The Natural State of Society ...

So, it seems like, in order to evaluate the roll of the government, the natural state of society should be looked at.     

To do that, I'd just like to cite an example used multiple times by people on both sides.  "If Caveman A invents something to make his life and survival easier, say, a wheel, he has the right to use it and ask for something in return from Caveman B to use it."  versus  "Caveman A does not have the right to ask payment from Caveman B who needs the tool, say, a wheel, to survive."     

Actually, Caveman B does not need the wheel to survive, he was surviving before.  The wheel makes his survival easier, but that does not make it necessary!  Fastforward a couple million years or so, and we're having the same debate about health care, etcetera.  The person in the country today who gets the worst health care is still better off than the person in the country fifty years ago who got the best health care!   

The definition of "necessity" seems to change depending on what is available to us.  This links with the definition of poverty being, in many people's eyes, somebody having less, relatively speaking, than other members of society.         

I am not a fan of this definition of poverty.  First, I don't think that's accurate.  Second, I don't agree with judging people (on anything) purely based on where they stand compared to others.  Third, the practical implication of this is that, unless we equalize final wealth, poverty will never be eliminated.  I disagree with that notion, partially because I do not, in any way, believe that final wealth is the ultimate indicator of prosperity (and I find it very ironic that it is often the very people who say that materialism is bad, we should not value materials, but, instead, what's on the inside, and happiness, who advocate a society which is based solely around the final equality of distribution of materials).                 

How would I define poverty?  I would define poverty as people who have no opportunity for advancement.  When people suffer a severe enough depletion of material goods that they simply have to struggle day to day, that is poverty.  When people do not have access to the information needed to advance or choose their own destiny, that is poverty.  When people are controlled by other people, that is poverty.  Poverty comes from the lack of an ability to choose.                                         

Fixing the final end wealth does not change poverty, it just gives it a way to keep going forward by giving people a way to get around dealing with the real problem.  Ensuring that everybody has a chance to choose what they want to do is the only way to eliminate true poverty.                

Hmm, I got a little off track there, oh well, next time.  (Ok, final thesis of the original post:  Assuming that the government has to equalize wealth is to assume that society naturally functions on a level in which, for some people to have, other people have to not have, and, what is good for one person is bad for another, etcetera.  This is not the case, people can benefit from each other's presence, and that is why we are social creatures.  With this as the assumption, the only thing necessary is to prevent people from exploiting other people.  This leaves the positive interactions and removes the negative ones, leading to a more prosperous society than simply leveling the end result.).                     

Desperate thoughts ...

A collection of thoughts from a mind desperately trying to avoid being used for productive work: 

1).  The state, society, collectivism, and the greater good are all abstract concepts, so what business does anybody have forcing individuals (people, not an abstract concept ...  ) to put their needs below the needs of these abstract concepts? 

2).  What can possibly be more important than the individual? 

3).  Libraries really make the world seem smaller.  Just today, I ran into books from (meaning used in) my old university, 4,000 miles away.  Some of them were even written by professors there, cool.     

4).  Nationalism is no worse than any other form of collective mindset.     

5).  Patriotism is loyalty to ideas, and Nationalism is loyalty to a group of people.  What do you think?           

6).  Someday, remind me to go through, line by line, and explain how '39 can be interpreted as a song about WWII. 

7).  The song "Cobwebs and Strange" is like musical amphetamine.  When I listen to it, I do whatever I am doing faster.  It is a very dangerous song to drive to.           

I have almost a week to finish this essay ... sort of ...

Shampoo and Migranes ...

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/beauty/10-drugstore-shampoos-you-shouldnt-buy-even-if-theyre-on-sale-527242/

So I came across this article the other day and thought it was worth sharing, not really the part about what works and what doesn't, but because of the clip about Pantene, and how it made someone have weird breakouts on their arms.     

This doesn't surprise me at all.     

