Sunday Morning Soapbox: Watch What You Want, Expect What You Watch

Hunger Games Tweets is a tumblr highlighting negative fan reaction to the character of Rue from the Hunger Games books being cast (correctly) as a black girl.

Just a taste, really.

It highlights the insidiousness of racism and just how easy it is to stumble into. Granted, not all of these people are racist; some of them are privileged white people. They don't hate black people: they don't expect black people exist.

Sunday Morning Soapbox: The re-view

Monday, I rambled about why I do reviews at all, but I had more unfocused bitching to do on the subject, but why ruin a perfectly good weekday? Welcome to Sunday Morning Soapbox.

Working on a boat, I notice that sometimes people consume media without ever processing it. I’ve had dumbasses on the boat who not only went to see Green Lantern in theaters, but also needed me to explain it to them afterwards and I--a person who has never seen that movie and likely never will--DID. It’s not that the plot was complicated or anything, it’s that this guy saw the movie and didn’t pay any attention to it; it was a series of bright lights and emotional moments that he wasn’t intellectually engaged in at all. It was a very mild hand job for his brain and after all the endorphins passed, he probably got a fucking hamburger and didn’t think of it again until the time was right for him to “me too” up in a conversation about it.

Ugh. It’s disgusting just to think about. Do not conquer stories; do not check off life experiences, declare them done, and file them away to bring up when others want it. Don’t just waste your finite seconds in a euphoric rush to waste the next few. Take your stories people; devour and digest them. Dissect and understand them. Then digest them again like you are a narrative cow.

Go hungry cows! Go!

Sunday Morning Soapbox: Just gonna...

...leave this right here.

Sunday Morning Soapbox: Knowing

My latest co-worker (Herman) is an older gentleman. He's been clerking a while and he has this jovial demeanor, so he's pretty easy to get along with. Every so often, he'll try my patience by cracking a lame joke right in the middle of telling me about something important that I need to know for my shift. I know that he'll eventually get to the end of it, but some part of me would be happier snapping his neck than faking giving a shit for the next ten seconds. Other times, he'll insist that what we do is some kind of precise science instead of a bunch of assholes carrying on an oral and typed (mistyped) tradition of record keeping. There isn't a book on clerking, I must often remind him, merely whatever our office instructed us to do last, for so long as they remember it. None the less, he'll insist that others are doing it wrong. One of those 'others' is often my least favorite coworker, so I don't make an issue of it...too much.

Sometimes, sometimes, he'll just drop a "Josh Fact" on me.

Oh, hand sanitizer is poisonous; a bunch of kindergarteners used it and they got sick.

Oh, and it's flammable.

If I were to pass this sage advice on to someone else, I'd sum up roughly: "Hand sanitizer is mostly alcohol, and not the drinking kind, idiot."

It's not that the information isn't correct; it's that the way it's delivered is inclined to present it as a status symbol; he knows something--nay, he knows a fact that most people don't. Heed and beware.

I guess it's common for most people to want to have some secret knowledge that others don't; a leg up on the sleeping drones around them. I get that; that's me. I mean, I'd rather smugly look on as people fail on account of their own ignorance with the slight possiblity that I might be educated at their attempts--should they succeed--and thusly erode my personal mountain of ignorance. Stranger things have happened.

Language exists to facilitate sharing things amongst ourselves, and no doubt having useful information to contribute to the tribe has been a long standing method of gaining acclaim in human culture. I like learning things from people, but people claiming that they know safe from unsafe in a world where that 'unsafe' status is ubiquitous and arbitrary aren't impressing me; they are letting me know I should mentally flag them as assholes.

Imagine someone triumphantly tells you that they don't travel on planes; they have stress fractures all over the wings that the airlines don't tell you about. After you kick them in the balls, maybe you could tell them that thousands of people fly every day. That air travel is safe. That if planes were crashing all the damned time and it is all really that unsafe than maybe they should start spouting conspiracy theories about the media because they're doing a hell of a job covering it up. Except when they aren't.

People who want to extoll the virtues of their own lives and choices versus those of other people based on a random sampling of data with no greater veracity than common knowledge are pretty irritating (Cracked.com, for no reason).

But even those guys aren't as bad as what happens when this is taken to its logical conclusion; conspiracy theorists. Conspiracy theorists think a lot of different things. The most common type of conspiracy includes the thought that an upper class of powerful elites are acting to control the common person via war, fear, economics, and/or the media. It often posits that there is a competent force at the head of the government/world actively working to subvert the government/world and all of its inhabitants. Most people are just daydreaming through life unaware of the terrible destruction of their comfortable existence.

