Donald Trump is Frankenstein's Monster, if His Monster Were a Bloviating, Bigoted Narcissist

In the 2008 election, the GOP ran John McCain--who, at the time--both Republicans and Democrats respected and almost admired. He was a celebrated war hero who was was well-spoken and considerate of those who disagreed with him.

He was a credible threat to the Democrats in that election up until he was forced to choose Sarah Palin as his running mate. Sarah Palin's involvement, if you remember--it feels like it's been forever; 7 years feels like an eternity in politics--was a vacuous country bumpkin who quit her Alaskan governorship, and was, some suspected, a way to appease the recently radicalized Tea Party fringe that did not actually come to power until the 2010 legislature elections. The Tea Party was a direct reaction by dispossessed, lower-class, undereducated, white people who did not like having an African-American for President. 

Keep in mind that, at first, GOP bosses deliberately pandered to the Tea Party in a total war against Barack Obama, but it wasn't long before this strategy became a disaster of their own making. In October 2013, Ted Cruz--arguably the only thing worse than Trump, according to GOP strategists--single-handedly shut down the government over the debt ceiling, causing Congressional and party approval ratings to plummet. In addition to that, the GOP has voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act 56 times (as of February 2015), and the Benghazi Committee has devolved into a criminal circus (the article linked is definitely worth your time).

The corrosion of our political landscape is a much more insidious problem. It is primarily because of this that a pathological bullshitter who is utterly incapable of saying anything remotely true can have a shot at running for President. From the very beginning, GOP officials have used racial epithets against the President, and Joe Wilson's "YOU LIE!" only became a harbinger of the kind of interparty vitriol that has desecrated our political system enough for Trump to take over. Sarah Palin claimed that there would be "death panels" as a part of Obamacare, and today, GOP 2016 candidate Carly Fiorina is clinging on to a series of extremely doctored videos supposedly depicting the sale of aborted fetuses by Planned Parenthood, which very likely provided the motivation for a recent terrorist attack at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado, a claim that--of course--she denies. 

There is a now-circulating conspiracy theory that posits that the Toxic Avenger is a Clinton plant. Specifically, it claims that Bill Clinton asked Donald Trump to run as a Republican in order to give Hillary an easy victory. It is something that Jeb! is trying to use to resuscitate his comatose campaign, after his appearance on The 700 Club had no effect, but it is doubtful that this tactic will do anything more than draw Trump's ire. While this idea is certainly seductive and hopeful in that can Trump really be this awful as a human being? Surely he isn't, really!, I doubt that it's actually true, because the world has never seen Trump be anything other than a cartoon character. 

Donald Trump has teased a presidential campaign five times, first in 1988, and then in every presidential election since 2000, until he announced that he would actually run in 2016. It isn't something the Clintons would have had to ask him to do. Donald Trump is an accurate and terrifying measurement of the extent to which our political system has been corroded. We should have listened when he said that he was going to run, and taken his announcements as a warning that we have serious problems. The GOP had laid the foundation for his campaign; they left their house a mess, and like any other pest infestation, he moved right in. And he's here to stay, even as they conspire in secret to be rid of him. Whether or not they even can is yet to be seen.

Why is it So Hard for White People to Understand Racism?

Full disclosure: I am a Caucasian male.

A friend of mine who actually attends Missouri University as a graduate student has asked me to write about the events that have unfolded on campus in recent weeks.

The Guardian has an excellent timeline of the events, and I find it disturbing that white power structures consistently and continually dismiss African-Americans' complaints that they are being treated unfairly. Coincidentally, Occupy Wall Street was also continually derided by mainstream media as a bunch of kids who should just "suck it up and get a job" (let's see what you think when the economy crashes for a second time....), but I shall leave this aside for a moment because African-Americans are in a unique position to contest wholly legitimate disenfranchisement in a way few other groups can claim (others being, of course, LGBTQ individuals, as well as Muslims, who also continue to face historical discrimination by similar forces).

The historical oppression of African-Americans is, contrary to what Texan history textbooks will tell you, well-documented and catastrophic. The only other group that can even match that magnitude of oppression is the Palestinians at the hands of Israel; while the Israeli occupation has only lasted a few decades, Palestinians' very identity as a people has been all but annihilated, with the exception that Israel's invasion provides them with a sense of shared trauma (O'Malley). However, the New World has been importing slaves since the 1500s, and it has been only 150 years since slavery was abolished; African-Americans continually face state oppression at the hands of police and the justice system generally, while the rest of us continue to exclaim that we are a free society.

Why does it not bother us that a whole swath of people are required as sacrifices for the glorious Capitalist machine? How is it that we can stand to be so dismissive of the plight of people who live here, who--legally (in words, if not in action)--are supposed to enjoy the same rights and privileges as any other demographic? It should rouse us that our fellow citizens face oppression to such a degree that a previous President would have invaded a country to stop. Why do we see and say nothing?

When a Muslim American student asked Bernie Sanders what he would do to combat racism, he proceeded to give a two-minute crash course on racism. Sanders explains that capitalist bosses excuse pitiful wages by playing races against each other. "You think you've got trouble? You're better off than blacks who can't drink at a water fountain!" From this perspective, racism is a divide-and-conquer tactic that continues to be used by many Republican candidates in the current election cycle. This kind of racism is easy to spot, and is a baseline for casual racists to say that they aren't that bad.
On the other hand, this is also the kind of racism that is being experienced by many African-American staff, faculty, and students at Mizzou. But it isn't the only kind.

Since Martin Luther King first marched, legitimate grievance has been by turns ridiculed and dismissed by white power structures. "Things aren't that bad!" "You aren't slaves anymore, right? What's to complain about?"To this day this goes on, in a society that survives only by calling attention to the excesses and injustices against our own people so that we can do better and be better. OWS, Ferguson protests, and Black Lives Matter were all heavily derided by the ruling class as the tantrums of  spoiled hipsters, and rioting African-Americans (not true; they have continued to model MLK's nonviolence even when they have every excuse and every right to descend into violence for what our society continues to do to them). The treatment African-American protests and movements have historically received in the press is the driving factor in their resistance to the media. African-Americans' discipline and resolve in the face of intractable and universal hostility deserves to be commended, not ridiculed. The act of delegitimizing the grievances of a historically oppressed demographic is inherently racist and serves to entrench white interests against a just and fair society.

The most difficult kind of racism for most people to understand is how opportunity is systematically removed from people who are different (sex/gender/race). Let's start simple. Consider your last job interview. Did it go well? Yes? Good for you. Now, imagine your last five job interviews. How many
said no? Are you white? What if you were African-American? According to the Department of Labor, "Historically, Blacks have had persistently higher unemployment rates than the other major racial and ethnic groups. In addition, the increase in the black unemployment rate during the recession was larger than that for other races partly because workers with less education are particularly hard hit during recessions. Moreover, the unemployment rate for Blacks was slower to fall after the official end of the recession." If you can remember what it was like to be unemployed, you likely knew that someone would eventually say yes. But imagine that the systems built into society were designed to bar you from opportunity. Think about all of the African-Americans who are disproportionately targeted by police, who are denied adequate protection from the law, and then consider how, after a sentence is served, background checks by potential employers further disenfranchises them, cutting them off from society completely. In Being & Time, Martin Heidegger at one point calls his reader to consider all of the opportunities that society has denied to the individual without the individual ever realizing it. He writes,

"In the lostness in the They, the nearest, factical potentiality-of-being of Da-sein has already been decided upon--tasks, rules, standards, the urgency and scope of being-in-the-world, concerned and taking care of things. The They has always already taken the apprehension of these possibilities-of-being away from Da-sein. The They even conceals the way it has silently disburdened Da-sein of the explicit choice of these possibilities. It remains indefinite who is 'really' choosing." (Heidegger 268-269) (Note: "Dasein" is Heidegger's term for the Individual, and the "They" is Heidegger's term for society at large; all of the people that the individual does not know; the crowd)

In Discipline & Punish, Michel Foucault explains how the individual's choices and potential are robbed from him without his knowledge:

"...Although it is true that the its pyramid organization gives it a 'head', it is the apparatus as a whole that produces 'power' and distributes individuals in this permanent and continuous field. This enables the disciplinary power to be both absolutely indiscreet, since it is everywhere and always alert, since by its very principle it leaves no zone of shade and constantly supervises the very individuals who are tasked with supervising; and absolutely 'discreet', for it functions permanently and largely in silence. Discipline makes possible operation of a relational power that sustains itself by its own mechanism...Thanks to the techniques of surveillance, the 'physics' of power, the hold over the body, operate according to the laws of optics and mechanics, according to a whole play of spaces, lines, screens, beams, degrees, and without recourse, in principle, at least, to excess, force or violence" (177).

