The Scream

“The Work” is a searing documentary about a program at Folsom Prison to get men imprisoned for violent crimes to face their deepest anxieties and grievances about their past, their absent fathers, brothers who betrayed them, and so on, in a kind of large psycho-therapy session moderated by social workers and joined by volunteers from the community, and largely led by the inmates themselves.

Filmed in 2009 but not released until 2017. Frighteningly raw at times– and not to everyone’s taste. You can see some of the volunteers hang back, then get drawn into the confessional style confrontations.  Violent fathers.  Absent fathers.  Abusive fathers.  Fathers who expected too much or too little.

Then one of the volunteers reluctantly recounts how his father was disappointed in him for fetching the wrong tool several times, and then sent him into the house. This is transformed by some of the inmates into some kind of traumatic thing that contaminated the volunteer’s relationship with his father, though it seems more likely it was and remained trivial. No, no, you’re concealing a deeper wound.  It must come out.  It was a strange sequence.

Other sequences are more intense, in which a person howls and thrashes his outrage while embraced tightly by the other men. One volunteer, Brian, says something condescending that really aggravates an inmate.  He seems to actually believe he should be automatically respected by these men because he is smart and wise and together.  They hate him.  Later, he calls a native inmate, Dark Cloud, “gentle”, which he misinterprets as an insult.  Dark Cloud lunges at him, prevented by the other inmates.  Just how suitable was Brian for the experience?  Didn’t they screen?

At times, searingly compelling. It is claimed that none of 40 men who went through the program returned to prison. I remain skeptical. I see some of this kind of programming as similar to faith healing and charismatic church services, speaking in tongues, and so on. It’s all very dramatic and full of lingo, but is there any real evidence that, 1) all of the experiences related by the participants are real or true, and, 2) that any of it is really therapeutic, at least, in the way the conveners think it is.

It is not difficult to imagine that the love and acceptance these men express towards each other doesn’t make them less dangerous to anyone outside of their artificially created circle of trust. Implicit in all of this is the suggestion that these men committed crimes primarily as a consequence of a deprived or abused childhood. If you are in this circle, you seem obligated to come up with something and to cry and to thrash and scream, and it would not be hard to imagine a deprived participant making something up, or exaggerating, in order to fit in.

I’m not sure it doesn’t work.  Maybe, for it’s own reasons, it does.

When the volunteer relates about his dad’s frustration with his inability to find the right tool, he also adds that he feels guilt over bringing this relatively trivial issue up among men who have experienced genuine trauma, but the men will have none of it.  They like him.  They urge him on to confront his trauma-inducing father, to weep and thrash, and break through, and confront him (one of the inmates role-plays for him).   It’s a moment in the film that is nearly comical and made me think of a potential SNL skit, which some might think disrespectful.

Yes, it is.  But let’s be clear: in my mind, it doesn’t diminish the real emotions felt by the inmates, or their expressions of rage.

 

[whohit]The Scream[/whohit]

What Did You Think You Were Getting

This article in NYTimes tells us that a number of gymnasts who worked out with coach and trainer Qi Han at Everest Gymnastics in North Carolina now allege that Mr. Han was abusive.

He absolutely was.  That’s how you do sports in the ultra-competitive U.S.A.  This is accepted as the way you drive young athletes to higher levels of performance.  Did you think your child’s coach was going to offer snacks as a reward?

I was on a collegiate hockey team in the Chicago area back in 1974.  We were coached by a Canadian history professor in a very relaxed, undisciplined manner.  It was decided– by somebody– that we would bring in a “real” coach for one practice, a Mr. Dave Vandenberg.  He immediately took to yelling and screaming abusively at us, trying to get us to play better.  I thought he was an idiot then, and I think so now.   I’m sure we would have played better had he hung around and coached us every day, but I just didn’t care that much.  Sports is trivial.  It is unimportant.  If you think it’s a way to bring glory to yourself, to make money, and become famous, then you get what you deserve.

Let’s make it clear.  Everest Gymnastics advertised itself to parents as an intensive training institution that could help young gymnasts improve their performances.  Do you know what kind of training we’re talking about, in ultra-competitive America?  Would it surprise you to find that coaches of any serious athletic discipline tend to be pricks?  That they shout at athletes and belittle them, and ridicule them, and mock them when they feel they are not making enough effort?

