Damian M. Schloming ideas and information

Naomi Wolf on rape: "...ours is increasingly an age of geopolitics by blackmail."

This website is to allow me to present intelligibly my thoughts and insights on various social, political, historical and even scientific issues I've been studying in the past two years. 

Some of which I have background knowledge of due to having been involved with and interested in various political movements many years ago. 

My political viewpoint leans towards libertarian, except that I am not completely happy with the way some of them think. Libertarians want limited government and civil liberties. As a matter of principle, that is excellent. But then libertarians seem to suffer from this ingrained bias of Western Culture that you can somehow intellectually decide that government "should be" a certain way and then the perfect society can then be achieved by some legislative body sitting down and crafting some written rule decreeing that that is how society is to be from now on.

 

Actually, I think government and the larger society it is embedded in is more like some kind of living beast that you can train or that can morph in one direction or another, but it can't be so easily manipulated or changed as we think. Written rules don't have the exact effect they literally intend, but instead enforcement of the rules and all sorts of other considerations regarding government bureaucracies results in all sorts of ripple effects or unintended consequences. As a result, the most free society does not necessarily result from the one with the nicest and most free sounding written constitution or constitutional rights guaranteeing liberty. A very good example of this issue is the liberal Warren Court expanding all sorts of fifth amendment procedural and technical criminal protections for defendants. Liberals saying they want to do this might be arguing this is to help the poor. The opposite is the truth. This is to help defense attorneys, and why is that a bad thing? Because criminal procedures and technicalities of the liberal Warren Court only resulted in defendants having protection IF they could hire an expensive enough attorney to do a good enough job PRESSING them. Public defenders are part of the corrupt court system, they deliberately do a bad job so as to make sure well heeled defendants find it worth their while to pay extra. Huge sentences ALSO give well heeled defendants more incentive to pay extra. Thus, defense attorneys representing rich criminal defendants have a vested interest in maintaining the strict sentencing policies responsible for Mass Incarceration. Furthermore, there was a law school bubble which burst, and now law schools are doing poorly because lawyers are not finding it worth their while to spend so much money on a law degree. Fact of the matter is, those liberal Warren Court protections indirectly increased legal fees for defense attorneys, thereby contributing to the upward pressure on college tuition and law school tuition, simply because the amount of money attorneys could make from a law degree made it more worthwhile. 

It also is true that the regulatory state increased in many other ways, increasing demand for attorneys in other spheres besides the criminal justice system. But I am going to talk about the criminal justice system here for now to use it as an example.

This is just one example showing how a policy that, examined in the most superficial way you think it's designed to help criminal defendants overall in the long run has the exact opposite effect. Because these protections are ones that only can be accessed by those with the money to pay for top dollar attorneys. And, it isn't always necessarily related to the facts of the case. The attorney usually has an incestuous relationship with everyone else in the court system, so much so that basically if you pay the right attorney enough money, you will get off because he is friends with all the judges and prosecutors, and parole officers, etc.

And for me to say that could lead to others thinking it is rather awful to have a court system so incestuously corrupt. Except, these are all nice people who know each other and court systems have ALWAYS been like this, more or less. And they always will be this way. Government is incapable of being perfect. Understanding its inherent imperfections such as this are necessary when it comes to avoiding passing laws which interact with such a culture in a way to produce very bad outcomes.

 

After all, we have always had government and, for some reason, it would appear if we always have had it, that is because we need it. The inner workings of government are so awful, you discover after you observe it, it can easily lead many to think we should just abolish it. But, given that that is impossible, the best alternative is to understand it as inherently flawed, and realistically think of how to make things "the least bad."

This is what I have thought for a long time, yet only recently have I stumbled across some law professors who subscribe to a movement called "legal realism." It turns out they think exactly the way I do, and see the same flaws in our society (or in the thinking of popular culture which leads to wrong-headed policies in our legal system) that I see.

Oddly enough, they seem to describe themselves as leftists yet they are not the kind of ordinary mainstream leftist most people would understand to be "of the left." Which is strange because I never would have thought of myself as a liberal -- but not a conservative either. But maybe this is because of certain strands of liberalism I have been exposed to which are quite awful. 

In any case, why categorize oneself? As I study and learn more about society, I like to share various insights and not limit myself to any one "box" or "category" that I pigeonhole myself into.

and Gomes' secretary who refused to let me speak to him

August 31, 2015  /  Damian Schloming

She was especially nasty about it, sort of like deliberately provocative.

OK now I see it. They were deliberately manipulating me. 

As for Gomes, I am reminded of this TV program someone recently shared about Gomes where he was talking about his recent book "the scandalous gospel of Jesus," and the TV host went and told him, if he started out as Catholic, then he is nothing but a sheep and they tell him what to do and he does it, and he said "yes." 

See I really wonder whether he is a bad person like they all said. I do know one thing, nobody breathed a word about him to me while I was at Memorial Church. Nobody introduced him to me, except for my mother of all people which was after I played the organ for a service and would talk to him during refreshments.

But I knew nothing about him, I didn't even know he was gay, I did not know Daniel Sanks was his lover until Spring of 1998. I did not know he was well known in any way. I knew nothing about his politics. All I heard about was how his mother speaks normal English and his preppy accent was fake, how he was a very bizarre individual who was a member of the mayflower society, e.g., descendants of people who came over here on the mayflower, which they thought was so ridiculous and funny, and remarked on how this "old dowager asked him so did you come over on the mayflower" and he responded "no I came over on a different kind of ship." (Direct quote: Murray Somerville.) 

Then, after I leave Harvard, all I hear from the likes of Christopher Thorpe is how intensely disliked Peter Gomes was at Harvard, and what a horrible person he was, all he cares about is talking with people who have money. 

What I wonder about him is, was he really a bad person, or was he just surrounded by and heavily controlled by a bunch of white gays and lesbians (all of whom were the ones who behaved so atrociously towards me) in a similar manner to how many performers who are gifted are used, manipulated, and controlled by "managers?" Given the high profile nature of some of the businesses who seemed to be using this situation in order to eventually exploit me, I'd have to say this wasn't really him, as some people have tried to tell me. 

I mean, come on, these people were all using me. Why weren't they using him as well?

[Added November 14, 2015. I totally forgot it, but another sign of the manner in which I was kept utterly ignorant about everything at Memorial Church, all so I could muddle through and not understand ANY of the social dynamics there was, regarding Daniel Sanks, Gomes' lover. I had no clue Gomes was gay. Well maybe I heard once or twice. But I had no clue Daniel Sanks was his lover until Spring of 1998, I accidentally try to visit Gomes to try to complain about Dan Sanks, I ring his door bell, Dan Sanks answers, I ask where Gomes is, he isn't there, and then I ask Dan Sanks "What are you doing here?" and he says "I live here." And I was shocked. This was after five years at Harvard -- just goes to show how badly I was socially ostracized, controlled, and shunned there, if I didn't know even that. 

However, I should also point out, it isn't like I didn't have some amount of "insight" as to their "relationship" or whatever you want to call it. When speaking to Danny Forger and other Harvard Individuals, I always referred to Daniel Sanks as "Director of Finance" and none of them corrected me. Because what I noticed about him was, he was very controlling, and obsessed with money. He and Nancy Granert would once a year work together at her desk doing the "accounting" -- which wasn't exactly like what you would expect to see at Harvard. She always had tons of $20 dollar bills in her right drawer, probably several thousands of dollars worth, and when they were "doing the accounting" at her office, they'd all piled up on the top of her desk. And what I am writing here is not a hint about something else. It's literally true.]

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