Month: July 2014

In a review of Jonathan Shay’s Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, Elizabeth Schambelan contemplates notions of wartime masculinity and friendship:

The broadest political implications of Achilles in Vietnam lie in Shay’s powerful critique of what might be called martial masculinity. The entire book enacts this critique, but it is most explicit in Shay’s discussion of the intense bonds that often form between one soldier and another.

“Combat calls forth a passion of care among men who fight beside each other that is comparable to the earliest and most deeply felt family relationships,” he observes. When Patroclus dies, Achilles no longer wants to live. To Shay, the age-old question of the pair’s relationship status is irrelevant: “Achilles’s grief . . . would not have been greater had they been a sexual couple, nor less if they had not been.” The failure to recognize “love between men that is so deeply felt” greatly amplifies the survivor’s pain. “If military practice tells soldiers that their emotions of love and grief—which are inseparable from their humanity—do not matter,” Shay writes, “then the civilian society that has sent them to fight . . . should not be shocked by their ‘inhumanity’ when they try to return to civilian life.”

In a recent interview, Kash Alvaro—an army veteran who served in Afghanistan and who has been diagnosed with both PTSD and a traumatic brain injury—alludes to the lingering, interlinked stigmas around the disorder and around masculine expressions of “love and grief.”

We’ve been through things that—that’s never going to leave your mind, and it’s always going to be there. . . . And just to come back and have someone tell you, “Oh . . . you’re just acting out. You’re just looking for sympathy,” and those people just don’t understand. Not everybody—I mean, if you have a strong heart, that’s good. That’s good. But there’s people in the world that don’t. You know, you lose somebody, and it’ll break you. . . . And if—you know, if I make it another year, two years, three years, I’m fine with that. If I make it ’til next week, I’m fine with that, too.

The irony that makes this statement all the more painful to read is that, even as Alvaro reels off a checklist of PTSD’s symptoms and triggers (intrusive memories, “acting out,” death of a close friend, parasuicidal fatalism), he seems to have internalized the notion that his post-traumatic stress could have been prevented by a “strong heart,” i.e., by the inhuman lack of feeling to which Shay refers.

(Photo of two-time Iraq War veteran Mikey Piro and his comrade-in-arms, Brian. Mikey did a podcast with me last year about his post-war experience with PTSD. Follow his blogging at PTSD Survivor Daily. The Dish has covered much of those writings here.)

A reader quotes Poniewozik:

Suppose The New York Times, or ABC News–or TIME magazine–had tweaked the content it displayed to hundreds of thousands of users to see if certain types of posts put readers in a certain frame of mind. The outcry would be swift and furious–brainwashing! mind control! this is how the biased media learns to manipulate us! It would be decried as not just creepy but professionally unethical. And it’s hard to imagine that the publication’s leadership could survive without promising it would never happen again.

It’s hard not to read this and immediately think of the new trend of advertorial content. I mean, isn’t this exactly what the advertorial is supposed to accomplish? To put you in a frame of mind where you’ve put your guard down because you don’t realize what you’re reading is an advertisement and not a more “objective” take from the publication? I think Poniewozik may have missed the boat on this one.

Another illustrates what your future on Facebook could portend:

Think they are trying to improve humanity? Or do you think they are trying to see how manipulating information may drive the actions of users, which in turn will help them do more targeted advertising? They know that younger people use their service more than any other media or app … the numbers are staggering. So if they can manipulate what information is provided to there subjects, and that manipulation sets the user’s frame of mind, then it potentially makes the user more pliable when it comes to targeted ads.

It is simple: create a bad mood … then insert Zoloft ad. Imagine reading all the anxiety producing news of the day and then see another article – I mean a Zoloft ad staged as an article – that gives you means of relief. Given that Zoloft can shotgun ads to people on other sites, or KNOW that the people seeing their product on Facebook will be of the proper disposition, what do you think that is worth?

The beauty of the whole thing is that Facebook EULA’s [end-user license agreement] appears to have been written by Peter Cook’s character in Bedazzled. Who needs ethics when you have profit and market share? And why would anyone think that a for-profit corporation will do the right thing and not betray your confidence when their risk analysis spits out “cha-ching!”?

If you log into your Facebook account and then have the irresistible urge to eat Taco Bell for breakfast and purchase a dildo for the office, you might want to consider getting your news elsewhere.

