“The more you understand, the less you forgive.”
—Terrorism Expert
In the Fall of 1991, shortly after the Clarence Thomas nomination and the Anita Hill hearings, the Class of ‘95 matriculated at Dartmouth College.
 |
| Dartmouth Hall, by Stephanie Gagnon. |
The young woman making the claim against the freshman said that he had visited her in her dorm-room around lunchtime one day during Orientation Week, and had “forcibly tried to kiss” her. She had rebuffed him, told him he was being “selfish”, after which he had left, without further incident.
This was the sexual assault allegation.
The young woman also claimed that the freshman had then started to harass her via electronic mail, in the days and weeks after. She claimed he had sent her “obscene messages”, which she had purged from her e-mail account, as she hadn’t wanted any of that “filth” on her computer.
This was the sexual harassment allegation.
The young woman said she wanted to “protect” the Dartmouth campus—and the other women at Dartmouth College—from the danger that the freshman represented. This was why she was reporting this incident three weeks after it allegedly took place.
The accused freshman, being unsophisticated, went through the disciplinary channels of Dartmouth College without contacting attorneys or even his parents. He was confident that the allegations would be shown to be lies—because he knew they were lies.
More to the point, he could prove that they were lies.
The young woman claimed she had thrown away the obscene e-mail messages he had sent her. But the computer science department at Kiewit Hall—in charge of the e-mail servers—said that that wouldn’t be a problem. This was 1991—few people had e-mail, and fewer still realized e-mails can never really be thrown away.
The techs at Kiewit duly looked through all of the e-mails the freshman had sent—as well as all of the e-mails the first year woman had received: None were obscene. In fact, there was only one e-mail between them: From when the first year woman had taught the freshman how to use the Dartmouth e-mail system. The only word on the message was “test”.
As to the sexual assault allegation: The freshman produced witnesses—ironically all of them women—who confirmed that he could not have possibly been in the first year woman’s dorm room around lunchtime—when she claimed—because the freshman had been with them.
Nothing salacious in these encounters: One of these women the freshman had been with was a senior in charge of hiring for a dining hall job he was applying for. Another was a sophomore from down the hall in his dorm, with whom he had talked about earthquakes (she was from California) and how to use the campus computer network. Three other women also placed him in innocuous situations during the entire day of the alleged assault.
As the freshman produced unbiased witnesses who could absolutely confirm he had been elsewhere at the time of the alleged assault, the first year woman kept changing her story—until she claimed that the assault had happened after 8 o’clock at night: A time for which the freshman could not produce a witness for where he had been. (He claimed he had been at an Orientation Week event at Warner Bentley Theater—ironically, where a sexual harassment and assault awareness skit was being play-acted by seniors up on stage.)
However, the freshman was confident that it didn’t matter that he couldn’t produce witnesses who remembered him attending the performance at Bentley Theater: The first year woman had changed her version of the events so many times—and had been shown to be outright lying about the nonexistent obscene e-mails—that the freshman assumed that all the charges would be dismissed, when the disciplinary committee met.
The disciplinary committee, known as the COS, the Committee On Standards, was made up mostly of students—juniors and seniors, divided roughly equally between men and women—plus a smattering of faculty, and chaired by the Dean of the College.
When the entire set of circumstances was aired out, even the chair of the COS was openly skeptical about the first year woman’s story.
Nevertheless, the accused freshman was suspended for an entire academic year.
There was no evidence he had committed any crime or transgression—only the first year woman’s word. There was ample evidence that the first year woman was lying—she had lied about the e-mail messages, and the blatant changes in her story showed that she was lying about the alleged assault.
As the freshman said at the time: “Everything I said that could be proved true turned out to be true—and everything she said that could be proved to be a lie turned out to be a lie.”
Though she had made demonstrably false allegationgs, the first year woman was allowed to continue her stay at Dartmouth, without hinderance or prejudice.
The freshman had to leave Dartmouth. But since there were still four weeks left until the end of the academic term, the Committee On Standards allowed him to stay on campus until after exams were done.
So much for being a “danger” to the other women on campus.
He didn’t have family in the U.S.—or practically any money: He had spent all he had earned before arriving in Hanover on tuition, books and supplies. He didn’t even have a car—and even if he had had one, he had no place to go to.
But somehow, he talked his way into a job in Washington, D.C., where he moved to for a year, working as an office drone at a law firm. It was a scary time for him—he lived literally hand to mouth, during that year.
He returned to Dartmouth, after his suspension was over. It was not pleasant. He was actively ostracized, and on occasion, openly cat-called terrible names by some of his classmates. All sorts of insane rumors swirled around him—but fighting rumors is like fighting the tide: Impossible, not to mention pointlessly self-defeating.
He couldn’t leave Dartmouth—no school anywhere near as prestigious would accept him as a transfer student. Not even lower tiered schools would take him—he applied, and was rejected, even though he had the grades and the test scores.
So he sucked it up: He kept himself to himself—watched a hell of a lot of TV—took extra coursework to make up the time lost to the suspension, and managed to graduate with honors alongside the rest of his class, the Class of ‘95.
At the graduation ceremony, he shook Bill Clinton’s hand.
He never returned to Dartmouth College after that.
That’s a true story. It’s a story, of course, that happened to me.
Even at the time that it was happening, I realized it had all just been bad luck—no different from being run over by a bus: Bad luck that I had met this woman, bad luck that the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill issue was in the air, bad luck that any allegations of sexual assault or harassment—however absurd—would not only be taken seriously, but taken to the limit.
Just bad luck.
The reason the first year woman made the allegations against me—which only now, as a grown man with far more experience about other people’s pride, do I fully understand—was that the young woman had grown to hate me, after I had turned down her offer of sex.
We’d hooked up, of course, during Orientation Week. But once in her dorm-room (on a different night altogether from the night of my alleged assault), I’d given her some fake-noble reasons as to why we shouldn’t sleep together that night.
She’d accepted my demurral. But almost two weeks later—during which time I hadn’t called or e-mailed her—she spotted me openly flirting with another girl by the Hinman Boxes at the Hop.
That’s when—obviously—she realized why I hadn’t wanted to sleep with her: I hadn’t liked her. I hadn’t wanted to complicate my life by bedding her.
So I had turned her down.
So I got hit by this bus of bad luck.
I’m not the litigious type, which is why I’ve never bothered to sue Dartmouth, or the woman who made the false allegations against me. At the time, I didn’t have the means (and oh, how it burned then, knowing that I lacked the money to seek not mere justice, but simple fairness)—and later, very shortly after graduating from Dartmouth, when I had indeed earned more than enough money for a battalion of attorneys in matching gray flannel uniforms and bright Hermès ties as colorful as streamers, I realized that going to legal war served no purpose, except to feed revenge and bitterness.
What would a lawsuit accomplish? Would it get me back my ruined college experience? Would it make me forget misguided and mistaken shouts of “Rapist!” that I heard a time or two (or three or four or more, actually) as I went to get lunch at Thayer Dining? Would it repair my reputation, and allow me to join in all the clubs and activities I was unable to join because of this young woman’s lies? Would it take away four miserable years, and substitute four wonderful years in my memory?
No it would not.
At best, after months of litigation, I’d get a few miserable bits of money from a settlement, and—maybe—a letter of apology. And this letter would not be written by this now-grown woman out of any sense of real remorse—it would be carefully crafted by an anonymous lawyer, neither admitting nor denying responsibility, though acknowledging my “pain and suffering”.
Big fucking hurray for me.
So I did the smart thing: I put it behind me. I didn’t wallow in my “victimhood” (code for “pussy” as far as I’m concerned), nor dwell on the unfairness of the situation that had happened to me—much less allow my existence to be defined by this one trivial incident. Instead—exactly like the shrink-industry says you’re not supposed to—I ignored it, and continued with my life.
(By the way, I’m a great believer in denial—or to be more precise, a great disbeliever in dwelling on past misery. Growing up I was always told to never pick on a scab—it’ll never heal if you do. Same with misery. But then, the shrinkage industry needs people to wallow in their misery until they drown—and then pay for their rescue.)
What I didn’t realize at the time—because I was too young—and which I would slowly come to realize over the years, was what the episode taught me, about America’s elite. About the cowardice of the American elite. A moral cowardice that, I understand now, is far more significant than practically anything else that I learned at Dartmouth College.
The members of the Committee On Standards who sat in judgment of me in the Fall of 1991 were not some lofty group of my “betters”, draped in gowns and wearing the wigs of English jurists: They were my peers—run-of-the-mill students of a small liberal-arts college in New England.
But that particular group of run-of-the-mill students is exactly the sort of individual who winds up running the United States. The current Secretary of the Treasury is a Dartmouth alum—Geithner ‘83. So was the last Treasury Secretary—Paulson ‘68—as well as a whole boatload of his partners at Goldman Sachs. The current head of General Electric (Immelt ‘68), the most influential Surgeon General in American history (Koop ‘37), the current junior senator from New York (Gillibrand née Rutnik ‘88), the senior White House correspondent for one of the major networks (Tapper ‘91), the soldier/writer who’s experiences in Iraq formed the basis for a major television series on HBO (Fick ‘99)—
—all Dartmouth alums.
The kind of men and women Dartmouth enrolls and graduates are the bright men and women who find places for themselves in the gears of America society. The men and women on the COS hearing in the fall of 1991 were no different.
And they showed me how fundamentally corrupt the American leadership class really is.
There was no question that the allegations against me were lies—blatant lies. Demonstrable lies. The chair of the Committee On Standards, the Dean of the College, Lee Pelton, knew for a fact that this woman’s allegations were bullshit: Her lie about the obscene e-mails was too blatant to be explained away, as was her constantly shifting story about what she claims had happened.
Forget a perfect world—in an intermittently just world, what the members of the COS should have done was dismiss the charges against me. And if they’d really tried for a truly just world, they should have suspended or even expelled the first year woman who had accused me, for having made up her lies and her baseless allegations.
“Committee On Standards” indeed—punishment for bearing false witness is a standard. And a crucial standard at that: No society can long survive, if it allows witnesses to openly get away with perjury. The COS should have made it clear that this particular standard would be upheld.
But it wasn’t. They didn’t. Because of the recent Thomas/Hill hearings, the political vibe on campus was such that, to have expelled or suspended or even admonished the first year woman for lying would have elicited cries of “Punishing the victim!”, and so forth.
There would have been hell to pay, politically.
So there was no punishing this young woman for having lied so blatantly: It would have been too hard.
It was easier for the COS to suspend me. My “voice” was not so important as the “voices” of the various campus factions who would have howled in outrage—regardless of the facts.
And if my entire college experience was ruined by ostracism and open contempt? If this episode in my transcripts made it unlikely—not so say impossible—that I would ever be accepted at name graduate-school programs? If indeed, it made applying to my first jobs an iffy proposition?
If this episode ruined all my carefully nurtured hopes and ambitions for the life I had wanted to lead?
