Madness Like Contagion: MIssion Creeps Lurking

(Updated, stet at 1445 hours, as to the question asked...)

After a medium length break to let people ponder the concepts, I figured I'd return to do a little dousing of flames.

Besides, the weather's lousy and I've mostly finished my hobby side project.

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Today's topic is "mission creeps".

This isn't the same thing as "mission creep", though that plays a formative role.

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From the Wikipedia article on "Mission Creep":

Mission creep is the expansion of a project or mission beyond its original goals, often after initial successes.[1] The term often implies a certain disapproval of newly adopted goals by the user of the term. Mission creep is usually considered undesirable due to the dangerous path of each success breeding more ambitious attempts, only stopping when a final, often catastrophic, failure occurs. The term was originally applied exclusively to military operations, but has recently been applied to many different fields, mainly the growth of bureaucracies.

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I shouldn't have to remind anyone that I grew up as a child of the Cold War.

Born not long after the launch of Sputnik, my family moved to the DC area not long after John Glenn became the first American to orbit this planet.

As a resident of the DC area, it wasn't long before I understood as well as anyone else -- and better than probably most -- the effects of nuclear weapons. I understood as well as anyone that I lived at the prime target in any nuclear war, and as I grew up on the standard fare of James Bond movies and about a million knockoffs in the genre, like probably a million kids I dreamed that maybe one day I too might grow up to be one of those suave and debonaire ladies-men with an unheard-of career doing things I could never talk about, and a license to kill.

Well, none of that happened, of course.

As for license, many suggest that my artistic license should be suspended, and it turns out that whatever career I have seems to be blogging (at least in the modern day) and I "talk about" any ol' damn thing that comes into my poor addled head. As for being a ladies-man, ah, no. I think this is well understood by now.

As a man with no family responsibilities -- at least I have no wife and no kids -- I really have very few life-path choices in front of me. Pick one! Do I devote my life to a descent into vice and self-destruction, due to a complete lack of attachment to anything or any ties to the community of the sort usually characterized as "ball and chain" or "mountains of debt"? Or do I try to give back, to adopt goals larger than myself, and try to move toward those goals as best I may?

As "the Preacher" says in Ecclesiastes, to paraphrase, it really doesn't matter how you live the life you were given; naked we come into the world, and naked we leave it. From dust we were made, and to dust we return. For the sinner and for the saint, for the rich and for the poor, for the mighty and for the weak, in the end there is only the grave, and as we no longer remember the fame of men of ancient days, in times to come, we also shall be forgotten.

Fame, glory, power, wealth... these too shall pass. So eat, drink, be merry, the grave awaits us all and none but the condemned know when their time will come.

And as a pagan I can accept every word of this; it's excellent advice. And whatever does no harm I shall do, as I see fit... and if I may prevent harm, in that I shall also take pleasure.

But I digress.

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Okay, says the Astute Reader, so you were a child of the Cold War, we know from the record that your dad was former military and your whole family worked government careers, and even you, the blogger, spent a few years picking up a Federal paycheck. Yet you're still batshit crazy, in Our Humble Opinion, which opinion we spare no effort to assure is widely held. Did you have a point to make here, or are you just trying to over-use foreshadowing and flashback and digression in a way that would make even Kurt Vonnegut, Jr dizzy and seasick?

Well, no, I should respond, I am just putting words in the mouths of my entirely hypothetical readers.

There's some technical name for that literary device, but I forget for now what that name might be.

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Well, try to keep up.

Typical suburban DC-area kids from government worker families usually wind up going off to college and never coming back to the area for any longer than might be necessary.

Why? -you may well ask.

That is an excellent question!

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Another excellent question was once asked me by nice expatriate lady from former USSR.

This, of course, was right before the glorious events of 1991 and 1992, when the USSR effectively collapsed as a communist state.

"Why," she asked me, "does every single one of us who comes here begin to suffer severe mental illness?"

Well, it turns out that nice expatriate lady from former USSR could have been suffering from any number of things. Perhaps it's the culture shock. Perhaps it's the water supply, which was so bad down in the District that Congress had to put together a special funding package back in 1995, and they were all drinking bottled water at work because who the heck knew what might be in the water from day to day. But that doesn't make sense, because the people from here would all be crazy too, and they aren't, are they?

I didn't know what to say about that. I wasn't exactly "all together", myself, at the time.

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Years later, I think I've perhaps got some understanding of this.

The lady, of course, was someone who had escaped or defected from the USSR, not an easy thing at all to do, not at that time.

When she had been living in the USSR, it was an accepted fact of life that there were several different types of secret police. It was also an accepted fact of life that once they decided that you were interesting, it was only a matter of time -- and generally not a lot of time -- before you were taken in. If you were lucky, it would be for theft or "hooliganism" and you would actually go through a court and into the prison system. This was considered "lucky" because at least in this circumstance your friends and family would know what had happened to you.

Of course, the secret police were generally as secret as they could be, but the fact was, anyone who felt eyes upon them could reasonably suspect that the secret police were investigating them. A thousand subtle clues would be perceived by anyone who knew -- as all Soviet citizens knew -- that they could at any moment become an object of interest to large and powerful organizations of people who were very well armed and not the least hesitant about excessive use of force.

But it was known that once the secret police started looking at you, they would quickly be coming to get you.

I think what was driving a lot of the expatriates right to the brink of madness was all of the people here in the resettlement zones, who behaved exactly like secret policemen, trying to not be noticed.

Perhaps it wasn't that, exactly... it was the fact that all of this surveillance never culminated in arrest or "disappearance". What was driving the poor expatriates crazy was that the feeling of impending arrest never ever ended.

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Of course, this being at the height of the Cold War, and she being an expatriate, and spies being spies, etc etc etc., all of this surveillance was absolutely real.

Some of it might well have been from any of a number of foreign nations which had fairly extensive intelligence operations in the DC area, and which no doubt still have them.

And then there's the "local talent..."

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Back in the old Cold War days, there was a really rather large number of people who got paychecks from... well, somewhere. Those paychecks got deposited... somewhere. And somewhere in town, or around town, or, well... somewhere, there was a practically unlimited pool of beat up old cars, shiny new cars, well-maintained used models, and probably motorcycles and bicycles and perhaps even skateboards.

"Local talent" would go through a variety of routines and wind up driving one of those cars/scooters/bikes all around the town and environs, working surveillance.

This was actually necessary, as quite a lot of international espionage was ongoing, and still happens. In the modern day, messages get passed a bit more electronically than in the former days. Back in the day, people were really truly doing things like smuggling microfilm microspools in semi-dried chewing gum stuck to the front of the heel of their shoe. Other stuff that was both extremely effective and too silly to believe also went on. Hell, there was even that business with Wilson Forbrush, but let's not go into that right now.

The point is, there were so many people following other people that it was practically impossible that a lot of these folks wouldn't wind up effectively tripping over each other, so to speak. It's hard to not notice that while you're trying to "be casual" following one person walking down the block in front of you, that you're walking right next to someone else trying to "be casual" as they're following someone walking right next to the person you yourself are following. Did I mention "silly"? The only way this can avoid becoming silly, or dangerous -- or worst of all, both silly and dangerous -- is that people get to know each other, more or less. Despite the fact that the various actors in "casual" pursuit of their wily subjects may be working for very different organizations and goals, the intelligence community did become a community. Hell, they became most of some communities.

And then, after years undercover, suddenly international superpower relationships are altered by Perestroika and Glasnost, and suddenly nobody has anything left to do.

And somewhere... somewhere there are parking lots full of cars that nobody needs to have at a moment's notice, and special lockers full of surveillance-equipment duffels that won't be getting used much anymore, and a lot of people with a very part-time job won't be getting those astonishingly large paychecks for doing next-to-nothing anymore.

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Can anyone reasonably discuss "mission creep" when there is no more mission for creeps?

About 12,000 people got "let go" in the DC area alone.

Can one reasonably suggest, however, that because someone is no longer employed as a ballerina, that it logically follows that they no longer can enjoy, or be good at, the Dance?

There's some saying to the effect of "give them the skills, the mission can come later".

What becomes of people at the peak of their game and career, when suddenly they are told that there's just no need for them anymore?

Put it this way: even if the NFL went out of business tomorrow, next Monday night, there will still be a game somewhere, and the pros will be playing.

Their previous mission might have been to entertain a hundred million couch potatos, and to get damn well paid to do it.

Their mission for now? Have fun while maintaining skills.

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Ah, poor expatriate lady from former USSR, driven mad by being followed everywhere by people who don't even make accusations or arrests!

Ah, poor people who no longer have jobs following people everywhere!

Ah, poor people with formerly cushy (and secretly very powerful, but very restrained) jobs managing and organizing people who have jobs following people everywhere.

What to do with all of that talent, skills, and ambition?

Maybe they could instigate, and exploit, a little bit of Onierataxia...

When, of course, they should be out looking for this.

And that is what you get when your Creeps have no Mission: you get Mission Creeps, doing whatever ridiculous thing they think will bring more people and more information within their reach, rather than being directed by competent authority towards useful ends.

