Ideas Posted by James Killus, 02 Aug 2007 06:33 am

The Base Metal Rule

There are plenty of people more suited to direct political and social commentary than I am. I’m more of a “meta” guy, heavy on the philosophy and intellectualization, not so much on the direct assessments of political organizing and such.

This is not to say that news of the world doesn’t penetrate; it certainly does. I will however, persist in trying to get at the more meta aspects of it all, in part because someone should, and also because it’s my own style of psychic defense.

So, in that spirit, I offer a generalization that I formulated several years back, in talking to a friend I shan’t name about a subject that I shan’t divulge. But as a result of a series of conversations, I came to understand what I think is a worldview that is shared by a lot of people, maybe even a majority, when thinking about moral issues. It goes like this:

There are good people and there are bad people. It is the duty of good people to thwart and punish bad people. Anything that happens as a result is the fault of the bad people, not the good people, who are always blameless, because they are good, and have good intentions.

If I have this wrong, you won’t be able to find anyone who fits this description. Well, there is another possibility that I see no point in discussing.

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Responses to “The Base Metal Rule”

  1. on 02 Aug 2007 at 6:52 am 1. JP Stormcrow said …

    Well I never met a “meta” man I didn’t like. … in a completely heterosexual way of course.

    So in that spirit I just want to understand what you’re intentions were in posting this.

    And in verifying that Will Rogers quote I came across this great one from him, with relevance for Democrats and WAAGNFNP alike.

    We can make this thing into a Party, instead of a Memory.
    Letter to Al Smith regarding the Democratic party (19 January 1929)

  2. on 02 Aug 2007 at 9:46 am 2. James Killus said …

    My intentions are to not be the guy who says things like this:

    “We have to punish this person because he is evil.”

    “This is all their fault, because we never intended for anything like this to happen.”

    It’s easy to see these views in other people. Just last night I heard someone say “A world without Saddam in power is better than a world with him in power.” Or, “We aren’t to blame for the excess deaths in Iraq, because most of them have been caused by the insurgents.” Recognizing the moral failure in such attitudes is trivial.

    It’s infinitely harder to acknowledge one’s own complaisance when bad consequences ensue, and harder still to still maintain one’s will to action in the face of the possibility of subsequent (and consequent)guilt.

  3. on 02 Aug 2007 at 10:38 am 3. JP Stormcrow said …

    My intentions are to not be the guy who says things like this:

    OK. I just wanted to be sure that you were a “good” person.

    … one of the most spectacular manifestations of this is American exceptionalism. Which I admit that I certainly have woven into my psyche to a certain degree, but not enough to avoid being branded as all manner of undesirable by those who are “all in”. And this what scares me most about my own country/culture - we are so comfortable with our “moral superiority” that if ever go (or when we have) way off the rails (we’re flirting with it), there is no internal governor - for many “it’s all good” (literally). John Bolton is a prime example.

  4. on 02 Aug 2007 at 1:39 pm 4. Seattle said …

    Ok, I’m getting tired of rewriting my response to this post. So this time I’m going to damn well post this.

    Good people can get bogged down over-analyzing any action until they achieve no action whatsoever. Other good people can charge ahead deciding that minimal or no analysis is good enough for them-screw up, and then blame the results on someone else. We’re in the middle of a war. Not surprisingly, when we launched this little corrective action, the majority of the American people, still freshly traumatized and terrorized by a retalitory act, were in favor of the move. Years later-having had time to analyze, the majority are now against it. Iraq is crumbling and the whole region is teetering on the edge of chaos-not that it’s ever been that stable in my lifetime anyway.

    “300″ is out on DVD-now THERE is a depiction of a bunch of gung ho guys out to “die for honor and glory”. I hear it was a big hit in Greece… : )

  5. on 02 Aug 2007 at 1:44 pm 5. Seattle said …

    Speaking of blame the victim mentalities, did anyone see the articles about the studies on what happens to women who ask for pay raises?

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/29/AR2007072900827_pf.html

  6. on 02 Aug 2007 at 1:59 pm 6. Oaktown Girl said …

    Seattle - are you having tech problems with the comments? Someone complained of that earlier this week. Can you describe what’s happening?

