Month: September 2012 (Page 2 of 3)

Overt racism masquerading as simple nativism bothers me a lot. Birthers question Obama’s legitimacy. The movement to make English-only government services, voting, etc. shares its source. Non-whites are foreigners. I have mentioned in the past, that my ancestry to the very state in which I live (though I just moved here not much more than a decade ago) dates back at least as far as 1620. That, of course, would be the European segment. The native American/native Mexican blood predates that by another 300 centuries or so.

Well what about the really swarthy? Surely they just got here, right? That’s true. If, by “just,” you mean only over 200 years ago.

It seems that back in the infancy of this country, President Thomas Jefferson signed a law that would outlaw the trans-Atlantic slave trade beginning January 1st, 1808. While the illegal slave trade continued, the majority of blacks in America are descended from slaves born on American soil during the 18th Century. That is to say that most American blacks have ancestors who were born in what is now the United States of America in the 1700s. Yet those groups most insistent on the sub-citizenship of non-whites have names starting with Mc- or O’- (Irish Potato Famine, 1845-1852), ending with -inni or -ese (great Italian emigration, 1880-1920), or could otherwise be identified with relatively recent mass immigrations to the New World.

That is odd.

Oh. Before I get any hate mail, I know that Obama’s African roots were not of the stock of former American slaves. I’m not talking about him. I am talking about the rest of us in general.

Interestingly, I have encountered Republicans and Republican-leaning people this weekend that dislike Obama, but shudder at the thought of voting for Romney. I wonder to what extent this election hinges on the lack of turnout for one side or the other.

A question that has become a meme this election cycles (much as it first did in 1980):

“Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

There are two obvious responses:

“I’m better off than I was three years ago.”

or, more to the point:

“No, I’m not. But Romney and the obscenely wealthy people who caused this mess certainly are.”

It really is too bad that they would rather waste their allotted time giving hand jobs to imaginary gods in deference to their opponents. That is probably why the Republicans will always win.

Immortal words for the ages:

“…evil will always triumph, because good is dumb.”
-Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)

Once again, I will reiterate: no scientist in the world that is not prostituting him/herself out to either a polluting industry or one of numerous right-wing political movements denies the fact of global warming.

People that claim otherwise do not accept the philosophy of science. What bothers me is that they fully accept the trappings of science. I would suffer science deniers a little better if they would self segregate. That way, they could test their conspiracy theories on water fluoridation by allowing their children to grow up missing a large fraction of their permanent teeth. They could test their conspiracy theories on vaccines by allowing their infants to break their own ribs with the violent coughing of pertussis. Unfortunately, they can not do anything of the sort with their conspiracy theories of global warming. They insist in damning all of us with their absurd rejection of science. They drivel on in their twitter feeds and on facebook while using smartphones that they must believe were created using magic.

And that leaves us at an impasse. How does one argue with someone who denies the rules of argument? Could we disagree about mathematics in the same way? Can one insist that 0=1 and continue to enjoy a sane audience? The real reason why the sane have no dialogue with the right wing kooks in the recently off-the-rail Republican Party is that they refuse to even agree to obvious premises. It’s not just science. Even accounting is considered subjective to these people. How adding and subtracting numbers in columns of data can be screwed up is beyond me. It is apparently not beyond them, though. I should give up even trying.

But how can we get beyond the craziness of the current political scene if we simply dismiss the 27% of the population for whom anything supported by the Democratic Party is, by definition, wrong? I honestly wish I knew.

I have been asked, on occasion, why I should be interested in policies or activities that have been aimed at blacks, Muslims, gays, or women. The fact is, that I am all of those things. Not literally, certainly, but figuratively. Something implied in the founding documents of this republic has been lost on so many of its beneficiaries. The primary goal was protection against “tyranny of the majority.” I am not sure how anyone could miss this. Most of the people who signed on to a document securing freedom of religion were in agreement about religion. But the fear that Mr. Jefferson so eloquently put to rest, was that religion would become a means of controlling the populace. I believe he would be rolling in his grave, were he not a filthy heathen like myself. No one, on either side of the aisle, can even run for the presidency without an acknowledged claim of belief in some magical bullshit about invisible helpers from beyond the “firmament.” This comes despite the fact that neither Washington, Adams, Jefferson, or Madison made overt claims to such beliefs. Were they inferior to people such as Santorum, Romney, Huckabee, or even Obama? None of them would be electable now. That is due to the hive mind of the religious. People suffering from that disability will not even entertain the possibility of voting for a person that claims no magic friends. This comes despite the fact that the beliefs of religious adherents are less different from those of us heathens than they are from the believers of other sects.

…but I digress…

I started off on niche areas of blogistan. I read about the feelings of oppression expressed by everyone. That includes both the oppressed (the aforementioned) and the wildly unoppressed (reactionary wealthy white Protestant Christian males). In that way, I maintain an understanding of the political context in which myriad peoples view the unfolding events.

Some opportunists play to the uneducated (Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh). These do not interest me terribly. What I find more interesting is people outside of the ruling caste that play the same tune. All of this is, to me, a vast area of interest. I wonder about which of the puppets in this play are playing their assigned roles, and which are true believers.