Syrian Intervention for Fun and or profit.

There is an old PSA about the right time to talk to your children about relationship abuse.  It’s a steady shot of a man and his son in a diner, sitting uncomfortably as a couple have a fairly one-sided argument in which the man screams at her, degrades her with name calling and intimidation, and then ultimately decrees “We’re leaving;” pulling her out of the diner by the arm.  The father does nothing to intervene or assist the woman, who will likely get a few black eyes when she goes home with her date.  The ad then poses the question: “When should you intervene in an abusive relationship?” or some pointed question similar to that one.  It zooms in closer on the son, who looks like he just realized his father isn’t Superman, and says, “Right now.”  The idea is simple: end the abusive cycle by immunizing your own children against it.  I can’t seem to find the PSA anywhere online, probably because it’s a terrible PSA, and all PSAs should be banished to the festering wasteland of awful and obvious messages cobbled together by hack directors who couldn’t get a job directing a Ronco Food Dehydrator infomercial.

Setting the Example in the Racial Discussion

In an earlier post, I stated that referring to a desire to have a smaller government and fewer entitlement programs as a libertarian ideology, not a racist ideology.  I also stated that referring to someone who doesn’t think the government should be helping anyone as “racist” is the equivalent of coughing and saying “douchebag” during a debate.  We’ve gotten to a place in our society where we now consider all conservatives to be racist because they want smaller government, which is not the way to have a conversation about race in the United States.  The problem with labeling people who are ignorant as “racists” is that everything then becomes a racist act, and not all insensitive, ignorant, or stupid act or statement is racist. I hesitate to write this, because insensitivity and ignorance are extremely problematic in our culture, and allow us to be apathetic towards suffering, social injustice, and institutionalized oppression of minority classes in the U.S.  I am not advocating for racists.  Fuck those guys (and girls.)  I am advocating for setting the proper example, and avoiding extremism/line-in-the-sand drawing.  While I will always believe that none of us are truly free until all of us are free, it isn’t helping anything to instantly label well-meaning but misinformed people, or people who have a different opinion as to the role of government as “racist.”

My Dad, the armchair pundit: The 2014 Midterm Elections

Every so often, my dad, lifelong Republican with an odd mix of entitlement protection, gun rights, and personal responsibility beliefs, will make bold political predictions based on nothing other than his own experiences and opinions, which are rooted in no political science.  Often times, these prophecies are apropos of nothing.  He’s the anti-Nate Silver. I’ll do my best to faithfully recreate his claims here.  This may become an ongoing series.

"On Civil Disobedience" Redux: Manning and Snowden

Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden are two whistleblowers, accused by the United States government of conspiring to release classified information to the world that exposed the actions of the Armed Forces, and the extent of the US Government’s data collection policies.  The reaction to both has been a mixture of labeling them heroes, and labeling them traitors.  The truth is, Snowden had the more damning information, but Manning is the more honorable of the two.

"We Need A Dialogue About Race" - Meta interactions do no good.

Don’t get me wrong; the United States populace needs to have an honest discussion with itself about race, but the royal “we” cannot have that discussion until we understand how to confront these things in an open and honest way.  What we are getting now is neither honest, nor a discussion.  In fact, we aren’t really even getting dishonest dialogue about race.  We are getting chatter about having a discussion or dialogue about race, which is way worse than just saying, “Ah, fuck it.  Our institutions are still mired in the racial inequality of the past, and until we all fulfill George Carlin’s prophecy of forming a beautiful, non-racial, caramel colored population, we aren’t going to move past thinking white culture is superior, black culture is inferior, and stay out terrorists and Spanish speaking people.”  Why is it worse?  Because it’s hope out of Pandora’s box when it comes to those who really TRULY just want to live equally and focus our energy on solving other problems like war and poverty.  The problem is, we are looking to the wrong people to start the dialogue, we aren’t even talking about race, and the terminology we are using is non-starter language designed by people who want to not talk about anything.

