Creating little authoritarians

The literature and research of psychology well describes how child physical and sexual abuse leads to the formation of authoritarian personalities, and later to conservative political affiliations. Children abused by the adults who are supposed to love and support them learn to deny their feelings of shame, helplessness and anger. Those displaced feelings can be activated later in life, possibly to be resolved by displacing them inter-personally or onto accepted "out" groups.

In their 1996 book The Politics of Denial, authors Michael Milburn and Sheree Conrad credit Theodore Odorno and later researchers as having "established the relationship between harsh, punitive child rearing and an authoritarian personality in adulthood."

The researchers showed how "...discipline [ in the family of the authoritarians] was experienced as threatening or traumatic or even overwhelming," and how those experiences often lead to conservative political orientations later in life, noting that "...the majority of authoritarians fall on the conservative end of the political spectrum."

In the US, large numbers of children are being abused. Nearly 3 million cases of abuse and neglect were reported to the Department of Health and Human Services in 1993, and a survey of parents showed that 84 percent reported "regularly using less severe types of physical punishment on children."

Certainly there are more cases of abuse than the 3 million reported cases. Stories like this one, Papal ally accused of 'ritual beatings': German bishop accused of hitting child with carpet beater at church-run home, have become commonplace. The accused Bishop, it turns out, is part of a "hardline conservative group of German Catholic Church leaders, to which the Pope belonged before his appointment to the Vatican."

Other children's organizations have also recently been accused of systematic child abuse, including the Boy Scouts, which has targeted gays over recent years, and public schools, where corporal punishment is still allowed in several states.

In the Catholic church, in particular, with the worldwide sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic officials, and the accounts of physical abuse by those even close to the Pope himself, the abuse of children seems to be as much about controlling the abused and accustoming them to authoritarianism as it is about sexually-repressed Christian leaders.

So in reality the "poisonous pedagogy" of spanking children and breaking their wills, and the authoritarian and harsh socialization techniques of some of our society's core institutions lead to a pent-up collective shame, helplessness and rage waiting to be tapped by unscrupulous politicians. These politicians - and others - give license to direct the suppressed feelings onto some other - communists, liberals, blacks, gays, etc. The now-adults get to experience the feelings in a socially accepted way.

But is that the way we should elect the people who actually govern us? Shouldn't political discussions be about policy and direction of the country - not the activating of hidden feelings? It is a distinction with a difference.

And lest you think that I am exaggerating the connection between right wing politics and child abuse, consider the child-rearing advice of James Dobson, the man who had the ear of the White House during the Bush administration, and who has sold millions of books on the subject, and who until very recently had a huge radio and newsletter audience.

He believes that children - as young as three years old - should be spanked for allegedly defying the wills of their parents. The sadistic Dobson writes children should only be allowed to cry for a short time after being assaulted - two or three minutes. If the child won't quit crying, then he "would offer them a little more of whatever caused the original tears."

Hopelessness, shame, rage, and denial

When people see this footage of US helicopter pilots and fighters gun down these unarmed civilians in Iraq, two questions sometimes arise: 1) Is this kind of behavior typical? and 2) How can these soldiers be so bloodthirsty?



Only by answering how our soldiers can be so cruel can we discover whether this kind of killing of innocents is prevalent in US war making. So - how do our soldiers end up acting like those in the leaked video?

I believe the answer is twofold: 1) Probably alot of these soldiers are self-selected violence prone people; and perhaps more importantly: 2) One of the main points of basic training for the military is to "break down" the personality of the recruits in order to acclimate them to killing and being a good cog in an authoritarian system.

This breaking of the will of recruits is designed to make them feel helplessness, shame and rage - feelings they must deny in order to be a solider - feelings that are later activated to discount the lives of people they will later kill. In "battle" these soldiers act out these feelings on the designed "other." Because the supposed "other" is ill-defined in modern warfare lines of conduct are blurred and easily breached. My guess is that this video is far from an aberration and closer to typical US behavior.

