Misunderstanding the LGBT (QUILTBAG) “Agenda” — Or Why It’s Not “Bigoted”
(I originally posted this on Google+, but since most of you probably don’t follow me there, I figured you’d like to read this. No, I don’t cross post everything. That would be annoying…) To this day, I still find statements (or logic) such as the following ironically amusing: “I love you, but homosexuality is a sin.” It’s similar to “I don’t support discrimination against LGBT (QUILTBAG) people, but I don’t support same-sex marriage.” Such statements point to a failure to understand the other side. To LGBT (QUILTBAG) people, the various issues they are campaigning for, which extend from the right to marry to the various protections afforded to almost everyone else (job protection, protection against abuse, discrimination, violence, etc. etc. etc.), are all Civil Rights. In other words, regardless of what one might think about these people and their “agenda,” they believe to the core of their being that this is a Civil Rights movement. Within that context, can you really blame them for seeing bigots everywhere? From the mindset ofCivil Rights, any contradictory statement like one of the two I listed above would present a bigoted position: that is that saying “I don’t support same-sex marriage because I believe it is a sin” is an dogmatic position, the adherence to which links one to bigotry within the context of a Civil Rightsdiscussion. The fact that LGBT (QUILTBAG) people are right — it is a Civil Rights movement — is secondary to understanding why they are so adamant about their beliefs. Some like to say that these folks are just as intolerant as the people they claim to be against, which is little more than linguistic trickery to support a victim mentality. The reality is that almost all (notice the qualification) LGBT (QUILTBAG) people do not believe they have a right to control what you do and do not believe, just that you don’t have a right to impose those beliefs on them by denying them the rights and privileges heterosexuals take for granted on a daily basis. At the end of the day, LGBT (QUILTBAG) people aren’t trying to take something away from their opponents. Their opponents, however, are — that’s where bigotry finds a home.
The Children of Tomorrow and What They Will See (or, Obama-mania’s Future)
One of my friends on Facebook recently posted this on his profile: the internet scares me. it makes me think people really would vote for trump. it makes me think people really believe obama is part of a conspiracy hatched decades ago to put a racist homosexual kenyan marxist-anarchist-fascist (say what?) in the white house. i’m losing faith in people with each new facebook group dedicated to shit like this. I’m not going to give out his name in case he doesn’t want it to be any more public than his FB account. I initially wanted to respond straight to his post, but then decided I should say the following here (after the fold): Imagine what the world looked like to African Americans pre-1865 or the years surrounding and leading up to the Civil Rights Movement in the south. Maybe it’s because we’re older and more aware of what’s going on around us, but the country is losing its damn mind again, for the second time in the last decade-ish. We went batshit on Muslims and look-alikes, and now we’re seriously entertaining buried racist ideology simply because Obama is one of those brown people, and just can’t possibly be one of us. But that’s not enough. The same people have to other him even more by making him the brown person who is also a socialist commie fascist pigdog, because once we accept that as the truth, we can do anything to him and feel no remorse. The Joker Socialist — a double othering… This is the same rhetorical practice used to justify the Holocaust or the Gulags or slavery or the countless other racist and ideological evils that have been thrust upon humanity like a stain. It’s the same practice used to make it acceptable to murder homosexuals by dragging them by a rope behind a moving car or raping them with broom handles. It’s the same practice which everyday makes people afraid or irreparably damages families all over the country. Because we have a rabid fear of terrorism… And in 20 or 30 years, or maybe 60, or 100, our children will look back, if indeed our children still exist, and they’ll wonder what was wrong with us. What unspeakable mental illness had befallen us as we continued to perpetrate great evil against humanity, against people who aren’t actually different, but are made different by arbitrary social “rules.” And if we’re still around, or more enlightened people are there to say something to those curious children, they might say we were infected with a festering hatred so buried into our blood that we couldn’t contain it…couldn’t hold back the tide of thousands of years of human bloodlust and fear, and in that brief little span of history we were weak, pathetic, and undeserving of the mountains luxuries and freedoms thrown at us like cheap magic tricks in a casino hotel. We were undeserving of the men and women who die on the battlefield at the behest of their country and honor. Because clearly they’ve done so much harm to humanity… Some of us will have to look into our children’s eyes and see that overwhelming childish confusion, much as many children today look at us when they ask us questions about slavery or, sometimes, even racism and sexism (though not so much the last of those great evils, because we still live in a world entwined in the old ideals of male superiority). Personally, I dread that day. I wish I lived in a country where the future of my children would not be so fraught by what will undoubtedly appear to them as utter stupidity. But that’s not the future my children or your children will have. Maybe one day we’ll get it right, and the evils of everyday life will be relatively minor, dealt with on a case by case basis. The history of humanity, however, says otherwise, but I am always hopeful for a better tomorrow…