I have never been a fan of that school of thought that believes that there is something admirable in pushing athletes to perform better by screaming at them.  Why?  Why should I care if they perform better?  Is it worth it?  What’s the point?  To beat some other athletes whose coaches yell and scream at them?

You send your child to Everest Gymnastics just so he or she can have fun.  The children taking training from Qi Han are probably being pushed by their parents to achieve, achieve, achieve.  To be better than the competition.  This kind of coaching requires a lot of time and money.  Parents are up early, up late, driving here, driving there– if they have several children, they find themselves spending a lot of time and money trying to turn their children in to star athletes.  Medals.  Success. Maybe the Olympics.  Maybe the NFL.  Money and fame.

Are any of these parents under the delusion that these coaches are going to be nice to their children?  Sweet, and encouraging?

Are these coaching methods a secret?  The parents didn’t know what was going on?  Suddenly one day they went, “oh my god!  Coach Han is yelling at my daughter!”

[whohit]What Did You Think You Were Getting[/whohit]

Internal Contradictions

With the election of Donald Trump, all the rules about political success and failure seem to be out the window.  He should not have won the Republican primaries.  He should never have won the election.  He should not, right now, have 90% support among the Republican faithful.

Well, he didn’t actually win the election.  He won the Electoral College and he won it with margins in a handful of states that are not really very convincing.  His current approval ratings are not good.  And take a look at realclearpolitics polling on congressional races going into the 2018 mid-terms: they don’t look good for the Republicans.  In fact, they are stunningly, uniformly blue.  The Democrats should win back control of the House.  They might be able to take the Senate, but that appears unlikely.

Of course, polling showed that Clinton should have won the 2016 presidential election.  And she did: by 3 million votes.  But she lost the Electoral College.

Winning a significant majority of votes is not a trivial fact.  Most American citizens did not believe that Trump would make a good president.  In fact, given Clinton’s unpopularity, a very significant majority of Americans still preferred her.

My theory about politics– which is challenged, of course, by current events– is that a political establishment is in trouble when it’s avowed values and goals include contradictory elements that cannot co-exist sustain-ably.   That’s a mouthful but it comes down to this: much of what Trump stands for is at odds with majority American values.   And even what he says he stands for is at odds with a clear majority of American voters.

These contradictions can and often do coexist for a time– people have a monumental capacity to embrace hypocritical values (using a not-nice word for “incompatible”).  When these two sets do collide, usually as the result of a crisis,  one of them changes.  In the 1960’s, it was the draft and the war in Viet Nam in contradiction with the growing perception that the war could not be won.  It was also the ideals of equality and justice espoused by the Constitution in opposition to the treatment of black citizens.    In the 1980’s and 90’s, budget deficits in opposition to welfare policies, and increasing crime in opposition to criminal sentencing.  Under Obama, widespread social acceptance of homosexuality in opposition to the laws governing marriage.    Under Bush Jr., the threat of terrorism in opposition to privacy rights.

Trump’s avowed policies on the environment, trade, international relations, and civil rights are ridiculously at odds with mainstream American values– which have not gone away, by the way.   The Republicans have been revealed for what they always were: race-baiting elitist materialistic gun-mad turds.  Until now, they’ve managed to disguise their real attitudes behind “nice”, “decent” candidates like George Bush Jr. and Mitt Romney.  Trump has suddenly revealed the Republican Party for what it always really was.

You mean it’s actually okay to say that out loud?

I believe a solid majority of Americans are still solidly in favor of sound environmental policies, decent wages, Social Security and Medicare, civil rights, and immigration reform, including a path to citizenship.

So this contradiction should lead to a crisis which will force a resolution of some kind.  What will the crisis look like?  Massive budget deficits?  Lay-offs by companies affected by Trump’s anti-trade actions?  Polluted drinking water?  Dramatic increases in carbon emissions coinciding with flooding of coastal cities?  Violent demonstrations?  North Korea firing another test missile?  Putin invading Lithuania?

Maybe it will simpler than that.  I don’t believe Trump will be able to resist the temptation to enrich himself through his position.  I don’t think he understands why that’s illegal.  I don’t think he understands what will happen when it all comes out.

