“Pre-Marital Sex Is Really Germ Warfare”
by tristero
That’s right: If you fuck outside of marriage, you’re a terrorist. Sez who? Why, Eric Keroack sez so, that’s who (warning, the link’s to a pdf).
You know who Eric Keroack is, don’t you? You should. You’re paying his salary.
ht, The Corpus Callosum.
[Updated immediately because I hit post too soon. grr….]
Collective Guilt And Punishment: Worse Than Racism
by poputonian
Let’s try this one more time. Sharkbabe said:
Sadly the mass of Americans are no more moved by Iraqi deaths than they were by Vietnamese deaths.
…
How hard is it to imagine your own neighborhood in ruins, your husband and children dead, your job gone, basics of life gone (clean water, electricity), future gone – why does nobody seem to grasp this or care? I still don’t get it. It’s more than racism, it’s something worse.
When I first read that, I tried to find a previous comment made by the brilliant aimai, but couldn’t locate it. Now I have. Aimai was correcting me for calling Jose Chung a racist. Jose had rationalized the Haditha massacre in part because Iraqis were so barbaric as to distribute DVDs of themselves killing American soldiers. In his mind, otherwise innocent Iraqis therefore deserved to be massacred. He even stated that Iraqi children preferred the DVDs to cartoons. Jose said he couldn’t see any logic in me calling him a racist. As aimai pointed out, he was right:
aimai: Got to side with the josebot on this one, poputonian–his haditha anecdote makes him a soulless, would be mass murderer … but it doesnt *necessarily* make him a racist. In fact, I’d bet all lombard street to a china orange that jose would happilly see lots of people killed in revenge for lots of perceived and imaginary infractions on jose’s world. And I’m sure that some would include members of jose’s own ethnic group,whatever that is, and possibly even members of his own family. Jose’s postings clearly point to both a massive and a fragile ego, a boundless and childish sense of rage, and an unlimited and utterly improbable sense of inflated self worth. But he’s not necessarily a racist. As if that could possibly make it any worse, or any better.
Me: Maybe so, aimai. What I took from his comment was that he sees a group of barbaric people, and from it then concludes that other people who look and dress like them must be sublimated into a culture he knows and understands. In other words, to his small and feeble mind, all Iraqi people must be tamed. Isn’t that racism?
aimai: poputonian, you know, no one despises the josebot and what it spits out more than I do, but it doesn’t make it racist. Jose is concluding–or trying to argue in a pathetic fashion–that all iraqis should be subject to some kind of strict group punishment in which even small children and non-combatants must pay for the sins of their countrymen. But I think jose probably thinks that about a lot of groups if he thinks they are “not on his side.” I don’t doubt that in practice jose finds that, oddly, lots of non-white people are “really evil” and need punishing but he will always think it’s because of something they ‘really did’ and not because he is over-categorizing due to a racist impulse which confuses individual with group. But I also think jose would cheerfully see lots of people of his own race killed, if it didn’t cost him anything and he determined they were “on the wrong side.” The idea of collective guilt and collective punishment is very old, and very retrograde. Its been abandoned by every civilized society. But jose still advocates for it, pathetically and by implication, with a sidewise wink and a kind of “omlettes must be made” attititude.
Here’s the thing, pop, Jose … lacks intelligence, and he certainly lacks empathy. All he has is a persistence of bad faith and a deep and abiding cowardice. It’s not even worth trying to discern his motives–frankly, even a true racist whose every impulse came from race hatred could be a more admirable figure than Jose. Such a person could be loving (to some) noble (to some), courageous in conflict, honest and upright in argument (to some). They could even be peaceful, generous, and empathetic in all things except their chosen fixation (race). Jose can never be any of those things.
Here’s Digby’s original Haditha war crime post (from May), and the corresponding comment thread from which the above comments are extracted.
Glad You Woke Up, Ken Adelman. Now Go Away.
by tristero
Ken Adelman’s flack has been getting him a lot of publicity lately, the latest being the lead-off “Had I known then what I know now” guy in this Washington Post article about rats deserting the sinking ship of George Bush’s state. And he seems genuinely horrified over what he contributed to, if still somewhat deluded on the subject of it being a good idea.
