tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66848805580756889502024-03-19T05:01:16.284-07:00IdiolatryThoughts on Life, the Universe, and Anything...
Sometimes focused on the ineptitude of technology in our lives
Recently much more focused on the growing existential perils we all face as pinnacle predators who are destroying our own ecological niche and our foolish penchant for constant war, and the inevitable decline of oil.
This is an Anti-Racist, Anti-MRA, Anti-Status Quo, Anti-Oligarchy blog.
Welcome!Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-75935283788625565802018-08-16T06:34:00.003-07:002018-08-16T06:34:34.866-07:00Science is a process and Bias is unavoidableMac Coon (and I agree)<br />
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"I certainly am not anti-science by any stretch, but i definitely do not worship at the 'shrine of holy science' (or any other shrine) either. there are often (understatement) times when science overreaches the limits of the scientific method and substitutes purely emotional conjecture for hypothesis then assumes a theory has been constructed out of re-defined variables which were so altered to fit the conclusion."<br />
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And to point out what might not be obvious to folks: Science is performed by scientists who are themselves raised in a culture with its values, its limitations, its ignorance, its social pressures, and so on.<br />
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Objectivity is a kind of useful goal that is not possible in reality - one cannot step outside of this universe in order to study it - all attempts to understand invariably alter in myriad ways the thing you're studying. The questions you pose reflect your ignorance, your biases, your cultural and/or religious indoctrination, your Human limitations and myopia, and so on. This is inescapable - yet it is laudable - and required for Science to be Science - to make every possible attempt to know your own biases and remove them from your experiments as much as possible.<br />
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That said, Objectivity can be a sort of trap as well, with tons of wankers believing that they're truly objective and everyone else is fools. That's just more bias (and a particularly male and juvenile one at that).<br />
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Science is an attempt to see what is true, record what is true, pass on what is true and go beyond our biases towards facts as much as Humanly possible.<br />
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...it just turns out that Humanly possibly isn't all that, and must be constantly reexamined and broadened and deepened.<br />
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I'm a firm believer in seeking truth, facts, reality. Science is our formalized attempt to learn from our mistakes and build on each successive generations attempts to do just that.<br />
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But fools and politicians (wait, redundant?) will try to manipulate the public through claiming authority everywhere that they can - including co opting "Science" as if it were a religion or a cloak of authority and then making absurd and false claims that appeal to people's ignorance and emotional biases.<br />
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That doesn't mean Science itself is wrong - or that all Science cannot be trusted.<br />
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But like *EVERYTHING* in life - you - yes YOU - actually have to have a brain, study, learn, learn to think, and think about what folks are saying to understand what is likely to be true, and likely to be false.<br />
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Putting your "faith" in anything - Science or your pastor or your politicians - is a step away from thinking, knowing, understanding - and step towards being a fool.<br />
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Do not be a fool. Think. Learn. Strive for understanding of what is really, actually, factually true. And help everyone else figure this all out along with you.<br />
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Only through being smart are we able to avoid the traps laid out for us by those who wish to dominate and exploit us.<br />
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In Love and Reason,<br />
<br />
Steve Wolf<br />
2018-08-16Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-77697478320850293722018-06-08T14:12:00.002-07:002018-06-10T10:02:42.226-07:00Jordan Peterson reflections<div style="background-color: white; margin-bottom: 6px;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Some reflections on some of Jordan Peterson's lectures and ideas (in no particular order):</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">I've been thinking that inequality is fundamental to greed - which is of course not limited to capitalism - but it is worshipped by capitalism - and all obstacles to greed are quasi-religiously bulldozed by capitalist societies - they are considered anathema to the true free market that is the bringer of all goodness[tm].</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">But it is obviously not limited to Capitalistic nations.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">My sense was also that the power structures that tend to encourage the concentration of wealth towards the few is systemic to Humans - but exaggerated and exacerbated by Capitalism; with Patriarchy - which is far older and occurs in nearly all extant Human civilizations - is also key to such tower-shaped distributions of wealth. i.e. it encourages hierarchies, and supports systemic systems of power distribution that favors 1/2 of the population over the other half right from the get-go.