Because see, before I went to Dartmouth—irony of ironies—I had had political ambitions! Really! I had actually thought that I could do good for my society!
My dream was simple: Ace Dartmouth—apply to and get through Yale Law—then get involved in politics—eventually run for Congress—maybe even the Senate—and in time—patiently—I can definitely do this:
Help make America a better nation. That was my self-conscious goal. What’s more, it was an achievable goal.
But instead, I was beshitted by a sex scandal—before I’d even had the chance to run for office!
Isn’t that amusing?
Someone, somewhere must find this amusing.
I bring up this painful story to make clear why I despise the American leadership classes—and why I will most certainly have nothing to do with the American mainstream.
I make no bones about who and what I am: I am of the elite. The best and the brightest? You’re looking at him. Since I was a toddler, and without exception, I’ve always been in the top tenth of the top percentile—but not just brains, I’ve got the balls and the drive to achieve great things. I have already achieved great things—and I will no doubt achieve even greater things, in the future. Fact is, I am working on those great things now. And if that sounds monstrously arrogant—which it does—well . . . suck on it.
But for all my talent, ability and drive, I certainly have no intention of working for the betterment of American society. I might comment on that society—but safely from the shores of the mainstream, from the safety of another country altogether. I certainly won’t lift a finger to help America.
Why should I? After all, America isn’t a thing—it is a society. And the class that directs and runs that society—the class which by rights I should belong to—is corrupt to the core, its members moral cowards—
—it’s not even moral cowardice, if you think about it: It’s a self-centeredness, coupled with a lack of belief in any sort of standards. A combination that comes across as moral cowardice, but which is actually more subtle than that—and more understandable. And thus more unforgiveable. (“The more you understand, the less you forgive . . .”)
The elites have no belief in a common good, which translates into not only factional interests—the bugaboo of the writers of The Federalist papers—but also into a pernicious, monomaniacal self-interest. If there can be no commonality, then everything is of the self—exclusively.
On the other hand, the American elites most certainly do not believe in any sort of absolute standard—they deny the possibility of any standards at all, because they claim that it is impossible to know anything outside one’s immediate perceptions.
In phancy-philosophy-speak, they believe in an act utilitarianism on steroids, while prima facie dismissing even a hint of a foundationalist epistemology.
In Plain-Jane words, they believe that everything is relative—and that what is good is that which causes the most pleasure to the most people, irrespective of any rules or constraints that have to be overcome in order to get at that maximum pleasure.
Since many people at Dartmouth would have been upset if I had been found innocent—and even more people would have been upset if the lying girl had been punished—I was made a scapegoat. According to this moral calculus, the harm come to me was lesser than the harm that would have come to the Dartmouth community from the campus hullabaloo.
And the epistemic excuse—the trick of the mind—that allowed the young men and women on the COS to dismiss the obvious evidence before them? Simple: Maybe she lied, maybe she didn’t—who can ever know. Maybe what she said was true, maybe what she said was false—it’s all relative.
Right.
Relative—like Guantánamo: Chock-a-block with demonstrably innocent prisoners—but whose release would cause a shit-storm among those un-Christian pussies who insist that all Middle-Eastern brown people are by definition evil terrorists. And so they are not released, and that evil persists.
Relative—like the banksters: They raped and pillaged our financial industry—yet they will never be punished for the harm they have caused us all, because they contribute money to the candidates. And so they continue reaping their un-earned rewards, and that evil persists.
Relative—like the rise of the Security State, all done in the name of blessed “security”. And so the fundamental rights which define the American Republic are trampled, violated, left for dead in the gutter, and that evil persists.
Relative—like so much that ails the nation: We pretend that it’s all relative, because the leadership classes claim that it’s all relative—
—and the common people of America, in their self-centeredness, agree with this sophistry. Why do they agree? Because it gives them free reign to indulge in their basest impulses, their most wanton decadence. If everything is relative, then every indulgence is allowable.
But on the flip side, by these rationalizations—by these ridiculous twin claims that there is no common good, and that everything is relative—our common problems become intractable.
By denying our common good, we deny that there can be a common solution to the problems that affect us all. And by insisting that “everything is relative”, everyone’s viewpoint becomes equally correct, equally valuable, equally “worthy of being honored”—no matter how absurd or contradictory or just plain stupid or wrong it might be.
Quaint concepts like right and wrong have no place with the American elites—all that matters are the numbers. Regardless of the political divide, American elites will never do what is hard—only what is popular.
Update II:
Several people have asked me to name the members of the Committee On Standards that suspended me over this bullshit.
Actually, I was not given their names. And since I was barely a month at Dartmouth when I was in front of this group, I didn't know who they were. They were strangers.
The chair, though, was Dean of the College Lee Pelton. Until recently, he was the president of Williamette College, and is now the newly appointed president of Emerson College.
Dean Pelton knew for a fact that the charges against me were baseless. He knew because, when I later took a class with him (on the XIX C. romantic novel), he told me so. I think he told me because he wanted me to like him.
If someone wants to find out who the members of the COS were who suspended me because it was easier, I suppose all you’d have to do is call up Dartmouth College and ask who the members of Committee On Standards were in the Fall 1991. After all, COS members have to campaign and get elected, in order to serve on it.
GL
On the other hand, the American elites most certainly do not believe in any sort of absolute standard—they deny the possibility of any standards at all, because they claim that it is impossible to know anything outside one’s immediate perceptions.
In phancy-philosophy-speak, they believe in an act utilitarianism on steroids, while prima facie dismissing even a hint of a foundationalist epistemology.
In Plain-Jane words, they believe that everything is relative—and that what is good is that which causes the most pleasure to the most people, irrespective of any rules or constraints that have to be overcome in order to get at that maximum pleasure.
Since many people at Dartmouth would have been upset if I had been found innocent—and even more people would have been upset if the lying girl had been punished—I was made a scapegoat. According to this moral calculus, the harm come to me was lesser than the harm that would have come to the Dartmouth community from the campus hullabaloo.
And the epistemic excuse—the trick of the mind—that allowed the young men and women on the COS to dismiss the obvious evidence before them? Simple: Maybe she lied, maybe she didn’t—who can ever know. Maybe what she said was true, maybe what she said was false—it’s all relative.
Right.
Relative—like Guantánamo: Chock-a-block with demonstrably innocent prisoners—but whose release would cause a shit-storm among those un-Christian pussies who insist that all Middle-Eastern brown people are by definition evil terrorists. And so they are not released, and that evil persists.
Relative—like the banksters: They raped and pillaged our financial industry—yet they will never be punished for the harm they have caused us all, because they contribute money to the candidates. And so they continue reaping their un-earned rewards, and that evil persists.
Relative—like the rise of the Security State, all done in the name of blessed “security”. And so the fundamental rights which define the American Republic are trampled, violated, left for dead in the gutter, and that evil persists.
Relative—like so much that ails the nation: We pretend that it’s all relative, because the leadership classes claim that it’s all relative—
—and the common people of America, in their self-centeredness, agree with this sophistry. Why do they agree? Because it gives them free reign to indulge in their basest impulses, their most wanton decadence. If everything is relative, then every indulgence is allowable.
But on the flip side, by these rationalizations—by these ridiculous twin claims that there is no common good, and that everything is relative—our common problems become intractable.
By denying our common good, we deny that there can be a common solution to the problems that affect us all. And by insisting that “everything is relative”, everyone’s viewpoint becomes equally correct, equally valuable, equally “worthy of being honored”—no matter how absurd or contradictory or just plain stupid or wrong it might be.
Quaint concepts like right and wrong have no place with the American elites—all that matters are the numbers. Regardless of the political divide, American elites will never do what is hard—only what is popular.
This is why the United States is falling apart today.
Lately, the political Left is so surprised about Barack Obama—how he has so easily “betrayed” the principles of the Left.
I too fell in love with Obama after the Iowa caucus—but I fell out of love just as quickly, when I saw through his veneer, which for me happened the second he disavowed his preacher, Jeremiah Wright, during the campaign for president:
“All of the statements which have been the subject of controversy are ones which I vehemently condemn.”
That’s what Obama said, when the Jeremiah Wright brouhaha blew up: Those statements Wright made which were “controversial” were the very ones Obama so earnestly tried to distance himself from.
Lies rarely upset people—it’s the truth that hurts, and gets us all riled up. Were the statements that Wright made the truth? Did he speak the truth—and make people angry precisely because they knew what he said was true?
The truth or falsehood of what Wright was saying didn’t matter to Obama—what mattered to him were the number of boos Jeremiah Wright provoked.
So Obama threw Wright under the bus.
 |
| “D Sailing”, by Stephanie Gagnon. |
The political Right shouldn’t act gleeful and superior: Their candidates and standard bearers are no different. We saw this in the war in Iraq: An unjust, illegal war, brought about by lies. Yet none of the elite of the Right objected—on the contrary.
The ones who did object? They too got thrown under the bus.
And when the truth about that invasion finally came out—when the truth became too obvious to dismiss or to deny? When no weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq, and therefore the reason for the war was shown to be a lie?
At best, silence.
And when it comes to torture—the most heinous crime our government has yet committed—what do we get? Tut-tut-tutting in the pages of the New York Times, but no outrage, no indictments, no prosecutions—except for the lowest servicemen who did not belong to any constituency that can protect them.
Those marginal people got thrown under the bus. Like me.
The mainstream people? They’re safe and sound—look at those evil bastards within the George W. Bush administration, including W. himself: A whole truckload of men and women who openly committed crimes that, fifty or forty or thirty, or even twenty years ago would have been considered unimaginable—and unforgiveable. Yet these men and women—criminals—are free, earning fees from lucrative contracts from their supporters both in America and abroad.
A bunch of them are Dartmouth alums.
But how can the mainstream Left point the accusatory finger at the goblins and demons of the W. Bush administration—do they point the finger at the Obama administration? Does MoveOn.org stage protest rallies against the war in Iraq anymore? The war is still going on, and last I heard, it’s still illegal—but I don’t see them staging massive rallies. Do they stage demonstrations, protesting the Obama administration’s continuation of the Bush policies with regards to torture? Do they cry indignantly that the Obama administration’s calls to carry out extra judicial executions of American citizens is wrong?
No they do not—
—and it’s not surprising. At least not to me. The good, the true, the decent is sacrificed for the sake of the numbers. For the roar of the crowd. For the anarchic rabble.
The individual has no place in this New American Society. In this new society, an individual only has worth or value by way of his position within a particular group, constituency, corporation, political side.
A human being—naked and alone—has no worth, in America.
When I was in front of the Committee On Standards in the Fall of '91, I didn’t belong to any group: I represented no one but myself. But my accuser—by virtue of her sex and her claims of victimhood—did. And so—to appease these groups—they threw me under the bus.
The young men and women on the COS in the Fall of ‘91 weren’t evil. The positions of leadership that those young men and women have grown into all across America in the twenty years since the events I have here described allow these people to wield enormous power. And I am sure that if you ask them, they will tell you—quite earnestly—that they aren’t looking to cause evil. Not deliberately, at any rate.
