Junior High School Confidential

Prologue

“In junior high a boy poured water down my shirt and yelled: `Now maybe they’ll grow.” — Pamela Anderson, American Entertainer

Regular readers might recall that the other day I quoted the legendary Junior High School graffito that begins “people who write on bathroom walls ….”

Sadly, I quoted it because, increasingly, Junior High School has become the model for American interaction.

Part i. Ennobling Material of a Nature Inconsistent with Our Normal Fare (fortunately, this is brief)

Piaget’s four stages of childhood development are or were fairly influential in teaching circles, because they give a good, practical paradigm for dealing with children in institutional contexts.

According to Jean Piaget (1896-1980), the Swiss psychologist, children go through four distinct rational alterations in our maturation cycle. It’s often slathered in swaddling jargon and laid in an academic manger, but, once translated, it’s a good rule of thumb method of dead reckoning.

Piaget divided schemes that children use to understand the world through four main periods, roughly correlated with and becoming increasingly sophisticated with age:

http://www.funderstanding.com/piaget.cfm

1. Sensorimotor stage (birth – 2 years old)–The child, through physical interaction with his or her environment, builds a set of concepts about reality and how it works. This is the stage where a child does not know that physical objects remain in existence even when out of sight (object permanance).

2. Preoperational stage (ages 2-7)–The child is not yet able to conceptualize abstractly and needs concrete physical situations.

3. Concrete operations (ages 7-11)–As physical experience accumulates, the child starts to conceptualize, creating logical structures that explain his or her physical experiences. Abstract problem solving is also possible at this stage. For example, arithmetic equations can be solved with numbers, not just with objects.

4. Formal operations (beginning at ages 11-15)–By this point, the child’s cognitive structures are like those of an adult and include conceptual reasoning.

There are 2.4 gazillion teaching films and videos showing the classic first two stages, each containing a variation of the classic sequence with children shown a tall glass and a short glass, and asked which has more liquid, and, when shown that the tall glass has the same amount of liquid (usually blue) as the short glass, they STILL pick the tall glass. When they pass the next phase of brain maturation, it then makes perfect sense to them.

Sort of like the day you realized that tic-tac-toe is a game you can never lose and you move up to checkers.

You will note that the formal operational period roughly begins around sixth grade. THAT is when abstract logical operations begin — the classic mistake being those ‘Seventies sorts of parents who constantly “reasoned” with their three-year-olds. The parent, by dumping formal, logical arguments into the child’s brain might as well be explaining integral calculus to a parakeet.

It isn’t much taught, but LOGIC is not so much a formal science, formalized by Aristotle, as a description of the natural functioning of the human brain. People were deducing sophisticated linkages long before Alexander’s tutor catalogued formal logic, beginning with A:A, the identity concept.

Kant almost got to it in his four a priori categories (time, space, cause and effect), but that’s a sidebar. Ever since the language philosophers deconstructed logic itself in the 1920s, Western Epistemology has been paralyzed with doubt, but, really, “logic” is a description of the natural formulation that the brain makes in perceiving reality. And, until the human brain has matured to the age of Junior High School, the sophisticated arguments of adulthood aren’t parsable by the child’s brain.

Logic is not the typewriter cover. It’s the typewriter itself: moving from egotistical and emotional reality to a logical reality is what you do in Junior High School.

And, as any survivor will tell you, you will never be as miserable in your whole lifetime as you are miserable in Junior High School.

“and those who read these words of wit …” — from the aformentioned Junior High School graffito, by Anonymous.

Part ii. At The Weasels’ Fair

I know Luke Ford. In some ways he’s a very decent fellow. In other ways … well, anyways, he broke a Drudgesque “story” the other evening.

You see, night before last, one of our Rightie bloggers floated the rumor that “everybody knows” about a sex scandal involving a presidential candidate that the Los Angeles Times is sitting on and won’t publish because of ethical questions, etc.