This also explains why veterans often turn out to be so violent when they return to civilian society, and why people from the military are prone to right wing Republican politics. After all, it is the conservatives who run campaigns based on stigmatizing "others" - whoever is convenient at the time, i.e. communists, blacks, hippies, liberals, gays, etc. - then displacing the repressed feelings of emotionally hurt individuals onto the specified "other" and symbolically destroying it. It is no coincidence that the military uses almost the exact same psychological maneuvering.

More Charter school fail

As Atrios says, "Nobody could have predicted":

One Philadelphia charter-school operator runs a private parking lot on the side. Another rents out apartments and collects the rent at his school. Yet another rents property to herself, signing her lease as both tenant and landlord.

These are some of the findings in a draft of a city controller's report on 13 Philadelphia charter schools obtained by The Inquirer that cites excessive salaries, compliant boards whose members are handpicked by school chiefs, inflated rents, and rampant conflicts of interest.

Whatever Happened to Hope: Why Barack Obama Cannot Become a Transformational President

In this recent talk at Vanderbilt University author Rick Perlstein (Before The Storm, Nixonland) points out that in today's polity, the Right is "operating in a post-shame world."

He says liberals have difficulty in dealing with an opposition that "operates from bad faith." And that Obama's consensus politics have little meaning if he never pivots to say certain views and people are beyond that consensus, thus marginalizing them. He argues the president has done nothing to move the political center of gravity away from the far right that now dominates our politics and discourse.

Regarding the Netroots, including the 600,000 people registered at Daily Kos, Perlstein describes it as a new social movement, one which the Obama administration has foolishly "affirmatively ruled out" as a partner in what it is trying to do. The fact that new social movements, Perlstein argues, are where real change comes from, puts the lie to Obama's claim to be an agent of change.

Punishing the victims

While Barack Obama blithely goes about blaming teachers for the children who do poorly in their schools - all the while cheering the destruction of those same schools, Diane Ravitch goes about her lonely duty of debunking the Washington consensus on education. In the words of a blogger whom she quotes, citing poverty as a key reason for poor educational performance:

"We can't fire poverty." Since we can't fire poverty, we can't fire students, and we can't fire families, all that is left is to fire teachers.

Indeed. Ravitch concludes:

It would be good if our nation's education leaders recognized that teachers are not solely responsible for student test scores. Other influences matter, including the students' effort, the family's encouragement, the effects of popular culture, and the influence of poverty...

This strategy of closing schools and firing the teachers is mean and punitive. And it is ultimately pointless. It solves no problem. It opens up a host of new problems. It satisfies the urge to purge. But it does nothing at all for the students.

Of course the morons who control our discourse - including the self-satisfied assholes at Morning Joe, will have none of this.

Truthiness in broadcasting

Today on the "liberal" MSNBC show Morning Joe viewers were treated to propogandization on a level that is too often the case on nearly all US media. The subject was "school reform" and featured guest after guest, subject after subject - six men including Al Sharpton and Mike Barnicle (!) on the glories of charter schools and the responsibility of teachers for much that ails American primary and secondary education.

The show cherry-picked the schools it chose to highlight - the ones I saw were all successful - when in reality a charter school is twice as likely to be failing than a regular public school. The schools seemed chosen specifically because they were not typical - they are the select high-flying set - somehow meant to be an example to all the other failures.

In her new book Diane Ravitch showed how when you boil down the few success stories that exist there can be no formula derived. She points out how some of the success stories pointed to, specifically in New York, are atypical even in the demographics of the city, coming from affluent White and Asian neighborhoods, whereas the majority of the city's neighborhoods are poor, Black and Hispanic.

The level of mendacity on the show was breathtaking, even given the low standards of cable TV. Perhaps the biggest lie was NY Mayor Bloomberg's assertion that, contrary to logic, studies, and the views of real education scholars the problem of poor schools cause poverty, and not the other way around. In this regard we are to take the word of Sharpton, a Black leader who Joe Conason said rents himself out to "GOP tricksters", and a billionaire mayor, as opposed to peer-reviewed research, 20 years of charter schools and privatization, and the views of real education scholars.

