Aparently this administration thinks being able to arrest and lock up anyone they want for any reason is important. At least that seems like a reasonable summary of what I read from Peter Wade in Rolling Stone magazine (via Lynna at PZ’s Political Madness thread).

This was what I had to say on facebook.

You will bring all proposed constitutional suspensions to the public or you will get a revolution during a pandemic.
This administration has given no one a reason to trust it. As far as I’m concerned they would treat me as bad as they would a migrant.
The Republicans allow such social cruelty that I am rationally prejudiced against them. As a group they simply don’t give a shit about prisoners, abuse by authorities, and and other assorted social cruelties.
The Democrats let Obama become complicit in torture, abuse government whistle blowers, and allowed government espionage against american citizens through telecom companies.
If you do this without a through public hearing the remaining social confidence in government will break.

I’ve been thinking about that. I spend a lot of time thinking about why groups of people do what they do and this one has me somewhat puzzled.

While I’m not sure how it got started I have an idea about how it continued. Once the toilet paper started running low people wanted to make sure they would have some so they ran out to buy it too, which is a least not disease related irrationality. So the hoarding keeps going disease relation or no disease relation.

For the record I’m not participating in that. I’ll use the water in the bowl, my hand, and wash my hands before I join the flock in this.

Now as for how it got started, I don’t know. I’ve to find examples of the early people hoarding it to see what they thought they were gaining. Maybe the toilet paper was just in someone’s field of view when the hoarding instinct clicked on.

The situation with my position in whiteness becomes more complicated when I consider the census.

I still believe that whiteness is a political fiction designed for social dominance. An unhealthy social obsession that damages my country’s politics. “Other” seems like my only viable option. If anyone asks I give them my reasons.

But once again my actions do not exist in a vacuum. I have to plan for social responses. My general position still gets reactions and I’m still seeing people, white people* in all likelihood, choosing to obsess over blackness. One acted like the slave origin of blackness made me a hypocrite, which is pretending blackness and whiteness are equivalent and history lets me kill that. I will watch what white people do with whiteness and pay attention to how they act towards blackness.

What could a social reaction to white people associating with “other” on the census be?

*no more scare quotes because a political group naming themselves white people need none.

Posted to facebook.
“Anyone with a problem with Elizabeth Warren’s tone, or likability is suspect for misogyny until I see the details. ESPECIALLY if you’re a Trump voter. That chucklefuck doesn’t get to be the only one using aggression. I will call that cowardly shit out. Learn to engage with aggressive women. Try to change their tone from what’s legitimate and I’ll poke at that weakness until you crack.”

The behavior in the comments of a recent post by PZ reminded me of another political issue I’ve been meaning to write about. Race and “whiteness”.

I was raised to identify as white and today I hate that political construct. It is useless unless one wants to win a political conflict through numbers or fists. It has no other rational use that I can see. It doesn’t focus on any actual relevant social problems, it doesn’t help me figure out who a good person or a bad person is, it seems to have nothing but the social conflict.

The color doesn’t exist in the human population. There are no white people. There’s a range of pigmentation in there.
If the lack of literal examples in a political label isn’t good enough there’s the fact that plenty of light skinned people were said to not be white. The Irish (the same comparison with monkeys in political images at the link) are one example, and today you can see complications over if Jews are white.

Am I missing something? This looks like a huge waste of time and social effort because people need to box themselves into “whiteness” and make adversaries. Think about what it was before “whiteness”. Nation. City-state. City, down to the people on the other side of the “geographical feature”.

If the lack of actual whiteness and the behavior of people obsessed with who is and isn’t white isn’t enough there’s the fact that the term originated in a “need” to separate people (here’s a PDF) for ownership and denial of rights purposes.

The first examples of “white race/people” in the Oxford English Dictionary are no earlier than the 1600s, when Europeans were deeply involved in African slave-trading; the same seems to be true of the corresponding terms in the major European languages. At that point, the use of what was by then a powerfully stigmatizing form of polarized terminology must have seemed comfortingly appropriate.

The reference to “polarized terminology” referrs to the way society (western in my experience) uses “white” and “black” as replacements for “good” and “bad”. Unless you are a bigot “whiteness” looks like a broken social tool if you care about more than base group conflict.

When I point these things out to people I get a couple of responses. This is what I remember so far. Some people agree with the connections and brokenness of “whiteness”. One person demanded to know what I’m going to give them to replace “whiteness”, interestingly they didn’t tell me what they needed but I pointed out the tool is broken if I have a replacement or not.
Another was more explicit about their concerns, “What about blackness? Black people need to stop using blackness!”.

How very interesting.

Instead of being concerned about the label that applies to themselves and some form of group organization that solves problems facing our nations, this person was concerned about the label “they” (black people) are using on “themselves”. Group conflict related fear.
I wonder how conscious this was? It’s happened more than once and it’s a useful way to spot irrational racial group conflict related fear.