Now, being generous people, let’s take Adelman at his word and welcome him back to reality. And I’m not being sarcastic or snarky. I’m genuinely glad that Adelman has wised up, even if it’s late in the game. However, the fact that Adelman now understands the consequences of what he so foolishly advocated doesn’t change those facts, or his responsibility.
First of all, Ken Adelman has the blood of tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of innocents on his hands. Assuming the best, that he is at some level a moral person, he will have to live with the horror of that fact for the rest of his life, that he directly contributed to the slaughter and carnage. But that is not all.
If there are (as there should be but probably won’t be) trials for the perpetrators of this illegal war, Adelman may escape indictment on a technicality but he is morally obligated to testify truthfully about all he knew and saw within the Bush administration regarding the planning and execution of the Bush/Iraq war.
Assuming the likeliest, that there are no trials, Adelman needs to write a book describing in detail what his thinking was that led to the infamous “cakewalk” comment (and weasling out of it by saying it merely referred to taking Baghdad won’t do) and what he knows about the Bush administration.
Secondly, and in my opinion far more important than punishing Adelman (I know many of you disagree, and you’re probably right, but it’s just not my personality to focus on punishing people for their crimes), after writing that book he should immediately retire from having any kind of role in the theorizing or implementation of foreign affairs. Time for a career change, Ken, and I don’t mean teaching foreign affairs somewhere. I mean it’s time to reactivate those adolescent dreams of becoming a death metal superstar, or opening up the motorcycle chop shop you and your wife always fantasized about.
In short, it’s time for Ken Adelman to go away. He didn’t merely make a mistake. He made hundreds of spectacularly awful mistakes. He was wrong about Rumsfeld’s competence, wrong about the very idea of invading Iraq, wrong about the cakewalk, and wrong to keep his mouth shut for so long. Kudos for speaking out (sort-of) before the November election, but that is not enough to recommend Adelman for a continued career in international affairs.
The corollary, of course, is that people who were right about Bush/Iraq from the get-go should consider a career in foreign relations and they should achieve serious influence. Step one: Elect a Democratic president. Step two: don’t count on the mere election of a Democrat to the presidency to guarantee good advisers: work hard to make sure s/he appoints them.
The article is also useful as it gives more insight into the delusional aspect of Richard Perle’s thinking, and by extension the mindset of neoconservatism and the Republican far-right:
Perle said the administration’s big mistake was occupying the country rather than creating an interim Iraqi government led by a coalition of exile groups to take over after Hussein was toppled. “If I had known that the U.S. was going to essentially establish an occupation, then I’d say, ‘Let’s not do it,’ ” and instead find another way to target Hussein, Perle said. “It was a foolish thing to do.”
Perle, head of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board at the time of the 2003 invasion, said he still believes the invasion was justified. But he resents being called “the architect of the Iraq war,” because “my view was different from the administration’s view from the very beginning” about how to conduct it. “I am not critical now of anything about which I was not critical before,” he said. “I’ve said it more publicly.”
In other words, Perle had a plan, a Grand Vision of exactly how to topple Saddam, install Chalabi, and transform Iraq into a land of milk and honey. Then, through some magical osmosis known only to neoconservatives, the rest of the Arab Middle East would follow. Oh, and by the way, while Israel would finally be safe unto eternity, they should hold onto those nukes they don’t have (wink, wink) just in case.
God save us from all future visionaries with clear plans to transform the world.
What Perle is saying is that he laid out the exact steps to follow and if things changed, hey, don’t blame him, they didn’t follow his carefully reasoned plan, which had to be followed to the letter if it was to work.
As if anything as complicated as the invasion and conquest of any country, let alone one the size and complexity of Iraq, can be done according to a linear plan with no deviations. Of all the insane assumptions behind the reasoning for the Bush/Iraq war, this was always one of the most idiotic, that you could write a straightforward narrative of what you wanted to happen and follow it. And it is truly incredible how many people fell for it. But they did.
The world simply doesn’t work the way Perle wants it to. As Anatol Lieven said, to title a book “An End to Evil” as Perle and Frum did, is insane. One cannot have serious discussions of American foreign policy with such people; it is simply incredible that they ever had, and worse, still have, influence in the foreign policy of the most powerful country in the world.
