Sunday, June 15, 2008 at 3:19 P.M. ("Father's Day") new attacks on my writings have resulted in the insertion of "errors" in a number of essays at my MSN group, once again. At the moment, I am unable to access Critique to make corrections. My cable signal has been blocked several times, written work has been altered or defaced. I will do my best to make necessary corrections. Please see "Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?"
I was shocked to discover a new "error" inserted in my essay entitled "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System." I will leave that "error" uncorrected, for today. That "error" will provide necessary inspiration for my continuing efforts against hackers. I will cultivate my rage and sense of outrage at the defacement of my Constitutionally-protected written work by New Jersey's minions.
Anger is the only appropriate emotion in response to such violations. Using that anger to create intellectual and artistic work is better than expressing it in violence. Violence must always be rejected, if we are to avoid becoming the evil that we despise. More essays examining New Jersey's legal corruption and profiles of specific judges are coming up, including "Jim Florio and the Mafia in Atlantic City." June 12, 2008 at 9:09 A.M. I will continue to attempt to run complete scans of my system for the next 24 hours.
John Eligion, "Victim Testifies About Small Talk With Rapist and How She Escaped," in The New York Times, June 10, 2008, at p. B5. (What an unusual name for a Times reporter?)
The encounter with great evil is a life-long ordeal. Trauma, loss, pain -- especially pain resulting from violation or rape -- are things that never entirely abandon their victims. These feelings and constraints, or fetters on our actions and possibilities, are like a great web made of steel that is woven by a sinister spider as we sleep, binding our limbs and thoughts. We awake each morning imprisoned, once again.
Several scans have been obstructed today by hackers. I am unable to write new essays at my sites at this time. I will persist in my efforts. Perhaps tomorrow will be better. For now, my fraud protection feature seems to be disrupted. I have discovered new "errors" in my essay examining John Searle's debate with David Chalmers. I will make a point of revising and reposting that essay.
Torture is the "gift that keeps on giving." Victims of trauma or evil must cut that steel-like web each morning, fighting against paralysis and despair -- despite all odds -- knowing that our chains of suffering will be restored in the night. That sinister spider weaves her webs out of our wounds and losses, from our deepest emotional scars and the horrors in our lives. Torturers are adept at seeking out painful memories and childhood wounds from which to torment victims and bind them forever. The best practioners of this hideous art derive a sexual thrill from their efforts. They are only incidentally concerned with their ostensible goals, like extracting information for the state. Diana, does this sound familiar? It should. (See "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?")
"As a man raped her, threw boiling water and bleach in her face and tossed her around like a rag doll, there were many moments when all she could do was scream or beg for mercy."
Begging for mercy is a waste of time and breath. The person committing these offenses -- like people inserting errors in my writings, or making harassing phone calls, responsible for all the tortures described in these essays -- derive a twisted pleasure from inflicting frustrations and pains on victims.
"But during an attack that lasted 19 hours in April 2007" -- I can top that! -- "there was also, improbably, space for calm, the woman explained, when the two made small talk and she parsed her attacker's every word and action, seeking an exit strategy."
The surreal, almost Twilight Zone-like experience of having a person ask you to "explain" Kierkegaard's ideas or Opera, as he or she is committing crimes against you, is beyond my ability to describe. Without genuine recognition, there will be no "exit strategy." Some part of you hopes to understand what will always defy comprehension: Why people who hurt you are also fascinated and obsessed with what you know and can explain. The arts, sciences, philosophies are denigrated as "useless," even as they are desired and feared for their strange power by all would-be fascists and torturers. This paradox baffles rational persons. It will continue to do so. There will never be a moment when crimes make sense. Evil is a kind of abyss. (See John Fowles' "Poor Koko.")
"During the early part of the ordeal, the woman testified, Mr. Williams lay on her bed and forced her to perform oral sex. He seemed to be dozing off, she said, so she tipped her head to the side several times, hoping he would think she was asleep. But each time, she said, Mr. Williams put pressure on her head."
Despite the harms we suffer, something in us pities any person trapped in a prison made of ignorance and brutality. There must be a rational purpose -- however deluded or misguided -- to explain the actions of a criminal. We mistakenly expect to discover that motive or purpose. Crime is often a Zen-like experience for criminals, especially sadists and torturers. Crime just "is." Crime is the ultimate gratuitous act. (Andre Gide) The suffering of victims, like me, seems to provide its own reward for criminals. Unfortunately, Orwell was right: "the purpose of torture is torture." ("The Wanderer and His Shadow" then "Why I am not an ethical relativist.")
The utter disregard for this poor woman on the part of her attacker -- a man who merits a life-sentence if convicted -- is revealed by his decision to set both his victim and her apartment on fire when he got through with her. After the destruction of my life, attempts to write a memoir were also frustrated by hackers altering the text after each draft was painfully composed at my computer. The goal was to deny even understanding and creativity to a victim. These persons engaging in such acts speak to me of "ethics." (See "New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court" then "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State," and "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead.")
Destroying a person's life and relationships is not enough. For some torturers, it is also necessary to prevent persons from expressing what has been done to them. Language itself is feared and must be destroyed. Intelligence is also demonized. The goal is not only to kill a person's capacity for joy in life, but also to destroy the things in which he believes -- like beauty, truth, meaning and (most importantly) love. "She's a fat pig" -- someone said this of a woman I love, then -- "she's a filthy whore." ("What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "What is it like to be tortured?")