Except for the conspiracy theorists.

I mean, they watch the same movies we do, have the same jobs, use the same internet, etc. etc., but they are so totally prepared for the government/IMF/One World Government/<obligatory reference to Xenu> to swoop in and take their guns/money/free will/thetans, even if it doesn't show.

I at least understand the true crazies. I don't know if tinfoil hats are still in vogue, but I know isolated cabins in the woods still are. That shit...so long as you don't end up in a standoff with the government (and, honestly, even a little bit then) is at least respectable because it shows committment.

If the world is sick, don't forward a chain mail or tell people about this crazy video full of conjecture; change your life and do something of consequence. If the problem's that serious--that fundamental--then the response should be absolute. You can't live your life just like the sleeping masses around you with the sole addition of boring/pissing off the ones unfortunate enough to be in your general vicinity.

My real point, however, is the common link between these people. You see, I'm somewhat smarter than the average person, and I've been thinking about this issue since I first started typing (almost twenty whole minutes now), and I'm beginning to think that maybe, if you peel back the layers, you realize that instead of trying to feel special by being informed harbingers of a vague doom, these people are actually engaging in mass, self-fufilling prophecy. After all, what good is doom if it never comes? Not a lot, I'd imagine. It makes sense that all of these self-important people are trying to bring about a single, pluralistic apocalypse. One which is so great and so vast that only the most paranoid minds on Earth could think of it. Indeed, the fact that no one has thought of a conspiracy theorists' conspiracy indicates they're closer than any of us could have expected.

It's too early to do anything yet but be watchful. But be watchful with the greatest urgency.

Remember, I told you about it first.

Oh, and apparently the best way to clean a coffee pot is with saltwater, not dish soap. No, you don't want to know why.

Sunday Morning Soapbox: All That Other Stuff

 
Free speech. If nothing else, preserve it for the LOLs.

My country is great. You know I love it. I love its ideals. I love its freedoms. I love that whenever the world has to drop bombs on some assholes, there’s this moment of “who’s got shit over there to drop bombs,” and while we might sigh and act like it’s really inconvenient for us we know that question’s rhetorical because invariably, “The United States” is the answer. It won’t last forever, but that’s how it is now and I love it.

However,

freedom is sometimes treated by my fellow citizens (including politicians) to act like it’s a golden ticket to believe whatever damned fool thing they want. What’s more, they act like it’s a license to make others behave the way they “should.” Freedom isn’t the liberty to deny or repress, to be irresponsible or complacent. Freedom is an obligation.

It is an obligation to truth, not what you want to believe, but real, factual, critical truth. It’s an obligation to education and making decisions. Freedom is not best served by enjoying the experiences of life in all their real, sensual present glory, or to turn away and hide from the darkest experiences of humanity, but to prepare the mind to understand the world around us, not as we want it to be, but as it is. The ability of those living in a world of comfort and ease who do not understand in the slightest how it came to be or is sustained are doomed to let it fall through their grasp and know only to cry to the heavens like ignorant savages whenever it inevitably does. The conveniences and luxuries in the modern world, indeed are a swirl of leaves in an eddy, a strange island of order between strong gusts of wind.

Freedom is an obligation of character, which is the heart of my statement here. How you feel about a person, how you judge that person, and how you treat that person are all very different things. I try to treat everyone I interact with on a daily basis with the same level of professional service. There may be a few Filipinos who combine a general inability to express themselves with a poor command of English, but I try my best to give their issues the same level of attention as any American, despite the fact that those interactions are often quite frustrating. Sometimes I don’t. It’s not that I’m a bad person, or a racist, or ethnocentric[1], but sometimes I do things that aren’t great. You can get angry at me for that, even if you know that’s not how I act all the time. I get pissed at things my friends do all the time; I’m not pissed at them really, more at what they’re doing.

 

It's sad I wish I should photoshop this well.

Making people angry on accident isn’t a mark against your character, nor should it be. People are entitled to feel an emotion without feeling that emotion on principle. We’re all just slightly-balding apes here and emotional responses are hardwired into us. Mistaking those knee-jerk feelings for more contemplative ones, or trying to fortify them with reason only makes an irrational response linger and is a mark against your character. Being angry at someone is fine and having someone angry at you is also fine. Those things aren’t judgments; they’re just biology.

