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.

ok oh yes now I remember and understand something more

September 01, 2015  /  Damian Schloming

There are some fake emails that have been added to my Harvard email account, which I never wrote, but which show me somehow emailing Murray Somerville and somehow it looks as if I somehow ended up meeting with him again and somehow writing that "it was all Danny Forger's fault" and having him somehow be the one to arrange for me to practice/play I think first at First Lutheran Church and then Old West Church. Of course, none of that happened. I can't remember who told me about First Lutheran Church but I think it was some organist, I am not sure where, and I practiced there once a week for awhile until the secretary left due to carpal tunnel syndrome.

 

Then after that there were some master classes at Old West Church which I was invited to and, in the process of preparing for the master class, I got to meet Pastor Laurel and I just knew from her personality, this would be someone I could somehow approach with regard to practicing the organ, and she was like, well there was a rapport there, I just knew she wouldn't be like others I'd dealt with before. So I did, but it was around that time that I ceased all contact with David Illingworth and didn't even talk to Sandy Selesky for a very long time, all because I was afraid Murray Somerville and Bill Porter and some of the others at Harvard might find out and try to slander me and wreck things with Old West Church, something I had suspected had gone on at First Lutheran Church. 

The truth is, the last time I ever spoke to Murray Somerville was after I wrote that email and he said "bad things are going to happen to you," and I asked "what bad things?" and he said "I don't know yet -- other people are going to carry them out." In addition to which, if I had REALLY started reestablishing contact with him, I would have continued to maintain contact not only with him but with David Illingworth and even Sandy Selesky. 

Actually, I first noticed that my Harvard email account had been altered and those fake emails had been put in there after I started working at Keller Williams -- or pseudo "working" there. Truth is they didn't LET me do any work and also implied showing houses might be dangerous, particularly realtors have been killed in basements while showing houses. 

However, around this time I had been convinced -- by a few untrustworthy others, one of whom happened to include this Comp Sci student who worked for microsoft -- that the only way to handle things was to "make a deal" to cover things up, or to HALF cover things up. Cover some things up, so some people are held accountable for committing crimes against me (which couldn't be covered up) but then a cover story is floated which preserves Harvard's reputation, and the reputation of other high profile players. 

So the moment I see these fake emails, after all the abuse I'd been through I thought, oh ok, they are agreeing to such a deal, and it was around this time I do believe I started responding by emailing my attorney telling him details about things that went on at Harvard, as well as indications as to how it can all be "interpreted" to either be my fault or the fault of my up bringing or of my parents, but not the fault of anyone at Harvard. Though I do remember I did mention that Murray Somerville really did do things that upset me, but I think I remember proposing maybe we can just say he was an eccentric musician and I can agree to downplay them or figure out how to explain it away. I was overly sensitive, it was a misunderstanding, blah blah blah. 

Oh and I assumed, of course, that any and all involvement of Harvard in the matter would be totally covered up, so the only "cover story" or "explanation" that has to be floated would be why I dropped out of Harvard, what all the problems were. The way my whole approach to the situation was, I was literally telling everyone how grateful I was to have been granted the opportunity to be considered trustworthy enough and smart enough to do a good job of "maintaining the kind of discipline" necessary to permanently cover everything up. Oh well, that's what some of the abuse does to you. 

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