Disability Rights & Health & Medical & Human Rights Posted by spyder, 24 Apr 2007 11:49 am

Squeezing parity out of the turnip

Warning, this post is acronym filled, and may contain nefarious allusions, probably inappropriate but nevertheless, they exist.

UNITED NATIONS Copyright - A new treaty designed to promote and protect the rights of the world’s 650 million persons with disabilities opens for signature at the United Nations on Friday.

At its core, the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities ensures that persons with disabilities enjoy the same human rights as everyone else, and are able to lead their lives as fully-fledged citizens who can make valuable contributions to society.

Forty years ago, as an upper-division undergraduate student, I was offered one of those scholarship jobs that go to jocks and related others. These were legacy-based inheritances, passed along to the next class of student athletes by graduating seniors, eagerly anticipated by the younger, who have heard-it-through-the-grapevine that this or that is the coolest chance at getting paid to do nothing, or close to it. My offer was not for one of those cushy roles (lifeguarding the women’s gym pool {only male allowed}, or driving the little tractor that picked up golf balls), but rather a heritage role for those of us in a special and unique club (the fish lane). Ours was the strand that provided support staff for the Education and Psychology departments’ on-campus education environments.

Thus I was obliged to interview for the role of motor performance skills instructor at the research facility for children with learning disabilities. Being a talkative sort, and relatively comfortable with public speaking, I was regarded as sufficiently acceptable and given the job. I ended up keeping it well past my graduation, up until the end of my first year in graduate school. My only previous teaching experience had been as an infant swimming instructor, teaching children under the age of two some basic water safety skills (it was the era of massive build out of SoCAL home pools), but lack of such experience was not apparently a critical consideration. No, what seemed to matter most was the capacity to interact and get along with children of the rich and famous (those who could afford to get their kids into the school) who were identified with a range of learning disabilities (and related handicaps, etc.).

Now this is long before there was the IDEA Act, its subsequent amending legislations, ESEA I & II, ADA, etc., etc., et al. We didn’t have IEP’s or 504s or EIS documented meetings or plans. We didn’t have FERPA, or OSED’s TA&D, to be guides or regulatory oversights. What we did have was: an incredibly dedicated core staff, professors and researchers from departments and psychiatric institutes, observers and lecturers, symposia and conference. Thus, we had meetings, lots and lots of meetings. My personal education in special education was gleaned from these meetings and daily discussions about this or that kid’s issues or problems of the day. As someone who was focused on looking forward to teaching in the university, I didn’t have the slightest interest in all this elementary work; it was just a good job, good hours, and a source of daily learning something, like a daily vitamin supplement.

Years later, working in public education environments, serving on SELPA’s, developing transitional, annual, and triennial IEP’s and 504s, meeting with teachers and parents—I was grateful and appreciative of the experience I had had back in the university. I could relate, I could understand, I could sympathize. I could sense the subtleties behind determining whether this or that kid needed or could best be served by mainstreaming, or pullout, or core services; I could advocate for students who needed to leave the regular public setting and spend their high school period in special programs focused on their needs and best interests.

I also started paying attention to the populations who attended the music festivals and concerts that I helped to produce and direct. Several of us passionately argued for all-inclusive environmental supports for the altered-abled, working diligently to insure that people with all manner of disabilities, handicaps, issues, could enjoy and experience our events to the fullest extent possible. Indeed this past weekend, at an Earth Day event, I watched a young woman sign the lyrics being sung by a raging punk band (how she knew what they were singing is beyond me?).

This has all been in a way of introduction to my rant for a more equitable exchange between those who deserve, and are entitled to, the assistance of the greater society in order to participate in parity with all others. With the advent of all of the legislative regulations and policies, more and more of our nation’s population are asking for and receiving an increasing share of revenue-based supports that offer significant participational parity. The future doesn’t look so bright either in terms of the predicted dramatic increase in citizens needing and deserving more care. This comes at a cost, one wisely paid by the taxpayers, to the overall wellbeing of the society as a whole, particularly in 21st century educational environments, but also in the day-to-day lives of everyone.

Under FERPA and ADA, parents and adults are informed of their rights to insist that this or that accommodation or praxis (regardless of the expense) be provided for their student. Such efforts are laudable, but grossly misjudged by the general population, and further mishandled by the bureaucratic institutions that are our public services. But this isn’t what is upsetting me at the moment. NO, what’s got my craw is what is happening on the public transit with all of the people willing to demonstrably exercise these rights. They are exceeding, rudely in some cases, the balance of parity, stating quite openly demands that they be given greater privileges and access than is equal or a fair share.

I serve on the citizens transit advisory board, a large and unwieldy group of active folks, mostly seniors such as myself, who have the time and freedom to serve on these types of councils, commissions, boards, and groups (I serve on no less than four, with less time to myself now than before I retired). We discuss how to better serve the region with more accessible and reliable public mass transit. We discuss numerous alternatives, fee structures, road conditions, driver and passenger needs and complaints, etc. And the biggest bone of contention is participational parity for disabilities; not because of the costs but because there are so many are becoming downright abusive and demanding.

For example, the other night, riding home on my regular route, an old Russian woman was sitting near the front. The bus driver and I usually share a casual conversation about the latest political or social upheaval of the day, sometimes getting other passengers engaged in some interesting social discussions (some of the kids are okay you know, they are paying attention and reading). Well last night this older lady (perhaps ten years my senior if that) starts shrieking “Shut up! Shut up!” pointing to her ears. She speaks little English but made it clear that any conversation on the bus was detrimental to her wellbeing. Flabbergasted, I politely refused to be quiet, but did speak in more hushed tone. Finally she thought she was at her stop, but became confused and needed to re-board and ride another block further. It turns out she had lost the remote control for her hearing aids and was unable to lower the volume. She could have turned them off of course, or turned one off, or manually turned them down, but no, that wasn’t what she wanted.

