I have no premeditated witticisms for this one. I'm too pissed-off for that, but I'll probably toss some stuff out on the fly just so I don't cry myself to sleep tonight. I can no longer sit idly by and pretend at some facsimile of political correctness or benefit of the doubt. That time has passed, and I must truly speak my mind. I make no apologies to anyone who is offended or thinks that I am too harsh.
The Republican Party is a cult, as sadistic as Charles Manson's family and as fiercely devoted as the residents of Jonestown. They deny science, dehumanize anyone who doesn't conform to their delusions, and call for the deaths of whomever they arbitrarily declare to be the enemy. As I write this all off-the-cuff, I realize that I must give this some structure or I may devolve into the same firebrand death-wishing as those I so despise, so let's do this.
Formation
First off, a cult does not need to be established around a religion; a dogma or philosophy works just as well, as Nazi Germany showed. The National Socialist party was most certainly a cult, and it rejected all religion.
The only true necessity for a cult to form is a dogma strong enough to gather like-minded followers and enough intelligence in the leader to realize that it needs to be kept silent. I cannot point to exactly when the Republican party became wholly infested by their cult, but I know that Conservative dehumanization, death-wishing and regressionist campaigning has existed ever since before the Civil War. My best guess for the firm entrenchment of this cult would be during the McCarthy era, wherein the madmen found that the public was willing to go along with the wildest accusations if driven by fear, and the Other was certainly enough to incite this fear.
The fall of the Soviet Union had to be a crushing blow to this cult, as suddenly there was no looming Other to terrify the proletariat. In the face of this, the cult dug deep and dipped into the collective fears that are nurtured by religious dogma and the willful ignorance that has always been a secondary goal of the Church since its rise to power at the fall of the Roman Empire. Lacking one major Other, they decided to instead sow the seeds of terror and division far and wide, striking at anything they could: homosexuality, women, other races, other religions, other demographics and educational levels; anything that could be painted as Different, Other, and Evil was done so. Fear is the single greatest motivator to make a person act against his or her own best interests.
Dogma
What makes one small group a religion and another group a cult? Well, there are all sorts of reasons, but the number-one thing that separates a religion from a cult is that religion is supposed to be a part of your life, while a cult is intended to BE your life. Nothing can supersede your loyalty to the cult, your subservience and dedication to your leaders. This certainly explains how so many competing Christian religions, who normally despise one another to the point of near-civil war, can work together in the Republican party while still making religion one of their primary stances. The reason, of course, is that their religion is their cult, not whatever denomination they claim. They ally with a church to gain the loyalty of the cattle, following basic talking points while keeping their true intent hidden.
This is another important point in defining a cult: they keep their behavior secret. They do not share their beliefs with others who have not yet been heavily indoctrinated, nor do they share anything about themselves, their lives, friends, activities, or anything else if they can avoid it. Todd Akin's recent verbal atrocity hints at this: we all know that the Republican base believes his words, that the vagina is some magic creature that can slay unwanted sperm, but I don't honestly believe that the cultists in power believe this. This is the dogma they spout to their constituents to get them to fall in lockstep; Akin made the mistake of sharing it with people who would protest, so the rest of the party immediately disavowed him.
In addition, cultists actively reject facts that do not gel with their fantasies. Whether these facts are that their leader is only human and not a god, or that economic deregulation has never worked in the history of modern America, they are ignored and violently shouted down. As with most cults that find their origins in heresy, Republican cultists have no problem with picking apart their holy book - the Bible - and rewriting sections to fit with their own interpretation of the world, to hold up homosexuality as a far greater sin than violating the Ten Commandments or the Two Commandments of Christ's covenant, and to somehow completely negate Jesus' lessons to support the poor and donate their wealth as the rich can never enter Heaven.
Something odd, though, is that most cults don't last very long because they have a single godly figurehead, and with that lost most can no longer cling to their madness, or at least cannot perpetuate it. In this case, scarily enough, I believe that their god-figure is the dollar. Every policy recently offered up that did not strip individuals of their rights was somehow designed to leave more Americans unemployed or stuff even more money in the pockets of the richest Republicans. In this case, the cult's leader will never die as the dollar cannot truly be killed. Instead, we are tasked with the nightmarish challenge of defeating the worshippers rather than executing their leader.
Principles
Cults always stand against human decency, acting in manners directly anathema to the survival of the species. In this case, we know the origin of their actions: fear of the Other keeps their followers quietly in check, following along in abject terror of some evil brown person leaping out to slay them, with the occasional carrot being dangled before them to make them move faster - usually something to do with religion or the stripping of human rights from women or minorities.
However, fear has been working less and less. Americans don't have as much to fear. Fewer and fewer people, though still more than is in any way acceptable, fear others for the color of their skin, their religion or orientation. So, faced with this glaring fact, the cult has changed to incite hatred.
This scares me more than ever, even more than when I first learned about Bush-era renditioning. Tea Party rallies cheer when someone dies from lack of medical care, they call for the deaths of their candidates' political rivals, and plot the demise of our President. All the while their cultist puppet-masters continue to drive them forward, stoking the flames of their rage.
Republicans have made more unfounded claims regarding fellow Americans than we have seen since the age of McCarthy, and now the motivation of these accusations are not fear but hate. We have seen a total of eight mass killings in one month, and the month isn't even over yet.