Who knows.

[whohit]Internal Contradictions[/whohit]

Spontaneous Premeditation

‘Denial of parole requires premeditation. Despite the jury accepting the murder was a “spur-of-the-moment” crime, they also found it was premeditated. As one juror explained it, premeditated meant not only planning hours or days ahead, but could also mean planning in the seconds before committing a spur-of-the-moment crime.’

From a Wiki article about the Peterson Case, the subject of “The Staircase” on Netflix.

Juries can be stupid.

Okay, so once upon a time long ago, Congress passes a bunch of laws and creates the criminal code.  They choose to make a distinction between murders that are planned in advance– “pre-meditated”– and murders that occur in a violent outburst of rage.  They decide that punishment for a murder calculatedly planned in advance should be more severe because the perpetrator consciously intended to commit a foul crime and, given time and the opportunity to reconsider and amend his intentions, he, instead, follows through on his homicidal plan.  Whereas, a murder committed in the heat of the moment is something the perpetrator may instantly regret, and it is an urge that only came over him in that brief engagement with the victim.  He may repent of his action and perhaps he is redeemable.

This brilliant jury decided they would develop a new philosophy of criminal intent, and a new psychology of the criminal mind.  So “premeditated” now means that the culprit was conscious during the commission of the crime, and, in the instant before he swung the club or pulled the trigger or pushed someone onto the subway tracks– in that instant, he plotted.  He meditated before the act.  He pre-meditated.  So they apply the concept of pre-meditation to precisely the one thing that it was never intended not to apply to.

We do a similar thing with juveniles.  We thoughtfully, carefully, and wisely– as a society- with lots of deliberation-  decided that young folk beneath a certain age should not be charged for serious crimes as adults.  Because they are young. Because their brains are still developing.  Because as they mature, they may yet develop a consciousness of right and wrong that makes them an asset to society.   And we carefully chose the age of 18.   So we say that if someone is younger than 18, than they can’t be sentenced as severely as a man of 30 years old.

And then, the first thing we do, is we make an exception so that if we damn well feel like– if we’re really pissed at someone– we can try him as an adult after all.  Precisely the thing the law was intended to prevent.  Every time you hear of a serious crime committed by a juvenile we hear the same nonsense: let’s ignore the law and try him as an adult!  (Actually, the law, unfortunately, allows for that exception: if the law is wrong, change the damn law and stop making exceptions.)

I think this jury just wanted to really, really throw book at this repulsive person who was not them– not remotely like them– not at all like them.  They hated him– so sly, and clever, and literate, and with so many lawyers and paid experts and private investigators on his side!  It’s almost as if he was a minority.

I can’t wait until this jury– and I’ll bet this idea was mainly the product of one demented, clueless, amateur criminologist who just happened to find his moment in the jury room– publishes a book so we can also share the fruits of this profound insight.  There can never be another case of murder that is not premeditated in the form this jury has defined it as.

 

[whohit]Spontaneous Premeditation[/whohit]

Why Was This Allowed in Court?

In a description of the testimony of one of the witnesses against Bill Cosby in his second trial for sexual assault, we hear that one of the women remembered going to Cosby’s hotel suite for drinks and then waking up in her bed at home.  That’s what she remembered.

Later, after hearing about the other accusations against Cosby, she suddenly “remembered” that she must have been sexually assaulted during that blank period of time because, after all, that’s what Bill Cosby does.  Everybody knows it.  Case closed.

Soon, she found herself on that bastion of unimpeachable journalism, the Dr. Phil show, thrilling millions with her lurid tale.

I’m not going to act surprised that a court allowed this testimony– it is no secret that real courts are not like TV or movie courts.  They will often allow ridiculous evidence to be introduced, without effective challenge–  like fiber evidence and blood splatter evidence.  So a woman who admits that she has no memory of any such thing is allowed to assert that Bill Cosby sexually assaulted her.   And the purpose of this testimony– Cosby is not on trial for assaulting her– is to put the jury into the right mood for convicting him of assaulting Andrea Constand.

I will point out that “recovered memories”, which is what this is, have long been rather convincingly discredited, and that no burglar, for example, should ever be convicted even partly on the basis of a neighboring home owner telling the court that one day she came home and found that her house might have been broken into and things she did not remember owning might well have been stolen, and that a neighbor she had given a key to might be the culprit.

