The consequence of getting tough

I had a meeting for a student, today, which completely epitomizes the consequence of getting tough.

I had a student, today, who got in a fight. She also happened to be in special education. Which is a mess.

Instead of just owning up and saying that she was sorry and that maybe she just shouldn't fight again in the future (a topic around which there is, actually, quite a bit of real complexity for both kids and adults, no matter how much we try to oversimplify it with rules and laws against fighting), this kid's mom and social worker sat and made a hour's worth of excuses. She was bi-polar, she was overloaded with work, she was stressed, yada, yada, yada. There may be truth to the idea that stress makes us more prone to aggression, but I watched this girl wail on another girl in the middle of the cafeteria, provoked only by her talking and her "mean mugging," as the kids would say.

And I sat there the entire time thinking, "What good is this doing for this kid? What mom would do this? Find all kinds of excuses for a kids' behavior instead of just expecting them to say they were sorry and that they'll try not to do it again?"

But you know why people do this?

To get out of the punishment. There's no other reason, really. They may really believe it, at some level. But it is clearly to provide a rationale to keep from being punished. As surely as people rationalize popular governing philosophies to get rewarded and grab for power. They may actually believe it, too. Stalin really believed Communism. Hitler really believed Naziism. And they both rationalized the shit out of life to get what they were looking for.

Everyone does it. Kids. Adults, Politicians. Citizens. Mothers. Fathers. Employers. Employees. Teachers. Students. Scholars. Dumbasses. Everyone. We all do it. We all do it to get out of the punishment. Which is exactly what allowed the Nazis to maintain power in Germany. Because everyone was too fuckin' terrified to do otherwise. A page which contemporary liberals and conservatives have apparently taken from the playbook of Joseph Goebbels.

And we are stuck with it now and forever until people get the courage to stop doing it.

The truth is that the Commuists and the Nazis were not quite so different from us. They were just more extreme in their commitment to getting tough and forcing "progress," a mantle they both embraced as wholeheartedly as Democrats and Republicans embrace that mantle today.

The great tragedy of the 20th century was that Germans embraced that mantle of forced "progress" for more than a decade in the 30's and 40's. The Russian people, much more sadly, embraced it for more than 70 years. The Chinese and North Koreans have embraced it, now, for almost 60 years. Syria for more than 40.

And the democracies of the West whose example and criticism and engagement and fruits of freedom were so critical to the fall of the Nazis and the Communists in the 20th century and are so needed to free the peoples of China, North Korea and Syria, have, at the beginning of the 21st century, embraced the very philosophy that brought the dictators in each of those governments to power.

And the biggest lie of all was not Hitler's. It was the lie that it was all that force rather than our free will and conscience that led to more responsible lives, when it is so clearly the threat of force that leads students' like my kid, today, and those in power and everyone to avoid taking responsibility, if we could ever just be honest about that fact. With others and, much more importantly, with ourselves.

And that is the true consequence of getting tough. And it always has been. This one long lie that we've told ourselves and one another that we were and are better than we really were and are, all because of how much more people were forced to be better. The bigger lie we tell is how we are. That we are better than we are, not just that we were better in the past. All because of how others forced us to be as good as we are today. That all the force in Washington is clearly making Washington a better place, and all of America and the world a better place as a consequence. Which is why we need that power, today. To make others as good as us.

That is the biggest lie. Joseph Goebbels would be proud. For all of it. How tough we get. And all the lies we tell in its name. To others. And to ourselves.

Love,
Ben

Pussy-footing our way to progress

I still have to write about brown paper wrapper for internet porn, Carson's blog tag from last week. It offers a very nice challenge for how we might handle difficult situations like kids' access to pornography in a world where we take freedom seriously, which I think we should.

But, for now, I want to assume that I'm wrong. And talk about why we are such pussies that we can't take real progress seriously if we want really believe in the idea of forcing the world to do good.