For some reason, this reminds me of the important theme buried in Stephen King's novel "the Tommyknockers": they have a few dozen really good tricks that turn out to all be ultimately destructive or worse, useless and time-wasting dead ends. Pay any heed to them, and you wind up just like them. But then again, that was their goal all along.

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[Part V] Oneirataxia and Gamer Overload

(Updated, some typoes fixed etc. Stet at 23:30)

What has gone before: Recently, I bewailed the New Racism in MoCo, mentioning that visually obvious "street gangs" seem increasingly race-based, entrenching themselves into various neighborhoods, increasing the appearance of ethnic enclaves, perhaps spurring on the formation of new race-based street gangs. I also had to digress through another posting that I was experimenting with a new literary structure for blogging.

A little history followed, about ethnic separatism and race/ethnicity-based hatred and crime and how it affected my ancestors here in the US. This is so that the Astute Reader -- and even readers less than astute -- will understand that I am not without sympathy for the victims of racial hatred.

Then I just had to make some clarifications regarding the distinction between simile and metaphor so that people will know that while you can call someone an Ass, that doesn't make them actually a Donkey. I pointed out that there are few faster routes to madness than the embracing of Superstition, and actually starting to believe ridiculous and utterly unreal stuff.

I did a long and probably pointless exposition on how I myself am effectively alone in a crowd, and thus somewhat immune to getting caught up in a lot of "mob psychology".

In "Don't Crush That Dwarf" I offered a bit of background of the popular Role Playing Game "ShadowRun", and more importantly covered the concept of Moral Panic, a variation on Mob Psychology which doesn't quite rise to the level of Riot, but which can be a first step into the sort of madness usually referred to as Witch Hunts.

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(For those who wondered whether or not it's available for their gaming console, please see ShadowRun for Xbox 360 Trailer.)

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There aren't many things that will spark a Moral Panic in the short-term, or a Witch Hunt in the long term, than a Blood Libel.

The best-known such cases have been the unfortunately common Blood Libels against Jews.

Yet even in the modern day, in a country full of people one would hope had been well-educated in their modern society, there are such blood libels as those of Satanic Ritual Abuse, in which alleged Satanists allegedly tortured or sacrificed their own children, each others' children, or the children of neighbors or total strangers.

From Wikipedia:

Allegations of SRA involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of individuals in the context of occult or satanic rituals. At its most extreme definition, SRA involved a world-wide conspiracy involving the wealthy and powerful of the world elite in which children were abducted or bred for sacrifices, pornography and prostitution.

That the majority of such alleged cases turned out to be either nothing at all, or something totally different, still, genuine and real horrors abound, and have abounded throughout history.

For example, recently here in Aspen Hill, a woman living on Vandalia Court allegedly abused her adopted children for so long that she wound up keeping the bodies of two of them in her freezer after she eventually killed them. Renee D Bowman is under indictment for Murder as well as a host of child-abuse offenses in the disturbing "Freezer Babies Case".

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How disturbed does a person have to be in order to (allegedly) beat two young children until they die, and than pack them into the freezer and tote them around the state over a series of moves?

Pretty damned disturbed, I'd say.

You'd think that someone with that level of disturbance would be obvious, and remarkable. Yet none of the neighbors even noticed that two of three adopted children were missing, and the woman was able to hold down a fairly demanding job. Indeed, the District of Columbia government cleared her to adopt, not just once, but twice.

My point is, nobody noticed how disturbed and potentially violent this woman was, and she held down a job and in all ways fit every detail of the picture most of us have of what constitutes a good and decent citizen.

And allegedly, she fit that picture perfectly until she beat her adopted children to death and iced them down in the garage deep freeze.

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I am quite certain that I am not the least bit alone in wondering: How many other people who seem totally normal are actually seething pits of frothing madness and repressed violence, possibly only a tiny nudge away from who-knows-what sending them over the edge?

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"Oneirataxia" is an inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality.

In a non-pathological form, almost everyone has experienced this, especially as children or teenagers.

An example: you go out to see a movie. For example, you go to see the latest version of Dracula... at the midnight showing.

On the way home, you walk past a darkened alleyway and see a lurking figure within. Of course, you pick up the pace. In all likelihood, this is nothing more than some homeless person doing some dumpster-diving, or a drunk urinating in public. "Onierataxia", however, is experienced for a moment: having just walked out of a horror movie, and it having been actually interesting drama as well as rather scary, your mind first leaps to the possibility that the individual in the dark alley is...

Sane people immediately discount this notion. First, it's ridiculous. Even if it wasn't ridiculous, what are the odds? That's like walking out of an end-of-the-world movie into the opening salvo of World War Four, or being struck by a meteor watching a cable channel replay of "Deep Impact". Of course, there's the added difference that it is actually possible that there could be a meteor impact, or a nuclear war.

In the mildly pathological forms of onierataxia (literally, "walking into a dream"), role-playing gamer teenagers spend all night in a grueling game of ShadowRun and emerge in the morning and the first thing that they see are some skinny blonds with prominent and pointed ears. "Elves!" they exclaim, though ideally not all of the gamers will exclaim this. Ideally, at least one of the gamers will point out to the onierataxic gamer that, first, they are not playing ShadowRun any more, and that secondly, there is no such thing.

In a really bad case, however, you might see all of the gamers declare, "zoh my gawd, it really is an elf!"

In the the next-to-worst of all possible cases, the group decides to kill it.

In the worst possible case, they succeed... and want to do it again, and go recruit towards that end.

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Folie à deux is a rather worrisome type of mental illness. Please read the link, above, and then ask yourself if perhaps our society's constant immersion in media -- from television through internet and through video gaming, etc -- might not tend to increase the number of persons predisposed to this "shared psychotic disorder":

Folie à deux /fɒˈli ə ˈdu/ (translated, "a madness shared by two") is a rare psychiatric syndrome in which a symptom of psychosis (particularly a paranoid or delusional belief) is transmitted from one individual to another. The same syndrome shared by more than two people may be called folie à trois, folie à quatre, folie à famille or even folie à plusieurs ("madness of many"). Recent psychiatric classifications refer to the syndrome as shared psychotic disorder (DSM-IV) (297.3) and induced delusional disorder (folie à deux) (F.24) in the ICD-10, although the research literature largely uses the original name.

More intersting in a way which should be considered carefully and deeply (italics mine):

Folie à deux and its more populous cousins are in many ways a psychiatric curiosity. The current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders states that a person cannot be diagnosed as being delusional if the belief in question is one "ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture" (see entry for delusion). It is not clear at what point a belief considered to be delusional escapes from the folie à... diagnostic category and becomes legitimate because of the number of people holding it. When a large number of people may come to believe obviously false and potentially distressing things based purely on hearsay, these beliefs are not considered to be clinical delusions by the psychiatric profession and are labelled instead as mass hysteria.

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First, "Moral Panic", and then "Folie à deux"... can Mass Hysteria be long in coming?

Charles Mackay, the original author of "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" has this to say:

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."

Mackay takes on the mass-hysteria aspects of fashions in beards and everything from witch-hunts to economic bubbles. His work however, doesn't cover much of the modern day; the work was first published in 1841... long before such things as the First Civil War in the US, before the psychedelic revolution of the 1960s, or the War on Drugs ongoing since then, or the recent so-called "Culture Wars".

If indeed we witness the formation of gangs of onierataxic persons trying to stalk and destroy imaginary beings, I'd guess that this falls under "Extraordinary Popular Delusion".

But this might indeed be "the New Racism"... a form of mass Witch Hunt, maybe a bit more low-key than in colonial Salem Massachusetts. Wouldn't want the authorities to get into a Moral Panic and stop all of the fun, right?

I've noticed that some folks just want or need someone to hate, to hate with the sort of hatred that doesn't much think about anything other than exercising that emotion. In the modern day, there isn't much for such people to do. All of the things people might have been encouraged to hate in the past, those reasons to hate are deeply deprecated and often even illegal.

Hating people based on their race, religion, national origin, matriculation or lack thereof, or even disability or mental challenges... it's considered just beyond the pale to hate people for this sort of thing, and crimes demonstrably motivated by such hatred are prosecuted more intensely, and rewarded with harsher sentences than mere crimes of random passion.

So why not direct hatred at the imaginary?

I suppose that's almost cathartic in a drama, but hating the imaginary and failing to distinguish between the imaginary and the real...

It's hard to know whether to charge them with Hate Crime, or lock them up as criminally Insane.

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More to come?

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[Part IV] Don't Crush That Dwarf: the "New Racism" in East MoCo

What has gone before: Recently, I bewailed the New Racism in MoCo,mentioning that visually obvious "street gangs" seem increasingly race-based, entrenching themselves into various neighborhoods, increasing the appearance of ethnic enclaves, perhaps spurring on the formation of new race-based street gangs. I also had to digress through another posting that I was experimenting with a new literary structure for blogging.

A little history followed, about ethnic separatism and race/ethnicity-based hatred and crime and how it affected my ancestors here in the US. This is so that the Astute Reader -- and even readers less than astute -- will understand that I am not without sympathy for the victims of racial hatred.

Then I just had to make some clarifications regarding the distinction between simile and metaphor so that people will know that while you can call someone an Ass, that doesn't make them actually a Donkey. I pointed out that there are few faster routes to madness than the embracing of Superstition, and actually starting to believe ridiculous and utterly unreal stuff.