I hope an appeals court will think differently.  [2023-20-22: Yes, the appeals court did think differently and tossed out the conviction.]    I hope an appeals court throws the entire case out because it amounts to double jeopardy: Cosby reached a court supervised agreement with Andrea Constand in 2006 under which she was offered and accepted $3 million dollars to go away.  This was not an agreement between two individuals: it was supervised and administered by a court, which certified that both parties had agreed to this settlement and that that would be the end of the legal procedure against Cosby.  Cosby has, as you might expect, launched a civil action to recover the money.

There is a debate over whether Constand did violate the terms of the agreement.

I have no doubt that Bill Cosby was and is an asshole– I never liked him, not during his days as a stand-up comedian when he ducked the civil rights movement, and especially not as Cliff Huxtable, in a boring, sanitized, ridiculous sitcom– a black “Daddy Knows Best”.  He played a denatured caricature of himself so that white audiences could safely enjoy his shtick.

But that does not make all of his accusers angels, and doesn’t remove the slight taint of suspicion that many of these actresses and models went to his hotel room or apartment hoping he would do something for their careers.  He didn’t drag them there.  He didn’t even pay them to come there.  He just invited them and offered to help them with their careers.  And these women accepted.

You might believe that they had no idea what a man might be up to when he invites a woman to his apartment or hotel suite, alone, or when he offers her drinks, or Quaaludes or benadryl, or massages their hair.   No idea at all.

And in the current political climate, none of them will ever have to truthfully answer the question of just what they expected to happen there.

[whohit]Why Was This Allowed in Court[/whohit]

The Healing Path to Victimization and Patrick Brown

“No one with a contemporary understanding of the dynamics of sexual victimization and its aftermath would be so insensitive and patriarchal as to try to dictate to a survivor what her healing path should be, much less goad her,” Mr. Butt said.  Globe and Mail, 2018-02-14

That is just fascinating.  Patrick Brown defied the woman who made allegations against him to go to the police.  Of course, if you go to the police, questions will be asked, and consistency demanded of you.  Her lawyer responded, as above.  This is a master craftsman at work, devising language to describe, in an appealing way, the process of denying the need for facts or evidence in support of nasty allegations of bad behavior by a politician.  Apparently, asking for actual evidence would be “patriarchal” and “insensitive”, because the woman who lied about Patrick Brown, is on a “healing path”, which, apparently, consists largely of slandering Patrick Brown.

Facts.

Here’s another remarkable quote from Mr. Butt:

There’s no requirement to do that, according to Marcy Segal, a former Toronto
criminal defense lawyer who is now a litigator and advocate for victims’ rights.
“I wouldn’t say it’s appropriate to bait these people, because if you’re a victim
you don’t have to go to the police in order to prove you have been
sexually assaulted,” she said. “There’s no requirement to do that.”

It’s something that might be derailed by inconsistencies and contradictory stories, not just by her and Patrick Brown, but by other witnesses, like the man who denies that he drove the young woman to Patrick Brown’s house.

By the way, I’m not making up his last name.  Of the lawyer.

I also heard on the CBC today a woman describe how she had had an affair with her boss years ago.  The boss’ partner, a woman, became jealous of the relationship and demanded that he fire her.  I think– the woman was a bit vague.  After describing what sounds for all the world like an affair, she was invited by the CBC hostess to consider whether the relationship fell under the #metoo category because, nowadays, we understand that even consenting adults can decide to be victims later, if they wish.  She thought aloud: maybe.  Maybe now I realize that instead of an adult consenting to a casual, sexual relationship with my employer, who, she admits, treated her well, she was a victim.  She was weak and incapable of resisting his advances.  Yes, that’s it.  I was a victim.  That’s what I was.

If that last line didn’t trouble you, it should: I am a victim if I say I am a victim.  I can choose to be a victim in a previous situation, if I decide to.

Would anything about this whole movement make sense if those leading it did not seem to share a presumption that even unforced sex is evil and shameful and sinful?  The horror with which they react even to stories of consenting couples having sex somewhere… it’s weird.