I think it's because we're soft. We just don't the balls that Stalin or the Jihadists have to impose our will on people. Liberal democracy has softened us and folks like Hitler could see that which is why he could so easily stomp about Europe with so little opposition. Because the truth is that freedom is for pussies.

So, I'm thinking: Let's get serious about progress, for God's sakes.

Here's what I'm thinking.

First, freedom of thought is for pussies. We all know what is right and what as wrong. The Good Book, for some, and Marx, for others, is self-evident. So why in the fuck we would take independent judgment and conscience seriously other than to arrive at what we already know is right is just fuckin' beyond me. Right is right. Or, if you're a Democrat, left is right. And there's not much need to debate that or discuss it or to subject it to critical examination. What we need is someone to fuckin' let the world know that we mean fuckin' business. And if you want to critically examine our fuckin' ideas, then you can fuckin' eat shit and do what you're fuckin' told until we tell you it is your fuckin' turn to speak up you insubordinate little heretic. Freedom of thought is for people who don't know what the fuck we're doing. You saying we don't know what the fuck we're doing? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Second, we all know that peckers are the root of most known evil, and we'd cut the little fuckers off if we didn't need those sorry little things to reproduce the species. So what we need is some fuckin' control over peoples' propensity to do damage with their sex organs. Sexual freedom is for hippies and God knows those little Rastafarians stink up a room, with their astrology as much as with their propensity to skip showers. So it seems to me that with the clear consensus that force is the wave of the future, that we start to really initiate progress and fuckin' shut that shit down. I don't know why we think tolerating adultery, homosexuality, pornography, casual sex, sodomy (anal and oral, if you've consulted your Good Book, lately), and definitely abortion - which is murder of a baby, you fuckin' sociopath - is somehow a sign of civilization or a progressive society. The wave of the future is force, if you haven't fuckin' picked up a paper or listened to NPR, lately. So why you would have some antiquated notion that sexual or reproductive freedom is a sign of a progressive civilization is clearly the product of propaganda by pedophiles and pornographers, you fuckin' letch. Get with the program. And if you don't, don't worry. We'll make you.

Free trade and a free economy are the work of greed-riddled industrialists and neoconservatives, the same bunch that brought you the Iraq War. Think they were in denial about that little police action? Just wait till they start talking about a robust economy and globablization and the benefits to consumers from a self-correcting market. You think people can make their own choices and judgments without government oversight? Have you looked at how the market makes decisions? Can you really say that people in the market make better decisions than President Bush or Vice President Cheney or Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi? Get real. Those market fuckers can talk themselves around a hoola-hoop, can't they? What the fuck has free trade done for us, other than ship our jobs off to some fuckin' chink or Indian or A-rab? Unregulated free trade is the bad husband that your mother told you would ruin your life, but did you listen to her?

No-oooooooh.

You know the place where we just haven't gotten tough enough? On people. All of them. They're a fuckin' mess. And what they need is some fuckin' medicine that they aren't going to fuckin' like, but they're gonna fuckin' get it anyway. It's called a good old-fashioned fuckin' whoop-ass. So here's what I'm thinking. If you do something wrong, anything. Whatever it is. I mean, we've pretty much narrowed it down, haven't we? The way to get people to do what they're supposed to do is to fuckin' make 'em, asshole. Stop making it so goddamn complicated. So what I'm thinking is, you fuckin' eat the meat, you fuckin' forget to recycle, you fuckin' smoke the reefer, you fuckin' forget get your taxes in late, you fuckin' don't fill out your OSHA paperwork.

First offense, you get a warning.

Second offense, you lose a knee-cap.

Third offense, public beheading.

Now, I know. A lot of bleeding heart conservatives out there are going to whine and moan, "Oh, what about the children? What about freedom? Now the terrorists win."

But I say, stop you're fuckin' whining you fuckin' right-wing pussies and learn to fuckin' take your licks like a fuckin' man. This is progress, baby. Get on the fuckin' truck or prepare to be run over, you fuckin' moron. Because noone asked if you wanted progress. You're going to fuckin' get it whether you fuckin' like it or not.

