Across the Great Divide

My Parade of Homes.

Sick of political nonsense? Me, too. I took a ride around my hometown and put together a personal Parade of Homes. I didn't cover everything, but a Parade is all about exclusion.

I this case, I exclude granite counter tops, great rooms and a bunch of other stuff you can find anywhere.

Remember, this'll autoplay unless you seize the controls and use the arrows.

Why Do Religious Conservatives Kill Their Kids?

On June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children, who ranged in age from six months to seven years, in a bathtub in her home. Prior to this, she had manifested symptoms of depression with psychosis, which were exacerbated in her postpartum periods. She had been hospitalized four times and was catatonic and mute during one admission. In statements made following the crime, she indicated that she believed that she was a bad mother and that she had concerns that her children would not grow up properly secondary to her shortcomings. She noted that she killed them to save them from eternal damnation.
— Psychiatry MMC

Here's a topic for study by some enterprising PhD student: Do more religious conservatives than liberals murder their children?

(You can spare me the comments about abortion. I'm talking about filicide here — and even more, our stupid tendency to explain differences in complex behaviors based on a generalized political affiliation.)

I was thinking about this even before George Will's latest column about how conservatives are more generous than liberals, which I'll take up in a separate post.

In Wisconsin this week, the home schooled daughter of a fundamentalist family died because her diabetes was left untreated. The mother says they are not crazy, religious people who belong to any organized faith. She just writes for an end-of-days ministry website on the side and actively proselytizes other women. Her sister-in-law, who called the sheriff, seemed to think there was a problem.

The aunt: "My sister-in-law, she’s very religious, she believes in faith instead of doctors ... and she called my mother-in-law today ... and she explained to us that she believes her daughter’s in a coma now and she’s relying on faith. ..."

The dispatcher got more information from the caller and asked if an ambulance should be sent.

The aunt: "Please. I mean, she’s refusing. She’s gonna fight it so ... We’ve been trying to get her to take her to the hospital for a week, a few days now so."

In Iowa, an embezzling banker bludgeoned his wife and four kids to death before killing himself. In communications left behind, he indicated he believed his family was in heaven.

And, not to leave anyone out, a Muslim cab driver in Canada strangled his 16-year-old daughter because she refused to submit to his control and demands she wear traditional Muslim garb.

I've looked for a study that examines the role of political and religious beliefs of parents who murder their children. Haven't found one. But golly, the circumstantial evidence doesn't look good, does it? And it stands to reason, when you decide to kill your kids with a baseball bat, the idea you're sending them to heaven might lets you swing just a little more freely.

Anyone offended yet? No, I'm not calling all religious fundamentalists child murderers. But if there's a pattern of behavior that could lead to prevention, wouldn't it be good to understand it?

Psychiatric researchers may not see much merit in testing my only half-serious hypothesis. The research already indicates that filicide is a multidimensional crime, and like most human behavior, is not likely to reduce down to red state/blue state simplification.

But it's hard to shake that whenever I see news of a suicide bomber or a murderous parent, God shows up pretty frequently in the story. John Kerry bumper stickers, not so much.

4,000 in Perspective.

As long as my empathy for the military is being questioned this week, I might as well pass along this time and motion information graphic [via The Deets]. I'm sure someone with an underdeveloped insula can turn this into trivializing the deaths of 4,000 service members.

Non-Compassionate Conservatives, Here's Your Chance!

Using brain scans, University of Wisconsin researchers have isolated a region of the brain — the insula — that plays a significant role in positive emotions such as loving-kindness and compassion.

"The insula is extremely important in detecting emotions in general and specifically in mapping bodily responses to emotion - such as heart rate and blood pressure - and making that information available to other parts of the brain," says Davidson, also co-director of the HealthEmotions Research Institute.

Activity also increased in the temporal parietal juncture, particularly the right hemisphere. Studies have implicated this area as important in processing empathy, especially in perceiving the mental and emotional state of others.

The study findings suggest that an individual's level of of empathy or compassion can be increased, and that practice — in this case meditation —  people can

develop skills that promote happiness and compassion. "People are not just stuck at their respective set points," he says. "We can take advantage of our brain's plasticity and train it to enhance these qualities."

