Thursday,
August 20, 2009 at 11:01pm
Friends,
brethren, lend me your ears...or um, eyes...for I sense a disparity
in our species. There is a tendency for the same kinds of behaviors
and views to be shared by different groups of people. Vague right?
Well, money grubbing, culture warrior, religious nut, anti-gay
marriage, anti-abortion, naughty word hating, anti-sex, drug
criminalizing, gun toting, death penalty supporting asshole tends to
conjure up a specific sort of stereotype. And given that I tend to
side liberally, I'll refrain from tying together an equally damning
but representative chain of overly liberal standpoints. What I want
to know more about is, why. Why are there usual suspects and usual
positions to people who all hold relatively the same views about the
same subjects? I'm not talking about the people who call themselves
religious and have leftist views, and I'm not talking about a staunch
Democrat who voted for McCain. I want to know why red and blue even
exist.
The obvious thing is the start from the religious standpoint. But a person had to come first before they were infected with that disease. What kind of person is it who would be so vehemently opposed to policies and actions that can be proven to work, or worse, actively destroy and disrupt what they were put in place to serve? This I feel is the heart of the "stupidity." I don't have to guess that reasonable people, whether they agree with my "philosophical" points or not, can hear me explain an issue and at the very least understand why I hold it. I don't just rant off a list of things I hate, say you should hate them too, and we go off happily into the night. Here watch, I'll even give you an example.
Take the death penalty. I'm against it. The system we have in place sends disproportionate levels of black people to sit on death row. We have prosecutors that withhold evidence for the sake of sending innocent men to death row, and we have confirmed that in fact innocent people have been put to their deaths. A frequented reason like "it deters future murders" has been shown to be so patently ridiculous, it's insulting to hear someone even bring it up. And finally, as a society, I think the messages we send are more powerful than people want to openly acknowledge. When you kill someone, it is about power. I don't want any "group of my peers" feeling or thinking for a second they have the authority or right to play with a life. That is supposed to be the reason we call the murderers the bad guys.
Now, this plays into the idea of justice. Would I want someone dead who killed my loved one? No doubt, but that loved one is gone. They reduced me to their depravity. I might beat them to within an inch of their life, but I'd rather them have to spend the rest of theirs in servitude and captivity, which incidentally our system can't do right either. Hell, and for shits and giggles maybe they can string them up for me to beat on down the line, despite how little this does stifle aggressive feelings. I can say confidently I don't have a short-sided view and know for a fact that other reasonable people can at the very least understand. What makes the right-wing Nazi's, so named, unable to do the same? How is one comfortable with halting their "reasoning" at " an eye for an eye?" Why are anti-abortionists never the ones who know more than how to print out big botched pictures? Why are anti-drug and sex people always the ones who should be working on getting fucked and high the most? Instead of learning, just complaining, and they drag our society down with them.
What cures self-loathing and deceit? I've come up with an overabundance of correct information. So much information that were you to try and ignore it you'd force your head to explode. There's support, but who want's to spend any time around the asshole trying to restrict their lives and control them though? It's no surprise that people who are introduced to all the "taboo" things early do tremendously well at acting maturely and handling them. Is it just too late to introduce these people into a mellowed out worldview? The problem gets worse though. You can't just show someone a door that admittedly has steps behind it and walk away. What cures laziness? You have to find it in yourself to know how to support what you say and make a reasoned statement. You have to be prepared to do more than defend your position on Fox news (you crazy random bitches......Ms. California, dining room table woman, "awakened the sleeping giant" woman, Michelle Bachmann.....none of whom deserve a place at the kid's table, let alone a national news syndicate.
Why is the government so fucked? You, idiot America. Your representatives have the same character flaws, same naive passions, same hatred for life and freedom that you do. Religious nut bags who bring their bigoted and petty grievances to places of power pretending it doesn't boil down to making money through exploitation and social engineering. You allow the media to play you. You refuse to find out for yourself. You refuse to stand up for the things you really do want, and would markedly improve human welfare, and you let them win. The only reason there are "two sides" in every debate is because we enable the know-nothings.
The obvious thing is the start from the religious standpoint. But a person had to come first before they were infected with that disease. What kind of person is it who would be so vehemently opposed to policies and actions that can be proven to work, or worse, actively destroy and disrupt what they were put in place to serve? This I feel is the heart of the "stupidity." I don't have to guess that reasonable people, whether they agree with my "philosophical" points or not, can hear me explain an issue and at the very least understand why I hold it. I don't just rant off a list of things I hate, say you should hate them too, and we go off happily into the night. Here watch, I'll even give you an example.
Take the death penalty. I'm against it. The system we have in place sends disproportionate levels of black people to sit on death row. We have prosecutors that withhold evidence for the sake of sending innocent men to death row, and we have confirmed that in fact innocent people have been put to their deaths. A frequented reason like "it deters future murders" has been shown to be so patently ridiculous, it's insulting to hear someone even bring it up. And finally, as a society, I think the messages we send are more powerful than people want to openly acknowledge. When you kill someone, it is about power. I don't want any "group of my peers" feeling or thinking for a second they have the authority or right to play with a life. That is supposed to be the reason we call the murderers the bad guys.
Now, this plays into the idea of justice. Would I want someone dead who killed my loved one? No doubt, but that loved one is gone. They reduced me to their depravity. I might beat them to within an inch of their life, but I'd rather them have to spend the rest of theirs in servitude and captivity, which incidentally our system can't do right either. Hell, and for shits and giggles maybe they can string them up for me to beat on down the line, despite how little this does stifle aggressive feelings. I can say confidently I don't have a short-sided view and know for a fact that other reasonable people can at the very least understand. What makes the right-wing Nazi's, so named, unable to do the same? How is one comfortable with halting their "reasoning" at " an eye for an eye?" Why are anti-abortionists never the ones who know more than how to print out big botched pictures? Why are anti-drug and sex people always the ones who should be working on getting fucked and high the most? Instead of learning, just complaining, and they drag our society down with them.
What cures self-loathing and deceit? I've come up with an overabundance of correct information. So much information that were you to try and ignore it you'd force your head to explode. There's support, but who want's to spend any time around the asshole trying to restrict their lives and control them though? It's no surprise that people who are introduced to all the "taboo" things early do tremendously well at acting maturely and handling them. Is it just too late to introduce these people into a mellowed out worldview? The problem gets worse though. You can't just show someone a door that admittedly has steps behind it and walk away. What cures laziness? You have to find it in yourself to know how to support what you say and make a reasoned statement. You have to be prepared to do more than defend your position on Fox news (you crazy random bitches......Ms. California, dining room table woman, "awakened the sleeping giant" woman, Michelle Bachmann.....none of whom deserve a place at the kid's table, let alone a national news syndicate.
Why is the government so fucked? You, idiot America. Your representatives have the same character flaws, same naive passions, same hatred for life and freedom that you do. Religious nut bags who bring their bigoted and petty grievances to places of power pretending it doesn't boil down to making money through exploitation and social engineering. You allow the media to play you. You refuse to find out for yourself. You refuse to stand up for the things you really do want, and would markedly improve human welfare, and you let them win. The only reason there are "two sides" in every debate is because we enable the know-nothings.
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