I did a long and probably pointless exposition on how I myself am effectively alone in a crowd, and thus somewhat immune to getting caught up in a lot of "mob psychology".

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Play this as you read, okay?
"Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers", Firesign Theater.

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Back in the Middle Ages, outside of events such as wars and eruptions of the Plague, there wasn't a whole lot to do other than work the fields and go to Mass.

However, every now and then, people's boredom would get the better of them, and their imaginations would run wild in a riot of back-alley whispering, and the next thing you know, it's time for yet-another Witch Hunt.

We who live in the modern day, of course, generally know better than to believe that there are old women sacrificing infants to the devil and then flying around on broomsticks to poison wells and make livestock miscarry, right?

Well, most of we Americans who were raised in the mainstream culture of the United States know better than that.

In most modern public schools, at a fairly young age, we are taught about the history of the Salem Witch Trials.

That is generally enough of an example for most people as to why we have our present system of courts. We have laws which restrain the actions of individuals and we have Constitutions which restrain the actions and powers of the State and of the Federal government.

Yet there is a very powerful force which can run wild in any population. It's frequently observed in one or another degree, yet almost nobody can ever discuss it by giving it its proper name: Moral Panic.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed by a large population about a specific group of people who appear to threaten the social order at a given time. Stanley Cohen, author of the seminal Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972), says moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests." Those who start the panic when they fear a threat to prevailing social or cultural values are known by researchers as "moral entrepreneurs", while the people who supposedly threaten the social order are known as "folk devils." Moral panics are by-products of controversies that produce arguments and social tension, or aren't easily discussed as some of these moral panics are taboo to many people. The media have long operated as agents of moral indignation, even if they are not self-consciously engaged in crusading or muckraking. Simply reporting the facts can be enough to generate concern, anxiety or panic.

And who are these so-called "moral entrepreneurs"?

From Wikipedia:

A moral entrepreneur is a person who seeks to influence a group to adopt or maintain a norm. The moral entrepreneur may press for the creation or enforcement of a norm for any number of reasons, altruistic or selfish. [...] [M]oral entrepreneurs fall into roughly two categories: rule creators, and rule enforcers. Rule creators can be seen as moral crusaders, who are concerned chiefly with the successful persuasion of others, but are not concerned with the means by which this persuasion is achieved.

The term "moral entrepreneur" comes from Becker (Becker, Howard S. (1973). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: The Free Press).

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Now, I suppose I might be classified as a bit of a "moral entrepreneur", especially over issues such as home-overcrowding, and people who pave their yards and illegally park their work fleets on the paved yards.

However, I don't think that anything I have done rises to the level of "panic". These characteristics would have to be present, and as of now, I haven't managed to motivate any such sequence:

• Concern - There must be awareness that the behaviour of the group or category in question is likely to have a negative impact on society.
  
• Hostility - Hostility towards the group in question increases, and they become "folk devils". A clear division forms between "them" and "us".
  
• Consensus - Though concern does not have to be nationwide, there must be widespread acceptance that the group in question poses a very real threat to society. It is important at this stage that the "moral entrepreneurs" are vocal and the "folk devils" appear weak and disorganised.
  
• Disproportionality - The action taken is disproportionate to the actual threat posed by the accused group.
  
• Volatility - Moral panics are highly volatile and tend to disappear as quickly as they appeared due to a wane in public interest or news reports changing to another topic.
  
• Ref: (Ben-Yehuda N; Goode E (1994). Moral panics: the social construction of deviance. Oxford: Blackwell.)
  

So, who are these "folk devils"? From Wikipedia:

A folk devil is a person or group of people who are portrayed in folklore or the media as outsiders and deviant, and who are blamed for crimes or other sorts of social problems. (compare scapegoat)

The pursuit of folk devils frequently intensifies into a mass movement that is called a moral panic. When a moral panic is in full swing, the folk devils are the subject of loosely organized but pervasive campaigns of hostility through gossip and the spreading of urban legends. The mass media sometimes get in on the act or attempt to create new folk devils to create controversies (see To Catch a Predator). Sometimes the campaign against the folk devil influences a nation's politics and legislation.

According to the Wikipedia article,

Catholics were seen as folk devils; minorities and immigrants have often been seen as folk devils; in the long history of anti-Semitism, which frequently targeted Jews with allegations of dark, murderous practices, such as blood libel; or the Roman persecution of Christians that blamed the military reverses suffered by the Roman Empire on the Christians' abandonment of paganism.

More recent folk devils have included the McCarthyite persecution of alleged Communists; Satanists and allegations of Satanic ritual abuse; blaming video games and violence, Goths, and other youth subcultures or musical genres for the Columbine massacre; racial issues from making either certain races a folk devil or racists themselves; people from certain countries (e.g. Mexico) for problems in the USA, and Islam for terrorism.

Thus, everything from religious differences to fashion choices has been blamed for everything from the collapse of empire to cranky babies, more or less.

But how does this relate to "the New Racism"?

And who, around here, would be the worthy subjects of a good old-fashioned Moral Panic, complete with "disproportionality"?

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The Astute Reader will no doubt remember my epic series on the Epic Fail of the "Midtown AA" cult of Sex Gang Children.

I doubt that this got much "disproportionality" and in fact it probably got a huge yawn from anyone who might have actually read it. The so-called "13th step" of seducing newcomers to Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous is an old story; the only thing that should spark any outrage would be fact that a lot of courts order people to join such groups as an alternative to prison, evidently all unawares that the alternative to prison is membership in a pseudo-religion Sex Cult.

Nor does it seem to bother anyone that there is at least one group is prowling the streets of MoCo trying to drive disabled people out of town, or at least out of their taxpayer subsidized rental housing.

Indeed, if you wanted a perfect example of "moral entrepreneurs" inciting a low-key "moral panic" for fun and profit, you probably could not find a better example of such, that is motivated by ideas which are, however despicable, comprehensible as sane.

But what about moral panics among the insane?

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And what, exactly, do we call "insane"?

I do believe that I have both held forth on the notion that Superstition is one of the fastest paths to madness, if you want to define madness as believing in the utterly unreal and basing actions in reality on your belief in the unreal. As well, I mentioned that I might try to bring in a motif of the Role Playing Game Shadowrun.

I personally never played Shadowrun, but I once had some housemates who were hardcore players and had collected a lot of the supporting literature and play materials, up to and including fiction based in this fictional "universe" and written by everyone from professional writers to die-hard fans.

As fictional worlds go, fantasy universes in which stories take place, Shadowrun isn't too unbelivable, and that may be the problem. Internally it makes a lot of sense, and where it doesn't make sense, it is made to make sense through the use of the concept of magic.

"Magical Thinking" is something that might or might not be a disorder in and of itself, or perhaps it might be indicative of a greater disorder.

Then again, it might be indicative of a complete lack of education, and of Superstition.

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Perhaps two years ago, I was standing around with a friend, and we were talking about sports or politics or something really mundane, and this 40-ish Central American woman walks past with a little boy in tow.

As she passed, she pulled the little boy closer to her, and pointed at us, not too subtly. And then she pinched him, and hissed "Silencio! Vampiros!"

Well, that little boy certainly did hush up quickly... but one must wonder at the particulars of Central American legends and mythologies. Then again, who knows what they'll believe, after all, there was the flap and "moral panic" over the Chupacabra.

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When Shadowrun first came out, it was a sort of "cult classic", in limited circulation.

Then as role-playing games gained popularity -- especially as popular video games carried the concept out of books and onto gaming consoles -- Shadowrun became something of a fad.

And why not?

Imagine, if you will, JRR Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings", only with modern or post-modern technology.

The Shadowrun world is cross-genre, incorporating elements of both cyberpunk and urban fantasy. The game is set approximately 60 years in the future of present-day Earth, and includes an account of important events from now until the time of the game. As in many near-future cyberpunk settings, Shadowrun includes advanced computer technology and sophisticated cybernetic implants. Unlike in a purely cyberpunk game, in the Shadowrun world, magic returns in 2011. Among other things, this causes humankind to split into subtypes, and some people take the form of elves, dwarves, orks or trolls. Likewise, some animals turn into the familiar monsters of fantasy, and both monsters and human magicians gain supernatural powers. By the second half of the 21st century, when the game is set, these events are accepted as commonplace.

William Gibson, a very influential and famous writer and a founder of the Cyberpunk school of science fiction, said of Shadowrun:

... when I see things like ShadowRun, the only negative thing I feel about it is that initial extreme revulsion at seeing my literary DNA mixed with elves. Somewhere somebody's sitting and saying 'I've got it! We're gonna do William Gibson and Tolkien!' Over my dead body! But I don't have to bear any aesthetic responsibility for it. I've never earned a nickel, but I wouldn't sue them. It's a fair cop. I'm sure there are people who could sue me, if they were so inclined, for messing with their stuff. So it's just kind of amusing...

It's too bad that Mr Gibson didn't have some sort of royalty arrangements with the publishers of Shadowrun and spin-offs. As wealthy as his work has made him, he'd easily be worth a lot more with income from royalties, if he had them.

