Empathy, Community and the Nature of Evil

I was leaving a comment on a blog post by my friend Nance, Mature Landscaping, when I realized that my comment was getting a bit long. Thanks, Nance for the inspiration for my own post.


I don't recall when it was that I first realized that there was a lot of meanness in the world. I do know that by the time that I read The Diary of Anne Frank, that I suspected that she was wrong, and that people were not really good at heart. I think that I was 12 years old when I first read Anne's diary.

Sometime during my twenties, I became absolutely certain that people are not essentially good at heart. I don't think that I'm a cynic, just a realist, and it's a realism born of experience.

Neither do I believe that we are essentially evil. I think that we are neutral until we choose to act on the specifics of our experiences and/or circumstances. Life is all about choices yet far too many of us consistently make those choices based on misinformation, prejudicial beliefs, and self-interests.

I think that we confuse aging with maturity, and make the fallacious assumption that empathy is an innate quality that develops as we mature. As children, we are all motivated by self-interests, by instant gratification. Small children are adorable but they are also inadvertently cruel in their actions. If you don't believe me, spend some time with a group of two-year-olds. Each wants whatever he or she wants when they want it. There's crying, biting, a blow here and there, and a lot of run by toy snatching. As we age, left unchecked, those desires continue to predominate. Empathy has to be taught and it has to be taught by example.

Empathy--the ability to identify with others, to put yourself in their shoes--is the most powerful force for good in the world; sadly, it is the emotion most lacking in so many of us. We're taught not to hit and to share our toys, but most of those lessons are narrowly applied to our immediate circumstances and we never learn to adopt the empathy model as defining our world view.

Listen to the tea partiers, they are obsessed with making certain that undeserving people do not receive a free ride. Who's undeserving? Anyone whom they deem to be so. Of course, that translates into anyone who doesn't look like them, or who speaks with a foreign accent. A free ride includes basic necessities like medical care. One of the biggest objections to the Health Care Reform Act was the belief that illegal immigrants would receive free health care at taxpayers expense. Even the terminology indicates the distancing from any identification with the perceived "other." Typically, the language refers to illegal "aliens," not people but creatures from another planet, inherently different and dangerous.

The recent anti-immigrant law passed in Arizona is further progeny of the empathy deficit. Angry supporters of the law insist that it is fair, secure in the knowledge that they will not be the ones stopped and challenged as to their legal right to be here. In their minds, the fallout from this law is not their problem.

The slide from disinterest in the well being of others into outright evil is accelerated by the fear mongers that appear in every generation. The Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs who nurture the fear and feed the hate. These people make conscious choices to ramp things up, to stir up a frenzy among the masses. They are not unique; history is full of these depraved folks who for profit and egoism disseminate malicious lies and half-truths designed to fuel the anger of those who believe that they have an entitlement that separates them from those they have designated as other.

I don't believe that there is some essential goodness in humankind that will simply win out. I'm not a total pessimist; to the contrary, I think that we have the ability to teach people to make more humane, informed choices. However, it means that we have to continually reiterate the need for change. We can't simply live locally and hope that the global issues will resolve if we build a sense of local community. Humankind is interconnected and we are global, regardless of what we may want to be. I understand the desire to withdraw from the larger world and to focus on one's community, but we do not live in isolation. There are no walls that can be built that are high enough to keep out the rest of the troubled world. Our local community is global.

PIGS “R” US

By Octopus

Early this morning, I walked my fabled beach to partake of what little time may be left before the sludge arrives. My beach is one of the most beautiful on the Atlantic coast ... a wide expanse of fine white sand that crunches beneath your feet, and an infinite emerald green vista beyond the breakers. Here, you can walk for miles before encountering another person.

On any given day, beachcombers will see herons, egrets, sandpipers, and plovers teasing the surf, or black skimmers and pelicans strafing the waves.

The Gulf oil leak disaster comes on the heals of an unseasonably cold winter that left hundreds of manatees and endangered marine turtles cold stunned, dead, or dying. For decades, marine biologists have warned: Our coral reefs are vanishing; our fish stocks are depleted; storm runoff is destroying our wetlands; and floating garbage will bring our ocean ecosystem to the verge of collapse.

Public opinion is a pendulum that swings between fads and confabulations, a rhythm and discord orchestrated by sociopaths. When gas hit $4 at the pump, everyone chanted: Drill, baby, drill. When corporations threatened to close factories and move operations overseas unless the government eased environmental regulations, everyone chanted: Down with tree huggers - they kill jobs.