A couple of years ago, I started to have headaches, and by headaches, I mean really, really serious headaches, nausea, sensitivity to light and sound, really fun stuff ...  And I had never had headaches before, this was definitely out of the norm.  Anyway, I got the idea that it was my shampoo (Pantene), because it was worst a couple of hours after I washed my hair, differences in whether I washed my hair at night or in the morning, and when I used conditioner, it was even worse.     

I changed to Dove, and my headaches stopped for a couple of days!  Then they got even worse.  I looked it up online and found this list of chemicals in bathroom products which cause problems for people, and I switched to a shampoo and conditioner which did not contain them (all natural), and my headaches went away and have (for the most part) not been back since.                     

In addition, my skin started to get very rough, dry, cracked, and red on my hands, and unhealthy seeming on my face, so I switched all my soap to non anti bacterial gentler soap, and, again, no problems to the present day.     

Oh, the for the most part on the headaches is this:  MSG can set it off, but only in relatively high doses.  Three servings of non organic fruit (only certain ones, like peaches and strawberries) can set me off, and whenever they put that stuff on the road (or wherever ... ), magnesium chloride, especially in summer, when they put it on dirt roads to keep the dust down, it really, really makes me sick.  As far as I know, I'm fine if it is not too recently applied, though.                                                 

Is this relevant to the majority of the population?  Probably not.  I just thought that, if someone else was having serious headache problems, well, maybe you'd want to look at these as potential causes.  A lot of people probably are not sensitive to chemicals, in which case, no problem!  But if you have been having, well, they sound like they were migrane type headaches from the description I have gotten of migranes, you might want to look at this.                       

George Soros ...

So this is ... um ... chilling? 

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/george-soros-on-helping-the-nazis-during-the-holocaust

I guess that's not new, but it sure is interesting to me. 

The Curious Case of the Glasgow Fire Alarms ...

Glasgow must be a very flammable city, because it takes more fire precautions than anywhere else I have ever been.  You know it's excessive when you worry more about whether someone will set the alarm off when you're in the shower, than whether or not the fire is real.  Another hint is that you go out during the drill, and people are surprised you didn't take the time to get on a coat.  Both of these are true, as is the fact that I have literally had four fire drills within the space of twenty - four hours once, although, to be fair, only three of them were in the same building, and one was planned ...    
People don't bother to get out quickly, anymore, either.  Jacket?  Check.  Shoes?  Well, I could change ...  You stand at the door, and point, if that's a real fire, he's dead, she's dead, he's dead, she's dead ...  It really is odd.     
During one of the fire alarms, my roommate was cooking dinner.  Wouldn't it have been ironic if an actual fire had been started?     
How do all these false alarms get set, you ask?  Well, we get lectures on how to prevent them (yes, lectures entitled "How Not to Set Off the Fire Alarms.").  On the list of things not to do: iron outside of the kitchen, take a shower with the door open, blow dry your hair with the windows closed (sticking your head out the window would be even better ...  ), cook with the door open, use any sort of aerosol spray outside of the kitchen (the kitchen has a real fire alarm, the others will go off at the slightest provocation), open the door before the steam from your shower has dissipated, you get the picture.  We're turning into a bunch of people more afraid of blowdrying our hair than being caught in a fire.    
On the bright side, they do make an effective alarm clock!              

The Post - Industrial Age ...

Communism was Marx's idea of a post - industrial age.  At the time he was writing, society was transforming in every way;  it was the Industrial Revolution, a time of capitalism, innovation, and industry, but also one in which the working classes were exploited by the elites, in which art and intellectual pursuits were pushed to the side, and in which the very structure of western society was changing in every way and on every level.  At this point in time, Hegel's dialectic was a very popular structure in philosophy, and one which influenced nearly every thinker of Marx's generation (Jakob Burckhardt opposed it.).                                              

Wait!  Don't stop reading!  I actually have something original to say!  I just have to describe the dialectic really quickly first ...         