The chain of power is vast and continuous, and its methodologies and modes of operation are widely consistent. Foucault's explanation of power can be verified, truly, without even trying. However, in the interest of time, I will stick to how this affects African-Americans specifically. Despite Affirmative Action and programs designed to help them succeed in society, many other forces competing with this aim succeed in stifling it. Private employers and government officials are more likely to believe implicitly that black bodies constitute a threat simply because that is what is presented to them by a constant and ever-present network of media entities who, taken together, resemble a conspiracy, but individually are not aware that they are perpetuating bias, and these falsehoods are further reinforced by overwhelmingly disproportionate arrest rates that reinforce this bias in a positive feedback loop. African-Americans are overpoliced (invisible to greater society) > African-Americans get arrested more often (visible to greater society) > African-Americans must be criminals (greater society's assumption). Racial bias, therefore, is a ubiquitous and discreet factor that cannot be overtly accounted for in the experience of African-Americans, and this is precisely where white people fail to recognize what is happening to their fellow citizens.

Except, of course, that they are affected by it too, only in radically different ways, and by only slightly lesser degree. Foucault wasn't talking specifically about 'white people' or 'black people'; he was talking about how power operates across all societies. White people may not disenfranchise each other by skin color, but they still employ these same mechanisms to discriminate against LGBTQ people and by religious identification. Furthermore, there is no greater example of Foucault's panopticon than that of the NSA, or, to a slightly lesser extent, the social media newsfeed. As an example, white parenting--specifically, white motherhood--is heavily policed: Is she eating right? Is she getting enough exercise? Can she drink while pregnant? Should she eat allergy-prone foods? Oh my god she just yelled at her child in the parking lot! Better get the hell out of there before someone calls DYFS! If her kid has special needs, both child and parent (specifically the mother) will be policed to a degree beyond even that by the school district and the local community, with a regimen involving endless paperwork, medication, therapy, and god knows what else in order to force both the child and the parent to conform to 'normal' standards (special education children are held to the same standard as general education students while taking the PARCC). The endless discipline of the perfect mother, the perfect child, the perfect body, the perfect sex life--truly,the list is infinite--is a woefully inadequate comparison to the degree to which African-Americans are so ruthlessly surveilled in the United States, but the only one that white people can immediately understand.

When Missouri University President Tim Wolfe declined to engage protesters, and issue placebo PR statements from his office, it sent a message to an assailed community of African-American students that the people to whom they give large amounts of their money, or go into debt for, couldn't care less about their experiences of both covert and overt discrimination. Nay, the fact that even faculty were not immune from racism drives home the scale of the problem at Mizzou. Do you know who was immune from racism? Football players. The revenue from sports is enormous. Mizzou coach Gary Pinkel alone makes $4 million a year, and because of this money, football players--a large percentage of them are African-American--are shielded from the experiences endured by their non-sports-affiliated peers. As recent player Kim English tweeted about how African-Americans were treated at local bars, as cited in an editorial in The Guardian, "If U were black at my alma mater, and ur name was not Maclin, Denmon, Pressey, English, Weatherspoon, Carroll, etc. You didn't feel welcome"

Unless an African-American is an ATM for the university, he or she will face discrimination.

Things are going to improve, however, at least for Mizzou students. Just yesterday, an African-American president was appointed in Wolfe's stead, to the delight of protesters, and a diversity chancellor position was created. How effective it will be in changing the culture there remains to be seen because, as I have previously demonstrated, racism is insidious and covert, and difficult to identify without taking into account entire systems and mechanisms of power, a conceptualization that is out of reach for many. (Coincidentally, this is also why disenfranchised workers misfired and elected Tea Party Republicans in 2012.)

Unless there is a history, an ongoing narrative associated with a group or individual's reality, it is difficult to even pick up on subtle modes of oppression and control, even as whites have historically embodied--and continue to embody--those modes. When the Palestinians and the Israelis talk about each other, the Palestinians' reference point is the Israeli occupation of the West Bank & Gaza, the humiliating and ubiquitous military checkpoints, economic embargoes, and incessant harassment at the hands of the IDF. The Israelis blame Palestinian terrorism for the disproportionate and continuous expansion of Israeli "security" policy and paraphernalia, and in recent weeks, Benjamin Netanyahu blamed the Palestinians directly for the Holocaust.

The willingness for the oppressor to suppress the realities of his own action against others is indeed universal. The only answer, truly, is to continue to chip away at widely-accepted cultural narratives, and to support efforts that call attention to the misuse of power to discriminate and oppress others, especially when it comes to members of the majority who fail to recognize those modes of oppression. Demonstrate, as clearly as one can, how these modes and mechanisms of power operate and how they are used to maintain the current power structure while oppressing minorities in both obvious and subtle ways. And it is up to the majority to pay attention, to care that it is not living up to its own expectations. As long as there is one group or individual who is not being served in a way that is fair and just, the society cannot call itself "free." Every unjust society has been free for some, and hell for others. Only a just society is free for all.

Books:

The Two-State Delusion by Padraig O'Malley
Being & Time by Martin Heidegger
Discipline & Punish by Michel Foucault

The Art of Throwing Grenades in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

I have been playing Counter-Strike 1.6, Counter-Strike: Source, and now Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for over 15 years, and lately, I've been playing the Competitive matchmaking mode when my favorite clan server is empty. There are a plethora of combat tutorials on Youtube, as managing weapon spread is very important, but what is, I think, equally important, is how to stay out of combat and deter the enemy while completing the objectives. As such, a very important aspect of CS:GO is woefully under-addressed: How to effectively use smoke grenades and incendiaries/Molotov cocktails.

Now, I consider myself a fairly competent CS:GO player, but I am not the best. I am competent in combat, but I play conservatively whenever possible, while my teammates are often eager to rush at what I consider to be inopportune moments. If we have the bomb planted, and there is one Counter-Terrorist remaining, there is no reason why any of us should feel the need to run out there and risk being killed looking for him, especially when we are sitting on his goal. The same goes when we're CT, covering both bombsites and the last terrorist still hasn't moved with 10 seconds on the clock: The punishment for running down the clock is heavy for a terrorist team. They earn no money the next round if they fail to plant the bomb or eliminate the Counter-Terrorist team (I think the same goes for a Counter-Terrorist team that fails to rescue a hostage or eliminate the terrorist team on cs_ maps).

I don't like getting into combat if I don't have to, and I think my method of using grenades to buy time and cover my team is part of why I've been successful in the matches that I've played. I'll try my best to explain why I throw grenades where I do and what each grenade toss does for my team.

Smoke Grenades

Smoke grenades are often not used effectively. A smoke grenade is used to conceal movement from the enemy; run alongside smoke, never through it, as the enemy will see you (or your shadow) before you will be able to see the enemy. Running through smoke has essentially the same effect on visibility as a flashbang.

One very popular position for smoke grenades is on de_dust2, at Middle between CT spawn and B, shown here

Middle Doors between CT spawn (to the left) and Bombsite B (to the right)

This is effective because terrorists will watch (and snipe) CTs passing through the gap in the doors. Obscuring vision here is very effective, because it prevents the terrorist team from being able to determine how many CTs are guarding B and taking pot-shots at CTs moving from spawn to B.

