The Power of the Post

Tags

political discourse, stupid people

Yeah, you’ve heard it all before. So have I, since I actually preach this message rather consistently. But alas, I forget. So, I figure you might as well.

REFRESHER COURSE ALERT!!!

Recently I got a friend request from a dude I recognized immediately as a nut. His Facebook icon was “Ted Cruz in 2016.” As I said, a nut.

Now, I should know better, but I could hardly turn down the chance to tell him he was an idiot before he unceremoniously “defriended” me could I? So I hit, the friend button and began a rather torturous journey into  lala land or the land of the not-quite-right-in-the-head folks.

I picked up a good half dozen to eight “defenders of the stupid” and proceeded to get into a number of fights immediately. As one would expect, all the trite Fox/crazy right memes came to the fore. Since most of the arguments were on gun rights, I got the usual, “guns don’t kill people”, and criminals aren’t gonna obey the laws, and variations on those themes.

After lengthy logical argument and citing of actual facts, I was confronted with the usual right wing nothingness. One guy just posted funny pictures and called me Sherry McMoron and quote, “liberish”, as if that sealed the deal on my inconsequentialism.

And the point is, that when people are “out there in the ether” there is no point in argument. They aren’t capable of arguing, except for a “you stupid troll” between burps from the beer guzzling.

When you see somebody who is absolutely clueless, beware. You think you can patiently start at A and proceed slowly and deliberately to Z and when you are finished they will smile, and say, “I get it now. Thank you, I’m going to read more carefully from now on.”

But they don’t. They say, “you stupid troll,” and scratch their nether regions, smile and the mini thrill and reach for another Budweiser.

This will always happen no matter your level of debate and logic skills. And the reason is simple, if not understood by most. It’s not you. It’s not your argument. It’s their brain.

Study after study shows that the conservative brain is a brain that lives in fear of the bad world it is surrounded by. It cannot make sense of it all, and it feels threatened. Simple answers that package their fear and put it away is what they yearn for and gravitate toward. The are frightened and they are insecure in this big world. Small and simple answers that assure them that all will be right, captures them faster than any fact or logical deduction ever could.

They will cling to what is familiar, reassuring, and safe every time over logical argumentation that leaves them feeling insecure and unsure. It is not how they want to think, it’s how their brains function. It’s called compartmentalization. It allows the victim to ignore all contrary information and when necessary isolate contradictory beliefs behind walls that keep the conflict at a minimum. (I believe in creationism, while at the same time encourage my niece to get gene therapy for her cancer diagnosis, never bringing to the fore that gene therapy is a result of evolutionary biological research.)

Eventually we all come to realize that “there is no point” in arguing with such types, but we continue, at each new juncture, and with a different right wing nut case in the cross hairs, we fall victim to trying again. And we get the same result.

Lest we be declared insane for trying to get a different result from the same activity, we have to finally admit that such is a waste of time.

EXCEPT THAT. . . .

Facebook is a unique forum. We all have friends on Facebook, and they exist in a variety of forms–relatives, old old friends we have moved far from, new friends, eternal friends, coworkers, associates, church friends, organization friends, and the list goes on to infinity. These myriads of “friends” bring forth a variety of individual talents.

I am graced with some great Facebook friends and I owe them a debt of gratitude. They have taught me so very much. Their passion, while not necessarily mine, has served to inform me on many a subject I would be unaware of without them.

I would never know how cruel and awful housing small whales and dolphins  in small tanks is, alone and without their families. I would never know about the issues regarding Monsanto, and Tyson and other vile corporate entities that endanger our health in the chase for the almighty dollar. I’ve had my theological foundation firmed, and loosened by a couple of theologians I know.

I could go on for a couple of pages. You see, I know all sorts of people in the Facebook way, and by and large, I’m enriched from the experience. The people I disagree with, remain small, but more importantly they are vehicles for dissemination.

What?

Here’s where I tie this all together. . . .

While it is unprofitable in general to get into discussions with right wing crazies en mass, isolated encounters in otherwise  friendly terrain, does serve a purpose. And that purpose is, they give one the excuse to lay out all the arguments that you can muster on an issue.

Why?

Rather than be the usual waste of time that we have encountered in large groups, in small ones, you don’t get overwhelmed. Much like big corporations make it hard to be sued by “papering” the opposing counsel with so many requests, demands, depositions, discovery, endless motions and so forth, when six or eight people are all ganging up on you, well, most people don’t have TIME to respond properly.

Responding improperly does more harm than good.

Why does this matter?

Because in every group, there are outsiders, people who live on the fringe, reading but almost never uttering a word. They are not crazies, but they aren’t politically aware either. They are busy living their lives, and barely bump into most of the political and social issues of our day. They do however, at leisure, read posts and comments, blogs and so forth.

They are not ideologically motivated. They are bright people, normal in every sense of the world except they aren’t much interested in the body politic or how it functions. Until it waylays them personally (and many it never will), they don’t get involved.

But, they do read. They do comprehend. They do get logic, and they do check out links. They will listen to a cogent argument and if not offset by superior information going in the other direction, they will agree with you.

They won’t deliver fliers in their neighborhoods or make phone calls for a candidate, but they will vote (if not too inconvenient) and they will vote consistent with the facts as they have come to understand them.

They are your audience always.