So, in a nutshell, Hegel's dialectic says that everything can be broken down into a basic series of events or situations, the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.  The thesis is the first stage, and has its strengths and weaknesses, the antithesis is the second stage, and has an opposing set of strengths and weaknesses, and synthesis manages to bring the two together.  Sometimes, the synthesis can act as a new thesis, and the process starts over.                     

It kind of makes sense that Hegel's idea of radically opposing situations ultimately merging to create one with all the benefits of both situations would be popular during the Industrial Revolution, when society was changing so drastically.  Different people looked to different situations for the thesis and antithesis, but, ultimately, everyone was looking for the synthesis.  The synthesis would be a post industrial age, which would combine both the benefits of the first two stages to create a much more ideal society.                                     

I don't believe in the Hegelian dialectic, personally.  That said, Marx did, so, just for the sake of argument, I will adopt it here;  it's kind of romantic, anyway.               

Going by the Hegelian dialectic, and I am not going to sit here and explain Marx's multiple step process to achieve Communism, but going by the Hegelian dialectic, it is fair to say that the final stage in society will be caused, at least in part, by the removal of the problems which face society in its other two stages.  Marx focused a lot on class differences, exploitation, alienation, and envisioned a society in which that wasn't the case.  His idea of a utopic society was one in which there was no government, and no private property.  Everyone would work for the good of the society, in total equality.                               

I want no part of such a society.  Marx confronts the problem of class inequality by proposing that the classes be forcibly equalized without ever really addressing any other societal problem.  Marx's idea of equality is purely an idea of material equality.  In Marx's system, individuals have no significance, except as parts of the whole.  This is the biggest problem.                                                                                    

In my opinion, the biggest problem with a purely capitalistic society is that some people become dependent on others.  This is not the case now, but, in the Industrial Revolution, when people had nothing and earned just enough to live on, they really became dependent on the jobs they had, and had to go no matter how badly they were treated.  Those problems have been largely fixed now, even to the point of being overcompensated for.  The dependence, however, was not purely monetary, but intellectual.  The vast majority of people who worked in the factories of the Industrial Revolution were people whose parents did not receive an education, whose families historically worked on farms, but who had sold their land and moved to the city a couple of generations earlier.  They were being exploited, but they didn't know what to do to stop it, and they looked to leaders to stop it for them.  Jakob Burckhardt would tell you that that is why the twentieth century was filled with dictators and tyrants.  That, that is the problem which needed to be addressed in the Industrial phase of society.                                                         

These people needed power, but true power does not come from forced monetary equalization, or societies in which everyone is merely a part of the whole, and, thus, equally powerless.  True power comes from understanding and taking initiative.  If every individual can control his or her own life, if every individual is an end in and of his or herself, then, and only then, can a truly equal society be achieved.  Power cannot be given, but it can be taken away.  Likewise, equality cannot be given, but it can be taken away.                                       

What is my idea of the post - industrial society?  It is a society in which every individual takes the time to truly understand what he or she wants from life, and goes out to achieve it, without hurting anyone else in the process.  Every individual would make his or her own choices, independently of others, and no one would tell anyone what they could or could not do.  Society would not put pressure on the individual to behave in a certain way, because society would be molded by the individuals who lived in it, and not the other way around.                                         

It is a simple vision, in some ways even simpler than Marx's idea of everyone simply contributing to the greater good and taking his equal portion of it.  It is better, though, because it gives life meaning, and freedom, true freedom, both of which are lacking in Marx's utopia.  It is exciting, millions and millions of individual people each doing different things for different reasons, and interacting on that level, rather than Marx's homogenization in the name of equality.  Can it be achieved?  I don't know.  We all talk about how communism is good on paper, but it can never really be achieved, well, I don't think communism is good on paper, but I think it is more likely to be achieved than this.  Education does not create understanding;  it only gives people the information to understand as much or as little as they want to.  Did you ever hear the phrase, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."?  Well, you can lead a person to ideas, but you can't make him/her think.                                                              

Surprise, surprise ...