The Court’s other major ruling yesterday was Harris v. Quinn, in which a slim majority ruled that public sector unions cannot collect “fair share” fees from non-union members – in this case, Illinois home-care workers who are paid by the state – even if these non-members benefit from collective bargaining by the union:

The much-awaited decision limits, but does not reverse, the court’s well-trodden ruling from 1977, known as Abood. In that case, the court found that requiring non-union-members to pay “fair share” fees did not violate workers’ First Amendment rights, so long as those fees do not go to advancing specifically “political or ideological” ends.

The decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, marks a loss for public sector unions, which may see their coffers and power depleted in coming years, although it’s not the worst-case scenario that many labor activists feared. The ruling stopped short of finding all “fair share” dues unconstitutional. It also does not affect all full-time public employees, but only a category called “partial public employees,” which includes a growing sector of home heath care workers.

The Dish covered the case when it was argued in January. So the Harris ruling does not overturn Abood, but rather limits its reach. Noah Feldman, however, suspects four out of five of the court’s conservatives would have liked to axe it entirely:

Abood’s value was never its imperfect logic but rather its practical wisdom in solving the problem of employees’ free riding on union efforts. In the real world, a public union could hardly function if its members could opt out. The Abood doctrine put a thumb on the scale by enabling legislation to block free riding.

Today, with public unions under intense criticism and with pension reform the order of the day in many states and municipalities, the politics look different. In dissenting, the four liberals expressed “satisfaction” that Abood hadn’t been overruled. In effect, one of the conservatives, probably Kennedy or Roberts, wasn’t prepared to provide the deciding vote against labor unions — for now. But their legal future doesn’t look rosy.

Or as Kilgore puts it:

I’d say the Court is short just one Justice of a majority willing to generally ban on First Amendment grounds “fair share dues” for non-union members who benefit from collective bargaining agreements, which would be a huge blow to the labor movement. Remember that in November of 2016.

Bazelon also fears for the future of public sector unions:

Once again, the First Amendment is turning out to be a powerful ax the court’s conservatives can pick up and wield against all kinds of laws and groups they don’t like, as I wrote last week.

Kagan is right when she says that the outcome of Harris is “at least better than it might be.” Abood stands. But when she adds that “our precedent about precedent, fairly understood and applied, makes it impossible for this Court to reverse that decision,” I’m not sure she can make it so just by saying it. Once the conservatives have teachers or firefighters or police officers before them who say they don’t want to pay their union dues, won’t they use today’s opinion as the stepping stone for toppling Abood and mandatory dues? The rules for the Supreme Court won’t change, and they work like this: Five votes turns the impossible into the possible.

But Kevin Roose’s interpretation is much less dramatic:

Pro-labor progressives will likely see Harris v. Quinn as the top of a slippery slope. … But these fears are largely unfounded for now. Today, the Court decided that teachers, firefighters, and other traditional public employees will still be covered by the collective bargaining laws that have existed since the 1970s. Public employees with unusual, state-backed working arrangements, like the 20,000 personal care workers in Illinois, may not be. The Court’s narrow ruling is an annoyance for the labor movement, but hardly a cataclysm.

Andrew Grossman is pleased that Abood is on its last legs:

The Court is right that Abood is “something of an anomaly” because it sacrifices public workers’ First Amendment rights of speech and association to avoid their “free-riding” on the dues of workers who’ve chosen to join a union, the kind of thing that rarely if ever is sufficient to overcome First Amendment objections. But Abood treated that issue as already decided by prior cases, which the Harris Court recognizes it was not–a point discussed at length in Cato’s amicus brief. Abood was a serious mistake, the Harris Court concludes, because public-sector union speech on “core issues such as wages, pensions, and benefits are important political issues” and cannot be distinguished from other political speech, which is due the First Amendment’s strongest protection. A ruling along those lines would spell the end of compulsory support of public-sector unions, a major source of funds and their clout.

But Moshe Marvit accuses the court of making things up:

In Harris, the majority implied that it was not the objecting employees that were the true free-riders, but rather the union. The decision focused on the fact that hourly rates were set by Illinois law and there were significant statutory restrictions over what the union could bargain over. It highlighted the fact that the union received dues for its representation, but questioned what negotiations or grievance representation the union could deliver to employees.

In effect, this analysis places unions in a bind: any reasonable observer would conclude that the union negotiated with the state to set the terms of compensation, benefits, and other terms of employment, which are then codified into law. However, because the Supreme Court has demarcated this activity to the realm of lobbying, which is beyond the strict scope of representation, it concluded that the union is in effect collecting dues for doing little. The majority has drawn an untenable distinction and then complains that the distinction is not tenable.

