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.

Anyway, the reason why I'm pointing all this out

September 02, 2015  /  Damian Schloming

In the below blog is, based on several hints from a lot of people, which I didn't pick up on at first, but am finally starting to, I am wondering if it is possible maybe some people at Harvard want to smear me by asserting that it was Mr Gomes I always had the problem with, rather than Murray Somerville. Of course, that makes sense too because for them to demand I go "mediate" with an abuser is outrageous so they'd want to cover it up by pretending they had asked me to apologize to and/or meet with Gomes, and I refused to and THAT'S what it was all about. And, if that's what they wanted to do, then yes it would make sense they'd fabricate fake emails between me and Murray that would make it look like I had met with Murray at a time when, actually, the big sticking point was I was so scared of him I wouldn't meet with him, I wanted to meet with others. 

On top of it, Gomes was black, did they want to make it into a political correctness race thing? Except, that's preposterous -- or what is more obvious is how they systematically discouraged me from ever getting to know him, and were very controlling about it too, and were so good at discouraging me from getting to know him that there were all sorts of things I didn't know about him, after several years there, which were shocking to learn. He was a gay Republican who thought out of the box politically (a lot the way I do) and Dan Sanks was his lover -- I had no clue about any of that until four years after I was a freshman. But I did know all about his peculiar membership in the mayflower society along with his preppy accent being fake and his mother speaking normal English. Meanwhile, everything they did can be seen as a pre-meditated effort to have Murray Somerville terrorize me, then have them provoke me into insulting Gomes, and then they tell me only that Murray is offended (at my complaints about his threats and other severely terrorizing wrong-doing) and that I have to meet Murray and placate Murray, something I knew I couldn't do because of how ceding to any of Murray's demands always resulted in me having horrible experiences which severely traumatized me, so I felt compelled to stay away from him in order to avoid trouble. 

Meanwhile, of course Peter Gomes could not breath a word about being "insulted" - nor could anyone else -- lest I end up meeting with him. Or trying to, and he's obligated to maintain his reputation within the church by being magnanimous enough to offer to talk to me, which is what I talked all along. Meanwhile, if they try to say it's a racial thing, I have to point out, I was the only organ student who was friendly with Eric the custodian, who was black, and also I started to befriend Archie Epps, after the big problem started, spoke with him once and really thought he was nice, and next time I tried to speak with him, Phillip Bean tried to tell me I couldn't (without even asking Archie Epps whether he was willing to speak with me) and I was so upset about that I got my mother to go to University Hall with me and object, and I think Phillip Bean ended up being very nice and saying it was ok for me to meet with Archie Epps after all. Which I would have started doing regularly (I later on would regularly visit Sandy Selesky and Eric, the custodian from the gym), except they suddenly retired Archie Epps and that was the only reason I ended up never speaking with him. 

And, of course, it is interesting how Peter Gomes and Eric the Custodian both die suddenly, right after I hire an attorney. [Added later: September 12, 2015: Interestingly enough, one thing I do remember, after my failed efforts to try to try to talk to Archie Epps again was, his sudden retirement was also accompanied by subsequent medical problems so bad, his wife had to donate him a kidney. Which may be a coincidence. And here is where harassment and constant accusations that I'm a conspiracy theorist leave me intimidated and hesitant to say a few things that have been on my mind, or which I've been "covering up," shall I say, but it IS true that, for quite some time, I have been under the impression, based on rumors heard through the grapevine whose credibility, of course, will always be ambiguous, that Peter Gomes' death was conveniently timed and hastened by a corrupt medical system. Which is, let me just say, kind of interesting.]

And, to be honest, I always liked Peter Gomes and always got along with him perfectly, sort of like he was the only person at Memorial Church who was decent and not like the others, sort of honorable unlike all of the others. So it makes sense I'd be upset and say something after his secretary very nastily refused to let me meet with him -- in hopes he'd hear about it finally and wonder what was going on and want to intervene and I'd get a chance to discuss it with him. 

I'll have to copy and paste it eventually but need to dig up more background info on some other issues I also mentioned in that letter first. 

Which I can do later. 

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