Thursday, June 21, 2012

Gotta Start Somewhere

To all who may stumble across this little gem (using that term loosely at the moment), it would likely be best to take a moment to illuminate readers as to what they may expect from this. Quite frankly, this is a place for me to praise, decry or simply expound on any subject I can imagine. It'll get political, it'll get religious, it'll get explicit, it'll piss a ton of people off.

But then again, what doesn't piss people off these days? Actually, that's a good starting point for this blog:

Immature Rage


We've all seen it happen: some titanic cocksponge in power has a fit over something minor and creates a nation-wide controversy that will last the entirety of twelve-and-a-half days before Kim Kardashian breaks another chair with her giant ass or some other inane occurrence.
This is what passes for the social climate in America, and like all things, it's difficult to decide where exactly it started, but we'll get back to that.

As I said, this is a repository for my thoughts, and my mind works in some pretty damn mysterious ways, so forgive any tangents I am unable to repress. That said, words. Words have power that nothing else in the world has. The right word in the right place - just one word - can incite riots or calm hearts. All of the greatest wars and achievements have not been won through strength of arms, not really. Sure, the soldiers and the explosions get the glory, but how did those soldiers even get mobilized? Words. Somebody said the right things to get the collective public off their fat, lazy asses and onto the battlefield. We've seen this work for good, as with Churchill and Eisenhower, both Roosevelts, and even Patton in his pre-battle speeches. It has also worked for ill, through Hitler and Stalin, Hussein and Ahmadinejad, and even Bush the Lesser.
Yes, I said it, and not just to stir up controversy. Face it, in the wake of 9/11, the general intent of which was well-known to the DoD and Bush himself since the day the reins were handed over, words like terrorism and patriotism were bandied about like "bitch" and "fuck" are in a gangsta rapper's songs. Plus, the entirety of the "war on terror" has been built on a lie, that lie being that Iraq had anything whatthefucksoever to do with 9/11. Honestly, The Mighty Shrub just wanted to beat up the guy who made his daddy sad.
But this isn't about Bush, not yet. This is about the monster of political correctness, and how the evils of maniacal fantasies have corrupted this nation and continue to do so. I direct you to the following link, http://tinyurl.com/8ys7swm but will gladly sum it up for those of you who don't like to be sucked into other websites: a comedian named Ally Bruener, who suffers from muscular dystrophy, was arrested for using the word "crippled." I'll pause for a moment to let the sheer level of bullshit sink in.
A crippled woman was arrested for using the word "crippled." Isn't that like arresting Jews for not referring to themselves as some made-up PC term like "Moses' Followers"? Or forcing everyone of Hispanic heritage to call themselves Latin on pain of incarceration?
Now, this brings me to several different points, all of which bear analysis, so I'll arrange them in no particular order.

1. Offensiveness
This is a sticky one, since offensiveness is sort of subjective. Up until my late teens, curse words caused a literal reaction of pain in my mind when spoken by people I knew. I chalk this up to autism, as my mind is geared toward words. The intent that comes with these words, when spoken in anger, burned in my mind; at least that's the best I can describe it. Now that I'm older and have really made words my thing, I am for the most part unaffected by the cursing of myself, my friends and family, though words spoken in true hate directly in front of me still generate a visceral response beyond simple revulsion.
Enough about me, let's talk about me some more! Just in a context that's relevant this time: I am a graduate of an HBCU. For those who don't know, that's a monogram for Historically Black College/University. I am essentially the photonegative of a black person, so while I was readily accepted by most people, I was always looked at funny if I used black slang and I didn't dare use "the N-word." I'd have gotten the ever-loving hell beaten out of me.
This is important for several reasons. First, it still shows the power of a word. Even if the general definition has been inverted, non-blacks are still forbidden to say or write it or they are automatically labeled as evil. Second, it proves that the civil rights movement has backslid. I won't say it altogether failed, because I can't judge, but when the same group that fought for equality now fights to remain segregated in its own subculture and lashes out against others, I'd say that the sentiment definitely got lost in the generation gap.
The question I raise, then, is this: how is that word, one that can get sixty to seventy percent of Americans beaten up or killed if uttered in public, not legal taboo, yet in a moderately large city the word "crippled" can lead to the incarceration and fining of a legitimately crippled person? The mind boggles.

2. Presumption and, moreover, missing the fucking point
This is something that both "sides" fall victim to, though in its inception political correctness was more pioneered by liberals yet is now more a weapon of conservatives, but we'll get to that. The presumption is, forbidding something will make it stop. That somehow, by preventing people from using a word, we will stamp out discrimination. I hate to make the reference, because the referred-to material makes my eyeballs bleed from its sheer ineptitude, but even fucking Naruto got this right: forbidding people to tell that the kid had a demon stuck in him didn't make people hate him less; they just found other ways to raise their children to hate the kid.
Originally, political correctness was just a finger-wagging method of trying to force respect, which I suppose is a noble cause and it got the general idea of words' power: by insisting that certain groups be referred to by more respectful terms, the idea is that people will come to be more respectful. This is decent enough in theory, but since you can't control what people think or what they say in private or among likewise bigoted minds, it accomplishes precisely dick. Tacking on a fine to this is a more conservative way of keeping up appearances, Stepford-style. You WILL conform to our delusion that Leave it to Beaver was a documentary and that life can still be like that, or we WILL jail your pinko-Nazi-socialist-fascist-Commie-homo ass.
This draws from what would be a major failing in Conservative thought/rhetoric, except that the American public is so bone-stupid that it works: most Conservatives believe that not talking about something makes it cease to exist. And guess what? Like a Twilight Zone ostrich whose world really does vanish when it sticks its head in the sand, this works more often than not. Who among you remembers Ted Haggard, the figurehead for the entire goddamn Evangelical church who was, in the mid-2000s, finally outed by a guilt-ridden male prostitute who confessed that Haggard had for decades been paying him exorbitant fees for gay sex and copious amounts of drugs. What did Conservatives do? A collective "our bad," then he was swept under the rug and never spoken of again.
Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away, but if the public forgets about it that's what matters to maniacs like Beck and Limbaugh and other less-powerful political figures like senators and congressmen who vehemently fight environmental acts because that would mean admitting that a problem exists, and it's just easier to pretend everything's fine.
This entire concept of Conservative rhetoric will be examined in a later post. I'd do a piece on Liberal rhetoric, but let's face it, Liberals really have no fucking rhetoric, nor do they really have a platform. I'd refer to Liberals as "we," but I like to imagine that, were I attacked by a murderer, I wouldn't help him drive the knife into my throat after a few seconds of struggling and nearly disarming him.

1 comment:

  1. Excellent blog!! Can hardly wait to read more!

    ReplyDelete