And Harold Pollack dissents from the perspective of home-care consumers:

Individuals with disabilities and their families have a big stake in this, too. They—we–require a stable and motivated group of direct care workers to perform important and difficult work. The alternative is to receive services from a disgruntled, low-wage high-turnover group of workers who are unlikely to provide competent and humane care. We consumers know first-hand why these issues are important. We know our great human debt to the men and women we trust so intimately to support people we love. …

Now that this partnership has been overturned by the Supreme Court, our state, direct care workers, and individuals with disabilities face a difficult choice. Direct caregivers can simply be hired and supervised as traditional public employees. This would deprive individuals with disabilities of the ability to select, supervise, and hire their own caregivers.  We can also shift a cumbersome management burden onto people with disabilities and their families, while depriving direct care workers of the collective bargaining mechanisms they seek. Neither option seems particularly fair or practical for anyone involved.

Reflecting on Pride Day, Reverend Gene Robinson, the recently retired IX Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, insists that America has a duty to help provide safe haven for oppressed gays abroad:

The LGBT people I know are horrified at what is happening to their brothers and sisters around the world, most recently in Uganda, Nigeria, the Middle East, and Russia. We are often gripped by a sense of helplessness. After all, what can I do about such oppressive policies and actions overseas? While we may not be able to stop the repressive actions of anti-LGBT regimes, we can mobilize to care for those oppressed and threatened LGBT people who make it to the United States.

Immigration Equality, a terrific group on whose board I am proud to sit, is doing just that. It has, in fact, been a fascinating few years for that organization. For two decades, we had done our best to help bi-national couples persecuted by Bill Clinton’s Defense of Marriage Act, and HIV-positive individuals targeted by Bill Clinton’s HIV Travel Ban. But in 2008, the Bush administration finally reversed the law targeting foreigners with HIV (it functionally ended under Obama) and last year, the Windsor decision destroyed DOMA, which prevented the federal government from recognizing bi-national gay marriages.

Suddenly, we were exhilaratingly adrift. Some of us thought briefly of closing the whole thing down … until something new began to happen. Immigration Equality had always provided free legal services to those seeking asylum because of homosexuality (with a 99 percent success rate). The Obama administration gave gay refugees a much more solid standing (thanks, Hillary) … and, in the wake of the wave of anti-gay initiatives across the globe, suddenly the asylum cases took off. The numbers have quadrupled in the last few years, as governments as vicious as Jamaica’s and Russia’s and Uganda’s and Nigeria’s began to target gay people for lynching, imprisonment or indescribable harrassment. These are the best of times for gay people on the planet, and the worst times as well.

In one corner of the world, Bel Trew looks at lesbian, gay, and trans Egyptians living under Sisi:

Since the military overthrew Morsi last July, rights groups have recorded the worst state crackdown on the LGBT community since the days of Hosni Mubarak.

Back in 2001, 52 gay men were arrested on a party boat on the Nile and tried for “public depravity”. Twenty-three were sentenced to hard labour in prison. In 2004, a 17-year-old student was handed a 17-year jail sentence for posting his profile on a gay dating site.

In the last 10 months, dozens have been arrested and at least 18 homosexual and transgender people have been jailed under the country’s draconian legislation criminalizing “sexual deviance,” “debauchery” and “insulting public morals.” The prison sentences have ranged from 3 to 12 years. “We are not even sure if we have documented all the cases,” said Dalia Abdel-Hamid, from Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR). “We know the actual number is higher.”

Josh Scheinert glances elsewhere around the globe:

When the Indian Supreme Court recriminalized consensual sex between two adult men in December 2013 (it was de-criminalized by the Delhi High Court in 2009), it contrasted gay men with straight men with the wording “as compared to normal human beings.” … In Jamaica, the LGBTQ population is denigrated and dehumanized in popular media in ways that would shock the most impartial of observers. Last year, a transgendered teenager was murdered by a mob. In Cameroon, men are imprisoned for sending text messages to one another that say, “I love you.” Last year, a leading gay rights activist was found tortured and killed in his home.

And in Uganda, which often attracts much of the attention when it comes to global LGBTQ rights, the government just declared 38 human rights organizations illegal on the grounds that they “promote homosexuality.” This is the latest development in a country where leading LGBTQ activists are outed in the media, and where one of those outed was found murdered in his home in 2011.

John Oliver devoted a sizable chunk of his latest show to Uganda’s anti-gay pogrom and American Christianist Scott Lively‘s role in it: