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.

Women in welfare bureaucracies -- development of some points

March 21, 2014  /  Damian Schloming

My original response is below, along with a bunch of changes. 

"Human children cannot be carried around in one's pocket, and are not very suited to fending for themselves amid any kind of serious long distance travel. So you instantly have women staking out a territory before they have babies, while men are free to wander long distances. "

I just want to develop this point, thinking logically. Women "stake out a territory…" what does that mean? Ultimately, it means a steady stream of the resources needed for survival of her AND her children for long enough until they can fend for themselves.

Such a territory could mean land, or a fixed point in land. Or it could mean other individuals who are strong enough or childless enough so they are free to gather resources and bring them to the home. Thus, territory could mean a plot of land on which agriculture and cultivation takes place. But, for women, it also includes a "social territory" which is a group of individuals women can draw on for support. And which does not include ONLY the father of their children but extended family members, and broader society. 

 

However, women are unique in terms of having a long period of extended dependency when with children, and this would explain pronounced gender differences between women and men. Besides differences in physical strength and appearance, the only other differences that are also bound to be big are SOCIAL DIFFERENCES. 

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AND HERE IS MY RESPONSE:

 

Yes well a good way to understand evolutionary biology or -- I don't know what it's called, it's a kind of sociology -- is to imagine looking down at a population from above. In humans, unlike in Kangaroos for instance, you will see mothers with children practically TETHERED to the same spot for long periods of time, while men move around or travel around. Human children cannot be carried around in one's pocket, and are not very suited to fending for themselves amid any kind of serious long distance travel. So you instantly have women staking out a territory before they have babies, while men are free to wander long distances. 

The moment you have a woman with children stuck in one spot, you see how she will develop a relationship of dependency with other human beings around, usually men, but also other women so long as they are ones capable of attracting or keeping good men around. However, assuming you have a tight knit community where everyone knows each other, even if some of the men travel on hunting expeditions, you still have the issue of needing to hoard supplies over the winter (northern european especially) and to worry about thieves or marauders. In moments of scarcity, it always becomes every man (or family) for himself. A woman will need not just any man but a STRONG MAN to guard any hoarded food which is in scarce supply over the winter. Whole communities need LOTS of strong men to avoid incursions by large groups of thieves or opposing villages. 

I wince a little at the words "Women have a natural sociopathic tendency built in" but have to note, it's all about dependency, insecurity, fear for survival. And that is why we tend as a society to forgive women their transgressions much more easily than men who show the same behavior. Men are not expected to be clingy or grasping, because they are expected to be able to fend for themselves AND for others. This is especially true regarding women who are mothers. 

It is not at all surprising to imagine women going to criminal lengths on behalf of their children, and at the same time to be given a free pass for doing so. That's one reason why, in my mind, it's disturbing to note how "feminist governance" seems to coincide with three simultaneous things. Infiltration of the police force with "feminism." Mothers of young children being forced to continue in the work place after their children are born, with their children's well being dependent on these mothers doing whatever it takes to maximize their own personal income. Greatly expanded war on drugs and prohibitionism of the type we all know massively increases mafia power and police corruption. Those three things happening all at once isn't good for society. 

However, I should note, if feminists want to stamp out gender differences, and create an independent woman, they need to go just as hard on women for clingy grasping and overly controlling ways, or for nepotism and family favoritism, as they would on a man. Especially since some of the positions they want women to fill are ones where such a person in such a position would do a lot of harm to others, if they aren't "magnanimous-to-strangers" the way men are supposed to be. We have a government that provides a welfare system. Which is supposed to compassionately care for the poor rather than subject them to cruel financial schemes whereby employees of the welfare bureaucracies make lucrative contracts with businesses that boost business profits and help enrich the families of the welfare employees. Yet, the moment women are in control of the welfare bureaucracy, that is exactly what you can expect them to do -- enrich themselves, their families, and their children, at the expense of the poor -- much more than you would see men ever doing the same thing. 

In fact, it is my belief that one reason why our country, more than most other countries, hired women as bureaucrats much earlier may well have been the impact of race in this country and how much certain businesses felt they could trust FEMALE WELFARE WORKERS to much more enthusiastically "tow the line" with regard to the exploitation of blacks through strategic use of the welfare system during the Jim Crow era.

I say this knowing one thing. In my experience, if you ever have to deal with a government bureaucrat in a situation where bureaucratic recalcitrance could really do you a lot of harm, which would you prefer to deal with? A male bureaucrat? Or female bureaucrat? In my experience, female bureaucrats are often poison in this country, while male bureaucrats tend to be amenable to bending the rules in order to compassionately accommodate someone's unique needs. 

Which may not reflect a universal human difference -- because I do think that gender differences are not quite as stark as that, yet in our country, the government has invested a lot of energy and effort into attracting a particular kind of especially harsh and cruel woman -- strict -- into bureaucratic positions. And, indeed, one reason for the negativity of the feminist movement is, it's almost like requiring such a toxic feminism as pre-condition for employment of bureaucratic women WAS a way of weeding out any woman with a tendency to be soft hearted that might compromise all of the money that could be made from bureaucratic oppression and abuse of the poor and of minorities.

Women are not quite as bad as the ones who have all been systematically put out front and center by the feminist movement. And, if you want to examine the reasons for why really negative women have been put out front and center, ….. I just think in the end this all stems from the legacy of slavery and race in this country. Maybe not directly, maybe not in an obvious way, but I think it still does.

 

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