Just a bit about personal politics

I'm still seeing political discussions on Facebook. Some are fairly civil, which is always nice to see. Of course, even some of the civil ones can be very presumptuous, and you know how that sets me off.

One opinion you'll here from good people on all sides is that being a democrat shouldn't preclude you from being friends with a republican, and vice versa. Most people I respect share this idea. They will simply say that whatever you may believe, politics are personal, and they shouldn't get in the way of your friendships.

Regarding that point, though, I actually heard somebody make a compelling argument for why your personal politics do matter. According to this person, politics are important because they're a matter not just of pride, but of the fate of our country. Apparently, hardcore liberals and conservatives have such drastically different plans for our country, our very way of life is at stake, because liberals plan to give the federal government so much power that it will inevitably take away all of our civil liberties.

Since the person who made the above point clearly has all the answers, obviously, this must mean that conservatives are people with good moral values who want to protect liberty, and liberals are morally bankrupt fools who want to create an Orwellian police state so they can have free healthcare and abortions, and sit at home numbing themselves with legalized marijuana while the iron fist of Big Brother Obama crushes everything about America that we hold dear.

I like it. This view of things is nice and simple. It eliminates all the messy complications and doubt that arise from approaching politics on a personal level rather than on the level of an entire movement.

There's certainly no way that any conservative politicians are selling their political influence to private interests for their own personal gain, slowly compromising the integrity of the government as it becomes more and more controlled by money rather than morals. And there are certainly no heartless, bloodthirsty warmongers in the party who treat citizens of the very country they claim to love with the kind of boundless contempt and fury usually reserved for someone who fucked your girlfriend and your mother in a three-way over the corpse of your dog and then sent a DVD of the event to all of your closest friends.

Of course, there is similarly no possibility that some liberals believe there should be a strong federal government in place for the purpose of actually protecting people's liberties and well-being from individuals and corporations who would seek to exploit the law to control the poor and the weak. It's entirely impossible that a person branded with the name "liberal" could in fact love their country and its people and wish to work together with the rest of government to better serve them.

Nope, they all just wanna control us, and the conservatives are fighting them to preserve the American dream.

Naturally, there are also people at the other end of the spectrum, who believe all conservatives are brainless, bible-thumping toothless morons who will vote for any corrupt, filthy rich, human-trafficking, Gevenva-Convention-violating, black-hearted Sith lord so long as he loves guns and says the word "freedom" enough. On the other hand, they figure all liberals must be highly-evolved, intellectually superior, free-spirited, omnipotent, angelic reincarnations of Mahatma Ghandi and Mother Teresa (if they were atheists). This point of view has exactly as much evidence to support it as the opposite view does, and makes about as much logical sense.

As straightforward and attractive as this kind of political-label-based thinking can be, I'm mainly of the opinion that anybody who rides too hard on the "conservative" or "liberal" agenda is probably too willfully ignorant and full of indignant holier-than-thou attitude to be worth interacting with on more than a casual basis.

If anyone's going to get a bug up their ass and act like they're smarter than everyone else in the room, it should be a cynic like me. Everyone who "shoots from the hip" and "tells it like it is" is firing blind; at least I have the decency to admit that I speak from a place of well-intentioned ignorance. Plus, I sure can talk pretty when I want to, can't I?

I do know this though: amid all this bickering between the democrats and republicans, liberals and conservatives, the voices of reason and compassion get lost in the noise of war drums. Americans are essentially going to war with each other, even if it's only a war of words. Evidently, they don't realize that this process actually benefits none of us in the American public. All the squabbling and mudslinging does nothing to secure our energy independence, protect us from terrorist threats, stabilize the economy, protect our civil liberties, encourage technological progress, prevent or reverse global climate change (you know, if you believe the word of countless scientists and climate experts all over the world), or really do anything else to improve our lives. It's a giant distraction; nothing more. As long as we have somebody to place the blame on, we won't worry too much about the rest.