One thing I like to do as a Terrorist is to toss smoke grenades on de_cache up at the overlook at bombsite B (Molotovs are also good, but don't last as long as smokes).

Bombsite B Overlook/Heaven

That spot is very effective for CTs defending the site, and if left alone, a CT can sit up there and easily take out a good portion of the team--or win altogether, as I will show in the next section.

Also on de_cache, the Terrorists can rush to bombsite A, which is a wide open, dangerous area. In the way back, near CT spawn, is a truck that CT snipers like to hide behind and potentially snipe incoming Terrorists.

De_Cache bombsite A "Main" Behind that smoke is a truck that provides cover for CT snipers

This allows the Terrorists to only have to worry about CTs to the right side and possibly one or two to the far left behind a forklift or a catwalk above that.

For the CT side, they have an excellent opportunity to use smoke grenades on cs_office when rescuing a hostage that spawns in the corner of a hallway behind the Terrorist spawn area. This area is particularly difficult for CTs to attack, and the smoke provides ample cover. A word of caution: Note where the hostage is before you toss the smoke, and use the minimap/radar to escape to safety!

I've got the hostage and can't see a damned thing. However, neither can they!

This is very good because the Terrorists are very unlikely to try to run through the smoke to try to shoot you, and if your teammates followed you, they can cover you as you make your escape. It's worth pointing out that there are three potential hostage spawns, and I'm not sure how likely it is that a hostage will spawn in that spot in a competitive match. It's still worth knowing this, I think (cs_office is one of my favorite maps).

One Last Note on Smoke Grenades

If a bombsite or hostage rescue point is heavily contested (this is especially true at bombsite B on de_season, which I couldn't get a screenshot of because it's no longer available in matchmaking), throwing smoke and planting the bomb (or defusing the bomb as a CT) is extremely effective in CS:GO. The enemy can't see you, and they are much more likely to concentrate on fighting through your teammates than trying to hit what they can't see. Again, note where you are before you toss that smoke!

Incendiary Grenades / Molotov Cocktails

Incendiaries are expensive ($400 for Molotovs, $600 for Incendiary Grenades), and I seem to be the only person who uses them.  I don't expect to actually hit anyone with them (though it's cool when I do), but they deal significant damage, and stop the enemy in their tracks, buying time for your team to join you at the area under attack.

One of the best places to use incendiary grenades as a CT is, again, on cs_office, this time as you and your team advance into Long Hall (connects to the rear hallway, where the hostage was in a previous image). This corridor is always occupied by Terrorist snipers, as it is a vital bottleneck in the map.

Long Hall on cs_office

What I have to do is peek out from an area just to the left of where I am, and lob my Incendiary grenade all the way to the rear. I have to be fast, or I will be killed, especially if there is more than one Terrorist in that area. If I pull it off, the Terrorists will retreat into the rear hallway, allowing my teammates and I to advance. From there, we can easily toss more grenades into that smaller hallway and slowly chip away at their team, eventually eliminating them or reaching a hostage. I have won almost every single round that I've done this in. This is the most effective use of an incendiary grenade in the entire game.

Another area where incendiaries are useful is in de_cache as a CT from the Overlook area smoked out in a previous image. Here, there is a CT watching the Terrorists' entry point after throwing fire down into it. It is recommended by a teammate once that I wait a few seconds before throwing it, because it really doesn't last long, maybe 10-15 seconds at most.

CT watching Bombsite B on de_cache from Overlook/Heaven. The checkered room to the left is still a viable entry point if they decide to retreat. Or, if they're faster than you or your team, they can push through the fire, either straight in or around and through the checkered room.

One final note on Incendiaries and Molotovs: As a Terrorist, if you think you're going to lose, it is very possible to save the round if you throw an incendiary on the Bomb, buying time and possibly even killing the CT who tries to defuse. However, a Terrorist guarding the bomb is likely to be sought out, and the time it takes to switch to and throw a Molotov on the bomb may be better spent shooting the enemy. I have only pulled this off a couple times, and it's deeply satisfying when it does happen.

Terrorist threw a Molotov on the bomb at bombsite B on de_mirage

Other Grenades

The other grenades--High Explosive/Frag, Flashbang, and Decoy grenades are nowhere near as effective as deterrents or as offensive tactics as the Incendiaries and Smoke Grenades are. The flashbang, even if tossed correctly, can be defended against by a skilled player simply by turning away from the grenade as it goes off, minimizing the flash effect. I have *never* been able to use flashbangs efficiently, and it's always a guess whether you have incapacitated your enemy. Decoys are easy to identify. As such, the probability that it will compel your enemy to move is minimal. The frag grenades only do approximately 57 damage, but they have to go off right next to the target, and are almost completely ineffective at a range greater than a few feet. Because of this, they are hardly worth the $300.

On Smoke Grenades in Counter-Strike 1.6

In Counter-Strike 1.6, because of its lower particle count, it is very possible to still see through the smoke with the game on high settings. Smoke grenades are thus much less effective in this version of Counter-Strike, and they should not be depended upon to the degree that they can be in CS:GO and CS:Source.

Serial Experiments Lain is the Most Accurate Cyberpunk Story I've Ever Come Across

Update - 6/7/2016

I have added links to Funimation's subtitled episodes on Youtube where appropriate.

End Update

Preface: It's been a very long time since I've written anything. I've deliberately avoided writing about politics because I didn't want to feed into the Trump Vacuum, and outside of that, there isn't too much that's going on that I really want to write about. So I decided that I would go in a completely different direction.


Not a lot of my readers are anime fans, but I felt like revisiting one of my first--and favorite--anime series and explaining what made this series so good. Serial Experiments Lain has been largely forgotten to anime history, and I felt it necessary to explore what it had to say about technology, and the ways it got the Internet right 17 years ago, at a time when so many cyberpunk/technologically-focused stories (like this, for example), got technology so wrong.

Serial Experiments Lain is a 13-episode series that centers around a young, socially isolated 14-year-old girl who receives an email from a classmate who committed suicide, urging her to follow in her footsteps and live in the "Wired" (the Internet). Intrigued by this email, Lain asks her father, who works at the Tachibana Labs computer company and is himself an early adopter/power user/tinkerer, who is excited to take her under his wing, to upgrade her computer. Lain uses a "NAVI", which is based on a variety of Apple products (the artists working on the series at the time loved Apple), but I find that the top-of-the-line model resembles more of a cyberdeck than a traditional desktop computer. It isn't long before we see Lain switching out parts, and her setup grows immensely throughout the series.

There are some important things to note in episode one: The shadows in the series are colored, and this is deliberate. The shadows represent the world of the Wired, underpinning Lain's "reality." The buzzing of the power lines in the beginning episodes eventually become distinct, though muffled speech, delineating Lain's ignorance of the Wired to her power over it. During her commute to school, we get a very eerie scene where the power lines start to bleed. Others have said that this represents Chisa's suicide, but I don't think that's accurate: It is foreshadowing the central theme of the series, that is the Wired and the "Real World" becoming one and the same, as we shall see.

One of the most interesting comparisons to make here is between Lain and The Matrix, specifically The Animatrix and the second film. In "Kid's Story," a teenager is contacted by Neo and commits suicide by jumping from his apartment building with the goal of reaching the Real World. A great deal of effort is made by Lain's classmates and another character to convince Lain to kill herself and enter the Wired. It's worth noting here that Lain came out in 1998, The Matrix came out in 1999, and The Animatrix after that. I have no doubt that the Wachowskis saw Serial Experiments Lain.

