What would I do if I didn't call you a moron?

By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

As I was saying, Somervillians are the people who I like most and have chosen to live with. Yet in these times, they call each other names more than other people that I know. 

There seem to be ever more conditions that legitimately evoke anger, but fewer clear opportunities to change them. Posts on the Somerville News' website catalog these conditions.

Anger is a healthy response to mistreatment. Learning to focus that anger in a way that actually makes things better is an essential element in becoming a mature human being. Aristotle wrote that “anyone can become angry-that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way-that is not so easy.”

Name-calling provides us with two small satisfactions. The first is the opportunity to discharge some of the anger that we feel. Although name-calling is not a healthy expression of anger, it is healthier that expressing it with a Glock 21 and extra ammo clips.

Name-calling also gives us a small and illusory sense of power. It is the power to hurt those who have hurt us. The notion that naming something can give us power over it is as old as language itself, but it is not true.

Hurling insults is counter-productive to changing the conditions that anger us. Conditions like those described on our website are rarely the product of one individual. More often, they are the outcome of broad institutional forces.

From time to time, I am angered by the behavior of the mayor, or aldermen, or the Planning Board. I believe that it is right to criticize their harmful behavior, more effective to illuminate its broader context, but hurtful and stupid to attack the individuals. Their actions that I criticize usually result from rational calculations within the context of a dysfunctional political culture and institutions that they, as individuals, have little power to effect.

None of us, as an individual, has that kind of power. The conditions that we object to are recreated every day by all of us making the best choices that we can, from a limited set of alternatives provided by the institutions that we inhabit. The most powerful of these institutions are economic. Their seeming solidity and omnipotence obscure the reality that they are merely congealed patterns of behavior. If we all woke up tomorrow morning and made different choices, those choices would transform the institutions.

Of course, this does not happen spontaneously. Institutions change when those who animate them by simply living their lives reach broad agreement that (1) the institutions' operations are harmful to their best interests, and (2) there are alternatives that are persuasive of their ability to do better for us.

All political, economic, and social institutions that we know benefit some people more than others. The most critical benefit is disproportionate power. The powerful will use every available means to persuade the majority that the institutions' operations are good for them, and that there are no better alternatives.

Today, those means are pervasive and internalized. Like fish who don't think much about water because it is their taken-for-granted universe, we swim in a deluge of information whose messages acknowledge no other reality. We are persuaded that our troubles are more the outcome of personal inadequacies than of systematic institutional operations.

We are more vulnerable to these messages because we are more isolated. More of us are working more hours. Many community institutions are gone that once allowed us to know each other, gradually establish trust, look at our troubles through each other's eyes, gain an inkling that our troubles don't all result from personal failings, and develop shared confidence that we might make changes.

I believe that when we listen to each other, we see each other's humanity. When we are listened to, we gain confidence in the authenticity of our own experiences. When we look through each other's eyes, we discover that what we share is more important than our differences. We gain multiple perspectives on shared problems. And we gain an opportunity to create the two conditions for institutional change.

Few things are as effective at making someone stop listening as insulting them. Doing so in a public forum hurts more than the victim's feelings. It undermines mutual trust, discourages participation, keeps us separated, and deepens a sense of collective futility.

There is a lot to be justly angry about. Expressing it can be the first step toward making things better. But as Aristotle suggested, some expressions are more effective than others.

Offering evidence that supports your complaint helps legitimize your anger and calls attention to real conditions. Many people do not have the time or inclination to develop such evidence. But even simply stating why you are angry, in terms of your own personal experience, leaves the possibility of interaction. It allows others to see your humanity, take your complaint seriously, and maybe even offer supporting evidence of their own.

Could we have more of that and less name-calling?

Comments

[Imux]

Bill, we don't need no stinkin' facts! The problem is that some of the ideas and beliefs that the moonbats/yuppies/freaks espouse are so out to lunch that one cannot help but to yell "MORONS!!!!". It has nothing with power or anger (well... some of it with anger) and it really is not personal... it is more a matter of disbelief that there are people living here now that are so stupid they do not see that many of us resent (deeply) what they've done to our city.

Believe me, when I'm sitting in a bar and some moonbat starts discussing some of what they want for Somerville -- I tell 'em to their face "You're a moonbat, so just STFU". For some reason that just seems to always end the discussion. Works wonders.