On the other hand, do you know who benefits quite a bit from all this political banter? Politicians. The two big parties still control our entire government, both on the federal and state levels. Independent or third-party candidates are rare, and have essentially no power to affect change. Congress has had a staggeringly low approval rating in recent years, yet many incumbent candidates got reelected all over the country. Why on earth would we keep voting for the same people we claim to think are doing a lousy job? Only morons like Todd Akin who found a way to stand out from the crowd and make themselves targets were voted out. Everyone who kept quiet and stuck to their party's platform saved their jobs.

I hear plenty of people talking about how awful the choices are in the elections, yet nobody makes an effort to find someone better. A lot of people genuinely didn't like either of the big two presidential candidates this year, but they still cast their vote for one of them, thinking it would be the lesser of two evils, and that somehow voting for any third-party candidate would be a waste of their vote.

I'm sorry, but how fucking stupid can the American people really be? The parties told us that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were our choices. We didn't pick them; the veteran members of those parties chose them. Even the political primaries are a joke; Republicans were given a handful of unlikable political riff-raff to pick from, and they picked the least of those evils to advance to the main election. How do more people not stand up in the middle of this mess and go "Is this the best we could come up with?"

At this point, I just think there's no point in fighting over how best to protect the foundations of American democracy. They're already gone. Our votes are bought and paid for. Millions upon millions of dollars were collected out of the pockets of political power-players and a sea of hapless gullible idiots, and they were spent on ad campaigns to convince us that our vote matters, yet simultaneously tell us who we are supposed to vote for. I'm not just talking about actual advertising segments, either. Network anchors and editorial commentators on cable news feed us the exact same information. I'm not sure if they're actually being paid off, or if they're just as gullible as the people they broadcast to.

It's pathetic and despicable, but even I'm complicit in all this. After all, I didn't really research candidates who might actually work to take the influence of private money and blind partisan loyalty out of political decision-making. I was too busy with whatever else I do with my life to set time aside for the future of my country, or my state for that matter. When I went in to vote on Tuesday, half my ballot was blank because I didn't want to vote for local politicians I knew nothing about, but not voting is almost as bad as voting uninformed.

In regards to the actual presidential election, I cast a vote for the Libertarian candidate. While I do agree with the vast majority of his platform, the vote was less out of loyalty for him and more out of contempt for mainstream politics. Hell, a couple of weeks ago, I still couldn't remember the man's name, and after this week, it's unlikely anybody else will either.

Well, this has gotten awfully long-winded. If I had a point to make with all this, it's simply the following: people who take politics so seriously as to cut off ties with friends they disagree with are irredeemable fucking morons. Politics, American or otherwise, are a stupid sick joke, and like most things we do as a human race, they should not be taken too seriously. It only makes us look foolish in the long run.

Anyway, if I offended anybody with this rant of mine, I do apologize. Not for anything I said, but for your inability to get your head out of your ass, metaphorically speaking. Life's too short to go on bickering over crap like this. In truth, I've given it more thought than it deserves at this point, and I wish I hadn't. So, maybe I do apologize for that much.

Verbosity is another thing I can't stand; you probably wouldn't guess that by reading this.

Instead of arguing over ideologies with people who have even less insight than I do, I think I'm better off just living the best life I can. I'm not quite sure how to do that, mind you; this life is still a work in progress, so there's time to figure it out. I'd just appreciate it if we could all learn to treat each other with the kind of respect we wish to be treated with. Nobody has all the right answers; most people don't even have a few of them.

I just want us all to remember that societies only work through cooperation, and drawing battle lines in the sand with labels like conservative and liberal only hurt our ability to thrive.

Now, I know we can't all just get along. Drama is inherent in our nature as human beings. I'm too hopeful to be a realist, but I hate entirely too many people to be a pacifist. I just hope we can figure out a way to live side by side without being at each other's throats day and night. We'll never get world peace, but I'd settle for that much.

Those are my thoughts for now. I'll sign off before this turns into a damn book instead of a post. I'll follow up later if my muse should strike me over the head again. Until then, peace and love, readers. And just for laughs:

Ron Paul 2016

Just annoyed with people right now

For some reason, the Obama campaign shared this story on Facebook a little while ago. Apparently they expect it to be uplifting and inspiring. I just find it confounding and infuriating, and the comments are even worse. One guy states: "I know it's not much, but donating $5 [to the Obama campaign] made me feel really good about myself."