Ford picked up on this, and, laying claim to this “scoop” wrote this:

October 30, 2007, 5:11 PM
Dark Unseen Scandal Star?
By Luke Ford

Mickey Kaus writes:

Do you sense there is some large mass of dark matter, an unseen Scandal Star, the gravitational pull of which is warping the coverage of what seems, on the surface, a pretty dull presidential race? I do. So does Ron Rosenbaum. I thought the Dark Star was the Edwards affair allegation. But Rosenbaum says “everyone in the elite Mainstream media” knows about another juicy scandal that the LAT is supposedly sitting on. I guess this is proof that I’m not in the elite, because I don’t know what he’s talking about. … My vestigial Limbaugh gland tells me it must involve a Democrat, or else the Times would have found a reason to print it. … P.S.: If it’s just Richardson, that will be very disappointing.

I’m placing my money on the lesbian-Hillary angle.

If you examine the candidates connected by the gossip columnists to current sex scandals, Hillary leads the way with her Huma connection (and Bill with his connections).

Within a couple of hours of reading Mickey Kaus’s report above, I blitzed more than 30 sources (most of them journalists) for what they know about this matter. None of them could identify the purported LA Times story.

My dialogue with my sources left me with no doubt Tuesday night that Hillary’s made passes at women and that Huma Abedin is Hillary’s most likely source of romantic and sexual love….

Let’s pass over the similarity between Kaus’ metaphor and my posting of a couple weeks ago. The point is this: while the leftie blogosphere has been trying to ask the question, “What is our Iraq General’s official Spokesman doing writing creepy snarks to bloggers?” the Rightie Blogosmear™ has taken off on a “Hillary’s a LEZZIE!” snarathon. Ford’s original post claimed credit for the original tale, but as the posting has altered through the day, it becomes a historical record of the conflagration in the blogosmear, with Ford’s rapper’s claim of intellectual territory suddenly absent.

Now: Col. Boylan snarks, and THEN claims that because he is a victim of “identity theft” in Vermont, his Army email account in Baghdad is compromised, and he didn’t write the letter that snarked Glenn Greenwald in Salon.

And the Rightie Blogosmear, in full battle array, screams that Greenwald is a “sockpuppet.”

Junior High School.

And the Rightie Blogosmear™, based on a conversation that some yahoo named Ron Rosenbaum had in a bar, slithers through “Hillary’s a LEZZIE!” land.

Junior High School.

I am getting very sick and fucking tired of living in the Junior High School and not the USA. THIS is what passes for political dialogue in the United States of America? Where every issue revolves around sophomoric name-calling, pseudo-superiority and pubescent posing? Around Beavis and Butthead sniggering?

Our politics is mired in Junior High School Land:

Tim Russert (who put himself through J-school as a figure model for Mr. Potato Head ads) asks Dennis Kucinich if it’s true — as reported by Shirley McLaine — that Kucinich “saw a UFO.” (And the snarking began.)

What? Isn’t this the province of Junior High School bullies?

Like George W. Bush, whom we ALREADY know we wouldn’t have liked in Junior High School. His first public appearance was in defending hazing practices – specifically, branding as a part of fraternity pledge hazing — and his relatives relate that he would always “win” any games played, even if he had to change the rules, retroactively, or just cheat. Which is being a Junior High School bully, frankly. Evidence suggests that he NEVER “moved on.” (According to Tucker Carlson, smirking at the execution of Karla Faye Tucker, the White House vendetta against Valerie Plame, etc.)

Part iii. I’m OK, You Suck

Which brings us, I suppose to an old bit of pop psychology. There is, of course, controversy, but, as with Piaget and Uranus, I’m using Transactional Analysis as a metaphor. Both because it, like Piaget, has a phenomenological bias (i.e. actions are more important than theories) and it’s easy to explain in non-jargon slathered terms. (cf. the classic popularizing text, I’m OK, You’re OK, 1969.)