Today, I woke up to the news that Barack Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize. My only surprise was that I hadn't thought of that happening before it happened. Seriously, he seems to fit in well with the ranks of Al Gore and Jimmy Carter, and we can only hope that he doesn't achieve Yasser Arafat status, but, well, whatever, the Nobel Prize is a joke.

Actually, it would be a joke, except for the fact that one million dollars are involved. The recipient of the prize gets a million dollars, and that makes a difference.

When Al Gore won the prize, Irena Sendler lost. Irena Sendler rescued over one thousand Jewish kids in the holocaust, was tortured by the nazis, and helped place the children after WWII ended. She lived through the days of Communist Poland, and, when she was nominated, was living in a nursing home, with not much more than a meager state pension to live on, and being taken care of by one of the children she rescued. Irena Sendler died later that year, with nothing, which is pretty much what she had had most of her life. She could have had something, but, instead, Al Gore bought a private jet.

We don't know exactly who Obama beat in the race for this prize, but there wasn't only one Irena Sendler in the world ... The people who win make the prize a joke, the people who lose make the prize annoying.

Drugs ...

So, until recently, I did not even consider the idea that drugs should be legalized in society. They are harmful, no good will come of it, legalizing them will increase the number of people who try them, so just keep it the way it is. I didn't really care about marijuana, except that its legalization would probably lead, eventually, to the question of hard drugs being legalized, so it is best not to go down that path. Then I discussed it with some people. Most of them simply accused me of being against drugs for moral reasons, or this or that, but some of them were really willing to sit down and discuss the issues rationally and reasonably, and it was a very interesting argument.

Some of their points I didn't agree with, but the idea that people should be allowed to make their own mistakes is a pretty overwhelming one. Does the government have the right to tell people to do things "for their own good"? If somebody wants to take a drug which might kill them, should they be allowed to? People should have the freedom to choose, as long as it is choosing with full knowledge of the risks.

I came to the conclusion even before this that virtually no drugs should be available by prescription only. Twice the reccomended dose of Tylonol can kill you, so why make something less harmful available by prescription only? Besides, doctors can be pretty careless about prescribing drugs, so maybe the idea that drugs are available even without doctor approval will cause people to take a more active roll in their treatment process.

So what is it that makes drugs something which should be illegal? Dangerous drugs will be available off the shelf if prescriptions are gotten rid of. People should be able to make their own choices.

The one question which is still left to be answered for me is that of addiction. I only said that most prescription drugs should be available without a prescription because I was excluding the addictive ones. People should be free to make their own choices, but addictive drugs actually minimize freedom in the (not too) long run. I am not talking about cigarettes or alcohol, or coffee, or sugar. Anything can be addictive in some way, but I am talking about the highly physically addictive drugs. Opiates such as heroine (and morphine) are the ones which come to mind for me, but maybe there are more. The thing is that, on those, once you start, it is very difficult to stop. Furthermore, they interfere with day to day functioning in all aspects of life. Do people have the right to take away their own freedom? Do others have the right to (by giving them drugs) take away other people's freedom?

The government shouldn't regulate things based on preventing us from doing stuff which could kill us (driving cars could kill us), or from doing stuff which could cause health problems later on (hamburgers should not be banned, either), but, when someone is addicted to a drug, that is a severe limitation on the person's freedom in a number of ways. Freedom is essentially maximized by not allowing physically addictive drugs to be sold, or sold without a prescription.

I guess that brings us to another question, which is, is it the government's role to stay out of people's business, or to maximize freedom?

If it were the government's role to just stay out of other people's business, we would essentially have an anarchy. The counter argument to this is that there is no victim, and the person chooses to give up their freedom. I would tend to argue that the person buying the drugs is the victim, and that, since they are only buying the drug by choice the first couple of times, it is not a choice, for the most part. A lot of people might disagree with this, because it is consentual, but it is irreversible and life damaging. Ultimately, freedom is severely inhibited. Even accepting this, the question is whether you can prosecute a victim for becoming a victim, and the answer is surely not. You can, however, prosecute the person selling the drugs.

So, I guess what I would tend toward is a prosecution of people selling highly addictive drugs.