...Why?

Maybe I'm naive, but why do people who donated a few dollars to a political campaign say they feel good about themselves? They shouldn't. Really. The only way they should feel worse is if they donated more than a few dollars.

Even if you honestly believe that Obama is the best person for the job of the Presidency right now, answer this: how does that $5 help him win the election? It's not as if your vote is multiplied by the number of dollars you sent in. All you're paying for is more brain-dead political ads to bother me while I'm eating dinner. You're buying another bottle of seltzer for the clowns in the three-ring circus we call a political system. Metaphorically speaking, that is.

Here's a sad dose of reality for you: at this point in the race, anybody who hasn't made up their mind already is not going to be swayed by political advertising. Hence, you wasted your money.

And yet, scores of people feel good about the money they've thrown away on political campaigns. If you donated $5 to Obama's political campaign, or worse yet feel somehow moved by stories about working class people giving up a pizza dinner so they can instead give to the campaign, you should be ashamed of yourself. This comes straight from that letter to Obama: $15 could have bought that nice family a fun pizza dinner, fresh fruit, or helped pay for tickets to a show they could enjoy together. Instead, that money went to paying for the incompetent political machine that pesters me incessantly with its propaganda. That political machine, by the way, is in no danger of running out of money anytime soon either.

If you want to help Obama win so badly, then inform yourself about his policies and his opponents' policies, discuss the issues with friends and family, and help get the word out. Hell, you can have local rallies for him if you really want.

But some of you can't be bothered with all that, can you? Instead you just throw a couple dollars his way so you can feel like you did something good to make a difference. Throwing money at a problem is a stereotypical lazy American way to handle things, and it's a big part of the reason the world doesn't take us seriously. Can you blame them? Actions like this make us look positively pathetic.

Of course, all this is ignoring the fact that nobody even knows about the presidential candidates in other parties beyond the big two, and I've heard virtually no one place any emphasis on voting for their own representatives at the local and state levels, or even the people who are supposed to represent them in Congress, but those are glaring issues for another time.

When our people are more committed to obtaining the new iPhone than to making an informed choice about the people who control our government, it's time to throw our hands up and let England reclaim control of their former colony. Sure, they've been having a collective panic attack over Kate Middleton being photographed topless, so they aren't the picture of common sense right now either, but it's clear now that we really can't handle running a country any better than they can.

So, that's all I'll say for tonight. I apologize for the negative tone, but I really needed to get all of that off my chest. Hopefully I'll be in a better mood after the election season is over.

Peace and love, dear readers. Oh, and if you'd like support my own campaign to become future president of the United States, send me as little as $5 to express your support, as well as your sick sense of bizarre irony.

Just need to rant

I just can't stay quiet on this. My brain feels like it's going to explode.

Look, sometime last week or the week before, whenever, I heard people talking about this video clip of President Obama giving a speech and saying something like, "If you own a business, you didn't build that." When I heard that, I thought, wow, I can't believe he'd say that. And I really didn't. What's more, I knew he wouldn't have actually said something like that. Do you know why? Because he's not a fucking idiot. We're just a few months short of the election. Obama wouldn't go out on the campaign trail and commit career suicide with a blatant business-bashing comment like that. Nobody is that stupid.

So, I just assumed somebody was misinterpreting his words, which is prone to happen, and I let it go. I didn't care to hear anymore. If people want to hate Obama for no other reason than he is Obama, let them go right ahead. Never mind that there are a plethora of legitimate reasons to dislike Obama. Let them draw whatever twisted conclusions they want about his character and his motivations, and let none of it be based the slightest bit in reality. It's not like their gaining a newfound respect for common sense would cause them to shift their political leanings that much.