You have to trust that they are there. They are, I assure you. Every once in a while  I get a message or email from one of them, telling me they have “lurked” for some time, and agree or have been led to agree to this idea or that.

Those are the people you are writing and talking to. They don’t have time to do the research you do, but they appreciate it. They can tell the difference between your citation to reputable sources and the other sides reliance on “common sense”.

They recognize that common sense to the right wing is akin to “what I want to believe is true because it makes me feel better.”

Your efforts are thus not offered in vain. Remember that you talk not only to who is directly before you, but all those who are within eye or earshot.

What it means for me personally, is to try to remember, (no matter how angry I often become at intransigent thinking), that calm, factual offerings are much more successful that bombast and snappy retorts that serve to explain only how loathsome the right wing fanatic can be.

So I thank all those who have taught me so much on Facebook. And I am thankful for Facebook which provides that unique platform allowing me a cornucopia  of “friends” that insure a range of opinions, talents, passions, and hard facts.

The post is powerful, more powerful than you think. So do be mindful of the audience out there, ephemeral as it may appear. This is your job. They depend on you for accurate information on an unimaginably wide source of things. Surely you can offer your services on a few of them?

Make a difference!

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It Was a Hell of a Ride, But, Dude, It’s Over

Tags

paternalism, power, racism, sexism, white privilege

I don’t recall as a pubescent girl, ever much thinking that I’d have rather been a boy. All that stuff in their pants looked rather homely to me as a child. As I grew older and wiser, I figured worrying that my boobs wouldn’t be “perky” enough was small potatoes versus worrying that my pecker wouldn’t pass muster either in the locker room or in a ladies vagina.

And then there was hair loss later in life, and well, I don’t pretend to know whether men obsess over chest hair or not, but it just seemed that their burdens were not worth the exchange.

I suppose it all goes back to caves, or whatever suitable accommodations were “home” to our ancestors on the plains of Africa. Men are for the most part stronger which makes them quite useful for things that require brute strength. Ironically men who work with their hands and use their bodies as their machines are fairly looked down upon by their Madison Avenue brothers as having not “made it” in the wicked world of power and wealth today. But it was the originator most likely of men’s superior classification.

In an event, men ruled, and that is pretty much everywhere you look across the blue marble we call home. In the only parts that counted (by those same men), white men ruled all others, including men of color. And it was all seen as good and well, as evidenced even by major religious scriptures, who took it for granted that men pretty much ruled naturally and with God’s imprimatur.

Somehow, even allegedly smart white men failed to see that Jesus rather turned that cart upside down when he suggested that women were, *gasp* capable of preaching the “good news” of the coming Kingdom.

Things have gone on in that vein for some time. Well, to be honest, it has gone on through most of recorded time. I’d hazard a guess that even where women ruled it had more to do with “blood lines” than competence, and many sturdy men were gathered around such a lady to “guide” her to correct decisions.

It continues today, but the battle is now fully engaged, and white men are getting a bit nervous.

Women have always been angry, but anger needs direction and some sort of power base to be effective. Only in the 20th century do we begin to see real movement to question the paternalism that has been the history of women’s life in America and the world.

Another aspect is now apparent as well. While white men were busy running the world and making obscene amounts of money to feel “successful”, the rest of the planet was busy reproducing like rabbits. Left with so much extra time on their hands, they played in the garden of rare delights also known as ladies private parts. And the birth rate has skyrocketed and well, do the math.

Ms. Lindsey is correct. If you look around white dude, well, I can understand why you are shakin’ in your boots and clingin’ to your guns. Your days are numbered and no amount of prancing around neighborhoods with your semi-automatic penises strapped across your chest is gonna make any difference to that.

You are a not dying, but certainly about to become wheelchair ridden, mere shadows of yourselves.

Now, I don’t say this with glee necessarily. After all, I’m married to one of y’all.  I rather like him too, so I have no ill-will in general to white men, just everything mostly that they stand for.

We can all pretty much agree that you have done a lousy job of runnin’ things. I mean yeah, you build a lot of stuff, but it seems for the only purpose of blowin’ it all up eventually. You guys can’t stop arguing about whose penis is bigger and if you ever bothered to ask us, you’d know that has nothin’ much to do with it.

Yet you persist.

And our sons and daughters and well, all of us suffer for your insatiable desire for bloodshed. There just ain’t enough hills for all of ya to be kings on.

So I can get why you are so angry. And like petulant children who can’t have ice cream for breakfast, you take it out on everyone you come across.

What you all are in need of is some basic psychoanalysis. I mean your ability to blame it on anybody but yourselves is shocking. It’s the black, brown, female, immigrant, wrong religion, youth, liberal, educated, government, et ceteras into oblivion’s fault for your troubles. A white man never looks in the mirror and sees the cause of his own disaster.

Anyway, you get all out there in your twisted but fact-less minds, and become conspiracists of one sort or another. We’ve visited the FEMA camps, and gun confiscations, the Muslim Brotherhood infiltration to death. We’ve been birthered to death and delved into the drug-induced supposed gayness of the black guy in the WHITE house.

We have tried to talk sense to your sense of impending loss, we really have, but past a certain point, crazy is too crazy to hear let alone understand. You are like the child who attempts to solve his unhappiness by making public scenes of displeasure at the world.