The Knights of the Eastern Calculus

In Layer 03, Lain receives a chip called a "Pachuke," and inquires at the rave about its function and manufacture. Taro, one of the kids who hangs out at the club, informs her that the chip was manufactured by the Knights and is extremely rare, bestowing powers and privileges to its user well beyond that of normal denizens of the Wired. The Knights are one of the most intriguing things about the series, as they are an anonymous group of hackers/renegades who seek to govern the Wired and are responsible for a deadly computer game. Few people know who the Knights are, and few people familiar with the series quite understand the brilliance of their existence in the series. Watching SEL in 2015, it is quite obvious that the Knights are analogous to another [A]nonymous hacker collective. SEL deserves some serious credit for its predictions, and its accuracy well beyond its time. In the series, the Knights have spliced a dungeoncrawling survival game not unlike many horror games seen today (think Slender: The Eight Pages) with a scientific experiment that sought to harness latent psychic energy from children called the Kensington Experiment, presided over by Professor Hodgson. The experiment was terminated because all of the children involved in the experiment died. Professor Hodgson explains to Lain that he sought to destroy all of the material involved in the experiment, but someone "dug it out of the trash" and incorporated it into the game (Episode 6)

This hybrid allowed other players to play as the monster, and any player who loses in the game dies in real life. The Knights are also able to use the technology in their game (called PHANTOMa) to kill other users. A housewife orders a Knights-manufactured PCI card and uses it to kill a person walking in the street wearing a headset and mobile wifi gear. Later, we find this same card, fried, in the garbage. In one scene, also in episode 6, after Lain discovers what the Knights did, she verbally abuses them by calling them trolls. They retaliate by--I think--uploading malware to her computer that causes her coolants to fail and her system to explode, which would have killed her had she not left her room. On top of all that, the Knights are also propping up a second suicide-turned-digital-consciousness named Masami Eiri.


Masami Eiri was an employee at Tachibana Labs, and he was tasked with creating IPv7 (Protocol 7; we are currently on IPv6). He included bizarre conspiracy theories involving psychic research and electromagnetic fields into his construction of the protocol, and aimed to insert himself into the Wired as its god. He wanted to move all of humanity from the Real World into the Wired, and allow people to communicate seamlessly, "without devices." The best comparison I can make for this is to the Human Instrumentality Project in Evangelion, which was also aimed at merging human consciousnesses beyond that of the flesh, albeit for religious reasons. When Eiri's managers discovered this, they fired him immediately, and he killed himself by running in front of a train. His consciousness lived on in the Wired, where he did become a god, thanks to his believers: The Knights. Eiri also claims responsibility for creating Lain. Eiri himself became god, basically, by using memes perpetuated by the Knights (think, for example, 4Chan or Reddit), and he lives on simply because people believe in him (similar to American Gods, where belief gives power). This is the same reason why aliens appear in the series: Because urban legends (Roswell, mentioned in episode 9, for example) become "fact" through collective belief in conspiracy theories (TVTropes.org notes that the alien who appears as Lain's avatar in Alice's room in Episode 11 is wearing a Freddy Krueger sweater). Episode 9 opens with the line, "For now, conjecture has become fact, and rumor has become history." While I am aware that The X-Files also heavily dealt with conspiracy theories around the same period, it did not address the way that these theories proliferated in real life through the Internet the way Lain did. In fact, I would argue that the very reason why they are discussed at all in SEL is because of how the Internet gave them a way to propagate freely in the underbelly of the Web, treating them as an artifact of belief, instead of addressing the possibility outright that aliens could be real. It's less "The truth is out there" and more "The expansion of the Internet has created a seedbed for all kind of crazy stuff!" Again, this series came out in 1998, and this is 2015, when conspiracy theories thrive on the Internet and have leaked into real political discourse.

Who are the Men in Black (not Will Smith and TLJ)?

The Men in Black are two mysterious figures who at first have an ominous presence as they stalk Lain from a black car, but they are not there to hurt her. At first, she suspects that they are working for the Knights, but the Men in Black are there simply to spy on her for an unnamed employer. They suspect that Lain is the Lain of the Wired (the "evil" one), and  later, when they take her in, they discover that she is, and reveal that they do not want the Wired and the Real World to merge. However, they are ordered to back off by their employer, and only resurface after Lain publishes the list of Knights members, whom they assassinate. In Layer 12, the Men in Black are betrayed by their employer and killed by an avatar of Lain (ostensibly with the same technology as the Knights with PHANTOMa). It turns out that their employer was in contact with Eiri, which may be why Lain killed them.

What happened to Alice, and why does Lain have three personalities? 

Alice is Lain's best friend, and her story arc is both depressing and slightly unclear. But first, we must explain Lain's three personalities. Lain in the real world is socially isolated, quiet, and generally passive. She discovers, as people recognize her in the club in episode 2, that there already exists a Lain in the Wired. This version of her is evil, and has spread embarrassing information about Alice, specifically, that she has been sleeping with one of her teachers. This is devastating to her (obviously), and is a major impetus for Lain's actions later in the series. It's worth noting that this is something SEL gets exactly right: That information on the Internet (The "Wired" in the show) can be found and used against people in the real world, with real consequences. On the Wired, Lain (the persona that the Real Lain has adopted for herself on the Wired) is assertive, belligerent, and quick to verbally attack other users, which reflects current reality: Many socially isolated people adopt a more forceful personality on the Internet.

It is also possible that Eiri had dummy copies of Lain on the Wired without her knowledge. "You wanted to pass off these dupes as me!?" (Episode 8)

In episode 12, when Lain is about to give in to Eiri and Chisa's demand that she forfeit her physical form and live in the Wired as a disembodied consciousness, Alice shows her the value of a physical body by letting Lain feel her heart beat. In fact, it is Alice who comes to her aid at the end of the series and saves her from making the same mistake Eiri and Chisa made. Here, Lain also discovers how much she had hurt Alice, and this is what causes her to hit RESET.

 So what does Lain do? How does she become a god?

In order to save Alice from the consequences of what the Evil Lain did, she erases everyone else's memory of Alice's sexual indiscretion, but does not erase Alice's own memory of her humiliation. Lain decides--after seeing the pain that her actions caused her only friend--to erase everyone's memories of herself, effectively erasing her own existence. The power she gained in the Wired and her need for a physical body (she did not kill herself) allows her to become what Eiri could not, and instead of fulfilling her stated purpose (according to Eiri), she reestablishes the barrier between the Wired and the Real World. Many of the people she knew and loved could almost remember her. Alice, seen with her fiancee, struggles and fails to remember that Lain was her best friend. 

Is Lain a computer program? What happened to Mika? And why is her family fake?

Eiri claims--late in the series--that he is responsible for creating Lain. She is, in his words, "an executable program with a body." Her entire life is a plant, and this knowledge is what pushes her over the edge. However, Eiri also says that all other people are "applications," so he is not exactly to be trusted. Considering Mika's fate, it may be more accurate to say that the Knights are responsible for Lain's existence, not Eiri.

Mika was a disaffected, "mature" teen who had very little interest in Lain. Because of her marked disinterest, the Knights manipulated her surroundings, telling her to "Fulfill the prophecy!!!" and drove her insane. There are theories on the Internet (on our Internet) that say that the Knights wiped her mind, but I think this goes a bit far. It is sufficient to say that she had a severe mental breakdown and was incapacitated for the rest of the series.

Her mother at one point--who expresses the same disinterest as Mika and yet suffers no consequences--remarks to her husband/Lain's father that "We don't have much time" (or something to that effect) as the two of them initiate intimacy. 

The bizarre thing about her family being faked is that when we see them again in episode 13, they are still together, only with Lain missing. This is bizarre because, after Lain hits the reset button, Masami Eiri is still employed, the Men in Black are construction workers, Chisa (the suicide from the beginning, and the one who originally sends Lain down the rabbit hole) is still alive. and other characters are similarly changed. The only explanation for this is that her parents would have fallen in love anyway, making at least some of the prophecy less impactful. 

Further Questions

I only have one major question: If Eiri is truly responsible for creating Lain, why does he not realize that Lain is supposed to overtake him as god? Or, as the title of episode 12 suggests, Eiri is so consumed by his own ego that he still thinks he can be god? Even in the denouement, Masami Eiri suffers delusions of grandeur...

