Proportion

Afghanistan. Peter Bergen, who looks quite fetching in his cheerleader's skirt and little white tennis shoes, pens an op-ed arguing that we do not have to model our humanitarian intervention on the Soviets. Why, we could emulate Genghis Khan instead!

Since Alexander the Great, plenty of conquerors have subdued Afghanistan. In the early 13th century, Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes ravaged the country’s two major cities. And in 1504, Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire in India, easily took the throne in Kabul. Even the humiliation of 1842 did not last. Three and a half decades later, the British initiated a punitive invasion and ultimately won the second Anglo-Afghan war, which gave them the right to determine Afghanistan’s foreign policy.

He continues, noting that the Soviets sent more troops, killed more people, and therefore met with more resistance. Appropriately enough, that's the plan currently being promulgated by the Obama administration, albeit downplaying the killing more people portion.

If our hubris weren't astounding already, it's become artfully over-the-top: as we wallow through trillion-dollar funny-money injections into our own failed economy and seek to stave off the actual, literal, for-real collapse of our system of exchange, we nonetheless have time to stalk around the world telling other people, "Yer doin it wrong." Have we really invaded and occupied a nation halfway around the world in order to turn it into "the model of a somewhat stable Central Asian state"? Is that weasely goal worth one human life? I would risk a turned ankle or a sprained wrist for that goal. America: the mad doctor that prescribes amputation for a patch of eczema on the elbow.

Foodie Friday

Wilted Mustard Greens with Sichuan Peppper

Why are you not eating mustard greens? You should be eating mustard greens. You should also be taking advantage of the 2005 lifting of the ban on Sichuan peppers, tiny seed pods that have a slight citrus flavor and cause a mild sensation of numbness in the mouth.

I make the broth in this recipe by chopping up the bones and carcass of a roasted chicken (don't throw them away, you wasteful fuckers), simmering them in a stock pot with salt, a pinch of anise seed, a stick of cinnamon, an inch or so of lemon grass, a few allspice berries, a quartered onion, a few green onions, and some salt.

1 large bunch mustard greens, chopped into broad strips, stems reserved
1 large yellow onion, finely diced
juice of 1 lemon
2 tbspns Sichuan peppers, husks only
2 tbspns Asian chili sauce with bean paste (available at any Asian grocery)
chicken stock
extra virgin olive oil
salt

Heat a large, heavy bottomed pan over high heat. Add enough oil to thoroughly cover the bottom of the pan. Add the onion and salt lightly. Sauté until soft and translucent. Add half the peppers, the chili sauce, lemon juice, and a ladle of broth. When boiling, begin adding greens, starting with the stems. Cover the batches and reduce heat to medium. As they wilt, add more greens, repeating the process until all of the greens are in the pan. Throughout the process, add broth as needed to keep a bit of liquid boiling in the bottom of the pan. Once all the greens are in the pan and beginning to soften, mix together well. Continue to cook until the leaves are very tender and the stems retain just a slight crunch. Add the other half of the peppers. Drain most, but not all, of the liquid. Serve family style on a large serving dish.

The Patriarchy Copyrights Your Image

Worst part of me, and henceforth hated most,
Through all the town a common fucking-post,
On whom each whore relieves her tingling cunt
As hogs do rub themselves on gates and grunt,
May'st thou to ravenous chancres be a prey,
Or in consuming weepings waste away
May strangury and stone thy days attend
May'st thou ne'er piss, who did refuse to spend
When all my joys did on false thee depend.
And may ten thousand abler pricks agree
To do the wronged Corinna right for thee.

-from The Imperfect Enjoyment by John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester

Pennsylvania is lovely in the spring. The trees are beginning to bud. The air smells like rain and earth. It stays light into the evenings and we take walks after dinner. The District Attorneys emerge from winter hibernation, thin and hungry.

So. There is District Attorney George Skumanick Jr.'s ardor for transforming young men and women into sex criminals who will never be able to lead normal lives, unless they submit to "re-education." Now, I am a young man, but I'm nevertheless old enough to recall those halcyon days in America's late morning when that word was always preceded by communist. Given the present national course, wherein dissident intellectuals will soon find themselves assigned to back-breaking labor on collective financial institutions, there's a certain irony.

The prurience of anti-pornography crusaders is astonishing. The absurdity of punishing boys and girls who probably see each other naked every day after gym class for banking semi-nude images electronically is amusing. The implication that by dint of their youth these people have no right to determine the uses and dispositions of their own bodies is offensive. The horror and disgust with which we desire them to treat their own nudity is pathetic and pathological. The notion that we can disabuse teenagers of their exhibitionism by prosecuting them as if they were rapists is morally horrific.

As a fag, it is of course my social obligation to put nude pictures of myself on the internets so that I can have more butt sex. Within the fag community, everyone has "x-pics" on the internet, and the very prevalence of the practice ensures that no one cares. I bump into friends and acquaintances whose cock shots I have, like, totally seen, and we are mutually unembarrassed. In the future everyone will be naked on the internet. Glory be.