How soon before certain legislators call for the project's funding to be cut off?

Roach Apparel.

A brief item in Adbusters pairs a story about how Belgian researchers induced cockroaches to imitate the behavior of cockroach robots with how savvy promoters did the same.

The team engineered a recurring, premeditated “non-event” in which they would hang out on a street bench located in front of New York’s most prominent American Apparel branch. Initially, they were able to attract the interest of passing youths because of their status as minor celebrities within the city’s taste-making elite, but over time “The Bench” (also known as the “anti-scene”) grew to become a hyper-local social phenomenon and quickly developed a reputation as a cool alternative to neighborhood bars and clubs.

Positive media publicity further popularized “The Bench” and soon enough the surrounding sidewalk was packed with thronging youths eager to hang out at New York’s newest and freshest night spot. Although youth are supposed to be resistant to social control, they were unable to resist the impulse to imitate, and ultimately follow their marketing-savvy friends into the light of American Apparel.

Yo, dude, I am so doing Wal-Mart.

X-raying McCain.

A trivial three paragraphs about how John McCain's teeth were being examined in the blogosphere has provoked a mini-firestorm, including a Mitch Berg dismissal that's three-and-half times longer than Molly Priesmeyer's original piece.

Well, not original exactly, since Priesmeyer is simply presenting a slightly embellished summary of what others are saying online.

If bloggers are saying one thing about John McCain this week it's that the 71-year-old has some serious grit. Of course, that grit comes in the form of McCain Mouth, a deformity that apparently causes teeth to look like a mess of yellowed and contorted Chiclets. Today, BuzzFeed.com has picked up on the mouth meme, turning McCain's piano-key chompers into an official phenomenon.

She tries to wrap up the snarky trend-spotting with a clumsy attempt at one more joke while almost making the point that it's unfair to judge any candidate by their appearance. A different slant might've made the little item almost substantive, but instead it simply managed to magnify a cheap shot at the GOP candidate, disrespect a former POW and stir one of America's deepest phobias — dental pain!

Intrepid opposition researcher Michael Brodkorb dredges up a citation in a Vanity Fair article, followed by another from the noted journal The Daily Mail [links mine] to substantiate

THE FACT THAT MCCAIN HAD MANY OF HIS TEETH BROKEN WHILE BEING TORTURED AS P.O.W.

In fact, McCain's teeth were broken at the gum while being tortured as a P.O.W:   

In 1968 he was offered early release, and when he refused, because others had been there longer, his captors went at him again; he suffered cracked ribs, teeth broken off at the gum line, and torture with ropes that lashed his arms behind his back and that were progressively tightened all through the night.

The source for the "many teeth" claim is a British tabloid journalist's summary of McCain's story, possibly lifted from the Vanity Fair article, since it also contains the "gum" detail. McCain himself simply said, "They cracked several of my ribs and broke a couple of teeth."

Much of McCain's dental problems were more likely the product of poor prison nutrition and the difficulty of maintaining dental hygeine in terrible conditions — especially by a man who even today cannot raise his arms high enough to comb his own hair. There's no need to invent details of McCain's suffering or the persistent consequences. But that's what "many of his teeth broken at the gum" appears to be.

Priesmeyer's piece was dumb and insensitive, of course, and now it belongs to the polemicists like Berg and Brodkorb, who will make much more of it than it deserves.

Priesmeyer is not the only one a little vague on McCain's injuries, though. The Vanity Fair article — to which Brodkorb provides no link — concludes its description of the extent of McCain's war-related disabilities with another encounter of the clueless kind, this from someone in a far better position than Priesmeyer:

One of McCain's aides tells me that two years ago, campaigning with McCain, George W. Bush asked him if the senator would like to work out with him. Told that McCain did not, could not, really "work out," Bush replied, "What do you mean?"

UPDATE:

And of course, today's critics would never stoop to mocking a candidate's war wounds.

UPDATE 2: And via a commenter back at the original Minnesota Monitor article, McCain apparently also broke some teeth on rocks in his food.

My Experience of Taking Calls at 3 a.m.

