If you want to know what I think, which maybe nobody does, but if you do, I think it all started when TOO many people thought themselves TOO self-important to work at anything that might get their hands dirty and their muscles sore. Thus, technical civilization and arrogance were born, and technical civilization and arrogance go hand-in-hand. And this is what-we-have-today in the Empire, that some erroneously still call America.

This hyper-technical civilization and arrogance will be our DOOM.

good article. most americans will probably not have to face such institutional abuse, but institutional indifference can be nightmarish as well. ("what? the city towed your car by mistake? too effin' bad.")

and we all just accept it. the docility of the average american in the face of the enormous crimes being committed and day to day humiliations and insecurities is really quite astounding.

our educational system is a marvel to behold. and, failing that, there is always prison. like that simpsons' episode where, to make up for the budget, the school rents out space to the local prison. school/prison? same thing.

school...prison...military....well said tristam.

how about the five year old detained for hours for being on the no fly list

http://boingboing.net/2008/01/10/another-fiveyearold.html

when his mother hugged him because he was crying they strip searched them both for the second time because the toddler may have passed important security information during the hug

this is not funny

there are more than i million names on the no fly list and even the most uneducated paranoid sheeple living in his bomb shelter basement hoping the rapture comes this week - even nuts like that don't think a million names is right - but there you go

senator kennedy is on the list

as are may congressmen an senators

let's not forget the millions of people we have killed in this fictional, corporate media produced war on terror

talk about uncivilized - talk abut barbaric

keep in mind that homeland security was written prior to 9/11

what about the three trillion dollars that the pentagon had stolen - if you recall the psycho rumsfeld on 9/10/01 announced the pentagon was three trillion short on their accounting books

the next day 9/11 we have the tv show at the wtc and poof - we never hear about the three trillion again

man, those 19 saudis with their box cutters couldn't have attacked america at a better time

the air defense stands down, fake pilots do top gun flying, buildings turn into dust, the plane at the pentagon crams itself into a 20 hole before completely disintegrating

what an unbelievably lucky break for the bushco

what are the odds

back to sleep sheeple - we have american idol and dancing with the stars this week and i hear these episodes are laden with fun, excitement and some pretty darn good dancing

we know that obama is on the case with the support and love of both kissinger and brzezinski

have a good nap - don't forget to take your medications

I tremble every day sending my 12 y/o kid off to school because 'the authorities' truly are nitwits not to be trusted. We see that all over our society these days, don't we?

smipypr

Zero tolerance = innumerable tyrants

"Institutional Sadism" has operated in the USA since its inception--one need only look at the institutions of Slavery and Indian Removal. Added to those institutions was the concept of Total War, first tested on the inhabitants of the South by Sherman and now implemented by drone aircraft in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Becoming a civilized human means mastering one's Dark Side. Governments are mere reflections of the people running them, and the US government's barbaric behavior over many decades speaks volumes about the quality of the citizenry it employs.

. . . nine U.S. Supreme Court justices will hear this case next month to decide what limits, if any, there should be on school authority.

Dateline: The Supreme Court. In a separate opinion, Justice Antonin "Nino" Scalia said the school should have shot the student in question out of hand. "Ibuprofen is a gateway drug; the next step is heroin addiction", he wrote. Justice Clarence "Pubic Hair" Thomas said the student should not only have been shot but the corpse subsequently burned and hung from the chain link fence in front of the school.

Institutionalized sadism is common. Most people who have dealt with the legal system have an opinion on this issue. Please read what happened in Vermont - and things like this happen all the time.

http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/jackowski01252006/

There was indeed a reason why corporal punishment was banished from schools.

1st step is to admit that people who are sadist are wanting to be jail keepers.

In the last decade they have all come out of the closet and feeling free to practice S&M in USA. Plenty of career opportunity was presented by El Presidente and his cabal in the name of patriotism and protection. Fees paid for this service with our tax dollars.

Forgiveness and compassion is opposite of jail keepers. We have to choose.

toophat for you!