We are the medical industries’ service center for a vast region of western states here. There are numerous hospitals, training facilities, medical labs, rehabilitation clinics, hospice centers, and so forth. Specific bus routes are dedicated to servicing these facilities as well as those for residents who need them. There are hundreds of residents who require and use electric wheelchairs, powered walkers, and other support utilities and equipment as they move about the city. The transit system has been more than willing to expend resources to develop special transit options for people to use, smaller more maneuverable vans, better ramps and kneeling buses, and other such offerings.

Yet there is not a day that goes by without at least one (and usually several more) altered-abled person demanding that their needs and rights extend to the point that they directly interfere with the rights of all others. Rather than wanting to ride the special vans, people insist that they ride the regular route bus. Since they ride virtually for free or reduced fare, take up two to four seats (severely obese, wheelchairs), use no less than fifteen to twenty minutes of extra time for loading and unloading, demand that the bus stop at their intersection regardless of appropriate stops, and so forth—these rude riders are beginning to attract negative and detrimental attention from the taxpayers and others in the community. They are performing a disservice to themselves and to others like them.

They insist that the drivers punish kids for being loud (and sometimes the kids are loud, and disrespectful, but not always). They demand that drivers move passengers out of seats just in case some other person of need might later require it, claiming that all of these types of seats are only for them (signage clearly states in the best language possible, that a person need only ask to use the seat if necessary and that is the priority). The public has been incredibly supportive and tolerant over the years, and struggles to continue to be so. But the tipping point is coming, particularly stoked by cases of wheelchair operators (and disabled others with walkers, canes, and dogs) who do so while under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol. There is nothing quite so provocative of irritation as a drunk handicapped person. Rude, loud, demanding, insistent—there are cases now where law enforcement must interdict to remove the person from the bus or the main downtown terminus. It is a problem and becoming a worse one, particularly as the regional VA facilities fill up with veterans of three wars, bitter and unhappy, treated poorly by those who serve them. Grumpy and irritable, they lash out verbally (sometimes physically) particularly at other younger handicapped and disabled people seen as competition for services and attention. We are seeing more and more complaints about these interactions from transit users, drivers, public media, and other citizens.

I don’t know the answer; I don’t know how to make this better. If you have some ideas, please post some comments. In the long run, this will be a growing problem across the US, as my generation of baby boomers feel more and more entitled to all of these sorts of services, while disdaining others who need them too. Veterans will need and demand more care; kids suffering from the ravages of environmental toxicities will be angry that they must share these ever limiting resources.

UPDATE: Over at Tom Dispatch, Chip Ward dicusses some of these very same issues from the perspective of the public library, another of our well served civil commons:

Ophelia sits by the fireplace and mumbles softly, smiling and gesturing at no one in particular. She gazes out the large window through the two pairs of glasses she wears, one windshield-sized pair over a smaller set perched precariously on her small nose. Perhaps four lenses help her see the invisible other she is addressing. When her “nobody there” conversation disturbs the reader seated beside her, Ophelia turns, chuckles at the woman’s discomfort, and explains, “Don’t mind me, I’m dead. It’s okay. I’ve been dead for some time now.” She pauses, then adds reassuringly, “It’s not so bad. You get used to it.” Not at all reassured, the woman gathers her belongings and moves quickly away. Ophelia shrugs. Verbal communication is tricky. She prefers telepathy, but that’s hard to do since the rest of us, she informs me, “don’t know the rules.”

Margi is not so mellow. The “fucking Jews” have been at it again she tells a staff member who asks her for the umpteenth time to settle down and stop talking that way. “Communist!” she hisses and storms off, muttering that she will “sue the boss.” Margi is at least 70 and her behavior shows obvious signs of dementia. The staff’s efforts to find out her background are met with angry diatribes and insults. She clutches a book on German grammar and another on submarines that she reads upside down to “make things right.”

http://tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=180836

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Responses to “Squeezing parity out of the turnip”

  1. on 25 Apr 2007 at 9:30 am 1. christian h. said …

    ADA, and the fact that it is taken seriously to a large extent, helps make the US much more progressive on disability rights than Germany. I recall that Bonn University built a dorm in 1995 that wasn’t wheelchair accessible. Even to visitors. It had an elevator, but that stopped only on half-floors (this also made it a pain to move in or out with anything heavy, as side-effect)! What kind of incredibly stupid idea is that?

    Progress has been made since then, like on many cultural issues, but it’s still lagging behind at least the more progressive areas of the US.

  2. on 25 Apr 2007 at 9:50 am 2. Seattle said …

    Cranky, combative disabled old people. So let’s talk about my mother, shall we? I already wrote a whole paragraph about her, but it mysteriously disappeared when I opened up another app, so now I’m a cranky non-enabled computer user…

    My words of advice, buy hearing aid company stock. The rock generation/baby boomers will all need one pretty damn soon. I’ve watched my mother (81) use a hearing aid for 6 years and while she could hear, the device did not differentiate and amplified all sounds equally. I watched her remove it time after time in family gatherings rather than suffer adrenalin shocks everytime a kid yelled. Yesterday she finally got a new one and we’re informed that hearing aid technology has improved considerably in the last 6 years so she says there is a significant difference in what this new one can do. I don’t know about the rest of the family, but I’m breathing a sigh of relief. She says it’s not perfect and she still has to strain to hear the TV, but it will be a month before she can get in to a technician to get it adjusted. Think about that. A month wait to get your hearing adjusted. No wonder she’s cranky.

    On a related note, I went to a seminar on the disabled in the work place run by two blind individuals about a month ago. The issues they reviewed were parallel to the issues experience by people of color and not particularly eye opening to me but I did see significant attitude displayed by one of the two presenters. Keep in mind that both of these individuals lost their sight well into adulthood, so they had gone through the grieving process of the loss as opposed to never having had it at all. They made several points worth repeating here-

    We carry social archetypes of the disabled-pitiful, angelic, angry or heroic. Most don’t fit neatly into any of those categories and as one presenter pointed out, every population segment has their share of jerks/bastards etc and the disabled population is no different. They also mentioned the “cumulative effect” where a disabled individual has reached their emotional limit and vents on the person who has made the latest clumsy attempt to help or whatever. I figure we all suffer from that on a regular basis-disable or not.