But they do. The members of the leadership classes in America allow evil and harm to come to others. They won’t lift a finger to save the innocent, if preventing that harm is too costly, or too unpopular with their peers.
In fact, they will never stand up to their peers and defend what is right, and true, and good.
In fact, they will never stand up to their peers and defend what is right, and true, and good.
Instead, they will acquiesce.
This is what Dartmouth taught me—it taught me so much.
Update:
Several commentators pointed out that I didn’t name the woman who made these false allegations, and that I ought to.
They’re right.
Her name was Anitra Auster-Birnbaum, from Shaker Heights, Ohio.
What has become of her, I do not know or care.
And BTW: Some commentators—new to my blog—think I’m some dopey-eyed Lefty cretin. Read here, here and here, then get back to me.
GL
Update:
Several commentators pointed out that I didn’t name the woman who made these false allegations, and that I ought to.
They’re right.
Her name was Anitra Auster-Birnbaum, from Shaker Heights, Ohio.
What has become of her, I do not know or care.
And BTW: Some commentators—new to my blog—think I’m some dopey-eyed Lefty cretin. Read here, here and here, then get back to me.
GL
Update II:
Several people have asked me to name the members of the Committee On Standards that suspended me over this bullshit.
Actually, I was not given their names. And since I was barely a month at Dartmouth when I was in front of this group, I didn't know who they were. They were strangers.
The chair, though, was Dean of the College Lee Pelton. Until recently, he was the president of Williamette College, and is now the newly appointed president of Emerson College.
Dean Pelton knew for a fact that the charges against me were baseless. He knew because, when I later took a class with him (on the XIX C. romantic novel), he told me so. I think he told me because he wanted me to like him.
If someone wants to find out who the members of the COS were who suspended me because it was easier, I suppose all you’d have to do is call up Dartmouth College and ask who the members of Committee On Standards were in the Fall 1991. After all, COS members have to campaign and get elected, in order to serve on it.
GL
I greatly sympathize with happened to you. I was accused at two different time in my life of repugnant things I had nothing to do with. It took forever to get my honor back in the towns i lived in at the time. To this day, there are places I don't go alone, so I can't be accused again. All you have to be is a single, somewhat of a loner type of guy, and people create crazy ideas about you. Because of my experiences, I could care less what somebody is accused of. I want to see PROOF, he did it, before he gets held accountable for what ever it is he's accused of doing. Sorry about what happened, I can very much relate to it. And the incredible moral cowardice people are capable of, when it might cost them something to protect and validate the innocence of someone.
ReplyDeleteGonzalo, we have never had, and never will have, a President who doesn't throw somebody under the bus to get elected. You can have an Obama who throws Wright under the bus, or you can have an Obama who is a senator.
ReplyDelete...and this is why the more you know, the more sad you are. Because, you realize what kind of filth is at the top. Then, later, when you realize that scandalously to your reason and feel of heart, most people on the bottom do accept and like all that filth on the top just the way it is, that is when you start to get sad, as you are getting near the complete understanding.
ReplyDeleteNothing, therefore, is worth fighting for. If only good people could somehow unite and make a plan, if only. But, then of course, there is the blessing is the curse by the other name: say we found each other, and we fought. Now what? Now we are going to have offspring, and in that offspring, there going to be the same percentage of evil as in society which we fought. Do we let them inherit our victory or do we keep it holy and kill love instead?
Thank you for helping me understand the amoral behavior of the ruling class, which till now has only horrified and confused me.
ReplyDeleteGL,thank you for sharing your true story. I'm so sorry that happened to you man. You should have taken all the sorry bastards involved to court!
ReplyDeleteDon't let them get away with it! Your victory
might give the next lieing btch pause, and cause the council to think a little harder before they
"acquiesce" the next time. Stay with us buddy, we need you! JM
So very well said. The realization that the principles of justice no longer apply is one of the most frightening things about modern society. And the fact that an ordinary citizen would have no way of righting those wrongs which may be done to them is one of the worst things of all.
ReplyDeleteThe same mindset in politics that you mention is very visible here in Australia as well. Our ruling Labor Party turned on the Prime Minister because he didn't have the right factional connections and replaced him with one who did. The backlash from the voters turned them into the first minority government we've had since the 1940's and the replacement PM's approval rating is abysmal. The funniest thing is, it looks like to have any chance of holding on to power at the next election, the ALP will have to give the old PM his job back...
The state government here in Queensland is despised by the public, but the conservative opposition are incompetent and fighting among themselves so much that the ALP keeps getting re-elected. But rather than sort themselves out and end the behavior that the voters hate, the conservatives drafted the more popular Lord Mayor of Brisbane into the leadership in the hopes he'll win the election for them.
"Growing up I was always told to never pick on a scab—it’ll never heal if you do. Same with misery."
ReplyDeleteGood point, one I often forget to apply - so, nice to be reminded of it.
However to some degree I think you need to re-reflect on it yourself. As the episode does seem to have coloured your attitude to a country as a whole rather than just it's leadership.
Find me a country on earth that doesn't have an "elite" that aren't self serving to some extent.
I think your point on relativism is a key here and one reason that I think, whether you'd had this awful experience or not, you would not have been a "successful" politician.
Relativism tends to be key to political success. Firm principles and politics, particularly in modern politics are rarely an effective combination. Anyone who thought Obama with his background and colour got where he is in American politics by having firm principles and sticking to them was being naive. Tony Blair is another classic example, these people spend their lifes bobbing around in a sea of relativism - it's who they are. If they justify their actions to themselves at all - and I not sure they feel the need - they will do it via the device of the "big picture". To them your just collateral damage.
On this particular point I do find amusing the level of bemusement demonstrated by the MSM when dealing with Ron Paul. You can almost hear them saying to themselves - "It's almost like this guy actually believes what he's saying!"
That's what happens when men try to organize their affairs (judicial, financial, military, etc.) without the restraining influence of God's law and the morality of Jesus Christ. When the affairs of man are conducted in a moral vacuum like Dartmouth, the world is upside down where right is wrong and wrong is right. There cannot be justice in this society without God's wisdom and people who are first obedient to him and his law. Relativism is indeed the paganism of the modern era. . .
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your story. You should out the name of the woman who falsely accused you so that she may defend her actions in light of time to consider them. If your story is true, (and I believe it is), then she should be held accountable or at least face the mortification she deserves.
Well said, Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what is going to happen to Earth citizens, but I do think it will not be good.
Another excellent and moving discourse, Gonzalo. For what it's worth, the crucible you've endured has opened your eyes to a fundamental reality you might not otherwise have seen. Perhaps it is your karma to endure such a derailing to fulfill your raison d'etre.
ReplyDeletePaddy Chayefsky came to a similar conclusion in his 1975 magnum opus, "Network:"
"What's finished is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom and flourishing of every individual in it. It's the individual that's finished. It's the single, solitary human being who's finished. It's every single one of you out there who's finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals. This is a nation of two hundred odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter- than-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings and as replaceable as piston rods."
Gonzalo, you read too much into the "intentions" of the female accuser and why you were dismissed and the accuser left untouched.
ReplyDeleteYou might have been (and most likely still are), in fact, a victim of organized stalking, which has been rampant on U.S. campuses since the 70s, and increasingly so.
To read more about the methods used in organized stalking, read about a FBI program called "COINTELPRO" (wikipedia), of which organized stalking is an offshoot program.
Chico,
ReplyDeleteThere was another dynamic at play. You are a tall White Hispanic Catholic heterosexual male. The streams of the Black Legend run deep. The truth doesn't matter in the halls of power only greed for more power and money.
Brillance, confidence, courage, chilvarenous are spun into "he just clever but definitely agressive Hispanic macho type". Presto! The label worked 100 years earlier on the Irish. So it works again. That is how they keep intelligent confident Hispanic Catholic males out of the corridors of power in corporate America.
Fortunately a demographic hurricane is going to repeat similar stories in millions of voices that will be heard from NY to LA. There is a global Hispanic awakening via the internet. Couple that with the world going multi-polar and we have a formula for an end of the Black Legend bias in the US.
"—and the common people of America, in their self-centeredness, agree with this sophistry. Why do they agree? Because it gives them free reign to indulge in their basest impulses, their most wanton decadence. If everything is relative, then every indulgence is allowable."
ReplyDeleteI think you might be painting with too broad a brush based on the caricature you surely get from not living every day with "the common people of America".
Sure, it's easy to see Americans as fat, dumb, lazy, self-centered, indulgents. All you have to do is get your view from the media or by applying a (rightfully) jaded prism from your own experience of 20 years ago. But that's the lazy approach. And doing so from another continent could be called the cowardly approach.
Maybe you should pick that scab a little more and then realize that it's a group of individuals who wronged you as opposed to the whole of American society. You see us as you want to see us and probably as the way you have been conditioned to see us. Maybe you see us as not living up to the ideal you thought we would be. I think what you are seeing is the human condition, not a uniquely American condition. I see my friends and neighbors that I live with, work with, go to church with and raise our families with, day in and day out. They aren't perfect. They have flaws, prejudices, fears and hopes. They are similar to the people I've lived among in South America and Eastern Europe. That experience makes me believe that people are probably similar the world over. Painting one particular citizenry as uniquely depraved belies either a lack of experience, effort or honesty.
You choose to see us you do. I prefer to see us like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME1YgDxlnt0
Hawks5999, Who are you?
ReplyDeleteSometimes you have moments of brilliance.
Thank you for writing and publishing this and sharing. No doubt you have touched a lot of people today, but in a positive way for those of us who love truth and freedom still. This is the best thing I've read in years about TRUTH. May you somehow gain strength from your experiences.
ReplyDeleteAmerica is a nation of total cowards and control freaks at the top. Only liars get elected... and the next set of better liars and bigger spenders is just another election away. America is corrupt to the core and lost... most of us know it.
FrankM
Hawks5999,
ReplyDeleteYou're wrong. I live inside US, and I can attest that Gonzalo is correct. Only filth is allowed upstairs.
I have observed this every day, and I confirm Gonzalo's observations.
People on the top in United States are filthy and self-serving cowards. This is as far as human heart and courage goes. As far as their bodies, yes, they do everything possible to stay better than majority, which only confirms that they are less than human, since their bodies mean more to them than their souls (ideas, principles, loyalties, justice).
People on the bottom, do have exceptionally good examples, but very rare. Most folks on the bottom will sell their mothers to the gallows to get upstairs. May-be only one in ten is actually a human being, or even less. My experience was that it is about 1 in a hundred.
You are right, when you say that the people in US are no different than in other countries. This is true. I think there are more middle upper class humans in other countries because they usually end up leaving the USA, expatriating to other countries. This does upsets the naturally even distribution. If Gonzalo usually dwells among the upper middle class, then he probably does see many more humans abroad, and that is due to expatriation.
