely refreshing to hear from someone outside of the system of corporate governance. Let me leave you with the two links: The complete text in Spanish and the complete text in English. Please do take the time to read it. This will never happen again in our lifetimes or any other time in the future.

http://www.granma.cu/reflexiones-fidel/2016-03-28/el-hermano-obama-28-03-2016-01-03-16

http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2016-03-28/brother-obama

Thank you Brothers and Sisters.

FJ

When The Alternative Is Far Worse...

Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth

Let’s take a break from our national pastime – trying to stop Donald Trump – for a moment of clarity. Wanting Trump out of the Republican presidential race is not the same thing as proclaiming Ted Cruz an acceptable alternative. He manifestly is not. If a Trump presidency would be a disaster, a Cruz administration would be apocalyptic.

The above excerpt from today's Boston Globe is spot on. While Trump (Drumpf), as odious as he is for a majority of Americans, Cruz is equally as odious and indeed far more dangerous to American civil liberties. The GOP field, with the exception of perhaps Kasich who doesn't stand a chance, is one of, if not the worst in modern GOP history. In fact, and it pains me to say this, the GOP is currently the best argument for voting democratic this year.

With his archaic views, ill-informed grasp of civil rights, and noxious ambition, Cruz shouldn’t be allowed any closer to the Oval Office than a White House tour. This is a man whose crowning achievement has been the 2013 government shutdown, which he engineered to force President Obama and the Democrat-led Senate to gut the Affordable Care Act. Of course, Obamacare remained intact, and what most people remember about their government being held hostage is Cruz reading “Green Eggs and Ham” during a 21-hour speech.

It was, as Josh Holmes, a former aide to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell told The Washington Post, “like a toddler’s version of legislating.”

And as every toddler knows, if you act up long enough, you’ll get your way. In the case of Cruz, then a freshmen senator and a Tea Party darling, it was about juicing his national profile in preparation for the presidential run he is now inflicting on us. No wonder his fellow Republicans, blamed for the shutdown, are loath to support a man willing to torch his party and country in order to further his own career.

Continue Reading  BELOW THE FOLD

      

'Inky' the Octopus Escapes

In case any of you have been wondering about my absence from the blogosphere, here is the reason: Non-stop minute by minute minutia on Cyanide Network News; the fetid aroma of ass wipe politicians wafting through the air; and hive insects lapping up the stench. Yup, the dreaded Zombie Apocalypse is upon us -- swarming with rotten animated flesh -- with no definitive or merciful End in sight.

Everyone needs a mental health break and a breath of fresh air.  So I decided to take a nautical vacation -- as naughty as possible -- until the effluvium subsides.