Let me start by saying that conservatism is not inherently megative. But contemporary conservatism, as it stands today, this very moment, is extremely detrimental to the integrity of the American political sphere. Cotemporary conservatism only succeeds at flaunting the fact that it out-lived its utility. Conservatives need to look back to their ideology's Civil-War era roots.
Case in point: John McCain. Mr McCain has a history of being a rational and individual face in a crowd of copies and schizophrenics. He was a favorite of the opposing party; not to make fun of, but of genuine respect. But this has changed, and I hope it is a change that is not permanent. Once a critic of political pandering to fringe groups and a muckraker into the cancer haunting the Republican party, the Non-Conformist, Rational Politician has fallen into the footsoldier parade. Two years ago he spoke to students at unLiberty University, founded by "agent of intolerance" Jerry Falwell. And this week, on an appearance on the Daily Show, he avoided questions no one else would even ask, such as the nature of Patriotism and what it means1.
Yesterday, David Brooks, an arch-conservative, wrote an editorial railing his party on this front2.
Something incredible has happened to swallow even John McCain. It is safe to say that organizing this Bolshevikian unthinking lockstepping has begun since the end of Reagan era.
Brooks states that they made Reagan into a simplistic myth, which I think is also what most Christians (moderates included) did to Jesus, and neither of them were simplistic. Mythification has great consequences.
On social policy, any shift in ideology on the front of private life (family, sex, etc) is met with swift and fierce opposition by Focus on the Family.
To oversimplify, the Republican Party has become merely the WASP/C-BB Party. [White Anglo-Saxon Protestant/Catholic-Big-Business/Brother]
The Republican party has dehumanized itself and very much embodied Ayn Rand's novels (represented by Peter Keating, Ellsworth Toohey, and James Taggart) reducing itself to a shapeless vague form, and John McCain's interview with Jon Stewart mentioned earlier is a perfect example of what I am saying.
Conservatism was traditionally pro-small-government, personal responsibility and minimum government spending. Under Bush II, I see none of those values or ideals.
While David Brooks and the Republicans I know recognize the Republican party for what it has become and now is, it will take a number of defeats and colossal failures (even at the expense of the public) for invertebrates to be broken and John McCain to return to his former self. Perhaps he might emerge as the most influential member of his party once he learns from this extremely costly experiment in group psychology.
--------------------------------------------------
Something terrible is happening. Let me write down the score:
-Lying about Iraq
-Valerie Plame ousting, Libby is a meat shield for Rove & Cheney
-Firing of Republican lawyers for "doing too good of a job" at prosecuting corrupt politicians3.
-Alberto Gonzales' short-term memory.
It seems a piece of the puzzle drops on our lap every few weeks. The aim is disturbingly clear. Thoreau's sentiment of democracy being used against the people is truth here. We have enough pieces of the puzzle to know what the picture is, but I don't think its complete. I cannot recall any other time in American history where a presidential administration have acted so deliberately against public interest and against the ideals for which this nation was intended to stand.
What we have yet to see is how many of this President's actions are irreparable.
-----------------------------------------
Works Cited:
1. Channel 13 around 6:00-7:00 EST: Bill Moyers Journal; Interview with Jon Stewart. on PBS
2. Brooks, David "Grim Old Party" New York Times. April 29 2007
3 Ibid; Bill Moyers speaks to professional independent bloggers on the Alberto Gonzales scandal.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Don Imus
Bah. I have to admit I haven't heard him in a long while, and now this. Here is the heirarchy of hypocrisy:
Viacom owns CBS, MSNBC, and Record Producing companies.
CBS and MSNBC own Don Imus's show (or...did)
Record producers liscence Gangsta Rappers
Gangsta rappers flaunt misogyny, often in black culture
Don Imus borrows "Nappy-Headed Ho's" from Gangsta rap.
Blacks speak out against Don Imus while largely ignoring the plague within their own culture. The "N-Word" is a term of endearment among black youth. "Ho" or "shortie" is short for "whore"/"prostitute"/"call-girl"/etc, a very common description for black women by black men.