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After Shadowrun went "mainstream", a lot of parents went into a "moral panic" over the supposed association of role-playing games with teenage and young-adult "weirdness".

This "weirdness" generally took the form of fans wandering around through Real Life, talking about Hit Points, Mage Scores, and the general unfairness of being a Troll in a contest against Elves. Anyone who can't understand any of this needs to go read some Harry Potter novels, or just sit down and talk to your kids.

Fortunately, people frequently outgrow being a fanboy/fangirl. Most people do outgrow it.

Outgrowing fandom means that you have (usually) become fully anchored in reality, or at least can separate reality from unreality. In the modern world, as a rule, education asserts itself and people revert to beings who live day-to-day in a universe of scientific rationales and rational causality.

The same can't be said of people who are either Superstitious, or so strictured in their Faith that they exist in their own alternate reality... or for people who are not obviously dysfunctional, but who are nonetheless -- because of the things they believe in -- effectively insane.

The worry then becomes whether or not they have a lot of friends who are insane in the exact same way, or in ways that are extremely similar.

Mostly there's not a lot to worry about, if the shared madness is something like Shadowrun.

But what if the shared madness is one like that of the Central American woman (see digressive story, above), who's taking her grandchild around the neighborhood to point out the white people as "vampiros"?

Or, perhaps, what of shared madness originating in extremely popular television shows with an immense and loyal fan following?

What if you've got ten or twenty teenage girls in the neighborhood who all think they're Buffy?

Then you would have not merely a teenage girl gang with purses full of pointed sticks, you'd have a teenage girl gang in a moral panic insanely seeking imaginary beings... at the local mall.

---

Could be worse, I suppose.

Teenage girls grow up, eventually... and most -- if not all -- stop believing crazy things.

But do they stop being in girl gangs?

---

More to come?

---

[Part III] Alone in a Crowd: More "New Racism" in MoCo

(Updated, oops fixed.)

On July 9th, I made a foray into the wilderness that is culture here in parts of East MoCo. In bewailing the New Racism in MoCo, I felt it necessary to mention the fact that visually obvious "street gangs" seem increasingly race-based, entrenching themselves into various neighborhoods, increasing the appearance of ethnic enclaves, perhaps spurring on the formation of new race-based street gangs.

I paused to explain that I'm trying to develop a new blogging style, which makes up for the shortcomings of the "bottom up" time sequence of blogging. Well, most people read blogs because they're looking for "what's happening today", so for most people the current style is just fine. But if you're doing a series, the style has to change. And while I was at it, I had to sing the praises of my Muse. Hey, "she made me do it".

Then I went on with a little background about my own family's history of oppression by ethnic separatism and race/ethnicity-based hatred and crime. This is so that the Astute Reader -- and even readers less than astute -- will understand that I am not without sympathy for the victims of racial hatred. "Been there, done that", as they say, in terms of people trying to cause problems for other folks because the one group doesn't like the other's "kind", or type, or race, or national origins. There are laws against this sort of thing now, in part because we got tired of it and put our foot down and that's that.

Then I just had to make some clarifications regarding the distinction between simile and metaphor so that people will know that while you can call someone an Ass, that doesn't make them actually a Donkey.

I also pointed out that there are few faster routes to madness than the embracing of Superstition, and actually starting to believe ridiculous and utterly unreal stuff.

---

I have always had a certain fascination with plots.

Plot, in literature, is what how the story plays out. They say that the real drivers of the story are the conflicts between character, and this is indeed what gives a story its depth and a believable humanity. But given that there needs to be characterization, and conflict, plot is how we see the development or exposition of the character, and the progress of that conflict.

The possible conflicts are a rather small class, and the characters possible are also a fairly small class. Yet those two classes can be combined in a number of ways which isn't all that small. Yet some famous writer once remarked "there are only about a dozen or twenty basic human stories, and they repeat themselves endlessly throughout history and literature".

Some have suggested that this tends to make literature and drama pretty predictable, unless you add in events external to the human interactions. A good freak storm sure will liven up a play.

Then again, so will Divine Intervention. Some have suggested that if there were no actual deities, we'd have to invent them just to put them into stories to forestall "heard it before" boredom. Cain versus Abel isn't all that unusual -- just ask any coroner -- until you add in a Supreme Being and Eternal Curses. Add in those plot elements and it becomes downright thought-provoking. And just what, exactly, is this "Mark of Cain"?

---

I also am fascinated with plots of the other kind.

I liked to read mystery and private-detective books when I was a kid. Who didn't? The one thing that always remained mysterious to me was the whole lifestyle of the "gumshoe", or "private dick", the guy or gal who can tail their wily suspect through a crowd. How could they manage to not be spotted?

Well, as it turns out, the best gumshoes are notoriously average-looking. They're nobody you'd notice. Thus, they are not notably good looking, or notably ugly, or notably muscular or notably thin. They are notably unremarkable.

Having come to this realization, I decided that if I wanted to spot people who could successfully sneak around without being noticed, I would have to learn to remark the unremarkable.

Personally, I can't walk down the street without me seeing people stare at me. I used to think I was a freak of nature or something. It was actually something different.

You know those guys who are ridiculously healthy, in excellent condition, perfect hair and skin, probably moonlight as male models for the local department stores, and they're absolutely and endlessly aware of how incredibly good looking they are and take relentless advantange of it?

Except for the relentless advantage and being endlessly aware of it, so I am told, that used to be me.

At any rate, sneaking around was never an option for me. At least it was out of the question that I could avoid being noticed.

Yet sometimes you can hide in plain sight.

---

I definitely didn't have "a great personality". In fact, I generally preferred to be off on my own somewhere reading a book.

I am not gregarious, much. Some people will mistakenly think that I dislike people, or will think "oh, he's a loner" as if it were bad to be able to thrive in solitude where others would suffer from loneliness.

Look at it this way: my ancestors came from a place where it was necessary for individuals to be able to spend a long time being alone and silent in order to bring down prey and put meat on the table. For half of the year, the only two things that could be had fresh were game and fish, and most of those got scared away by crowds. Anyone who could spend a few days all alone on the trail of game was someone who could feed their families better than people who started talking to themselves after five minutes of being alone.

That doesn't mean that you don't want to talk to people when they're around. I'm a regular Chatty Cathy in a crowd. Just pull my string to wind me up and let the random verbiage begin.

But if nobody wanted to talk to me, that's fine. I can't hide myself in a crowd... but I can be entirely alone in the midst of one, and that means that without having to focus concentration on the conversation at hand, I can listen to all of the others.

---

In the field, the lone hunter survives best by studying the behavior of possible game, and of possible predators on either the game or the hunter. If you're a lone antelope in the middle of a herd of wildebeest, you'd better be alert to the wildebeest no less than to possible lions. A lion might cause them all to stampede. Or, being wildebeest, they might just up and decide to stampede for no real reason at all.

Worst of all, they could up and decide that antelopes are a perfectly good reason to stampede... all across the top of the antelope.

---

People can be like that; they may take offense at the inoffensive, solely for the reason that something is different.


Ben Franklin didn't like Germans, but since William Penn had invited them by the thousands, Mr Franklin was forced to associate with them long enough to form this opinion:

[...] that measures of great Temper are necessary with the Germans: and am not without Apprehensions, that thro' their indiscretion or Ours, or both, great disorders and inconveniences may one day arise among us; Those who come hither are generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation, and as Ignorance is often attended with Credulity when Knavery would mislead it, and with Suspicion when Honesty would set it right; and as few of the English understand the German Language, and so cannot address them either from the Press or Pulpit, 'tis almost impossible to remove any prejudices they once entertain. Their own Clergy have very little influence over the people; who seem to take an uncommon pleasure in abusing and discharging the Minister on every trivial occasion. Not being used to Liberty, they know not how to make a modest use of it; and as Kolben says of the young Hottentots, that they are not esteemed men till they have shewn their manhood by beating their mothers, so these seem to think themselves not free, till they can feel their liberty in abusing and insulting their Teachers. Thus they are under no restraint of Ecclesiastical Government; They behave, however, submissively enough at present to the Civil Government which I wish they may continue to do: For I remember when they modestly declined intermeddling in our Elections, but now they come in droves, and carry all before them [...]

This sounds inexplicably familiar to me in the modern day.

---

Nativism in the United States is of hoary lineage; it goes back to before the Revolution and has lasted long past the First Civil War.

The origins of many gangs are in "self defense" and often these self-defense oranizations were reasonable responses to unreasonable pressures. Nativists versus Immigrants is an old story.

Yet all too frequently, the leadership of such "self defense gangs" were people who had been criminals in their former homeland.

Historically, we've had Nativist gangs, German gangs, Irish gangs, Italian gangs, Chinese gangs, Jewish gangs, Catholic gangs, Protestant gangs, you name it.

No cause, or perception of difference -- however great or slight that difference -- has failed to produce at least a few individuals who banded together using that cause (or difference, real or imagined) as a pretext to victimize other people, in an ongoing and highly organized fashion.

However, we fortunately haven't had a whole lot of gangs -- at least not very recently -- operating continuing criminal enterprises based on politics, or ideology.