The article ends with words by Kenneth Adelman that are worth repeating:
The whole philosophy of using American strength for good in the world, for a foreign policy that is really value-based instead of balanced-power-based, I don’t think is disproven by Iraq. But it’s certainly discredited.
Good.
And going forward, let’s operate under the assumption that a “value-based” foreign policy has, in fact, been disproven by Iraq.
To those of you who may not be familiar with my earlier posts on the subject, I am not in any sense advocating “realism” nor an abandonment of ethical principles in foreign policy; nor, for that matter, do I believe that it is impossible for countries to identify “the good” and act to further it.
I simply believe that foreign policy must be guided, above all, by what Raymond Aron called “prudence.” I think what he means, at least in part – and I”m sure you’ll correct me – is that a country must act cautiously, carefully, and very knowledgeably in international relations, steering an unclear and inevitably compromised course between the Scylla of realism and the Charybdis of idealism. It is as foolish to behave like Henry Kissinger as it is like Elliott Ness (“Okay gentleman, let’s do some good!””).
I would emphasize caution and knowledge. Crazy people start unnecessary wars. The history of the last six years demonstrates quite well that the world would have enough problems to deal with had there never been a Bush/Iraq war.
Stupid people deal with other countries from a position of near-total ignorance. And again, the last six years proves that the so-called “black box” paradigm of realism – and its corollary, that all countries and peoples roughly aspire to Americanism with a local accent – is preposterous.
A policy of prudence will neither prevent war in all cases, nor preclude fighting a just war. It is not appeasement nor war-mongering. but simple common-sense. And it helps countries avoid wars. Even when you’re dealing with a crazed worsethanhitler lunatic like Saddam Hussein? Yes. Especially then.
In the particular case of Iraq in 2002, a prudent course would have been to drop the sanctions and/or try to refocus them so that they hurt Saddam’s administration rather than the people in the country. In addtion, it was necessary to reinstate the inspection regime, backed up with highly targeted force if necessary to compel inspections (the so-called coerced inspection idea).
What would be the prudent course in Iraq right now? There isn’t one. There isn’t any good course in Iraq. It is a monumental catastrophe. one our grandchildren will be living with. The best I can come up with is get the troops out as quickly as possible and then wait for Bush to leave office in January, 2009 and assess the situation then. Nothing good can or will happen as long as Bush is in office.
That sounds grim and defeatist, I know. But having lived with Bushism now for 6 years, I also know that it is a realistic attitude. The Hamilton-Baker Commission will achieve nothing except create more American deaths (both of Americans and by Americans) while delaying the inevitable withdrawal a few extra months.
And this tragedy – one of the worst debacles in American history, and that is saying a lot – is the legacy of men and women like Kenneth Adelman. And that is why I say, glad you woke up, Ken. Now, go away.
[UPDATE: Peter Daou, quoting Lambert, has a nice takedown of the very idea behind the article, that the most “powerful” criticism has come from his erstwhile supporters. They are, of course, absolutely right.]
Nationalism Over Humanism
by poputonian
In a comment thread below, Sharkbabe noted the American apathy toward death and destruction in Iraq, and asked the key question why:
Sadly the mass of Americans are no more moved by Iraqi deaths than they were by Vietnamese deaths.
…
How hard is it to imagine your own neighborhood in ruins, your husband and children dead, your job gone, basics of life gone (clean water, electricity), future gone – why does nobody seem to grasp this or care? I still don’t get it. It’s more than racism, it’s something worse.
Her comment reminded me somewhat of a letter Benjamin Franklin wrote to his friend Anthony Todd, the postmaster in England. Granted, the American Revolution was a war between Anglo-cousins, so it obviously wasn’t a race war. But I think it illustrates how people with power do things without thinking about the consequences, just because they can. Here’s what Franklin wrote:
How long will the insanity on your side the water continue? Every day’s plundering of our property and burning our habitations, serves but to exasperate and unite us the more. The breach between you and us grows daily wider and more difficult to heal. Britain without us can grow no stronger. Without her we shall become a tenfold greater and mightier people. Do you choose to have so increasing a nation of enemies? Do you think it prudent by your barbarities to fix us in a rooted hatred of your nation, and make all our innumerable posterity detest you? Yet this is the way in which you are now proceeding. Our primers begin to be printed with cuts of the burnings of Charlestown, of Falmouth, of James Town, of Norfolk with the flight of women and children from those defenseless places, some falling by shot in their flight.
