Nose-picking on the Internet

Methods for expelling mucus (Wiki commons)

You know how a person will pick his or her nose while driving a car, convinced that it is private space and no one can see the disgusting habit that entices all of us from time to time?

Just so on the Internet; people who are bone-deep cads seem to think that behaving in caddish ways on the Internet is fine. Cad is defined as, "An ill-bred man, especially one who behaves in a dishonorable or irresponsible way toward women" by Dictionary.com.

It is an archaic British word, but one I think needs to be resurrected and also expanded to apply to women who act in equally dishonourable and boorish ways toward others. (I think boor works, also: "A person with rude, clumsy manners and little refinement: a peasant." But cad includes the dishonourable part, and so is preferred.) Yesterday, I mentioned in response to a call for comments about the travesty of the conduct of the Zimmerman case that the Florida jurors were ignorant. OF COURSE they were ignorant, based on several cogent probabilities.

Support for calling Zimmerman jurors ignorant

First, they were in Florida, a state with a racial problem second to none. Oh, sure, it hides it well under the patina of opening its arms to Cuban refugees (with the exception of Elian Gonzales, but of course Bush's gormless Feds had something to do with that disaster), and under the fact that much of south Florida was built by New Yorkers, Ohioans and Canadians as a place to retire their snow-brittled bones. Having a visible population of northerners gives Florida a soupcon of race relation respectability, except, of course, not every northerner is free of racial prejudice, not by a long shot. 

Second, it pays to recall that of all the states involved in the Supreme Court's ultimate selection of George W. Bush to be the first moron president of the United States, Florida led the pack, captained by Katharine Harris who was subsequently handsomely rewarded for her misconduct, and from which the state's current governor learned how to manipulate the vote without the public drama. He simply purged the voter rolls of every voter who could possibly have been black. No hanging chads; hell, Florida has just about got over hanging Chads...and Willies*. (My apologies to at least two very intelligent and decent Floridians, but they already know I'm not talking about them, but rather about the lowest common denominators of that state's population.)

Third, Florida rants in the low average column for education in half a dozen surveys I've seen.

Fourth, the defense in this case--knowing it had a vicious reprobate as a client--would have dismissed any juror showing the least glimmer of intellect or decency. It appears the defense, taking a page from the OJ Simpson Book of Courtroom Idiocy, did not reject those rejects.

Fifth, the prosecution was as dim-witted as Marcia Clark and Chris Darden. As they failed to easily refute the bloody glove defense in the OJ case (duh...people...leather shrinks after being soaked in liquid. Blood is a liquid), so the prosecution in this case failed to shrink-wrap the defense notion of a bit of pavement being a weapon for Trayvon Martin. No, Martin had not picked up a chunk of it to USE as a weapon; he was holding Zimmerman down on a long stretch of pavement. Was he hitting Zimmerman's head against it? Who knows? We were not there. Zimmerman was, but he has had so many untoward incidents in his past, it would hardly be prudent to take his testimony without a grain of salt. I doubt he much feared a perjury charge. 

Can we teach everyone the basics of intellectual argument, PLEASE?

OK. Now back to my cad experience. 

So, after my opinion that the Florida jury was ignorant, The Cad--rather than supplying facts to cause me to rethink my contention--simply implied that I was a profound idiot...which in itself is idiocy because, if I were, I could hardly have managed a relatively lengthy post on Facebook. Later, he claimed he hadn't called me an idiot, he had merely said what I wrote was idiocy. It is impossible to sever writer from writing (no, I do not produce this stuff by automatic writing delivered gratis from the spirit world). Had he wished to do anything other than call me names, he might have written, "I find your contention regarding Florida jurors to be without merit because....XYZ."

Worse, The Cad claims to have taught at-risk Florida students. Oh, boy. I guess he didn't instruct them in avoiding ad hominem attacks and in how to construc logical arguments. But then, to teach it, you first have to know it.

Nor did he back off when I verbally slapped his face, and told him that I would have done so in the flesh and not in words if he had attacked me that way in person. He STILL didn't back off, so, a second time, I told him his face needed a good slapping. I broke off contact as it was apparent that he is incapable of realizing that part of being a fully functioning adult human being includes logical discourse, not playground rank-outs. Maybe he's been with the kids too long. But I suspect he thinks he is safe on the Internet, and possibly he is. I am not going to post his name here; I don't relish as bogus lawsuit from him. So yes, he is safe as far as that goes. He can pick his mental nose until the cows come home, but he can't pick mine.

But The Cad is also unethical, unconscionable, ill-bred, uneducated and vicious as ascertained by a look at his actions. Precisely as, I expect, Zimmerman might turn out to be if he were to attempt a debate on an issue. He couldn't subdue Trayvon Martin without killing him, if the young man even needed subduing which it appears he didn't, or at least hadn't until Zimmerman baselessly stalked him. Just so, The Cad would probably not be able to endure a 'back off' order like the one Zimmerman received regarding Martin, and would doubtless attempt to subdue this uppity woman with some sort of nuclear flyswatter or other. 