Politics: A Critique Deconstructed (Part Three)
(Part One and Part Two) The third and final part of my long-winded political nonsense is here. You can read the post that I am responding to here. Now for part three: VIII. Creationism No matter what you call it, it’s not a scientific theory. It’s religion. Creationism/intelligent design has never become a scientific theory, since nothing, short of theoretical/experimental physics, becomes a theory in science without following the scientific method (and I have a huge problem with theoretical physics using the term “theory” for every crackpot hypothesis that proposes an answer to life, the universe, and everything). This means that evolution has gone from a hypothesis (a guess or a series of guesses based on evidence) to a theory (an established scientific fact) by means of providing evidence (mountains of it) and proving its case time and time again to the scientific community through peer review, research/experiments, and so forth. Creationism, however, has never met the burden of proof that evolution has. Evolution is proven. Not only that, it has even been observed in the lab (more than once). Creationism, on the other hand, has zero observable evidence for a designer. In fact, most of what Creationism and ID call for is directly refuted by well-established scientific practices. The fact that creationists and IDers claim that such practices are wrong is more paranoia than anything else. So it’s not a matter of squashing a “scientific theory,” as Wrighton seems to suggest. It’s about preventing fake science from being taught in a classroom, on top of preventing religion from being used as a basis for scientific education. Evolution is irrefutable unless you live in a bubble. Creationism and ID are simply attempts on the part of the radical religious community to assume more power for themselves. Why? Because we can see what happens in other western nations that have accepted science for what it is (a logical, observable explanation for the world around us); such nations have become rapidly secular. They have a problem with that because a secular nation (even if its members believe in God, as a great deal of secularists in secular nations do) is a nation that can’t be controlled by religious dogma, and some people have a hard time letting go of that control (humanity has a history of it). But this is a well-worn argument, and we’re not going to convince each other of anything by debating it. The facts speak for themselves. IV. The First Amendment Ain’t Truz This particular point makes me laugh. He accuses me of not knowing my history, but then cites Wikipedia as if it is the most accurate database in the world. In any case, it doesn’t matter if government has changed how it interprets an amendment. What matters is that the federal government supersedes state and local government, and so its application of the First Amendment to protection for and from religion applies universally, particularly to those places that receive federal funding (which is almost everywhere). Since schools are partly supported by the federal government, they are also subject to federal law. As such, public schools cannot teach religion, though there isn’t any reason why a public school cannot have a course about religion as a concept (i.e. a historical examination of religions–yes, plural). But Wrighton seems to think that it’s a-ok for public schools to have a Christian class. The problem is that it would violate the Constitution by extension of public schools being protected and funded partly by the federal government. It’s also really awesome… But then there’s the fun part: namely, that since states are under the jurisdiction of the federal government, and, thus, funded in part by it, they are, as a whole, subject to the laws of the fed. Like I said: the fed supersedes state and local governments. Yeah, that’s what I feel about it… Wrighton, of course, simply disagrees with the interpretation of the Amendment as applying to anyone beyond Congress. There’s not much I can do to change his mind on that, except to point out that a number of Amendments have been interpreted this way, and that by his logic, he would have to suggest that the Constitution must not apply universally in such cases. But then there’s that tricky part about the 8th, 15th, 16th, 19th, 24th, and 25th Amendments, all of which pretty much suggest that Congress has a lot of authority when it comes to applicability. X. Lies and Misdirection and Other Things Politicians Do Wrighton finally asks some important questions about my request that Republicans stop lying or misinforming the public and to stop taking campaign contributions from corporations and protecting them from persecution (or from making it legal for them to hide where they get their money from). The problem? While his questions are good, they don’t address the key point in my original argument: I wasn’t talking about all corporations; instead, I was referring only to situations in which protecting or taking money from corporations is not in the best interests of the majority of the people. The problem is that Republicans are notorious for doing this. When they protect businesses, they do so when such protection isn’t actually good for the rest of us. Take BP as a prime example of this. A number of Republicans went to great lengths to defend and protect BP, even though the company not only failed miserably to deal with a crisis situation, but was also responsible for it. Instead of paying attention to the devastation and the complete ruin of the Gulf economy, Republicans continued to take money from oil companies and continued to support policies that would protect oil companies from government regulation and so forth. How exactly is that in the best interests of most Americans? We’re talking about an industry that is notorious for violating federal regulations and has a history of destroying ecosystems and economies. The fact of the matter is that we need clean oceans to eke out an