    And in case you are computer free tomorrow…

    HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
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  7. on 02 Aug 2007 at 2:04 pm 7. Oaktown Girl said …

    Last weekend I saw the movie Goya’s Ghosts, which is relevant not just to this post, but several recent posts here (religion, fanatical ideas, corrupt “leaders”, and even the French Revolution).

    The movie takes place toward the tail end of the Spanish Inquisition. It was about a young well-to-do merchant class woman accused of being a “Judi-izer” after she was seen refusing a meal of pork in a public tavern. “Judi-izer” was new word for me, and defined by the movie’s villain, Brother Lorenzo, as someone who practices “Jewish rituals”.

    The specific link to this post and the theme of “punishing evil” is that the movie did a good job of depicting the chilling philosophy behind being put “to the Question” – the euphemism used by the Church for being tortured to get confessions out of people. The idea was that if you were innocent, you would never confess to something you had not done (just to stop the pain of torture) because God would give you the strength to endure. Therefore, no innocent people ever gave false confessions under torture.

    The acting was pretty good all around, especially the creepy job done by Javier Bardem as Brother Lorenzo. Perhaps the best part of the movie was the many fascinating works by Goya that were shown.
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  8. on 02 Aug 2007 at 2:19 pm 8. James Killus said …

    A friend of mine has several family friends who are prosecutors at the city and county level. Over time he formulated the notion of the “prosecutorial mentality.”

    Those with the prosecutorial mentality, which seems to include the majority of actual prosecutors, first decide whether or not a particular criminal defendant deserves to be in jail–a decision that may have little to do with whether or not the person actually committed the crime for which they are charged. If the prosecutor decides that the answer is “yes,” then they feel no compunction about bending and twisting the rules to achieve a conviction. They will, in fact, do everything in their power to convict someone that they are certain is innocent of that particular crime; they will suppress exculpatory evidence if they are able to do so. Because it is more important to put a “bad person” in jail than to insure that only those guilty of a crime are convicted of that crime.

  9. on 02 Aug 2007 at 3:05 pm 9. Seattle said …

    Sorry to mislead you, Oaktown Girl. I didn’t have any technical problems. Just problems writing a response which actually related to the post.

    Thanks for remembering my birthday. Half-way to 90! Woohoo. I think my maternal grandmother made it to like 96 by ceasing to eat anything that tasted good from the time she was about 52…. : (

  10. on 02 Aug 2007 at 3:11 pm 10. Seattle said …

    Speaking of special people killing someone just because…

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20095387/

  11. on 02 Aug 2007 at 3:14 pm 11. JP Stormcrow said …

    I think my maternal grandmother made it to like 96 by ceasing to eat anything that tasted good from the time she was about 52…. : (

    The comments thread on this item at Unfogged is a good source for exactly the opposite. Good tasting but “not good” food.

  12. on 02 Aug 2007 at 3:29 pm 12. Oaktown Girl said …

    Thanks for remembering my birthday.

    No problem, Seattle. Will you be here at all tomorrow so we can roast toast you?

    I didn’t have any technical problems. Just problems writing a response which actually related to the post.

    Don’t let that ever stop you here, Seattle. Go ahead and ramble or drift. Then, if you want, you can comment later to “clarify the previous ramblings” or whatever.

    But these damn intriguing posts over here at GNF headquarters get my mind rolling on so many possible responses, it gets me upset that this damn job keeps me from getting to them all. I still have a couple of things I’d like to say on yesterday’s thread.

  13. on 02 Aug 2007 at 4:12 pm 13. Seattle said …

    Sure, roast away… You KNOW how thin skinned I am about my age and all. LOL

  14. on 02 Aug 2007 at 5:27 pm 14. Oaktown Girl said …

    Here’s more on blame and evil just from today:
    I’ve been too busy at work to search the blogs (those fine comments at #6 and #7 above took up my whole lunch break), but I heard on the radio on my way to work that Bush (or someone in BushCo) came out and flat-out blamed the Democrats for the bridge collapse tragedy in Minnesota last night. And I also heard it was the Republican Governor who was the one who repeatedly refused funding to shore the damn thing up.

