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.

Thought about it some more

August 31, 2015  /  Damian Schloming

My email account at Harvard has been tampered with, and actually it's obvious from a few other emails it's been tampered with. For instance, a particular email I sent to exactly 17 people, when I opened it recently had, at one time, 22 or 25 recipients instead, and then much later on far more recipients, people I did not send it to. 

I would not have switched the word order from "hands shaking violently" to "violently shaking hands" in my email to Samuel Hayes. I just wouldn't have. Meanwhile, I have to say that this whole email paper trail is quite interesting and, at the same time, I'd have to say indicative of corruption in ways I hadn't thought about before. 

But I need to take my time and first discuss background context and not be in a hurry and certainly I should not be expected to "figure this all out" while being verbally harassed, constantly trolled on line, and gas lighted by several individuals. 

What strikes me as most interesting is, after I wrote the email, David Fithian went and told me that "Murray Somerville was very offended by what you wrote" and was going to ban me from playing the organ until I spoke with him. E.g., I had to "mediate" this whole situation with Murray Somerville. Yet the email I wrote discussed in very credible ways all sorts of things he had done to hurt me, abusive things, and discussed how much I was afraid of him. 

Meanwhile, I had expressed disappointment, somewhat insultingly, with Peter Gomes for refusing to meet with me at a point which was right after Murray Somerville had upset me very much by screaming with me at the top of his lungs. 

Except, it was actually his secretary who blocked me from meeting him, without even consulting him. She told me I cannot meet with him unless I write a letter wherein I somehow will demonstrate that I am not going to talk about any of the various things Memorial Church employees had done that I was upset about. And she told me right away -- without even calling him up or asking him first. 

Now, that's the thing. I don't know how many people from Memorial Church have said really horrible things about Gomes to me over the years since 2000 or so, and prior to that the way certain employees and individuals in the choir behaved towards him behind his back was the exactly opposite of respectful, but he was always nice to me and I always enjoyed talking to him and something about his personality made me believe that, if only I got to talk to him and tell him what the problems were, he'd be able to smooth it all over and mediate the situation. 

And I still thought that when I wrote this letter to about 17 individuals complaining about my problems, which letter was precipitated somewhat by certain treatment I had been subjected to by some Harvard bureaucrats which I think one could understand would upset me. 

What's interesting is, if anyone should have been merely "offended" by the letter, it would have been Gomes. And that was somewhat purposeful, because of course if he was offended, then I'd have to apologize and in the process would presumably have an opportunity to meet with him and explain all the stuff people in the church had been doing to me, which I had assumed he didn't know anything about. 

If he was offended, that was never communicated to me and was a total non-issue among all the people I dealt with at Harvard who never mentioned it once -- the only issue was the accusations of wrong-doing by Murray Somerville et al, which they were refusing to investigate. Or, to be honest, they did say "we don't like the tone of your emails," which I took as "we don't like what you are accusing Murray Somerville of." Or, it was so vague, I didn't know how to interpret it. And, to be honest, it should have been an issue, and the fact that it wasn't was actually rather typical, in terms of the Memorial Church crowd not being exactly too respectful of Peter Gomes, at least in my presence. 

Good example is the way the choir, which then would sit in Appleton Chapel behind a screen, would behave during the sermon. Literally, they'd be all slouching in their seats, yawning, reading books, fanning themselves, taking naps with their mouths open, none of them listening to the sermon at all. I even remember once mentioning it to Murray Somerville in this slightly embarrassed way, and him sort of laughing and saying "it's a good thing there is that screen, it would NOT be good for the congregation to see that." 

It has occurred to me -- and I never thought about it that way before -- that this could have been something in the paper trail they were "saving" to potentially spring on me later in case I complained to individuals outside of Harvard, even while not telling me at the time in order to prevent me from rectifying the situation (which they didn't want fixed, last thing they wanted was for me to get a chance to speak to Peter Gomes as that would have forced them to do the right thing), but they could after the fact all lie on the same page, 15 years later, and pretend it was really Peter Gomes who was offended and Gomes who I was refusing to meet with. 

Except, of course, the paper trail does not mention that in the least and I don't refer to it even once ever. And I would have if they had ever mentioned it. That is one bit of context, but then I need to go over a few other background things as well. At some point I'll just post the whole email exchange. But will take my time with it. 

One thing that was interesting was, David Fithian, and nearly all the others I had problems with, were gay. And even the students from across the hallway who sexually harassed me were supposedly straight yet I do remember the cops telling me they really were gay and just closeted. 

Another interesting thing about Memorial Church was the strict sex segregation regarding the organists. Nancy Granert taught all of the female organ students, Murray Somerville taught all the male organ students, and never the twain shall meet. A more typical situation would be one where students choose which teacher they want and are allowed to go back and forth and learn from both teachers at different times. 

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