Unfortunately, you’re methodology includes the killin’ of plenty of innocents as you strike out in anger and frustration that you can’t always be first in line and get the best cupcake.

It’s over dude.

Do the math.

You are like the king who rules over a kingdom of “others”. Once his army became “others” too, it was only a matter of time, until they learned to count. Suddenly it was lookin’ a bit grim for the king.

Some of you have taken to claiming that you are the one’s being victimized now. Oh, if only that were true. We’d surely come to your aid if it were true. But it’s not.

Nothing is more pathetic than hearing a white dude proclaim that he is being discriminated against. Dude you were born with a white penis, what more could a person want? With it came all the entitlements and assumptions that have always attached to a new born white male. There is no “stretch” to thinking of you in a new more powerful way. It’s business as usual for you.

You can’t fathom how that is not what it is for the rest of us. We have to first convince somebody(s), that we can do the job, that we are smart enough, strong enough, carry the right emotional schema, are not unsuitably encumbered by family and obligation, and a host of other things. Women must explain that their menses won’t cause them to divulge the nuclear codes nor will “pillow talk”. Black and browns must assure that they have enough of the “cultural”requirements to govern. Remember, they weren’t “raised” the same as white dudes, which has become by their decree the cultural norm.

And since the numbers, (damn them) simple are what they are, white dudes are gonna lose no matter what. You can’t shoot it, marry it, enslave it, or stick it in a company town. It’s just gonna swallow you up.

So you lash out.

Do you realize that almost all crimes of mass murder are committed by white men? Dude, this endears you to no one. Let us know that your brains are falling out because you can’t be king any more, and we will help. If you don’t, well, the end is your demise one way or the other.

But please, stop trying to take us with you.

Is I Crazy? You Decide.

Tags

economics, evolution, humans, society

Oh, boy have I unleashed the dogs of war. Offering up such a juicy steak to those incredibly warped individuals who don’t think that I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread. Handing them an eviscerating tool of great power–is I crazy? Twice?

Trust me, letting them think they have me at their mercy is just my way of inviting them into my lab-bore-a-tory said the spider to the fly.

Is I?

As a child, I laid upon my bed and wondered was anyone in the world like me? I feared not, and in the era of peer-pressured sameness that we all strove to reach, I quivered. Was I normal?

Now, at the threshold of agedness ( I shall never be a “senior” or and old person I swear), I lay upon my bed and wonder if there is anyone in the world like me. I fear so, and in an era of eccentricism, I quiver. I don’t wanna be normal.

I think my prayers are answered. Were answered, or were ignored but I was just lucky that my prayers were actually the way things are? One of the above.

I’m a nut. I believe in all sorts of things that you no doubt think foolish.

For instance.

I wrote about this before so bear with me. In college I took a logic course and was asked to write a response to this statement: Would you be willing to pay for the support of an individual whose only requirement was to read? In other words can I fathom a world in which not everyone must work for a living?

Buckminster Fuller suggested an answer:

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”

See,  I went to college. But not to think. I went to earn a living. And I did very well, thank you very much. I set myself up for a gentle life, not working too hard, in a reasonably decent setting. I had tons of friends and colleagues. I made good money and enjoyed the perks of professional work. I needed to make a living and by all standards, I succeeded rather well.

But that’s not what should be or could be. Too many good minds are wasted in menial work of all sorts, professional and otherwise. These minds might be better used if we just let them think.

I think it would all sort itself out over time. I mean if you aren’t a good thinker, then thinking would become both boring and well, mindless at some point. One would ache to get one’s hand on a piece of wood or a pie crust. And one would move to that. We would do what pleases us and revs up our juices. It would be sane.

Trouble is, most of us aren’t willing to pay for others to do what seems pointless to many. But thinkers think about things and thinking about things leads to ideas and ideas lead to schematics and drawings and experiments and prototypes, and, well you see where this goes.

New stuff is discovered and people who work with their hands for pleasure make this new stuff. And thinkers and paper pushers and bus drivers enjoy this new thing, which makes their lives a wisp easier or more pleasant. What’s not to like here?

Still, tight asses will complain. They will suspiciously stare at the thinker and want proof that their money is being well spent. No lobster sir, be satisfied with bean soup you grifter! Yes, they will not trust the process, because they are all about making sure they ain’t bein’ ripped off.

Hey nothing is perfect. Somebody is always scammin’ the system. Hell people go to great lengths to set themselves up as pillars of the community when they are stealin’ ya blind. Humans are very human no matter the system.

But if you are of the mind that humans are in a process of evolving, then shouldn’t we pursue avenues that point to evolution in our THINKING as well as in our technology? Shouldn’t we be nobler and kinder in our systems of governing, pushing us mere mortals to be better than we think we can be?

Didn’t Jefferson and Adams and Madison and all the rest focus on the horizon and see a future better than any before them? Didn’t they offer us the messiness of democracy because we would screw it up surely as humans, but we would have something worth struggling for rather than languishing in the monarch-subject model?

Why do we keep beating up on the defenseless? Look, a cursory examination of physical types of human being proves rather clearly that genetics is a tricky and sometimes comical thing. I’ve seen people put together in what looked to be no more than random cutting and pasting of various limbs. Head too small, body growing outward as one descended, legs like stumps without the merest reference to ankles?

