The Thoughtcrime bill that passed overwhelmingly in the House is going through committee in the Senate. The Senate bill is S. 1959.

Dahlia Lithwick writing in Slate points out "Harman's "thought crimes" bill [...] does no more than explore whether those thought crimes are a problem." She follows that up with some snark on the ineffectiveness of Democrats in Congress.

I am profoundly grateful that instead of criminalizing protected speech outright, Democrats merely form a commission that will do a study, which will in turn christen a Drive-Thru Center for Excellence, where they will someday consider criminalizing protected free speech.

I'm happy to see more media coverage for this. At best it's a waste of time and money, at worst it's a lever for rolling back protected speech. I'd much rather see Congress increase their oversight of the government agencies already studying these kinds of issues.

I'm really digging the Doctor Fate part of the eight issue Countdown to Mystery series. Steve Gerber's writing and Justiniano's art are my favorite comic book read right now. It reminds me of my enthusiasm in the early issues of Neil Gaiman's Sandman.

I came in with almost no familiarity with the helmet of fate. In this series Kent V. Nelson is a disgraced, divorced psychiatrist living in Las Vegas, NV. (Yeah, not Gotham, Metropolis, Central City, etc.) He's homeless and pulling in money from bum fights. After losing a fight he's thrown into a dumpster and discovers the helmet of fate. From that point the series has explored Nelson's past, through multiple planes of existence. The helmet allows him to alter his perception.

In issue three Nelson visits what appears to be an occult bookstore in the mundane world but is a stygian wasteland when the helmet alters his perception. Physically he never leaves the bookstore, he's only viewing it through a different set of symbols. The lady at the occult bookstore offers him a book to teach him how to use the helmet. The book is written in this Visual Basic like pseudocode. I really liked the explanation the lady at the occult bookstore offers about why that works for him:

Every era, every culture develops its own incantatory idiom, its own language for establishing contact with the unseen world. To anyone with any sensitiviy, it's obvious something has changed in the domain of magic, and the idiom is changing with it. The book I pulled for you proposes a programmatic paradigm for accessing the beyond — and the within.

I like the comparison between programmers working with an unseen world inside the computer to alchemists and magicians. Culturally Gerber is right on here. The old term Unix wizard fits this notion perfectly.

After he reads one of the subroutines, chosen by fate, he finds himself in the stygian wasteland. It's nothing but gray sludge as far as the eye can see, with a lazy river ambling by. (There is a viscious but funny commentary on consumerism as well) He sees a boy on a raft floating down the river.

The boys vernacular recalls Huck Finn. Nelson even addresses him as such, but also realizes that he's not a literal Huck Finn. He's really just a symbolic representation of Nelson's own guilty conscience about a patient of his that died. In fact it turns out this plane of existence is a symbolic representation of Nelson's conscience. The fact that Huck Finn is just a symbol is driven home by the artwork depicting Huck as an empty shell.

They float down river and Nelson struggles with the meaning of it all. In the midst of dreary grey spires they reach a crystalline complex that is built with perfect, clean angles and no curves. It's a bulwark of rationality against the dreary, crumbling spires everywhere else. Naturally it's where they are headed.

Inside he meets the King and Queen. Most likely they represent Nelson's anima and animus since Jung is explicitly mentioned earlier. They're dressed in clothes that look like Louis XIV meets Japanese Noh masks. The fact that everyone is wearing a mask or has no face isn't lost on me. The King introduces himself to Nelson:

We are the King. This is our Queen. That is our whipping boy. You will address us as "Your majesties." You will not address that at all, for that possesses no identity — no persona, no self-concept. That exists to be broken.

The whipping boy is a groveling lump of flesh on the floor that is vaguely human who jumps up and rips Nelson's face off. Nelson comes to the realization that the whipping boy is him. The King and Queen also represent him (his anima/animus). The gloomy underworld is his own creation because he's been beating himself up for mistakes he made. In lesser hands this whole sequence would have been pretentious but it's handled with a directness and a sincerity that makes it work.

You just don't find stuff like this in any other DC/Marvel comic books right now. For me this is a lot of what comic books are all about. They reflect our own world back at us with the symbols changed around. This gives us a new way of looking at ourselves and our society. Grant Morrison is particularly adept at doing this but this is different. Gerber is doing his own thing and it's excellent. I'm a little worried though. Gerber is ill and waiting for an organ transplant. I can't believe he's writing through that. I have to wonder if his writing for Doctor Fate is somehow informed by his illness. It can't be just coincidence that both of them live in Las Vegas, NV.

"Belief precedes action" is now added to the list of obvious truths I've completely missed until now.

I gleaned it from William James' speech on The Will to Believe. I'm missing something from the speech though. It felt like a fancier version of Pascal's Wager, not the clarion call to religious belief I was hoping for.

James' concludes with this quote from Fitz-James Stephen:

What do you think of yourself? What do you think of the world?...These are questions with which all must deal as it seems good to them. They are riddles of the Sphinx, and in some way or other we must deal with them...In all important transactions of life we have to take a leap in the dark...If we decide to leave the riddles unanswered, that is a choice; if we waver in our answer, that, too, is a choice: but whatever choice we make, we make it at our peril. If a man chooses to turn his back altogether on God and the future, no one can prevent him; no one can show beyond reasonable doubt that he is mistaken. If a man thinks otherwise and acts as he thinks, I do not see that any one can prove that he is mistaken. Each must act as he thinks best; and if he is wrong, so much the worse for him. We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? ' Be strong and of a good courage.' Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes...If death ends all, we cannot meet death better."

This is an even more dramatic restatement of Pascal's Wager. There's gotta be a good movie in there somewhere. I'm imagining Sophie's Choice meets The Screwtape Letters. Make it an action picture with a big Summer release.

H.R. 1955 seeks to criminalize thoughtcrimes

The term violent radicalization means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.

The term ideologically based violence means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual's political, religious, or social beliefs.

There is no definition for extremist belief system.

I wonder if civil rights marches in the 1960s would count as an extremist belief system attempting to facilitate political, religious or social change.

We already have laws against murder, assault, theft, etc. I don't understand why we need laws against speaking about those things. Punish the deed not the thought.

This is not how you stop terrorism.

This bill passed the House 404 to 6 and was created and sponsored mostly by Democrats.