Final Thoughts and Analysis

SEL  was released in 1998, and I find it amazing, watching it 17 years later, how prescient it was. A lot of what is happening now is seen in the series, from Anonymous, Reddit/4Chan, TOR/the "Dark Web," doxxing, conspiracy theories (though they've been around for a lot longer than the Internet, their swift proliferation is what makes SEL so relevant), and the consequences of the collapse of the barrier between the Real World and the Wired. Transhumanists are considering the implications of uploading human consciousness to a computer network, and we are on the verge of VR. We are working on accessing the Internet without any devices. These are topics that are explored on shows like Black Mirror today, but Serial Experiments Lain discussed them way back in 1998. I would also like to point out that the main character is a girl, whereas in 2015, most people who are computer experts (those who work in Silicon Valley) are men. At the time SEL was made, women were much more involved with computers. I love that Lain focuses primarily on tech-savvy girls.

SEL is a perfect expression of the anxieties felt at the dawn of the Internet age, during the dial-up era, and remains a landmark achievement in cyberpunk and science fiction generally.

Update 6/7/2016

"This afternoon, the firewall of the Information Bureau's Information Control Center was cracked by some unnamed renegade party. As a result, the Information Network System of the Wired is in total disarray. And furthermore, be advised that although it is actually a live broadcast and is being sent out at this very moment, it is quite possible that it may arrive tomorrow, right now, or perhaps yesterday."

As I talk to my friends about Lain, because they recently watched it for the first time, or haven't seen it in a long time, I keep thinking about how great it is. It eats at my brain the way that only Neon Genesis Evangelion could, and while Evangelion was excellent, very little of it had to do with the real world; all of the religious references kind of went nowhere, and somewhere along the way in my mind, SEL's unwavering allegiance to reality--to such a degree that few other science fiction stories ever match--causes me to fall in love with it over and over again. I keep thinking about that one character in episode 7, who was wandering the busy street with his backpack and VR gear. We can do that now. Yes, VR has been a thing for a long time (think Star Trek's Holodeck), but few have ever imagined how it might work in reality. I am stunned by the fact that SEL came out 17 years ago, and almost everything it ever said about technology and society is actually true.

I can hardly believe that the series ever got made in the first place. It had a shoestring budget, there is no official merchandise (except for a Japan-only one-shot manga and a Japan-only PSX adventure game), and the animation doesn't look too good (and that's putting it nicely). 

And yet it is the best anime I have ever seen. I first saw it when I was in high school, and it was, if I remember correctly, the first anime series I ever purchased (my first anime purchases were AKIRA, Ghost in the Shell, Perfect Blue, and Serial Experiments Lain). Lain is the only anime I own on Blu Ray, and I purchased it soon after I watched it again for this essay. My only complaint with the Blu Ray is that there aren't enough extras about Lain: No interviews, concept art, etc. I had to dig up an interview with the creator in a French magazine (that interview and others can be found here) to try to figure out where it came from, and I still don't know. 

The only thing I do know is that I want to watch it yet again.

Final Fantasy X - A Retrospective

I have just completed Final Fantasy X, which debuted on the PS2 in 2001, and has recently been remastered twice in a short span, both on the PS3 and PS4. Having played it, I'm not exactly sure why it got the high marks that it did, particularly because of the very weak plot and rather uninteresting characters.

Approximately 1000 years before the start of the game, a cyberpunk metropolis called Zanarkand was at war with the Al Bhed, and in the ensuing conflict, the deaths of so many people resulted in the birth of an extremely destructive creature called Sin. A religion was created around this creature, providing for the means to temporarily subdue the creature only for a decade at a time, only to have it return each time. One of your characters, Auron, has already completed this journey, and realizes that there must be a way to permanently destroy Sin. Meanwhile, a Guado Maester named Seymour has murdered his father, and plans to use Sin to completely annihilate Spira because he believes that killing people means saving them, but he never seems to do anything important, aside from killing all the Ronso on Mt Gagazet. He's more ridiculous than he is threatening. Seymour is no Kefka, who looked like a clown and still managed to destroy the planet 60% of the way through Final Fantasy VI. And Tidus is a dream summoned by the spirits of the dead (fayth) who govern....Sin? This is never adequately explained in the game.

Your party travels from location to location, visiting temples on landmarks on a pilgrimage to collect all of the Aeons required to subdue Sin. Yuna proceeds on the hope that her journey can kill Sin permanently, but Auron realizes that it's all bullshit (again, he did this before), and when Lady Yunalesca tells her how Sin and Yu Yevon (the god-thing that controls Sin) work by taking control of the Final Aeon--which kills the summoner after it stops Sin--and turning it into Sin again, she chooses a different path. Oh, and, Tidus's father is Sin because he was sacrificed and turned into the Final Aeon, which was then absorbed by Yu Yevon.

There is obvious symbolism in this story. Final Fantasy has a long history of expressing anti-religious ideas, but this doesn't make up for an uneventful story, especially when Xenogears did the same thing much more effectively.

None of the characters in the game are particularly interesting, except for Auron, but that's only because he knows more than anyone else. Wakka and Tidus are the most irritating: Wakka is almost worse than Steiner in  Final Fantasy IX (in fact, they are pretty much the same character in different circumstances, though I doubt Steiner would dye his hair red and play underwater soccer). Tidus is kind of a klutz, but only because he doesn't know anything: He was teleported from Zanarkand 1000 years into the future and spends 80% of the game making an ass of himself. Yuna is earnest, but naive. Lulu has nothing in her personality going for her, so the character designers put her in a ridiculous dress to make her interesting. Kimhari was ostracized from his tribe because he's smaller than the other Ronso and his horn was busted. It was never explained how. Guides on the Internet claim that Kimhari is the least useful character in the game. Rikku is probably my favorite character next to Auron: She is very useful with the correct abilities, and she was the least grating character to listen to. Did I mention how bad the voice acting and dialogue are? I swear that nearly every voice actor in the game was reading from a cue card and have never seen their lines before. The only actress who was decent was Julia Fletcher, who played Lady Yunalesca and later played Judge Drace in Final Fantasy XII,  one of my favorite characters in that game.

I don't know if I'm being unfair to a very early RPG on the Playstation 2, but I can't help but notice that all of the party characters are significantly more detailed than any of the NPCs. The NPCs all look like they were transferred from a PS1 prototype.

The combat system did offer one major improvement: Your characters are able to switch out every turn individually. While great for leveling, at points I felt like I was playing Pokemon (though you did get to keep your turn when you switched): Characters must act or be acted upon in order to receive AP, and when you can kill monsters in a single hit, making characters take non-offensive actions just so they received AP quickly became time-consuming and tedious. On the other hand, it is arguably better than waiting until halfway or even 95% of the way through the game to level your entire party like in so many other RPGs.

I have heard it said by some of its detractors that Final Fantasy X marked the beginning of the downward trend of Final Fantasy, but I have to disagree with this because Final Fantasy XII was such an incredible step up, and that is at least partially why I am being so harsh: Why, exactly, was Final Fantasy X so widely remembered, when XII was almost completely forgotten?

Final Fantasy XII told such a complex, interesting story that went far beyond earlier FF titles; it strongly resembled Game of Thrones and threw in nuclear proliferation just for fun. Its graphics were incredible, the combat system was completely different (it played more like Knights of the Old Republic than Final Fantasy), the characters were all great--all of them!--and it had more sidequests than some Western RPGs. And few people have played it.

Skip Final Fantasy X, and play XII instead.

It's Really Important That We Ask the Question: Can God Be Evil?

Eleven days ago, Ireland voted to legalize gay marriage in a national referendum, despite religious conservatives strongly opposing it. At the same time, a national Pew poll indicates that only 70.6%--the lowest ever--of the United States considers themselves Christians. Another Pew article details how millennials are driving the expansion of 'Nones'. Yesterday, Caitlyn Jenner appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair, and most people are extremely happy for her.