The George Zimmerman Verdict: How Not to React.

There are plenty of facts about the Zimmerman Trial and Verdict that are disturbing.  Here’s a chain of events that is not in dispute by either the prosecution or the defense: George Zimmerman spotted Trayvon Martin, thought he looked “suspicious,” called 9-1-1, was told not to chase Trayvon Martin, did so anyway, confronted him, fought with him, and then shot and killed him.  I feel like Kevin Bacon in “A Few Good Men” describing the Code Red to the Jury during opening arguments. Let’s be clear about the fact that the entire interaction was precipitated by a guy who decided, against the advice of law enforcement, to chase down a person who wasn’t doing anything wrong.  If he had just turned up ‘Winger’ on the 80s station, we’d never have heard of either Trayvon or Zimmerman.  This pretty much makes him a shitty human being.  In the aftermath of Zimmerman’s acquittal, much of the country was outraged, and a multitude of responses were registered, including lamenting the United States government, political grandstanding, and egotism.  You’re welcome to have an opinion about the outcome, and welcome to react to a heavily publicized case.  Don’t do it like an absolute moron.

The wrong way to be right: Tim Wise is the worst kind of correct

A few years ago, I was in graduate school in Columbus, Ohio, working at a small, private, liberal arts institution that had decided to go sick with its staff development budget and hired Tim Wise to speak to all the student staff members.  He spoke for about an hour, and discussed race in the United States, and the necessity for affirmative action, race conscious laws, and ways to even the playing field in a system that is inherently biased in favor of the dominant class, A.K.A. white people.  I was completely engrossed.  I must say, I had been considering, for a time, the notion that maybe we needed to take our foot off the pedal when it came to affirmative action, and that plenty of laws and practices were so slanted in favor of minorities that they actually became something like “reverse racism.”  As it turns out, and through a couple of decent stories and turns of phrase, Mr. Wise was able to convince me of the contrary.  I walked out of the speech and hopped on Amazon, wanting to purchase his book “White Like Me” to further engage myself in his discussions about race in the United States.  As the years passed, and I hopped on to the twit-o-sphere, I saw that Mr. Wise had a twitter account.  He was such an engaging speaker, and his books were so encouraging for young white people who wanted to make a change in the United States that I figured the account would be full of commentary about the world at large, and nuggets of wisdom about the institutional racism inherent in our society.  I don’t remember first following him, but as I peruse his twitter feed, I realize, he is a colossal asshole.  He’s not wrong about much of what he is speaking about, but he chooses the most tone-deaf, holier-than-thou way to convey his message, and it’s completely off-putting.  Judging by his interactions with some solidly leftist twitter followers, I’m not the only one who believes this to be true.

Scheduled Posts

As part of an effort to get me to actually post more on this blog, since at least 1100 times, people have been intrigued enough to click over to it, I'm going to start doing regular posts, and trying my best to create some type of schedule, which could change or be scrapped in an instant if I find that others really don't like it.

Mondays: Entertainment/Sports/TV/Movies or something
Wednesdays: Dorky rants about the English Language
Thursdays: Politics/News/World Events

As always, please post in the comments section.  Call me a dickhead, tell me I'm as ugly as my opinions, anything.  Hurl your empty liquor bottles at me as a way to exorcise your personal demons, electronic-style.

Born in the U.S.A. is Patriotic, but not the way Slacker thinks.

I received a Slacker Radio email today, July 3^rd, promoting the 33 Greatest All-American Divas, Classic Springsteen, and 4^th of July radio stations.  I almost always just delete emails from Pandora, Slacker, Spotify, and the like, but anything that references my buddy Bruce, I’ve gotta read.

