oppression

The Newseum—Vainglorious Journalism Leads to Triumphalist History

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The Newseum sits on Pennsylvania Ave. in the District of Columbia next door to the Canadian embassy about halfway from the White House to the Capitol. A magnificent architectural accomplishment in glass and some white metal (aluminum?), it contains a vast 7-story atrium. Everything that can be transparent is transparent. The parable for the news media seems rather obvious. And you can enjoy this Disneyesque production for a mere $21.95, for two days’ admission. If this seems a bad value, it’s probably because all the Smithsonian museums are free and have nicer gift shops.

Inside, arranged like the Stations of the Cross, are the tiers of exhibits, interactive playgrounds, working studios, more exhibits, a gift shop, and a food court. Unlike Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré or Guadalupe, the faithful are taken to the top of the mountain by an all-glass joy of an elevator. And then descend by ramps and steps to worship at each Station of the Press. Make no mistake. This is not a rational or logical endeavor. This is a monument to one of the religious cults of our nation–the so-called “Free Press.” As such, its pretentions are not limited by either fact or truth, but go to serve the great myth that is American “constitutional” government by the People. A basically good idea executed rather haphazardly, compared to what it promised.

A casual viewer may think that every major event in the last 200 years was initiated and orchestrated by the press. Further reflection shows that, even when events occurred unexpectedly, the initial and follow-up press coverage defined the public memory and archival record of the events, including multi-generational effects (e.g., future history). As an example:

We are shown how the rogue bureaucrat J. Edgar Hoover, could infiltrate the highest levels of our government through corruption, criminal conspiracy, and blackmail, even as a feckless press elevated him as a national icon of progressive law enforcement and public safety. Nowhere in this paean to Hoover and the press of the day, heavily sponsored it appears by the FBI, did I note reflection or self-criticism or even comprehension of the possibility that the press had been gullible co-conspirators in Hoover’s aggrandizement, which so distorted the realization of our national values throughout most of the 20th century and linger with us today.

There are many exhibits presenting a collective, synthetic record of events assembled from selected press reports. Where a death blow was dealt to all human freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution in the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, the Newseum is silent. On as issue of grave importance and representing serious injury to the press, the press is silent, not only in reaction, but in acknowledgment of the destructive reality. They might as well be dead.

And so the press, with its collective ignorance and cultural biases, records the events of time. The stories and, finally, myths that arise from this shallow sloppiness become fixed in the minds of people and define what is considered to have been true, even it, as often happens, the press record bears no meaningful or logical relationship to the reality of the event.

The serious question raised by this subtle distortion of reality in the mainstream media is how it affects the development and interpretation of history, our national myth. For historians will draw on recorded data, and the mainstream media produce more data and content than any other private agency. So it is easy to see that the slant of the historical record is shaped by prevailing media assumptions of the period being analyzed. While a historian may find arguments and events advantaging one side or another in some dispute, his analysis may not penetrate to the underlying errors of thinking that distort the positions on both sides of a dispute. So when the media focus on a particular event uncritically, this naive approach tends to define the simplistic story of a complex issue. History is largely written by the winners of any dispute. Triumphalism is a great failing of the human spirit. And from this emerges bulshyte, not history.

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

When we examine the so-called historical narratives of our own or other cultures, we quickly find much that is commonly believed that has no basis in reality at all. One need only consider the legends of the founding of our nation and the roles of George Washington to know that this is not the Native American view, not the French-Canadian view, and certainly not the Primitive Mormon view of what the United States is and what it stands for in terms of “freedom.” Our own national myth, enshrined in endless hours of fantasy contemplating and analyzing such delusions as “manifest destiny” and “states’ rights,” begins to resemble Horatio Greenough’s half-naked statue of George, a fitting symbol for the founder of a nation that glories in empire rather than service to humanity, no matter how little it relates to the man himself.

 

—Dan Massey

 

in Cosmic Citizenship / Library / Transhuman Erotic Freedom  by 13 Jul 2011 0 comments

Why the United States Government is Damaged Goods (Part 2 of 2)

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On January 21, 2010, the 235-year lifetime of the first North American federal republic, which once called itself the United States of America, came to an abrupt end. On this date the Supreme Court of the nation issued an irrational and false ruling, in the so-called “Citizens United” case, born of a lack of any valid national visionary focus that effectively recognized and bestowed on every organized collective entity the full rights and privileges of a singular citizen. Our national constitution was designed to provide a process for managing collectives and overarching rights to limit their operation against the individual and personal choice. By according individual citizen rights to collectives, the court destroyed this balance. The result was the creation of an irremediable failure within the foundation of balanced decision making in the Constitution, resulting in the final destruction of any voice from the people at the ballot box.