    If true, not surprising, as Republicans in the past couple of decades have almost always balked at keeping our infrastructure up to date. Another casualty of deregulation and privatization, and the most under-reported aspect in corporate media of the huge blackout that took out most of the Midwest a few years back.

    Anyone got any info/links on this (Bush blaming the Dems for the bridge collapse)?

  15. on 02 Aug 2007 at 6:45 pm 15. JP Stormcrow said …

    Anyone got any info/links on this (Bush blaming the Dems for the bridge collapse)?

    Probably referring to these remarks from Bush. Not really blaming, but politicizing nonetheless. Truly, truly shameless. Contrast the reaction to this to the Wellstone funeral.

  16. on 02 Aug 2007 at 10:09 pm 16. Oaktown Girl said …

    Thanks, JP. On the way home from work, I was lucky enough to hear Mike Malloy give a scathing read of our infrastructure report card. While he did this, he also gave a cost breakdown of what it would take to do all the repairs and upgrades needed to get us back on track compared to what we are spending on the Iraq occupation, and it was simply staggering.

    He also spoke about the estimates of how many JOBS investing in our infrastructure would CREATE, as will as how much money it would ADD to our economy.

    I can only quote our very own Kiera PSI for my response to this:

    *sigh*

  17. on 03 Aug 2007 at 9:21 am 17. JP Stormcrow said …

    Via Lawyers, Guns and Money, some further insight into the “prosecutorial mentality” that James mentions above.

    My recently completed study of the 124 exonerations of death row inmates in America from 1973 to 2007 indicated that 80, or about two-thirds, of their so-called wrongful convictions resulted not from good-faith mistakes or errors but from intentional, willful, malicious prosecutions by criminal justice personnel.

  18. on 03 Aug 2007 at 9:52 am 18. James Killus said …

    JP,

    That’s my real objection to the death penalty: it is a powerful tool for misconduct by malicious prosecutors. Those wrongfully sentenced to death are only a small fraction of the evil done; many, many more innocent men accept plea bargains and do jail time rather than risk being wrongfully executed. And they know all too well that there is a good chance that they could be executed, even if the prosecutors know that they did not commit the crime.

  19. on 03 Aug 2007 at 10:25 am 19. Oaktown Girl said …

    And James, what’s the difference between what you and JP are saying about the “prosecutorial mentality” and “prosecutorial” practices of the Spanish Inquisition I mentioned above in #7? Certainly not much, if any.

    In the Inquisition, even if the Church knew you were not guilty of the “crimes” for which you were accused, you’d still be put “to The Question” if you were believed to not be toting the Church line strongly enough. You might be deemed to be in general bad influence on society, and therefore you deserved punishment, and it was better to just get you out of the way once and for all.
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    The Compassionate Prosecutor

    (Another pic from Goya’s Ghosts)

  20. on 03 Aug 2007 at 1:54 pm 20. JP Stormcrow said …

    And they know all too well that there is a good chance that they could be executed, even if the prosecutors know that they did not commit the crime.

    Yes, and I suspect a lot of times prosecutors are thinking “Well, they deserve to be killed” because they are bad people, maybe not just real guilty of this crime.

    The attitude reminds me of a shocking “Pat Buchanan moment” on the McLaughlin Report after Pinochet lost power in Chile. One of the “liberals” on the show pointed out how it always ends in tears with guys like Pinochet and we only admit it after thousands are killed [JP - And I’m not sure that “we” ever have.] Buchanan jumped into to say that “most of those people deserved to be killed anyway.”. (This is way pre-YouTube, so reconstruction is approximate - I also wonder if Buchanan is a trifle more careful in his comments these days.) Two thoughts crossed my mind on hearing it. 1) He really is a loon! This is where the good/evil view of the world ends up. and 2) He probably thinks that I deserve to be killed, and it does not take too much imagination to come up with the scenario where he would be advocating that.

  21. on 03 Aug 2007 at 6:01 pm 21. James Killus said …

    Well, what do you expect? Pat Buchanan is a bad person.