Allen and his people, with Lovell, an amiable character and a man of letters, all in chains on board your ships. Is anybody among you weak enough to imagine that these mischiefs are neither to be paid for nor be revenged, while we treat your people that are our prisoners with the utmost kindness and humanity? Your ministers may imagine that we shall soon be tired of this, and submit. But they are mistaken, as you may recollect they have been hitherto in every instance in which I told you at the time that they were mistaken. And I now venture to tell you, that though this war may be a long one (and I think it will probably last beyond my time) we shall with God’s help finally get the better of you; the consequences I leave to your imagination.
This is what happens when people who are incapable of empathy find their way into the world’s top power cell. They start wars because they can; because to them it feels good. It’s country versus country first, a competition to force others to submit to your will, even if you have to torture them, or kill them. Apparently, these war-makers do not understand that when you attempt to conquer a culture, that culture’s “innumerable posterity” will “detest you.” They might even merge into a new and different adversary, in the case of the Middle East, perhaps a more powerful Shia crescent.
Sharkbabe closed with this:
If Pelosi had an empathetic populace to work with, this atrocity would never have happened in the first place. As it is, I think she’s being very astute in her rhetoric (and I hope tactics) toward achieving the goal at hand – to stop this soul-sickening holocaust as soon as possible.
Yes, as soon as possible.
Saturday Night At The Movies
Incitement to mutiny
A film review by Dennis Hartley
There have been a good number of excellent documentaries examining various aspects of the Sixties protest movement (“The War At Home”, “Berkeley In The Sixties” and the more recent “Weather Underground”), but none focusing specifically on the members of the armed forces who openly opposed the Vietnam war-until now. “Sir! No Sir!” is a fascinating look at the GI anti-war movement during the era. Director David Zeigler combines present-day interviews with archival footage to good effect in this well-paced documentary. Most people who have seen Oliver Stone’s “Born On The Fourth Of July” were likely left with the impression that paralyzed Vietnam vet and activist Ron Kovic was the main impetus and focus of the GI movement, but Kovic’s story was in fact only one of thousands (Kovic, interestingly, is never mentioned in Ziegler’s film). While the aforementioned Kovic received a certain amount of media attention at the time, the full extent and history of the involvement by military personnel has been suppressed from public knowledge for a number of years, and that is the focus of “Sir! No Sir”. In one very astutely chosen archival clip, a CBS news anchor somberly announces that there appears to be some problems with “troop morale” in Vietnam (while in the meantime, behind closed doors, the US military was apparently imprisoning dissenting GIs left and right under “incitement to mutiny” charges, sometimes just for being overheard expressing anti-war sentiments). All the present-day interviewees (Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine vets) have interesting (and at times emotionally wrenching) stories to share. Jane Fonda speaks candidly about her infamous “FTA” (“Fuck The Army”) shows that she organized for troops as an antidote to the somewhat creaky and more traditional Bob Hope USO tours. Well worth your time. The film would make an excellent double bill with the classic documentary “Hearts And Minds” (DVD available from Criterion).
—- Dennis Hartley
(Ironweed Film Club DVD 2006; info @ www.ironweedfilms.com)
Editors note: Dennis Hartley is a Seattle based comedian, radio personality, film buff and writer. He has agreed to review films for the discerning Hullabaloo reader on a semi-regular basis. We have joined the Ironweed Film Club (what the NY Times calls a “progressive film festival” on DVD) and will be featuring those films, as well as others that we think will be of interest to you liberal schmarties. Please welcome him to our motley crew.
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Gleichschaltung
by digby
In an unprecedented transparent attempt to severely limit the right to peaceful protest and freedom of speech of low-wage Houston janitors and their supporters, a Harris County District Attorney has set an extraordinarily high bond of $888,888 cash for each of the 44 peaceful protestors arrested last night. Houston janitors and their supporters, many of them janitors from other cities, were participating in an act of non-violent civil disobedience, protesting in the intersection of Travis at Capitol when they were arrested in downtown Houston Thursday night. They were challenging Houston’s real estate industry to settle the janitors’ strike and agree on a contract that provides the 5,300 janitors in Houston with higher wages and affordable health insurance.