Parsi ...

I was talking to some people the other day when the subject of Freddie Mercury's ethnicity came up. Was he a Farsi? Parsi. That's like Iranian, right? Well, sort of, it is someone of Persian descent whose more recent ancestors have lived in India.

Same thing, right? No.

They thought I was just being difficult, or, perhaps, a little bit of a know it all, because I am a huge Queen fan (and yes, I am a huge Queen fan.). I am something else, too, though, and that is a Parsi (don't ask me how it came to be that Queen was my favorite band, it has nothing to do with Freddie's being a Parsi! That was just one of those bizarre coincidences.).

I don't really care that they called him a Farsi, and I didn't press the issue. I didn't even tell them that I am a Parsi. I don't get offended when other people talk about my religion or whatever. This is purely for the intellectual interest of anyone finds it, well, interesting ...

Whenever someone asks me where my name is from, I say it is either Parsi or Indian. If they ask me "what I am," I usually say Indian, for simplicity's sake. I never, ever say Iranian, or Persian. Ethnically, it is true, I am much closer to being Iranian than anything else (well, on my Dad's side, on my mom's side, it's Europeans who have been in America since the 1600s), and, so, on forms, I put down "caucasian" as my ethnicity, because Parsis are caucasian, ethnically. Enough on that. Culturally, however, I consider myself much, much more Indian. It is not just because we eat Indian food, speak Indian languages, wear Indian clothes, etcetera, all with variations, naturally. It is also, for me, the fact that, well, Iran kicked us out and India took us in!

Here's the story as it was told to me, and probably countless other Parsis.

When the Muslims invaded Persia, they gave the existing inhabitants three choices. They could convert, they could leave, or they could die. The Parsis were the people who chose to leave. Not all of the people who chose to leave made it. Some landed in hostile countries and were killed off, or died on the journey, etcetera. Supposedly, some went to China, and were killed off. Anyway, a group of them landed in Gujarat, on the western coast of India, and they were greeted with hostility and suspicion. The king came and was going to make them leave, saying that they could not be
trusted not to take over, etcetera, and one of the priests made his plea. He asked that a bowl full of milk be brought, and it was. He brought some sugar, and put it in the milk, and said, "See, the sugar didn't make the milk overflow, but if you taste it, it is now sweeter. That is what we will do for you. We will not cause a disruption. There are not many of us. We will not convert other people, or try to take over in any
way. We just ask the right to live here and practice as we wish, and, in return, we will contribute to the country and make it better for everyone." The king said ok, and we've been living in India ever since.

The thing is, we did move there, and we did integrate, and we have been successful in India. We are an ethnic group in India with roots in Persia, rather than a group of Persians who has been living in India all this time.

Society Must Be Decentralized ...

Society must be decentralized. The question is how the government should factor into this. The government is in a unique position of being a relatively unchecked center. It exists to check other centers, but it, itself is relatively unchecked. In the American Republic, the government is supposed to be checked by the population, the ultimate decentralization, but government is a very dangerous power center, because virtually all centralization and oppression which has occurred in the past has been performed by the government.

Centralization versus Decentralization ...

Ok, if many subsequent posts are going to make sense, I am going to have to spend time defining a couple of words, centralization and decentralization. The exact definition of these words might be adjusted slightly as I go along, and it is going to be a little bit difficult to say exactly what I mean by the words at the beginning, so I am thinking that I'll just give the words two bits of information each, a description of the most extreme scenario, knowing that it is highly improbable that the most extreme scenario of either would happen at any time, and the historical context of each. This way, you'll know what I am talking about when I ramble on about centralization.

Centralization: In its extreme form, centralization means one world government determining what is best for international society as a whole. People only form a part of the greater whole, and can be used by society for the greater good. Everything is ordered, and everybody plays their part, contributes their work, and interacts with other people who do the same thing. Marx's definitions of Socialism and Communism were good examples of ideals of centralization.