If some physical jokes pass as the range of genetic drift allowed within the species,why is it so hard to realize that not everyone has inside their cranium the makings of even a good basic biologist? Some people are dumb. Some are thoughtless. Some are unable to walk and chew gum, or see beyond their own nose.  Why must they be conformed to some job to which they are ill-suited in almost all respects?

Let them find their way, and then make up the slack. Don’t they have enough to contend with? What must it be like to realize that one got shortchanged in the brain functioning department? To think but not to reason well? Ah, that’s the rub.

Out of common decency let these people be! A decent home, nutritious food, medical care, education based on interests. Do this to our less fortunate and embrace them as providing a meaningful richness to the fabric of humanity and move on.

Stop the whine. Yes, uber conservative with your compartmentalized brain and your rigid sense of right and wrong, I’m talking to you. You have worked all your life. Nobody gave you a thing (I know you believe this although it’s far from true). You can’t retire because you don’t have enough of whatever it is you think essential.

But that is not the only model of living available. There is nothing to be ashamed of if for any reason you can’t hoe the row established by the not so bright but physically strong average human. There is a place for us all, and if we do it right, we will be doubly enriched by the offerings of all these oddball humans who contribute to the human family diversity.

Sometimes people just make damn bad decisions. Should they pay forever? Or can you cut them some slack and help them exist in what’s left of their lives? Can ya?

That damn Protestant work ethic and those bootstraps will be small comfort in the grave. It did not serve you especially well quite honestly. There are other ways.

It’s a little bit socialistic I guess. And a bit psychosis.

That is. . . .

We participate in SoCS.

Women and Children First!

I heard that phrase in the context of the Paris shootings. The one at the store. Where hostages were taken. I was listening to Al Jazeera, and the commentator said, “among the hostages appear to be a number of women and children.”

A normal enough statement, one heard in many contexts. Fires for instance–first attend to the women and children the men are admonished by each other.

It sounds quaint.

It sounds sexist.

It sounds wrong.

Not that I don’t believe in taking advantage of every possible opportunity to get ahead in life, and being favored to survive is certainly one of those things. Can’t say I’d turn down the offer if it came to that. I’m a long way from being noble, so I probably would. Take advantage of the “women first” offer.

I’d no doubt try to lay it to something else. I’m old. I’m not agile like I used to be. I can’t swing from trees anymore. I deserve special treatment. Yeah, I can come up with a good excuse I figure, should I need to.

But it’s not right. I have to admit that. Like it or not, it’s not fair, not right, reeks of all sorts of bad things. It’s not stoic I know. Nor is it rational much.

It places a burden unfairly on one sex for no good reason. You can’t help being male, so why are you supposed to die first as some goofy sort of gallantry? Nobody believes that “fairer sex” crap any more.

Boy from the day you were born, know this–in case of emergency women and children have more right to live than you. Unless you’re disabled or feeble-minded. Or maybe not. If you aren’t healthy in mind or body, ain’t it better to cull the herd and save the fittest? Old ladies would not pass that test.

It’s harder to make an argument against not saving the children first. I can, sorta.

Look, nobody is here by special dispensation. We all were born from the union of a sperm and egg. All are destined to die. Plenty of babies die, plenty of fetuses die. Plenty of old people die, and all in between. There is no way to judge why somebody is worse off by being cut off in the “flower” of life. Heck one could argue that some don’t face as much suffering as the old have had to endure. That’s a good thing. Given none of us knows what happens “after”, heck dying might be the best of all worlds.

So you see, it really makes no sense. We need to stop this women and children first nonsense. We aren’t God, and it’s not our job. Yes, I realize that a toddler isn’t going to be too adept at making his way to the life boat, but then again when there is only a little space left, the toddler will fit and I won’t. It’s just how shit happens.

Yeah shit happens.

Kay Hagan, newly elected from North Carolina in 2008, wanted to take a swim in the Capitol pool. She was told it was male only, cuz some of the senators preferred to swim with their junk free of a suit. Can you believe that? 2008?

Kay Bailey Hutchinson was interviewed about it on UP with Steve Kornacki. She didn’t see it as a big deal. She thought you have to make a lot of allowances for these older men who are going through “the transition”.  You know, the transition? From being troglodytes to human beings? And exactly how many decades need this transition take you might ask?

Did you know that women, as late as the late 90’s were warned about getting into an elevator alone with Strom Thurmond, that dead-man-walking-racist-piece-of-shit? Then there was Robert Packwood. Does this crap never end?

Somebody posted on our high school alumni page, “what would you do over again if you could?”

That’s always an interesting question I think.

There are lots of answers you can give that sound so, well, intellectual or spiritual or some combination of both.

“All the stuff that happened, even the stuff that wasn’t pleasant contributed to who I am today. Who knows who I’d be if not for everything.”

Yep, I agree. It’s pretty much unknowable.

Still.

Others say,

“I’d not change a thing! It’s been a hell of a ride.”

Yep, I agree.

Still.

See the error of the above, or so it seems to me an error, is that it means you really haven’t grown much, emotionally at least. Don’t you want to take back time wasted with people you now know to be idiots? And people that turned out to be deep and thoughtful and nice? Wouldn’t you have liked to have spent more time with them?

I would.

I’d like to not have participated in any form of bullying, or being mean to anybody just cuz they weren’t in my “group”. I’d like to have been more my own person and not so much of a follower of the crowd. I’d like to have argued with teachers more. I’d like to have been more principled.