Politics: A Critique Deconstructed (Part Two)
(See Part One here.) Part Two IV. Global Warming Ain’t Real The title of this section basically sums up Wrighton’s argument. Of course, he has no citations, so I have no idea where he is hearing about all the lies. I suspect FOX News, but that’s because that network is sort of like McCain: really happy to talk about what supports his opinion, but suddenly screaming “BIAS” when something doesn’t. Finish him! As for global warming evidence: a handful of bumps doesn’t prove something wrong. Facts speak for themselves. Well, unless you think National Geographic and NASA are making it all up. Just like they did with the Moon Landing, right? V. Racism Against the Whites Whether Affirmative Action is the right approach to preventing racism or sexism from being institutionalized at a jobs level is certainly worth debating, but it is currently the only reasonable system by which we can prevent people of color and women from being actively discriminated against (rather than for). Wrighton makes an indirect argument that whites are actively discriminated against because colleges and employers look at one’s skin color or gender and select people based on that rather than on test scores. While this is true in part (as per AA and other policies), it completely ignores the socio-economic factors that contribute to poor test scores and performance (the same problems caused by underfunded schools)–not to mention that it ignores how utterly useless test scores really are (I’m a college teacher, and people who do well on the tests are still ridiculously disadvantaged in things like writing, etc.). If we went only by test scores, pretty much everyone going to college would be white, with the exception of those entering sports programs. David Duke would be very proud of this line of thinking. This is what the inside of Atlanta’s airport looks like. Only, you know, inside. Likewise, his point doesn’t deal with the fact that even with AA pushing more diversity into schools and jobs, both women and people of color are underpaid and prevented from rising up in the ranks even when they are just as qualified as white men; in fact, his point ignores it, instead opting for the “white men are being discriminated against” argument instead of actually looking at the problem. But this is all part of a problem that is too big to take on in a post like this. I just hope that Wrighton isn’t making the “let economics decide” argument for dealing with racism/sexism. VI. Keep Your Government Hands Off My Healthcare I’m going to break these apart piece by piece: “[Government] run health care does not work.” People who have such systems would be surprised to hear that, since it works a hell of a lot better for them than our private healthcare system works for us. “Look at the wait times for doctors in places like France and Canada.” Most of these wait times are myths or manipulations of statistics. People who oppose universal healthcare often take one bad statistic in one specific place (like Paris, a very large city in France) and then apply that to every single situation in the country. But then they also conveniently ignore the fact that we have wait times in parts of the U.S. (not all parts). I know from personal experience of having to wait three weeks to get an appointment with my general practitioner and having to wait upwards of six hours in the emergency room with a serious respiratory problem (it turned out I had cancer around my airways and my aorta). But then there are the two times in my life when I received free health insurance and access to a government-funded, university-run clinic. In my current situation, I can get an appointment with my doctor tomorrow, and pay next to nothing for it (free for appointments; $25 for medications). Fun how that works, no? But socialism is evil! “There are two choices to make here. We use the free market to regulate the cost, thus granting access to everyone willing to pay, or we make it a “public” controlled system, and institute rationing, where only certain people gain access.” Wrighton seems to think that the free market hasn’t been in control of the system to begin with, and that they haven’t been regulating costs in their benefit for the last thirty or so years (then again, he seems libertarian, so he might suggest that any government regulation is bad, thus believing that people who run corporations must be trustworthy by default–you’d have to in order to be truly free market). He gets his information from some Austrian institution I’ve never heard of, but since said institution seems to think the government involvement in making employer-provided health insurance tax free is the same as the government subsidizing health insurance, it’s really hard to take them seriously (they basically don’t understand the employer-provided health insurance system). In any case, there are problems with this logic. First, it offers a false dichotomy–i.e. an either/or that is intentionally limiting and fallacious at best. The RNC mastered this when the health debate was in full swing. It also is hilarious for trying to apply to the “public option” things that already exist for the magic “private market.” Rationing is already occurring. It’s called socio-economic rationing. People who can’t afford health insurance or healthcare don’t get it. Fuck the poor, right? It’s not always about being willing to pay, and trying to simplify the argument to money is really just a lame way of avoiding dealing with the human aspect. But then Wrighton says that cheap healthcare for all will never happen, which tells me he’s already given in to the idea that some people just aren’t important enough to care about. Fuck the poor, again, right? Like I said. Socialism is evil! Screw Little Timmy! Now, I’m not suggesting that universal healthcare is perfect. It’s not. No system is perfect. If there was a perfect system,