Decentralization: In its extreme form, decentralization means that no groups exist, and individuals act solely of their own volition. Centralization was a product, largely, of the Industrial Revolution, and what had existed before then in the middle class was a largely decentralized system. People did not, for the most part, rely on specific other people. There is no dependence. Dependence is a product of centralization. People do not exert power over each other. That is also a product of centralization. Decentralization is much easier to define by what it is not than what it is, which is simply all members of society living their lives as they see fit, and making their own choices without force by other people. It is the total independence of each member of society.

I will say right now that decentralization is the route in which I believe society needs to go, and that, if ultimate decentralization were possible, it would be my idea of a utopia. Given the idea, which I feel is pretty well substantiated, that it is not possible, however, the goal must be to structure society in such a way that decentralization is maximized, so that individual autonomy can also be maximized.

I will also argue in favor of decentralization, rather than centralization, as the ideal.

Quadrophenia Versions and Introductions ...

So today, I picked up the soundtrack version of Quadrophenia. As I understand it, John Entwistle produced the music for the soundtrack version, while Pete Townshend produced the two album versions. Perhaps Roger didn't care too much for the soundtrack version? I'm not sure. Anyway, it is quite different, actually. John's version seems much harder, but there is always something going on in the background, whether it is something orchestral, or guitar, or even piano, which kind of sounds like his bass lines. I can't tell which version I prefer! They are so different. Another cool thing about the soundtrack is that it ends with fifties and early sixties songs. The cool thing is that these songs, which I have heard a million times, before, sound totally different on this album, and not because they have changed them! It is just that looking at them from Quadrophenia, you can almost picture the early and mid sixties mod culture, and these songs which we grow up with, thinking of them as innocent little cutesy songs, well, they were not always that! They were part of a legitimate culture in society for a long time. It really adds to the romantization of the time, even using songs which I would not have picked out as my favorites from the era, for the most part.

Yeah, this post is a little stiff. I am going to be posting a lot more, though, I think, and the posts should get more fluid and conversational as they go along. A lot of the previous posts here were simply imported from my facebook account, and I was not sure what to do for a blog, even though a lot of people were telling me that I should start one. Add to that the problem of having a whole lot to say and not a whole lot of people who are interested, and the solution becomes clear. Whenever I have something to say that will interest no one I know (and that is a lot), whether it is about politics, music, movies, or life in general, I am going to bring it here. I might also try twitter. Hopefully, I can use this to vent, ponder, and philosophize, and someone else can use this to read and respond to.

We'll see!

Roman Polanski ...

Roman Polanski was arrested for raping a 13 year old girl thirty years ago. At first, I was willing to give Polanski the benefit of a doubt. I will say it. The guy has had a traumatic life. He loses his mother in the holocaust, then he loses his wife and unborn child in the helter skelter killings. Now, I never would have given him special treatment legally because of this, but did I think he was necessarily a horrible person? No. Stuff like that leaves scars, and maybe that was just some manifestation of an emotional scar, a one time only occurrence which, well, I wasn't quite sure what happened, anyway, and maybe it wasn't that bad ... Well, it was. It was as bad as you can imagine and then some. Read the victim's testimony, and then go read some of Roman Polanski's later exploits, as detailed in his autobiography. Yes, Whoopie, it was "rape - rape." I don't know what you think "rape - rape" is, but I assure you, taking an underaged girl (No, it is not just a societal stigma. This matters because children depend on and trust adults, because they do not have the knowledge, skills, or life experience to take care of themselves), drugging her (with drugs and alcohol which could have killed her, by the way), and having intercourse with her even when she still objects is "rape - rape."