But as I wrap this up I need to point out another group conflict related fear, a rational one, the one black people have regarding white people. When Europeans assumed whiteness in order to dominate and enslave they chose blackness and forced it on black people. We took their culture away. What gets done with blackness is black people’s business. It looks like the same kind of attempt to socially control as complaints about baggy pants and rap music.

People who discover the brokenness or offensiveness of whiteness as a political organization tool can’t simply disavow it and ignore it. There are people out there speaking for you. When they say “white people” they mean you. They are implicitly trying to speak for you too. They have to make this assumption so they can’t deny your challenge.
You get to criticize them. If you want to fix society you will critisize them if you safely can. I won’t tell someone to do something risky but I do encourage it, especially with the climate change problems. This shit is fucking our societies up, it’s not based on solving problems. I’m comfortable spending the rest of my life watching for what white people say.

When someone publicly makes claims about people and/or groups and doesn’t support them I see that as politically pissing on fences.

For example the Trump fans who simply post “Trump2020!” in articles about anything considered politically “left” in the US, or in places they consider liberal, or articles about the election…

It’s on the “left” too, but this is my example. I need a political label of disgust having to do with political dominance displays that have no actual substance. Racists have made primate related insults a challenging problem. I’ve no problem respecting that strategic political reality, I’m just making it explicit (the blog name is an experiment and I welcome opinions) . So dogs are the implication, sorry dogs.

The last person I used it on said I didn’t support my argument and had to point out that it was a label for political behavior. From there I overtly meet them at that level, their behavior let met do it. Their comment nothing but the basest expression of personal politics lets you be personal right back.
Do unto others as they give you licence to do unto them (I call it “the inverse golden rule”).

Bigot in cheif.

Irrational, illogical, incompetent, ignoramus… incumbent? No. That needs work. But the alliteration is catchy. Irrational, illogical, incompetent, ignoramus, and I repeat myself.

Trump is a cheat, a cheater, and you shouldn’t let him cheat you even if you voted for him.

Somehow my brand of tourette syndrome has come with personal insult resistance. I’m more sensitive to people insulting one another and I often treat personal insults as a challenge.

Maybe it needs work, I’m going to practice this. There’s social symmetry in there because Trump makes insults for people. There’s an argument for overtly openly reflecting Trump’s bad behavior (not just insults) on his supporters and only stopping with specific supporters when they start critisizing Trump’s awful personal behavior.

With the insulting language it has to beliefs, manner of thought, or behavior. Not face. Not body. Personal behavior relevant to his awfulness. If you go for the irrelevant personal characteristics you’re not focused on the problem, you’re helping to propagate the problem.

You don’t have to worry about letting go of bigoted, irrational, and irrelevant insults. Have you noticed how “ignorant” and “incompetent” and “bigot” or it’s flavors like “racist” and “sexist” are treated as if they’re just insults and not characteristics? You’re not losing anything and you gain focus on social problems. Sure you have to do the work of making sure you can competently use them yourself but it’s worth it.

Just make sure the sting they feel isn’t why you’re doing it or you’re likely to mess things up.

And what is this? This is bigger than me. I’m practicing behavior associated with tourette syndrome phenomena, boundary crossing, insults, finding places where politics justifies me using this, instincts? Personality?

It’s been a while since I was here. I was socially overwhelmed and something had to go. I could see places where I was crossing boundaries where it should have been obvious, as well as other signs of being overloaded. It’s useful to talk about though, and this post is for some of that as well as what I need to write about next.

I’ve become totally open about mental health and mental illness issues and their connection to me, and most of my anxiety involves how I might affect others. When I was last here I was coming out of a period of general anxiety induced unemployment and started some serious therapy work. High school teacher, and substitute teacher to make money, were poor choices and I got general anxiety out of it. I’m not ready to write about that yet, it’s not that I don’t want to, but it’s more like I’ve got other thoughts that would be more useful to constructively express.

I started mopping floors so that I would have the mental downtime to start functionally working on changes. It’s been useful with respect to learning more about myself. I’ve actually been depressed since graduate school a little over a decade ago and at the time I didn’t recognize it creeping on. The substitute teacher stuff layered a different trauma onto that. And then there’s the social avoidance since early childhood.

And there’s more. Little objectified pieces of myself that I’m learning to lock into place. Someone should have shown me how to do this mental work when I was a child, but I come from a very ignorant and incompetent culture. A white conservative protestant american military culture that didn’t know what to do with a social sensitive in general.

But my culture did have ideas about what to do with social aggression. One thing I did since my last post was to keep up the political aggression as much as I could for practice. I need control over all the bits related to my aggressive instincts. Culture and basic sensation like fear, anger and disgust. Overtly expressed, repeatedly when useful and possible. Practicing using strong negative feeling words when relevant and necessary. Ignorant, incompetent, irrational, illogical, bigoted, sexist, misogynist, racist, homophobe, transphobe…the more you practice using them the better you get.