These insights come from age and experience. I’d like to think I’d grown some in the intervening years. I was a racist as a kid, because everyone I knew was, though that is no excuse. I’m less of one now, though no doubt I can still be taught a thing or two about being not-white.

I accepted that as a female my life was defined in certain ways. I don’t now, and I’d like to think that matters.

I thought God was a bizarre notion as literally enunciated in the King James Version of the bible. I think quite differently now that I know what a fundamentalist is, and that that version of God is, yes, pretty warped, but there is a vision that makes a lot of sense to me and that  heartens me immensely.

If I had it to do over again, I’d not go to law school but I would go to grad school. I’d have been a theologian or a philosopher I think. Don’t know where that path would have led, but I know one thing. There is no better place to live than in a college town. Anywhere.

An old friend of mine once told me that she had listed in her teenaged years, all her goals in life. Some twenty-plus years later, she was proud to say that her goals were the same. She thought that was a badge of some sort of maturity. I thought it was sad. To be that much older and to have no better goals than the ones you jotted down as a sixteen-year-old?

Save me from people who have no curiosity or breadth of vision. Bring me the dreamers, the wonderers. On them are built the future that I wish to inhabit. The rest? Oh gosh, they are still in the cave, still thinking that the shadows are the reality.

We can’t know who will be the Plato nor the fool. So messing with who lives and who dies should not be our prerogative either. We’re all just doing the best we can, and trying to avoid the troglodytes ya know?

 

 

 

 

Is It Part of Growing Older?

Tags

aging, good old days, illusions, life in the foothills

I’m greatly afraid that my generation has lost its collective marbles. I take comfort in the fact, that every generation at some point is spoken of this way. If I’m right, then we are doomed as a society, and that would displease me quite a lot. I’d hate for civilization to end on my watch.

A friend suggested that he thought we got a “pretty good high school education.” I spent more time in social studies and literature and thought the offerings mediocre (looking back from of course the lofty position of “higher” education), while he spent time in math and science and thought he got a rather good effort from his teachers.

The problem is one of perspective of course. Those that have nary opened a serious book since they paraded around the gymnasium in their blue gowns and little hats rather think they were “well-educated” since they have managed in most cases to chew gum and walk at the same time, which is, albeit for some a herculean effort.

Those that either attended a reputable university (all the TV preacher colleges excepted please), or those motivated by someone or something to learn on their own, have a better  perspective I would argue to decipher the puzzle.

If you mean, did I learn to read and write a simple enough declarative sentence, read road signs and interpret them correctly, follow the directions at the polling place (and be there in the first place), stand when I heard the National Anthem (unless I was flirting with Marxism at the time), and pay my taxes on time  even while cutting every corner I thought I might get away with, then yes, I was well-educated in high school.

If you mean, on the other hand, was I taught to read carefully, discriminatingly, and with a critical eye, was I taught to evaluate arguments, avoid straw men (what the hell were they?), reserve judgment until more facts were accumulated, heck define a fact from a feel-good facsimile, then no, I was not well-educated in high school.

The fact is that education, publicly at least, has probably always been the former, more or less.  We are required to attend school to accomplish this: (1) become “good” citizens however defined but including being law-abiding, honest (on the big things at least), voting (again at least on the big things), and willing, oddly enough, to offer one’s life up for the entity known as “one’s country”, and (2) to fill out simple forms and read directions such that one can do the above as well as become a good cog in the economic machine.

A certain number of those being so groomed are culled from the herd as “college material” and will go forth to don the white collars and supervise the rest, or provide other medium level services, such as accounting, teaching of the young, druggists, and so forth. They may at will also participate in low-level political jobs such as school boards, city councils, mayoral duties in smaller towns, and so forth.

The malady of which I speak or was alluding to in the title seems to affect mostly those who rather blithely go through life, thinking themselves both learned and intelligence with nothing but a faded high school diploma to assure them of their abilities. The malady?

Thinking that things were better “back when”.

I belong to a forum or two dedicated to the high school I once attended, and it is fraught with this sort of talk. The old neighborhood has “gone down”, it’s not longer “safe”. All the old hangouts are “torn down”. Many a sentence begins with “when we were kids” and then goes on to explain how we were safe, happy, well-fed, drug-free, healthy, robust, patriotic, god-fearing, obedient, polite, mannerly and so forth. By contrast today’s youth are none of the above, except  one’s own grandchildren which are all perfect and the best ever produced.

Of course there are myriad causes for the “decline”, but it usually breaks down to one of several causes: (1) Democrats, i.e., liberals, (2) Republicans, i.e., conservatives and tea party adherents, (3) lazy people, i.e., people of color including immigrants, (4) crime and drugs, attributed to number (3) and condoned by (1).

The life seen in retrospect was akin to Donna Reed and Leave it to Beaver rolled into one.

We seem to have forgotten a lot of real truth here. More than a little I would say. In fact while we remember the “good” we have forgotten the bad. In the 50’s and 60’s most children who contracted leukemia died.

Most African-Americans were trapped in ghettos in the north and Jim Crow lives in the south. But at least we could boast that the tax rate on high incomes was upwards of 90% something which causes gasps today as we have been taught that asking the rich to pay any taxes somehow inhibits their ability to “create jobs”. They created plenty back then. Today big agribusiness has driven most small farmers out of  business, while they reap farm subsidies alongside the natural resource people  adding to their billions of profits each year, but it’s somehow really bad to give people food stamps to eat. Those are handouts and wrong. Business subsidies are good. Those things remain with us from our youth.