"In 'Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,' the crew of the Enterprise travels back from the 23rd century to 1986 America, either to save the planet or save the whales. There's a wonderful scene toward the end where Captain Kirk, Spock and Dr. McCoy are trying to save Chekov from the claws of 20th century health care. Dr. McCoy can't believe the hospital's wards of barbarism. To a woman on dialysis: 'Dialysis? What is this, the dark ages? Here, swallow one of these.' Chemotherapy? 'Sounds like the (expletive) Spanish Inquisition.' One of these days, I hope not so far as the 23rd century, we'll look back on this decade's epidemic of institutional sadism with as much horror as Dr. McCoy looked at 20th century medicine."

LOL. I'm a only casual Trekkie, but I've always loved this movie and fondly remember those scenes with Bones in the hospital. He stole the movie. Then they're trying to run out of the hospital with Chekov and the formerly infirm little old lady on dialysis is celebrating her newfound health.

They wonder why people are afraid to go to the doctor or dentist, why animals are afraid of the vet.

We are a country of neighborhoods. And Arizona Sucks-It is marked by PERVASIVE bigotry, hatred and a mentality that idolizes guns, jails, locking people up, and John McCain if I recall. Go to prison for years for growing a little weed.

But a bored redneck can pull his pick-up into a gas station in Northern Arizona and fill up, buy a 12 gauge Remington pump & Ammo, a half-gallon of Jack Daniels & hit the road!

How many Arizona Rednecks does it take to eat coyote?
Two. One to get down on his knees and pig out, the other to watch for cars.

That the principal doing this to a 13 year old is enough to make my blood boil. The sad part in all of this is people keep saying "Ah, well torture cases don't matter. They do them there so they won't do them here." Yet, this article just proved the opposite. Oh, they'll torture innocent Iraqis over there alright but that doesn't stop domestic terrorism and abuse such as what the principal had done to the 13 year old. And the author makes an excellent point on outsourcing. In the 19th century, slave labor was so visible that it lead to the Civil War. Yet, today's slavery is not so obvious that most people will sit in ignorance about it unless their job is lost or is on the line. In fact, a coworker of mine who struggled to turn his 3-6 month contract positions into permanent jobs for two years found out that every time his job was outsourced for nothing. Even his best friends would laugh at him and say "Oh well, that's business. Sorry but in this world there are winners and there are losers. Maybe you're just not working hard enough." He was working very hard actually and I was in tears when he told me about how even his fiancee left him even as he was struggling to secure a job because she thought that she was doing great with her job for 4 years but that somehow he wasn't and she even mocked at his stressed out looks and told him "Sorry sweetie but nobody wants to marry a bald loser !" From childhood to adulthood, the system is so screwed up that the perpetrators get rewarded while even the hardest working victims get punished even when it wasn't their fault of their own. This is another reason that I fear that America is heading towards a greater depression because as history has shown, the Great Depression was about the only time people actually came together to help one another and all these individual weaknesses exploitations were minimized.

A society without any standard but the requirement to always obey authority figures is dysfunctional. Cognitive dissonance paralyzes social interaction and productive innovation. This benefits legacy institutions owned by very rich individuals that don't want any change in the status quo. Eventually even the rich get caught up in the maelstrom of social fiber destruction that comes about. Sharks in a feeding frenzy bite and kill each other by mistake. We are there now. The frenzy of greed breeds the worst reactions from those in power. All these labels describing the "isms" for all this destructive behavior are symptoms of major decay. The rich have no idea what they have unleashed. These stupid bastards really believed they could corral and coerce all the people all the time. It's the old pipe dream from the ivory towers. They never learn.

And another charming feature of "zero-tolerance" approaches-- which by definition are draconian, rigid, and authoritarian-- is that they undermine such courage, independence, and flexibility that an adminstrator might have in the first place.

That is, while a degree of sadism or lust for power may be an occupational hazard to which many school officials yield, there are also decent teachers and administrators who recognize and oppose the pettiness and general outrage of children being victimized by zero-tolerance administration.

But the administrator either goes along and takes the "easy out" of administering harsh sanctions because his or her "hands are tied" by rigid mandatory proscriptions, or expresses dissent that makes said administrator Intolerable to the system.