The things that I have stated in previous articles are coming true: Christianity's political influence is rapidly decreasing. It's exposure and relevance in the greater culture is regarded as almost universally terrible. Both the Vox article about film, and the Week article about music, place the blame on an ossifying culture that no longer reaches an audience beyond the Christian demographic; no longer does Christian culture try to engage the secular culture in a meaningful way. No longer can Christian culture claim to represent American culture as a whole.

Ireland is probably the the most Christian (Catholic) country in the West, and the church--the cultural power structure--could not stem the tide of gay marriage--they had even less success than their counterparts in the United States, where gay marriage emerged victorious not by popular means, but through court cases on a state-by-state basis, with a Supreme Court case underway this season. Between the Pew poll and the Irish referendum, the signs could not be clearer: Christianity is swiftly losing the leverage it once enjoyed for so long. What happened?

A friend of mine posted an article in USA Today that claims that "fakers" aren't going to church anymore, and that Evangelical denominations are growing. There are two problems with this: The first is that numbers are numbers, and I would argue that there are still people who are "faking" it and identifying themselves as Christians despite possibly not actually being Christian--closeted LGBTQ teens living in oppressive households, those forced to attend conversion camps (there is a pending court case about those, too), etc. The second problem is that Evangelical denominations are exactly what Christianity needs less of; it is these sects--not the mainline Protestant denominations--that are the cause of Christianity's cultural malaise. A graph found in the Washington Post details the connection between support for evolution and climate change between Muslims, Jewish sects, Buddhists, Christian denominations and Catholics, and other religions. Conservative Christian groups such as Assembly of God, Southern Baptists, and many others (the light purple circles in the bottom left) rank particularly low on both of these issues, and we can safely infer that their views on other cultural issues (gay marriage, sex education, etc) are no different. Moving toward more conservative religious views will only accelerate Christianity's cultural isolation and decline.

Why are millennials leaving religion? We have two competing phenomena: On the one hand, we have a very clear message coming from the loudest voices in the room, voices which, for a long time, informed my view of religion as a whole. On the other hand, we have a group of people who had been oppressed by the first group, and, after a time, showed themselves to the public as completely normal, whose only goal was to be treated the same as everyone else. Following the success of this group, stories of others broadened the perception of similar groups, to the point that people congratulate Caitlyn Jenner for her debut in Vanity Fair.

The message of the first group was loud and clear. We had Jerry Falwell's infamous exchange after 9/11. We had the Westboro Baptist Church's "God Hates Fags!" We had DOMA. We have Indiana's RFRA law: Christian florists, bakers, and pizzaria owners all saying the same thing. We have a unanimous  message of exclusion--across all candidates--coming from a major political party in next year's election cycle. 

On the other side, we have seen youth homelessness and conversion therapy, which is now facing a possible ban in NJ and on the national stage, as the APA has since discredited it as a mode of therapy. Scott Lively, the architect of Uganda's law against homosexuality, now faces charges of crimes against humanity. The Pope, as progressive as he is (especially compared to the last one, which had a showdown over a US nun's views on sex), still doesn't like gay people. On top of all that, transsexuals and transgendered people such as Leelah Alcorn, take their own lives at an alarming rate because of Christian bigotry. 

Which group would you choose?

This is the choice made by millennials answering the Pew polls. As the Westboro Baptist Church, Jerry Falwell, and Scott Lively claimed that God can hate and judge people, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris were not making an original claim when they compared God to a celestial Stalin; they took the Christian Conservatives at their word and asked people to consider: Is the god represented by these religious figures worthy of worship? 

Think about that for a second. If it turned out that God (not that He really is) were the monster conjured in the minds of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, how would humanity behave? 

This is what makes the story of Job so important, and the fact that the story's two most important lessons are completely lost when it became part of the Christian canon is at least partly responsible for its present predicament.

I have previously written about Job here and here. All of the points I made in those essays are relevant here, but there is one more thing I want to touch on, where contemporary Christianity--and, by extension, contemporary conservative Christianity--encounters a huge philosophical problem.

The story of Job has one final lesson to teach us: It is primarily about worshiping power. God tells Job that he should worship Him because He has killed a Leviathan, because He had tamed a Behemoth, and because He had created the world. "Look at how awesome and powerful I am! Bow down to me or I will smite you where I stand!"

Job says no, and in the end, God realizes that He had behaved badly and compensates Job 7x what he had lost. He is furious at Job's friends for defending Him! This is the message of Job. The central message for Christians in the Book of Job is that God should not be worshiped simply for His power. Worshiping God because he is powerful is worse than marrying someone simply because they are rich.

This is the trap that conservative Christianity has fallen into. There is an external standard of justice in Job's story, and he is a hero for holding God accountable to it. Is it right for God to hate people for who they are (leaving aside whether or not God actually feels this way)? Is it right for God to force people to hate themselves? Should human beings be morally accountable themselves for enforcing the will of an evil God? Can and when should God be feared and obeyed? Is there a difference? 

The Jewish tradition allows people to look up to the sky and exclaim, "God, what the hell did you do that for!?" They had a relationship with God that was more than Command-Obey. "Noah, people are being evil. I'm gonna hit the restart button and flood the planet. You better build a boat so your family and the animals can survive when it's over." "Hey Noah, I don't think that was a good idea. Whaddya say I don't do that ever again?" "I created the Earth, but you guys are My People. I will protect you as long as you follow these rules."  "God! Why are you tormenting me!?"

Conservative Christians worship God for His power. The Christian tradition, by omitting the important lesson in Job that God and Humanity are held to what could be the same standard of justice, have no way to decide whether what their God is telling them is actually good. When individuals claim that God told them to commit murder, we still hold them to a standard of justice. Why is their bigotry any different? Because it's wrapped in faith?

Would God tell people that he hates certain groups within the population? Imagine if He told Fred Phelps that He hated the Dutch. "God Hates the Netherlands!" Wouldn't that be ridiculous? (I'm sure Harold Camping, were he still alive, could find an instance of God hating the Dutch somewhere in the Bible.) 

So if conservative Christians love God for his power, how is His power to be dispensed? This is where everyone runs into trouble. Why is God's wrath always directed toward people who are different, people who seem to 'represent' a 'threat' to the believer's 'beliefs'? First, God told Columbus's crew that the Native Americans were the cursed descendants of Ham. Then He told the Southerners and those in the slave trade that Africans were going to have a better life under Christendom. Later, He told white men that women belonged in the kitchen and were only good for popping out babies. After that, He recognized homosexuality, Dungeons and Dragons, and heavy metal music as the biggest threats to His Kingdom. Only one of these last three is still actively combated.

But wait! He also spoke to the Africans, and gave them a message of hope, and inspired them to rise up against the white men and assert their freedom! Who is right? How are we going to decide whose God is the True God? 

For that matter, why aren't child homelessness, disease, hunger, and rampant warfare, among myriad other issues, higher on God's agenda, than what people are doing in their bedrooms, or which team won the Super Bowl, or when the hell am I going to win the lottery?

God is powerful, that much we know. But because there is no frame of reference for the conservative Christians--their holy book is nothing but a long list of one-liners--God has no pattern, He has no stated interest. He proceeds from moment to moment on a whim. This is why they worship His power: When the Maelstrom comes, they hope to be spared. Everyone else, in their eyes, is literally going to Hell. 

Hell and the Apocalypse. Two favorite topics of conservative Christianity. Both of these concepts were invented by Christianity, the Jews had no concept of the afterlife, and they were hoping to be saved in reality from desolation and extermination after leaving Israel. The predictions made by their prophets were real, Earthly desires, rather than some ethereal wish. What happens when we take the lesson from Job, and apply it to these two concepts? Is it right that God should condemn swaths of people to Hell? Is it right that He should violate the terms of His covenant with Noah  and murder 9 billion people in a Biblical inferno? Who determines how we are saved from such a fate--Hell or the Apocalypse? Why should God ever want to build a Hell, and who should want Him to end all life on the planet?