 

[whohit]The Healing Path to Victimization[/whohit]

Pro Life: Neil Gorsuch

Progressives who find most conservative politics regressive, ignorant, or just plain stupid, regularly hear from more enlightened conservatives or moderates that so-and-so or such-and-such is NOT a typical conservative.  Oh no, he is intelligent and fair and thoughtful.  He’s not a racist at all.  He doesn’t even sound like Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly.

How often were we not told that Paul Ryan was one of those exceptions: the “brains” behind the Republican Party who, after 7 years in opposition, claimed to have a brilliant replacement plan for Obamacare that would be both cheaper and better.  Then we saw how singularly unimpressive he was.  He had nothing.   He had the same old, same old, same old: tax cuts for the rich.  The free market, which has never reduced medical costs before, would suddenly, miraculously, reduce medical costs. And, snake oil salesman that he is, he assured us that the tax cuts would generate so much economic growth that the increased tax revenue would more than make up the difference.

We hear the same delusions about Neil Gorsuch, the Republican nominee to the Supreme Court.  He is not like Thomas, who hasn’t said a word, hasn’t had a question, hasn’t even made a joke in 20 years.  Oh no.  And he is not as corrosive as Scalia, no, no, no, who ridiculed the very idea that old white men of the 18th century shouldn’t have the final word on justice in the 21st. Gorsuch, we are told,  is brilliant.  Even some liberals — so we’ve heard– think he has a great legal mind.

Well, Mr. Gorsuch has written a book.  Yes indeedy.  It is a book on whether or not the government should allow individuals to receive assistance in committing suicide. Now, when Mr. Gorsuch testified before Congress as to his qualifications for the Supreme Court, he made it very clear that he was neutral and objective, when it came to political issues, and considered every legal case on its merits alone.  That’s why you have no right to assume he would automatically be against the rights of an individual to assisted death just because he appears to be every ounce the conservative he claims not to be.  No right at all.

Oh, of course he is against it.  He is a Republican who claims to be a Christian: he is in favor of death, generally, but not when you choose it for yourself.  And not when it is in your body.  And not when it’s purpose is to end intolerable suffering.

If you think it is a little harsh to label him as “in favor of death”, you would need to convince me that he is not in favor of capital punishment, or the death penalty, or a more powerful military, or bigger bombs, or war against nations that have the impertinence to deny us their oil wealth. He does give a nod to a nominal-consistency on the issue: Once we open the door to excusing or justifying the intentional taking of life as ‘necessary,’ we introduce the real possibility that the lives of some persons (very possibly the weakest and most vulnerable among us) may be deemed less ‘valuable,’ and receive less protection from the law, than others,” Well, there you go.  Surprise!  He really is pro-life.  Or is he?

“Introduce the real possibility”– do you understand how weak an argument that is?  He is saying I can’t find a real argument against the right of an individual to make his own decision about when to terminate his own life in the face of intolerable suffering and incapacitation, so I argue that something else that might come afterwards should be illegal, therefore, physician assisted suicide should be illegal.  If people are allowed to drive 50 miles an hour, they might later drive 100 miles per hour, so driving 50 must be prohibited.

I used to be perplexed, somewhat, by conservatives and their “pro-life” values.  Most of them are not “pro-life” by any stretch of the imagination, in any sense of the meaning of “pro” and “life”.  I’ve never understood why they would call themselves pro-life.  It’s like McDonalds declaring that they are in favor healthy diets and good nutrition.  Well, there you go: they offer salads.  A chaser for your Big Mac.

In a later comment, Gorsuch tries to cover his tracks.  He says that taking a human life by a “private” individual is morally wrong.   So he slipped up in the early passage.  He meant to say that life was sacred, “other than– of course– if my government wants to kill a few people in order to take their oil, which I, as a patriotic citizen joyfully embrace”.

What is a reasonable exception?  When your government needs to give the oil companies access to more oil?  When your government needs an airfield to supply the air force that helps with the war against the government that doesn’t want to give access to their oil to our oil companies?  When we need somebody to attack because our citizens are frightened and angry that some terrorists have attacked our country and those terrorists are citizens of a nation we can’t attack because they voluntarily sell us their oil so we have to attack some other nation that had nothing to do with the attack but whom we hate anyways? When families of the victim of a terrible crime just can’t sleep at night until they see the perpetrator– or someone who may or may not have been a perpetrator but didn’t have a good lawyer–  killed, to make things even? When a man has killed a police officer, but only if he is black or poor and can’t afford a good lawyer who knows how to plea bargain and negotiate and hire private detectives to cast aspersions on the character of the witnesses or the provenance of the bullets or whether or not someone was merely standing his ground?