[JK]

Imux. Is that post supposed to be sarcastic? If not, I'm not sure you understood or even read this story. Perhaps if you said something more constructive to us moonbats about the kind of change that bother you and things YOU would like to see happen with this city then the moonbats would not only end the discussion, but change their opinions.
Sincerely,
Proud Moonbat

[Imux]

JK, it is generally just too painful to read what Bill writes. Plus, I already know what Bill is going to say.... higher taxes for more nutbag useless programs...blah...we need more illegals...blah... blahh... we should let criminals out early.... blah...blah... higher taxes...blah...Pat Jehlen is God... blah... blah... let's all hold hands in Davis square and sing Kumbaya.... blah.... blah... higher taxes for more moonbat programs.... blah... blahh....we just need higher taxes...blah... blah...only develop what we moonbats want developed.... blah... blah... legalize weed.... blah... blah... it's so cool being pro-alternative lifestyle... we need more low-income housing.... blah... blah... higher taxes....

Did I mention that Bill would blather on about needing higher taxes for more moonbatish programs (see: Arts Council and Human Rights council among others)?

[Chris]

Glock's don't use "CLIPC" you moron!

[Chris]

That was supposed to be CLIPS. I didn't say i wasn't a moron too.

[JPM]

"Offering evidence that supports your complaint helps legitimize your anger and calls attention to real conditions."

Bill, the problem is that people on both sides of an argument can always advance statisitical evidence to back up their claims....and we know what they say about statisitics. There is no way for us to verify these stats. Often the group producing the stats has an agenda.

[Bill Shelton]

JPM,

In the column I said, "Many people do not have the time or inclination to develop such evidence." You make an excellent point: many people don't have the time to check out others' evidence as well.

I do think that the most honest thing to do is to state the experiences that made us angry or led us to our position. I think doing so makes it easier to have a conversation than citing facts that can't be checked out. If someone won't listen to our experience, or ridicules it, then they were never going to listen anyway.

Once people do share their experiences, if they really care about the subject, they can say, "How would we determine what the larger truth is. What evidence would we both find acceptable? Where could we find it?"

If we can't do this, I fear for our future. Because we share fewer and fewer activities that bring us together, we are drifting into bitterly hostile camps.

Imux, my friendly adversary,

JK suggests that if we listened to each other, we might actually change our opinions. The list of beliefs that you attribute to me suggests that I am not communicating effectively or you're not listening.

higher taxes for more nutbag useless programs-I am a fiscal conservative, and I think that the most effective social program is a job.

we need more illegals-In my series on immigration, I concluded that we need effective enforcement before anything else, and I suggested a way to accomplish that.

Pat Jehlen is God-Pat Jehlen is a caring person, and she would be the first to tell you that I regularly take her to task--but not in public.

we should let criminals out early-we should do whatever is necessary to protect society from real criminals, but not criminalize activities that harm no one. The absurd expansion of the prison system over the last 20 years is one of our most expensive and wasteful moonbat programs.

Chris,

I am moronic about many things, but my Glock has a clip. Would you prefer for me to call it a magazine?

[Diogenes]

Bill,

You wrote, "If someone won't listen to our experience, or ridicules it, then they were never going to listen anyway."

So why do you keep talking to Imux?

[Bill Shelton]

Well, Diogenes, as Jessica Rabbit said about her husband Roger, "He makes me laugh."

[Chris]

Since clips are used to feed magazines, and Glock's don't use anything to feed a magazine other than your thumb or an external loader, then the proper term would be magazine when talking about a Glock pistol.

BTW, i was only joking. I don't really care what you call it.

"That isn't a hole. It's art. It represents anger."

[Imux]

Bill, it may be just me, but maybe in your next articles you could explicity state your opinion more clearly. Something like:

1. I am against illegals coming and staying in this city. I realize that the next president/congress will be withdrawing federal funds for any city who does NOT support the federal govt's laws concerning deportation of illegals. I am therefore all in favor of the local cops - acting like cops - and enforcing the laws of the land.

2. As a fiscal conservative, I am totally against spending any of our tax dollars on "social engineering" programs (read: moonbat useless programs). Our taxes should be for defense, fire, police and that's about it.

3. We need to build more prisons 'cause we simply have more knuckleheads running rampant than ever before. I attribute this increase in criminals due to the moonbat inspired decline of our morals as a society.

See how easy it is to clearly state your positions, Bill? I am pumped to know that you've finally "seen the light" and are getting on the winning team (GOP). After President Bush's state of the union address last night I feel even more confident that we're on the 1 yard line with President Bush about to jam the ball into the endzone for the winning score. With Dick Cheney as the lead blocker - of course!

On Iraq: We are there to help the Iraqis, because inside every Islamofacist there is an American trying to get out. It's a hardball world, Bill. We just had to keep our heads until that peace craze blew over. It did - the surge worked.

[To:IMUX]

I know you could give a rats ass, but:

The prison industry now employees more than half a million people -- more than any Fortune 500 corporation, other than General Motors. Mushrooming construction has turned the prison industry into the main employer in scores of economically depressed rural communities. And there are a host of firms profiting from private prisons, prison labor and services like healthcare and transportation.