  3. on 25 Apr 2007 at 10:01 am 3. Seattle said …

    Obviously, I’m spelling impaired today.

  4. on 25 Apr 2007 at 11:43 am 4. peter ramus said …

    As a practical matter, spyder, it shouldn’t take fifteen to twenty extra minutes to board a passenger who’s in a wheelchair and then see that passenger successfully off the bus. It shouldn’t take more than two or maybe two-and-a-half minutes at each end, tops. I have no reason to doubt your experience, but I think two things need to happen to diffuse this situation. First, the driver needs to be trained to a farethewell in assisting disabled passengers. Boarding passengers in wheelchairs and securing them on the bus takes some practice, but it’s really a question of the driver doing the same thing over and over again until so utterly familiar with the process that the immediate needs of the individual being assisted can be recognized and accommodated by second nature. It’s a part of the job, and the driver needs to be good at it.

    Secondly, many folks in wheelchairs can benefit from training, too, to familiarize themselves with what it takes to get on and off a given bus, to get a feel for process and make it second nature for themselves, as well. I’m guessing your transit agency has a training coordinator who can be contacted to set up time for individual instruction if that’s necessary, and a polite recommendation from the driver that such training might helpful (and some contact information) is never out of line.

    Among those who Paratransit exists to serve are those whose disability denies them the minimal command of a wheelchair needed to safely negotiate the boarding of a bus, and transit buses are all about the safety. Some peoples’ needs require individualized attention on the part of the transit agency rather than the rude ride with the masses offered by the regularly scheduled lines.

  5. on 25 Apr 2007 at 11:55 am 5. spyder said …

    One of my good friends is a professor at the National Technology Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York; in fact, he is one of their technology experts. I have learned a great deal about hearing aids and other support systems for the deaf, and for the hearing as well. As mentioned in other spheres, my summers are spent working on music festivals and concerts; quite literally enmeshed in rock-n-roll. I have always worn ear protection and have made the effort to keep my children (and now grandchildren) aware of the need to protect themselves. The good news is that most musicians now use technologically advanced ear piece monitor systems, that are capable of being appropriately equalized, and more importantly capable of filtering out the more damaging frequencies (it only takes a second of intense feedback to destroy cilia in one’s cochlea). My professor friend always sends out updates on the latest available technological improvements, and for that he is hugely appreciated. Of course none of these things are cheap, but how much is your hearing worth????

    The bad news arrives in the studies done on sound reproduction systems used for personal entertainment. Automobile speaker systems put out huge decibels at very close range (and inside a car you can’t get more than a meter away from them); between bass and midrange speakers, a driver can all too easily experience upwards of 140 dB of sustained output. Such volumes and pressures can severely damage hearing and do so. Likewise, those lovely iPods, and other mp3 players, push compressed frequencies at high dBs directly into the ears of our youth. Our consumer habits are creating an entire generation of the hearing impaired.

    more later and thanks for the comments.

  6. on 25 Apr 2007 at 12:28 pm 6. James Killus said …

    It does help to remember that an asshole in a wheelchair is still an asshole. And that not being in a wheelchair should not, in and of itself, be a source of guilt.

    I used to ask of various people who were disadvantaged in some way or another (usually African-Americans or women), “Are you more interested in becoming equal or getting even?” Even if they didn’t answer, their response usually indicated which was which.

    It’s also worth reflecting on how you personally will feel about the ongoing loss of abilities that comes with aging, and whether or not one is, as Jack London once said, “Willing to wait up with the corpse,” to linger on after the great diminishments. London made his choice and died at 40.

    I like the carved out curbsides, they’re convenient for shopping carts and skateboards as well as wheelchairs and walkers, and I find most of the efforts to accomodate similarly win/win. I hope that everything I want to visit is walker accessible by the time I need one, and I’d like to live long enough to need one. So I’ve got my own answer to Mr. London.

    He was the inventor of the Bowen treatment for deafness, which involved the surgical implantation of a banana in the patient’s ear. It did nothing to aid the condition, but it did eliminte the need for a lot of explanations. — found in one of my old notebooks

  7. on 25 Apr 2007 at 1:26 pm 7. peter ramus said …

    “Are you more interested in becoming equal or getting even?”

    Is there any way of saying this that doesn’t bear the slightest hint of pugnacity?

    James, by the way you’ve phrased it that “becoming equal” of yours assumes some measured lack of equality to be filled by informal grant or deed or other that finally recognizes the subject as up to par with an amorphously defined most of the rest of the people who already enjoy being “equal.” But the equality is already there, intrinsic in the person, and it isn’t so much a question of being, by whatever metric, recognized as finally having become “equal,” as it is a question of recognizing the entailed rights custom-fitted to the owner based on an equality that’s taken for granted. Is what I’m saying.

  8. on 25 Apr 2007 at 2:17 pm 8. Seattle said …

    LOL

    “I used to ask of various people who were disadvantaged in some way or another (usually African-Americans or women), “Are you more interested in becoming equal or getting even?” Even if they didn’t answer, their response usually indicated which was which.”

    Really? You used to do that? What made you stop? Gathered enough responses to draw your own statistically relevant conclusions? What did you prove to yourself?

  9. on 25 Apr 2007 at 3:15 pm 9. James Killus said …

    peter,

    It’s probable that I said “being equal” as often as I said “becoming equal” but no matter how one parses either the sentence or the situation there is a huge difference between believing in the philosophical concept of equality and observing de jure and de facto equality. Or was the concept of the Equal Rights Amendment completely empty, as some of its detractors insisted? Is affirmative action now purely reverse racism because minorities have equality, so it can only be discrimination against whites? I do not believe so, but I believe that inequality remains, so affirmative action remains a valid policy.