Kenneth Arrow

Collectives are not and can never be functionally equivalent to individuals. The critical difference is in the quality of decision making. Individuals make choices based on their own sense of truth and their will to act upon it (or not). Collectives aggregate the opinions, true and untrue, fantastic and incomplete, of their members by various means, but never as an individual. The essential unfairness of this was conclusively demonstrated in the 40’s by Kenneth Arrow, in a PhD thesis that foreshadowed a lifetime of work for which he later received the Nobel Prize in Economics. In brief, Arrow showed that, given a group of three or more people, all expressing preferences according to their own desires, there was no possible way to combine their individual judgments to achieve a collective decision that would be non-dictatorial, representative, decisive, and fair, among necessary qualities. The main difference is that the individual decides, but the group decision making process, even conducted with perfect transparency, necessarily diffuses the inevitably illogical and irrational way the conclusion was reached, protecting the guilty within the group by spreading moral responsibility across the whole body of participants, both innocent and guilty. Of course, Arrow’s Paradox may also be taken as a proof of the inevitable inadequacy of any collective form of government to achieve all the ideals one might reasonably expect of it.

Today we already see our dead nation rotting away as a direct result of the single decision in Citizens United; however, a great many of the foundations of our nationhood had already been undermined or had never been implemented at all, as I noted yesterday in comparing the colonial treatment of the black man, who could be enslaved, to the treatment of the red man, who lost both life and society to avoid enslavement. Equality of opportunity and social redress for the injustices of slavery seem to have slowly, painfully advanced. The survivors of the great North American Genocide for the most part languish in poverty without social services or infrastructure, though some have won the proverbial jackpot by having control of petroleum sources or legalized gambling. The privilege gap between the Mashantucket Peqod, a tiny tribe that operates the vast Foxwoods Casino complex in Connecticut, and the Hopi inhabitants of Third Mesa in dry, red rocky, desolate, Arizona is now as vast as the income inequality of our nation as a whole, if not more so.

The Constitution elaborates a mechanical government and gives it force, while the Bill of Rights offers a set of vague and unenforceable promises to protect the individual from the depredations of government and the mob or horde. What can we possibly do to rescue our communities from the global plan of legalized slavery that is now sliding into place with the surety born of an alien invasion of overwhelming might? Old-style humans increasingly organize to own and control all property and, since property is essential to life, all living things as well. They have conspired to take control of all aspects of government, including the ability to define what government is and is to be. They have announced loudly their intention to make our presently oppressive government a refined instrument of total social and economic control, to accelerate the attrition of the weak by deliberately increasing the death rate through destruction of social and medical services and infrastructure, and to trap a planet in their incredible solipsistic delusions of personal grandeur. Such is the legacy of our pastfathers.

For over two centuries the worst of such bullies progressively gained greater control over the Federal government, the US military, and the know-nothing cults displaying their self-generated delusions and ignorance under false-flag Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, which, as “religions of the book,” are peculiarly susceptible to such spiritual derailment when subjected to ignorant literal reading of their largely irrelevant and obsolete texts.

And what has all this social terrorism of the meek and powerless achieved for our nation? I refer you to the table “American Shame” from the New York Times, where you will find the US has the poorest performance among all “advanced economies” in income inequality, food insecurity, prison population, and mathematics education. At the same time, US life expectancy at birth is significantly worse than all advanced nations except Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Slovakia. Our unemployment rate is higher than every country but Slovenia, Spain, Portugal, and Greece.

Monday, July 4, we celebrate our nation’s birthday and honor the vision of what our nation might have been had we been a truer and wiser people, less inclined to reliance on imagined history and other myths of the past, and more willing to replace fear with love. Now that we have witnessed the cycle of our old nation, like Greece, Rome, and other false social constructs, cycling to an ignominious end in a convulsion of greed, bullying, and imperialism, we know better for the future. It is now our task to build new ways of living on the remaining working parts and reusable structures of that which we now transcend.

Our own transhuman destiny calls those of us who understand and have experienced the full dimensions of complete freedom of sexual orientation and gender identity to accept our role as teachers and leaders in the founding of a new social order. From this day we shall move forward in time with the future, at last to build that great and fabulous society of which we have always dreamed.

Our own celebration this year might be viewed as a “Launch Party” for the “New Age,” which we eagerly look forward to helping to create. There’s mighty work afoot. Let us begin to prepare for the second great North American federal republic—the nation that is to be, that will realize the ambitions of humanity to be safe and at peace, where all can grow into the fullness of their abilities.

Hail, Columbia!