Nobody listened. How soon we forget past transgressions. How soon we forgot about the tragedy of Love Canal where a housing community was built upon a waste dump containing 21,000 tons of toxic chemicals. In short order, residents reported acrid liquids leaching into their basements, and higher than normal prevalence rates of miscarriages, birth defects, and cancer. Children who played outdoors came home with burns on their skin. Eventually, the government evacuated 800 families and reimbursed them for their homes; however it took another 18 years before the successor corporation agreed to pay restitution.

How soon we forgot about the succession of fires along the Cuyahoga River: The first in 1912 that killed five, a fire in 1936 that burned five days, another in 1952 that burned three days and caused millions of dollars in damage, and the last in 1969 when accumulated trash and debris trapped in heavy black ooze was ignited by a sparks from a passing train.

How soon we forget the epidemic known as Minamata Disease, a severe neurological disorder resembling cerebral palsy caused by the release of methyl mercury in industrial wastewater. This highly toxic chemical accumulated in the seafood harvested from Minamata Bay, which when eaten by the populace resulted in mercury poisoning. By 2001, over 2,265 victims had been officially recognized, of whom 1,784 had died. At least 10,000 others still await compensation.

Major Industrial Polluters

(Click on image to enlarge)

Each year, the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) publishes information and analyses on major polluters in America. This study relies on EPA Risk Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI), which assesses the toxicity of chemicals released, impacts on human health, the risk to exposed populations, and the burden borne by local municipalities. How toxic is toxic?

The EPA tracks 600 toxic chemicals released into the environment as measured in millions of pounds per year. It should be noted that toxicity is not merely a measure of the quantity of pollutants released each year but the toxicity of each compound in relative terms. Toxicity varies by seven orders of magnitude meaning, pound-for-pound, some chemicals are ten million times more toxic than others. The EPA database includes known carcinogens such as asbestos (toxicity index = 1 million), benzidine (TI= 480,000), and bis chloromethyl ether (TI= 440,000), highly toxic industrial solvents, and millions of pounds of heavy metals such as cadmium (TI = 90,000), chromium (TI = 86,000), arsenic (TI = 60,000), lead (TI = 8,000), and mercury (TI = 6,000).

One would think the term Environmental Justice would place Mother Nature and the right of all citizens to clean air and water on an equal footing along with “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In fact, Environmental Justice is a ploy used by polluters to spread the impact of pollution without regard to race, religion, ethnicity, or station in life.

Pollution is good for business. It saves owners and shareholders the cost and inconvenience of cleanup and puts more money in their pockets. “Lets allow more arsenic in public drinking water,” says the coal lobby, “and who gives a damn if your worthless kid gets leukemia.” The perks and privileges of the few outweigh the health concerns of the many because public welfare, as Glenn Beck has told you, is tantamount to socialism.

“Have another Double Whopper with bacon and cheese,” says McDonalds, “Who who gives a damn if you die of diabetes. Shareholder value, baby!, that’s what’s its all about.”

“Go ahead. Beat your children and traumatize the crap out of them,” spouts Herr Doctor Freud, “Es ist goot fur beezniss.”

Corporate responsibility is an oxymoron. The titans of industry don’t want environmental regulations, banking reform, consumer product monitoring, food inspections, or workplace safety standards, because regulations are bad, big government is bad, and what’s good for business is good for America!  The 19th Century mindset of social Darwinists, libertarians, and the discontents of civilization are anachronisms living in the post-modern world.  And who the hell needs healthcare when you have no heart and no brain, and your head and your ass are interchangeable.

Inevitably, the cost of cleanup and compensation will be borne by the consumer as energy costs rise. Eventually taxpayers will get stuck with the bills when push comes to pay, because BP’s lawyers will delay and delay. When gas hits $4 at the pump, the pendulum will swing once again with chants of “drill, baby, drill,” because nothing in the human Universe ever changes, while Mother Nature suffers one more incremental death blow.

The longer the Louisiana oil leak persists, the more inevitable this becomes:  Oil will enter the Gulf of Mexico Loop Current that will transport it to the east coast of Florida … thus impacting our beaches and coastal ecosystems. The oil slick arribada may be weeks or months away. Heartbroken, livid, outraged, there are no words to describe what I feel.

How Glenn Beck Makes Sh*t Up

A deconstruction: Beck turns two black panthers, a Farrakhan speech, and a step-dance video into "proof" that OBAMA HAS A SECRET NEGRO GOON ARMY!!!

The High-Tech Lynching of ACORN

Warning: music is appropriately modern, angry, and loud. Video can still be educational with the sound off.

Religious leaders speak out against Beck

Because they are fundamentalists, certain factions . . . oppose preaching a social gospel that attempts to make a relation between Biblical teachings and social problems. Thus they are often critical of the favored liberal social legislation of the National Council of Churches. . . .