    As for the pugnacity of it, I would probably call it snide and snarky. If someone had called me pugnacious, I do not believe that I would have hit them. I’m sure I meant it to shock, because I thought some people needed shocking. I thought they were in the process of fragmenting a political caolition that they depended upon, and all the while giving ammunition to the very people they (and I) despised.

    I believe the first time I began using that bit of snark was after a friend of mine was sexually harrassed. He was male and his female boss basically told him “Put out or I’ll give you a bad job review and block any advancements you might get.” I noticed that, upon hearing this story, women who called themselves feminists tended to have one of two reactions. One reaction was sympathetic; they were shocked, upset, annoyed, whatever, at the woman’s behavior. The other reaction was, “Good. Now he knows how it feels.” This from people who had never met my friend, of course.

    Now maybe I could have been what is now called a “concern troll” and wrung my hands at the situation. God knows I’ve done that often enough, having been brought up polite and all. But apparently my subconscious decided that some snark was called for. Maybe I’d seen too many calls for “civility” come to dust.

    The term “politically incorrect” began as a bit of self-mockery used by some members of the left who had a sense of humor about the difficulties of politics in a democracy and the foolish consistencies (and contradictions) that practical living often entailed. The term, of course, got hijacked by intellectual thugs, just as “junk science” was hijacked by the enemies of science for application to any scientific findings they found not to be of their liking.

    In any case, the “New Left” ran off the tracks sometime in the late 70s, with its authoritarian elements (and there are always authoritarian elements) defecting to form the neo-cons, porn obsessed feminists (see Joanna Russ’ Magic Mammas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans and Perverts: Feminist Essays (1985) for more on this), Green Utopians, and the Sovereingty Left that Michael Bérubé recently wrote about:

    http://crookedtimber.org/2007/03/26/how-do-i-sleep/

    So, to answer your question Seattle, I mostly gave it up as a lost cause and because there were other ways of gaining the same information and/or causing/getting myself into trouble. Like noting when Persons of the Left engage in implicit racism or prodding global warming denialists just to see what paranoid fantasies they’ve invented this week. It’s all good, provided of course by “good” one means “amusing if observed at a great enough distance.”

  10. on 26 Apr 2007 at 8:03 am 10. Seattle said …

    COMPLETELY UNRELATED TO THREAD:

    Seattle Mariners SHUTOUT the Oakland A’s. Take that! Oaktown Girl! Ha. I say HA! ; )

  11. on 26 Apr 2007 at 8:12 am 11. Oaktown Girl said …

    Seattle is not only in violation of the Poor Form Act, she is willfully thwarting our Open Thread. You’re on very thin ice, Seattle. I see a trip to the WAAGNFNP’s Re-Education Center in your immediate future.

  12. on 26 Apr 2007 at 8:46 am 12. Seattle said …

    Do your worst. Somebody or other has been trying to re-educate me for years….

  13. on 26 Apr 2007 at 8:49 am 13. The Constructivist said …

    I move we recruit AL East fans to cover every time zone’s great baseball rivalries. I’ll get to work from Japan; with Japanese players in both NY and Boston, the media here is casting every game as a showdown between them (the players more than the teams), so it shouldn’t be to hard to find rival fans by now. To which I can only say (as an ex-Yankees fan who still blames Steinbrenner for getting rid of Bucky Dent), “go Softbank Fukuoka Hawks!”

  14. on 26 Apr 2007 at 9:16 am 14. spyder said …

    Perhaps i have lost track of the commentary hosting in my need to be offline, but it appeareth to me that the Open Thread is two posts before this one at this time. Be that as it may, Seattle’s apparent violation will be duly noted, with the addendum that indeed the Giants are on a roll thus mitigated the Minister of Justice’s lament about her sacred ritual performers. It is difficult for those living outside the Northwest to appreciate the Seattle sports franchises. Up here we are given no choice whatsoever, even when you live 300 miles inland, as local media have no other desire but to shove Mariners, Sonics, Storm, Seahawks, Canuks, down our throats (with very occasional passing mention of those downright awful Blazers–oh the Walton years). Is this a disability (other than for Portland)?? Perhaps, as the limitation on populations with sufficient disposable income simply cannot support numerous teams (hell they can’t support the ones they have).

    But i would like to go back to James’s point:
    I thought they were in the process of fragmenting a political caolition that they depended upon, and all the while giving ammunition to the very people they (and I) despised.
    This comment reflects my take on the local issue here. As Peter reflects in #4, we do have driver training; we do have alternative (free) paratransit systems; we do have available infrastructures (and yes those redesigned corner curbs are a huge blessing, especially now that they have teflon deicing textures)l; we do have assistant services and support personnel. All of these are great for the whole of the community and seem to be well supported, even by those who would prefer to have to pay nothing for supporting any form of government other than some gianormous police state to protect their precious property.

    The problem herein lies in the “assholes” who create displeasure among the other citizenry using the commons. The assholes, de-inhibited by their choice to use brain and behavior altering substances, are making a public statement about people with disabilities, regardless of their intent or purposes. And that statement is that these people are getting something special, more than equal access, out of parity with the rest. Why does it take fifteen extra minutes? One filed complaint mentions the senseless and overt acts of the electric wheelchair bound rider: who demanded the bus move closer to the sidewalk (this bus was equipped with an extension ramp, rather than the “elevator” style life) because of anxiety about possibly “driving off the ramp;” then insisting that all the people in the front of the bus move out of her “god-damned way’ so that all the benches could be raised to allow her to drive more easily into the crowded bus {remember, we have on-call paratransit to accomodate these people-some just refuse to use it}; subsequently the woman was not satisfied with the side of the bus the driver chose so she moved across taking up more time; finally demanding that the driver not put restraints on her wheelchair because she had control of it and “it has good brakes.” Why was this complaint filed?? Because the patron felt that the driver’s overt and remarkable courtesy and good manners were detrimental to the commons. The complainant wanted the driver to be pubnacious to the asshole. These sorts of things never get resolved, mostly because they are not yet all that common, and the only recommendation is to commend the driver for his behavior, to review the video records and determine the identity of the handicapped person, and send that woman a letter requesting that in the future she needs to properly use the paratransit.