Humans ( those who are willing to stand up to uphold the justice in the real way, such as not just by waving the flag to bomb innocents while not demanding the investigation of guilty), usually cannot survive here, nor do they find any point in trying to do so.
But yeah besides the expat factor, of course Americans are not any worse genetically that anyone else. Nor better.
I haven't done any studies, this are my personal observations, so, I may be wrong, but in any case, my observations confirm those of Gonzalo.
I was having trouble with finding the words to express a lurking feeling I had when reading this unusual/unexpected article. I very much liked the writing prespective - I like your willingness to get personal. It was almost too long of a read for me, but I got through it. Daytime is not a good time to sit and read from a computer.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the notion of being "fedup" with American elite society for all the many reasons indicated struck me as a bit inmature. I do inmature stuff all the time and I am 50 years old. I think having a "inmature" perspective is fine and dandy. You seems to understand the situation in a context that works for you. It would not work for me.
The rhythm of "Relative" made for good reading, but not one I could get on board with given the real crust of the problem (the origin).
Prisoners, the War in Iraq etc was bit of a jump, but one I could follow. The marketing of the Iraq deal and other current autosities from your point of view may indeed be explained by what you term "numbers." That conclusion stuck me as rather brilliant. Brilliant in that I associate your rationale with the marketing, but necessarily with the more important reasons for the hard decision American leadership has been treking these day, over and over again.
Personally, in addition to a miscalculation between risk(moral/financial/outcome) and investment(morale/financial/goals/etc), I have been mostly supportive of many of the more firely topics of recent years, such as waterboarding, being in Iraq, Afganistan, etc.
Where I have argument is when American soldiers have to live by a code of engagement,that the enemy does not. When the American military does not have its hands and ammo tied with Washington politics, they have the skill to get the job down, and down well. Iraq and Afganistan could have been tied up long ago. It is politics that keeps it going.
I liked how you reasoned the motivation of your COS peers and the college administration. Freud would be proud. A tiger is a tiger, not a pet.
After reading your article, I am glad that I was a freshman at East Los Angeles Community College, of Monterey Park, CA. It was the right place for me. It could be a tough place at times, but I felt loved and cared for there. I carried that love with me through the years of many hardships that followed. Twenty years later I took home a Masters of Science degree - finally!
For Miss Darthmore Bitch, I can imagine the Karma she has or will have to content with. Most likely, she already has. We all operate with our own rationale of what is and what we are willing to accept. You have accepted yours in Chile, which I admire you for. I have my own little palace in the wheat field - just a old 2 bedroom - but for me it is a palace.
God works in mysterious ways. Sometimes crap just happens, and sometimes it is for a reason. Glad for you GL, that you are where you are. You strike me as too creative and kind to be in politics.
@ anonymous @ 3:15 for Sept 18, I have this to add...
ReplyDeleteBTW, I am also anonymous @3:31 for Sept 18, AKA Kansas.
Your response tickeled me. Seems like you read Hawks5999 response with a cracked magifying glass. You sure stuck up for GL. Extra cheer is good and you make a good cheerleader.
GL seems to appreciate a passionate argument rather it agrees with his or not. Anyhow, Hawks5999 happens to have been the best so far at shedding additional light when evaluating the philosohies presented.
GL articles are famous for attracting thought. That is what makes him a brilliant, and sought after by readers.Constructive thinking leads to discovery. If I just read and followed my twins I would be a dull and unhappy sheeple.Life is art - visit the canvas often.
Anyways, Anonymous at 3:15 made me think of a sister sticking up for a brother. I hope I am not entering into a cat fight of sorts.
Cheers from Kansas
Excellent, excellent story, Gonzalo, maybe your best ever. What happened to you happens to thousands of others every day, and everyone is as helpless as you were. You said: "by insisting that “everything is relative”, everyone’s viewpoint becomes equally correct, equally valuable, equally “worthy of being honored”. Yes, that's the terrifying bottom line, it was the master plan of those elites all along, the omega point, it's called communism. If you want to sell poisonous shit, wrap it up in the sleek disguise of democracy, and tell everyone relentlessly that it's both delicious and good for you.
ReplyDeleteThe bottom line...The elite sacrifice the weak to progress their own agenda which typically leans towards the moral majority especially when financial or political gain is involved. I did not go through your experience, but have been sacrificed by the elite class as well. It is what it is. The jaded understanding people like us walk away with alters our future. I make a very good living and will continue to do so. I also invest in PMs because I understand how the elite will eventually destroy their power base. They will sacrifice as necessary to survive at the top for one more day. Its not elite vs. the poor. It's the elite vs. everyone else. Look at what is happening to JPM Chase and Silver manipulation, look at the mortgage debacle, look at whatever scandal and resulting scape goat is sacrificed to appease the moral majority. The current power structure will fail, and another will take its place, and the cycle will repeat itself. You said it yourself the best, the brightest, the most connected...find themselves either as elites or as one of their minions.
ReplyDeleteThanks for being such a generous human being. Your story reminds me of the individual being sacrificed by the elite in the altar of the gods in order to please and have power over the sheep.
ReplyDelete@Tim:
ReplyDelete"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within"
GL may have painted the common American a little too broadly but his overall sentiment is correct. So we are either seconds away from the eclipse or perhaps we've already passed that point and the Spaniards are about to beach..
Dear GL:
ReplyDeleteYou see corruption in the American elite but I see it in the world's elite.
Ever try Cuba?
How about China, Russia, Europe, Venezuela?
The American people are a good people, but they have become dazed by the promises of socialism.
There is a revolution coming in the US.
People are beginning to wake up.
@Ebag the revolution is beginning to #occupywallstreet and #takewallstreet and make it #ourwallstreet.
ReplyDeleteFollow it realtime @Occupywallst
I know how you feel GL.
ReplyDeleteI was a woman at Dartmouth a few years earlier when they first let women in. We went through some horrible treatment by the assholes on campus that were Dartmouth Men. But I had plenty of really great men friends who weren't like that. Who treated me with respect, so you just ignored the jeering and taunting that you might hear from the balconies of the fraternities as you walked by, or a table of guys at the Thayer dining hall, because you had to believe that it wasn't them, it was the circumstance. If you fell into believing that all the guys that made fun of you really felt that way, then you became bitter and usually a lesbian. At least for a while.
ReplyDeleteGonzalo, I am sorry for what happened to you. I wish I had been on campus at the time, but by then I was mushing dogs in Alaska and didn't even have a phone or a newspaper. (see we all had to run away for a while after Dartmouth) I know you don't believe in therapy, but this is therapy, right, so just know that there are those that love you, that the pendulum swings both ways, and no matter where you're at, there you are. Love you.
That was a very satisfying read!
ReplyDeleteParticularly because I have lived here in Hanover for 4+ years and your story resonates: this place is a shockingly in-bred mono-culture and your treatment is understandable from several aspects: in terms of the DEP (Dartmouth Eugenics Project - they turn on that green beacon not just to attract money but also 30 something alumni to return to Hanover and begin procreating) your genes were selected against with extreme prejudice; in terms of the DDF (Dartmouth Distortion Field) your viewpoints as evidenced by your posts that I have read over the past 8 months betray the ability to fearlessly think critically - Dartmouth students themselves are (to me) surprisingly earnest and not arrogant however they are fearsomely incurious and completely averse to "rocking the boat" - they are peerless in their quick discernment of the dominant pardigm/power structure and fall into lockstep expected behavioral patterns (digression I have never seen anywhere else packs of students jogging along the road - Lyme Road by the golf course - in unison as if a pack of gazelles). Dartmouth appears to be not so much a college as a finishing school for the elite masters-to-be of the late stage capitalist american empire. Their greatest weakness (as it is for many) is that they do not know what they do not know - and what they do not know or have forgotten or have had bred out of them (and something that I in my limited experience find unhealthily unique to them) is what it means to be a single solitary human - they are enamored and enslaved by a pavlovian compliance to group think and those group thoughts seem to be circumscribed by an overwhelming fear of being expelled from the group. Accordingly, they appear to constantly check themselves to determine that they are mirroring their coevals. This place (both college and town) has a distinctly "stepford" quality to it that is the opposite of the "squeaky wheel gets the oil" - instead with so many of the people here bearing the credentials of "fiat" accomplishments the "nail that sticks out gets pounded down"
I empathize with your own pounding down and congratulate you on being a bigger man than I and not giving into bitterness. I also enjoy your prose and the ideas they express and thank you for making them available for free.
@ anonymous @ 3:52 Sept 18 AKA Kansas:
ReplyDeleteMay-be you're right. I meant to change "You're wrong" to "I disagree", but forgot.
As for sticking out for Gonzalo... I wasn't. Just happen to have the opinion, that supports his observations. I actually stated why...
Anyway, to your question about rules of engagement. You know why there are rules of engagement at all, right? You may have different opinion, but I am very much sure, that the reason there are rules of engagement and always had been, is to force the contender to obey the behavior standard that ensures the current top dog wins every time.
The victorious side always writes the rules that satisfy his winning strategy. Victorious side always insist that not obeying his rules results in savagery.
At a first glance, sure, it does, savagery follows. But the savagery follows simply because the rules have been set in someones favor, and therefore must be broken. Thus the one who sets the uneven rules is really the bringer of savagery, not the contender that breaks the rules.
This is exactly same grand deception as in rules set up by ruling party. Every government on earth, tries to disarm the populace to some extent that they deem achievable. This is the rule of engagement too!
Why? They do it so that they may continue to plunder the populace unchallenged! And every single government exists for this sole reason, to plunder, and nothing else.
How is a guy with a home made AK supposed to defend his country from an enemy commanding the seas, skies and the fields, an enemy who has unlimited funds not only to fund his operations but to paint the only reasonable side (the local resistance) as savages?
There is, and always was, and will be only one way, and that is to find the weak spot, and that is only possible and a direct result of not observing the rules of engagement written by the enemy for the enemy.
I was rarely wronged while I was at Dartmouth or other US schools but I was at those schools so I can understand what happened there. Probably the worst thing done to me- I suspect I graduated with lesser honor for showing up drunk and arguing with professors. However many ridiculously bad things happened to me after schools because of evil cowards and some of those injuries left permanent damage to my career and wealth. But those also caused me to get to where i ended up. My enemies are still laughing at my face but I probably never met my wife if any of those disasters did not happened. So this is a path that had been given to me and it was not my choice. Should GL succeed in his trading in the near future, the terrible incident certainly played a role in his path to success. While I feel like I should be thankful for everything, but I also trust that is not sufficient. A proper/right thing to do is to focus on what I am doing at present. But why do I still ponder So much of the past i not understand.
ReplyDeleteWow, great article! One of your best, probably because it is so personal. What happened to you is not surprising; it happens, and has happened, everyday to many, many people the world over. Who hasn't been screwed over in one way or another? This is part of the human condition. And, this kind of behavior is not endemic to the US; it's wherever humans exist.