Women made less on the dollar than men than they do now, back in the 50’s.

(The ad denotes that a man wearing these pants is so amazing that a woman can’t wait to be walked on by him). This is how our mothers were thought of. It is the role model many of us grew up with. We looked to “marry well” and have kids, and keep a clean house. My mother and her sister-in-law waged a silent battle to out do the other at Thanksgiving and Christmas meals and my grandmother joined in for who could be-ribbon their gifts with prettier and bigger bows.

How far back to you want to go?

Not as far, I gather to the great depression?
Not so far as World War II? Let’s skip that part about Russia and the Cold War, and practicing duck and cover under the desks. Let’s skip the Cuban Missile Crisis when even us kids walked on egg-shells knowing something awful was afoot.

If you stopped at the high school level, then you know so damned little about the reality of this country that you’re bound think that the 50’s were great and should be returned to.

That’s why when people who have some knowledge of the unconscionable things this country has done in the name of “security” or its economic interests”, naturally point out those evils, you feel attacked. You then come with your misunderstood “history” which was never really  true in the first place but was fed to you to make you a good obedient citizen.

You tell us your distorted recollection of the founding fathers, now lacquered with Christian fundamentalist fervor. You tell us of “unfettered free markets” which never were in the first place. You tell us of all the bullshit you’ve been fed since by a propaganda machine that claims it’s “fair and balanced” so you trust it. It’s all crap, but now you’re defending your “way of life” which was nothing like reality in the first or last place, but makes you feel relevant once again.

The fact is you don’t know the real world and don’t want any part of it. It makes you feel uncomfortable because it goes against all you remember from the past plus what Fox has told you to fear and blame. So you do, and you wail for the “good old days” when life was perfect, although it wasn’t, and you’re neighbor was beating his kids, and another was raping his daughter, and another was suffering with knowing he was attracted to other guys and had no one to confide in, and this family was fighting over money every day and night, and that mother was a secret drunk, and the lady across the street took pills to keep from screaming.

That’s real life. And it’s a damn shame that you are in your sixties and still have no clue. And you won’t learn because shit, it’s just way to easy to pretend, and blame somebody other than your little group. And the beat goes on, my friend, and you never grew up and you never will.

And that’s why your education sucked in high school, because nobody ignited the spark of curiosity in you, and you didn’t have it naturally. At that’s most of you. Thank god, apparently society functions like that. Or maybe it would be better if it didn’t.

I just know I’m not like most of you. Not better in a lot of ways. In a lot of ways worse. But man I cannot live in a dream world created for comfort. I cannot. It will not be part of growing older for me.

 

I’m Not Nice, and I Don’t Intend to Change

When I read this article, it kind of all became clear. What article? This one.

It’s another of those that I have read recently that redirects the finger back at the liberal establishment for the perpetuation of racism.

Not in the way you damn real racists believe. Not in your stupid, we are post-racial and I’m not a racist, and if you play the race card, you, damn libtard, are. No, not in that way.

Some one suggested to me a week or so ago that liberals are the real racists, and she meant it. I admitted that that was a possibility in some sense, but in reality that would be an oxymoron of sorts. Liberal by definition excludes judging whole classes of people on the basis of some preconceived and wrong notion. Find me an overtly racist liberal and I’ll tell you to try again to go find me a liberal, cuz honey you ain’t got one.

I no more think all Republicans are scum-sucking whack jobs than I think all Democrats are destined for ambrosia and petal-laden avenues in heaven. I come closer to the “all” epitaph when it comes to white men, but I can rattle off several dozen to whom it doesn’t apply starting with my own husband to really mean that either.

Liberals, according to the psychological and sociological testing done by a myriad of smart people in a variety of institutions of higher learning, are people who are more adventurous when it comes to the great unknown, would rather try something new than use something old, see a symbiotic relationship that extends to all peoples of all places and includes animals and the environment. Our tribe is humanity, so we naturally don’t group people into cells of otherness. We like facts and logic. We have values but we know that facts and truth trump our parochial notions, and values can and should change as we accumulate more knowledge about ourselves and the world.

I’d be the first to tell you I didn’t start out that way. My parents weren’t particularly political, in fact my mother could not have told you a single fact about any important issue before the body politic. My father had opinions, but they were such a mishmash of conflicting direction, that I gained little insight into the world of conservative vs. liberal from him either. What he was was a racist, and he made no bones about it, though in his later years he learned the correct “words”, no longer using the “N” word and substituting “black” uttered with an guttural blah at the beginning that left little to the imagination about his true feelings.

He learned that a distant cousin’s child had married an NFL player who happened to be African-American and he took great delight in announcing “that’ my cousin” as the player ran down the field. It was not meant as praise nor as puffery. It amused him to be considered “family” with a person of color. It was a joke you see.

It took me getting to college and beyond, and later working and living in close proximity to people of color before I began to see the light of reason. At first it was a bit of a surprise to realize that all people pretty much are the same. African-Americans became my friends, my best friends in some cases, and lovers in a few too. They became mentors and people I came to admire for their values and principles and accomplishments. The point was, African-Americans were just like me, just like you, possessed of all the grandness and foibles that are the lot of humans.