    In my own day-to-day moving about the city, i see perhaps one incident a week of this sort in the public commons, in which the disabled are behaving unreasonably given the circumstances. Most people let it go, others raise up their own assholishness, and once a month or so some citizen calmly suggests that you get “more with honey than vinegar” (yes, i heard that comment). As i suggested in the thread post itself, we are on the cusp of my generation’s maximazation of the entitlement programs. We are a generation of bitter assholes and happy hippies, and everything else in between. And we are sicker and more unhealthy than ever before. We will stress the whole of the commons, demanding our fair and equitable share, most likely abusing parity at each moment possible (just look at the current US administration). It will take enormous and powerful compassion for this country to weather through this i think.

  15. on 26 Apr 2007 at 10:44 am 15. JP Stormcrow said …

    My OT contribution is a link to this map of MLB fan areas from CommonCensus. (they seem to be having problems with their navigation, but if you replace the 2 after “sport=” with 1,3,4 or 5 you get NFL,NBA, NHL, Div-1 College.)

    More on topic, I do take spyder’s point that the boomer demographic bubble will have a significant impact in this areas as it has in most everything else it has moved through, with both its numbers and sense of entitlement. But to be fair, also with its relatively outside the box thinking**. And yes the current admin is sort of “Boomers - The Bad Parts”. Clinton was “Boomers - in all their Glory, Hypocrisy and Self-Doubt”. And speaking of the latter, I do recall driving home one day shortly after 9/11 and Anthrax (and specifically in my area of work during the Code Red/Nimda computer virus) and thinking - “Jesus, our parents were right, we are going to screw up everything, we can’t defend the country, we can’t deliver the mail and we relied on these new-fangled electronic networks that don’t really work.” I am not proud of the thought, nor think it was necessarily accurate, but that it even came to mind is a symptom of my entanglement in our ongoing generational pathology. (… or then again, maybe it’s just me …)

    I have nothing constructive in the way of solutions to add at the moment - but am glad of the prod to think about it some more. And I do fear where we will take disability/old age. I am reminded of an old Dan O’Neill Odd Bodkins comic strip, titled as I recall When I’m 64, with geezers of our generation on a park bench - I always imagined I’d be the guy on the end turned away from the others thinking What a bummer.

    Here is an effect we have already had on geezerhood - we made it socially acceptable for our parents generation to “shack up” together in retirement, which is far more convenient and less complicated for many than marriage.

  16. on 26 Apr 2007 at 11:13 am 16. James Killus said …

    I’ll add one other one-degree-of-separation personal anecdote to the general fund.

    A friend of mine, a buddy since grade school, had a psychotic break in college, attempted suicide owing to “suicidal mentation” (he believed both that communists were out to get him and that this would be somehow remedied by drinking insecticide), and eventually wound up on powerful and dangerous medication that allowed him to function, albeit in a greatly attenuated state.

    He nevertheless transfered colleges and perservered, eventually receiving a Ph.D. in mathematics, and obtained a job with the administration of a school district in a midwestern city. Eventually he found a mate and married her.

    His wife has a chronic disease, which will probably eventually be terminal, albeit probably not for years. She is on a disability pension. The drug that best kept his diagnosed schizophrenia in check was taken off the market several years ago, to be replaced by a drug of the same class, with similar side effects.

    My friend lives with the fear that his current drug will also be taken off the market. He is afraid of his wife dying. He is afraid of retiring, feeling that he could easily drift into a totally reclusive existence. And sometimes, he is just afraid.

    Sounds like a perfect candidate for a support group, wouldn’t you say? Indeed, he has tried to find support amongst other “consumers” as they are called, and call themselves (short for “consumers of mental health services”). And they won’t have him

    Why? Because he is, to them too successful. Despite his illness, he got a college degree, and not just any degree, but an advanced degree in a difficult subject. He has a job, and a wife. Despite hardships that I can barely imagine, he has managed to create a decent life. I admire him substantially, and I’ve tried to tell him so. But those who do have an idea of what it’s like to have a mental illness don’t want to know him.

    There were even some of the “consumers” that he tried to join with who accused him of lying about his condition or his life. Others sneered at him as being “stuck up.” Apparently in those communities that he has so far encountered (which include several on-line groupings), the only acceptible behavior is to be a passive “consumer of mental health services.”

    Like Marxists, the Randites never came anywhere close to a workable philosophy or program. But some of the social and moral critique is spot on. Hating people for their virtues is one of the lowest aspects of the human condition.

  17. on 26 Apr 2007 at 11:26 am 17. Seattle said …

    One giant leap for Stephen Hawking
    Physicist set for weightless flight; sees it as ‘first step’ to space

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18319259/

  18. on 26 Apr 2007 at 12:31 pm 18. spyder said …

    But some of the social and moral critique is spot on. Hating people for their virtues is one of the lowest aspects of the human condition.

    Of course that assumes, that one of the virtues happens to be the acquisition of great wealth, or at least the social-economic status of financially successful, and therein lies the conundrum. This illusory yardstick of human value promotes dissension among normally aligned constituencies, ridiculously grounded in the faux equation that happiness is best created by wealth. And i am not intending to be a snarky marxist here (nor marcusian), only that the perception of “status” is too oft misperceived as the other doing well, or being “okay,” from a place of lower expectations and social status. The loop goes round and round, the rounder it gets the faster it goes. Hence that urge to reach out there and shake them silly.