ReplyDeleteThat cowardly, elitest behavior that you rail against is nothing more than the modern version of survival of the fittest. Regardless of our trappings, we'll always have primitive self-interest as our prime motivator. We just are incapable of rising to, and maintaining, the high ideals that we've invented.
Thanks for sharing. Have you ever seriously considered ALL the ways, trivial and profound, that your college experience has influenced you? You wouldn't be who you are without that dark time!
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”
ReplyDeleteMaybe you should add that one to your list of Aphorisms.
You noble effort in avoiding a sexual encounter should have been more direct, she was aware of your timid approach, and inferred that you would not put up much of a fight, thus she was able to enact revenge for your rejection.
Should you have taken the more direct approach: “I like your intellectual prowess, but honestly, I wouldn’t fuck you for practice” She would not have messed with you any further.
I have noted that there exists a Facebook page for the class of 95.
Undoubtedly, your experiences will permeate through the vast internet cerebellum to where these individuals’ synapses reside.
Upon reading said article, it will undoubtedly spark some activity in the frontal lobes, whereupon she will be forced to reconcile her perceived recollection of events of that day in 95, and pitch them against your well written piece.
Problem is with girls, is that they just cannot let it rest, and that my friend is where you now have your fun.
I would not be surprised if she is reading your blog, and fuming that she now has no outlet for her frustrations, which clearly she had back in 95. I doubt she has 19000 people clicking on her daily for their enjoyment, actually, I doubt, she gets any clicks, based on your 95 noble effort in passing up a free pass.
She probably is now married to some idiot banker type, unhappy, that she did not get full use of the Dartmouth Degree, and wondering if her actions have any connection to her present malaise.
Never ponder on what could have been, life is too short, too complicated. We all have a destiny, and it changes dramatically at times due to forces that are working for us, the real ability comes when we can connect the dots later on, and make sense of why it happened, and enjoy it.
Gonzalo,
ReplyDeleteI would never claim to be as "smart" as Gonzo, I do have experience in psych (I actually left the field b/c it is so FUBAR). The one thing that demonstrates how WISE you are is shown by ONE IMPORTANT TRAIT: You gave up RESENTMENT. If anyone reads this story, and wants to learn something that will save their life, or prevent illness, it is letting go of resentment. From past wrongs. From parents. From other family members, and on and on....That right there is why we have to use psych meds. Others prefer street drugs. No matter. Their consciences are shattered. I know. I worked it. I saw it. For many years. And it's getting worse with an entire generation of latchkey kids.
Second thing (almost as important as the first) is the ability to confront wrong without fear of ridicule or disapproval from others. In other words, not giving a damn about what others think. This generation is completely engrossed in their image, even more so than before. Facebook alter egos, for example. Everyone seems to be posing or fronting, even if it means having the newest iPhone.
Thanks for this post Gonzo. One of your best, and it has the potential not just to educate, but truly help your fellow man.
I think this relatively well known quote applies here:
ReplyDelete"Since I have entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided in me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they -better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."
- Woodrow Wilson
"Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned" ... Andy Shand beat me to it! Do you know what happened to her after graduation? Perhaps it would help you if you knew, and perhaps her life has not been as interesting or pleasant as she may have expected. God only knows how someone who knowingly destroys another person can live with herself, she may be a complete mess, wallowing in regret and hate.
ReplyDeleteYour fan Tita
Dear GL, no one on the Left, no one on the Right, so no-one? Really? Didn't forget anyone, like, someone on the 13th floor in a hotel perhaps?
ReplyDelete.
Your monstrously arrogant style is great, the story is superb and the aim at relativism perfect. Just it wouldn't be you to NOT overdo it anyway, especially when most of the readers will fall for it.
.
Never letting facts to prevent you from drawning the story in too much juice, be it forgeting Ron Paul here, or bashing austrian econ elsewhere, just if you know you will get away with it.
.
Truly of the Dartmouth hoarde, aren't we?
.
In this article it's kinf of a perverse perfect fit. Sort of ... Priceless. Keep it coming.
BTW, ever considered dropping the first "S" from your motto?
ReplyDeleteRe. the anonymous commentator at 6:53 pm, Sept. 19: Check out the headline now.
ReplyDeleteGL
Gonzalo a great article! I loved it and I agree with you. I am only here because Elena has to "serve her time" to get her retirement. My moment of awakening was September 11, 1973. On that morning when Pinochet struck, all of a sudden the lobby at the Sheraton in Santiago was full of men in dress-green US Army Uniforms. Another group of men were there. They wore designer slacks, expensive silk shirts, and each man had a Rolex President watch. I knew these people from Vietnam; they were CIA Phoenix Program people. There were the guys who ran the political assassination programs, etc. in Vietnam. It was clear to me that the whole coup was being run from the hotel by the US government. A US Army major politely questioned me for a half hour. He took my US Navy number, etc. He told me to go to my room and wait there. I was called back down to the lobby. This polite major told me to stay in my room. He warned me that if I talked about what I had seen I would be charged with espionage and get 10 years in prison. I was one of the lucky Americans that day. Two were not lucky and they were shot in the soccer stadium
ReplyDeleteHawk above said: "So we are either seconds away from the eclipse or perhaps we've already passed that point and the Spaniards are about to beach."
ReplyDeleteYou mean Spanish tourist on Miami beach. For you know that the US is Rome. We conquered 50% of Mexico in 1845 and the rest economically with NAFTA. We conquered Central America by the 1930s.
Ever wonder why the Hispanic American population ballon from 6% to 26% of new births in 40 years? It is not by accident. The intention is to create a political union with NAFTA and CAFTA no late than 2035.
Now that the end game is clear: the world is going multi-polar, North American integration is only going to accelerate.
Think of America in 2050 as Canada today except rather than having French Canadians it will be Hispanic Americans distributed throughout the country.
Rest assured they will assimilate through marriage while changing America into Anglo - Hispanic bilingual socially conservative continent.
Gonzalo, thank you very much for writing this article, and I am very sorry for what happened to you. I am glad to see that they have neither defeated nor destroyed you. I was fortunate enough to have never been hit by that bus, so I did get to enjoy many things about being a non-pariahed student at Dartmouth. But there were things that I saw, and some that happened to me personally (tiny things relative to your things) that made me smell a big rat, and I haven't forgotten that smell. Thanks again for writing. It's great and important.
ReplyDelete-David Leddy '88
Thanks for helping me understand the ruling class in America. I detest what they have done in Iraq and Afghanistan and we are now starting to signal with Pakistan and China. We just need to go home and resolve our own problems.
ReplyDeleteWOW .. that sucks! in other news, you are a believer in this "common good" philosophy? Really?
ReplyDeleteObama? Really ? The only thing worse than than being an "Obama believer" is being "G.W. Bush/neoCon believer!!
Isn't your "common good" philosophy fundamentally the same as the ACT Utilitarianism of the elites you are railing against?
Your "standard" of good/evil is essentially the same as theirs. This, by definition, is elitist! When a group of folks (elites) decide what the "common good" is, and force a minority of individuals to sacrifice all or part of their lives for said "common good".
Seems like your 1 in 1000 brain tripped on the same step the other 999 stumbled upon.
Read "The Law"! ... again! And this time do not project your believes into his words.
PS good article. Worth my time!
Bastiat
GL, I like you have had my share of disillusions. After graduating from College; I found my self being rejected by the ruling class. Like you I'm latino. To make matters worst I was an ex-Marine. So I don't look like a person who holds a BS in Chemistry and minor in Biology. I now work for a very well known multi national company; and though I'm sought after for my opinions and knowledge; I've been delegated to a lesser position within my field of expertize. Meanwhile Idiots who fit the "frame" get the special treatment.
ReplyDeleteI think what happened to you is the same old discriminatory action that has transpired for Eons. We colored people will never be "Equal" No matter our level of education! I agree with you on your description of the upper class. They are worthless, sociopathic, self-serving idiots.
One more thought; I find it funny that other nationalities are viewed dirrently merely by perception.
For Instance Asians, Indians are viewed as always smart (not truly so). I know plenty of dumb Asians.
While other races are viewed negatively no matter what.
I'm sure they looked at you and no matter how smart you were; they simply saw a dumb "Spick" good enough to just mop the floor.
But, as you and others have elutted to; when the party ends (and it may soon) and the elite loose all their worthless paper (money); we will all be "Equal".
Then we will see where the chips will fall!
I envision a future where people are judged by their character and moral compass.
I'm sure the Elite don't see it that way.
Then nature will set its course.
Beno
You won't get any cheering from me on this one. You got punched in your nose and chose to lie down in defense, then have the stomach to whine about it online. If you are so "ballsy" and smart, then you put this grudge out of your mind. Sue her and piss on her grave if you have to, just bury this grudge. You know, that bus can hit HER too!
ReplyDeleteGonzalo,just a question:
ReplyDeleteDid she apologize to you in person for what she did?
If not I'd consider her fair game and I'll dance on her funeral.
I am sure this will be deleted, but I don't care. If it is deleted at least I would know that you have read it.
ReplyDeleteYou should have redressed it with the college and the woman, if just only to reestablish your reputation.
I can bet everything I have that the woman (you probably know where she is now) is way ahead of you, probably marrying another elite and is way above the cloud, while you are stuck forever in Chile, excluded from the elite who move the world for ever.
You might think you are successful, but any success you might have had would be confined in Chile, which very few people in America give recognition. The President of Chile is a billionaire, but until he became President and showed his face to the world in the 33 miner incident, very few out of Chile knew him. I am sure he has had more gratification in that incident than when he was making all these money (I don't know whether he made his money or inherited it).
I bet she is among the movers of shakers of the world, and has and will have influence on more people that you will ever have in this blog.
You could have stopped her track , but you didn't. So she is way ahead of you.
I am sure she doesn't even remember it now, while you still gripe about it after 20 years. She won, you lost.
You said you never went back to Dartmouth. That means, you are not going to be considered as an alumni, never will be treated as an equal by those who went to the same school with you, and never be accepted in the same circle. Also I am sure you got no alumni help, the 'hidden hand' which gets things done, which is the only reason people go to prestigious schools.
In other words, the only thing you got for your stay at Hanover was the name of school on the diploma to show to your folks in Chile, who wouldn't know what has happened. If they knew they would have a different opinion of you.
In fact, you were able to slip out of their radar because you went back to Chile. If you stayed in America it would have blocked your every step for the rest of your life.
For Anon September 18, 2011 10:27 PM, if you were successful and married a powerful man, you wouldn't be in this blog to begin with.
For Andy Shand, I would like to say that she is probably powerful enough to make this blog disappear if she desires.
To Anon
ReplyDeleteSeptember 20, 2011
3:33PM
How very Dartmouth!
Blame the victim (check);
Turn their accusations back onto them (check);
Add personal insults (check);
Mention Hanover (check);
Drop secret society references - 33 (twice) hidden in plain sight
Gosh the only thing you missed was the pointing out of your target's grammatical errors (preferred) / typos (if nothing else)
Good job, now please get back to your duties at Parkhurst!