By far the most disturbing bit of the linked article is this lovely little snippet:

As part of the five-week, 10-hour program Mr. Skumanick recommended, girls would "[g]ain an understanding of how [their] actions were wrong," "gain an understanding of what it means to be a girl in today's society," and "[i]dentify non-traditional societal and job roles."

What does it mean to be a girl in today's society? It means, evidently, that you can be a sexual commodity but not a sexual being, that if you allow people to see you, then it will be your fault when you are raped, which you will be, because of iPhones.

The Old Buy and Buy

Rosanne Altshuler assures us on NPR that saving money will blow up the moon.

Minor tax give-backs amounting to twelve cents per paycheck or whatever do not spur "consumption," our regnant raison d'être. Has so-called capitalism become so crackpot [IOZ: yes!] that we no longer even recognize that their are modes of production--that we no longer recognize production, having sacrificed it to that Mammon, Productivity, long ago?

If you employ people productively, whereby in exchange for making shit or doing something useful and they are compensated with a fair hourly wage or reasonable salary, then they will buy goods and services from other people doing the same. If, on the other hand, you create an economy [IOZ: yes, create] in which the purpose of wages is to spend a percentage on retirement con games in which worker money is pooled and invested by a few money managers who reap exorbitant profits and the retained majority of worker income is to be immediately flushed down the toilet of unnecessary and profligate consumption, bolstered by the availability of unbacked credit, then sooner or later you will have an economy in which people with lousy jobs and no savings who don't produce anything don't buy anything.

Not. Conceptually. Difficult.

Municipal Blog Codes

That my post tags are from time to time, by which I mean often-to-usually, tongue-in-cheek escapes certain commenters, but is good, is good. There are a couple of comments that cutely demand, request, imply, implore that I acknowledge state and muni auto codes as being within the legitimate purview of the state and fess up as a lawbreaker. A lawbreaker, yes.

These sorts are thoroughly and probably willfully unaware that auto codes and statutes, inspection and registration requirements, mandatory emissions testing, are not simply harmless, even beneficial, examples of good governance, of our managers looking out for the best interests of safety, the environment, etc. They actively and consistently disenfranchise the poor.

Now, while I don't have the most handsomely remunerative job in the world, it's also true that a couple hundred bucks is, for me, an oops and a lesson learned. I forgot to get my car inspected. I was probably stoned or something. Who ever looks at their tags? The little thing's in excellent shape, drives great, gets serviced regularly. I'd have preferred to pay just forty dollars a few months back, but so it goes.

On the other hand: cities and, more seriously given the lack of transit in this country, small-town and rural areas are full of poor people who don't get inspections because they can't immediately afford repairs; who don't keep their cars registered because they have no fixed address; who don't immediately pay for parking tickets or minor moving violations because they can't afford it. Spend a day at your local municipal impound, watching the line. White folks in business casual don't abound, but you'll see a lot of young black guys trying to get their trucks back so they can continue their work as occasional contractors. You'll see a lot of minority women with their children. You'll see a lot of people who can't get their cars back. Oh well, probably just losers.

Rational basis is not the only test. It's in the practical application of laws that we so often see the unacknowledged biases of our legal state enacted.

A Wall Street Story

Dear Jake DeSantis,

You are big. It's Wall Street that got small.

Cinematically,
IOZ

Culture of Guilt

“Do we really want to encourage cases,” Professor Arum asked, “where students and parents are seeking monetary damages against educators in such school-specific matters where reasonable people can disagree about what is appropriate under the circumstances?”

Well, yes.

Thrilling though it may be for junior high secretaries and vice principles to consider themselves deputized as some manner of vice squad, doesn't it seem odd that a society so enthralled to the notion that its educators cum educators are abject failures--iz are children learning? and all that--is so blithely willing to concede that schools should be set up as moderated panopticons run by the very same incompetents?

In the particular instance in the linked article, the poor girl was accused without evidence by a fellow student of carrying the equivalent of a couple of asprin. A threat, indeed, to the "health and welfare" of her fellow students. Why, had she been carrying, she might have inadvertently ameliorated menstrual cramping or a twisted ankle at recess. The school's default reaction was not to simply ask the girl if she had the medicine, operating on the assumption that reasonably intelligent adults who work with young adolescents every day ought to be able to ferret out untruths through verbal questioning, but to treat her like a vicious criminal or, worse, an airline passenger.

Or, you know, they could've just called her mother. Increasingly, I've noticed that public schools, supposedly empowered to act in loco parentis, view actual parents with a mixture of dread and animosity, and seek through intimidation and subterfuge to prevent parents from being active partners in the upbringing of their children; rather than deferring to mom and dad, or mom, or dad, or aunty, or uncle, or grandmother, or legal guardian, they seem to believe that these evil family influences are kinds of co-conspirators.

I once found myself on the receiving end of the threat of a more . . . intrusive search back in my student days, and the offending administrator found himself on the receiving end of the implication that I might make certain implications about male administrators with undue interest in teenage male students in states of undress. But I was brazen, protected by my family's influence and station in our community, and older than thirteen. Also had half a joint on my, so there was that.