  19. on 26 Apr 2007 at 1:02 pm 19. Seattle said …

    Somebody once complained to me about being treated rudely by a fast food restaurant worker. Then by a convenience store clerk. Then by a fellow bus rider. Then by a waitress. Then by another person in a low wage, low status job. Then another. Then another. Do we see a pattern here? Humans like to organize themselves by status and the lower you are on that chain, the more you need to locate others you can mentally place below you-some status being better than none-and then treat them accordingly.

  20. on 26 Apr 2007 at 1:04 pm 20. spyder said …

    and now for something completely different!
    The larch, a coniferous deciduous tree growing in the northern latitudes?
    No, you silly twit, and not a silly walk either.

    This should have been titled the Trillion Dollar Con Scheme; that was so successful that even those that knew it was a con still got completely and royally screwed.

  21. on 26 Apr 2007 at 2:44 pm 21. JP Stormcrow said …

    Had a timely receipt of message at my workplace entitled:
    Self-Identification - Veterans & Disability Status

    It provided a number of mechanisms by which one might self-identify as disabled, but the most intriguing to me was the War Service Creditable for Veterans Preference available here at this website.
    Since the only “declared” war with any real population of veterans left is World War II (soon to be retired, and which has the following interesting definition: The inclusive dates for World War II service are December 7, 1941, through April 28, 1952.), the site identifies all other “qualifying” campaigns - which makes for an interesting list of American military engagements well-known and obscure and their intersting names.
    A few “highlights”:

    Vietnam Evacuation (Operation Frequent Wind) April 29, 1975, to April 30, 1975 - [who could top that name]
    Grenada (Operation Urgent Fury) October 23, 1983, to November 21, 1983 - [urgent need to redirect Beirut bombing fury.]
    Global War on Terrorism September 11, 2001 to present [Operation Enduring Freedom - Iraq is also dated from September 11]
    Am intrigued by:
    Navy Occupation of Trieste May 8, 1945 to October 25, 1954 - but even more by:
    Navy Occupation of Austria May 8, 1945 to October 25, 1954 [the Danube barge fleet?]
    Panama(Operation Just Cause) December 20, 1989, to January 31, 1990 [Just Cause a former Drug dealing partnership “went South”.]

    I half expected to find:
    Chile (Project FUBELT) 1970 to 1973.

    Worth a look just to appreciate the scope.

  22. on 26 Apr 2007 at 3:05 pm 22. christian h. said …

    Imperialism in all its ugly glory. And as JP mentions, these are only the actions we admit to. Homework exercise for liberal interventionists: count all the wars and military interventions on the list justified as “humanitarian”. Discuss the result.

  23. on 26 Apr 2007 at 3:51 pm 23. James Killus said …

    spyder,

    My friend’s virtue consists of getting a degree, a job, and a wife. I don’t see how this prompted your comment that “Of course that assumes, that one of the virtues happens to be the acquisition of great wealth, or at least the social-economic status of financially successful.”

    It is true that many Randites often associate “virtue” with “wealth” (as do Calvanists of a particular stripe), but that was not the case that I was describing, nor is it the only test of virtue in any of the “canonical” texts from Rand.

    In short I really don’t understand what you’re driving at, or at least what it has to do with what I wrote.

    I do agree with Seattle, though I’ll observe that status inversion is also a frequent trick: holding that those above you in status don’t deserve it, and the world would be a much better place if they were lower and you were higher. I’m rather fond of that one myself, truth to tell.

  24. on 26 Apr 2007 at 5:10 pm 24. Oaktown Girl said …

    Panama(Operation Just Cause) December 20, 1989

    Great Gojira! Why did you have to remind of that one, too? What a birthday ruiner that was. AND I was spending my birthday evening with a really great guy who just happened to be from, you guessed it, Panama. And worse, at the time he was a US Marine with most of his family living in Panama.

    “Just Cause” my ass. It’d be a close call to determine the most vomit-inducing invasion marketing title. But that’s got to be a Top 2.

  25. on 26 Apr 2007 at 5:37 pm 25. christian h. said …

    You know, instead of discussing the next “humanitarian” intervention (Darfur, favorite cause of liberals everywhere), why not start by not giving our allies a green light to do something like this? Somehow, I’m waiting for some of the Dissent liberals to notice. But they’d rather discuss the grave threat posed by Iran (and the even graver threat posed by leftists who don’t condemn Hezbollah sufficiently forcefully).

  26. on 26 Apr 2007 at 6:32 pm 26. The Constructivist said …

    Oaktown Girl, you and onechan share a birthday, it seems!

    And back on topic, you gotta give the Nietzschean left some credit for taking up his critique of ressentiment. I disagree with Wendy Brown on a good number of matters, but her book States of Injury is a major work. I wonder if folks in disabilities studies have engaged her arguments. Maybe next weekend’s open thread can be “Ask a Dangeral Professor!”

  27. on 26 Apr 2007 at 6:59 pm 27. The Constructivist said …

    Oh, and speaking of humanitarian interventions, it’s not just what Berube has called the Sovereignty Left that questions them. See this interview of net activist Geert Lovink by Tom Keenan (director of Bard’s Human Rights Project), both of whom are informed by European poststructuralism’s engagements with humanism and theorizings of the “human.” The intervew continues Keenan’s earlier engagement with some of these issues in Fables of Responsibility (1997), particularly his chapter on Foucault’s activism and theorizing. To put my cards on the table, I was in favor of an earlier intervention on behalf of Bosnia, saw Kosovo as a guilty and inadequate response to the earlier failure, am highly critical of apologists for the Serbian leadership, and don’t think Iraq has anything to do with Clinton’s halting and inconsistent exploration of what Kouchner and other human rights NGOs were calling for. Oh, and I was a student of Keenan’s and participated in a colloquium with Lovink and others.

  28. on 26 Apr 2007 at 7:59 pm 28. Maud said …

    “Hating people for their virtues is one of the lowest aspects of the human condition.. . .
    My friend’s virtue consists of getting a degree, a job, and a wife.”