Over the years, I met medical spouses who considered their partner's achievement their own. Sometimes you  had to wonder who had been through the greater ordeal — the doctor who had navigated the studies, endured the residency, taken sleep-depriving call and fended off the malpractice claims while making life and death decisions... or the partner who had brought in the income during school, accepted the absences (physical and emotional), raised the kids, held the household and the marriage together and kept the martyred feelings down to a dull roar.

Hard as it might've been to be the spouse, the problem-solving and decisions weren't theirs. The thousand cares from a thousand anguished patients never weighed on their minds. Nobody died on their watch.

Sure, every time the call from the hospital rang through at 3 a.m., I woke up. But that experience did not make me a doctor.

Institutionalized Bullying.

A surprising number of bullying cases involve health care settings, where the problem is said to be endemic, with senior hospital workers, particularly doctors and supervisors, harassing nurses and technicians. The problem is also common in academia and the legal profession, experts say.
— "When the Bully Sits in the Next Cubicle," New York Times

As others have observed, workplaces where status is derived from credentials are the worst. But how does this explain bullying on the blogs, where the biggest bullies have the dodgiest credentials?

*****
Douglas A. Blackmon was on Talk of the Nation today talking about his book, Slavery by Another Name. From a review:

Almost as soon as the Civil War ended, powerful white politicians, plantation owners and industrialists began reinstituting slavery through laws intended "to criminalize black life," Blackmon writes.

Countless thousands of blacks were arrested on the flimsiest of charges, thrown into jail and, in effect, sold to plantations, railroads, mines, factories, mills and lumber camps.

In addition, millions of blacks, if they wanted to work, were forced to do so under labor contracts that prevented them from leaving without written permission from their employers. Many of these men and women were also treated like slaves, subject to the harshest discipline.

To understand the economic and social position of black families in America today, Blackmon says, we can't ignore the impact of this long period of "neoslavery" that didn't effectively end until World War Two, and still cast its shadow over the South into the 1960s.

Rootless Beer Float.

I had wandered into the Palisade Brewery hoping to fill our growler with the potent Dually, a hoppy Imperial double IPA, but it's available only off and on, and now it was off. However, we were just in time to have the first taste of the new Porter, except for the small glass already being downed by the brewmaster.

It had a light fore edge to the darkness, not blunt on the tongue like some porters.

He and the owner were kicking around what to buy from Sam's Club for the salsa recipe, but my ears really pricked up when I heard the other item on the list: Good ice cream. They were going to do beer floats.

Tonight, I tried it. Porter and a caramel ice cream. I am a kid again.

Do you need any more recipe than that?

Gun Logic.

A friend ran across this version of an old fable as she was reading my recent Crosscut series:

An alligator is swimming along in a river, and the water is very swift – too swift for a frog to cross from one side to the other. So the alligator stops on the river bank and says to a frog that is waiting there, "I'll take you across."

"No, no, no," the frog protests. "You'll eat me!" "I just ate lunch," the alligator says. "So I'm not hungry. Besides, you are but a toothpick to me."

So the frog accepts the offer and hops on the alligator's snout for a ride from one side of the river to the other. Then, just before they reach the bank, the alligator flips up his snout and opens his mouth.

"You promised you would not do this!" the frog says. "I'm sorry," the alligator says, "but it's my nature."

She looked into its origins and sent a link from snopes.com, musing about how it applied to the discussion going on here.

The fable has been retold in many cultures, with a menagerie of different creatures. The reassurances vary, too. One version involves a scorpion riding a turtle, so the passenger can play the aggressor, too.

"Are you mad?" exclaimed the turtle? "You'll sting me when I am swimming and I'll drown!"

"My dear turtle," laughed the scorpion, "if I were to sting you, you would drown and I would go down with you. Now where is the logic in that?"

What do we make of it?

One interpretation might be that it is foolish to trust a "natural" enemy. The strong will always devour the weak. Evil will try to destroy good. The devious will capitalize on the arrogance of those who believe their superior logic or boundless sensitivity can overcome baser motives.

A secondary lesson is that negotiation, accommodation, reason and even mutual interest are illusory and futile. Better to kill the enemy now than to talk. (Obama, are you listening?) Iran won't change; it would rather drown than deal.

To think otherwise is to be a victim.