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Additionally, patriarchy is aggressive, combative or competitive in nature, and it rewards "winners" over losers - not merely as one who wins at a given contest - but as a way of dividing who should get the overall spoils of life vs. those who should not. It's a winner-takes-all mentality; rather than merely winner gets more or better.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">And finally patriarchy encourages a world-view which is grounded in such zero-sum games, competition, winner takes all, take or be taken; and the paranoia that accompanies such a mindset and world-view.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">To me, these are deep archetypes that distort any culture and unbalances it if such tendencies are not counterbalanced by an equally strong pull towards honoring wisdom, group effort, common survival, common cause, common grounds, the wellness of the whole, respect for one's peers and elders, preparation and sacrifice for the future generations, and a sense of borrowing or using with respect, reverence, and in balance with what can be reasonably afforded any given individual - or at least balanced against the greater good (Humans and Nature).</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">These ideas seem to me to be core to health - to a literal and alliterative sense of wellbeing and balance and deep contentment and integrity - that are just not possible - nor encouraged in any way - under patriarchy.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Jordan Peterson points out the fallacy that inequality is limited to Capitalism - or that thinking of capitalism as the root of the evil of inequality is too narrow-minded and fails to notice a much larger tapestry of human societies that have tended towards concentration of wealth.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">However, for my 2c, I find the archetypes of the divine feminine to hold real promise in offering a way to rethink society and culture to avoid the endless traps of dickishness and its constant narrow towers...</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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I guess as far as I can see - balance and wisdom and honor and grace and compassion and a consideration for the welfare of everyone cannot be mandated by laws or rules - cannot be defended by police - cannot be made into a competition or rewards system.</div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The only way to have a society that values health, well being, compassion, and so on is to actually hold those values as a people, and hold each other accountable to such lofty - wise - ways of being and acting - not by punishment primarily - but by example and by social interconnection.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Such motivations must come from within individuals - and those individuals must be raised with some awareness of such high-minded principles - we must reinforce such goals and values as a collective people.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">I honestly think we all start out with a very solid sense of fairness and desire for the wellbeing of all - and learn later on that such things are for suckers as we're abused and we see example after example of the destitution that "losing" brings.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">So, JP says it's all personal - it's the struggle of the individual to do right by themselves - which is inherently right by others - to achieve a life that makes up for the pain and suffering of existence.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Okay - solid on many levels. Wise words IMO.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">That said - there is undeniably racism, sexism, colonialism, imperialism, classism. There are easily understood and mathematically trackable biases woven into the collective systems we call society that make the games of life considerably easier for some, and vastly more difficult for others.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">So, to my eyes, we have a valid truth of individual responsibility, willingness to shoulder their own load (self-love and self-care being obvious motivators); and we have the equally valid truth of systemic racism and sexism and so on stacked against various people to various degrees through no fault of their own. none. It's just the shit they were born into. Because of others' crazy beliefs - women are inferior, or blacks are not really humans like themselves, or native americans are just whatever - it's their own fault - whatever the sick and twisted belief happens to be.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">These things are not mutually exclusive.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Both can - and absolutely undeniably do - operate in the same world at the same time.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">It is not enough to simply say "take responsibility".</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">It is not enough to simply say "society is corrupt and unjust."</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">In fact, part of taking responsibility is knowing that society is corrupt and unjust and - who the fuck else is going to bear the burden of righting that wrong? Of making things a little better for the next generation? For helping our children to have less of a headwind to fight against while doing the already seriously challenging work of individual growth?</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">If not you, if not me, then who?</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">These are not mutually exclusive, but go hand in hand. And I wish to do my part to make a better world by changing the corrupt and unjust and evil mechanisms buried in our societies that stack the deck against people of color, and women, and other minorities, including the surviving remnants of our genocides against the first peoples of this continent.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">I hope you'll join me.</span></span><br />