Politics: A Critique Deconstructed (Part One)
I’ve been critiqued! On politics, if the title of this post didn’t make that obvious. Stephen Wrighton of KrashPad has written in response to my post in September on what it would take for Republicans to earn my vote, and according to Law One of the Internet, I am going to respond (Law One, if you didn’t know, is as follows: “If someone is wrong on the Internet, you must correct them”). I’m going to make this a series of three posts, though, since what I’ve written is quite extensive and, thus, too damn large for one single post. Part One The first thing to do is throw out the stuff that I don’t think needs to be addressed at length. There are certainly things to be said about how Wrighton shortens my list–namely, that he unfairly reduces my list to talking points, which is not what I initially offered–but what I want to focus on are the real meat and potatoes of his post, which I will take down methodically below. I. Political Slurs I am always amused by the way political discussions are often reduced to single terms as if the terms themselves represent a negative. In the case of Wrighton, he refers to my thoughts as being “leftist” and “liberal,” both of which have been used by politicians (specifically those opposed to the imaginary picture of “leftists” and “liberals” they have in their heads) to destroy the credibility of the “enemy.” The problem? Doing so is a clear attempt to avoid dealing with what is actually being said. Wrighton, of course, does try to address my points, but by starting out with references to political negatives, he immediately colors what follows in his post. What isn’t asked when someone says “liberal” or “leftist” is whether what is being identified by those terms is actually right. There are no absolutes in politics. People from any of the “sides” are not infallible, nor are they wrong all the time. Being “liberal” doesn’t mean one is necessarily wrong. Nor is being “conservative.” But we’ll get into that a bit another day, since there is much more to say. II. The Economy Wrighton responds to my call for a change in Republican economic policies (which you can read at the link above) by saying the following: First, the economic policy. It’s a great thing, to believe that the government can be some grand equalizer, sharing out wealth and handing out bags of gold and food to everyone who stops by. But, that’s an unsustainable form of growth. Government can not create wealth. It cannot create jobs, and it cannot do anything but take money from those who do create wealth and jobs, and hand it out to others. Typically and traditionally, we call those who take things they have not earned thieves, and those who wait with open hands for handouts beggars, yet when Congress is involved, we call them the Taxman and Welfare Recipients. But, in a sense, he is right, in that we do not need an economic policy revolving around extending Bush-era tax cuts. After all, those did not go nearly far enough. Instead, we need to cut taxes even more, and do away with un-Constitutional programs and departments. Taxes and Government spending only removes capital resources from out economy. There are a lot of fairly obvious untruths here: The government can and does create jobs. Millions of them, actually (that link is for State and local governments). We can argue about whether these are “good” jobs, but the fact remains that most of these jobs would not exist without the government (note also that most of the jobs created are for the public good). The government can and does create wealth. World War Two. Look it up. One of the largest federal spending periods in history (because of the war) and the result from 1940 to 1948? An increase in personal income, massive job creation, and so forth. And we seemed to have come out of that quite well considering… There seems to be an assumption here that people who benefit from tax dollars, such as unemployed people, poor people, and so on, are beggars. Or perhaps Wrighton is just talking about the massive debt owned by the fed. Either way, the first is a lie and the second is oversimplified. People who ask for help from the government are just asking for what they paid their taxes for (unemployment benefits and so on are paid for in our taxes dollars). There’s a lot more to say about this point, but that would take all week. (To be fair, some people don’t pay taxes, and some people do get more back than they put in–though the government makes interest on the money paid in–but anyone who is legally employed pays into the unemployment pool.) Wrighton assumes that cutting taxes more than they are already will actually do something beneficial for the economy. The interesting thing? History proves otherwise. Trickle-down economics has never worked the way people wish it did. If companies were willing to take the massive profits they pull in from what they sell to everyone else and trickle that down to, well, everyone else, then America would not have as much unemployment as it did pre-Recession. The reality? The tax cuts and Bush’s various other policies have actually drastically increased the gap between the rich and the poor. Median income has remained the same for those in the bottom 40%, while the top 10% have actually acquired more wealth than they ever had before (close to 70% of all wealth in the country). Where is the trickling happening? There are also a few differences to mention here. The first is that the government is not like a thief. A thief uses the things s/he steals for personal gain, while the government uses the money they acquire from taxes in order to serve the public good. That includes maintaining forces to protect the nation from