So, just as in our political system, incumbents are rewarded for fecklessness and conformity.

· Yr Obd't Servant

I am in strong agreement with Mr. Tristam. As he points out, our collective tolerance of torture has rippled throughout our culture. A recent example of how our putatively just criminal justice system has become corroded, is the case of those two juvenile court judges in, I think, Georgia. The gained control of the court budget, which paid for juvenile detention. Then they shut down the county-owned juvie detention center and began to funnel all juveniles with sentences to a privately-owned and run detention center that actually paid the judges for each child (juvenile offenders are children, let's keep this in mind) the judges sent to prison. (calling it a detention center makes it sound a little soft but it is a juvenile prison).

The juvenile court in this county quickly became known for imposing the strictest sentences possible on all juvenile offenders. The crooked judges had daily goals, making certain they filled their quota of incarcerated children so they would get their kickbacks.

Those judges are slime, yes. And each of them are individually culpable for what they did. But there is no question in my mind that these jduges were able to exist -- and persevere with their hideous crimes -- because our large culture has deteriorating values. These scumbag judges performed right in front of the justice community where they lived. Some juvenile advocates tried to challenge them but the judges controlled everything and shut every effort to contain them down.

This juvenile court judicial scandal/crime would not have been possible if we (all of us carry some of this burden) had not tolerated the blatant abuse of what used to be our values. Once our government started torturing, we were all infected.

Keep up the good work, Mr. Tristam.

reading thru the comments made me wonder about pierre t's conclusion. interesting that the person 2ND most likely to cause your death, after yourself (thru "lifestyle" issues like smoking), is YOUR DOCTOR or HOSPITAL or other health care provider.

(at least per this article:http://www.counterpunch.com/goekler03242009.html)

more institutional neglect and indifference....

Coaches become principals and are in charge of the schools. The typical coach is gross and insensitive with narrow intellectual capacity, yet America loves it's coaches. Coaches have sex with students regularly so it should be no surprise that one was strip searched. Schools are made into little hells when coaches are placed in control. The culture of coach run schools are akin to little gestapos.

Torture does not commence in a vacuum. For it to become an organ of State policy, as it seems to have, people in government must first conceive of the idea - in other words to visualize it, or conceptualize the practice in other ways, before then giving the go ahead for torture to be carried out. This pre-supposes a sado-masochistic mindset. This mindset partly comes about through suppressed anger, but politically in the need to reinforce the top to bottom hierarchical system in its most potent manifestations. This psychology is easily recognizable from the Bush/Cheney/Blair triumvirate and the way they enforced motifs onto society whilst in power. Until the root cause of the need for the masses to vote into power individuals who will given them the satisfaction of seeing this kind of politico-psychological sado-masochism being played out in the national and international arena, the problem will not go away, or not entirely. First, each person who votes (or influenced the political system) must try to understand the 'other' and not live through fear and anger, in other words, to think and act responsibly - and thus stop empowering the 'crazies' to anarchically plunge the world into war, economic destruction, environmental catastrophe and the starvation of vast masses of humanity. Torture is the sharp end of a truly sick mindset, and it is this mindset which must be cured.

Good to see the "sadism" word proximately displayed here and in Chris Hedges' recent piece calling for a "moral bailout". If a critical mass can keep the sadomasochistic character dance in main focus the bars to the cage the collective is trapped in can further come into vision (egad! am I one of the bars?!); then of course the location of the lock can appear...allowing for formation of the key to begin...

As intimated by other commentators here the sadomasochistic relationship pervades all strata of human social structures, whether macro or micro - it's the true March of Madness, and breaking it's spell the real Big Dance. Hmm...maybe it's time to review how Joseph McCarthy was reined in - Good Night and Good Luck to All.

American schools are all surrounded by fences. The children are locked in for their "protection", thanks to insanely promiscuously gun laws by people who think that people without guns would be able to kill people as readily as a lunatic holding a couple of automatic pistols. The same firearm promiscuity, and 'zero tolerance' in drug laws, has put weapons & money in the hands of the powers now giving Gauleiter Napolitano all the moral indignation she needs to continue to fuel that problem.