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Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-3967822616255310362018-05-21T06:19:00.002-07:002018-05-21T07:10:16.210-07:00Criticism is (also) Love<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEwmTrVQVx_om5t2L83WZuTHZ7Q1lAWtHz4kcs9I8bdZLgnfmqyyy_JYONF8IlZ41NKMF0xLPFUV7t6X32F0rTFRJUn-3eN2TVfvGFLLvCvECzyVmq9teSEKLFO_HHEE60OC92ZeORlQNP/s1600/Justice.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEwmTrVQVx_om5t2L83WZuTHZ7Q1lAWtHz4kcs9I8bdZLgnfmqyyy_JYONF8IlZ41NKMF0xLPFUV7t6X32F0rTFRJUn-3eN2TVfvGFLLvCvECzyVmq9teSEKLFO_HHEE60OC92ZeORlQNP/s1600/Justice.png" title="Sword of Justice" /></a></div>
<br />
In my time as an "SJW" - I've watched as identity-group after identity-group is attacked and throws themselves on their own swords and screams injustice and <a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/notall?source=feed_text" style="color: #365899; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit;"><span class="_5afx" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit;"><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl _5afz" style="font-family: inherit; unicode-bidi: isolate;">#</span><span class="_58cm" style="font-family: inherit;">NotAll</span></span></a><mygroup> and <a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/unfair?source=feed_text" style="color: #365899; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="_5afx" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit;"><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl _5afz" style="font-family: inherit; unicode-bidi: isolate;">#</span><span class="_58cm" style="font-family: inherit;">Unfair</span></span></a> and <a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/wedidntstartit?source=feed_text" style="color: #365899; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="_5afx" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit;"><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl _5afz" style="font-family: inherit; unicode-bidi: isolate;">#</span><span class="_58cm" style="font-family: inherit;">WeDidntStartit</span></span></a> and otherwise throwing hands around and kicking their feet and screaming that it is "anti-semitic" or "misanthropic" or "hating on good people" or whatever the particulars are to pretend that</mygroup></div>
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IT IS TOO MUCH FOR THEM TO BEAR TO SEE THEIR IDENTITY-GROUP CHALLENGED ON ITS MISDEEDS AND OUTRIGHT EVIL HISTORY OR CURRENT ACTIVITIES.</div>
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Right now it's mostly <a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/notalljews?source=feed_text" style="color: #365899; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="_5afx" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit;"><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl _5afz" style="font-family: inherit; unicode-bidi: isolate;">#</span><span class="_58cm" style="font-family: inherit;">NotAllJews</span></span></a> and "Criticisms of Israel are only encouraging anti-semitism and are veiled hate on all Jews"</div>
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Isn't it funny that it's #NotAllJews but all criticism of Israel - they insist - is somehow All Jews (even though - TTBOMK - the word "Israel" and the word "Jews" are only partially overlapping Venn circles).</div>
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But be it Israel committing genocide in Gaza (a former Manhattan that they've turned into their personal Soweto hell on earth open-air prison and gas chamber for what remains of the indigenous peoples of former Palestine), or Christians murdering blacks or homosexuals or other "undesirables", or Americans murdering thousands of Arabs and Muslims in the middle east, or funding and supplying arms and logistical aid to the Saudi princes in their genocide in Yemen - or American corporations destituting this nation's middle class and destruction of what remains of our common grounds for fun and profits; or whether it is along racial lines pointing out western white people's penchant for denying the existence of 400+ years of chattel racist slavery and utterly amoral theft of Humans and their families and their futures and an entire continent's culture and prospects for laughs, cruelty, and profits; or whether it is males and our penchant for rape and brutality whenever we seem to feel we can get away with it - using our social power to subjugate the women in our workplaces or those we are sworn to protect in the precincts we patrol or in our own homes with those took an oath to cherish, or our neighborhoods with those who are vulnerable and defenseless...</div>
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It matters not what Identity-Group is challenged.</div>
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They all scream like a stuck-pig - Gnashing their teeth - screaming that "I AM THE REAL VICTIM HERE!" and - your actions are cruel to us!!! And but <a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/not?source=feed_text" style="color: #365899; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="_5afx" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit;"><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl _5afz" style="font-family: inherit; unicode-bidi: isolate;">#</span><span class="_58cm" style="font-family: inherit;">not</span></span></a><a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/all?source=feed_text" style="color: #365899; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="_5afx" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit;"><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl _5afz" style="font-family: inherit; unicode-bidi: isolate;">#</span><span class="_58cm" style="font-family: inherit;">all</span></span></a> and #not <a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/i?source=feed_text" style="color: #365899; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="_5afx" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit;"><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl _5afz" style="font-family: inherit; unicode-bidi: isolate;">#</span><span class="_58cm" style="font-family: inherit;">I</span></span></a> and you are only "Strengthening Our Enemies" and you are a "Traitor" to "Our People."</div>