—Dan Massey

 

in Cosmic Citizenship / Library / Transhuman Erotic Freedom  by 06 Jul 2011 0 comments

The Philosophy of Burning Books—Calling It Like It Is

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Last week a truly amazing story of academic support for persecution of LGBT youth by “professional mental health researchers” came to light through the diligent work of Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin and Anderson Cooper of CNN. Briefly, both deal with investigations into the academic and professional life of George Rekers, an ordained minister of the Southern Baptist Convention, arguably the most homophobic of all Protestant cults, as well as the largest. Rekers was a graduate student in clinical psychology at UCLA under Richard Green and Ivar Lovaas, who were responsible for the review and acceptance of his research papers, when the story begins of the tragedy they created to satisfy their lust for academic and financial advancement.

Rekers, with the support of Lovaas and Green, published knowingly false research reports on the case of a child, “Kraig,” who was placed in their care by two very gullible parents. Their own neurotic reactions to their effeminate son resonated with a chord of sociopathy present in UCLA clinical psychology at the time, which was following a path of child development through bullying and deprivation of empathy that had been pioneered by the famous poseur B. F. Skinner, of Harvard. For decades the lies these men wrote, swore to, and promulgated dominated major branches of American psychology and psychiatry.

Over a year ago, thanks to Truth Wins Out and the Florida LGBT press, the fact came out that, in spite of his very public homophobic image, Rekers was actually a closeted homosexual. This was big news in the LGBT press and led to his resignation from the boards of homophobic charities and organizations he had helped lead for so long. This also drew attention to his lifelong history of academic and religious publishing, which has now been proven to be based on deliberate falsification of research results, apparently with the support of his supervisor (Lovaas) and department head (Green) since both were deeply involved themselves in the pseudo-scientific study of effeminate behavior in young boys.

Sorry. Don’t know artist or source.

The work of this blind and bigoted trio has influenced generations of students of childhood development of sexual orientation and gender identity. The published work of these men, and other fraudulent scientists like them, is the foundation of a public relations industry devoted to the marketing for profit of homophobia and transphobia. These institutions are NOT public charities and DO NOT deserve registration as 501(c)3 tax-exempt charities, since they only exist to enrich their organizers and spokespeople by marketing their hateful fantasies as real. I just paid $10 to see the new Spielberg flick. When you leave the theater you know it was all more-or-less meant to be nonsense. At least Hollywood pays taxes on the money it gets from peddling nonsense. The Southern Baptist Convention and its constituent persons and organizations do not. Perhaps Hollywood should claim to be a religion. I know a lot of LGBT folk who would agree.

How can the damage done by Rekers and his like be countered in the intellectual life of humanity? Obviously, the exposure by Burroway and Cooper identifies the problem, but this again will become a one to two week PR event unless the,LBGT community and allies take away a sense of purposive action to stop the further spread of this evil that permeates so much of the generally accepted ignorance of the people. As a minimum, we should identify and disqualify the researchers and the publications that have come about as a result of Rekers’ crimes against academia, science, and humanity.

When one tries to assess the importance of some piece of scientific research, it is useful to know how often and in what capacity the work has been cited by other researchers in their publications. Although the bibliography in a paper tells you where the author used other’s work and ideas, there is nothing to tell you who went on to make use of this particular work of this particular writer. It would, for example, be very convenient to be able to trace out every academic publication that referenced the work of Rekers, Green, or Lovaas, but would require you to examine every bibliography in every later publication that could have possible referenced their work.

Actually the problem was solved definitively 50 years ago by the creation of the Science Citation Index (SCI), which is essentially a reverse bibliography that identifies every subsequent publication that cites the target article. Through SCI one can find not only everything written by Rekers, Green, or Lovaas, and published in a significant peer-reviewed journal, but also everything that cites any of their work. Thus one quickly identifies both publications that should be recalled (since they are contaminated by authorship by Rekers or the others) and other publications that should be recalled (since they are contaminated by citation of Rekers or the others).

This process is then iterated, seeding the new selection cycle with the name of all authors of citation contaminated publications, identifying their other writings and the writers who cited them and their writings. In fact, it is likely one could turn this into a real witch-hunt through the assholes of academia.

Once the offensive material has all been identified, there is an immediate technique for ending further research or credibility for this entire intellectually and morally bankrupt community. Each journal that has published a suspect article simply publishes a formal retraction, even going back 50 years, if necessary. These retractions are indexed by SCI and become a part of the formal record there of the final disposition by rational humanity of a body of published research. Though the discredited documents presenting lies as true will remain in a few archives, every bit of future meaning is gone in the sense that no sane person would waste time by basing further work on it. The injury to academic and science is corrected.