We need to declare this Republican cult to be the religious terrorists they are before they amass and strike against peaceful Americans. Human compassion from the Right is at an all-time law, and they believe murder to be justified in idealistic disagreements. I do not normally stand as an advocate of fear or direct negative action against fellow human beings, but I can no longer sit quietly and watch as the raving masses continue to build power and create a feedback loop of rage amongst themselves. This bubble of hatred is soon to burst, and I fear for all those who believe in self-determination and human moral responsibility. The most outspoken of them will likely be the first casualties.
Showing posts with label political correctness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label political correctness. Show all posts
Friday, August 24, 2012
Friday, July 27, 2012
Pros and conned
The recent Chik-Fil-A controversy has unveiled a disturbing number of gay-haters, many of whom try to disguise their bigotry - even to themselves - with rhetoric and differing arguments. The "pro-" movement has existed for a long time, and is most often utilized by the ignorant in an attempt to positively or negatively charge a debate.
Take some of the most common (and inaccurate) terms: Pro-Life and Pro-Family. Pro-Life is just a blatant lie. If life is sacred, why is it only sacred until birth? After that, Conservatives work to strip healthcare from mothers and children, stating that programs such as welfare and Medicare are only a drain on society, and it's every person's duty to take care of themselves. Of course, this is why Ron Paul, one of the biggest supporters of abolishing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security makes excessive use of all of them for himself and his family. Apparently only those capable of easily supporting themselves deserve handouts, because why should those with the ability to do so actually do so?
People who are Pro-Life also frequently favor the death penalty and leniency in killings with laws like Stand Your Ground, so again life is sacred only until birth, then they don't seem to care if people die or are murdered. Truly, Pro-Life is simply Anti-Abortion trying to make itself appear friendlier.
Pro-Family is another laughable concept, if one actually takes a step back. Those people who claim to be Pro-Family stand behind representatives who are adulterers, who hate their own family members for being different, who divorce their spouses or abandon them to die, and numerous other atrocities against the concept of family.
The entirety of the Pro-Family argument is basically "pro-anything that's not gay." Gay children are shunned, and gay people are hated. Many of homosexuals' detractors say that gays are "anti-family" or "anti-traditional marriage." This implies that they wish to abolish marriage or tear apart families, and where has one advocate for gay rights seriously come out and said that gay marriage should be the only marriage? I'm seriously asking for a single recorded statement, on the record in a press release, saying that this is the goal.
Now for two actual "pros": First is Pro-Choice, which does nothing but acknowledge that it is each woman's, and each family's, choice. If Pro-Life doesn't care that parents torture and violently beat their children, and calls for the deaths of people every day, how can they claim the moral high ground over a movement that just says that a person's body is his or her own?
Next is Pro-Equality, a common term for the gay rights movement. As the name says, the movement is focused on equal rights, not on superiority. Gays only want the same rights as any other Americans, the ability to visit their loved ones in the hospital and to share the precious commodity that is health insurance, among other things.
As an addendum, I truly do not understand the hatred of gays. Homosexuality is not condemned by the Ten Commandments, nor by any sacred covenant between God and His people. How do the religious Conservatives justify permitting violators of the Ten Commandments, the very building blocks of Christianity, to hold rights that they would keep stripped from gays?
Take some of the most common (and inaccurate) terms: Pro-Life and Pro-Family. Pro-Life is just a blatant lie. If life is sacred, why is it only sacred until birth? After that, Conservatives work to strip healthcare from mothers and children, stating that programs such as welfare and Medicare are only a drain on society, and it's every person's duty to take care of themselves. Of course, this is why Ron Paul, one of the biggest supporters of abolishing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security makes excessive use of all of them for himself and his family. Apparently only those capable of easily supporting themselves deserve handouts, because why should those with the ability to do so actually do so?
People who are Pro-Life also frequently favor the death penalty and leniency in killings with laws like Stand Your Ground, so again life is sacred only until birth, then they don't seem to care if people die or are murdered. Truly, Pro-Life is simply Anti-Abortion trying to make itself appear friendlier.
Pro-Family is another laughable concept, if one actually takes a step back. Those people who claim to be Pro-Family stand behind representatives who are adulterers, who hate their own family members for being different, who divorce their spouses or abandon them to die, and numerous other atrocities against the concept of family.
The entirety of the Pro-Family argument is basically "pro-anything that's not gay." Gay children are shunned, and gay people are hated. Many of homosexuals' detractors say that gays are "anti-family" or "anti-traditional marriage." This implies that they wish to abolish marriage or tear apart families, and where has one advocate for gay rights seriously come out and said that gay marriage should be the only marriage? I'm seriously asking for a single recorded statement, on the record in a press release, saying that this is the goal.
Now for two actual "pros": First is Pro-Choice, which does nothing but acknowledge that it is each woman's, and each family's, choice. If Pro-Life doesn't care that parents torture and violently beat their children, and calls for the deaths of people every day, how can they claim the moral high ground over a movement that just says that a person's body is his or her own?
Next is Pro-Equality, a common term for the gay rights movement. As the name says, the movement is focused on equal rights, not on superiority. Gays only want the same rights as any other Americans, the ability to visit their loved ones in the hospital and to share the precious commodity that is health insurance, among other things.
As an addendum, I truly do not understand the hatred of gays. Homosexuality is not condemned by the Ten Commandments, nor by any sacred covenant between God and His people. How do the religious Conservatives justify permitting violators of the Ten Commandments, the very building blocks of Christianity, to hold rights that they would keep stripped from gays?
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.
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.
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