The gist is this: we communicate in three modes: Parent, Adult, Child. There are six possible modes of communication (transactions):

• Parent:Parent
• Adult:Adult
• Child:Child
• Parent:Adult
• Parent:Child
• Adult:Child

Optimal political interactions would be Adult:Adult.

Instead, we’re stuck with endless Parent:Child interactions. The GOP claims (as the cranky child) that Govenment is the Great Parent (and we all know how awful parents are). They even call it the “Nanny State” — mostly because a Nanny, while NOT a Parent, exercises the function OF a Parent, and, in the manner of a Parent restricts the “perfect freedom” envisioned by the Child (GOP). BUT you can still defend “family values” attacking the authority of the Parent by calling it a “Nanny,” i.e. an “outsider.”

This Nanny-restricted ‘freedom,’ in the Child, includes the freedom to put a bath-towel around one’s neck, and jump from the roof as “Superman,” or in reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged as being deep and profound.

The “Parent” function mostly serves to keep the Child from breaking its fool neck.

[It is, perhaps, telling that the blogger at Atlas Shrugs picked up on Luke Ford’s report immediately, after spending last week screeching that Al Qaeda had started the California fires based on a Faux Nooz rhetorical bizarro question. The blogger in question is our special Satanic Poster Child of the Day, just to give Michelle Malkin a breather.)

The Democrats under Nancy Pelosi keep playing the “Parent” role, to the unruly GOP “Child” role: witness the recent “Parent” bill of SCHIP, which, after the “Child” Bush vetoed — to show that he’s still “relevant” — the same “Child” asked the “Parent” congress for $46 billion more worth of Army men, firecrackers and lighter fluid.

Which is the crazy dynamic in all of this: George W. Bush’s whole life is about winning those Parent:Child confrontations. His entire history is that of the “baaaaaaad little boy,” who continually gets away with tweaking the “parents” — in this case, the confrontation between Bush and Congress (Update, Nov. 2: he just vetoed a water bill that already has a veto-proof majority. Tell me this isn’t about his ‘bad little boy’ persona).

Sadly, this is the dynamic of Junior High School: the over-reaching Nannies of the Junior High School’s Administration and Faculty against the suddenly formal operational “Children” of the student body. Perhaps coincidentally, the Junior High School students are undergoing the most profound of transformations into ADULT mode, which involves hormonal elixirs on a par with Dr. Jekyll’s tranformative brew, as hair starts sprouting between the navel and the knees, and generalized madness ensues until the hormonal geardown of middle age.

But politically, although through Junior High School and actual High School, peer interactions become, increasingly, Adult:Adult, the Parent:Child rebellion becomes paramount — until the “Child” finally separates from the Nanny State, marries another Child, has children, and begins pretending to be a Parent, having never actually become an Adult.

That hormonal geardown eventually produces much less tweaked grandparents, perhaps (Adults), but the emotional and political dialogue seems frozen in Junior High School, as though the first apperception of formal logic (remember, that’s the description of the functioning of the Mind, not some abstraction) had frightened the Junior High School mind into eternal hebephrenia.

And that is the character of too much of our political life: Junior High School students who never became adults. “I don’t care about EITHER party,” we hear, when what’s being said is “Me, the CHILD” doesn’t HAVE to interact with the PARENT political parties. They’re all PARENTY.

What is missing in the dynamic is the ADULT:ADULT interaction of representative government. Instead, the battle is framed in Junior High School terms. We, the CHILD versus the PARENT government, politicians (who ALL lie), and political parties.

Perhaps this is what was to be expected when, after the Second World War, the Baby Boomers became the center of attention, the ultimate Trick-Or-Treat recipients, who have hijacked the Holiday until it exists almost exclusively for the adults, but because of the Fear that the Inherently Nanny/Parent News instills every year (that old “razor blade in the caramel apple” story was sheerest urban myth, like ’snuff films’ and ‘representative democracy’) , Halloween does not exist for ACTUAL children, anymore.

