This is an historic moment. Which candidate will support the continued murder of Iraqis, fueling of hate and terror, and bankrupting of our resources for the FEWER ACTUAL ADDITIONAL YEARS? Mrs. LibCred or Mr. Audacity-of-Charisma?

Do you mean to say that men, more so than women, have biological urges that lead them to sexual attraction and arousal as a response to the human body?

And that, unchecked, these biological proclivities can lead to boundary violations, aggression, even worse, when the female is not consenting?

But that all males are capable of transcending and controlling these most ingrained of biological urges?

And the way to their mastery and transcendence isn’t through repression, or denying the existence of (sometimes gendered) predispositions, but by accepting and experiencing them, as the only way to gain control?

All that without the distraction of “essentialism” or “evo psych”?

Damn.

Maybe there’s hope for all of us.

It’s easy to skewer the overt misogyny of the cleric’s statements, and part of their apparent absurdity derives from cultural distance. What’s more difficult and discomforting is getting an objective view closer in. More fundamentally than religious code, the veil represents evolutionary remnants of once-adaptive mating and reproductive systems – but no more so than do monogamy and marriage.

“But here we don’t punish women, or men, for deviating from arbitrarily prescribed norms for social and sexual behavior.”

Really? Maybe not overtly or with religious law. But you might ask the Spitzers, or Clintons, or review our public treatment of female figures who deviate in any way that operationalizes “sexual freedom” as more than a leftover buzzphrase.

We know a fair amount about behavioral change in humans: for example that shaming, judgment and humiliation are likely to elicit temporary compliance or resistance, not internal change. Social modeling is potentially very effective, but only if the model (or model culture) is trusted, congruent, admired, and authentic in observed behaviors and attitudes. That is, the culture purporting to serve as model for others would need to be held in positive esteem, and demonstrate that the values it operationalizes actually result in greater freedom, equality and well-being for women and men. That would be an admirable culture.

There are predisposed behaviors as responses to fears around deprivation and unpredictability in resources needed for survival that can be counted on in PA blue collar workers, humans in general, and our evolutionary ancestors: marginalization and disempowerment of others to raise relative status, thus safety; increased aggressiveness; and defense mechanisms to protect self image against the antisociality of the former two. These phenomena, which Mr. Obama hinted at in an unusually candid way, for forbidden topics, largely explain xenophobia and bigotry, the gun fetish, and religious practice, respectively. The intolerable sin of his astute comments, and the reason they had to be shut down, is that they pointed the way toward more forbidden truths – that the workers’ unexamined fears are driven by a system, capitalism, whose roots in psychopathology will always generate extremes in access to resources needed for security and thus the types of real fears that increasing numbers of Americans face every day. Like not knowing whether adequate food, housing, and health care for self or loved ones can be counted on.

For his unusual candor, insight and intelligence, Mr. Obama was punished, then forced to respond with rambling, unfocused noise, reframed in permitted language and designed specifically to bury his original and courageous insights and to protect us from heterodoxy (that is, from ideas and thought), illustrating once again how effectively insulated and defended against authenticity and insight is the dog-and-pony show we continue to construct somehow as a “political process”. Disingenuously framing him as condescending translates as, “Back off Obama, this much insight is too distressing.” Mr. Obama’s supporters and detractors alike experienced the reframing as safe and relief-producing precisely because it evades approaching any larger truths. Anything more real would be intolerable.

it allegedly may also be true that the pope always wears boxer shorts in the shower, with the explanation that his holiness does not wish to look down upon the unemployed.

Is it possible that contractualizing and bargaining away control of intimacy, of your own sexual behavior and body, for some added degree of security, social approval and material gain could ever be consistent with empowerment and self-actualization?

and no one is listening.

Every discussion on “race”, every use of the construct, is a regression to the comfort of fairy tales and to and the comfortable avoidance of freedom.

A sign of progress would be to hear a response in a public discourse of the type:

“I’m sorry, did I hear ‘race’ and ‘black’ in your comment? I can’t think of what might conceivably or usefully be intended or meant by those meaning-free utterances and I suspect that neither can you. We need to move on with our discussion now. Please feel free to join back in once you have reformulated your thoughts.”

My Dyson “Animal” does an admirable job with pet hair, has nothing approaching artificial intelligence, but has to be operated. AI can certainly complicate a relationship. The Cylon wants only to suffer and for others to believe that he suffers, so that he can be loved. I would try some empathic responding with the Roomba, along with some work to identify the source of your anger. You seem resentful of Roomba’s needs and demands on you.

or does Mr. Tomorrow generally achieve more in a few panels than certain Salon writers do with 2000-3000 words?

then please provide explanations for current levels of incidence of pathological use of: food, nicotine, methamphetamine, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, Republicanism, aggression, religious practice, alcohol, patriotism, gambling, Prozac, sport, Xanax, consumerism, gun ownership, television viewing, and (more to the point) idiocy.