What Imus said was wrong, yes, but where exactly did he get it from? Black culture.
The really big question is: Why did it take Don Imus for blacks to realize that their culture is the biggest purveyor of blatant misogyny in the United States?
"Whites" cannot fix this problem. It's up to the black community. The status of rap as art is debatable. Hip-Hop apologists say that they write about what is "real." Perhaps the first few times it was real, it was reflective. But now, thanks to the quick rags-to-riches fix and tastelessness of record producers (what will sell over what is good) , it has becomes the fuel of the environment, the statement that poverty is "good."
Censorship will not solve this problem, it will only reinforce the oppression of blacks - only blacks upon themselves.
It's sad: They've only replaced the Sambo, Zip Coon, and Mammy with the Gangsta and Ho. They've taken it upon themselves to provide their own degredation in the media. But it doesn't have to be this way. There are positive images of blacks in the media (Crash). What I hope for, what people who are concerned should hope for, is a Second Harlem Reniassance. I hope, however, that it does not simply fuel current stereotypes. Things can be better, but only if those involved want them to.
Viacom owns CBS, MSNBC, and Record Producing companies.
CBS and MSNBC own Don Imus's show (or...did)
Record producers liscence Gangsta Rappers
Gangsta rappers flaunt misogyny, often in black culture
Don Imus borrows "Nappy-Headed Ho's" from Gangsta rap.
Blacks speak out against Don Imus while largely ignoring the plague within their own culture. The "N-Word" is a term of endearment among black youth. "Ho" or "shortie" is short for "whore"/"prostitute"/"call-girl"/etc, a very common description for black women by black men.
What Imus said was wrong, yes, but where exactly did he get it from? Black culture.
The really big question is: Why did it take Don Imus for blacks to realize that their culture is the biggest purveyor of blatant misogyny in the United States?
"Whites" cannot fix this problem. It's up to the black community. The status of rap as art is debatable. Hip-Hop apologists say that they write about what is "real." Perhaps the first few times it was real, it was reflective. But now, thanks to the quick rags-to-riches fix and tastelessness of record producers (what will sell over what is good) , it has becomes the fuel of the environment, the statement that poverty is "good."
Censorship will not solve this problem, it will only reinforce the oppression of blacks - only blacks upon themselves.
It's sad: They've only replaced the Sambo, Zip Coon, and Mammy with the Gangsta and Ho. They've taken it upon themselves to provide their own degredation in the media. But it doesn't have to be this way. There are positive images of blacks in the media (Crash). What I hope for, what people who are concerned should hope for, is a Second Harlem Reniassance. I hope, however, that it does not simply fuel current stereotypes. Things can be better, but only if those involved want them to.
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Revolutionary!?
Me, a revolutionary!? Yes, my mom believes that I'm a revolutionary, that I want to overthrow the gov't and all that. But the truth is, I liked this country during the Clinton Years. If you want to talk about revolutionaries, talk about Jesus Camp and Borat, when the Chief Justic of the Alabama Superior Court and the director of the rodeo are blatantly theocratic. According to some people, my aunt's boyfriend's Catholic brother and an online friend, the Jesus Camp brainwashing routine has always happened, only in smaller sects and on the fringe, out of public sight. It's only thanks to the last 4 presidents (Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Tsar Nikolay Bush II; Clinton because his delicious sex scandal and the CR's 'restore integrity to the Oval Office' crap [though who has integrity now! I wish it were a sex scandal!]) that these "fringe" dwellers and underground Bolsheviks burrowed out to gain control. On three channels (including CNN!), programs are running on what used to be considered fringe beliefs: Falwell is on CNN, Faux is talking about the resurrection, and History has recently begun giving credence to End-Times fanatics and ran a lengthy series of "investigations" pertaining to The DaVinci Code. Oh joy.
I want what Thomas Jefferson wanted, though hold the hypocrisy. I would like it if America was an international intellectual melting pot, where thinkers from all around the world would convene in one place, where...ahh what the hell? In reality, the lowest sewer-dwelling reptiles in the heirarchy of anti-intellectualism, like Ann Coulter and James Dobson, weild their Becky Fischer-trained child-footsoldiers against something that they truthfully know NOTHING about.