Today, there are over 1.7 million people incarcerated in the United States, more than in any other industrialized country. They are disproportionately African American and Latino (almost 70% of US prisoners are people of color) and two thirds are serving sentences for non-violent crimes. One in three African American men between the ages of 20 and 29 is either in jail, on probation or parole. 1.4 million black men -- or 13% of African American men -- have lost the right to vote because they have committed felonies.

Taxpayers foot the bill for "get tough" policies that treat a generation of young people -- mostly young people of color -- as expendable. New York and California, states that once had arguably the finest public university systems in the country, now spend more money locking people up than on giving them a college education. Meanwhile, prison gates are swinging wide open for corporations. Some like CMT Blues, Microsoft, Boeing, TWA, and Victoria's Secret, are using low cost prison labor for every thing from manufacturing aircraft components and lingerie to booking reservations.

In addition to companies exploiting prison labor, there are eighteen or so private prison corporations that control about 100,000 prison beds across the country. The largest, the Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America -- whose securities were dubbed the theme stock of the nineties by one investment firm -- also operates private prisons in Puerto Rico, Australia, the UK and will soon open one in South Africa. These private lockups cut corners on labor costs, often hiring untrained, inexperienced guards, leading to a dismal record of escapes and brutality against inmates.

[Imux]

My respone: As Baretta so eloquently put "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time."

The problem we have is our liberal society (read: moonbat) has created generations of people who have no morals and/or belief in God. The SOBs think it's ok to do drugs, rape, rob and murder. What should society do with these lowlifes - let them continue to wander around and continue their criminal activities? No. You gotta lock 'em up.

Chicken and egg issue - which came first? Criminal or prisons? We didn't build the damn prisons and then go out looking for "guests" - it ain't the hotel system. We have too many criminals, so we're building rooms for them all. I'm all for it. Build more.

[To:IMUX]

Our Correctional system at it's best.

By Maggie Mulvihill/ Exclusive

State correctional officers called in sick a startling 52,399 days last year, averaging 15 sick days each and costing taxpayers an additional $3.5 million in overtime to pay for their replacements, according to state records.

And that¹s an improvement.

"The numbers are staggering," said Department of Correction Commissioner Kathleen M. Dennehy, who has been cracking down on sick time abuse since she was appointed in 2003.

Sick time use by correction officers has actually come down about 15 percent under Dennehy.

In 2004, correction officers took a total of 62,012 sick days or roughly 17.3 days per officer, DOC statistics show. Last year, the officers averaged 14.9 days per year or three weeks of sick time.

Roughly 3,500 correction officers work in the state prison system and their union contract allows them 15 sick days a year, including five unsubstantiated days that don¹t require a doctor¹s note, said Steve Kenneway, president of the Massachusetts Corrections Officers Federated Union.

"As far as I¹m concerned, if there were 100,000 sick days, as long as the doctor signed off that is an authorized absence," he said.
Dennehy acknowledges DOC management has not addressed the problem aggressively enough in past years.

"We as an agency have to accept some of the responsibility for not having vigilantly monitored these numbers over the years," Dennehy said. "The vast majority of the staff don¹t abuse sick time."

But correction officers have faced tough discipline under her command. Fourteen officers were disciplined last year, including one officer who worked at MCI-Norfolk. The $54,000-a-year officer was terminated after taking 256 sick days.

Dennehy has referred seven cases in the past two years to Attorney General Tom Reilly for possible criminal prosecution.

The Massachusetts numbers are significantly disproportionate to state prison systems that employ the same number of officers. For instance, in Colorado last year the 3,525 correction officers used 20,316 sick days - meaning Massachusetts officers used over 2.5 times the amount of sick days.

High sick time usage was highlighted as an issue by two panels convened by Romney to revamp the entire state prison system. More correction officers call in sick at MCI-Cedar Junction, one of the state¹s two maximum security prisons, than any other facility.

Kenneway said Walpole is the most difficult facility to work in.
³Walpole is, bar none, the most violent facility in the Northeast to work in. There is a feeling of dread when you go to work there because you never know what the next eight hours will bring.My hat¹s off to those guys because they do a fantastic job keeping the level of violence down,² Kenneway said.

He said the union does not brook abuse of sick time and blames understaffing for the high numbers.

³We are far more serious than we have been given credit for about this sick time stuff. When I am working a block, I want my partner next to me,² Kenneway said. ³But they can¹t even cover the vacations anymore. They don¹t have the staff to work these prisons.²

[JPM]

I think that ordinary working people in Massachusetts are frustrated. People who work in the private sector, who aren't connected, who have to save every penny for their retirement. There are a few broad categories:
1. The super wealthy - the government can do what it wants because it will not affect them.
2. The upper middle class professional classes making a comfortable living.
3. Public sector workers.
4. Private sector workers making $35-$55,000.
5. Those on welfare and disability.

