Profiling and stereotypes

These days it seems like the entire legislative and political processes have gone stark-raving mad. The same voters, I assume, that elected Bush Jr to a second term elected Obama and wait for change, only to get bad changes. The middle class continues to have to struggle to even get unemployment benefit extensions approved, while savers are punished with rising inflation due to government printing and bailouts to big bank cronies. Nothing "changed" on that front.

Once again, I digress. Today's topic is "profiling." It is a constant buzz-word, as constant issue is taken with various forms of "profiling" by groups from the hispanic community related to anti-illegal immigration to muslim/arab/middle eastern profiling at the TSA.

Guess what, we are all profiled and profile on a constant basis. When you get ID'd to buy cigarettes or alcohol, you have just been profiled. Some clerk at the counter is forming a subjective picture of what you "look like" and making certain assumptions as to your age. This is just one small, quite everyday example, of how profiling occurs everywhere already.

Granted, to live in a society we give up certain rights willingly. We agree to produce identification to the police when requested. People typically understand that the greater good requires their compliance. Except, it would seem, when really IMPORTANT issues like terrorism, rather than underage smoking, necessitates the profiling.

If you want to know my opinion, if you are in the USA, you implicitly agree to abide by the laws, assuming that the law is reasonable and just (perhaps there are better, more to the point terms than "reasonable and just" but I don't have the time to figure them out). I add this caveat to allow for the possibility of conscientous objections or civil disobedience should the law of the land become corrupted and unjust. However, removing one's shoes or burkah at the airport, even having to undergo a more thorough airport screening due to being "profiled" as being of middle eastern or arabic descent, to me is eminently reasonable in a post 9/11 world.

Granted, the anti-illegal immigration profiling fears are a bit more complex. I would guess we can thank our legislators for the fine mess we find ourselves in after decades of looking the other way to illegal immigration.

My main point is that profiling happens daily in many different ways, and I think that people in society generally are ok with it, as long as they understand that they are complying with requirements for the greater good of society (ie safety from terrorism). It is a delicate issue, and those doing the "profiling" need to be well trained and to know the reasons they are doing whatever it is they are doing, and the extent of what they need to know and are authorized to do. Profiling should never give anyone a blank check to violate a person's constitutional rights, but needs to be very specific. Whoever is doing the profiling also needs to be aware of their personal biases. In fact, in the case of security work, this is absolutely something they need to be aware of, lest the would be villans play the security forces for their very own stereotypes.

Forgive me if I am fed up with the constant debate and whining over vital measures for national security, while at the same time government aims to dig its hands even deeper into your life, from charging higher premiums to uninsured smokers, to requiring you to have health insurance, these are definitely topics for other posts. You shouldn't be upset about securing the borders or profiling at the airport. These are matters of national security. You should worry about laws that would require you to eat a certain diet, not smoke, wear your seatbelt, have health insurance, in short, make every decision you make a matter of government, and probably tax it to further divide the uber-rich from the poor, or to make Goldman Sachs quarterly profit tick up another few percent over analyst estimates.

The title of this post should have been back-assward, as that is quite what I think of the voting public.

The Great American Novel: Life and the Art of Novel Writing

There is no doubt a preoccupation, a fantasy, if you will, among certain of us to write, for once and for eternity, "the great American novel."

What would it say? This has been a great and remarkable country, with a vast array of attractions - throughout Its history. The great American novel need not be a historical document. History is loosely assembled around facts, yes there is inherent ideology - history is written by the victor. However, I think we do have a sense, in the US, that our history is written relatively truthfully. There is at least an implicit idea of progress that we nurture in our republic, however distorted this concept of "progress" has become. I will not take the time here to delve into the convoluted concepts that qualify under the heading "progress" at this time and date - in the two-thousandth and tenth year of our Lord.

The great American novel is really more about the lyrical, the poetical, the personal viewpoint, taking into consideration, in due measure, the external realities of the time. Who is our character and how does he/she relate to the "blooming, buzzing" confusion of the streets? The streets that so typify their times? Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Even, on another level, Catcher in the rye by J.D. Salinger. The narrator deeply within the psyche of the main character.

Rather, back to the point of this post, and that is - perhaps the preoccupation, the interest that the idea of writing the great American novel holds for us, is in simply wanting to be heard, to be understood, to be remembered, to be valued. (Perhaps with all this progress thus far we've lost something).

To be seen under and within the light (of truth), one could say being seen as God sees us, one could further water this down and plead, at last, to be seen as the unique species that is human being (Humanistic). To be seen, to be heard, to have you listen to us air our major grievances, our greatest outrages, our most outlandish dreams, to join us in our most cherished reveries - the story of falling in love, the specific individual vision of heartbreak, the specific revelation of the universal.