My mother believed that the kids in Jesus Camp and others like them would recover soon after exposure to the almighty Huxleyan Glass Teat, that "they will rebel when they find out," but was explained by the Catholic mentioned earlier that "few people ever recover" from early-age indoctrination. Such activities have always happened, yes: In places like Nazi Germany. Who would have ever thought in America, the Land of the Free, etc?
The problem is, as the Bolsheviks put it, "politically conscious"1. It wouldn't be so frightening if the Jesus kids never learned of the democratic system, which their instructors hate with so much Christian Passion. Lauren Sandler, who wrote books recently on Jesus Youth Movement, said in an ABC interview that Kids on Fire and its brothers are going to have "a negative impact on the country's future"2. Music to the Republican party's ears, a haunting requiem for a country that was so great and the citizens whose lifestyles will be tossed into the bonfires alongside the Constitution.
And we know what is going to happen, it's a convention and formula. Revolutionaries taste power, power corrupts and those in possession of it act hastily for the infinite expansion of the power they hold at the wanton expense of the residents.
I think that the political Christians are most similar to the Bolsheviks, perhaps not so much in their ideology (though the Proletariat was undereducated as well), but in their behavior and methodology.
They were ruffians, blatant hypocrites who merely wanted to change the class system upside-down. After Lenin and Trotsky, the proletarian "intellectuals" were about as intelligent as average 8th graders. They essentially lowered their standards of intellectualism, if not did away with them. Their intellectuals, save Lenin and Trotsky, were merely drilled with slogans and sayings, not what they meant or how to achieve them. They were very fiery and, when power was within sight and competition with other socialist factions grew fierce, the Bolsheviks resorted to terrorist tactics. Boris Pasternak wrote in Dr Zhivago, "The war [WW1] had killed off the flower of Russian manhood, now there was nothing but rotten, good-for-nothing rubbish left...And Russia, too, was a manageable girl in those days, courted by real men, men who would stand up for her, not to be compared with this rabble nowadays"3.
In the 90s, we had abortion clinic bombings that the government did not pay attention to, acts which the government has forgotten, partly because those bombers are indirectly in power! The RW Christians are less intelligent than 8th graders, not because they are "born with it," but because intellectual capacity is not stressed, and merely repeat those same types of slogans and the same arguments that their parents and teachers and leaders spoonfeed to them. And what is to happen if they gain power? We have a model for that, too: 1970s Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini.
The RW Christians seek not to overthrow the bourgeosie, but to overthrow the intellectual "elite" that has "oppressed" them. In truth, they are not oppressed, they are not hunted down with dogs and jailed, etc. They are actually quite allowed to do what they do. The problem becomes (as it is a problem now) that they seek to unravel our fragile democracy in place of their Old Testament government, and tyrannize (as expressed in Borat and Jesus Camp) over what they believe to be evil: The very freedom for individuals to live as they please so long as they affect no one else.
The irony: Many theologians, Muslim and Christian, believe that "Allah" and "God" are the same entity. The "Allah" that flew planes into the WTC and Pentagon and beheads journalists and blows up innocent people is the very same "God" that America turned to so willingly en masse. Its very funny, pleading to your oppressor as you would a benefactor. However, the RW Christian belief that God is punishing America is valid under this premise: Under Islamic law, women have no rights. In America, women have many rights. Under Islamic law, women's sexual deviance is punishable by death. Our law is, realitve to Islamic law, indifferent to sexual activity. In Islamic nations, homosexuals are immediately detroyed. In America, they are allowed to live but are still relatively oppressed. See the connection? God disdains minority freedom.
The catch is that one would have to take parts of the New Testament, as well as small sections of the Old Testament completely out. Jesus is an escape clause. Being that only 22% of RW Christians have actually read the Bible, this isn't a big issue for them4.