This of course leaves open the place where real injury to real people has been done by these men and their disciples. And this continues through their writing and publication in the very large non-academic press that has no standards of peer review and, in many cases, no concept of truth in reportage. For example, there are 16 titles by Rekers on Amazon. Do any of these books deserve dissemination? Or distribution? Or memorialization in libraries?

Here we face directly the struggle for the hearts and minds of the sane. There is no social purpose in the publication and dissemination of these books. On the other hand, their just and forcible suppression could leave some unconvinced of the evil they represent. Scientists and authors of good will are needed to tell the true stories of human sexual and gender development, uncontaminated by the theological and moral mythology of cult leaders. Such truth will gradually eclipse the lies of the cults, since sane human minds recognize truth and resonate with it when it is heard.

No, I don’t advocate book burning, but I see no reason the false intellectual legacy of men like Rekers, where it can be so clearly identified in the stream of formally reviewed publication, should not be erased permanently from academic history, taking with it the life work of many bigots and homophobes who have hidden (and continue to hide) their neuroses and psychoses behind the false privilege conferred by an academic degree and often tenure.

—Dan Massey

 

in Cosmic Citizenship / Library / Transhuman Erotic Freedom  by 11 Jun 2011 0 comments

Meek, Arise! Defeat the Bullies!

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También en español More clearly than at any other time in our past, the underlying mechanisms of oppression by which our cultures maintain the status quo are coming into sharp relief. These mechanisms divide the public interest into warring groups, easy to suborn and emasculate through political manipulation. For far too long the attention of the people, whom religion, government, and commerce exist only to serve, has been manipulated and diverted into hatred of their fellows rather than love and respect for individual autonomy. The collective folly and false presentations of reality presented by religion, government, and commerce instead force each of us to compete for resources and privileges of life because they are deliberately kept in extreme scarcity by artificial systems of ownership and distribution designed to support oppression.

Finally, the pretentions to love, truth, and public service are progressively falling away from human delusions of religion, government, and commerce. This is exposing the vicious zombie program that soullessly drives forward a cruel and uncaring social fate selected by bullies for personal and collective advantage over their fellow humans. We see exposed the naked foundations of human oppression. And they begin with sexual repression, culturally forced on infants the day they are born and never relaxed afterwards. And the brutality of this completely failed cultural system perpetuates itself as one generation insists that the next adopt its obscene and failed ideas and ideals.

Today the meek can see that their entire lives and life expression are being dominated and shaped by uncaring bullies, who have conspired to seize control of all human rights and liberties, denying the most basic needs to everyone who dare challenge the selfish execution of their desires against the whole of human welfare and progress.

by Khannea Suntzu

The time is at hand to end the bullying. The time is at hand to turn your back on the demands of a false and failed culture that would control your every desire, including the most basic forms of sex and gender freedom. The time is at hand to recognize the falsity of all religious myth, of all government hallucinations of moral purpose, and of all greed-based commerce. Those who would practice such bullying must be forced from society and isolated in their own personal world of delusion, never to abuse the trust of the meek again. The systems they have erected for their power and enrichment must be disassembled and reformed to the purposes of humanity or allowed to rot and decay in their own purposelessness.

Today the bullies have become well-organized and open in the expression of their desire to fully enslave the rest of humanity. The public statements of religious, governmental, and commercial leaders continually disclose their greed and cynicism, free at last from false assertions of selflessness or service that have surrounded them for millennia. Now they admit their purposes, even flaunt them inhumanely, so no intelligent person can fail to realize a personal responsibility to end the bullying forever and the bullies’ processes of persecution of the meek.

We outnumber them by the billions and there is absolutely nothing they can do if we all refuse to play their evil games. The bullies will try to use the meek who have bought into the system of oppression to force the disenfranchised to participate in this system that is unfair to their interests. The bullies will, as usual, try to do this with military and police force. Many members of these forces are not bullies but are themselves among the most oppressed by the bullies. When they come to understand the reality of their oppression they will refuse to continue to play the vile roles for which the bullies have so long exploited their fears.

Put another way, if you let some asshole dictate to you how to express your most basic sexual/gender character by legally limiting or guilting your behavior, you have enslaved yourself by giving them control over every less important thing you might think or want to do. You have denied your most central aspect of being in submitting to their ignorant or cynical delusion.

Defeat the bullies and you bring to an end the oppressive culture we have known and endured all our lives. We can replace it with a far better world in which all work together in diverse ways to accomplish common goods for the benefit of all, not just a few worthless bullies. The resulting rewards to humanity as all move forward in unity are beyond human experience and human imagination. Meek, arise!

–Dan Massey

 

 

in Cosmic Citizenship / Library / Transhuman Erotic Freedom  by 29 May 2011 0 comments