The rationalization of will to power over others may be called "therapeutic adjustment," control of "undesirable elements," or even "duty to the fatherland." The real reason to torture people is simply that torturers enjoy it. Wouldn't you agree, Diana? Terry? John? How are things at the OAE? It wasn't sex with Marilyn, but getting away with "using her" that attracted you, Diana. Isn't that right? It was not the money taken from my office; rather, it was the opportunity to hurt me (or cause me trouble) that made it desirable to steal my money. Did you share the loot with Tuchin? I hope you weren't too greedy, Diana. Who else got in on the action? Ethics? ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")
One foolishly believes that it is possible to detect the humanity of criminals responsible for hurting others. Often, this is not possible. Curiously, however, this is also a negative version of the criminal's or torturer's objective. The person hurting another human being, especially over a long period of time, is locked into a kind of twisted, obsessive fascination with her victim. Would you agree, "gentlemen"? Why do I say that? Will I please "explain" the theory of abnormal motivation by way of the great criminologists to New Jersey's therapists, who will then seek to "instruct" me on these matters?
Well, the torturer wishes to "frustrate" all relational and communicative efforts of victims, to frighten, disgust, or otherwise fill every waking second of that targeted human being's shattered life. The torturer needs his or her victim's "reaction" -- even in agony -- in order not to succumb to a lifeless state, since he or she is "normally" lacking in the capacity to feel. Alex? The worst dread of torturers is that they will be made to see themselves for what they are -- monsters of sadistic cruelty. Frustration and pain imposed on a victim may prevent any suffering person from telling the world what torturers' have done and become. If you silence him, Diana, he may not have time or opportunity to show both the world (and yourself) what you have become -- irrevocably and irredeemably evil. Is that the idea? What do the therapists say?
"We meant well!" I am sure that you did ... or thought you did. A torturer wishes to "affect" his or her victim. An audience is (typically) delighted by the spectacle of pain imposed on victims (Tuchin?), even when audience members claim the status of psychiatric professionals. "We can learn from you." Tuchin likes to watch. Hence, bystanders will, usually, do nothing to stop the infliction of suffering. (I will run another scan later.) The worst thing you can do to torturers is to ignore them, making them irrelevant to your objectives and methods, forcing them into the disgusting cave within themselves. ("Would you have helped Kitty Genovese?")
When victims have qualities that are admired by their tormentors -- usually intellectual ability or talent, as with Salieri in Amadeus -- these qualities must also be destroyed for the victim, who must be persuaded that he is "stupid or worthless." I was told that my writing is "shit" and that I am "shit." Jews in the camps were called "rodents." Think of the n-word. (Only one "error" inserted since this morning, so far.)
Torturers' greatest fear is the exact opposite of what concerns and troubles people like me: I want connections to others through art and self-explorations, analysis, and dialectics. Torturers wish to avoid connections or looking at their actions by focusing on their victims' "inadequacies." The things admired by victims must be denigrated. Whatever the victim is good at will be trivialized and dismissed as worthless. All values are "relative," incoherence and stupidity are celebrated because "everybody's equal," even as admiration of human genius is anathematized as "elitism." ("Is Humanism Still Possible?")
One of my interlocutors at The Philosophy Cafe explained: "You just read a lot of books and write really well." If you say so. This comment was intended as a dismissal. That's the kind of insult that I like. These habits of reading many books and trying to write as well as possible seem "unfair" to simple and brutal men and women. By indulging in these "hobbies" I was "trying to be better than everybody else." It is no good to explain to such people that one is hoping to be better than oneself, not anyone else. As a result, crimes committed against me were permissible. I was deemed an "uppity" minority person. A torture chamber is a "No Exit" dilemma from which the golden key to freedom is always missing. That key is only a respectful concern with the Other and for the product's of another's subjectivity, like art and philosophy:
"The facts of Aushwitz and Hiroshima ... [substitute your torture chamber of choice] may prove to be irreparable. They will have marked, at depths of consciousness and self-consciousness all but inaccessible to repair, both victim and killer, both the torturer and the tortured. In a dialectic analogous to that on Golgotha, the Jew occasioned and released the bestial in other men [and women.] ... The camp guard, the torturer, the killer-gangs in our inner cities, the apologist for racism, [Cubanoids?] and political-religious madness, [a Jew who becomes Mengele,] wherever he operates -- from Guatamala to Siberia, from Rwanda to Belsen -- makes something less than human both of his victims and himself. Thus, it is, I believe, difficult to deny that the twentieth century has lowered the threshold of humanity. Man has, on a pervasive scale, been diminished." (Steiner, Errata, p. 121.)
Shattered relationships cannot be restored by forcing or manipulating encounters with persons for whom one feels only a sense of betrayal and disgust. What is destroyed cannot be repaired without recognition. The idea of recognition offers some hope. Professor Steiner's pessimism must not be accepted without struggle. I recall Pope John-Paul, II's visit to the man who shot and nearly killed him. The Pope entered the man's prison cell as a simple priest attending to a suffering soul, offered forgiveness and recognition, while receiving the same in return -- perhaps for the first time -- from his tormentor and would-be assassin, whose bright eyes sparkled with hatred and rolled around in his head like marbles.
The Pope's embrace of this afflicted man and his invitation to pray together ended with the total pacification of the convicted criminal. Love cannot be defeated by hatred. Torturers always torture themselves and (like the criminal in this newspaper story) are the ones who seek to evade their victims' recognition as well as their own final self-assessments. The criminal in the newspaper account of this horrible incident was unable to enter the courtroom to see the woman he had injured. Pity the criminals and torturers. They are the true victims.