The school district does not contest that Ms. Redding had no disciplinary record, but says that is irrelevant.

“Her assertion should not be misread to infer that she never broke school rules,” the district said of Ms. Redding in a brief, “only that she was never caught.”

And isn't this the case with all of us. Innocent only because we have so far avoided arrest.

Missed Connections

Dear Anglophone World,

"Star-crossed" is not good. Please adjust your usage accordingly.

Love,
IOZ

Keep Your Head Down

My car was towed the other day. From the street. In front of my house. The precise circumstances remain murky, despite my best efforts to ascertain the series of events leading to the tow. Several years ago, PA decoupled auto registration from auto safety and emission inspection requirements, and although my registration was current, I'd forgotten to get it inspected. Oops, my bad. You'd expect a ticket, right? Instead, I walked out of my house and found that my car was missing. I called the few people who occasionally borrow it, even though I doubted any ever would without asking first. I called the police and reported it stolen. Filled out a report. Etc. They called me back several hours later. Your car, they said, has been repossessed.

Impossible. I own the car outright, I said. There aren't even payments to miss.

Well, not exactly repossessed, he said. Towed as an abandoned vehicle.

But, I said, why didn't it show up as having been towed to the city impound when I made the report.

Private tow, they told me. Wasn't in the database.

Who reported it as abandoned?

We can't tell you. It was parked in the same place for 48 hours. Besides, you got a certified letter.

No, I said, I didn't. Besides, I said, in 48 hours? Not likely.

I tracked the car to a tow lot in McKeesport, PA, about 40 minutes from my house, drove down, and paid a couple hundred bucks to get it back. This was the cost of towing and storage, and although I raised a little fuss, in the end the guy was just a tow truck driver for a firm that contracts with the city, and to the best of his knowledge was just serving a legitimate work order. There was no ticket. The city stole my car, and they didn't even profit by fining me. I talked to my family's attorney. I could write a letter, he said, but to be honest the time and effort of recovering the fees you paid isn't really worth it.

I found the entire experience both an hilarious example of municipal ineptitude--right hand not knowing what the left is doing and all that--and a minor but profoundly dislocating demonstration of just how little control we have over our own property in a system which consistently preaches the sacrosanctity of property rights.

More disturbing, though, was the general attitude I discovered when I did some cursory digging to find out if the tow had even been legal (answer: uh, possibly maybe). A number of similar stories had been posted to various boards and forums, and they were met with near-universal lack of sympathy. Worse: with mockery, followed by advice for the proper attitude of acquiescence. Never do such-and-such to a cop was a popular admonition. Cops don't like this. Never ask a cop that. It's your own fault for failing to comply.

Most of the folks making the initial inquiries were, by their own accounts, like me guilty of an oversight, and most, like me, expressed self-similar attitudes: if they'd just issued a citation, we'd have grumbled, paid it, gotten the car inspected at the nearest opportunity.

Well, maybe the tow company and lot pay a kickback to the city. Maybe that's why there wasn't a ticket. No one seems to know.

But I keep circling back to the sheer volume of derision directed at people for their minor violations of the vehicular codes. There was a kind of fury at them for even inquiring after the validity of the actions of the police. There was a palpable anger at the perception of disobedience. And I can't help but generalize from the experience: we seem, as a society, to have developed a serious disorder when it comes to authority, to have internalized submissiveness, to have sighed, resigned ourselves to the petty unfairness and injustice of it all, and to have grown consequently hateful of those who through minor infractions are somehow presumed to have ruined it for the rest.

The Levee

Liberals appear to be concerned that the Geithner plan will result in the people who wrecked finance finding themselves rewarded for the wrecking. This, I'll suggest, is the plan's principal aim. The euphemism of "risk" is indicative of the accuracy of my reading. Baby fall down, go boom. Mommy lift baby back up. Economic dislocation has so far been not nearly prolonged or severe enough for the ruling class to do otherwise. A quiescent public poses no threat, and the GOP opposition is playing its role nicely, acting with such unceasing lunacy that anything Obama proposes seems the epitome of reasonableness and rationality in comparison. Grampappy Floodpants Falsetto Frownsalot, AKA Candidate-in-Exile John McCain, and the rest of the absurdist choir make delicious nonsense by proposing that a naked sop to the poor, poor fortunes of our rich, rich banksters is Leninism, decrying always-popular federal spending on local projects, and claiming that unemployment insurance is Treason. Against this even the sallow, foppish, out-of-his-depth SecTres seems a paragon of virtuous intellect.

As noted yesterday, I doubt the plan will succeed even on its own terms, let alone that the economy will be all peaches and bundles of cash by early next year, although the ability of our Accounts Overlords in Government to manipulate Wall Street's regnant innumerates with confidence game pronouncements may yet get the Dow back into 8-9,000 territory . . . briefly. To use a metaphor currently popular, we appear to be witnessing our officials breathing a sigh of relief that the hurricane didn't directly hit the city.