Overworked, Under-appreciated, and Unemployed in America - The Argument for Inefficiency

In the United States, we don’t have an unemployment problem. We have an underemployment problem and an overworking problem. The problem with our economy is it is built to run cleanly, solidly, and with as little overhead as possible.  We have an efficient capitalist society (don’t worry, this won’t be a full on socialist rant) that trims off the excess, and pulls us down to the lowest common denominator.  This is seen as a good thing.  It keeps businesses offering goods and services for the lowest prices around – they make money, we save money.  In theory, it works to perfection.  In actuality, when we talk about trimming off the excess, we aren’t talking about buying too many parts to make our widgets.  What we are talking about is trimming off the excess jobs.  What we are talking about is trimming off excess workers.  We are talking about trimming excess people.  This is what efficiency does to our society, and this lack of specificity sterilizes our society from what is happening to the “last in/first out” of us.  We need less efficiency, because it benefits all of us – the workers, corporations, and government included.

A Modest Proposal: We Need To More Quickly Jump To Prejudicial Conclusions

**Before you read, if you think what follows is to be taken at face value, then you, faceless internet reader, do not know me, a faceless internet poster. If you weren't aware, "A Modest Proposal" is a reference to Jonathan Swift, satirist. Carry on.**

I think it’s time we take a look in the mirror, America.  Let’s look at our big, beautiful, pudgy faces, probably smeared with a combination of chocolate and bacon grease, our hair a little askew, some type of bad mustache with a few stray hairs, and ask ourselves, when did we change?  When did we become something different than who we used to be? We never used to accept news coverage that was this shoddy, this rote, and this lacking in information.  As a country, we used to demand MORE.

As a country, do we really want to become the type of people who are afraid – and that’s what it is: FEAR – to jump to conclusions, and make wildly speculative, semi-to-fully racist accusations based on nothing other than our own internal prejudices and fears?

The argument against Gay Marriage, and for GLBT equality under the law (really!)

A few months back, I wrote a piece about how to reduce abortions, including strengthening adoption funding and birth control in the US.  Basically, what I said was that no one really likes abortions, no one celebrates them, and no one wants them to happen in record numbers.  Making them illegal won’t work, and but making them safe, legal, and cheap isn’t a great option at preventing them, either.  I wasn’t really looking at abortion from the moral perspective, just as an issue that we’d all like to reduce the instances in which it occurs.  Well, now it’s time for round two, only this time, with Gay Marriage.

I’m about to make two seemingly contradictory statements, and then I’m going to show how they don’t have to be contradictory.  One is, on its face, wildly socially conservative, and one is wildly socially liberal, and I believe them both:

1. I believe that gay and lesbian people should have the exact same rights as heterosexual people, including with regard to benefits for uniting in love in the eyes of the Government.
2. I don’t think that the government should recognize Gay Marriage.

 Everyone ready? You may now begin to freak out.

Our Abortion Debate - Nothing to Hang Your Hat On. Or coat.

This past Tuesday was the 40^th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision on the case of Roe vs. Wade, legalizing abortion in the United States.  We’ve spent countless hours since then ripping ourselves apart at the straw man argument of all or none: should there be free, legal, and available abortions at all times, or should we outlaw them in the name of the sanctity of life?  These two distinctly opposite arguments have produced countless spider-webbing discussions that have produced their own discussions as well: When does life begin? Does an embryo, and the stem cells contained therein count as a person? Do all babies, in fact, wanna get borned? Here’s what we aren’t doing: working to eliminate the need for abortions.

Off-Target Gun Debate

We’re having the wrong debate about guns right now.  Despite pleas from both sides to avoid politicization of the horrible events in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and then accusations lobbed at one another about the other side’s politicization of the event, we are having the wrong debate.  Schools are not the real world and either stance, more gun control or less gun control in society, isn’t applicable to the circumstances of this incident.

Less Change, Even Less Hope

A few weeks ago, when I learned of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, I made a fairly bold statement.  Of course, I did it via Twitter, so it was lost in a sea of dick and fart jokes, as well as updates like “making dinner and watching American Horror Story!” Suffice to say, it’s not like it hit the twitterscape…verse…osphere with the resounding hydrogen bomb-level explosion I’d hoped.