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All who rush to defend perpetrators of Evil -</div>
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Should know who you are. Should know yourselves. Should honor your great sacrifices in running defense for others because you believe that your common connection - whatever that is - religion, birthplace, color of skin, sex - makes you a sort of kin - and that somewhere in your sick head - you believe that true love means not allow your brethren to face their demons and protecting them from looking in a mirror to see who and what they truly are.</div>
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Where did <b><i>you</i></b> learn this sick version of "love"?</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Who taught you that love is keeping others from consciousness?</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
When did you decide that loving was keeping each other in the dark, in ignorance, enthralled to your most base natures and unable to change or learn or transform into something more beautiful?</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
I challenge your belief in what LOVE is.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
I name your "love" SICKNESS and EVIL.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
I dare you to GROW YOUR HEART THREE SIZES today, and hold YOURSELF and those around you ACCOUNTABLE.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Nobody is perfect. You cannot possibly be perfect.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
But that is <a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/noexcuse?source=feed_text" style="color: #365899; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="_5afx" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit;"><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl _5afz" style="font-family: inherit; unicode-bidi: isolate;">#</span><span class="_58cm" style="font-family: inherit;">NoExcuse</span></span></a> to not try, and when you fail, to own your failure as proof of your humanity, common connection to all of us, and to get up and learn from your mistakes and DO BETTER NEXT TIME.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 6px;">
Jesus Fucking Christ. Is that REALLY too much to ask?<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/49/1e/1f/491e1f00c1b66da726faaf1532cb4b4a--love-life-quotes-desktop-wallpapers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Related image" border="0" height="300" src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/49/1e/1f/491e1f00c1b66da726faaf1532cb4b4a--love-life-quotes-desktop-wallpapers.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It takes a village</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br /></div>
Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-73356129094089707822018-04-26T11:53:00.005-07:002018-04-26T11:53:54.664-07:00Gender CriticalI'm going to use "male" and "female" to denote "biological reality" - and never gender. I"ll use "masculine" and "feminine" to denote gender roles / attributes.<br />
<br />
Males may well be somewhat predisposed to "masculine" attitudes or behaviors /on average/.<br />
<br />
Females may well be somewhat predisposed to "feminine" attitudes or behaviors /on average/.<br />
<br />
<b><i>Maybe...</i></b><br />
<br />
Hard to know since we're all raised in gender-role reinforced societies. The process of socialization into gender roles starts before birth - with parents wanting to know the sex, and then painting the room blue or pink, and buying cuddly things or more "manly" things, etc. Girls get frills, boys get simpler / plainer attire, etc.<br />
<br />
In psych 200 or maybe it was developmental psych - one of the things that came up is that studies show that strangers who come upon a newborn - the very first thing they want to establish is "what is its sex" (most folks would use the term "gender" here - but I refuse to - sex is biology, gender is socialization).<br />
<br />
But the point is - it is the FIRST and FOREMOST thing that nearly everyone - regardless of culture - wants to know about an infant (once children are older, sex is more obvious, so the need to ask or whatever is obviated by their ability to discern from external social cues - i.e. the child is almost certainly displaying gender-role appropriate garb to resolve that without asking).<br />
<br />
The funny thing is - why?<br />
<br />
Why in the 9-hells do we "need" to know the sex before we feel comfortable to interact with this newborn? (I think with some reflection you'll be able to answer that, gentle reader).<br />
<br />
So, no, I don't believe that gender-roles are native to sex - but rather are native to culture - which has a complex relationship to biology and history - so there is *some* modicum of aggregate bias towards or predispositions towards certain gender-role-behavior-groupings. However - that relationship is - at most - mild predispositions and buried under mountains of social / cultural bullshit - which then becomes a straight-jacket for conformity.<br />
<br />
And we all learn early that to buck those social normatives brings quick and egregious backlash from pretty much everyone - including our parents and other adults and children ("sissy" - "wimpy" - "pussy" for males, and "pushy" - "willful" - "aggressive" - "un-lady-like" for females).<br />
<br />
So, for most of us, we learn to stifle those parts of ourselves that do not conform to other's beliefs about what our sex is allowed to be or behave as.<br />
<br />
And THAT is gender - and THAT is too restrictive and arbitrary and leads to cruelty towards one<br />
<br />
Knowing that a man has a penis, a woman a vagina, full stop; is simply reality and irrefutable*.<br />
<br />
And the great thing about separating gender and sex is...<br />