The above paragraph is taken from a section about the John Birch Society in the book, The Far Right by Donald Janson, 1963.

Nearly 50 years later Glenn Beck's rants sound eerily identical to this right-wing extremist group. Goose-stepping along with the JBS, this fountain of lies and distortions "has suggested any church promoting 'social justice' or 'economic justice' was using code words for Nazism and communism."

I beg you look for the words social justice or economic justice on your church Web site," he said. "If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. ... Am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! If they're going to Jeremiah Wright's church, yes!

If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish," he said. "Go alert your bishop and tell them, 'Excuse me, are you down with this whole social justice thing?' If it's my church, I'm alerting the church authorities: 'Excuse me, what's this social justice thing?' And if they say, 'Yeah, we're all in on this social justice thing,' I am in the wrong place.

Later, Beck held up a picture of a swastika and one of a hammer and sickle, declaring again that "social justice" has the same philosophy as the Nazis and communists and that the phrase is a code word for both.

A small group of churches and religious leaders are speaking out against this poor excuse for a human being. Hopefully there will be a louder outcry as congregations gather to worship this weekend.
The strongest voice against Beck so far has been that of the Rev. Jim Wallis, CEO and president of Sojourners and an evangelical leader.

When Glenn Beck is asking Christians to leave their churches, the Catholic Church, the black churches, Hispanic, evangelical, to leave all our churches, I'm saying it's time for Christians to leave the Glenn Beck show," he said. "This offends Christians. This is salt, something at the heart of their faith. It's something many of us have spent our lives trying to do, to practice.

Urging a boycott of Fox and requesting an invitation to appear on Beck's show for a little friendly chit-chat, Wallis said, "What do you say about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., what do you say about Desmond Tutu, about Mother Teresa, what do you say to the reverends and rabbis who gave their lives to social justice because that is their faith?"

The Rev. Canon Peg Chemberlin, president of the National Council of Churches of Christ USA, commented:

It's very disturbing," she added. "He's speaking on behalf of his political views and trying to take out of the biblical text the things that are going to oppose his political views. This is primarily a political motivation. ... It's not that Christians haven't been Nazis and socialists, but we're not talking about political parties here. We're talking about 2,000-year-old gospel.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which he and his family are members, "suggested Beck's comments did not necessarily represent its position." In a kind of wet noodly way, the church issued a statement that read, "Public figures who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints represent their own views and do not speak for the church."

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

idiocracy

My newest creation is a video about the return of paranoid politics in our time, set to the tune of a defunct metal band called idiot. The CD it's all a lie was pressed before the movie Idiocracy was a glimmer in the eye.

Misinformer Of The Year

Media Matters names Glenn Beck "misinformer of the year:"

Glenn Beck, Performance Artist

Remember that focus-group we heard about the other day? The one that basically says today's conservative movement is a cult, and Glenn Beck is the cult leader?

Two aspects of the discussion on Beck among conservative Republicans were particularly noteworthy. One was a common fear among the women for his personal safety, a belief that his willingness to stand up to powerful liberal interests was putting his life, as well as the lives of those working with him, in danger. Of course, his willingness to face this danger head on only adds to his legend.

As it turns out, Beck was spotted with an armed bodyguard that very same day:

Guests at the other day's preview of Broadway musical "Memphis" noticed Beck was closely accompanied -- even to the men's room -- by a bodyguard with a gun partially concealed under his jacket. Beck, who famously accused President Obama of being "a racist," tweeted after the show: "Just got back from 'Memphis' on Broadway. Amazing cast & music. 2 songs abt Hope & Change. rlly? Only 2?"

Beck's performance art has spilled out of the studio and into the New York gossip pages. Which is not to say that Beck doesn't receive death threats; I'm sure he does -- but from under-medicated lunatics, not "Obama goons." As I've demonstrated before, the "goons" are products of a lunatic imagination.

I'll go further and say this "bodyguard" is another plastic frog. A fake. A fugazi. There is no such thing as a "partially-concealed" firearm; the gun was another ostentatious show in a very public setting. Beck is actively courting his cult status.

We need a name for his cult. I'm going with "Beckies" right now. Any nominations?

Adding: "Beckentologists"?

Summer raving

Those lazy, hazy, crazy conspiracy theories of Summer are still with us and not just in the deep South. Majikthise gives us a clip of Glenn Beck, Fox News' designated madman, discussing the prospect of Americorps being a cover for President Obama's own private army - a kind of American SS if you will. Just the kind of zombie troops he will need to disarm the Armed Retards of Texas and deliver our country into the hands of Sauropods from Saturn. Just like FDR did with the WPA.