More on whoever.

[whohit]Neil Gorsuch[/whohit]

Losing the Feminist Religion

Here’s a story that makes me cringe and should make a lot progressive-minded people cringe.

Julie Ann Horvath worked at Github, a programming network, from 2012 to 2014.

It is very hard to determine what exactly happened at Github because Horvath’s own comments make no sense.  She claimed that she experienced some kind of awful oppression while working there.

Here’s one of her issues:  another Github employee “asked himself over” to talk and declared that he was romantically interested in her.  When she refused, he “hesitated” to leave.

That, my friends, is now regarded as oppression and harassment and “making me feel uncomfortable” so I ran into the bathroom and I cried.

And now I am suing them.

And it’s not about the money.  Oh no, it’s never about the money.

[whohit]Losing My (Feminist) Religion[/whohit]

Connundrum

This is an interesting legal problem.   Francis Rawls’ employers, the Philadelphia Police Department, had reason to believe he had been frequenting an online service that was known to traffic in child pornography.  They seized his computer and hard drives only to discover that they were encrypted by the Apple OS.  They demanded that Rawls un-encrypt them.  He refused on the grounds of self-incrimination.

There is, of course, a real legal principle that a person cannot be forced to incriminate himself.  The police– in kind of a weird twist– suggested that he type in the password without telling them what it is.  Why?  How is that different?  Because, they say, then he is not “incriminating” himself.  They will do the incrimination when they look at the hard drive.  Telling them the password, they claimed, could be “construed” as the forbidden self-incrimination.

I’m not sure if many people understand how weird this problem is.  President Obama himself thinks the police should simply be able to call Apple and demand that they facilitate access to the hard drives by providing them with an application or a key that will bypass the user’s encryption.   His analogy is a search warrant for a house: if the police think you committed a crime, and can convince a Judge that they have good reason for that suspicion, they can get a warrant and enter your house and look through your underwear drawer.  Why shouldn’t they be able to look through your hard drive?

First of all, let’s get this out of the way: your hard drive is not your underwear.  Your hard drive may contain the contents of your mind, your thoughts, your feelings, your interests, your fears, your imagination, your dreams, and even your beliefs.  In a sense, it could be argued, the government thinks that now that there is a way to “read your mind”, they must be allowed to do it.

Would it be hard, given any average person’s computer, to find something incriminating among the thousands and thousands of files, images, tags, visited websites, that would be there?

I’m going to go sideways on the issue for just a second:  I don’t believe you can discount the fact that disclosures by Edward Snowden and others in the past few years have raised serious issues about whether or not the government is itself abiding by its own laws in terms of accessing private information.  This is not a trivial issue.  Obama says, trust us, we’re law enforcement, we have integrity.  Snowden’s disclosures show that you don’t have the high road, and no, you cannot be trusted.  If you were given the power to access anyone’s private information, you have demonstrated that you will lie and violate the constitution to do it.

Back to the main track:  what if the government and the police started whining about the fact that they don’t have recordings of everyone’s private conversations in their homes that they could access– with a warrant, of course — to try to stop child molesters and drug dealers and terrorists?   Why can’t they install listening devices in everyone’s home (they could already just use your phone, with the right access)?  They promise they would only listen to the recordings when they have good reason to suspect a crime has been committed.

The courts have been very, very clear that the police cannot try to obtain such recordings without a warrant.  They can’t just pick out a house and put a recording device in it to see if you are committing a crime.   Why not, they would argue?   If you are not committing a crime, what do you have to fear?  And what if the police say, we will install the recording device but we will never examine the recordings unless we have reason to believe, in the future, that you have committed a crime.

That’s the big difference between a wiretap in the past and what the government is now doing.  In the past, if the police obtained a warrant, they could install listening devices to record any conversations taking place from that moment forward.  But if the police acquire the ability to search your computer without your authorization, they are, in essence, compelling your testimony.  They are forcing you to incriminate yourself.