Which isn’t to say that judgment isn’t biology or that feelings are divorced from judgment. No, you can, and probably should, hate people who are genuinely bad people. That said, you don’t really have to. I’ve had fine conversations with someone, knowing they’re a reprehensible example of humanity. On the other hand, there are some fine people (like my grandfather) that I almost never talk to.

Back when I was a Nuke, there was an engine room upper level operator that I just could not stand being around. He knew his shit, was generally friendly, and was a good guy. I hated every single watch I had with him and I treated him like the senior enlisted that he was. Life is strange, but there’s a big difference between how we feel about people, how we act towards them, and the kind of person we know that they are. Having character and being able to make these distinctions is an integral part of freedom. You may not like someone or agree with them, but you have to put aside the emotional factors and personal factors to realize that everyone is afforded the same freedoms as everyone else. This bleeds into my next point.

Freedom is an obligation to justice. On the surface, it’s simply a call to treat those as you wish to be treated, which shouldn’t have to be written down but is intuitive. Justice is more than punishment for wrongdoers; it’s ensuring that labors and contributions are rewarded just as much as it fails to reinforce parasitism and inaction. The blatant inability of governments to provide equal opportunities to those they serve is the exact cause of the unrest in the Middle East right now and not, as you might have guessed, overextending their armies for a double-attack into Southern Europe.

I think this is how the DHS runs all of their threat scenarios.

Freedom cannot be a noun. It cannot be something you hold or sit on or keep on a shelf or take out on holidays. Freedom is a verb. It is acted, and perhaps that’s its paradox; it is actions that define freedom, specifically breadth of actions and the broader those actions, the greater freedom is. In fact, freedom cannot obligate a person to anything (by definition). What obligates one is the perpetuation of freedom. If you are free, then you may do as you please. If you wish your children to be free, equal, and rewarded for their labors, then, then you have to curtail your own freedoms.

Then you have to reach out aggressively ensure that justice is carried out, that equality is delivered, that truth--and not some branded version of it in warped service to an ideology--is sought and served, not enforced with harsh words, or batons, or bombs, but with knowledge. You can make every savage on the planet act like a civilized man, but you can never make him understand civilization.You can kill every selfish deviant on the planet, but a new crop will grow up and learn to survive.

The perpetuation of freedom is based on education, and truth, and justice, exclusion, self-righteousness, or force.

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[1] Remarkably, I will be surprised if I don’t get labeled as anti-American and ethnocentric for this whole post, but hey, worst case scenario, I’m just a wrong guy on the internet.

Sunday Morning Soapbox: Temo Party

I don't like the Tea Party. I don't think there's too much to like about them. I think they're naive, self-centered whiners who want to act like everything that's going wrong in this country is the fault of elected representatives in Washington. Basically, I hate them more than the Democrats and Republicans because they have the audacity to be naive.

Howevercomma I do like the fact that their naivete is pushing them towards cutting the budget. Drastically.

Yes, there are cuts to things I'm uncomfortable seeing cut, but I'm less comfortable with a system where we're consistently promised smaller government and less spending, but we're consistently running a deficit for something of allegedly vital importance. This Huffington Post article mentions the (unsurprising) fact that most Americans generally want the government to spend less, but hesitate to enumerate exactly where less money should be spent. Education? Medicare? Department of Homeland Security? Those are all good things, and no one wants to have less of good things.

I think that the biggest problem here is that everything called something remotely like "Department of Kicking Sick Puppies" has already been axed; cutting in the middle of what's left only opens politicians up to looking like the villain, while cutting at the extremes (or else making a big show of the same) at least makes you popular with your constituency. But if you're going to debate the buget at all, your actions have to be significant and they have to be taken with the knowledge that we just can't pay for everything we want. Even if you can pay for Planned Parenthood for the next five years or so, what about the ten after that? The twenty? Same question about Social Security. Health Care. Look, Planned Parenthood, Social Security, and Health Care are all good things; they save and improve lives, but if the government won't answer the hard questions about how to pay for them, not just this next year, but in perpetuity, then they have to accept that these programs won't survive when the US quits paying for things on our credit card. Our government will have to resign itself to either spending its money more wisely, or doing less with less. It's called, 'living within your means,' and I guess that for a lot of people who have the money and resources to get elected, it's strange to have so little means in relation to your wants.