Oh, yeah. And drugs. There's a fuckin' war on, you fuckin' nimrod, if you haven't noticed. The war on drugs and the war on poverty are how we finally fuckin' rid ourselves of these and million other plagues on society. And if you can't fuckin' join up, you're either fuckin' with us or against. And in the meantime, we didn't fuckin' ask you. You're in the way. And if you didn't notice, we never said that progress was touchy-feely.

Next, politics. Someone's gotta clean that fuckin' mess up. And every damn person we send down there keeps getting covered with the mud. We gotta finally get serious about that godforesaken city. So what I'm thinking is that we once and for all finally require that politicians do what we tell them to do. I'm thinking a law with some real teeth. Oh, and no illegal namby pansy, either. I'm getting fuckin' tired of all the people we send to do the work of the law always ending up on the other side of it. So I'm proposing that we make any illegal activity illegal. Show them we're really serious. I'm thinking maybe a dungeon or some real time - life imprisonment clearly doesn't deter people from committing murder because they're still doing it, if you haven't noticed, so maybe something a little less Bob Ross-ish - or maybe dissappearing some people for awhile until they get the fuckin' message. Cause if you haven't seen the Pinochet regime, you haven't seen real force in the advance of progress.

I know, I know. All the wittle soft-headed conservatives and soft-hearted liberals are going to go their mommies and the ACLU and the Milton Friedman Foundation and say, "What are about ow fweedom? What about our wiberties?" And all I have to say is that noone fuckin' asked you, Mr. Rogers. What are you, some fuckin' rapist? You want the fuckin' pedophiles to win? Or the fundamentalists? Or Ken Lay and his buddies? Freedom is all fine and good as long as you don't have any fuckin' problems. But here on fuckin' earth we have our health and our safety and our children and our jobs at fuckin' stake, James Dean. Freedom's for chumps who don't know when to say stop. So our job is to say stop for them. What do you want? A world where everyone is going around breaking the rules and pretending like their following them? What a fuckin' mess that would be. How in the hell would we manage in a world where everyone went around pretending that they were following the rules and all the while clamoring for more of them? What a godawful mess that would be.

The problem with the world is that we don't want progress badly enough to impose it on people. What we fuckin' need is a fuckin' law once and for all that requires people to finally follow the law and put the fear of God in them. You want to smoke marijuana? Great. Pick a fuckin' jail cell, you fuckin' reactionary. You want to have an abortion? Goody for you. But you better be ready for a little brute force in your life. You want to fuckin' come into our country without our permission, say hola to el familio when you get to Mexico, Pablo.

Some people just don't know how to put the fear in people, because they don't understand just what a mess this world would be if it weren't for the wise men who make our laws and what a terrible, crazy dysfunctional little piece of insanity it would be for us to have a world where people are always breaking the rules and advocating for more?

You know what 21st century America and Nazi Germany have in common? It takes laws to keep order in this world. You want a bunch of Jews infecting our young people with their brand of anti-Christ? You want slaves going whereever they want to go, no matter how much people paid good money to have them till their soil? You want all those darkies in America or India and their "civil rights movements" and their "independence movements" just deciding which laws they were going to follow and which ones they were going to not follow? Laws are what keep that insanity from transpiring in our world. Laws kept out the Eastern Europeans and other undesireables, they are what kept us safe from the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, they are what kept that science teacher in Tennessee from teaching those poor children about monkeys being some kind of ancestor, they kept debtors from leaving prison and not paying what they owe, and they are what keep us safe, and healthy, and responsible.

Why have we not elected Patrick Fitzgeral President? Thank God Elliot Spitzer is well on his way. We need some prosecutorial zeal to make progress for this generation stick. Otherwise, how are people going to believe that when we say we're forcing progress, we mean business.

Without law, there is no morality. Law is how we define the bounds of good in our society. It's what keeps out the undesireables and keeps everyone else in their place. That's why we have to keep it safe.

From the consciences of its citizens.

Love,
Ben