Works Cited:
1. Pasternak, Boris. Dr Zhivago. Wm Collins & Sons. London. C. 1958: Boris Pasternak lived in Soviet Russia from before the Revolution and his novel seeks to be as realistic as possible. The rest of the paragraph is not taken from the novel, just that quotation. Also of note is a review of
A Study of Bolshevism: Author of review: David G. Smith in The Journal of Politics © 1955 Southern Political Science Association found at http://www.jstor.org/view/00223816/di976494/97p0596n/0?frame=noframe&userID=9597ce5e@wpuni.edu/01cce4406500501bc3993&dpi=3&config=jstor
2. Harris, Dan. Film Shows Youth Training to Fight for Jesus. ABC News. September 17, 2006 http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2455343&page=2
3. Ibid. p. 310
4. Altemeyer, Bob. The Authoritarians. University of Manitoba. C. 2/26/07. http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
I want what Thomas Jefferson wanted, though hold the hypocrisy. I would like it if America was an international intellectual melting pot, where thinkers from all around the world would convene in one place, where...ahh what the hell? In reality, the lowest sewer-dwelling reptiles in the heirarchy of anti-intellectualism, like Ann Coulter and James Dobson, weild their Becky Fischer-trained child-footsoldiers against something that they truthfully know NOTHING about.
My mother believed that the kids in Jesus Camp and others like them would recover soon after exposure to the almighty Huxleyan Glass Teat, that "they will rebel when they find out," but was explained by the Catholic mentioned earlier that "few people ever recover" from early-age indoctrination. Such activities have always happened, yes: In places like Nazi Germany. Who would have ever thought in America, the Land of the Free, etc?
The problem is, as the Bolsheviks put it, "politically conscious"1. It wouldn't be so frightening if the Jesus kids never learned of the democratic system, which their instructors hate with so much Christian Passion. Lauren Sandler, who wrote books recently on Jesus Youth Movement, said in an ABC interview that Kids on Fire and its brothers are going to have "a negative impact on the country's future"2. Music to the Republican party's ears, a haunting requiem for a country that was so great and the citizens whose lifestyles will be tossed into the bonfires alongside the Constitution.
And we know what is going to happen, it's a convention and formula. Revolutionaries taste power, power corrupts and those in possession of it act hastily for the infinite expansion of the power they hold at the wanton expense of the residents.
I think that the political Christians are most similar to the Bolsheviks, perhaps not so much in their ideology (though the Proletariat was undereducated as well), but in their behavior and methodology.
They were ruffians, blatant hypocrites who merely wanted to change the class system upside-down. After Lenin and Trotsky, the proletarian "intellectuals" were about as intelligent as average 8th graders. They essentially lowered their standards of intellectualism, if not did away with them. Their intellectuals, save Lenin and Trotsky, were merely drilled with slogans and sayings, not what they meant or how to achieve them. They were very fiery and, when power was within sight and competition with other socialist factions grew fierce, the Bolsheviks resorted to terrorist tactics. Boris Pasternak wrote in Dr Zhivago, "The war [WW1] had killed off the flower of Russian manhood, now there was nothing but rotten, good-for-nothing rubbish left...And Russia, too, was a manageable girl in those days, courted by real men, men who would stand up for her, not to be compared with this rabble nowadays"3.
In the 90s, we had abortion clinic bombings that the government did not pay attention to, acts which the government has forgotten, partly because those bombers are indirectly in power! The RW Christians are less intelligent than 8th graders, not because they are "born with it," but because intellectual capacity is not stressed, and merely repeat those same types of slogans and the same arguments that their parents and teachers and leaders spoonfeed to them. And what is to happen if they gain power? We have a model for that, too: 1970s Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini.
The RW Christians seek not to overthrow the bourgeosie, but to overthrow the intellectual "elite" that has "oppressed" them. In truth, they are not oppressed, they are not hunted down with dogs and jailed, etc. They are actually quite allowed to do what they do. The problem becomes (as it is a problem now) that they seek to unravel our fragile democracy in place of their Old Testament government, and tyrannize (as expressed in Borat and Jesus Camp) over what they believe to be evil: The very freedom for individuals to live as they please so long as they affect no one else.