I hasten to add, I have been called names by women for my opinions on Facebook, as well, especially when my opinion included my displeasure in the currently popular methods of displaying one's cool, an opinion I'm certainly entitled to hold and express, considering that the current display of "cool" is in itself a personal expression. I guess I was the lobster trying to climb out of the boiling water, and lord knows American society can't tolerate THAT. I mean, look at how many people want Snowden lynched. Still, I wonder if it is simply coincidence that the worst offender among my experience of female cads also lives in Florida. Apparently, Floridians are all vigilantes now, since the Stand Your Ground law went into effect, and they have clearly established the Sunshine State Thought Police as well as Bozos Against Black Folk.

God help us.

* A very, very probably innocent black man hanged in Florida in the late 1980s, while I lived there. It was almost physically impossible--not just improbable--that he had killed a man, all known at the time of his execution. It was a horrific time to be in Florida...and even more horrific to be Willie Darden and his family.

Morality and the overturning of Proposition 8

God, as portrayed by Michelangelo on the Sistine Chapel (Wiki Commons)

The image reflects the communal belief of the time, 1512, in an avenging god. This is not the face of the loving god spoken of by Jesus of Nazareth. Michelangelo painted his own sexual conflict and guilt, just as as Saul of Tarsus wrote his.

In deciding in favor of gay marriage in California, and in overturning the scurrilously Christian Proposition 8, a California judge opined that, “Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights.”

The shameful condition of education in the United States probably prevents even some otherwise thoughtful people from understanding the full import of the judge’s ruling; certainly, those mired in the insupportable belief that their religious beliefs equate with universal morality will never understand the perfection of the judge’s ruling.

Taking the single sentence above one piece at a time might, however, sway those with sufficient education and open-mindedness to stop equating their personal or community morality from the constitutional demands of the United States.

The concept of moral disapproval is, of course, the key ingredient. Morality is not written by god. It is not really written by anyone or any entity. Morality is, rather, a set of beliefs to which a community of people adhere. If one reads the whole bible, one will see that, in fact, ideas of morality have changed radically from the earliest of those books to those of the new testament. Indeed, even within the new testament, one has espousals of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, which would demand equality and compassion for all humans.

And then one has the gospels of Saul of Tarsus, renamed St. Paul by Christians. Saul of Tarsus was a man so torn by his own sexuality, as some scholars maintain, that his epistles are the insupportable basis on which, to this day, the Roman Catholic Church attempts to impose a male superiority morality not only on its own adherents but―via its interference in the sovereign decisions of independent states (I refer to its rejection of Kathleen Kennedy as U. S. Ambassador to the Vatican)―on the rest of the world. On a world that does not share its concept of morality.

Just so, the right wing in the U.S. tries to enforce its communal morality on communities that have a different communal morality. And, thank goodness, one judge has put an end to it, at least for now. Perhaps the reversal will last only until the US Supreme Court weeds out its own narrow moralism, which at best reflects less than 50 percent of the communal morality of the nation, and begins to reflect the demands of the Constitution, a “morality” if you will that virtually all Americans agree with. That morality includes equality for all people under the law. All people. When it was written, the Constitution did not include women or non-white humans. Over the years, as the communal morality expanded to acknowledge those individuals, so did the interpretation of the Constitution. And, to ensure it, additional laws were written as well.

The term “improper basis” is somewhat problematical. Improper by whose reckoning, some might ask. Improper, in this case, means according to the demands of the Constitution as written, and as interpreted over the years. It does not mean improper by some arbitrary set of community beliefs. In its setting as part of a legal proceeding, the term improper can only be taken in its legal sense.

Finally, there is the concept of denying rights, which this decision seeks to end. I will freely admit that, for quite a while, I was unduly influenced by early religious training, as well as a certain sloppy philology on my part, and decided a “marriage” could be only between a man and a woman, although a “domestic partnership” could be between two women, two men, or a man and a woman for that matter.

During the run-up to Mr. Obama’s inauguration, in comments to a column I wrote then for examiner.com, I was persuaded that I was in error. I am still persuaded of that, and I would posit that if it is my right to marry a man as I desired, then it is my friend’s right to marry a man, also, as he desired. It is somewhat uncomfortable for those of us not living in the gay community to deal with (to us) amorphous concepts of husband and wife. But no matter; the right of the gay community to marry is absolutely not superseded by other communities’ rights to be comfortable in the nomenclature at all times. In short, non-gay “morality” does not supersede gay “morality.”

Indeed, no particular community’s morality, extrapolating from this ruling, exceeds another community’s morality. If all are equal under the law, then so be it. And in the U.S., that is what the Constitution suggests that the entire community of Americans believes.

If all are equal under God―and I am somewhat convinced that all religions would at least pay lip service to that (except perhaps Westboro Baptist Church)―then this ruling has done nothing but conform California law to the religious teachings and community morality of all the citizens. Amen.

As for myself, being a non-Christian, somewhat pantheistic existentialist, the entire issue has allowed me to examine my core beliefs, define to which sub-community I belong, and expand my spiritual awareness. (Yes, Virginia, existentialists do believe in a spiritual world. Indeed, it is central, although expressed in humanistic terms.)