I don't believe, as the article I linked says, that Americans secretly like big government. I mean, everyone likes getting money, but that's a subject for another blog entirely. I also don't think that this is a Republican vendetta against women. I think that it's more common for women to need social services, so when Republicans--as they are wont to do--cut social services, women suffer. It's not part of a malign plan against the sex cursed with the lack of a Y-chromosme, it's just that the people with the greatest needs are the first to suffer when the government quits supporting those in need.

Yet, this news article says some things that dovetail better with my own reckoning(add grains of salt to taste); the sound and fury new house (roadhouse) will pass any ridiculously partisan bill that they want to jack off their constituents, blame the senate for not going along, and please their fan base without ever worrying about upsetting the status quo. The senate democrats shouldn't shoot this bill down; they should amend it to ridiculously cut spending for pro-conservative programs and raise taxes on organizations they don't like. Responsible, irresponsible spending cuts might very well do a lot to balance the budget. If our elected officals fought as hard to save money as they did to spend it, we wouldn't be facing a massive national debt (we'd probably be facing a wide variety of other threats too numerous and varied to fully explore here, but I digress). Simply refusing to pass a budget and/or failing to cut spending won't solve anything and either side playing an absolutist game doesn't serve anyone's interest.

It seems that regardless of the outcome, a sweeping, conservative-backed bill presents a win-win for the right. If it fails and the economy doesn't get back on track, then the conservatives can pass any legislation they want come 2013. If it succeeds, then regardless of the passage by Democrats and The President, it's hailed as a victory for the right. If it's passed and fails--either fiscally, in the public eye, or both--then the Democrats get the blame for allowing it to happen. The only real winning scenario for the left is if it's shot down, Washington keeps spending, and the economy picks up so that by 2012 no one's talking about deficit spending anymore.

In all fairness, some Democrats are trying to cut spending. Some have suggested tax increases and cuts to other programs; I'm supportive of this, though dubious about anyone paying more taxes, even the easily-vilified "rich" (although, let's face it, considering the income gap, I'm not that dubious) until the government learns to spend more responsibly. Representative McCollum (D-MN) suggested that the millions of dollars spent by the military on advertising on NASCAR vehicles could be spent somewhere else, the response to which was an incoherent fax which defies any other description with mere words:

I've actually run out of "what the fucks" for these sorts of things. I am "what the fuck"ed out. I had a whole bag of "what"s, "the"s, and "fuck"s to pull phrases out of, and all that's left in there is an IOU from my country's political discourse, which only gets me about a quarter of the way through "fuck."

Sunday Morning Soapbox-Rocking the Cradle

Tunisia
On December seventeenth, Mohamed Bouazizi attempted to sell vegetables from his cart in Sidi Bouzid. When he could not afford to bribe officials, he was beaten and his goods and equipment were confiscated. His attempt to take his case to the local governor was rebuffed and he was left in the street with no money, no goods, and no income to provide for his family. In protest of the abuse and apathy of his government, he lit himself on fire. Within a week, other protests had started. When state police fired on protesters, more dissent sprung up in other areas. Ten days after Mohamed Bouazizi's hospitalization, protesters were in the capitol. He lived until the fifth of January, nine days shy of President Ben Ali's flight to Saudi Arabia (The European Union has since frozen his assets).

For 23 years Ali had been ruling Tunisia, taking land from citizens and redistributing it to his allies and family. He had used the media and police to silence dissent, amended the constitution to allow him to run for president twice, and won obviously fraudulent elections with 99.9% of the vote. While the interim government still contains many members of his party (his own Prime Minister now heads the government), it's not expected that those members will remain in the government after free elections (date still to be announced). The uprising was quick, long in coming, and partially organized over the internet. Some also speculate that leaked US State Department cables released by Wikileaks exposing the corruption of the Tunisian leadership may also have played a part, sadly reducing my personal ability to vilify Julian Assange at will.

Sunday Morning Punditry-Retards, Fags, Nutjobs, and the N-Word

Since I don’t think that my plentiful political topics are part of the usual fare I want to put out, I’m making Sunday an optional soapbox say, where I stand up and rail impotently against the inequities of the world [note, add something clever here about nailing Jared Leto un-impotently, in case someone forgot you were gay.]

So, I was reading MightyGodKing’s post on the Tucson Shooting (because he is a much better blogger than I am) and happened to look down at the comments. In it was someone pleading that we not call Loughner a nutjob anymore because they work with mental patients.

Really? He seems like a nutjob. He backs up his crazy, violent acts with crazy, impenetrable rhetoric. Nutjob.