Is there some sort of natural niche, as it were, being left empty?

Or, in the absence of any directed functional conspiracy, are strange collections of slightly-demented people coalescing in a way to fill that niche?

Or, more likely, has at least one such group coalesced and become increasingly and more openly active, and I just didn't notice?

It's one thing to not be at all bothered when you're alone in a crowd.

It's quite another thing if you fail to notice that you're alone in a crowd, and that crowd is turning ugly...

---

More to come?

---

And Now for a Commercial Break

(Updated July 13, 11PM, typoes grammar etc etc.)

A Little Provocation Goes A Long Way

I have so much fun with digression within postings that I do believe I will take the time to digress between postings as well.

I'm hoping that this will convince the self-appointed herdsmen of this mad blogger that I've crossed some line and that they are therefor entitled to cross their own lines. Ideally, they will do so in ways that will make them first in line to stand before a judge and explain how their actions do not constitute violations of a new Maryland law classifying as hate crime willful violence or discrimination against persons who are -- or who are believed to be -- disabled, and/or homeless.

For some reason there's a phrase in the language "crazy like a fox". I'm not a mental health professional, so I couldn't tell you whether or not that's a step up, or a step down, from being as "crazy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs".

But I think I've made it clear, before, that while people doing crazy things to people doesn't mean that the victims actually were crazy -- in any case, violence is hardly therapy and it's also criminal -- if you want to make someone crazy, keep being pointlessly violent to them for no legitimate reason.

A certain kind of mindset would probably think thus: "if they aren't crazy, but I treat them as if they were, then they will become crazy, and once they have become crazy, then my abuses are justified".

I'm not entirely sure how a mental health professional would characterize that sort of rationalization, but I doubt they'd call that sane.

Thus, what you have is one crazy person picking on another crazy person... but the one person wasn't crazy until the crazy person started picking on them "for being crazy".

Does your head hurt as much as mine does, trying to make any sense of this?

Look at it this way: so long as society and government will accept the notion that "it's okay for me to abuse them, they're crazy", insanity will indeed be contagious, because the crazy will be maddening the sane... if mostly because of the very strange fact that sane people appear to insane people to be the crazy ones. But such is the nature of madness.

But that's okay. There's an entire pharmaceutical industry with all of the pills you can afford. That won't make reality any more appealing, you just won't be able to care.

---

Moving Right Along

There are ways to make people crazy which don't necessarily rely on violence.

One way is religion.

I am not going to say that any one religion is crazy, or that their beliefs are crazy, or that the people who follow these religions are crazy. Actually, a lot of good has come out of the ethical cores of many religions... so long as people stick to those cores.

I am going to say that the difference between Philosophy and Religion is that one is a matter of Debate, and one is a matter of Faith.

That which is debated is debated because it is amenable to proof or to disproof. That which is a matter of faith may be debated but it isn't amenable to proof or disproof; at some point in the debate you simply have to say "well, that's what I believe" even with no way to support the belief outside of the fact that this is what you believe.

Yet if you're going to try to transmit your faith to others, it's very helpful to actually be schooled in that faith. This is particularly true when teaching to children who are of an age to ask questions and have lots of willingness to do so. Or you could just beat them when they ask questions, but this will only teach them that people who don't have all of the answers may still have power over you. And what will they do throughout life? They will probably live lives ruled by the credo: "violence is the ultimate resort of the incompetent". In civilized societies, this isn't usually allowed to be true. In civilized societies, "the just and thoughtful ruler has the admiration of the troops".

Faiths are generally internally consistent, if self-referential. They can also save a lot of time with explanations. Why should people respect the property of their neighbors? "God says so" is a lot easier to say than "If we don't respect their property, why should they respect ours". It's easy to develop arguments around the latter saying, but the former brooks no dispute, at least not among those sharing that faith.

Faiths are sometimes badly transmitted, or poorly remembered, and this is where people can get crazy. It's no longer faith when it has degenerated to Superstition.

Superstition is, generally speaking, pretty disconnected from reality, and thus might be thought to be irrational if not actually insane.

But what can you say about Superstitions that have gotten so far from their origins that people don't even recognize them as superstitions, and start to take them as commonplaces, and start teaching these commonplaces as if they were facts?

---

I'm thinking I might take a stab at this, in an artistic and literary way, of course.

The difference between a simile and a metaphor is that the one is a direct comparison using "like" or "as", and the other doesn't use "like" or "as". One is more direct, and one less so, amounting to exercise of artistic license. Examples: a simile would be "he is as dumb as an ox". A metaphor would be "he is a dumb ox".

Some people don't quite "get art", and a metaphor's meaning escapes their comprehension. Most of these folks would easily understand the simile.

Some people don't quite understand the concept of metaphor, and they may actually think that an idea can fly right over someone's head. I'd love to point out that ideas, so far as anyone can tell, do not fly. At any rate nobody has every photographed an idea flying over someone's head. But I digress.

Some people perfectly well understand the metaphor, and the allegory, which is an extended metaphor.

Some people actually can write stories which don't merely make use of allegory and metaphor, but which also are allegory and metaphor.

And as such, they can be real in their abstracted way, as real as the fact of someone that people call an ass.

No human being is an Ass. An Ass is a quadruped beast of burden also known as a Donkey. Yet many of the characteristics of the Ass may be seen in the character of certain individuals, and through the power of metaphor, we may speak an utter untruth -- "that man is an ASS" -- and nobody can say either that this is a lie, or that the person making the statement is crazy or wrong. It's a figure of speech, a colloquilism, a metaphor.

I do believe that I may have to find or make a way to drag into the progress of this blog the elements of a popular role-playing game known as Shadowrun.

Why?

Because by declaring this as my Motif, I can get away with a lot of artistic license, and people who are competent, sane, literate, and are educated as well as being fond of Role Playing Games won't think I've gone as batshit crazy as some folks might otherwise suggest.

Especially not when I start talking about legendary creatures as if people out in the world actually believed in that sort of superstitious crap and madness.

---

[Part II] More "New Racism"

On July 9th, I made a foray into the wilderness that is culture here in parts of East MoCo. In bewailing the New Racism in MoCo, I felt it necessary to mention the fact that gangsterism -- expressed in the form of visually obvious "street gangs" -- is taking on an increasingly race-based form, and is also tending to entrench itself into various neighborhoods in ways which increase the appearance of ethnic enclaves and tends to cause those of other ethnicities to either relocate, or entrench themselves into their own emerging race-based street gangs.

---

I'm not going to belabor the obvious here. Gangs are here, and always have been, long before we got invaded by Mexico and and had literally a third of all working-age Central Americans sneak across the border and then claim the status of Temporary Protected Refugee ("TPR"). TPR is a strange legal limbo in which people are generally turned away if they attempt to cross into the country, but once they're here, "there's nothing so permanent as a temporary refugee". Well, as long as the economy can exploit them, that is. It seems that a fairly significant number are actually returning home voluntarily ("Outlaws in the U.S., Strangers at Home: Downturn Strands Illegal Latino Immigrants Between Cultures", Hendrix, Steve, Washington Post, July 12, 2009).

Of course, the economy wasn't the only exploiter, and sometimes the exploited become the exploiter, or other people help them to do it.

---

Employment rackets and organized crime infiltration of union movements is nothing new. However, a few years ago I saw something at the local Home Depot that annoyed the hell out of me.

I saw a rather shabby white gal load 2/3rds of a pallet of construction blocks into a van, and then she was almost done when she was approached by a very large individual.
I mean, immense. This is the sort of guy you imagine when you think of the word "goon".

He walked up to the woman, told her to stop working and show him some ID. She said she didn't have it, she was just trying to work for some money for food, the Social Security check just wasn't enough, and he said, "no CASA ID, no work for you". He ran her off, snapped his fingers, some of the goon's ethnic countrymen ran over from where they had been sitting in the shade and finished loading the van. They got paid for what they did, plus for the 2/3rds that the gal had done before the goon ran her off. They paid the goon about a third or so of what they got paid.

I drove off wondering that the money was flowing so freely at Home Depot's loading lot that the day-laborers could afford to hire "muscle".

But that wonder faded to outrage when I saw the shabby white gal who had done half of the work, at the nearby bus-stop, rummaging through the trash bin, apparently looking for something to eat.

And then I realized: foreigners of one race/ethnicity were paying locals (judging by the fluent English the goon spoke to run off the gal) of their own race/ethnicity to deny employment opportunities to a citizen of the United States.

And that got me just hopping mad.

---

That didn't get me anywhere near as mad, however, as the time I was cutting my lawn at my fully-paid-for family home, back in 1996 or so.

I got up off of the ground, wonderingt what had happened and why my head hurt so much.

Some asshole with a gold tooth, grinning from the back of a pickup truck full of other people just like him, said with a very thick Spanish accent: "You don't cut the lawn here, only the spanish cut the lawn here". He waved his baseball bat for emphasis.

Some people wonder why it is that I so vehemently carry the fight against illegal aliens and especially against their organized crime.

Let's just say that when foreign invaders beat my ass and tell me that I'm not allowed to do my own yardwork at my fully-owned family home, that gets my goddamn German up.

