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.

March 08, 2015  /  Damian Schloming

Quote Originally Posted by dmschlom View Post
Well, yeah it's true most people would be a bit suspicious if asked to do videos like that -- except, notice his last video. he is obviously reading from a teleprompter, looking to the side every few seconds. Who is feeding him his lines? The speech was long enough so it couldn't all have been written down on one page. He would have had to have cue cards -- and then put one down and picked another one up. Or a several page statement written in large letters, but you'd see him do more than just looking to the side, you'd have to have heard him rustling pages. There were no page turns -- which there should have been, unless it was a teleprompter, but if there was a teleprompter, doesn't someone have to pace things so the lines get fed to him at the right speed? Or did he do it himself? Why did the New York Times not report "it appears he was reading from a prepared statement in that video" and then inquire as to whether cops FOUND the written statement, or found a teleprompter, assuming that was what he used? THAT'S FISHY.

......
Maxx:


NOTHING is fishy about it. You are fishing. Badly. And i don't think this sort of wild speculation is a fruitful avenue to go down but each to his own.

============

 

dmschlom:

Hold on one minute. Where is the video? Are you telling me that Elliot Rodgers wasn't constantly pausing in his statement, looking to the left because he needs to READ MORE, and then looking back to the right to continue his statement? 

What's your position on the Elliot Rodgers video? Did he memorize that whole speech? Or did he read it from a prepared statement? 

You are telling me that I am "fishing." Well, last time I ever went fishing was when I was a teenager and my grandfather took me fishing on his boat near where he lived by the ocean. And that was over 20 years ago.I haven't gone fishing in 20 years. Telling me I am going fishing is not a response. 

You also use the words "wild speculation."

You did not need to use the word "wild." If my statement was "wild," you could let it speak for itself. 

As for the rest of what you say, you are trying to tell me that "they" -- I don't know who "they" is -- seem not to have a motive you could understand for framing such an individual. But, you see, I am not claiming per se that anyone DID frame him. I am merely questioning whether or not they might have. And, if they did, how they could have gone about it. Some of the facts of the case allow for that to be a plausible interpretation. Some of the facts of the Michael Brown case in ferguson also allow for a similar plausible interpretation which has a few striking parallels, but I am not interested in exploring that issue here. A lot of people claim Michael Brown was set up. If he wasn't, all I know is the police did a whole bunch of really strange stuff in that case -- enough so they deserve to be considered NOT TRUSTWORTHY. 

Under the assumption that the police -- and the mainstream media, including the New York Times -- are NOT TRUSTWORTHY, I really would withhold judgment on the whole Rodgers thing until I knew all the facts. Which, of course, I don't. Maybe it was reported later on, the whole issue of how Elliot Rodger could have been narrating his video from a prepared statement. In an ordinary case reported in the media like that, the media would report that it appeared it made the video reading from a prepared statement, that cops looked for the statement, and that they either found it or didn't. And that they tried to investigate or figure out whether he had third party accomplices. Part of the process of determining whether he did it by himself, or had help, would have been an investigation as to whether or not someone was HOLDING the written statement he was reading from up for him to see or not. How long did it take for cops to figure out Elliot Rodgers was acting alone? 

I have been paying close attention to Naomi Wolf's Facebook page where she has been noticing, of late, and pointing out, of late, that there seem to be a lot of irregular stuff and unreliable media coverage out there. For instance, she argued some of the ISIS videos may have been fabricated, and criticized the New York Times and other media outlets for failing to show sufficient skepticism in the matter. Later on, I think it's been acknowledged that some of them were fake. With all that in mind, I am simply noticing, they failed to report on whether or not Elliot Rodger appeared to be reading from a prepared statement or teleprompter in his last statement, in which case thorough reporting would have asked, was any such thing found? 

So I am questioning things. It's speculation of course -- but not wild speculation.

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