The combined $39.1 million bond for the workers and their supporters is far and above the normal amount of bail set for people accused of even violent crimes in Harris County. While each of the non-violent protestors is being held on $888,888 bail …
[…]
Community activists and leaders expressed concern and dismay today at the police’s use of horses to intimidate and corral janitors participating in the non-violent civil disobedience Thursday night in downtown Houston. The police’s choice to use horses to stop the protest resulted in four people being injured, including an 83-year old female janitor from New York.
Check out the pics and the video, here and here.
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you and me.
Says I “But Joe, you’re ten years dead”
“I never died” said he,
“I never died” said he.“In Salt Lake, Joe,” says I to him,
him standing by my bed,
“They framed you on a murder charge,”
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead,”
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead.”“The Copper Bosses killed you Joe,
they shot you Joe” says I.
“Takes more than guns to kill a man”
Says Joe “I didn’t die”
Says Joe “I didn’t die”And standing there as big as life
and smiling with his eyes.
Says Joe “What they can never kill
went on to organize,
went on to organize”From San Diego up to Maine,
in every mine and mill,
where working-men defend their rights,
it’s there you find Joe Hill,
it’s there you find Joe Hill!I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
alive as you and me.
Says I “But Joe, you’re ten years dead”
“I never died” said he,
“I never died” said he.
Shrinking The Kewl Kidz
by digby
I have long written about the Washington press corps as a bunch of “Mean Girls,” “Kewl Kidz” and the like, often drawing criticism from women who think that I am being sexist by using the terms I use. (I even got a thorough rhetorical thrashing from one of the blogosphere’s most famous feminist scolds for using the term “Heathers”) Mostly I assume we all “get this” on an instinctive level because it’s something we’ve either observed or experienced in our childhoods and so it is a very quick way to understand the phenomenon. I have thought about writing a long post to explain the social psychology that underlies it and never got around to it.
It’s lucky for all of us then, that Sara Robinson at Orcinus has now written a thorough post on this powerful form of bullying. (And those of you have read “Cat’s Eye” by the greatest feminist novelist of our time, Margaret Atwood, already know all about it…)
Here’s the nub:
The Parenting Perspectives website provides a concise description of this devastating style of coercion and abuse:
Acts of relational aggression are common among girls in American schools. These acts can include rumor spreading, secret-divulging, alliance-building, backstabbing, ignoring, excluding from social groups and activities, verbally insulting, and using hostile body language (i.e., eye-rolling and smirking). Other behaviors include making fun of someone’s clothes or appearance and bumping into someone on purpose. Many of these behaviors are quite common in girls’ friendships, but when they occur repeatedly to one particular victim, they constitute bullying.
Increasingly common is another form of harassment termed “cyber bullying”—using e-mail and websites to harm someone. Cyber bullies use personal websites and instant messaging to spread rumors about classmates over the Internet. Cyber bullies might also use classmates or “friend’s” PIN numbers and pass codes to send embarrassing e-mails. Sometimes it is easier to engage in cyberbullying than more direct acts because the bully never faces the victim. This form of harassment is also very fast–an instant message posted at night may spread through an entire school before the first class period….
Relational aggression tends to be most intense and apparent among girls in fifth through eighth grade. This type of behavior often continues, although perhaps to a somewhat lesser degree, in high school.…
The usual motivation behind acts of relational aggression is to socially isolate the victim while also increasing the social status of the bully. Perpetrators might be driven by jealousy, need for attention, anger, and fear of (or need for) competition. One reason girls choose this type of bullying rather than more direct acts of harassment is that the bully typically avoids being caught or held accountable. Girls who appear the most innocent may indeed be the most hostile in their actions. These bullies are often popular, charismatic girls who are already receiving positive attention from adults. Because of their positive reputations, these girls may be the least likely suspects. Thus it can be very difficult to identify the perpetrators of acts of relational aggression, and victims can suffer for long periods of time without support.