I’ve always been good at seeing the bigger picture. I soon realized that Asians and Hispanics, and all the Pakistanis, and Arabs were all the same too. That happened a very long time ago, and I’ve learned a good deal since then. I’ve been, to a small degree, a part of the continuing struggle to bring justice and equality to this country.  I’ve learned the ins and outs of strategy and the uses of the NAACP versus SNCC, versus the Panthers, and others as the means to the equality that we all see as necessary and inevitable.

What I have learned in my dotage is that being “nice” doesn’t work. I have talked to a lot of racists who tell me how they are not. They tell me about their black friends. They tell me that their black friends are like them. Bullshit. When you tell me how wonderful Ben Carson, Herm Cain, Alan West, Alan Keyes, and people like that are, and in the same breathe tell me that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are racists, well, you need say no more. You have no black friends. You may have African-Americans whom you work beside, but trust me, they think you’re a racist and probably call you a cracker behind your back. If you are trying to impress them by telling them that you would sure vote for that Ben Carson fellow, then they surely know what you really are.

There is no nice about this ugliness in America. And those of us who are white, well we have to stop the “please don’t riot, be nice like Dr. King taught you.” We don’t run this show. We only have a right to offer ourselves as “hands” to do whatever tasks need tasking. We must encourage other white folks to speak up and be loud too, but our task is not to lead but to confront racists and poke them continuously with the stick of recognition.

The fact of the matter is that a travesty is occurring in this country and has been going on for EVER. Young black men die because police and others can get away with it. And they know this. We cannot fall for the explanations and excuses and the sanctimonious “advice” offered by people who don’t live this experience, and don’t deal with people who do.

It is NOT enough to agree that people shouldn’t destroy property, and sympathizing about what drives people to extremes. That is bait, set out to deflect the conversation away from injustice to excuses for why the police can’t be blamed for the poor upbringing of black boys. Keep focused on the reality of black men being abused daily on our streets. Keep focused on women being pushed around and assaulted by men because they can. Keep the focus where it belongs.

I don’t give a damn whether Bill Cosby’s career is ruined. I care about the women who have come out in droves to repeat the awful things he did to them. THEY ALL CAN’T BE LYING.

I don’t give a damn whether A woman lied about being raped. I care about the thousands who have been and who are afraid to face a condemning society that till tries to make it her fault.

I don’t give a damn what the grand jury testimony was in any of these cases. The fact remains a trial should have ensued because trials ensue in 99% of all the cases they hear as long as cops aren’t involved as potential defendants.

I don’t give a damn if many, or even most cops are good and risking their lives every day. They chose the career after all. I care about every damn dirty one who uses his/her power to push around others because they feel ineffectual everywhere else.

Some of you have told me that I’m not nice. You are supremely right. I’m not. I’m not nice to hate and injustice and inequality. I’m not nice to power used against people to keep them small and beaten down. I’m not special. I’m part of that great sea of decent people who mostly are nice, because they don’t want to offend. Well I want to offend. And I’m not going to be the least bit shy in telling you that you are a damned racist when you use the words and codes that announce it to the world.

It just happens to be the penalty you pay for watching that shit-“news” show Fox. You don’t even know, that based on what you do say, you might just as well use the “N” word, we all know what you mean.

And when more white people stop being nice, as the article suggested, well, then we might just cause you to go inside your tiny little mind and slam the door and avoid the public where you don’t belong. And we can get on with the work of building a decent society where people come first, ALL people, not just your lily-white group.

PS: And all that crap about “I am not against immigrants just ILLEGAL ones” (oh the crime!) We get that too. It’s just code you idiot for all your fears and your real cowardice to state the truth of your bigotry.

 

 

 

 

Stupid Installment #4,592

A lady (no doubt a very nice one) took umbrage at my propensity to, as she put it, “insult” people when making a point. My insult is of course pointing out that some people are stupid. I don’t make the charge lightly, since it normally takes some work to be stupid, it doesn’t just come naturally to most people.

I was pointing out that while all people to a degree form opinions and then look for “evidence” to support their comforting thought, conservatives, given their mental makeup, do this to a greater degree than most people. An acknowledged expert in the field of motivation, Jonathan Haidt, professor of Ethical Leadership at NYU’s Stern School of Business says as much, though I dare say he is more diplomatic than I.

That was and is his point after all. The way to reach people who are intransigent when it comes to facts is to recognize that facts don’t sway people who have “gut” beliefs. You must appeal to the that which motivates their world view. In the case of conservatives it is things like tribalism, fears of the mean old world, and comforting religion. While liberals can fall victim to similar emotional motivations, I contend that they do so with less fervor and less often because liberals are by nature open to new ideas and things in general–thus a new explanation draws their attention.

I find conservatives for this reason often illogical and Haidt supports that conclusion. Logic and factual evidence don’t persuade, rather, hitting them where it counts (family, and values) does. If you can structure an argument that helps them to see the truth as supporting their tribal instincts or values as they see them, they are more likely to listen.

I myself, being who I am, don’t have the patience. I hit them between the eyes with the obvious, and then throw up my hands in disgust, and publish yet another diatribe on, you guessed it, “stupid people.”