Even sadder than Hollywood backing up Polanski is the repeated treatment of victims of rape in this country, led by Hollywood and the press. More often than not, it is treated as the woman's fault. Polanski's victim says that every time this case comes up, her name is dragged through the mud by the press, who says that her mother was just trying to get her a movie role, or something like that. Heaven forbid it's the man's fault, especially when he is famous. This is not new. William Kennedy Smith raped someone on the beach at Ted Kennedy's house, but it was her fault, because, well, what kind of girl was she, anyway, walking alone with a man on the beach at night? What did she expect? No it doesn't matter that she was on the property, and in the company of the family of, a US Senator (even though he was a Kennedy) ... Any girl who would engage in such conduct should expect to be raped. When Clinton raped Paula Jones, she was dragged through the mud as trailer trash. Actually, she was a big - nosed, horse - faced piece of trailer trash, so she should just be glad that a man paid her any attention at all ... I've got news for you.

I don't care if a woman is walking naked down the darkest allyway in the US, she should not expect to be raped. It should not be excused if she is raped. It is never her fault.

Laura Ingraham's Ten for '10 ...

Most of it seems ok, but there was one thing which really stuck out at me as being just awful. 9) Restore America's System of Justice. Introduce penalties for frivolous lawsuits, where those who launch unsuccessful lawsuits are liable for the defendants' legal bills. That is a terrible, terrible idea. Firstly, just because you lose a lawsuit does not mean the lawsuit was frivolous. Lawsuits are long, hard battles, and they often involve corruption or unfairness of some sort. Raising the stakes only raises the chances of this happening. The legal system is manned by people who are no better than the people filing the lawsuits. Furthermore, it becomes a restriction on people who want or need to file real, valid lawsuits, because the stakes become too high to risk a defeat.This renders the petition unsignable, absolutely. We cannot have this impede people's rights to justice under the legal system of the United States. If people are so worried about frivolous lawsuits, maybe we should ensure that judges are hired who can choose what is frivolous and what isn't. We already have "Rule 11," which states that a judge can determine if a lawsuit is frivolous or not, and act accordingly. This includes making the side engaging in the "frivolous" lawsuit pay the legal fees for the other side. This puts the entire American justice system at risk.

Roman Polanski ...

Roman Polanski was arrested for raping a 13 year old girl thirty years ago.

At first, I was willing to give Polanski the benefit of a doubt. I will say it. The guy has had a traumatic life. He loses his mother in the holocaust, then he loses his wife and unborn child in the helter skelter killings. Now, I never would have given him special treatment legally because of this, but did I think he was necessarily a horrible person? No. Stuff like that leaves scars, and maybe that was just some manifestation of a scar, a one time only occurrence which, well, I wasn't quite sure what happened, anyway, and maybe it wasn't that bad ... Well, it was. It was as bad as you can imagine and then some. Read the victim's testimony, and then go read some of Roman Polanski's later exploits, as detailed in his autobiography. Yes, Whoopie, it was "rape - rape." I don't know what you think "rape - rape" is, but I assure you, taking an underaged girl (No, it is not just a societal stigma. This matters because children depend on and trust adults, because they do not have the knowledge, skills, or life experience to take care of themselves), drugging her (with drugs and alcohol which could have killed her, by the way), and having intercourse with her even when she still objects is "rape - rape."

Even sadder than Hollywood backing up Polanski is the repeated treatment of victims of rape in this country, led by Hollywood and the press. More often than not, it is treated as the woman's fault. Polanski's victim says that every time this case comes up, her name is dragged through the mud by the press, who says that her mother was just trying to get her a movie role, or something like that. Heaven forbid it's the man's fault, especially when he is famous. This is not new. William Kennedy Smith raped someone on the beach at Ted Kennedy's house, but it was her fault, because, well, what kind of girl was she, anyway, walking alone with a man on the beach at night? What did she expect? No it doesn't matter that she was on the property, and in the company of the family of, a US Senator (even though he was a Kennedy) ... Any girl who would engage in such conduct should expect to be raped. When Clinton raped Paula Jones, she was dragged through the mud as trailer trash. Actually, she was a big - nosed, horse - faced piece of trailer trash, so she should just be glad that a man paid her any attention at all ...
I've got news for you. I don't care if a woman is walking naked down the darkest allyway in the US, she should not expect to be raped. It should not be excused if she is raped. It is never her fault.