<br />
You can be yourself - in whatever array of beautiful being that is - without fear of being ostracized and humiliated - because we're no longer requiring you or anyone to only behave in socially-confirmative ways - but rather we're open to you being ... well, you, in all of your complexity and glory. <3 p=""><br />
---<br />
<br />
* of course someone will quibble over intersex folks. But intersex folks are - drum roll.... intersex. Not really male, nor really female - but their own situation, and again - that's not my opinion, that's reality's "opinion". Take it up with mother nature.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<img alt="PEGGY ORENSTEIN - the Battle over Dress Codes - from the New York Times. A very balanced look at parenting and feminism in light of this issue." height="400" src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/db/12/3d/db123dfe5619fd89615b3f2830492770--feminism-quotes-womens-rights.jpg" width="285" /></div>
</3>Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-37496947866469303602018-03-14T07:24:00.002-07:002018-03-14T07:24:46.944-07:00I'm floored today thinking about "Disaster Capitalism"I'm floored today thinking about "Disaster Capitalism"<br />
<br />
Flint<br />
Private Insurance<br />
Opioid Epidemic<br />
Haiti (and places like it where a "natural disaster" creates an opening for exploitation)<br />
Ferguson (and places like it, Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, etc)<br />
CA fires<br />
<br />
Literally - everything horrible that happens on a large scale - that requires a community or state or national effort to address - a coming together of the people...<br />
<br />
Instead is meted out to the corporate for-profit interests who dismantle the previous community based solutions and legal protections (obstacles) to replace them with for-profit corporate based exploitative businesses that look to gentrify or industrialize or otherwise exploit the dire situation on the ground for personal profit off of the backs of desperate people, ensuring they become destitute and utterly powerless to resist further exploitation.<br />
<br />
Many have warned what America routinely does to other nations would inevitably come home to roost here, too - creating a coup, then installing and exploiting banana republics leaving their citizens destitute and in horrific slave conditions and leaving the nation impoverished and ecologically ruined.<br />
<br />
And it literally just dawned on me this morning:<br />
<br />
It's here.<br />
<br />
Sandy hook, Haiti, Flint, Ferguson, CA, the opioid epidemic - it's all here.<br />
<br />
Even our government is being replaced with crony capitalists - even Gestapo (ahem! I mean CIA) agents. 25% of the dems running in the 2018 midterms have overt CIA connections. They're openly calling for war with Russia and Iran (pretty much synonymous).<br />
<br />
This nation has gone through a coup to install Bush, and another to replace Trump's administration with CIA war hawks and deep state loyalist stooges.<br />
<br />
We are any other banana republic being railroaded under disaster capitalism for war and hijinks to profit the very few at the expense of the lives and livelihoods of the great many.<br />
<br />
We are finally coming home.Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-16034108330316992842018-01-26T12:22:00.001-08:002018-03-01T17:18:26.262-08:00Power attracts dicks, total power attracts total dicks<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="3qtre" data-offset-key="1l3kh-0-0" style="background-color: white;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1l3kh-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;">
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">For those who worship power - as governments - and those attracted to positions in government - and militaries especially - do --
For them there is only one possibility: Conquer or be conquered.
Theirs is a paranoid world of will-to-power and selfish manifest destiny whose endless terror can only be violently grappled with in an effort to come out on top, using whatever skills and tricks one can devise to stay there as long as possible, king of the human pile for just that much longer...
Life is a competition, hierarchy is the nature of existence, brutality is a necessary prerequisite to rising to the top.
Were it in my power, I would elide such aggression from the gene pool and render Humanity far more cooperative in nature.
I do not believe that this is an absolute truth - a necessary and inescapable, inevitable future that must be prepared for.
Rather, this is the expression of a sick, paranoid culture that is unable to choose peace over strife.
Theirs is the road to global death. It is the one we're currently on, and accelerating towards an armageddon that is indeed inevitable should we fail to mature past this arrested development outlook on life: this zero-sum-game.
I am not especially hopeful, but I will never agree that theirs is an inevitable vision of Humanity, nor does it hold one ounce, one scrap of honor or virtue - it is simply mental and emotional illness and stupidity beating its own chest.
Trump - is an excellent face of this vision, this philosophy.
We can be better than this. But it is going to take many of us get on board with a better vision, to pursue cooperation, radical equality, and a healthy vision for humanity's future on this space-ball.
I hope you'll all join me. For if we continue to let the sociopaths and militarists and deranged competitors rule, theirs will indeed be our only future. It may even be too late for our race of Homo Sapiens already.
But if there is any chance, any chance at all, it is in many of us becoming the adults in the room and leading by example, changing the course of our future history, together, cooperatively.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
</div>
Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-9824482921278251212017-12-18T08:57:00.004-08:002017-12-18T09:06:07.757-08:00Trump is not an excuseThis article in The Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates is typical of democratic-party-think: "Donald is a true white supremacist, and all he does is to elevate white supremacy."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/">https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/</a><br />
<br />
It’s true in some basic ways – certainly he does openly flout many white supremacist notions and say many blatantly racist things. He is without a doubt an openly bigoted, misogynist, and racist man.<br />
<br />
But the agenda of democrats & so-called “liberal media” is to amplify all of that into some sort of super-villain, some evil aberration who is simultaneously a mastermind of white supremacy and also a bungling idiot and also a Russian agent provocateur and also an incompetent man-baby.<br />
<br />
Trump is a PoS of a human being. On that I agree wholeheartedly with democrats and progressives and sundry other leftists and independents.<br />
<br />
But this attempt to make him out as being an aberration in terms of his white supremacy, and thereby to normalize the quiet acceptance of white supremacy of his predecessors –<br />
<br />
I have deep misgivings with that. It is fundamental to what neoliberalism is, and how it maintains its stranglehold on American politics. It willfully misunderstands racism and white supremacy and our national character and the social fight we’re all currently engaged in. It eliminates from our entire conversation ownership of our collective participation in our collective ongoing systematic racism - especially including school-to-prison pipelines, criminalization of the poor, legalized murder of black and poor folks by the police.<br />
<br />
Pieces such as this serve no useful purpose, as far as I can tell. Folks who read The Atlantic and articles like this – are democrats. They are the “true believers” in this narrative, and reading this is just joining into a massive circle with all of their peers – a kind of national prayer – going to the same church together to “pray on it.”<br />
<br />
It doesn’t help elucidate anyone who goes. It doesn’t take responsibility for how we got to this sordid juncture in history. It doesn’t offer a way forward. It just reinforces everyone’s false-belief that they are good people, that Trump is bad people, that democrats are trying to do right in the world, that republicans are the evil slime blocking their good intentions.<br />
<br />
That’s a road to nowhere. It’s where we’ve been stuck as a nation since at least Ronny-Ray-gun, and we’ve been digging this collective hole we’re all standing in deeper and deeper – with Congress becoming more partisan and acrimonious for decades.<br />
<br />
And then the media plays up this rift – giving excuse to democratic representatives and senators – “oh, they couldn’t do [anything good] because those mean old evil republicans.”<br />
<br />
And the democratic faithful rend their clothes and gnash their teeth and wail at the sky and do absolutely nothing. Understand absolutely nothing. Take responsibility for – nor demand their congress people take responsibility for – absolutely nothing.<br />
<br />
Which is how this game is really being played.<br />
<br />
Democrats always manage to pass the budget including a massive hand-out to all of their favorite donors – including war-industry, pharmaceuticals, insurance companies, and so on; while claiming that they can’t get anything that we-the-people want accomplished – often in numbers like 83% across both republicans and democrats – saying that “the other party makes it impossible.”<br />
<br />
Democrats always manage to "do the patriotic thing" and vote for wars, and war-spending, and war-power.<br />
<br />
Democrats always manage to "protect the homeland" and pass police-surveillance, fund new and existing intelligence agencies, rescind their duty to act as a check and balance to the president's power by authorizing (or not authorizing) wars.<br />
<br />
Democrats always manage to ignore Flint, MI, and the leaded and contaminated water issue there. Or the crime problems in Chicago. Or the overall movement of money from the lower and middle class to the ultra-few-elite-wealthy. Or to ignore the vast inflation of health care in favor of their wealthy donors who own insurance co's, pharmaceutical co's, or etc.<br />
<br />
Democrats always manage to pass bills that favor the wealthy, but can never manage anything that even upwards of 83% of all Americans want.<br />
<br />
So the narrative given by this Atlantic article does nothing more than reinforce this useless and largely untrue narrative that keeps everyone stuck and useless while the domestic greedy and global war profiteers continue to have their way in the world.<br />
<br />
So – please don’t think I am offering succor to Trump or his bigotry or his mismanagement or the myriad ways he embodies the inner asshole of the entire Human race.<br />
<br />
However – he is merely a symptom of a larger cancer of our national character – one that this narrative only helps to hide while growing in plain sight.<br />
<br />
<br />Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-57525252900954904042017-12-05T11:16:00.001-08:002018-04-13T07:38:35.808-07:00Sex vs. Gender<h2>
Let us start with some simple truths:</h2>
A woman is not a man, and a man is not a woman.<br />
<br />
Let me state for the record that I am a man - both biologically and in gender-identity. I have <b><i>not</i></b> lived a woman's life experiences, and similarly, a woman hasn't lived a man's life experiences. Nor have either lived a Trans-man nor Trans-woman's life experiences. All four categories are distinct because <b>society treats us differently</b>. This is inescapably true.<br />
<br />
As a male identifying man, I have most definitely lived a man's privileges and perspectives. My expectations and other's expectations of me are largely related to their perception of me as being a male. I am given male clothes, expected to behave in male-conforming ways, and I am given various latitudes and priorities in all sorts of social situations where males are deferred to as the norm.<br />