---

Back when my great grandfather and his people settled in Kansas, people came and told them that they could not do their own yardwork and tried to beat their ass in general and in many particular cases tried to outright kill them.

This got their goddamn German up.

And many many decades later, there are still many Hardman folks in Kansas. But as to the Comanche, Cheyenne, and Pawnee, "not so much".

The Germans that settled the American frontiers doubtless had their share of complete fuckwads and total assholes among them, but the general reputation was that they worked hard, improved their lands, and everywhere they went, the property values rose as they filled the lands with storehouses, churches, schools, and clinics. The German-Americans also had a reputation for not having much of a sense of humor but also for being annoyingly honest and straightforward in their remarks.

They also got a reputation, eventually, as being a bit set in their ways, but easy-going in terms of liking to eat, to drink, to dance and have some fun. Another reputation developed over time, as well. "They're not hard to get along with, live and let live they like to say, but you really don't want to actually do them wrong and do it in a way that gets their German up".

People would ask why, and the other people would shrug, and say "Go ask the Comanch. Or the Romans, for that matter".

---

People keep telling me things like "America was really built by the Chinese/Irish/Slaves". Ah, no. We German-Americans had a lot to do with it. Yet for some reason they don't like to teach that in the schools. But why don't you go on out to Missouri and try telling someone that sort of crap. Then you won't have to go ask the Comanch, or the Romans for that matter. You'll know what happens when you get someone's German up. You will have just told someone who is almost certainly both German-American and of the 4th or even 5th generation of people who live where they do because a century before, their forebears built the place.

People keep telling me that "white people can't take the heat and sunlight and that's why they all work desk jobs, and that's why we need 'immigrants', white people can't handle it". Go tell that to the Comanch, or to the Romans for that matter. Go talk that shit to someone who is still running the farm their folks established in the 1850s.

A lot of my kind of Americans work desk jobs because they come from families that teach their kids to read before they go to school, and they come from families that value education, and they come from families that are easy learners and good students and actually like campus environments, and when they graduate from school they generally take even more classes and they wind up being very good at what they do, and they get paid really well, and that is why they have a desk job: because of the excellent money they make.

And as the economy slowly slides off of a cliff, an awful lot of very well-educated and healthy former office workers are about to be hitting the streets looking for work.

They won't be getting office jobs, since there aren't as many, and nobody's hiring. They'll be getting tan, and whatever work they do will provide ample exercise, and learning to endure as much hot or cold as is needed to get paid.

And considering that they probably won't be very happy about this, people won't have to push them too hard to get their goddamn German up. Or get their Irish up. Or get their Italian up. Or their Russian up. Or their Polish up. Or their German-Italian-Irish-Russian (with a little Cherokee on my mother's side) up.

And let's just see what happens when these well-educated and mentally and physically healthy people do the first time that someone beats their ass for firing their gardeners and doing their own damn lawns.

Let's see what happens when it happens to enough of them, and they start talking to each other about it.

---

Oh yes. Long before the MS-13, long before the 18th Street, long before the Yakuza or the Tongs or the Cosa Nostra, long before any of these, there were Gangs in America.

And based on history, after nearly a century of them not being much seen nor heard of, as there once were gangs in America, there will be again.

---

More to come.

---

A Small Pause to Explain Something...

I must take a pause to explain something.

The Astute Reader may have actually seen beyond the obvious, to... the obvious.

I like to write. It is one of my arts.

Arts are good, as are talents and skills.

It's very easy for people to judge one another based on their appearance, and indeed entire industries have arisen to allow people to spend money to affect some fashion, style, or mode which is meant to broadcast to others one's interests in the arts, in sports, in recreational pastimes.

Yet I've long seen the value of being just plain folks, hardly Amish but I try to not be overly pretentions. "Conform yourselves not to the ways of the World", as the Good Book tells us; and I see little point in bizarre affectations such as dressing for sports while pursuing a drink in a bar, or for that matter, wearing Dockers and Timberland while working on the car or cutting the lawn. I tend to dress in a way that is suitable for almost any situation, and appropriate to the weather.

I don't see much point in dressing like a rock star. If someone is to find out that I'm a musician, they should be able to tell by seeing the guitar or hearing the music. If they want to find out that I'm a writer, they can read something I have written. They aren't likely to see me writing; this my Muse is one that comes to visit me only when I am alone and need pay attention to none but to her. She is demanding, and damn can she nag... and when she wants me all to herself, she gets top billing, and that is that. And when I dress, I dress for the Muse, be she the one who calls me quietly to sit and type for her, or be she the one who puts a guitar in my hands and tells me to make the guitar speak, or cry, or rage.

And in either case, I'll probably be wearing a t-shirt and jeans and sneakers... because the sort of work I do requires as much comfort as possible as I endure the strain and joy that is channeling the Muse, any Muse, however great or small.

---

I have been writing several thousand words a day for about 20 years now. At the peak of my BBSing days and through my peak on UseNet, writing 100 kilobits was not unusual, and the UseNet performance was on top of building a few websites, and writing stories as well, that the world will probably never see.

Stories have a special place in my relationship with the Muse of text expression and her internal reflection, the Muse of understanding and perhaps even of Wisdom.

---

I know people who see something in the world, and they say, "Oh, that's just like what happened to (insert biblical character here)".

I know people who see some young man breaking his heart in search of commitment over some young sweetie who doesn't want anything but to be the flower for every last bee she can attract, and they don't say anything... they just whistle the tune that goes with the lyrics: "she was too young to fall in love, and I was too young to know".

I also know an unfortunately large number of people who cannot abstract a situation or event to an allegory. I know an unfortunately larger number of people whose allegories are only from limited sets of pop-culture, and who try to express their allegorical summations to others as a sort of conceptual shorthand, and expect understanding and a response in kind.

I myself am perhaps at risk of falling into the latter case; when I'm watching television, I'm not watching trendy sitcoms or popular reality TV or "America's Next Model" or whatever. I try to limit my allegorical communications to stories more classical in nature, and then I discover that they no longer teach the classics.

If I were to draw an allusion to Echo and Narcissus, probably nobody under the age of 50 would get it, and many more would fail to get it at all for the reason that it's totally outside of their culture. Muslims or Jews, for example, aren't likely to get allusions to the Book of Revelations, though most Christians couldn't possibly miss understanding my meaning if I said "and he rode a pale horse". Yet perhaps no Confucian or Budhist Chinese-American would understand if I made reference to the intended sacrifice of Abraham, and no devout Jew, Muslim, or Christain could fail to understand the name and story of Isaac.

But I strongly suspect that perhaps the majority of people reading this are asking themselves and perhaps the people around him, "what the fuck is this Muse he keeps talking about as if we should get the reference?"

I fear for the future of culture.

---

I fear for the future of culture for a variety of reasons.

One is the cellphone and texting and twitter and all of that; they divorce the individual from the surroundings. Maybe that's how their Muse comes to them, but let's just say that my own Muse isn't explaining to me exactly how that works.

Another worrisome thing is the "response on top" or "latest on top" mode seen in office e-mail and in blogging. I'm used to a top-down mode in the classic style of writing and literacy in the classic Western mode.

So I have a little project.

I am trying to create a posting style in which you can read the most-recent first, of a multi-post series, and still know what the whole thing is trying to say. Thus, a summary block at the top of all of the multi-parter postings. Yet you should be able to read "from the bottom up" (in linear temporal sequence) and still find something new the closer you get to the top, to the modern second. Yet there shouldn't be any need to go "back to the past" unless you are really in search of detail, links, or nuance.

But as this is all a little difficult, and gives my Muse conniption fits even though she's getting used to the idea, you may have to wait a bit between posts, as I struggle to let the past be in the future, and the future be in the past, without painting myself into a corner -- as it were -- by imposing structure from the beginning which may turn out to be unwarranted as the story evolves, as new information comes to light, or as situations change.

Bear with me, if you will, and I'll see if I can't produce something worthy, even if it turns out to be nothing more than the metaphorical equivalent of pigshit on marble pavings, or pearls before swine.

And of course, I'll have to try to supply a bit of allegory, metaphor, allusion, and even obscure references, and hopefully it won't all turn out to be a Shaggy Dog Story.

Then again, if I can manage to make people fall out of their seats laughing after I've been plunging them into mopery, outrage, or even existential angst, then perhaps you won't see me for a while, because I'll be too busy with my Muse, getting lucky and getting offline and writing some new stories for people to steal and get rich on, so you can watch something with a plot instead of crappy "reality TV" that's so boring you'd rather twitter.

---

Commercial break over, folks. Back onto the court.

---

[Part I] The New Racism in East MoCo

(Updated July 9 @ 2300 hours, typo and missing word. Stet.)

I have been putting off this post for a long long time.

Since about 2000-2001 or so, I have been involving myself in various activities in Aspen Hill, especially focusing in such things as cleaning up North Gate Park, bringing more and better security to local shopping centers, and improving standards of living and safety at local rental and townhome/condo complexes.