It makes no sense for God to do these things. Even if God were indeed evil, I highly doubt that He could inflict as much damage as we are inflicting on ourselves already, especially given God's vast timescale. We could all be dead before God decides to act. Our sun is going to die in five billion years, which is about the same length of time that it took us to get here, and if He could wait that long, then there's no reason to stop now. Beyond the eventual demise of our sun, God would also have climate change and possibly even nuclear warfare to look forward to, which would mean that we would die that much faster.

Imagine that God did kill 99% of the Earth's population, and left only those who believed in Him. What kind of lives would they lead? What would they do with themselves, when there is no one else to be better than, to oppress? What if God said, after everyone else is dead: "Alright, guys! You made it! Let's PAAAAR-TAAAYYYY!" Would they truly be able to dance upon the dead, to look up at God, after all the horror, and say that He did the right thing? Is this God deserving of worship?

Thankfully, God cannot end the world, because He promised Noah that He wouldn't. If you were to read closely what He says to Noah and later to Job, He betrays just a hint of regret over His actions, and is very unlikely to do those things a second time. God is many things, but He is not one to repeat His mistakes. 

And yet, for many, this is exactly what they want God to do, and don't give a thought to fates of those who are damned in this scenario. Again, this displays the chronic inability to recognize an external standard of justice, and, at bottom, represents the grossest power fantasy.

Considering everything I have said up to now, conservative Christianity has been unmasked as nothing more than that power fantasy. God telling them who to hate, who can be enslaved, the existence of Hell as a weapon against others, and the Apocalypse as the ultimate revenge. God, to them, is nothing more than an Avatar of Hate, His immense power is for them to use at their discretion. 

Who decided that gays were a threat? Who decided that Africans could be enslaved? Who decided that women should obey men? Who benefits?

Without the capacity to judge God's actions as right or wrong, without the context of Job's story, Christianity runs the risk of being the tool of the conservatives, who will follow wherever God leads, Heaven for them, and Hell on Earth for the rest of us.

This is how Christianity fades. To reiterate: They have the message, and they have the volume. It isn't the atheists who did it; it's not me, nor Richard Dawkins et al, nor the Homosexual Agenda, nor Marilyn Manson or Gary Gygax. 

It was a deafening, constant message of hate and revenge. It was the Christians who used religion to oppress others that precipitated this decline. They had the media outreach, and, for a very long while, they have had the nation's attention. They used their positions of power to oppress. Their words reached millions, people listened to them, and now it's time to pay up. There is no one else to blame.

What if the Social Contract Was Always a Sham?

The Social Contract, an idea first created by 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, basically postulates a system in which people participate in a democracy following the basic rule that no one person will use his or her power in order to disenfranchise another member of the society. This was an idea that heavily influenced our Founding Fathers.

In the Foucault-Chomsky Debate, Michel Foucault expresses his belief that the Social Contract is a sham.

As we continue to experience the increasing cascade of official actions against minority groups--rampant police homicide in Baltimore and Ferguson, laws passed and rhetoric spoken by our presidential candidates against homosexuals, women, and illegal immigrants, and with so few victories won on behalf of these populations, one begins to wonder if Foucault was right.

America was ostensibly a democracy on paper, but limited the voting population to white, land-owning males. Thomas Jefferson held slaves, and the population of slaves was established in the Three-Fifths Compromise, wherein a state's slave population was officially counted for only 60% of the actual slave population. If you were black, you were only 60% of a person. Women gained the right to vote only in 1920. Following the Civil War, while African-Americans were mostly liberated from slavery, they still found themselves everywhere oppressed by a white power structure determined to--despite what was stated in the law--maintain its dominance. This continues to the present day, where African-Americans are still not afforded equal opportunity for economic success, and are still disproportionately targeted by an oppressive law enforcement regime built by a paranoid society in the aftermath of white crime.

The police were placed in public schools in order to defend against mass shootings, such as Columbine, Sandy Hook, and many others. As the public school system became a regular police beat, infractions that would normally be punished by administrative action (at the discretion of teachers, principals, etc), became the jurisdiction of police. As a result, minority children are unfairly dragged and locked into a legal system that immediately alienates them and destroys whatever chances they have of contributing productively to society. It is worth noting, also, that all mass shootings at schools with one exception have been perpetrated by white kids. Only the Virginia Tech shooting was perpetrated by a non-white student, and he was Korean (America loves Koreans!).

It is worth noting that in one case in Florida, a white 8th grade student was charged with felony cybercrime because he changed the desktop background of his teacher's computer using a password that was a secret to everyone. The school administration asserted that the test files on the teacher's computer had not been compromised, but Sheriff Chris Nocco pressed on: "Who knows what he has done?" If you don't know what he did, then what the hell are you charging him with? However, this student is still in the minority, and his case is just as absurd as any other. PBS reports that over 70% of in-school arrests and children reported to law enforcement by school administrations are of black or Latino descent.

In April 2015, an autistic 11 year-old child--who is black--was handcuffed and charged with disorderly conduct for kicking a trash can. I knew a kid in high school who had Asperger's. He once threw a trash can across the cafeteria because someone blocked his favorite Magic: The Gathering card during a game. We were all very amused. No, he wasn't arrested. The school psychologist called him over to calm down and take a breather. As far as I know, the kid has no criminal record, at least not consisting of anything at school. Why should the 11 year old black kid be treated any differently?

The point is that we need to recognize that our society doesn't do what it says it does. We don't treat people fairly, and everyone is constantly abusing their power in order to disenfranchise other people that they don't like.

"Let's write RFRA laws so we don't have to respect gay people." "Let's disenfranchise teenagers by not telling them how to have safe sex, and punish them for making natural choices without taking the necessary precautions." "Let's ruin some black lives today."

Power, especially in our ostensibly democratic society, in which--we claim--that everyone has personal autonomy, is still all about one-upping and destroying each other. We now find ourselves playing this game where any vote for the "wrong" candidate is a vote for complete annihilation. We don't expect that, if, say, a Republican candidate wins the presidency, that they won't go out of their way to marginalize and oppress certain groups. On the other hand, they see a Hillary or Bernie Sanders victory as opposing an immoral Liberal Reconstruction on the entire South. [You know what I think, but the point is clear.]  This is what our democracy has become. This is why the Social Contract may be dead. And this is even before I bring up the omnipresent security/counter-terrorism apparatus.

Foucault said that all of us are potential delinquents, and this is pretty much true. It only takes one antagonistic brush with the law to alienate one completely from society, and isn't as though the police aren't looking for people to put in prison. For some--because of the color of their skin, for their socioeconomic background--it is possible to be reintegrated with society, but for others who aren't so lucky, for those who may be members of the minority, law enforcement exists for them.

They are not--and perhaps never will be, as a class--part of society. The rift, the struggle to contain and restrain them, is older than the nation itself, and the white, wealthy power structure will perpetually do all in its power to maintain its position, without a care for who or what gets caught in its grasp. The 8 year old who is being charged with cybercrime is merely an accident; its real target is the 11 year old who kicked a trash can. Both of these actions--changing a teacher's desktop wallpaper as a prank, and taking one's anger out on a garbage bin--are harmless. But one is white, and the other black. One got caught in the machine, the other was targeted.

There is a system of economic disparity that works in tandem with an oppressive law enforcement regime designed, much like a fishing net in a bathtub, to keep minorities under stricter behavioral norms than members of the majority. Literally any minor infraction--kicking a garbage can, even waging a water balloon fight--can trigger a hostile law enforcement response depending on one's minority status in society. If you are white and not wearing a hooded sweatshirt, you probably won't be treated as harshly than if you were of African-American descent.

There is one other phenomenon it is worth looking at: The Baltimore and Ferguson demonstrations. Here is a list of "11 Stupid Reasons White People Rioted". Over half of these are sports-related, and others are even more absurd. What do we say about white people rioting? Do we say "White people should shut up, learn their place, and obey the law"? Nope. But black people and young adults need to be on their best behavior (see Occupy Wall Street) in order to even be considered worth listening to. They are on unstable ground simply because they are black. It doesn't matter that their grievances are historically the most justified, and deserving of more attention and respect than the power structure and public at large has given them.