Someone on the Joe panel emphasized the false point that the future of our country's job market was dependent on all schools succeeding. But education is not the ticket to the middle class that it once was. In fact, as Paul Krugman put it, "Being highly educated won't make you into a winner in today's U.S. economy. At best, it makes you somewhat less of a loser." Fortune magazine reported that between 2000 and 2004 "real annual earnings of college graduates actually declined."

In other words, the problems so obviously go much deeper than public school teachers, who are nothing but a convenient target. The same forces that are bringing down our economy are bringing down our schools. Impoverishing foreign trade, loss of jobs, the housing meltdown and the steep drop in our economy are hurting American families. In both cases deregulation and privatization in a way that retains the spending and authority of government but transfers the power to private entities is having disastrous results.

Implicit in the Morning Joe argument is a utopian idea that all schools - and their students - can be exceptional. That's a nice romantic notion, and I too wish everybody could be exceptional. But in this world, as the existentialists would say, that is not possible. Existence before essence. With their destructive lies, the school choicers have taken a different path: In pursuit of an unattainable essence, they rejoice in the removal from existence of those merely trying to exist. To get a flavor of this, just look at the reaction to the recent announcement of the closing down of a so-called "poorly performing" school in Rhode Island.

Exposing the Obama education disaster

Today the failed experiment that is charter schools represent about three percent of all national primary and secondary schools. President Obama's plan for improving public education is to double the number of charter schools - to six percent of all schools. How in the world creating MORE failed charter schools - all the while maniacally focusing on teachers as the sole cause of the supposed failing of public education - will improve education is not discussed, as if the non-existent market for schools is some kind of magic bullet. And what will become of the 94 percent of schools that are not charters?

Now one of the prime ideologists of the destructive No Child Left Behind act, and a chief right wing proponent of school choice, charters and school vouchers has done a 180 degree turnaround, denouncing NCLB as a blueprint to destroy public education, and school choice as a failed theory originated by White southerners after the 1954 Supreme Court ruling Brown vs. Board of Education, which outlawed racial segregation in public schools. It is a stunning turnaround for Diane Ravitch, who besides being a (former, now) right wing operative is also a noted historian of public education. Click the image at right to watch an interview with Ravitch from C-Span's Booknotes.

Her new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, is about as powerful and complete a repudiation of American education policy over the past 20 years as one could find. She is especially harsh on President Obama and his wretched Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Ravitch says she met with Duncan to share her concerns with Obama's education policy of blaming teachers for students' failures and his pressing for more failed charter schools.

Using her decades of research experience, Ravitch pointed out to Duncan the error of his and Obama's views on education, and how they would achieve the exact opposite of the purported goals. She described the obvious fallacies of the economists and statisticians whose views rule education policy.

Noticeably she placed poverty at the apex of reasons for failing students, and recommended a government policy of dismantling the NCLB testing regimen and charter schools, instead using the money for poverty reduction, which would have a much stronger effect on creating better students than punishing those who are trying to help. According to Ravitch, Duncan listened politely but paid her no mind.

Given Ravitch's importance to the right wing school "reform" movement, and her shocking and brave turnaround, you'd think her ideas and research might have an impact on our discourse, but you'd be wrong.

The Right is already going about rewriting its own history. John Stossel, for example, has already dispatched Ravitch by reporting on her turnaround, then fishing around the regular channels for comments suggesting "Diane Ravitch was never really a reformer." Really? You wouldn't know that from her writings, nor her professional affiliations, both political and within the conservative movement.

Recently in a disgusting display of ignorance and ill will on CNN Wolf Blitzer teamed up with Arne Duncan and "Bookie of Virtue" Bill Bennett to spend a half hour telling lies about public school teachers and charter schools. Duncan is touring the country with Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton - those noted education experts - touting Obama's sadistic education policy.

Here in Minnesota we are regularly treated to anti-public school teacher and pro-charter school nonsense in the Star Tribune. Buffoons like Don Samuels advocate the exact policies which Ravitch so efficiently debunks, but thanks to the censorship of the newspaper readers will likely never know they have been duped. At any rate, here's three cheers to the courageous Diane Ravitch.