Rosalind Wiseman, whose Queen Bees & Wannabees is one of the bibles on relational aggression (the other is Rachel Simmons’ Odd Girl Out), says that Queen Bees are generally the girls who have bought most heavily into “media bombardment” to look pretty and cool. She provides the following list of traits for the garden-variety relational bully:
–Her friends do what she wants them to do.
— She can argue anyone down, including friends, peers, teachers and parents.
— Her comments about other girls are about the lame things they did.
— She doesn’t want to invite everyone to her birthday party, and if she does, she ignores some.
— She’s charming to adults.
— She makes other girls feel “anointed” by declaring them special friends.
— She is affectionate to one person to show rejection of another, like throwing her arms dramatically around one girl to emphasize the exclusion of another.
— She does not take responsibility when she hurts another’s feelings.
— She seeks revenge when she feels wronged.
Sound familiar?
The head Queen Bee in American journalism is Maureen Dowd. She has almost singlehanded created Kewl Kidz style journalism. She is, however, a bi-partisan Mean Girl, which is part of what makes her the Queen. Check out her entry today:
Ted Olson, the former solicitor general and eloquent Republican lawyer who argued the Bush v. Gore case before the Supreme Court, was warming up the rabidly conservative Federalist Society crowd for John McCain with a few sexist cracks about Botox.
The new Congress could amuse itself, he said, by “searching for any sign of movement in Speaker Pelosi’s forehead.” The Senate, he added, would be entertained by “the expressionless, Pelosi-like forehead of Senator Clinton.”
It reminded you of just how idiotic Republicans can act sometimes. The only thing worse than hearing the first female speaker of the House filleted in such a lame way was seeing the first female speaker of the House flail around in her first big week in such a lame way. It reminded you of just how idiotic Democrats can act sometimes.
Nancy Pelosi’s first move, after the Democratic triumph, was to throw like a girl. Women get criticized in the office for acting on relationships and past slights rather than strategy, so Madame Speaker wasted no time making her first move based on relationships and past slights rather than strategy.
Instead of counting votes behind closed doors or even just choosing the best person for majority leader, Ms. Pelosi offered an argument along the lines of: John Murtha’s my friend. He’s been nice to me. I don’t like Steny. He did something a long time ago that was really, really bad that I’m never, ever going to tell you. And I’m the boss of you. So vote for John.
Modo is such a grand bitch queen that she can fillet everybody. Her lessers don’t have her power and so they only sharpen their puerile wit on those whom they have dubbed the “losers” — the Democrats.
It would have been smart for bloggers to have disarmed Dowd when we had the chance, by refusing to allow her any accolades when she went after the Bush administration. But Democrats were so beaten down and marginalized during the early years of the Bush juggernaut that we were only too happy to applaud Modo’s QueenBee bitchiness when it was directed at them. (At times, it was all we had in the mainstream media.) I’m not sure it would have done any good, anyway. This is now a full-blown pathology among the chattering class that is going to require a much more systematic approach than simply not falling for Maureen Dowd’s schtick.
And anyway, the Queen bee is a pundit, not a reporter. She is given latitude to have attitude that regular journalists are not supposed to have, but which so many of them (and their equally “Mean” editors) show toward Democrats all the time. At this point, it’s the newspaper and TV reporters on whom we need to focus.
Sara did something interesting with this. She asked what the experts all say needs to be done to stop this kind of bullying in schools and then applied that advice to handling the Washington press corps. (Read her whole post.)
I, for one, will begin asking readers to politely write to reporters who manifest this silliness whenever I blog about it. They may not know they do it or they may not know that we recognize it. (“One reason girls choose this type of bullying rather than more direct acts of harassment is that the bully typically avoids being caught or held accountable. Girls who appear the most innocent may indeed be the most hostile in their actions”)
We will do it openly and we will do it politely and we will not use Mean Girl tactics or “cyber-bullying.” But we will let them know that they have been caught in the act.
As Gilliard says:
This is not 1996. We live in different times and the stakes are vastly higher. They start with that Beltway Kool Kids Klub bullshit, they’re gonna get run to ground.
Clinton didn’t have the infastructure on the left to protect him or even object to the bullshit being run about him.
But in an era of You Tube and blogs, this kind of thing is going to be nailed and nailed hard. Noron can make her stupid comments, but her bosses have an e-mail address.