<br />
To pretend that others' perceptions of my gender are irrelevant is literally self-deceptive and disingenuous. To pretend that my lived experiences encompases other folks lived experiences when I identify as male and have a male conforming body would be just incredibly disrespectful to others - such as women, or trans folks.<br />
<br />
Their experiences are undoubtedly different. I haven't had the same confusion or fears over choosing a bathroom, or clothes, or friendships, or sexual partners, or self identity. Those are all struggles that are a part of being a trans person that - to pretend I know them from my lived experiences as a male, would be truly disrespectful and dishonest.<br />
<br />
So let's stop pretending that trans people's lived experiences encompass anyone else's lived experiences when it comes to how society treats you due to your apparent sex.<br />
<br />
Males, Females, Trans-women, and Trans-men all have different lived experiences.<br />
<br />
So, if we can agree to something this obvious, this fundamental, this self-explanatory, then we're off to a good start on solid footing.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, so-called "trans-theory" or, as it's often known in academia as "queer-theory", attempts to obfuscate this self-evident truth: that we all have different lived experiences because of other's perceptions of us and society's norms for how it treats men, women, and trans-people.<br />
<br />
Queer-theory obscures it, associate it with hate-crimes, denounces anyone who would point out such self-supporting truths in an effort to obscure this conversation so that they can enable trans folks - primarily trans-women, who are natal-men, to then claim to be allowed to define womanhood and erase any meaningful or commonsense definitions of what it is to be a woman living in our sexist, patriarchal, misogynist world.<br />
<br />
And that's messed up. It's wrong. It acts as a cloak for unscrupulous actors and predators. It erases women as a distinct, identifiable class of people who need common sense protections. It destroys hard-won protections for women and girls - because it redefines such things to be whatever some males claim they are!<br />
<br />
Women's sports becomes a joke. Some unscrupulous men simply identify as women and compete against actual women, with their male bodies. Not that most transwomen are the kind of folks who are looking to cheat or rob women of anything! In fact, in my personal experiences with trans folks, they're quite genuine in their desire to be a woman or to be a man - to present as such, and to be treated as such, and are not looking to use this to take rights or protections from anyone else. However, there is a significant minority who are and would happily twist things to their unethical advantage. This subset is often predatory in nature, and must be addressed.<br />
<br />
I know it is upsetting to consider - but just as with natal men - there is an unscrupulous subset of males who are quite eager to abuse others and to use their physical size or social standing to abuse and exploit others. Sexual predators is a real phenomenon of human beings. Just because you may think it is upsetting - and that "not all men!" - doesn't release you and I and everyone of our responsibilities to protect our fellow sisters and mothers and daughters from such people!<br />
<br />
Women's scholarships or other attempts to create encouragement for women to enter various underrepresented fields becomes a lie - a farce! Some unscrupulous males will simply change their claim of identity and get to claim those incentives, literally taking women's things for themselves.<br />
<br />
Academic scholarships are threatened, as are safe spaces for showering, dressing rooms, political and academic positions intended for females (such as head of Women's Studies or Feminism), rape crisis centers, women's prisons, and probably quite a few more if one considers everything that is sex segregated (and considers for half of one second that they're sex segregated <b><i>for a reason</i></b> - usually hard-won against male patriarchal opposition to allowing women to have those safe spaces in the first place - for example: Women's bathrooms are relatively new only being about a hundred years old in Europe and America, previously having forced women to stay home or be unsafe in male places with high rates of harassment and even rape).<br />
<br />
If there is truly any doubt in your mind at this point - and if you're new to this conversation, then there probably is - you might want to consider the following:<br />
<ul>
<li>Opposing trans-theory / queer-theory is not about attacking trans people!<br /><i>It is about protecting women and girls!</i><br /><b>Trans people can live and let live without annihilating any meaningful distinction between men and women.</b></li>
<li>Trans folks protections should not come at the expense of women's and girl's protections.<br /><b>We can and should protect both classes of people.</b></li>
<li>Trans folks should not be trying to redefine "woman" for homo sapiens.<br /><b>Sex is a category that is a biological truth across all sexually reproducing animals, Humans included.</b></li>
<li>Nor should anyone be policing language at all! <br /><b>In a free society that values freedom-of-speech, everyone is free not to listen to a given point of view, but everyone has the right - <i>must have the right</i> - to their freedom of speech!</b></li>
<li>Crying "hate-speech" for the perceived misuse of ordinary words like "female" and "woman" is a quick slide to thought policing and totalitarianism.<br /><b>Please see links below for some heinous results that are already emerging from this misuse of power to silence other views and even normal human interactions around queer-theory.</b></li>