The parents remain stuck at Junior High School, the politics remain stuck at Junior High School, the culture remains stuck at Junior High School, else why the Renaissance of fart and booger jokes? In the mainstream? As a legitimate ‘artistic’ expression? Really?

How come so much of our politics is “gotcha” and our media is UTTERLY stuck in parental sniffing (nobody, to hear them, is more MORAL than our media talking heads, just listen to Novak, if you disbelieve me)? These are the psychological needs of Junior High School, of destroying (through humiliation) the “enemies,” and making one’s friends “cool.” You know: like George Will and, formerly, Tucker Carlson liked to imply that the Bow Tie was the ne plus ultra of manly fashion, while sneering pretentiously at those with whom they disagreed. And the ultimate Junior High School trick: tweaking the Vice Principal, cast, in this case, as Harry Reid, the Senate Minority Leader.

Which is why, perhaps, our politics is mired in Junior High School Land, and, increasingly, we blindly accept the arbitrary authoritarianism of our “government” — with our Constitutions before us! — as we used to blindly accept the authoritarianism of the Junior High School principal and his/her minions. (Oh, and the demonization of the “Other” as means of stifling or belittling dissent, e.g. the reflexive slurring and vicious racism displayed towards ANYTHING Islamic or Muslim.)

Junior High School was as much a disaster of governance as our current political cliques snarking on anyone serious and Adult — e.g. Hillary is a LEZZIE! or Greenwald is a SOCKPUPPET! Which is why a Luke Ford would feel it paramount to establish his claim to the Hilezzy Rumor, rather than, say, writing about the outsourcing of American jobs. The former, to the Junior High School political sphere is INFINITELY more important, which is to say, prestigious — in the same manner that having your picture on the cover of Tiger Beat Magazine is prestigious (and forgotten within months).

The legendary fickleness of the Thirteen-Year-Old girls who make up Tiger Beat’s audience turns our political dialogue into a series of personality driven fads, like Bobby Sherman or David Cassidy, or some other Tween Idol: demigod one day, forgotten and shunned the next.

Yes. It takes place on both sides of the aisle, but currently the preponderance is on the Right. Sorry. The entire (now almost universal) complaint against “Political Correctness,” is a Child and Adult complaint against a Parent:Child transaction gone terribly wrong — you can’t say this and that and the other because, IN THE OPINION OF THE PARENT, it’s offensive to Group X, and will HURT THEIR FEELINGS. (Williams’ Censorship Constant: All censorship takes place “on BEHALF of,” never directly.)

On the other hand, the complaint of the GOP — I don’t have to pay no TAXES. “It’s MY money! It’s MINE!!” (Wm. O’Reilly, verbatim) — is the Child gone mad. The “roof over the child’s head, the clothes on YOUR back, and the food you eat at MY table, young man!” are taken for granted, manna from Ayn Rand heaven, with society functioning, army, navy, fire, police, electrical lines, highways, etc. etc. as a pre-existing state/State that would exist without ANY collective contribution or payment.

But Adult:Adult transactions?

Weirdly, with this administration, we have Junior High School AND a weird amalgam of Parent AND Child gone mad (as the uber-enfant terrible sticks its used bubble gum to the underside of the metaphoric Desk of Civilization):

Watch lists. Dress codes (cf. Cindy Sheehan being manhandled out of the House of Representatives’ gallery before a State of the Union, or three Medford teachers kicked out of a Bush speech for their “protect our civil liberties” t-shirts, etc. etc.). Phones tapped. Mail opened. Library records and gag orders. Secret searches. Extraordinary renditions.

Or, in the words of George HW Bush’s Kennebunkport Pool Boy: “I look at the biggest middle finger in the world all day.“

Just another scholastic year at Franz Kafka Middle School, right? Only it’s the U.S.A.

Hey: I didn’t like Junior High School the FIRST time.

Epilogue:

“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.” – Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

“Oscar Wilde was a faggot.” — Ann Coulter (simulated quote)

And back again, evidently.

Courage.

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