Hell, even I'm not voting for Obama. I flat-out refuse. The guy's overall been a failure; I have no doubt about that. Some of his measures with the healthcare and stimulus helped some people, sure, but he has no way to pay for that stuff. He couldn't reach across the isle and get Congress to compromise on legislation like he promised. He didn't close Guantanamo Bay, and as far as I can tell has no immediate plans to do so, despite telling us he'd have this done years ago. He got us out of Iraq on time but entrenched us even worse in other Middle East affairs. He basically seems like he's gunning for a record for the highest ever increase in national debt. That trophy should look great alongside the one for most enemy combatants blown to bits with unmanned drone strikes, which he is also winning.

And to top it all off, he signed that damn bill that would give the government the legal ability to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial if they are suspected of terrorism. Of course, he added at the bottom that his administration would never make use of this power. Forgive me if I don't trust you at your word, Barack.

But this... what happened with this video clip from the speech, what Fox News and Mitt Romney willfully did with this clip is so wildly unethical, I can't believe nobody from Obama's campaign or the White House has filed a law suit yet for slander. I was right all along. Surprise surprise, Obama didn't actually commit career suicide. He gave a speech saying that, basically, it takes a community. Even great leaders in business have people who help them, and everyone has to rely on some things like the nation's infrastructure. Shit, even Romney agrees with that. Here's a video, if you care to watch:


So... The actual line from the speech was: "Somebody invested [in] roads and bridges; if you've got a business, that- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." Now, he did misspeak a bit. I assume he meant, if you've got a business, you didn't build all that, or you didn't build those. He was referring to the aforementioned roads and bridges. If you wonder why I assume that, rather than assume he was talking about the businesses, I refer you to previous statements about him not being that stupid.

Well, guess what? Romney doesn't care about what he actually said. Fox News didn't care what he actually said. They saw an opportunity to lie right to our faces, and they took it. They cut the clip; they removed the start of the sentence when he mentions roads and bridges, so the clip they showed depicted Obama saying, "If you have a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

Honestly, I'm not sure what to be more upset about; the fact that they did this at all, or that they knew their viewers were fucking gullible enough to believe it. It's bad enough that those fucking scumbags would stoop so low as to actually blatantly lie in such an obvious way. Did they really just think, hell, the American people are stupid. Our viewers at Fox News are definitely stupid. They'll believe what we show them here because they already hate Obama. And then they'll get more outraged, and they'll tell all their friends and family how anti-business Obama is, and they'll spread the word and disparage him more and more, all based solely on a lie.

And you know the most fucked up part of all?

It. Fucking. Worked.

My own father fell for this bullshit. He trusted the words and the hack-job video clip from Fox News, and he believed the words of the pundits and radio personalities. He added this to his laundry list of superficial bullshit to hate about Obama, all the while blindly following the narrative that Romney is a brilliant business leader who will steer the country in the right direction. I'll concede that Romney may know how to personally succeed in business, but I will never fucking vote for a man who would lie straight to my face like this.

Look, I can't say this to his face. I love my dad. He is overall a good guy, a hard worker, a loving family man, and given the option, I wouldn't trade him in for anyone. He's the best I could hope for. But dammit... he is so fucking gullible when it comes to politics. I guess he gets it from his dad; the difference there is his dad is in the bag for liberals instead of conservatives. Maybe that kind of blind political gullibility runs in my family.

...That wouldn't quite explain me, though. I guess I do take more after Mom after all. In that case, I should really be on medication or something.

Anyway, that's all I had to say on that. I hope some of my loyal readers enjoyed my dose of vulgar enlightenment, and I hope the various nuts who make their way here from Google realize that I moderate comments, and I have no intention of giving a soapbox to anyone who's looking for a shouting match. If you have something smart to say, go ahead, but I'll be watching like the scornful know-it-all that I am.

So, yeah, on a happier note, at least when Romney is president I'll get to gloat and rub it in Dad's face when the country gets screwed all to hell, just as badly as it already has been. That's assuming, of course, that the ocean hasn't swallowed our house by then.

Peace and love, dear readers. Don't forget: hate is a sin. Practice patience and forgiveness. Hopefully I'll be able to do the same.

Re: America, F@#k yeah!