*If there is anyone out there who doesn’t really get what this whole thing is about, there is no more thorough compendium of kewl kidz nastiness than Bob Sommerby’s exhaustive expose of the Gore Campaign coverage on The Daily Howler.
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Just Doing What K-Lo Told Me To Do
by tristero
Kathyrn Jean Lopez has this to say about Borat wannabe Eric Keroack, about whom both Digby and I have been yakking about, as well as a lot of other people:
A Bush administration HHS nominee is getting grief for his involvement with a pregnancy center that believes: “that the crass commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness.”
Passing out contraception without any deeper context or conversation is degrading and disrespectful — to men and women. Tell me I’m crazy.
No problem. You’re crazy.
Radical Quacks
by digby
I looked at tristero’s post yesterday about Bush’s stealth appointment of Dr. Eric Keroack and laughed nervously, but I had no idea how totally deranged Keroack really is.
Alternet has some slides from his Powerpoint presentation on the “depletion of Oxytocin” that supposedly afflicts women who have sex with too many different men. (Yes, this freak is going to be paid by you and me to spread this ridiculous swill.)
Hello?
Last June, Keroack was a featured speaker at the 10th Annual International Abstinence Leadership Conference in Kansas City, where he provided his somewhat unorthodox insights into the role of hormones in relationship failure.
Oxytocin is a hormone whose actions are associated with pregnancy, breastfeeding, and maternal-infant bonding — and, according to Keroack, it’s the tie that binds in marriage, as well. People don’t fall in love, but into hormonal bondage. Therefore, the most important rationale for sexual abstinence isn’t faith-based at all, but purely physiological. Unfaithful men and promiscuous women are created by misuse of the “emotional glue” of attraction, an abuse leading to a “perpetual cycle of misery.”
In his presentation at the 10th Annual Abstinence Leadership Conference in Kansas City earlier this month, Dr. Eric Keroack … explained that oxytocin is released during positive social interaction, massage, hugs, “trust” encounters, and sexual intercourse. “It promotes bonding by reducing fear and anxiety in social settings, increasing trust and trustworthiness, reducing stress and pain, and decreasing social aggression,” he said.
Forty percent of couples who live together break up before they marry and of the 60 percent that do marry, 40 percent of them divorce after 10 years. … So why do so many adults continue in a cycle of sex without a marriage commitment, cohabitation, and failed relationships? This perpetual cycle of misery is due largely to the role of oxytocin. The following is Dr. Keroack’s explanation of the cycle:
Emotional pain causes our bodies to produce an elevated level of endorphins which in turn lowers the level of oxytocin. Therefore, relationship failure leads to pain which leads to elevated endorphins which leads to lower oxytocin, the result of which is a lower ability to bond. Many in this increased state of emotional pain and lower oxytocin seek sex as a substitute for love, which inevitably leads to another failed relationship, and so on, the cycle continues.
There is hope for the weary brokenhearted, Dr. Keroack said, but it requires abstinence and plenty of time for healing.
Keroack’s fitting title for that novel presentation [PowerPoint link] was “If I Only Had a Brain.” In an unpublished article that has become an established text of the abstinence movement, he wrote, “People who have misused their sexual faculty and become bonded to multiple persons will diminish the power of oxytocin to maintain a permanent bond with an individual.” Keroack’s teaching on the role of “God’s ‘super-glue'” is accepted as irrefutable in an article titled Fornication and Oxytocin.
There’s more at the link.
This man is a hero in the forced childbirth movement and a card carrying member of the Christian Right. But he also represents another wing of the crackpot alchemy wing of the conservative movment (tristero’s personal bete noire) that really has to be marginalized if this country is to remain a first world nation.
David Kuo, whom I admire for his consistency of Christian belief, tried to make a case in his book that the Bush administration didn’t deliver for the Christianists. It may be true that they didn’t show private respect or funnel as much money as they promised to faith based programs, but they delivered big time with the appointment of unqualified nutjobs like this to taxpayer supported government positions.