TSA (Totalitarian Sexual Assault): My Thoughts on the TSA’s New Procedures and People in General
(Warning: explicit language and politics are below; ignore if you’re not interested in either) I’m going to take some flak for this post (at least, I expect to). This is because I’m not going to say anything particularly kind about the TSA (or Totalitarian Sexual Assault, as I will now call it) or the large portion of my fellow Americans who have decided the new measures aren’t that big of a deal. Of course, if you’ve been ignoring the Internet, or don’t pay attention to politics or the news, you have no idea what I’m talking about. So, I should probably clear that up first. The TSA recently changed their search policies for the security lines in U.S. airports (Nov. 1st, I think) to allow the use of full-body scanners OR, if you refuse to be scanned or the image of your naked torso appears suspicious, TSA agents will perform a pat-down that includes a groin and chest search. What does that mean? It means that your options, should you be selected for the special TSA treatment, are to have your body x-rayed, allowing a TSA agent to see you naked, or to be sexually molested by a member of your own sex. In the case of the first, the agent is supposed to delete the images, but, of course, the feds are particularly bad at that–that link also points out that the images that were leaked on the net. In the second case, you literally will be subject to full groping of your private parts, whether male or female. All your testicles are belong to them. I first learned about this from this guy, whose story about his refusal to subject himself to the new measures at the San Diego International Airport resulted in a threat of a $10,000 civil suit and expulsion from the airport (you should read the full story to get the bigger–and more disturbing–picture). Needless to say, I was pretty damn shocked. I wanted to know how these new policies came to be and how we, as citizens, could sit idly by and let it stand. Now? I’m livid. The body scanners and the new pat-down procedures are obvious violations of our rights. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that requiring Americans to subject themselves to sexual assault or body imaging in order to fly is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects everyone from unwarranted search and seizure. Read the Amendment for yourself. The fact that the TSA sees these measures as acceptable is even more shocking. They say it’s in our best interests–to protect us. The terrorists, after all, are real resourceful, what with all those successful bombing attempts in the U.S. since 9/11. Well, except for the fact that they haven’t been. The problem is that I don’t feel any safer now. I have no reason to be. My rights mean jack shit in this post-2001 world, and my government regularly violates them in the interest of my “safety.” To say that the terrorists have already won is an understatement. Look at what we’re giving up. We frequently claim that America is the freest country in the world, the one beacon of hope and yadda yadda in the world. Except it’s not. Far from it. We’re allowing our rights to be stripped from us faster than a stripper takes off her clothes. And we’re doing it because we’re told we should be scared. The operating word in “terrorism” is “terror.” It’s objective is to create terror. I’m not going to go so far as implying that our government is a terrorist agent, but it would be fair to say that the terrorists we’re supposed to be fighting have already begun the slow process of destroying us. The difference is that it’s happening from the inside–ourselves. Turn your head and cough, please… Child abuse in action. But more alarming to me is the fact that so many Americans have shrugged off the new TSA procedures. Some Americans have even said that they’re worth it to feel safe. I think those people are cowards. Every one of them. I also think they barely deserve the rights the Constitution grants them, since they clearly hold them in such low regard–you can’t think highly of something you’re not particularly interested in preserving. Why have the Constitution if we’re not even going to uphold is laws? I’m not willing to go so far to say that they should lose their rights. I think everyone should have the rights we’re supposed to be celebrating every 4th of July. (And don’t get me started on parents who allow TSA agents to grope their children. Those people are committing child abuse, and how you expect to convince your four-year-old that nobody should touch their privates after allowing a TSA agent to touch them is beyond me). But it makes me wonder if people’s opinions would change if the situation were different? Maybe if the government decided you need to have your belongings searched before purchasing milk, because they’re afraid you’re going poison the milk supply, people would say something. I don’t know. It seems to me that so many people are crippled by the fear of something they can’t even properly describe, and, thus, are willing to give up anything just to have their pathetic little security blanket wrap them up and proclaim that they are safe. The reality? You’re not safe. Nobody is. You could die tomorrow in a car crash. Should we have checkpoints at every door in the entire country to make sure nobody drives while drunk? You might also die of food poisoning, perhaps by your own action. Should the government force you to let licensed cooks make all your food for you? People seem so desperately concerned over something that is both incredibly unlikely, but also just as nameless and faceless as an unexpected asteroid attack. The difference is that nobody is freaking out about the asteroids we don’t know about (oh, and