On my last rant post, I talked about moving to another country. I know that's probably not something that should be thrown around too lightly. To tell you the truth, I was in a pretty rotten mood that day to begin with.

Anyway, the way President Obama has been responding to criticism of the US approach to Iran and the healthcare reform plan the last few days, I think maybe we're going to be okay. Maybe it's silly, but it puts my mind at ease to know the most powerful man in our government has America's future at heart. The fundamentals of the economy might not be perfect, but the fundamentals of the American spirit haven't been shaken. I guess I was just a little too short-sighted to feel that way; national pride never was a big thing for me anyway. But then, pride in general never was. I'm kind of a pessimist, if you hadn't noticed.

To sum up, I guess I won't be buying that one-way ticket anytime soon. I'll probably bitch and moan quite a bit, but nothing so drastic as that. I know some people aren't fond of anti-America talk, but if anything it shows I'm still an American at heart. I don't sit back and accept crap from my government. They're supposed to represent me; I expect them all to take their jobs seriously. Right now, I trust Obama to take us in the right direction. Now, if our senators and governors would just follow suit...

Social Theory, and Beating People with Sticks

No, the two topics are not related.

I have two kind of random things to talk about tonight. Firstly, while discussing this healthcare business with my family, I became very frustrated. Things were especially weird toward the beginning of President Obama's televised discussion group thingy that was on ABC around 10 o'clock. The way we discussed it during the first commercial break, it felt like my mom and I were talking about two different pieces of video.

I realized this kind of thing happens a lot, so I thought, hey, could there be something to this? Or is my mom just as dumb as a post? I'd like to think she's not, so to explore this business, I started a little theoretical research project for myself (and Hubpages, since I haven't posted there in a while), regarding the subjectivity of reality:

Is reality subjective?

If anyone has an opinion, or better yet some evidence or personal experience to help me with this project, please let me know. You can post a comment here, answer at Hubpages, message me on Facebook, or email me. To anyone interested in helping out, thanks in advance.



Okay, second: I was thinking, our generation really needs a new sport. I'm not really a sports guy, per-se. I've played some golf, and I was a madman at bowling in high school, but I don't really have a sport to love and call my own. So, I thought, what kinds of things do I like to do that don't involve physical activity, but could? Well, how about pwning the crap out of some noobs?

That's when I got this idea. People like to play fantasy fighting games on videogame consoles and the Internet, but the experience is still kind of artificial. To really get the blood flowing, why not make a real-world equivalent? I'd be kind of like LARPing, but without all the nerdy crap.

The original inspiration for this came a long time ago. A friend of mine from high-school once invited me to join this game of capture the flag with him and his friends. What made this game cool was that we all were equipped with wooden swords and hockey sticks and the like. When encountering members of the opposite team, an exciting battle took place. The first to get hit lost the fray; if you were on opposing turf, you had to go back to your home base to "respawn," and losers on their own turf would have to kneel for 20 seconds before rejoining the game. Good fun and excitement to be had, but no serious danger involved. Okay, I did kind of get my kidney crushed when one guy did this epic leap over me to escape certain doom, but otherwise it was a lot of fun.

So, deriving from what made that game awesome, here's my idea: a new sport of fantasy fighting with artificial weapons. Everyone plays quick and fierce like a real fight, but no one gets seriously injured. Although I'd plan many different kinds of matches, the main event would be simple one-on-one fights. Players score points by getting a successful hit on their opponent. Then, of course, we'd have variants of that; ie, first to 5 points wins, most points in 60 seconds wins, etc.

I figure we could take it further than that, too. We could divide it up into beginner, intermediate and expert ranks (with cooler names than that, of course. The expert rank would probably be called Elite or Master or something). For beginners, all weapons would be light plastic or foam, and points would only be awarded for hits on the torso or arms (to make things less vicious), and you couldn't hit someone while they're down like in boxing. For the experts, wooden weapons would be allowed, and all manner of crazy tactics like leg sweeps and down attacks would be permitted. Groin shots? Not encouraged, but they'll still count, so if you want to join the expert ranks, wear a cup. And of course the intermediate rank(s) would fall somewhere in between kiddie-time and anything-goes.