Before the election I mentioned in passing this article in the New York Review of Books by Gary Wills that really should get more attention in light of this astonishing appointment. (tristero has a couple of issues with it that are worth noting.) It is called “A Country Ruled By Faith” and really needs to be read by all these people who insist that theocracy is not on the table:
It is common knowledge that the Republican White House and Congress let “K Street” lobbyists have a say in the drafting of economic legislation, and on the personnel assigned to carry it out, in matters like oil production, pharmaceutical regulation, medical insurance, and corporate taxes. It is less known that for social services, evangelical organizations were given the same right to draft bills and install the officials who implement them. Karl Rove had cultivated the extensive network of religious right organizations, and they were consulted at every step of the way as the administration set up its policies on gays, AIDS, condoms, abstinence programs, creationism, and other matters that concerned the evangelicals. All the evangelicals’ resentments under previous presidents, including Republicans like Reagan and the first Bush, were now being addressed.
The head of the White House Office of Personnel was Kay Coles James, a former dean of Pat Robertson’s Regent University and a former vice-president of Gary Bauer’s Family Research Council,[2] the conservative Christian lobbying group that had been set up as the Washington branch of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. She knew whom to put where, or knew the religious right people who knew. An evangelical was in charge of placing evangelicals throughout the bureaucracy. The head lobbyist for the Family Research Council boasted that “a lot of FRC people are in place” in the administration.[3] The evangelicals knew which positions could affect their agenda, whom to replace, and whom they wanted appointed. This was true for the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, and Health and Human Services—agencies that would rule on or administer matters dear to the evangelical causes.[4]
The piece goes on to examine in detail the thoroughness with which Bush appointed radical religious right operatives to the government in all departments. The executive branch has become a patronage operation for the Christian Right and it is as destructive in its way as anything the Bush administration did. (And any attempt to unwind it will be greeted with cried of religious discrimination.)
This is obviously the deal that any Republican will have to make with the religious right in order to gain their favor. John McCain may not run as a Christian Conservative but he’s already made pilgrimages to Bob Jones and Jerry Falwell and he will have to promise them something for their support. He can agree to appoint their judges, of course. That is a first principle. But if they want to keep their most important, cohesive voting block happy they need to keep them fed. This is how they will do it. It’s largely under the radar but over time it will be felt in ways we cannot imagine.
The Christian Right is the most authoritarian faction of an already authoritarian movement. The polls from this last election show that they did not politically demobilize — even when confronted with such rank hypocrisy as Jack Abramoff, Mark Foley and Ted Haggard. (I used to joke that it would take finding Republicans in bed with young boys to get the Christian Right to step back, but I overestimated them.) They are the most radical force in the Republican party and despite what Dobson and others threaten every couple of years, they aren’t going anywhere.
These people ARE the modern Republican party and nobody, not John McCain, not Mitt Romney, not Rudy Giuliani, can do a thing about it. For the forseeable future, every Republican president is going to be owned by these people and Americans will be paying for them to drag this country away from progress and enlightenment and into the cramped, primitive world of superstition and voodoo they are now calling “science.”
The only way to keep Christianist radicalism out of your bedroom, your hospital room, your classroom and your wallet is to elect a Democratic president.
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Pelosi
by tristero
This morning, I visited our brave men and women at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center. It is a place of prayers, of honor, of respect, and reflection. And I left there more committed than ever to bringing the war to an end.
I told my colleagues yesterday that the biggest ethical issue facing our country for the past three and a half years is the war in Iraq. This unnecessary pre-emptive war has come at great cost. Nearly 2,900 of our brave troops have lost their lives and more than 21,000 more have suffered lasting wounds. Since the war began, Congress has appropriated more than $350 billion, and the United States has suffered devastating damage to our reputation in the eyes of the world.
The notion that the war is an ethical issue is an important one. It ties the mindset of a party that would appoint a Mark Foley to the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children or an Eric Keroack to oversee Title X funding to the kind of mentality that would wage an immoral, insane war.
And quite rightly, Pelosi understands that the prosecution of this war, the continued American involvement in the carnage of a civil war, the utterly pointless deaths, the gut-wrenching lack of positive alternatives as long as Bush is in office, the madness of American exceptionalism and pretensions to military/economic empire, the unspeakable corruption and cronyism, and the torture … Without a doubt, the Bush/Iraq war is the pre-eminent moral issue facing the country right now and the foreseeable future.
Let’s hope that she and her caucus continue to have the courage to speak up and more importantly, act, on their principles.