Obama has given the job training and public service agency "half a trillion dollars" to turn them into an elite fighting force to use against Americans, presumably after the Pentagon balks and Blackwater opts out. The Pentagon would be jealous of all that funding - if there was a particle of truth in this seditious crock of Glennbeckery.

Now don't get me wrong, I do not reject conspiracy theories out of hand. There certainly were some involved in bringing on Bush's Second War and a number of less violent ones involving raiding the public treasury, but I say that because there is credible evidence for it. There never is for Beck's ravings. In fact the idea seems to be that total absence of evidentiary support is not only proof of conjecture, but a large screen upon which to project the ideas he comes up with by sticking his head in a paper bag full of aromatic hydrocarbons. Never mind the proof of his dishonesty, the folks who have been backed into a corner don't care about evidence. The people who hired him care nothing at all whether their viewers are human or subhuman or anti-human as long as they tune in, turn on and freak out.

Beck and the Burning Bag

Remember the Halloween trick with the flaming bag of dog crap? Eons of experience show that leaving it alone is the best policy because you can't stamp it out without getting shit all over your porch and on your shoes. It's an apt comparison, I think, to what's happening with Glenn Beck and the boycott of his incoherent hate-fests. Despite Fox having lost some 4 dozen sponsors, his ratings seem to be going up.

The LA Times tells us that according to his latest Nielsen data, he had 2.81 million viewers Monday, his third-largest audience ever on Fox. It didn't hurt that Sarah Palin, the de facto spokeswoman for the Stupid wing of the Hate Party, gave him a plug and it's good evidence that Homo Sapiens bashing has become the national sport.

OK, that's one person per hundred of population, but it's more shit than I want on my porch, thanks.

Rounding up the righteous.

Glenn Beck, that bottomless sack of snake shit, is trying to make you forget that the last administration set new highs in illegal surveillance of private citizens by referencing a small item at the Whitehouse.gov web page which asks that the endless stream of e-mail lies be forwarded. The site, if you care to look, has information and videos that attempt to disprove the mostly baseless claims. The professional liars are alarmed and so they want you to be alarmed -- and so they break out the swastikas again and try to pin them on the Democrats. "They're rounding up the conservatives, they cry, while trying not to snicker. "they've created a new 'Information Czar'" says the bullshit Czar, Glenn Beck.

People who invent psychotic scenarios and dress them up as dire warnings are "conservatives" you see and only trying to help you see that Obama is a fascistcomministmuslim and illegal alien -- conservatively speaking.

If you're like me, you've had enough of the Palin "death panel" fraud and a great many others and forwarding them to Snopes or Factcheck simply doesn't help much. Returning them with comment to the people who sent them to you doesn't help either. Depending on the Media to refute the obvious and childish fabrications is a lost hope, but it seems that Mr. Beck and Senator Cornyn and the other professional traitors and haters of honesty are afraid someone will get to the bottom of it all and trace the sabotage, the lies and the psychotic ravings back to the RNC and into their own hard drives from whence it originates.

Behold, we're now all being asked to "squeal on our neighbors" say the folks who wanted to have postal letter carriers peek in our basement windows a few years ago and encouraged librarians to spy on those of us who read. Obama is making up a list, just like Santa and he's going to put all those people who tried to warn you that Obama is Hitler into camps.

Did I mention that Poland invaded Germany? The Liberals don't want you to know.

Glenn Beck is the Anti-Christ

These are wicked, crazy, frightening people says Glenn Beck and he's right -- absolutely right. Anyone who would broadcast a story that WWW.cars.gov, the site that explains the government's cash-for-clunkers program will trick you into signing away the rights to all the information in your computer is wicked, crazy and frightening.

“They can continue to track you, basically forever, once they’ve tapped into your system … it’s so broad that they can do just about anything.” says Beck's vampiric foil Guilfoyle.

“I know who our czars are now, and this collection of these czars, these are evil people. These are wicked, crazy, frightening people.” replied Beck on his Fox News program.

The show went on to have Jonah Goldberg lie that if you log onto the site with Skype, you're giving them permission to listen to all your phone calls - something their hero Bush did with Fox's blessing.

It's a lie of course, says Kos and I'd like to think that by now someone in the Foxhouse would have bothered to notice that the privacy statement Beck showed us wasn't from Cars.gov at all but from a system registered dealers use to report the sales. you couldn't log into this system if you wanted to. I'd like to think there would be some kind of apology - in fact I'd like to see some kind of criminal prosecution, wouldn't you? I'm sure we won't. I'm sure we will see and hear more and bigger and more outrageous lies and no one will do a damned thing as we slide into ruin.