I was with you halfway through, until you started Bush-bashing and gradually became indistinguishable from the crowd that did you wrong. Like those 1930s leftwingers who couldn't understand why Stalin was so beastly to you. America is the only country where the individual has a chance for justice: join the American debate and work to get the country back on track. If the fight is lost here, it is lost everywhere and darkness will descend on the earth for a very long time.
ReplyDeleteYou actually believe the bullshit about Bush "lying us into war", that the Gitmo detainees (whose home countries won't take back) are innocent and that mild fear is "torture"? Sad -- you showed a glimmer of intelligence up to that point.
ReplyDeleteBravo!
ReplyDeleteAnd this is why the Global Warming scam continues to be perpetrated, because to end it would require some moral courage among the lying elites who benefit from their position of status, and for whom it is simply a Tax on the Stupids who foolishly believe in it.
ReplyDeleteMan.
ReplyDeleteYour comments sure do attract the crazy, don't they?
(This means you, CIA-conspiracy dude.)
You are apparently not familiar with the definition of a University.
ReplyDeleteA University is a place where men of principal outnumber men of honor.
Let's see, incident at Dartmouth in 1991. Full-throated screed condemning an entire society in 2011. As much as you say you don't need a shrink, pal, you may want to reconsider. Long-winded, but decent writing though.
ReplyDeleteName her.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your general opinion of the US elite, and also agree with the commenter who pointed out that elites everywhere else are at least as bad or worse.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with your general opinion of psychiatrists and the shrinkage industry with the exception of those disorders amenable to chemical treatment.
I'm not so sure I agree with your alternate strategy of just sucking it up. Your piece is a bit of a broad brush that spatters vitriol somewhat wider than is justified. I suggest considering the advice of the fictional Don Corleone (taken from a non-fictional real person) that revenge is a dish best served cold. Out the woman now, including her current name and location if you can find it. Let her sue you if she dares, and counter-sue if she does. Or accept her public apology.
You'll feel much better afterwards.
"When no weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq, and therefore the reason for the war was shown to be a lie?"
ReplyDeleteWith such lack of reasoning ability, how in the Hell did you score in the top 0.10 percentile? Where is the proof there were no WMDs which likely were moved to Syria, where is even the slightest proof any of this was known beforehand? ALL international intelligence agencies were in agreement, all liberal Democrats also. On this one you are a complete dumbass. Everything else I agree with. Regards.
GL,
ReplyDeleteSay what you will about George Bush allegedly lying us into war. I'll bet you a case of Leinenkugel's Red Lager that if you asked Bush over a cup of coffee if he'd do what he did all over again he'd reply, "Given the same facts and circumstances with which I was presented as President, and my oath of office, you're goddamn right I'd do it all over again, pard."
And that's why George Bush is, and always will be, better than either you or Obama.
Sorry about your female trouble, but ruminate on the above and spare us your cynicism.
Sorry about your experience, Gonzalo. You write your side of the story well, and I believe you.
ReplyDeleteBut please re-examine the lessons you've taken away. Moral courage is RARE. It would surprise me to find that one person on your COS stood up for an unknown freshmen - a majority would have been hugely improbable.
Now you hate America from afar. (Thank God Clarence Thomas didn't take HIS ball and get on a plane - he's the finest Justice we've got.) Why? Is there more moral courage in Ecuador or Chile? In Europe? Political enthusiasms have the power to grind the angelic nature out of most men, no matter what country.
Man is a fallen creature. Lies are easier to believe than truth: "Bush's War for Oil".
Take your own advice about picking scabs, friend. A leftist political ploy against Thomas laid you low - don't let it turn you into a leftist tool.
You're right, "victim" is "loser". No lawsuit would have brought you "closure". It would have clogged up the courts and taught nobody anything new. All you missed was money.
You write well - I'll buy your book. Vaya con Dios.
Well, is this any worse than the guy in North (South) Dakota who was recently suspended for a year over a rape allegation by female student? The police were called in, doubted her story, tried to arrest her, she fled, but...
ReplyDeleteThe school stuck to its suspension.
There is no justice for men our system. Look at Tiger Woods. He plays around, his gold digger wife beats him on the head with a golf club, divorces him, ruins his golf game (head trauma) and his endorsements, and takes his money and his children.
Imagine, say, if Serena Williams were married to a gold digger, and the entire scenario was played out with genders reversed. The only question would be how many years in jail her ex-husband would get for beating her and ruining her tennis game.
So, man up, like you say. Living well is the best revenge.
Lira, you are one disturbed s.o.b.
ReplyDeleteYou need to name the woman.
You should name and shame the members of the COS
ReplyDeleteYour silence on this outrage enabled your enemies to keep behaving this way, towards you and countless others.
ReplyDeleteWhen will you apologize to those who were victimized by the people you enabled and encouraged?
Dude... sorry for pointing out the obvious, but you still sound pretty bitter. Who are you trying to kid? You? Maybe. But you're not kidding me.
ReplyDeleteTake the important first step: Identify all of the individuals who wronged you.
ReplyDeleteIf the names of perjurers are public record, why shouldn't the names of these scum who did the same thing?
Shame them. Embarrass them. Make them aware that EVERYONE knows that they are morally vacuous individuals, utterly oblivious to the concept of right and wrong, truth and mendacity.
Of course, they're all probably liberals, which means they're likely completely unable to be affected by such opprobium.
Names, or it didn't happen.
ReplyDelete(Kind of like my Anonymous comment didn't happen.)
If what you say is true, you owe it to the world to name names.
A disingenuous, dishonest left-winger bitten in the ass by political correctness? Sounds like justice to me.
ReplyDeleteShould have picked that scab to let some of the puss out. You sound awful bitter.
ReplyDeleteSome of the stuff you had to say was ridiculous. Illegal war? LOL.
The fact is this-- there are few passions more powerful than narcissistic rage. It is powerful, but also completely destructive. Lot's of people "got screwed" in this world. There are innocent people all over the world sitting in prisons. That doesn't change your situation, or the unfairness of it, but... what matters is what you choose to do with it.
ReplyDeleteI've been there too, friend. And, I had to just let the anger go, and move on. Picking at the scabs of the past lead to nothing but a bigger wound in your life.
Let it go. Don't forgive if you don't want to, but still Let It Go.
Honestly, after your tale of personal woe you derailed as your rant went further. You besmirched this woman (rightly) for her lying but then cling desperately to lies about recent history just to satisfy your elite ego.
ReplyDeleteTwo steps forward, five back.
Perhaps you should step out of your echo chamber and start learning a bit more about the 'common' Americans...and how they're vastly superior to those Dartmouth produces.
I'm with DEK and Rob Crawfoed.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear about your tragic experience, but get a grip, dude. It's long past time to move on.
And the lesson you supposedly learned at Dartmouth is nothing more than self-defeating, post-modern nihilism. Bull crap whining about all the awful people in places of authority, holding back the noble little guy.
Grow up, brush the chip off your shoulder, and life will start to seem a whole lot better.
After all, given that so many in the world are denied a basic education, do you really expect anyone to feel sorry for you because you were forced to graduate Ivy League Dartmouth in 5 years instead of 4?
Naming her will do no good, since she is probably married/divorced to somebody with a fancy, and probably recognizable, last name.
ReplyDeleteSomebody said living well is the best revenge. Well, no amount of 'living well' will bring you to her level, ever. One can live like a king in Santiago, but nobody in the inner circle of power will even raise an eyebrow. Remember, the billionaire president of Chile was a nobody in the world until the San Jose mine collapsed.
She will be going to parties, with congressfolks and other important movers and shakers, while Gonzalo has went down the level of Nicole Foss, who is not someone taken seriously by people who create and lead opinions.
Face it. Your life as a global elite has ended on the day you got your suspension. It is very unlikely that your 15,000 blog followers will include anyone who can change world opinion, while her circle of friends can kill this blog at once if they desire.
That's the world of winners and losers.
The bus that hit you is called "Political Correctness."
ReplyDeleteYou were a man; she was a woman. Even if you didn't sexually harass her, you probably wanted to.
Horrifying stuff.
Lucky for you whatever doesn't kill us, makes us stronger.
I really don't see what your beef is. William Gibson describes cyberspace as a "consensual hallucination" - so is leftism, to which you apparently subscribe. Just as communism in the USSR punished people who were problems, the leftists at Dartmouth punished you. Because you were a problem.
ReplyDeleteWonder if there isn't more backstory untold by you, that would illustrate how you exacerbated your own plight. You sound like the sort of bigmouth who does not know how to handle a woman. If I were to bet I would bet that somewhere along the line, in Chirac's words, you missed a good opportunity to shut up. BTW, what does "hooked up" mean? Did you screw or not? Sodomy? Was she jilted or just refused seconds?
And just like the good Russkis who have always cried "If only the Little Father/Stalin/Putin knew!" you lay down for it. You couldn't see that the people who shared your values would inevitably come to this. This is what leftists do.
But you just want your comrades to "remember you as a good Communist" like Bukharin and Beria and all the other rats. It didn't burn those corrupt values out of you - look at you crapping on Bush & Co. for no good reason (perhaps we can avoid rehashing the whole GWOT and you can allow me to extend the better arguments for the war, which as a big Dartmouth brain I imagine you can concede exist at least theoretically, or if you want we can do that all over again), chiefly to show the leftists whose approval you crave that you're on their side.
Some lone wolf you are. You're just a dog who's been kicked out of the house, and you hope that if you can only catch one wolf, they'll let you back in the house again.
Conservatives would never have done this to you. At Virginia Tech or Notre Dame or, hell, probably Harvard, you would have had a tlast a better shot at a fair trial. Frankly, even at NYU I was, so gossip got back to me, accused by a chick with whom my roommates caught me "hooking up" of some nebulous sex crime, and "what did I have to say about it?"
My answer: Not a thing. And it all went away. I bet you screwed up somehow. Bet the rent. If a broad couldn't screw a white male at NYU, a broad couldn't have screwed a Hispanic male (a protected class, believe it or not, and apparently you don't) at Darmouth without he screwed himself. Maybe you weren't that smart.
So again, it's the people who are all "right on!" about your antiwar shtick, who are just the ones who would sacrifice you to the girl because of whatever PC/diversity math it is that you are whining about.
I dunno, maybe I should read other posts of yours to get a better read on you. Maybe I am being unfair. But as far as I can see to this point, as to your leaving, I say "stay not on the order of your going" and "don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out." Sadly, in the old days, you absenting yourself from our fair shores would effectively relieve us of your braying; however, in the age of the Internet, this is no longer the case.
The kicker is you begging for money. I thought you had made zillions in some no doubt noble fashion or other "very shortly after leaving Dartmouth." What, did you blow it on coke and hookers? Or buying into the Chilean hierarchy? You should be PayPal-ing your readers.
Nah, I don't see how you will be missed. Good luck though. I'm sure Chile is dying for what Dartmouth alums can bring to the table.