The truth is, the word ignorant better describes such people, and I can tell you from experience that they loathe this term even more. Of course its the perfect word because all it denotes is that you are uninformed, and aren’t we all on more subjects than we care to mention? I am ignorant about architecture, and can barely tell my Ionic from Doric but fair a bit better with Corinthian I must say. I am ignorant when it comes to “reading” music. The list is long I assure you.

Yet somehow, to call a person ignorant is to deliver a most insulting blow.

Well, so be it.

People are known to prey on ignorance. These people are called grifters.

Sarah Palin is a perfect example. She is not a stupid person actually–in her own way she is quite brilliant. She set out to become wealthy and famous and has done a fine job of doing just that. She is much too lazy to actually learn much that doesn’t  have to do with her trade, so to normal people she appears buffoonish, but she rather relishes that since it plays to her real advantage.

Sarah’s true audience are other ignorant people, those who are “too busy” to read books, magazines of note, or listen to good public discourse. They are not fans of Mozart (a name they would recognize at least) but have never heard of Berlioz. They might vaguely have heard of Oscar Wilde, but couldn’t name a play he wrote if you held a hot poker to their eye. They probably remember that the name John Locke was mentioned back in high school history but would no doubt answer with the query, “wasn’t he one of the Pilgrims?”

The examples given above are just that examples, one could give an infinite number of similar “tests” of general knowledge and these folks would stare at you like you had grown a second head.

One reads of a time in this country when people went (as entertainment mind you) to listen to a lecture by William James. Parlors were filled in the evening with women and gents conversing on all manner of politics and religion. On the Continent they were called salons.

Today, “family rooms” are filled with kids playing video games, Dad watching football, and Mom making elaborately decorated cupcakes for the church sale on Sunday. Discussions relate to the latest shenanigans of the Kardashians, which team is likely to take the bowling trophy this season, and should they all watch the latest installment of Real Housewives of (insert city) tonight as a “family”. The kids are clamoring for Honey Boo Boo which sadly  I think left the air with me never having had the opportunity to learn what it was.

All this stems, at least as as I see it, from a quality of life that has mired in “diversion for diversion’s sake”. Since we don’t prize education for itself, but only as a means to an end (doctors and lawyers make “good livings”, i.e., more money), we don’t learn the joys of actually learning about the world, the history of it, or anything much else. We work to make money to buy things to help us forget that we hate our jobs, and hate much of what accompanies it.

We hate the commute, we hate the chores and the endless stops to pick up this and that. We hate the meetings, the bill paying, the yard work, the shopping. We hate the traffic, the noise, the crowds. We are physically exhausted from the effort. Is it any wonder that we actually walk into a supermarket and buy “partially boiled potatoes”? Seriously, we don’t have twenty minutes to spare to boil our own! Since cooking is a chore, best leave it to Prego, or McD’s, or somebody else (for a price), so that we, poor beaten down creatures that we are, can spend every single second RELAXING.

And relaxing has taken on the meaning of “make me forget how crappy life is”, so it must be “other”. It must be things that don’t require thinking or comparing, contemplating or contrasting. Relaxing should be mostly mind-neutral, requiring only the barest of attention. Fishing and scrapbooking, movies, and sports, all fit the bill equally well.

You would think we would reach another conclusion. But that would require thinking. If I am working my butt off 40 hours a week all for the privilege of falling exhausted into bed each night, ought I spend the few precious hours I have of LEISURE in figuring out how I can better my lot, how we all COLLECTIVELY can better or lots?

Or stated another way? Is somebody or something making my life like this because it makes their lives better?

Our time should be spent on understanding our government, what it is there for and what we can do to change it. We should understand the truth of our history (not the good citizen version but reality). We should understand the history of the world, not superficial dates and names. We should understand philosophy and explore the great themes of human existence. What is truth, beauty, and morality?

That is the stupidity of much of our citizenry. They have been lulled by a consumer “shiny object” to reach for the latest IPhone rather than Plato, a new recliner with built in snack tray rather than a book of poetry. None of these diversions are wrong, they are just the entirety of our leisure time and as such they serve to keep us stupid and ready prey to the Palins and the Murdocks and the Kochs of the world.

We may hear the news in the background, but we have been drugged by the seductive tones of “it’s all their fault” of all too many self-serving politicians and journalists and pundits who make a good living off misdirecting your anger and frustration. It causes you to do stupid things, like vote for an increase in minimum wages while at the same time voting for the guy who has campaigned against it. You don’t even know enough to know that. The sound bites just convinced you that Democrats are all socialists now and just give stuff to lazy people.

You know almost nothing of importance or value to the conversations we are not having but should. You have opinions and account them as good as facts. Truth is relative you claim to each of our life experiences, when everyone knows that the people who eschew that remark are the evangelical preachers who tell you that truth is never relative, but can be found perfected in a book that they will interpret for you, for a price.

As I pointed out to another. I would not give a rotted carcass of caribou about your stupidity if you would just have the nicety to keep your ignorant ass away from polling stations and let people who do care take care of the country. You would in the end thank us and be grateful for the better life you would have. But no, you meddle in affairs you have no idea about and make it infinitely harder for the rest of us to make the world a decent humane place.

Since I cannot logically argue for disallowing your vote, I can only rail at your failure to inform yourself of the truth. Get off your lazy dumb ass and learn something. I’m serious. You are stupid.