The park is pretty well cleaned up, and to some degree security is improving at the rental/condo complexes. That latter improvement is due to increased cooperation between property managers and law-enforcement; the property-managers don't want any kind of doper action going on and they have all kinds of numbers to call to arrange a really bad day for whatever tenants they decide they don't want on their properties. The people answering those calls will cheerfully provide those very bad days, but there is a consequence which may have been unintended but which should have easily been anticipated. All of the displaced "problem people" -- as they are actually called -- wind up renting here in "the houses", in Aspen Hill west of Georgia Avenue, or during the recent excesses in the mortgage markets, they actually bought houses with "stated income loans" (or "liar loans") and those were generally in South Aspen Hill.

Even the sketchiest of "white Americans" tend to be either staying out of South Aspen Hill, or they go there in force. Gangs have been here longer and more deeply than the police or elected officials wanted to admit, but largely those were "immigrant gangs" such as the 18th Street Gang or MS-13, Vatos Locos, Sur X3 and the occasional wild clique of South Side Locos. But in recent years we've seen something pretty new and it's just depressing as hell, as well as totally understandable. Yet though it's understandable, I cannot approve.

Almost any of the misplaced cultural anthropologists -- who have spearheaded "anti-gang initiatives" for years here -- would tell you without hesitation that "immigrant gangs" are a natural response to a feeling of displacement, of being the stranger in a strange land, outnumbered by unfriendly faces and frequently the outright and undeserving victim of discrimination, harassment, and even violence. Be that as it may as regards the origins of such immigrant gangs, those origins are far in the past, and the aggressive recruitment of such gangs even down into elementary schools shows that it's not the immigrants who are set upon by hostile whites or blacks. What's happening here is that the "immigrants" -- legal or otherwise -- are assimilating to a new culture in their new homeland, a culture of crime, violence, and especially of organized activities of vendetta, revenge, and pre-emptory intimidation.

But the worst part of it all is this: people coming to America are expected to become American, and the most unusual and amazing characteristic of the USA is that we generally oppose racism. We generally oppose separatism. We generally strive to offer equal opportunity. But the gangs don't want that, in most cases.

And in response to the relentless anti-white/anti-Americanism of the "immigrant gangs", now we once again have white gangs, and I'm not talking about people who came out of prison after 20 years and can't wait to get back into a life of crime; I'm talking about teenagers and young adults. Black gangs are growing in the area at a rate never before seen, and they're not just gangs of local kids-gone-bad who just happen to be black; a lot of this is national-scope gangs such as Crips and Bloods. As for the Latino gangs, the local situation used to mostly be spontaneous networks of people moving mostly in the underground due to immigration status (or lack thereof), organizing a workforce not legally entitled to work in the US, and assorted bored teenagers with lame pretentions to being "gangsta". Yet in recent years, even before the current economic doldrums, there has been increasing importation of the so-called "California rivalries". Locally, black "rude boys" and sketchy latino kids used to be able to get along. But as the Crips and Bloods rivalry is imported from the brutal West Coast scenes, so also do we see the importation of the brutal rivalries between the Bloods and the 18th Street, between the Crips and other "hispanic" gangs, and as the crime grows increasingly racist, so does the general society reacting to that racist crime.

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Very sadly indeed, as a primarily American Black community finds itself driven more deeply into poverty by the economic downturn, the already high unemployment rate of non-college black males is driven even higher by the cutthroat and cut-rate competition of "immigrants" (legal or otherwise, mostly Spanish-speaking) for low-skilled and construction work. This sort of endless competition and sense of being discarded in favor of the johnny-come-latelies that can't even "speak American" is not making anyone any happier and indeed the outrage is growing.

I'm seeing increasing segregation at various places. For example, the central Aspen Hill shopping centers seem to be increasingly latino or African immigrants only, and in the Plaza del Mercado stores -- notably CVS -- there is a pervasive attitude I pick up, of "what the fuck you doin' here, white man?" I didn't spend most of the last decade trying to reclaim the parks from crime, or get more and better programs in the schools -- such as free summer lunches and educational programs to keep kids on the right track -- just to have people get all up in my face as if they thought they had a right to resent me.

If the recent elections -- both the Presidential and the County District 4 Special Elections -- are seen mostly as giving a license for racial hatred, all I can say is that I'm offended. Race or perception of it is no license to crime, to exclusionary practices. Indeed, race or the perception of it is especially odious as associated with criminal acts.

And there's nothing more odious, thus, than organized crime -- gangs -- based on race. The only thing that could be worse would be gangs -- racist or racialist gangs -- engaging in continuing patterns of crime and harassment to carve up desegregated neighborhoods into racially exclusive enclaves... that they control.

Yet as far as I can tell, the elected officials are "just fine with that"... and that's where the police get their orders.

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More to come.

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Other Shoe About to Drop: Commercial Real-Estate, etc.

Ah yes, once again into the fray of blogging.

I haven't been feeling very well -- perhaps it's something I ate, perhaps it's the rather peculiar weather, and the allergies that go with it, or perhaps it was my genuinely amazing level of alcohol consumption over the holiday weekend -- and so I have been restricting myself to intellectual pursuits rather less demanding than blogging.

I'm still spending several hours daily in tracking down obscure yet fascinating deed transactions in Aspen Hill Land Use History.

Somehow I have managed to become Focused (grr) on this truly boring and ultimately pointless task. Indeed, I am managing to display a nearly manic enthusuasm for downloading PDFs from Maryland Land Records Network and cross-referencing with the subdivision plats from the Plats Network.

Well, you know how it is when people get Focused. They become obsessed with trivial details and totally forget about everything else, such as dating, shopping, food, sleep and most importantly to those who want to use Focus as a tool, politics.

My fascination with trivial details pertaining to land-use patterns has been most gratified by locating various marker stones and pieces of pipe hammered into the ground. Dating, eh, I think I covered that a few posts back. Food, sleep and shopping? Well, I can just stock up on groceries and beer and mostly nobody will see me for weeks at a time, and I sleep when I can't read the deeds anymore because my eyes are shot, and when I wake up, my eyes don't work right until I eat something, so who knows what sort of hours I'm keeping.

I have been out, mostly to satisfy my obsessive thirst for knowledge about why the streets in my neighborhood appear to have been laid out by chimps on acid rather than in the traditional small-town mode of glorifying the cow-paths as happened infamously in Boston and elsewhere.

To understand this, you have to understand the bounds of the lands, as those lands were bought and sold, aggregated and parceled out. Whether aggregated over time as farmers increased their lands or aggregated in a one-day frenzy of flipping as seen in the acquisition of central Aspen Hill West on September 18, 1947, or aggregated over years as in the immense tract acquired around the turn of the 20th Century by one George H Earle Jr of Philadelphia only to be sold by the heirs, or land sold off a piece at a time until only a shadow of former greatness remains, as in the division and distribution of equity as in the case of the Cassell Tract, which remnant in the modern day is mostly visible as the grounds of the Aspen Hill Library.

Perhaps I've been bitten by some strange sort of bug, or perhaps I got spellbound by wicked warlocks, but really it's more likely that I saw one too many showings of "National Treasure". But much has been uncovered and explained, such as the origin of an abandoned dirt road just east of Brookhaven Elementary School.

Of course this effort is ongoing, I mean, it wouldn't be an obsessive Focus if it wasn't both endless and carried on regardless of any possible goal or profitability. Could be worse, I suppose; I mean, I could be desperately in love with a demented foreign veterinarian and be cruising country-western bars in search of cowboys to trade into the international human organ black markets, or driving my children insane by teaching them that you can tell who's a werewolf by looking at their ears, or something equally and classically Montgomery County Weird. I'm just taking GPS readings and making googlemaps. And unlike a lot of people, I actually know where is the "West line of Hermitage" and the "end of the 42nd line of Bradford's Rest".

My point? I'm generally harmless, but have been keeping busy doing things other than nothing-but-blogging.

Besides, I must add to confuse anyone who thinks that they are (but are not) the Astute Reader, with no current One Time Pad, is no point in concealing clever comments in transparent HTML window-target statements. Perhaps is coming back from abroad cleverly concealed in phrasing from minor economic accords from recent summit meeting between leadership of superpower states. And perhaps it is already picked up from dead drop in surveyor's stake at the end of the 40th line of Bradford's Rest.

Just be careful out there as you prowl around out there in the bushes. There are more and more desperate people in those bushes, many of them coming from places where desperation isn't answered by Social Services but rather by the Law of the Pack, and they've been hunting all of their lives while you can't ever seem to even be able to find your TV remote.

In a lot of places near Aspen Hill, though the crime may frequently go unreported, violence and skulduggery is way up. Let's just say that when biker 'Nam vets from Baltimore characterize the scene in South Aspen Hill as "getting goddamn rough down there", you can't just pass it off as me being typically timid and easily frightened. Even a lot of the cops you see driving around down there have this look on their face that I translate as "when I signed on for MoCo I did not expect to be patrolling this much instant ghetto".

The fact is: probably 80 percent of the households in South Aspen Hill (which is, of course, in the Hermitage rather than in Bradford's Rest) depend on the construction trades for their income. And as poorly functioning as is the market for even "distrssed residential" real-estate, the new-homes market is doing even worse, and there is something like a 9-month surplus of new homes already built that need to be sold before there's any excuse for building any new ones.