--Nekulturny
(I would log in but can't be bothered)
For someone who's pissed off about people who support demonstrably false assertions you certainly don't hesitate to toss them around.
ReplyDeleteGitmo is full of "demonstrably innocent" men? Really? I'd love to see your evidence.
The Iraq war, the one that freed tens of millions from the abuse of a horrific tyrant, was "illegal"... how, exactly? I mean, seeing how it was authorized by the entire US Congress AND the UN what law did it break? And although it was PARTIALLY based on faulty intelligence that's much, much different than being based on a lie.
And, as so many others have pointed out, it's kind of silly to judge 300 million people based on the actions of a few dozen individuals and then claim to have gotten on with your life and put it behind you. You're protesting a little too much, I think.
First off, I'd suggest GL do see a psychologist at least to talk about it with someone professional. He seems way to smart to assign the motives of a few 19-yr olds to a nation of 310m people.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, it is funny how over the past year with the release of the WikiLeaks documents showing not only that Iraq had WMD, but also moved many of them into Syria with Russian help, never seem to get mentioned by the 'Bush Lied!' wishcasters:
'During that time, former Iraqi General Georges Sada, Saddam's top commander, detailed the transfers of Iraq's WMD. "There [were] weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands," Mr. Sada said. "I am confident they were taken over."
The documents showed that US troops continued to find chemical weapons and labs for years after the invasion, including remnants of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons arsenal -- most of which had been destroyed following the Gulf War.
...Also in 2004, troops discovered a chemical lab in a house in Fallujah during a battle with insurgents. A chemical cache was also found in the city.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/wikileaks-show-wmd-hunt-continued-in-iraq-with-surprising-results/
http://www.examiner.com/public-safety-in-national/wikileaks-wmd-program-existed-iraq-prior-to-us-invasion
And, of course, SH's top nuclear scientists testified that he planned to restart their weaponized nukes program as soon as possible. And several people and intelligence agencies have said/shown that Iraq *did* try to buy uranium from Niger.
General Tommy Franks and former CENTCOM commander has said that he saw persuasive evidence that Irraq’s WMD went to Syria.
He said “We saw all kinds of suspicious activity which...meant for certain that weapons were being moved into Syria.”
Franks made the comments after the former second-in-command of CENTCOM, General Michael DeLong, said that the intelligence had reported Iraq moved its WMDs to Syria, Lebanon and possibly Iran.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/satellite-photos-support-testimony-that-iraqi-wmd-went-to-syria/
Don Bordenkircher, who served as the national director of jail and prison operations in Iraq for two years, told me that he spoke to about 40 Iraqis, either military personnel or civilians assigned to the military, who talked about the WMDs going to Syria and Lebanon, with some claiming they were actually involved. Their stories matched and were not contradictory, he said...
I also asked Duelfer if he was aware of the intelligence provided by the Ukrainians and other sources that the Russians were in Iraq helping to cleanse the country shortly before the invasion.... The Ukrainians provided all the details of the Russian effort, including the dates and locations of meetings to plan the intervention and even the names of the Russian Spetsnaz officers involved. Shaw also worked with a British source that ran an intelligence network in the region and provided substantiation and additional details.
The former head of Romanian intelligence during the Cold War, Ion Pacepa, has provided supporting testimony. He says that he had personal knowledge of a Soviet plan called “Operation Sarindar” where the Russians would cleanse a rogue state ally of any traces of illicit activity if threatened with Western attack.
John Loftus, a former Justice Department prosecutor known for his wide-ranging contacts in the intelligence community, said in an interview we did that “every senior member of a Western, European or Asian intelligence service whom I have ever met all agree that the Russians moved the last of the WMDs out of Iraq in the last few months before the war.”
.... General James Clapper, President Obama’s pick to replace Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence, has previously stated his belief that the weapons went to Syria and took part in the meetings organized by Shaw."
Dear Gonzalo, I remember you from the fall of '91 (I believe we were in Phil 1 together). And I remember hearing that you had been suspended for sexual harassment. I don't remember seeing you on campus after that. I can understand wanting to put this behind you, but I sure as hell wish that you'd written this up in, say, the Dartmouth Review closer to the time of the events in question. (Did COS make you sign a confidentiality clause, under pain of further suspension or expulsion?) No, going public would likely not have gotten you an apology, money, or an expunged record, but public shaming of Dean Pelton and the COS might have made the likelihood of this happening to someone else diminish just a bit.
ReplyDeleteYou had me on your side until I read this:
ReplyDeleteRelative—like Guantánamo: Chock-a-block with demonstrably innocent prisoners
And then I realized ... you got screwed by the system because you're an asshole.
Unfair? Sure. Earned? Totally. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy. In other words, an asshole.
What was it you so eloquently said? Oh yes.
Suck on it.
I should think that anyone that meets you would see you as that scared and now scarred young boy that Lady Justice kicked in the nuts. You are deserving of sympathy and maybe even pity.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, your towering intellect has left you handicapped: you fail to see that this society, as warped as it can be is amazingly resilient and self-correcting. You don't like how long the pendulum swings, too bad, suck it up little man.
BTW, I did want to empathize, having gone through a remarkably similar situation, but I didn't blame "America," or our piss poor leaders, I blamed the scummy bitch who was too stupid to pass a respiratory licensure exam.
Oh look. Here she is:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.pharm.stonybrook.edu/mstp/MSTPAlumni.html
(scroll down and search for "Birnbaum, Anitra S."
And guess what. She's now a doctor. And is out on maternity leave.
And her email address is:
anitra.auster@hsc.stonybrook.edu
Have at it, folks.
Apparently, she finally got someone to tap that pussy. I wonder what her husband and children will have to say about all this when they are confronted with all this due to the lack of impermanance on the Internet.
Apprently they will let anyone into Johns Hopkins med school.
The anonymous cypher who posted here at 9:27 on 9/20 cannot be for real. The billionaire president of Chile was "a nobody in the world" till a mine collapse?
ReplyDeleteThe only people that matter are "congressfolks and other important movers and shakers"?
Some little wart from the River Cluster, pressing his nose up against the glass, envying Jamie Gorelick and Al Gore their dance in Eden.
This reminds me of all my Libertarian friends who got screwed by one government dept, and who now are Puritans: I could create a govt. 99.9% pure and it would not suffice for them.
ReplyDeleteAs for illegal wars: 85% of Iraqis are still glad Hussein is dead, as am I.
Which is more than you've ever done, but I thank you for this article. It's a marvelous demonstration of leftist myopia. Fannie Mae, a GSA, run by Walter Mondale's ex-campaign manager, did more than any bank to destroy the housing market and set the fraudulent tone, all with Congressional Democratic connivance, but you blame Wall Street.
Dartmouth and the Left abused you. But aside from this personal experience, you haven't learned much.
You claim to have incontrovertible proof of your innocence, yet you admit you were alone in a room with this woman. You also make outlandish claims about how everyone from Dartmouth are corrupt assholes and then assert you are great. Whether it is your intention or not, you come off as both an asshole and a liar. My guess is that the student counsel was playing it safe--they didn't believe her, but also saw that you had a huge chip on your shoulder and were lying about being alone which, by your own admission, you were.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, you are aware that you probably committed libel, right?
Re. commentator Sept. 20, 1041pm:
ReplyDeleteI am an asshole—I’ve never pretended otherwise.
As to being a liar? No, I’m not—for the simple reason that I have less to remember when I stick to the truth.
Which is why I haven’t committed libel: Everything I wrote here is true and accurate—and I have the written statements to prove it.
And of course, I’ve earned the money to not only defend myself from any “intimidation-by-lawsuit”, but also to counter-sue anyone who thinks they can fuck with me.
I learned my lesson. That’s what this piece is about: In today’s America, you get the justice you are willing to pay for.
And that is the tragedy.
GL
See? Johns Hopkins MD.Way ahead of you! Probably married some wealthy doctor.
ReplyDeleteAnd, Walt, the President of Chile is less powerful than a junior senator from Wyoming or so. The President of Chile has influence in Chile, and that's it. One inch away from the Chilean border, he is nothing.
Before the mine collapse, nobody really knew or cared about who was the President of Chile, a billionaire or not. Who knows, or cares about, the name of the richest man of Uzbekistan here?
That mine incident was the event which put him into the world map, and only after that the world knew who he was.
As far as the world which does matter is concerned, in other words among the opinion of those who actually do matter,
only the USA, Canada, Australia, NZ, Western Europe, Russia, Japan, and maybe Israel, China, Korea, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia (because Oil is coming from there) exist. The rest simply does not exist.
So, I guess you feel that the Gitmo detainees who WERE released, who then went back to Afghanistan and killed children and US soldiers with bomb belts were INNOCENT.
ReplyDeleteIf that's your definition of innocent, then I guess you were treated more than fairly by the college.
You sound like a real asshat. I bet you gave that girl herpes before dumping her.
Dude, the outcome of the Iraq war was a huge victory for anyone with any decency in Iraq.
ReplyDeleteIt came at a big price for America.
Decent Iraquis owe members of the American armed forces an enormous debt. But being human beings, they will not show any gratitude.
Lots of people have explained to you why you are a dumbass. Rather than taking time to repeat their well stated arguments, I will suggest that you read their posts again. Maybe you will learn something.
This missive is worthless because you did not and do not have the courage to name your accuser and the members of the Committee who wronged you. These left wing ideolouges have paid no price for what they did to you, why should they not do it to someone else. Your response was (and is) one of cowardice, nothing else. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
ReplyDeleteHah. As if Europe, South America or any other continent/country don't have their elites. Europe defined "elite" and most certainly rejected "standards" long ago.
ReplyDeleteDartmouth grads are Dartmouth grads. Face it, you are one of your peers.
And I'm glad you aren't a representative or Senator. We have way too many Dartmouth do-gooders already. You listed a bunch of them.
In one way, I hate to go to the lowest common denominator... but hey......someone would have goen there eventually...
ReplyDeletehttp://family.webshots.com/photo/1519343355081838875QiKAel
I wouldn't hit that on my worst and perhaps last day on earth.
Brace yourselves before you click on the link, folks..
The comments from the beginning to end reveal a full range of PC/liberal types (including a few identifying with those from that class of 95 or friends of her)to people who still believe in Bush/etc. So continue to make roundabout arguments to mislead the direction or just state your faith in the great mission accomplished in Iraq(lovely country now right?). And the ROW point at GL's shortcoming as a person or need for help. Should the paper runs more than 300 word, someone please post a three-sentence summary so that we won't get more entertainment from reading the comments.
ReplyDeleteMy interest is if/when they do acquiesce, is it done knowingly or unknowingly. Or is it more often just a group thinking? Or do we just blame the lack of power or neglect of the judge figure who should have enforced acceptable outcomes? Or was it really a mistake by bunch of immature people who didnot know they were incompetent to be in the room? Outside of textbooks, people aren't rational.