Today I go to maybe 10-15 facebook posts a week. Posts that attract negative, often hostile attention. In retrospect it feels like I’ve been creating political dispositions, social attitudes towards behavior. I feel like I’ve tried to make my personality activist, concerned with changing basic social behavior around me in some fashion. And just a little while ago I found something that feels like it’s always been a part of my personality. Social gadfly. On that note posts no longer require pre-approval, I’ll get some rules posted on an actual rules page as problems manifest.

In addition to restarting blogging I’m trying to get back into academic research. I never lost my dream of working in a laboratory doing origin of life research. I think I stand a better chance of figuring out how I need to organize myself and assert my differences when needed. Unfortunately there are complications involving my diagnoses. My social senses are skewed in a way that I’m still figuring out. I have some sources of advice and eventually I’ll put something up here.

Before I do that though, have you ever had something in your mind that you just had to get out to make room for other things related to the thing? I’ve got one of those related to origin of life research and the reading and more I’ve been doing and I think if I get it out it will help me out in several areas.

While I mopped floors I refreshed my memory and memorized metabolic pathways by drawing them over and over. That’s a useful way to internalize information. I mean sustained motor and visual activity feels like it enhanced my ability to work with what I’m memorizing. And I think there’s this whole other aspect where when you mash as much information as possible into your visual field it helps in creative thinking. Let me give you an example of a drawing where I’m trying to find connections related to the origin of the molecules that make genomes and ribosomes.

I’ll do a little explaining but the majority later.

As an example of how far I’m going to find information to integrate, that center row going left to right consists of reaction intermeadiates that don’t leave the protein. The image below are the reactants and products placed between the proteins for the pathway producing Purines (DNA/RNA bases A and G). Places where there is a split (PurN vs. PurT) are where bacteria, archaea, and/or eukarya have differences.

And I can still think of things I can add to that drawing, as well as making it look better. The 2 carbon is where a Dehydroxy ribonucleic acid is made. The 3 carbon to 5 carbon are the end points for polymerization. The 3 carbon is where a metabolic distinction is made between anabolic (building) and catabolic (dismantling) H+/e- addition and subtraction through the addition of a phosphate for anabolic NADP…

So my next several posts will be about patterns in abiogenesis research because it’s going to help me make room in my mind. I’ll do the best I can to make it general interest but I’m still getting a feel for the audience so I’ll probably be somewhat disorganized somewhere. I’m happy to answer questions and explain things differently in comments.

And now I’ve got this thing in my mind that I want to organize. The pathway suggests how it evolved and what our pre-cellular ancestors might be like. I think I can see metabolic modules coming with each purine or pyrimidine base. Carbohydrate organization with U, membrane organization with C, organizing sets of molecular tools called organic molecule cofactors with G and A that dispense molecules and organize synthesis.

One more drawing. This image transformed from a linear presentation of physical data of the earth focusing on it’s first billion or so years, to information about LUCA, to maybe hadean crust data, to something about archaea monolayer membranes I wanted to memorize in comparison with the bilayer membranes.

And finally I want to leave something related to political conflicts despite my misgivings. I’ll end this with something I think of as “strangling them in the social contract”. Technical language means something and I think that fixing society will require people overtly critisizing others using technical language badly.

I’m tired of seeing people abuse mental health and mental illness language. Technical terms they haven’t the competence to use, but use anyway. Often in politics. So I’ve decided to interrogate the use of mental health language and science and medical language more broadly. People blaming shootings on “mental illness”. People dismissing rape accusations because of “mental illness”. There’s so many. Even the insults “idiot”, “stupid”, “moron” and the like are in the general territory though I challenge those a bit differently. Most recently it’s people who seem upset that transgender isn’t a disorder anymore.

For people who appear to be politically abusing such language I put varying levels of pressure to demonstrate that they are using the language competently. For the people upset with transgender not being a disorder anymore I demand they define the disorder they think applies and they have to use the same professional guidelines. Otherwise casually diagnosing people is rude at best. For the word disorder I demand something like:

1. The name and type of disorder.
2. The specific diagnostic criteria.
3. Actual quoted or videotaped examples of the behavior in question that are rationally and logically tied to number 2 and any specific political points and claims they are making.

Now this runs some risks (and if anyone sees any I don’t please speak up) but I think they are manageable and we want a society more competent at these things. One risk is giving a bigot a platform to display disgusting views but as long as they keep showing any lack of objective criteria for attaching medical terms you can do a lot of things to take advantage of and point out their incompetence. It’s a respect to society to make sure people use these words right. I’m sure there are other risks and if any occur to me I’ll point them out in the comments.

And you can call people out and have them explain in technical terms of you don’t know what they mean. You can write it down and see for yourself. Anyone who actually cares about a political issue would want to give you something you can look up on your own. It’s their connections, they should be giving you ways find out for yourself. This goes for legitimate professionals too. You should learn to explain yourself to the people around you. It’s a skill.