    Your take on your friend’s situation seems to me loaded with unwarranted assumptions. A mental illness, like other disabilities, is not a uniform, with identical kits issued to each member of the club. Your friend is indeed unusually high-functioning, but it does not follow that this is due to greater virtue on his part. His accomplishments are admirable, and follow on great hardship and struggle, I have no doubt. You should not assume lesser hardship and struggle on the part of those you describe as passive consumers of mental health services. That is not an accurate description of anyone’s life, and great struggle does not always produce great accomplishment in the terms you recognize.

    Being a consumer of mental health services is one aspect of the life of a person with a mental illness, and it is one aspect likely to be shared in a support group, as it is itself part of the hardship and the struggle. As the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health appointed by President Bush (who just loves to name things after Freedom) concluded back in 2003, the public mental health delivery system is “fragmented and in disarray” and “not oriented to the single most important goal of the people it serves - the hope of recovery.” Since the issuance of the report containing those conclusions nearly four years ago, we’ve heard no more about addressing the needs of the public mental health system until the recent tragic events at VT, and I don’t believe any of those comments concerned themselves with the hope of recovery, either.

    Support groups are formed, however, not around a diagnosis, which is a medical classification, but around shared life experience. It’s quite possible that members of the groups your friend has had contact with simply felt his life experience has been so different from their own that they could not relate to it. Not every support group is right for every person with a shared diagnosis, especially when dealing with mental illnesses, where diagnoses are imprecise, and each is more properly understood as referring to a family of related disorders, rather than a single, uniform disease and set of symptoms. Your friend has the distinction, with attendant advantages and disadvantages, of occupying an uncommon position in the narrow area of overlap between serious, chronic mental illness and “normal” life. He may yet be able to find others sharing similar struggles, especially as those who are more educated and higher-functioning are more likely to access the internet.

    Of course, I’m assuming that it is you who have ascribed your friend’s achieving a fuller life to his greater virtue. If that is his own belief, it is likely to have communicated itself to the members of those support groups one way or another, and that would be enough to make him unwelcome. They get enough of that shit from everybody else.

  29. on 26 Apr 2007 at 8:30 pm 29. spyder said …

    In short I really don’t understand what you’re driving at, or at least what it has to do with what I wrote.

    I am aware of what you wrote and apprised of what your friend achieved. I also don’t think my comment was far removed from your paragraph that begins by framing the statement of virtues within a critique of Marx and Rand. Randians praise selfishness and capitalism and are deeply and passionately opposed to Marx. It seems to me to suggest that you were including economic status as a core virtue; if you were not then i misread you.

    My comment was directed towards the underlying supposition that one of the core roots of value in this country regardless of Rand or Marx, is predicated on economic status. Jobs and degrees are achievements connected directly to wealth and economic values. My frustration with this nation is that we ignore authentically connecting with other human beings, prefering to rely on relative economics as a measure of status and social structure. For example, assumptions about the quality of supermarkets are predicated on the economic status of the people who shop there. I don’t know why the support group rejected your friend but i am fairly assured that economic status had something to do with it on some level. That was all i was saying.

  30. on 26 Apr 2007 at 10:18 pm 30. Oaktown Girl said …

    Oaktown Girl, you and onechan share a birthday, it seems!

    Yea! Auntie Oaktown is so happy about that!
    Tell onechan that the Aunt she hasn’t met yet sends her a big hug!

    Oh, dammit. I keep forgetting that us libruls are supposed to be anti-family. Who the hell keeps letting me get off-message?

  31. on 26 Apr 2007 at 11:22 pm 31. James Killus said …

    Well, I certainly agree that life is full of assumptions, often unwarranted. Still, I spoke of “a degree, a job, and a wife,” and I am compelled to wonder why these are parsed as being economic references, rather than, for example, social achievements. What exactly are the assumptions here, and who is making them?

    True, I spoke of Marx and Rand (something of a yin/yang arrangement, it’s true), but, having actually, you know, read both of them, the conclusions that I formed were that neither of them were economic determinists, but rather social critics. A PhD in mathematics suggests intelligensia (Marx) or intellectual (Rand) to me. Clearly that’s just my idiosyncratic take, or so it would appear.

    But mostly I’m getting the lesson that Marx and Rand do not matter, only Marxists and Randites do. I’ll remember that from now on.

    In observance of Maud’s oar in the water, I must say that accusing me of making unwarranted assumptions about someone that I’ve known all my life and you know only by the thinnest of descriptions is, well, the word presumptuous comes to mind. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, and trying for the best take on the rest of what you wrote, I’m going with the conjecture that you think I’m making assumptions about those who insulted my friend, about their own efforts to live their lives, their attempts to cope, etc. This may well be so; I would localize my assumption to the fact that I believe my friend when he describes his experience. Hmm, let me think. Nope, not going to change that.

    Or perhaps you know of some mental health support group that does not behave as my friend describes. If so, I’m sure he would like to meet them.

    By the way, why does the phrase “unusually high-functioning” stick in my craw?

  32. on 27 Apr 2007 at 7:42 am 32. spyder said …

    But mostly I’m getting the lesson that Marx and Rand do not matter, only Marxists and Randites do. I’ll remember that from now on.

    James, thank you for clarifying your intent in your writing and social critic. I just read the passage differently, from my own views and readings, but mostly from my ongoing daily experiences. And thus, my own assumptions appear to obviously been based on thoughts you were not intending to convey at all. I don’t deal with Marx or Rand as philosophers nor with their social and economic critiques; i spend my days in the political arenas hashing it out with the Marxists, Randites, Straussians, etc.: the whole pletora of folks along the politically-charged spectrum. Randites are particularly influential at the moment in this region as are their Straussian thinktank puppet masters (if i may use that analogy?). So that leaps off the page at me, rather than remaining embedded within your construct and intent. Sorry, i’ll remember to read you at the base value in the future.