Holy Crap. Lotta comments. But the jist of it is, I think you kinda need help. Can't condemn a whole country on account of a no fair incident. Didn't your Dad ever tell you that life's not fair? Besides, America may be screwed, but we still beat all as far as alternatives. Admit it, don't you miss something that used to be available to you here in America that you can't get or experience in Chile? We rock, man. C'mon back. There's more opportunity here. And no one's gonna look at your 20 year old Dartmouth transcript. Get real.
ReplyDeleteOH my eyes....my EYES!!!
ReplyDeletehttp://family.webshots.com/photo/1519344109081838875RVAktH
http://family.webshots.com/photo/1519344271081838875xFiAye
OHGODPLEASEGETITOUTOFMYHEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Did you tell the "Committee on Standards" that the reason you didn't bang this fanged and fugly she-beast was because YOU have "standards" too?
Might not have helped you any.....but hey.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete*Birnbaum, Anitra S.
ReplyDeleteB.A. Dartmouth College, 1995
M.D. and Ph.D. in Genetics, 2005
Dissertation Title: "Structural & biochemical studies of the human papillomavirus type 18 replication initiation protein e1"
Mentor: Leemor Joshua-Tor, PhD, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY
Residency: Internal Medicine, Johns Hopkins, MD / Mount Sinai, New York, NY, 2005–2008
Current position: On maternity leave
Time for you to get on with your life. You didn't have counsel for your hearing, and you chose not to do anything except be bitter. Maybe it's time to forgive and let the anger turn to something useful.
Thank You Mr Lira for sharing your experiences at The "Ivy League" Dartmouth school....absolutely stunning.
ReplyDeleteI admire your courage.
Thank You again.
> Dartmouth grads are Dartmouth grads. Face it, you are one of your peers.
ReplyDeleteExcept no 'peer' worth its title, which doesn't include those who have time enough to lurk at this blog, will want to do anything with him. That takes most of the luster from the title.
>Time for you to get on with your life... Maybe it's time to forgive and let the anger turn to something useful.
No amount of 'forgiveness and forgetting' will get Lira back to the status he desired when he first got to Hanover on '91.
Something useful? Whatever he does for the rest of his life, including this blog, will not get him ahead of her, socially.
It will be appreciated by readers of his blog, but not anyone at her level or status.
And, yes, the likes of Al Gore and Jamie Goerlick run the world, and the President of Chile don't, no matter how rich he might be in his land.
Hey, man. Thanks for that.
ReplyDeleteGL:
ReplyDeleteYour narrative reads like the Book of Job. Our founding father's efforts, realized in the Constitution, anticipated the flawed nature of humankind. Thus they gave us a nation of laws, separation of powers, and accountability. The advent of the great regulatory State, commencing with the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, has created the class of federal bureaucrats upon which Dartmouth has modeled their administration. You probably wonder what would have happened if you had been experienced enough to retain competent council...and been able to pay for it or find someone pro bono. So do I. I would like to believe that you would have been better treated by the courts. And that would be my advice to anyone in similar circumstances.
Whatever you went through, it is nowhere near as bad as what Bert Riddick went through. Falsely named a father, and then assigned a default judgment against his wages, he paid child support for 13 years. He proved in court that he wasn't the father, but it was irrelevant to the State of CA. So his real family had to live at subsistence level as CA kept stealing his wages.
ReplyDeleteWhat he went through is far worse.
C'mon, Anonymous (10:57PM 9/20 poster), your measure of men is childish. A Johns Hopkins-trained doc beats a Chilean novelist? They both sound financially comfortable - the rest is up to wisdom; the wisdom to choose happiness, not victimhood or hate.
ReplyDeleteThe junior Senator from Wyoming? Sure, the US Senate's the most luxurious club in the world, full of "legislators" who never have to write or read a law. What has their political power to do with their worth, their wisdom, their happiness?
Man does not live by bread alone, sorry. Partying with "congressfolks" sounds appalling - playing Nintendo would be infinitely preferable, and I dislike games.
Chile sounds lovely, thanks to Pinochet. Their wine is often tasty. I wouldn't want to be president, but a billion dollars and a few good friends in Santiago would give me no cause to repine.
You sound like one of those high school kids who, when asked his ambitions, says he wants to be famous. Good luck with that. Oh, and thanks for telling me the Saudis have oil.
@Dingleberry, so very well said.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Kansas
Isn't Birnbaum Jewish? I wonder how many Jews were on the COS committee. Jews protect their own you knwow.
ReplyDeleteLira? Isn't that some type of Latin name? And we all know how hot blooded latins are. Yes, they thought he probably did it, based upon superficial cutural analysis.
Excellent piece. I have not experienced the personal tragedy you went through, but I see validation of every point you made each time I return to the U.S. to visit relatives ... good, wellbred, oblivious relatives who wonder why I spout such venom about the big brother police state, the friendly fascist motherland, the f'ing land of the unfree and home of the slave that the U.S. has transmogrified itself into in a scant few decades of this tyranny of the elite and elite wannabes.
ReplyDeleteI left the U.S. in 2004 and worked for several years in international finance in a major Asian city. I am still here, having traded my job as an enabler for the Goldman Sachs, JP Morgans, BOAs and various other vampiric cults of wealth for something nearer and dearer to my heart. In 2 years I will be eligible for permanent resident status in my new home, and plan to take it.
Fuck those people who act like emigrating from the Fourth Reich is an act of cowardice, or that speaking truth to fools is only permissible from Amerikan soil. When they demonstrate any success whatsoever in turning out the oligarchic elite who have made a once great land into their own private fiefdom, I might listen to what they have to say. Until then, I just see them as a bunch of cowards, rationalizing away the death of liberty and turning the other butt cheek to take another big one up the whazoo.
Keep lighting matches, and maybe one day we can all celebrate the conflagration that results. Best!
For many generations now the "American" elite have admired foreign leaders: Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Mao, etc. The elite may mention Lincoln or Washington, but they don't look the Founding Fathers, they don't think like the Founding Fathers, and they don't act like the Founding Fathers. They boast of it and hang Maoist "Christmas" ornaments from their trees. They abandoned their God and morality for vile ideologies and behaviors: socialism, homosexuality, and feminism. The "American" elite aren't American and haven't been for some time. And now they have destroyed the American people as well. The country is still called "America" and its people are called "Americans," but they aren't. You learned this hard way and early on. Thanks for sharing. Welcome to the present. And future.
ReplyDeleteAmherst is a far superior school in moral and intellectual character than Dartmouth.
ReplyDeleteAmherst students as a general rule are extremely bright, well mannered and emotionally balanced.
Amherst may well be the best college in the US. Moreover, it is Hispanic friendly (i.e., no need to be in a defensive fight mode on a regular basis).
Great essay. Made my blood boil.
ReplyDeleteWe may be through with the past but the past ain't through with us
ReplyDeleteGonzalo Lira submitted a less-passionate and less-detailed version of this essay to the Dartmouth student newspaper in February, 1995:
ReplyDeleteMy Education at Dartmouth.
A rebuttal, Lira’s column ignores real issues of sexual abuse, was published a week later. Worth a read... it hasn't aged well.
>A Johns Hopkins-trained doc beats a Chilean novelist? They both sound financially comfortable
ReplyDeleteA Johns Hopkins doctor's value is recognized around the world. A Chilean novelist's value is , ahem, very little outside of Chile's borders, and virtually nothing outside of Spanish speaking world.
Aren't you aware that Borges translated a lot of the things he wrote himself to English so he would be recognized in the Anglophone world?
>The junior Senator from Wyoming? Sure, the US Senate's the most luxurious club in the world, full of "legislators" who never have to write or read a law. What has their political power to do with their worth, their wisdom, their happiness?
Nothing. However, in almost all countries in the world, a junior senator from a small US state will be treated better than the head of state from most countries in the Southern hemisphere, since the junior senator can arrange connections to people who actually matter.
It's like the British Raj; the Indian princelings might have been richer than anybody in England, but they sent their kids to London to make friends and connections to the sons of country squires who might become an MP to decide the fate of their fiefdoms.
>Chile sounds lovely, thanks to Pinochet. Their wine is often tasty. I wouldn't want to be president, but a billion dollars and a few good friends in Santiago would give me no cause to repine.
Except all of these will mean nothing outside of Chile's borders.
Yours is a good story, but I can beat it. When I applied for a position in the Canadian House of Commons I was told at the interview stage by the Director of Human Resources that she was considering my claim of having six years at major Canadian universities to be invalid! This happened well over two decades ago, but my protestations of this madness have failed to cause the House administration to revoke her pronouncement nullifying my degrees. Even two Speakers have rejected my pleas. You say that you have moved on from the injustice you suffered. It's somewhat harder to "move on" from a declaration by a high official of your nation's Parliament that your university education is a fiction, especially when no one higher in authority will overrule her.
ReplyDeleteIt's time for people to realize just how arbitrary and corrupt public administrations have become. This same parliamentary control clique tried to rob me of about a third of my pension when I retired under duress (I was already a long-term House employee when I applied for the position in question; oddly, no objection to my c.v. had been lodged when I got my earlier job with the House administration!). These managers should be known for what they are: go-fers and agents of criminal elements who dictate from behind the scene.
Wow, she's got some wicked crazy big teeth. She reminds me of one of those clattering skull wind up toys you see at Halloween.
ReplyDeleteAnd, darkness falls upon a weary world...
ReplyDeleteAnon: September 21, 2011 4:23 AM Oh yay the Jews the Jews the Jews. Thanks for that. Her maiden name is Auster and she's from Ohio, so I'm guessing Not Jewish. The fact that Mr. Birnbaum is, I suppose, legally blind does not mean that the Zionist Occupied Government is implicated in this one.
ReplyDeleteHoward: All people who use the term of art "Amerika" and its forms "Amerikan," etc., are thereby labeled fools. Thanks for putting that right out there so nobody needs to consider you further.
BTW, you will become a CITIZEN of Singapore or HK or wherever you ended up, when? I'm thinking... the Fifth of Never? Good luck getting into a criminal sexual mixup with a real citizen, whitey!
And whoever, oh, Anon (September 20, 2011 11:53 PM) : I don't think I'm the last defender of the Bush (43) Administration but if I'm the only one on this thread, I'll wear it. I don't see how that makes me a PC liberal, though.
Yeah, I think the overthrow of Saddam's Iraq was justified on several bases, which we can go round and round on if you like but which GL might regret for reasons of space. Meanwhile, though, IIRC our host was crapping on the Afghanistan effort too. You could nitpick details - I would have preferred to spread plague - but what? They were the Michael Moore kite-flyers and we should have left them alone after 9/11?
What are you or he saying exactly? Are you one of the nuke-Pak, nuke-Mecca types? (We could discuss that, LOL, but I don't think that would have exactly avoided the political shitstorm that GWB incurred.)
Okay, GL, I'll go read your other posts before judging you. Just to be fair. That and I'm looking forward to see how you walk back the cat on this one.
-- Nekulturny