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Commercial real-estate cannot be expected to provide all that much work for our suffering "guest workers".

Commercial real-estate vacancy rates are up 20 percent, from about 8.5 to above 10 percent in the District, and in Maryland -- already not doing too well -- it's nearly 14 percent. There's simply no need to build any more.

A recent visit to the "Rio" in Gaithersburg got me there an hour early for the premier of "Star Trek", and I spent some time wandering around looking at the stores... and there weren't all that many stores, and a lot of them had "going out of business sale" signs in the window. That was a few months ago, and I imagine that those storefronts are all empty now. And they say that when you have a retail/office complex like that, if you have any empty spaces on the street level, you probably have almost nothing but vacant office space above.

Obviously, all of that vacancy decreases rents ("Local Office Vacancies Soar, Driving Down Rent", Haynes, V. Dion, Washington Post, July 7, 2009).

The thing is, it could be worse, and elsewhere, it is. "Chicago Business" shows nearly 25-percent vacancy in Chicago's suburban commercial real-estate market.

Remember, folks, a lot of entities such as pension funds -- especially those serving public-servants such as educators, fire/rescue, and law-enforcement personnel -- have very major proportions of their assets on the books as ownership in full or in part of large commercial real-estate sites. For example, TIAA/CREF -- which serves the professional academic community -- is one such outfit, and I've been watching that part of my retirement savings take a major hit as of 6 months ago. (How did I wind up with them? Long story short: it's not rocket science, it was me doing network and computational support for rocket scientists at a university consortium.) Still, the specific investments listed in the real-estate section of my prospectus are rock solid... yet still they've declined very significantly. So don't take this as me crowing about other people's misfortune. I'm getting reamed once again, as if losing my ass in the dot-bomb implosion and then again after 9/11 wasn't bad enough.

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If I was the sort of person who had excessive wealth and wanted to hang on to it, I might try to be the first to actually short commercial real estate. Remember, those pension funds were very likely some of the entities hurt worst when it became evident that sooner or later the housing market bubble was about to burst, and they fled in part into commodities investment, specifically into oil futures, driving up the price of gasoline to over $4.00/gallon, assuring the housing market meltdown, and then when it became evident that they had lost all assets there and that this collapse would also drive down oil to recently unheard-of lows, there wasn't anything to do except to try to be the first to short oil the most.

Fiduciary responsibility is a sword of many edges and while it might not be even-handed in terms of what befals the greater economy, the duty to the stockholders is unequivocal, especially if you yourself are a major stockholder and get paid bonuses in stocks rather than in cash. In such a position, just to preserve no more than a 20-percent loss in the pension fund of, for example, the Florida teacher's union, you'd cheerfully short oil down to 25 percent of what it was 6 months before, just to keep up the values of your major asset, commercial real-estate. Shorting oil could make ridiculous amounts of money, at least until the new rules came into effect against "naked shorting", which was basically taking bets with other people's money at a game where you weren't even present and in which you had no stakes. (This is also known in classic caper lore as "the bookie is skimming the till and winning no-lose bets with it". It works great until someone notices, and then you get concrete overshoes.)

Without a fallback to either shorting something that can no longer be shorted -- there's not much lower to go, and you're not allowed to do it -- or using the after-effects of that shorting to prop up a business climate with super-cheap energy, the only way you can maintain asset valuation in your commercial real-estate holdings is to not acquire any more of it, and perhaps even to unload the less-solid sites... at discount rates. This of course leads to a scramble to the bottom, and the bottom is nowhere in sight.

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The end result of this, of course, is that there's no work at all in the Construction trades, and what there is has been going to the bottom feeders, and the race to the bottom is cutthroat. It's gotten so bad that you've got day-laborers getting paid $5.00/hour and being glad to get it, and you've got the vultures circling the check-cashing places looking to do a little "amigo shopping" (day-laborer robberies) and even as hobo "jungles" start to pop up in the bushes around various shopping centers -- the Park Police are being pretty aggressive about monitoring the parks -- you've got really scary people starting to hang out in the bushes just laying in wait for any of the homeless to try to bed down there with a few dollars in their pocket from any work they might have got.

Foreclosures -- or homes within a month or two of final action in foreclosure -- in Aspen Hill may amount to as much as 5 percent of the housing stock. Thus far, no rumors are circulating about gutted houses, or squatter shacks, and most of the lawns are reasonably well maintained, which is to say, they have been cut at least once since the property was vacated.


How long this can last, especially once the next wave of "alt-A Option Mortgages" reset to much higher payments within the next 6 months, nobody can predict. But summer is really only new beginning, and as the last of the alt-A mortgages resets, winter will only then be really with us.

And between now and then?

Don't look for the commercial real-estate sector to save us. Their total asset value is likely to drop nearly a quarter between now and then.

Where Your Money Is: Calculated Risk

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Please subscribe to Calculated Risk.

Read it and tremble... but at least you'll have some clue about what's coming.

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Turn of the Screw

(Update. Fix links, typo etc. Stet at Midnight July 3, 2009)

I know of a reasonably cute l'il gal. She has that sort of technical talent at which older folks marvel.

You know, can't figure out how to set the VCR? Call in the kids, they'll look at you like you're stupid and fix your broken stuff in about 30 seconds. What's really scary is when they try to explain to you what they did. They say something like "um well, you just..." and words usually fail them and they wiggle their fingers like they were pushing buttons.

It can be difficult to articulate what occurs in the realms outside of the verbal. I have done a fair amount of technical writing, and the hardest part is translating the "well, push this button and yank that cord" into a story that has not merely a beginning, end, and middle, but which also conveys to the reader the reasons that they will need to know to figure out any uses outside of the merely rote.

Alas, though I had hoped the young lady in question might turn out to be one of those who can either figure out the reasons on her own -- whether or not she could articulate them into the common standard language -- or can come close enough to doing that so as to get jobs done that most people wouldn't even try to do. Most folks of a certain age are doomed to forever watch the clock on their VCR blink 12:00. Even though they can watch videos or DVDs just fine, it's a waste of the capabilities of the equipment.

Yet I made the mistake of asking the young lady in question "So, have you set your mind on a career yet?" and she declared that it was her intention to become a Parole and Probation person.

All I could tell her was that such people that I've known generally didn't seem to me to be too incredibly happy.

What I couldn't do was to express my complete incomprehension that anyone would ever want to spend four years in college just so that they qualified to be a lousy screw.

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"Screw", for the English Impaired, is a classic and commonplace reference to anyone remotely associated with the business of keeping people in lockup.

"Screws" can also refer to anything that can't be resisted, and gets tighter and tighter and tighter... until things break. In certain contexts, what breaks is a person's will.

In a certain sub-context of that last definition, a screw is exactly what is used to stop an asshole from blowing crap everywhere. You just keep tightening it down, and finally, the asshole is stopped.

It's just not exactly pleasant to be the poor bastard with the screwdriver.

Then again, you stopped an asshole.

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As of July 1, 2009, a lot of new laws went into effect. At the State level, nobody will be getting a new driver's permit in the State of Maryland which is usable for any Federal purpose unless they can prove lawful presence in the USA. At the County level, a lot of the people who won't be able to get new driver's permits also will get ticketed for parking their fly-by-night commercial vehicles in residential areas.

Yet the real gravy is only now starting to be basted onto a goose that is long overdue to be cooked.

The Gazette reports that at long last the Montgomery County Police will start moving towards dealing with the immense backlog of bench warrants. Their reluctance to do anything about it previously to now stems directly from at least a decade of County policy. There has been no significant effort in at least 10 years to deal with this backlog of warrants, because over half of the people in line to be arrested for "failure to appear" have "Hispanic" names and possibly most may reasonably be presumed to be illegal aliens.

The County's approach for now is to blanket the neighborhood with flyers advising people that it's really best for them to turn themselves in to avoid complications.

The County is, I have no doubts, just taking their standard approach, which is to give everyone all due warning that the County is about to start turning down the screws.

Although the County is trying to take the line that of course they'll be giving primary attention to minor offenses -- as the illegal alien community is still adjusting to the idea that only crimes of violence or weapons charges will get their immigration status checked -- this is of no consequence. Orders have come down from the very top -- which is to say, via DHS chairperson Janet Napolitano on direct orders from President Barack Obama -- that all persons brought into any jail anywhere on any level of charges will be checked against ICE and CIS as well as LEAA and NCIC. It doesn't matter, the second these warrants are served those people get their status checked. That's all. Direct from the President. A Democrat. Understand me, Mr County Executive, Mr Chief of Police, Mr Sheriff, Mr Officer On the Street? Deal with the warrant backlog, and you'll be dealing with the immigration issue.

Or, you could simply do as has been done for the last decade... ignore blatant disrespect for, and open mocking of, the law... as long as the repeat offenders and bail jumpers are all foreigners illegally present in the country.

We citizens -- who just today heard that the official unemployment rate is 9.5 percent but when you really do the real math, it's more like 16.5 percent -- expect that here in Montgomery, we who play by the rules and abide by the law will still see the foreigners being turned against us as tightened screws.

Then again, times are changing and the politicians need to change with them.

Maybe the screws will be turning where they're supposed to be turned... against the lawless and the cheaters.

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