Those are just some of the preliminary notes. I'm thinking that once I've got a working plan, I'll set up a fun tournament or something and host it at Indian Meadows Park down the way from my house. That way the BHBL alumni can come have some fun on summer break. If that's successful (and even if it's not really) I'll bring the concept to SUNYIT in the fall. I don't know exactly how much interest there is for this, but I'm better if I provide some of my own weaponry, people will show up. Come on, it's an excuse to hit people with sticks!

Again, if this business tickles your fancy, please drop me an email, message me on Facebook or comment here. I'll get back to you, we can discuss particulars, and maybe set up some kind of event to try it out.

That's about it for now. Stay cool, readers.

Re: the Government

Now that I think of it, that post about the Obama action figure was probably a little late coming. Obamania isn't exactly what it used to be. I think I kind of missed the boat on that one.

My parents seem to outright dislike Obama. I agree that his handling of the economy has been less than excellent. I think he's got some good ideas, but bailing out those failing companies was all wrong. Helping the guys who helped get us into this mess really won't make things any better. We need more work programs to create jobs and improve our cities' infrastructures.

Oh, and it wouldn't kill us to put a little more effort into this 'clean, renewable energy source' that sci-fi writers have been dangling over our heads since before I was born. Have we completely given up on solar, wind or even nuclear power? We've got state-of-the-art military weapon systems that can execute a surgical strike and wipe an enemy stronghold off the map from 3000 miles away without even messing up the lawns in the surrounding civilian areas, yet we still can't generate electricity without burning fossil fuels.

We have the capability of bringing about the energy revolution. I don't understand why this crap is allowed to continue. I mean, is everyone in charge of this stuff really that dense? Or are we just too set in our ways to do anything good for mankind?

You know, this is a rotten time in my life, because it's seriously hard to tell how my depression is doing. I can't tell if I'm miserable because of a medical condition or because the world is falling apart all around me, could easily be fixed with a little time and effort, and everyone who has the ability to do anything about it is too god damn stupid to get their priorities straight.

By the way, since I haven't mentioned it in a while, I'm still working on my plans to take over the world. I might as well; humanity is too stupid to take of itself. If I controlled the world under a single government, at least we'd have half a chance in hell of surviving as a species. With the people we've got running things now, we're screwed. Obama's a decent leader, but congress is still full of idiots, and state governments are like a 3-ring circus, especially here in New York.

Seriously, do Senators these days give a shit about anything but politics anymore? We're in serious need of more jobs, more money, better regulation in just about everything, but all these idiots care about is whose party gets to have the majority. Who gives a shit? Do what you were elected to do and support your constituents. I've seen high school mock senates who worked better. You're supposed to be working for your state, for your district, for your people. You're not there to push your own agenda and the agenda of whatever party you identify with. The position of senator is supposed to be a position worthy of courtesy and respect. Act like it, you babies!

Alright, I'm through. As soon as I'm able, I'm moving to Sweden. Or Finland. Or Mars if the option becomes available. The further I get away from people and government, the happier I'll be.

Unless, of course, I do manage to take over the world. At least then I'll be able to sleep at night. The world might still be going to hell, but I'll finally be in a position to do something about it.

He has his own what?!

Really? We're so stricken with Obamania now that the dude gets his own action figure? I don't see too many other presidents who can boast that, let alone boast it less than six months into their first term.

...Okay, seriously, I have to have one of these. :D

RE: The Economy

I'm sure there's plenty I could say here, but I think this about sums it up.

This is the Best News Ever

I got my absentee ballot in the mail today. I voted for Bob Barr. No, that's not the news, but I thought I'd mention it.

No, the big news is this: YouTube has officially added audio previews for comments. Yes! This has been suggested many times in many forms by many different people, but I never thought I'd see the day that it gets implemented. This is fantastic. Now, when people go posting comments on my videos, they'll first click audio preview, and something like this will happen:



(Congrats go to Randall Munroe. He called it)