And so we want to show you these things, have you walk a mile in our shoes, the great lesson of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

We will not all write the great American novel. This simply is not a feasible possibility. Some of us must merely live our lives. Perhaps we become scholars in the art of living. The more honorable among us will take on philosophy - "The love of wisdom," and the rest, those who worship at the feet of mammon, will take on persuasion, the art of rhetoric. They will be Machiavellian, and they will be good candidates, most of them, for middle management, with a 5:1 shot at upward mobility.

We journey through this life, as busy assembling meaning (the philosophers among us) as life is in refining our natures. The great wash-board of life. Refined by fire. Born out of suffering is strength, yes, but also weariness and weakness, rust. In the end, the years wear down the best among us. And for the best among us, those who tower over us in the bright shining strength of their characters, in the radiant glory of their God-given true natures, those who seek to walk with God, to be known, indeed as the friend of God, in the splendor'd countenance of Moses descending the mountain, these Abrahams amongst us also to will perish.

And whether they perish and are gathered to their peoples with crying in the streets, or in relative obscurity, alone in some candle-lit room, I feel that heaven cries out for them, the skies open in a deluge upon us mere mortals, pelting our heads to chastise us for our weakness.

But again, back to the point. The desire to write the great American novel. Is it not a desire to be heard, to be known, to be remembered in our innermost detail, and to convey this knowledge to others? To be known in the matrix of our times - our culture, our friends and family, those who loved us and those we loved? To let the world know the things we hated and the things we loved?

We spend most of our lives these days running through a "Rube Goldberg" machine of the Monday-Friday workweek, only to get to the weekend to try to once again ignite our passion, to jumpstart the flatlined dream that we once knew and clung to so tightly, so dearly, in our youth. To assemble once again, the crew, to "get the band back together."

But if we must lie somnolent, supine, and let the sweat grow beads on our brows, toss and turn in an empty room, in our four-walled worlds, trapped in a prison of our own device, then I suppose, we can hold out the last hope of writing the great American novel. Forgive me the sarcasm, but even if we pass away into obscurity, or should I say through obscurity, grow older, and lose our "matrix" of friends and associates, we still are known to God.

Even if I forget where I was going, become distracted from who I once was, as I pass through possibility to actuality, from actuality to obscurity. When the sun sets on our role models, on those we look up to, these things, these memories, these intentions of mine must not fade away and pass into the void.

Under the starry skies tonight I looked up and wondered if there might yet be hope for all of us sinners with the silver sprouting signs of wisdom on our crowns and songs still left in our hearts...

"The Mad Bomber"

I bought this book, Casebook of a Crime Psychiatrist, by James A Brussel, M.D. after reading an article a friend passed to me from the New York Times.

The article in the NYTimes, by Malcolmb Gladwell, viewable here speaks about the origins of criminal profiling, and questions it's reliability. Of course, this cold-reading can get out of hand. Comments can be ambiguous, "You are typically introverted but can rise to the occasion when necessary." I wouldn't expect any profile worth a damn to give into that cheap television psychic mumbo-jumbo, however.

The first story in the book, and the story that the NYtimes article speaks of is about a man named George Metesky who was the "Mad Bomber." Over a period of some 16 years he planted pipe bombs around New York City, many of them exploding in places like phone booths and inside the bottom of movie seats. A frustrated police investigator reaches out to Psychiatrist James Brussel for help. He stunningly comes up with what would appear to be several succinct and amazing predictions/profile of the criminal. Including that when he is caught he will be wearing a double breasted suit...buttoned.

The book mentions Metesky's address as "17 4th Street, Waterbury, CT." It's amazing what you can pull up these days with map sites like Bing and Google. While there is no street view available of the Mad Bombers house, there are satellite views (click on bird's eye view on the bing search), and a mouse over on Zillow likely confirms this is the place, as it states "built in 1924."

So, for roughly $184,000 you could technically buy the house and give tours to tourists, assuming of course, it was for sale.

Zillow link

Bing map of 17 4th St, Waterbury,CT

Wikepdia entry for George Metesky

There also seems to be quite a bit of information on this case obtained by a google search, FYI.

Hunter S. Thompson

"It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die... all we know for sure is that Hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix--a clean well-lighted place full of sunshine and bromides and fast cars where almost everybody seems vaguely happy, except for the ones who know in their hearts what is missing...And being driven slowly and quietly into the kind of terminal craziness that comes with finally understanding that the one thing you want is not there. Missing. Back-ordered. No tengo. Vaya con Dios. Grow up! Small is better. Take what you can get..."

Thompson, Hunter S. Author's Note. Generation of Swine,Gonzo Papers
Volume 2, Tales of Shame and Degredation in the '80's.
By Thompson. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. 11. Print.

No words needed