  33. on 27 Apr 2007 at 8:08 am 33. spyder said …

    And speaking of opportunities for the disabled to travel in a pretty cool way.

  34. on 27 Apr 2007 at 11:45 am 34. James Killus said …

    spyder,

    Thank you. Despite whatever snarkiness may have seeped in, I do appreciate the reminder that Rand is today judged by the actions of Randites, Marx by the actions of Marxists, Freud by Freudians, etc.

    It’s inevitable, but also a shame. Whatever Rand’s shortcomings, philosophical and personal (and I can cite chapter and verse), Randites are usually appalling for quite different reasons. I’ve considered writing something like “Ayn Rand would hate you” directed at Movement Conservatives (whom she despised when she was alive), Christian Conservatives (she was a militant atheist), and corporations that depend more upon government connections than innovation, etc. She was an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam war, despised Richard Nixon, and thought William F. Buckley a blight upon the landscape. She would have despised George W. Bush as just another drug addict substituting religion for cocaine and alcohol.

    That there are think-tank “Randites” who shill for policies dictated by conservative political operatives is sad and predictable, yet much of the blame rests with Rand’s own behavior during her life. She was entirely too susceptible to sychophancy and all too willing and able to rationalize her way to a predetermined conclusion. That may actually be a virtue in a popular novelist; it is a disaster and a tragedy in a thinker or a human being.

    Nevertheless, my reckoning is that Marx is not responsible for Stalin or Mao, Hugh Hefner did not create the Patriarchy, and Nietzsche did not conjure Leopold and Loeb. I read your initial essay as being directed toward the notion of personal responsibility. One makes allowances and attempts ameliorate the hardships that life hands many people, but to absolve them of the ultimate accountability for their actions actively advances the philosophy that they are inferior creatures, unworthy of the respect owed to someone who does shoulder the responsibility that comes with being a citizen and human being.

  35. on 27 Apr 2007 at 12:22 pm 35. spyder said …

    Thanks James. We are starting to get back into a discussion that TC wanted to begin to have here, that would follow up on Bérubé’s long, three-part discourse and critique of Raymond Williams and something worthy of our own WAAGNFNP efforts. I am hoping we will have that opportunity soon.

    My own contemporaneous experience is with countering the efforts of Straussian/Randite conservative coalitions to significantly alter the tax structures and land-use policies in our region. Funded with very large contributions from the neo-con legions, the battle lines (at this very moment in Montana) are drawn and conflict is happening; over cutting health care and other social services in favor of huge tax cuts for the wealthy (current proposal in MT asks for a 90% social service cut, if you can believe that), diminishing taxes on out-of-state corporations that own the resources within these states (agribusiness, petro-chemical industry, energy producers), and reduced access to future litigations.

    Likewise, three regional groups are waging their own efforts in lobbying Bushco to sign an executive order that releases huge tracts of US Forest Service and Department of Interior lands for sale and private ownership. That most of the land desired would control available water rights seems to be beside the point when one reads any of the media, but that is at the heart of the issue. So yes, i agree that even Rand herself may be offended by what is being done in her name. The issues are becoming downright scary, and threats of violence are rising. It makes me angry and thus more snarky that is deserved of this fine site.

  36. on 28 Apr 2007 at 3:01 am 36. peter ramus said …

    …but to absolve them of the ultimate accountability for their actions actively advances the philosophy that they are inferior creatures, unworthy of the respect owed to someone who does shoulder the responsibility that comes with being a citizen and human being.

    I suppose after a certain age everybody has to wipe their own butt, or give good cause why not. And if they just can’t manage for themselves, assistance can be provided, but of course who wants people coming around whining, “Please wipe my butt,” when they could be doing the thing themselves, responsibly, like they should? Nobody. Nobody at all. And everyone agrees that we are all ultimately responsible for eating our own food and breathing our own lungsful of air instead of having somebody else do it for us, and there are a whole raft of other responsibilities everyone would agee on, but the problem is, this insight doesn’t scale up very far before it founders against the question of slavery:

    If every slave is ultimately accountable for his or her actions, any slave who doesn’t stop acting like a slave is inferior and unworthy of the respect owed a citizen who’s shouldering all that responsibility. And people who are inferior and unworthy and not due respect are slavery’s usual candidates anyway, so there you go. They belong right where they are, in bondage.

    But of course we’re all aware that slaves continue to act like slaves for reasons well outside their own control: conditions favoring their continued slavery go unmeasured by the metric of ultimate accountability that worked so well when we were wiping everybody’s butt with it. Lots of other stuff has to be taken into account to make any sense of slavery at all, none of which depends on a good reading of the slaves’ ultimate responsibility for their reduced circumstances.

    Which is to say I disagree, James.

  37. on 28 Apr 2007 at 12:15 pm 37. peter ramus said …

    …remember, James, by the founding documents of the WAAGNFNP all are encouraged to reply to the broadest of broad strokes of the pen with the broadest broad strokes off their own own forever and ever amen, up to and including the sanctioned use of litotes, if it should come to that.

    peter ramus represents a constituency which has long recognized the outer bound of civil discourse as being defined by the arc of a wooden stave, which of course explains my earliest sympathy for all the entirely foriegn congnates of that same sensibility found in Michael Beréubé’s often reiterated fondeness for the game of hockey, which has the stick of wood, on his own personal blog where he could write about anything at at all and chose hockey often enough, and the hockey-like swerves of his prose, too, the force of his rhetoric pounding some hapless bloviator up against the boards in comment sections all over the internet. The Professor’s interlocutors never took for snark what he delivered with evident scorn, and many a metaphorical Oof! was heard in response.

    And may the ghost of Patsy Neal strike me dead if I ever read another syllable of Ayn Rand.

  38. on 28 Apr 2007 at 12:23 pm 38. peter ramus said …

    And I will now go to the penalty box for mishandling the aigus in my complicated spelling of the name of the Chairman–For–Life.