What the government now wants is the right to go into your past.

As an aside, suppose the government proposed to give itself the authority to do this, to plant listening devices in every home?  Suppose a courageous Senator or Representative amended the bill to require that every government official and politician must also allow all of their private conversations to be recorded?   Do you think it would pass?

Never.  If the government ever considered such legislation, I can guarantee you they would give themselves, and the police, exceptions– for “national security” reasons, no doubt.

 

[whohit]The Retro Warrant[/whohit]

 

The Feminist Crucible

In this review, J. Kelly Nestruck in the Globe and Mail argues that Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” is outdated and irrelevant.  It is a bad play now that the communist “witch hunts” of the 1950’s are stale memories.

Tennessee Williams is all right.  He is relevant and vital because he cares more about gay characters:

But while Williams’s focus on gay and female characters had become increasingly valued, Miller had begun to feel like a dated moralist, stuck in a postwar sensibility, focusing on white, heteronormative nuclear families and obsessive about the paterfamilias.

This, the compliment to Williams, about a dramatist most famous for a play about a pathetic young woman who invests everything– all of her emotions, her hopes, her dreams– into an inept courtship of an ineligible young man, and is shattered when he doesn’t deliver and make her life meaningful.   That is more modern?  That is more “valued”?

Well, he (it’s “James Kelly Nestruck”) doesn’t say who now values Tennessee Williams more than Arthur Miller.  For good reason, I think.  Most people today would find Williams a crashing bore, while Miller retains a good deal of vitality.

It gets worse.  You see “The Crucible”, according to Nestruck,  made it seem as if the young girls who accused various citizens of Salem, Massachusetts of being witches were wrong in some way.  Ah– now I get it.   It made it appear as though they coordinated their stories.  It made it appear as if they were not actually suffering physical symptoms from the witchcraft they alleged– they were hysterical.  It made it appears that they might be lying, beginning with Abigail Williams, who had an affair with Proctor and bitterly resented being expelled from the household by Elizabeth Proctor.

So, given a more modern sensibility, we need to admit that the girls were actually telling the truth.

That damn John Procter: he blamed the victims.

I don’t casually use the word “chilling” to describe commentary on social issues, but this one deserves it.   Nestruck clearly implies that the girls in “The Crucible” should have been believed.  Because girls never lie?  He makes reference to Jian Ghomeshi and Bill Cosby, as if Ghomeshi’s trial had not revealed that, yes, after all, women do sometimes lie.  They lied to the police and they lied to the Crown Attorney and they lied in court to the judge.   Did none of this matter to Newstruck?  Does he believe that facts and proof must give way to emotional belief?  Was it all, perhaps, witchcraft?  In the context of “The Crucible”, he suggests that the core of the accusations of witchcraft might have been true.  That is insane.  It is contrary to everything rational we know about the world, to science, and reason, and principles of justice.

The most remarkable thing about “The Crucible” is what Nestruck hates the most about it: it reveals precisely the narcissistic root of the kind of lies the girls tell, the embrace of victimization because of the sudden power it gives you over individuals who would never otherwise defer to your status, and the insanity of blindly believing “victims” because to question or challenge them is “re-victimization”, one of the most pernicious ideas I have ever heard because it insists that everything an accuser says is automatically to be believed.  It is exactly like “The Crucible” in that anyone who dares to raise suspicions about the honesty or truthfulness of the accusers is then suspected and accused of the same evil.

It is absolutely “guilty unless proven innocent”.

Nestruck suggests that “The Crucible” is less relevant today because, after all, it was really about the McCarthy Communist witch hunt, not about Salem.  But that is exactly wrong: “The Crucible” is powerful precisely because it is not just about McCarthy or Salem; it is about fear and hysteria and delusion, and the consequences to society when it buys in to the delusion.  It is just as relevant today as it was in the 1950’s, if not more so, and it was powerfully relevant in the 1980’s with the Satanic Ritual Abuse hysteria where, once again, the system was asked to look the other way when accusations made no sense, contradicted themselves, or spread like a virus among impressionable children.

And now, a woman on the CBC declares that we must find a new way to try men who abuse women because Ghomeshi was obviously guilty.

[whohit]The Feminist Crucible[/whohit]