Public sector positions are cushy. They do not make great salaries, but they can retire after 20 years (which is ridiculous), get great benefits, abuse sick time (see above), manufacture scam disabilities (see fire department story in Globe)....etc...

Well get a job in the public sector i hear you say... As I know from working in the public sector for a year, the vast majority of these positions are kept for people who are "juiced in." It is amazing how many wives of police officers are working in the court administration for example. Court officers would tell me you had to get juiced to get a postions. That's just how it is is Mass. Not everyone can work in the public sector.

Then those working in the public sector get pissed when there taxes go up again to fund bs programs....when we are struggling to survive. Taxes should pay for the following:

1. Roads
2. Police
3. Fire
4. Military
5. Public Education
6.Government/courts administration
7. Assisting elderly and disbaled that GENUINELY cannot work and need assistance.
8. Perhaps free healthcare for children who are poor.

I am sure I have missed a few things, but basically necessary "public goods." Given that mass is in huge debt we need to extend public sectors retirement until they have worked to 65 like the rest of us.

[Imux]

JPM, I could not agree more. The motto of the politicians (mostly liberal democrats) in this state is "My trunk is always open!" Beyond the rampant nepotism, it is that vast corruption that is so wasteful. Look at the T. Good lord, what a joke that system is. The damn T is bankrupt - not because of operational costs, but becuase of all the pensions, disablity and other BS the unions squeezed out of 'em. Everyone got a cut except us - the people who pay taxes/fares and so on to keep that joke of a system afloat.

Another good reason to build more prisons: lock up all these people scamming the system.

[JPM]

It should sat "Then those working in the PRIVATE sector get pissed."

[JPM]

Bill would you care to address my post? I would be interested in your response to this frustrated taxpayer who gets up every morning to do an honest days work, and tries to do the right thing. Thanks.

[Imux]

Some asshat posting as me. You are a bunch of liberal morons.

>>

JPM, I could not agree more. The motto of the politicians (mostly liberal democrats) in this state is "My trunk is always open!" Beyond the rampant nepotism, it is that vast corruption that is so wasteful. Look at the T. Good lord, what a joke that system is. The damn T is bankrupt - not because of operational costs, but becuase of all the pensions, disablity and other BS the unions squeezed out of 'em. Everyone got a cut except us - the people who pay taxes/fares and so on to keep that joke of a system afloat.

Another good reason to build more prisons: lock up all these people scamming the system.

[Solh Zendeh]

JPM, I want to second my approval of your list. One thing I would note is that for highways, I advocate making them all toll roads.

Now that we have the ez pass, there's no reason not to, considering:

- locals could get on/off their local exits at a discount or free.
- businesses and commuters that use the roads pay for them.

Of course, you would need some sort of law that assesses the toll for maintenance of that road only - none of that Mass turnpike funding half the state budget BS.

[Bill Shelton]

JPM,

I'm not sure what to say except that I agree with your post. The one exception that I would make is that I think we should have single-payer universal health care that focuses on prevention, and this is for FISCAL reasons.

We're the only industrialized society that doesn't have universal health care, and we pay 50% more for our health care than the rest of them. Society has come to think of tobacco companies as the personification of amoral greed. I think that insurance companies are pretty close. When I was in business school, going into the insurance industry was the fall-back job for the least talented.

Unlike Imux, I do not think that this state of affairs is because of liberal Democrats. Thirty years ago, when I lived in California, I imagined that Massachusetts was the most "liberal" state. Having lived here now for decades, I don't think that is very "liberal." I think that it is corrupt. "Corrupt" may be too harsh a word, but it's the one that I apply to the "juiced" favor-trading system that you describe.

I don't think that this is because the Democrats are too liberal. I think that it's because they have had so much dominance for so long that they have turned the public sector into a favor-trading spoils system. Conservatives and Republicans do the same thing when they gain to much power. Consider Tom Delay and his K-Street strategy.

[Bill Shelton]

I should also point out that I am not attacking public employees, but I am attacking the system. There are plenty of public employees who work hard and conscientiously, and most who must simply deal with the system as they find it. But I am profoundly critical of those who dispense jobs to maintain their own power. You know who you are.

[John]

well 1 fact about correction officers (Gaurds) in jails in mass are the highest paid in the nation or maybe the 2nd but they are right up there and they are mostly gaurding a bunch of drug addicts at the county jail anyways

[John]

by the way i got that from boston.com i dont know how to post the link but do a search if you dont belive me