At least three issues in the 2016 Presidential Campaign Season are related to the disenfranchisement of minorities in the United States: 1) Same sex marriage and religious freedom restoration laws (the entire GOP caucus has supported RFRA laws) 2) Immigration, which I have not touched upon here, but Marco Rubio is quick to sell out his own group in order to conform with the Republican party line, and 3) Income inequality.

Income inequality is the other important example for the failure of the Social Contract: As political candidates construct SuperPACs, SuperMegaUltraPAC Alpha Edition DX (sorry for the Street Fighter Word Salad, though it isn't so far-fetched), and vast networks of financial pipelines, the ability for the uberwealthy, like Sheldon Adelson, to buy politicians for their own private use, enables them to manipulate the law to their private benefit, against the public at large. In the near future, business owners will have bought the law outright. Currently, there are private organizations like ALEC and the Heritage Foundation that draft laws on behalf of businesses, but these still have to go through Congress to be passed. Currently, Sheldon Adelson is on the verge of being in trouble with the law because he fired his executive because the executive refused to work with a Chinese crime syndicate. The reason why he tried to buy Mitt Romney and pretty much the entire GOP is because he wanted them to intervene in his case on his behalf. He attempted (and is still attempting) to buy the law.

In the aftermath of the 2008 crash, the executives and board members became extremely wealthy when the rest of the population was being laid off. The GOP, owned by the wealthy business owners who gained what everyone else had lost, called for "austerity" and massive cuts to the programs and services that people needed, and cried foul when the government wanted to do what it could in order to stimulate the economy again--the $800 billion stimulus package that Paul Krugman, to name one, felt should have been much more substantial.

One other interesting point is that people are constantly complaining that the tax law is FUBAR (I'll let you Google that). Let me just ask: Who do you think has the resources to write the tax law? The tax law is the result of a constant war between corporations constantly trying to buy the law in order to protect themselves. Who has the most lobbyists? Which company hires the most competent attorneys? Which company can most afford to buy the law?

Again, people are using their political power in a society that ostensibly believes in the principle of the Social Contract in order to attack other members of the society. The idea that the law can be bought--that it is not unassailable, that its nature can be deciphered for what it is (not even the terrifying, nebulous, nameless, thing that Kafka said it was), but a material artifact that can be wielded--like an ion particle beam cannon, like the Death Star, against one's enemies--is the most damaging fact. This truth, that the law has a price, above and taken into account with all else, is truly the death knell for the sanctity of the Social Contract.

God Says I Will Go To Heaven As Long As I Don't Bake a Wedding Cake For A Gay Couple

Last week, Indiana governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, to a collective "What the f---!?". Many sources were quick to remind the enraged public that 19 other states--and the federal government--have similar (emphasis on "similar") laws on the books, but Indiana's RFRA has one critical difference: Indiana's RFRA applies to private businesses

The Atlantic makes clear:

The new Indiana statute also contains this odd language: “A person whose exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened, by a violation of this chapter may assert the violation or impending violation as a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding, regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding.” (My italics.) Neither the federal RFRA, nor 18 of the 19 state statutes cited by the Post, says anything like this; only the Texas RFRA, passed in 1999, contains similar language.

The Atlantic article continues:

What these words mean is, first, that the Indiana statute explicitly recognizes that a for-profit corporation has “free exercise” rights matching those of individuals or churches. A lot of legal thinkers thought that idea was outlandish until last year’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, in which the Court’s five conservatives interpreted the federal RFRA to give some corporate employers a religious veto over their employees’ statutory right to contraceptive coverage.Second, the Indiana statute explicitly makes a business’s “free exercise” right a defense against a private lawsuit by another person, rather than simply against actions brought by government. Why does this matter? Well, there’s a lot of evidence that the new wave of “religious freedom” legislation was impelled, at least in part, by a panic over a New Mexico state-court decision, Elane Photography v. Willock. In that case, a same-sex couple sued a professional photography studio that refused to photograph the couple’s wedding. New Mexico law bars discrimination in “public accommodations” on the basis of sexual orientation. The studio said that New Mexico’s RFRA nonetheless barred the suit; but the state’s Supreme Court held that the RFRA did not apply “because the government is not a party.”

Essentially the law is both providing free license to discriminate and legitimizing the personhood of corporations vis-a-vis religious belief. Corporate entities such as Hobby Lobby now believe in God.

How does a corporation believe in God? I once worked, a million years ago, as a delivery driver for a restaurant owned by a devout Korean woman. She eventually had to fire me because I drive like a normal person: "I was too slow" She said to me, as close to verbatim as I can remember, "I believe in Jesus Christ, but I have to protect my business." Sorry, Jesus. You just got knocked down a peg by the Almighty Dollar. We are a monotheistic society, but you are not its deity.

It is impossible, because survival and profit against all are paramount, for any business to hold any sort of authentic ethical or religious concern as long as the conflict of interest between doing what is profitable and doing what is morally good exists. True belief of any kind relies upon placing one's self at risk in order to do what is right. Businesses will never choose to put themselves at risk for any ethical cause unless they are sure that doing so will pay off as good PR and recoup whatever costs through their image as an "ethical" company. Any claim by a business enterprise to hold a religious belief can only be met with laughter and derision.

There is another, more pressing concern with this RFRA, however. The law allows the current power structure to take priority in disputes. More profoundly, it removes the burden of moral actions from the Christians it protects. It protects the people who believe my title.

These people don't need to be protected. Being a Christian is the most pedestrian thing a person can be in a country--nay, a world--that is 70-80% Christian. Christians, as the majority of the United States, do not comprise a protected class because being Christian (especially if you're a white Christian: that certainly helps) is basically doing what everyone else is doing. Do you know who needs to be protected? Gay people. Transgendered people. Transsexual people. Muslims. African-Americans. Women. People who do not identify with or fit into the greater power structure (specifically, the power structure that sent this law to Mike Pence's desk).

Gays, transsexuals, transgendered people, Muslims, African-Americans, and women need legal protection because they not only have experienced historical discrimination by such private entities, but in many cases, that same discrimination by private parties continues to the moment you read this sentence. Mike Pence's RFRA protects not the rights of victims of discrimination, but rather the supposed right of the power structure to discriminate. Except that the power to discriminate is not a right!

The entire spirit of the law up to the 21st century was built on citizens' autonomy from negative pressure by the church of England, by the King, and even--potentially--the power of domestic tyrants. The idea that individual human beings could be free to pursue their own "[lives], liberty, and...happiness" precludes any codification of discrimination of any kind! There is absolutely no right to discriminate against any group of people whatever, especially if that target is a minority.

There is one consolation to this RFRA: It reveals which group really is in control, particularly in the South and Midwest, where the Bible Belt is still a thing. It shows us just how far we still have to go to bump Jerry Falwell's ghost from power.

I will say that I don't quite blame Mike Pence. Mike Pence is just an idiot, he is the Adolf Eichmann in the whole thing: Just doing his job, just following orders. Nobody told him what it was that landed on his desk, because the only people who had access to him were the Evangelical groups who wanted it passed. I would imagine that the discussion went like this:

Pence (P): "Should I sign this?"
Evangelicals (E): "Yes! Sign it. Gay people are gross."
*Pence does what he's told, word gets out that the RFRA is now law. A media firestorm against Indiana and Mike Pence now ensues*
P: "WHOA WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST SIGN!? THEY TOLD ME TO!"

Mike Pence is right now begging the legislature to "fix" the law because it wasn't until it was too late that he realized what he did. He cannot go on TV and defend the law to the public. He is getting absolutely annihilated because he signed a law that he didn't read to the benefit of the Evangelical base and to the detriment of everyone else. I predict, at this moment, that the Evangelicals throw Pence to the lions and do nothing.