The irony: Many theologians, Muslim and Christian, believe that "Allah" and "God" are the same entity. The "Allah" that flew planes into the WTC and Pentagon and beheads journalists and blows up innocent people is the very same "God" that America turned to so willingly en masse. Its very funny, pleading to your oppressor as you would a benefactor. However, the RW Christian belief that God is punishing America is valid under this premise: Under Islamic law, women have no rights. In America, women have many rights. Under Islamic law, women's sexual deviance is punishable by death. Our law is, realitve to Islamic law, indifferent to sexual activity. In Islamic nations, homosexuals are immediately detroyed. In America, they are allowed to live but are still relatively oppressed. See the connection? God disdains minority freedom.
The catch is that one would have to take parts of the New Testament, as well as small sections of the Old Testament completely out. Jesus is an escape clause. Being that only 22% of RW Christians have actually read the Bible, this isn't a big issue for them4.
Works Cited:
1. Pasternak, Boris. Dr Zhivago. Wm Collins & Sons. London. C. 1958: Boris Pasternak lived in Soviet Russia from before the Revolution and his novel seeks to be as realistic as possible. The rest of the paragraph is not taken from the novel, just that quotation. Also of note is a review of
A Study of Bolshevism: Author of review: David G. Smith in The Journal of Politics © 1955 Southern Political Science Association found at http://www.jstor.org/view/00223816/di976494/97p0596n/0?frame=noframe&userID=9597ce5e@wpuni.edu/01cce4406500501bc3993&dpi=3&config=jstor
2. Harris, Dan. Film Shows Youth Training to Fight for Jesus. ABC News. September 17, 2006 http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2455343&page=2
3. Ibid. p. 310
4. Altemeyer, Bob. The Authoritarians. University of Manitoba. C. 2/26/07. http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Friday, April 6, 2007
New Blog, Bush
My friend and I started a new blog. Find it here: http://perilsofreligion.blogspot.com/
I've been thinking over the past few days: I think it is possible for George W Bush to actually be a good President.
He did one thing that, while it may destroy America, it may also potentially save it. George W Bush singlehandedly exposed, for everyone to see, nearly everything that is wrong with America.
He brought, for us to witness, the very sludge that dammed our progressive streams. He brought into the light, our militarism, our greedy and socially irresponsible and exploitive aristocracy, our racist and religous bigotry and primitive thinking, and our bureaucratic ineptitude, one that ranks, as we have seen in the Katrina Aftermath that still continues, with the Bolshevik bureaucracy. He exposed our corruption, our xenophobia, our psychotic fear of acceptance of differences, our disdain for immigrants, our epidemic ofperverse conformity, collectivism, and the putrid stench of groupthink.
One might say, "This is not America!" But it is. We are seeing ourselves. For eight years, everything that we denied about ourselves will have tyrannized over us. What we now need to do, if America is to survive as a superpower, is gather the will (political and individual) to clean up this mud and refuse that holds our livelihoods and our once-proud nation hostage.
If we do not fight back, if the best of us is conquered by the worst of us, well, thats for a science fiction author to describe...
I've been thinking over the past few days: I think it is possible for George W Bush to actually be a good President.
He did one thing that, while it may destroy America, it may also potentially save it. George W Bush singlehandedly exposed, for everyone to see, nearly everything that is wrong with America.
He brought, for us to witness, the very sludge that dammed our progressive streams. He brought into the light, our militarism, our greedy and socially irresponsible and exploitive aristocracy, our racist and religous bigotry and primitive thinking, and our bureaucratic ineptitude, one that ranks, as we have seen in the Katrina Aftermath that still continues, with the Bolshevik bureaucracy. He exposed our corruption, our xenophobia, our psychotic fear of acceptance of differences, our disdain for immigrants, our epidemic ofperverse conformity, collectivism, and the putrid stench of groupthink.
One might say, "This is not America!" But it is. We are seeing ourselves. For eight years, everything that we denied about ourselves will have tyrannized over us. What we now need to do, if America is to survive as a superpower, is gather the will (political and individual) to clean up this mud and refuse that holds our livelihoods and our once-proud nation hostage.
If we do not fight back, if the best of us is conquered by the worst of us, well, thats for a science fiction author to describe...
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