<li>Gender isn't only about what an individual wants to project! <br /><i>It is also about what others' perceive.</i><br />This is fundamental and indelible.<br /><b>Self-identity is a only one piece of a much larger and more complex puzzle with wide-ranging impacts upon all of our lives!</b></li>
</ul>
I do not believe that many men are necessarily rushing out to identify as women in order to acquire the "privileges" of women. Most people who transition or who present as another gender simply wish to be identified with the gender of their choice, and to live their lives that way, for their own personal reasons. However, trans-theory goes well beyond simply supporting folks to adopt a new gender-identity and instead races into the realm of policing speech and erasing women and girls protections.<br />
<br />
The consequences of annihilating the meaning of the words "woman" "man" "female" and "male" have profound deleterious consequences that favor patriarchy and misogyny and the erasure of women's and girl's protections. This is a terrible, retrograde idea that is not grounded in liberation or sexual or social empowerment at all - but rather in controlling women and society through sexuality and a sick and twisted regressive theory of gender conformity!<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">No concessions: the five letters in sequence "woman" or "women" must not be applied to males ever, because all such roads lead right back to where we are. Further, there is nothing offensive about calling a man a man.</p>— Jenn Smith (@JennSmith64) <a href="https://twitter.com/JennSmith64/status/960920103746326528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<br />
Please keep in mind: this is not about opposing trans people's rights to be trans people! I, and every feminist I know, is a staunch supporter of an individual's right to present as they wish while being treated with respect and decency.<br />
<br />
Everyone has the right - or should have the right - to be treated with basic respect, common decency, and have all of the rights to pursue happiness and self expression so long as it does not infringe upon the rights of others.<br />
<br />
Queer theory / trans theory absolutely impinges upon all of our rights, erases hard-won protections, and is a bludgeon of gender-conformity and regressive thinking.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
There are a great many good resources to help you explore this topic. I've assembled a few here, to help get you started:<br />
<br />
TERF is really a hate-label:<br />
<a href="http://www.feministcurrent.com/2014/07/29/how-terf-works/">http://www.feministcurrent.com/2014/07/29/how-terf-works/</a><br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/terfisaslur?lang=en">https://twitter.com/terfisaslur?lang=en</a><br />
<br />
Miranda Yardley (An honest-to-goodness feminist who happens to be a trans-woman):<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyUNuD8WUSY">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyUNuD8WUSY</a><br />
<a href="http://mirandayardley.com/en/">http://mirandayardley.com/en/</a><br />
<div>
<br />
Great primer on Sex and Gender!<br />
<a href="https://sexandgenderintro.com/">https://sexandgenderintro.com/</a></div>
<div>
<br />
Born in the right body (a mom and daughter's odyssey):</div>
<div>
<a href="https://4thwavenow.com/2017/10/25/born-in-the-right-body-introducing-4thwavenows-new-spokesperson-mom-of-a-teen-desister/">https://4thwavenow.com/2017/10/25/born-in-the-right-body-introducing-4thwavenows-new-spokesperson-mom-of-a-teen-desister/</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
One of the best essays I've read to-date:<br />
<a href="https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3108929-a-letter-to-the-woman-who-called-me-a-terf">https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3108929-a-letter-to-the-woman-who-called-me-a-terf</a><br />
<br /></div>
One critique of gender-spectrum theory:<br />
<a href="https://rebeccarc.com/2016/01/06/gender-is-not-a-binary/">https://rebeccarc.com/2016/01/06/gender-is-not-a-binary/</a><br />
<br />
Brilliant rebuttal against Canadian trans-theory bill C-16:<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgOLs_cEKi0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgOLs_cEKi0</a><br />
<br />
Brilliant Reflections by Camille Paglia:<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8BRdwgPChQ">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8BRdwgPChQ</a><br />
<br />
Brilliant Gender-Critical Series:<br />
<a href="https://auticulture.wordpress.com/2017/05/31/the-rise-of-the-dream-state1/">https://auticulture.wordpress.com/2017/05/31/the-rise-of-the-dream-state1/</a><br />
<br />
For the Marxist minded, this is brilliant:<br />
<a href="https://medium.com/@zacharygeorgenajariannajafi/misogyny-is-revisionism-part-1-on-the-lefts-woman-problem-22984b49675b">https://medium.com/@zacharygeorgenajariannajafi/misogyny-is-revisionism-part-1-on-the-lefts-woman-problem-22984b49675b</a><br />
<br />
On cultural-appropriation and blatant ignorance from trans-activists around indigenous peoples of the Americas:<br />
<a href="https://culturallyboundgender.wordpress.com/2013/03/09/toward-an-end-to-appropriation-of-indigenous-two-spirit-people-in-trans-politics-the-relationship-between-third-gender-roles-and-patriarchy/">https://culturallyboundgender.wordpress.com/2013/03/09/toward-an-end-to-appropriation-of-indigenous-two-spirit-people-in-trans-politics-the-relationship-between-third-gender-roles-and-patriarchy/</a><br />
<br />
Who is funding this anti-science bizarro-world newspeak:<br />
<a href="http://thefederalist.com/2018/02/20/rich-white-men-institutionalizing-transgender-ideology/#.Wow7W_wn1Dg.twitter">http://thefederalist.com/2018/02/20/rich-white-men-institutionalizing-transgender-ideology/#.Wow7W_wn1Dg.twitter</a><br />
<br />
Another excellent piece on following the money:<br />
<a href="http://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/01/03/considering-rapid-rise-trans-ideology-academia-follow-money/">http://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/01/03/considering-rapid-rise-trans-ideology-academia-follow-money/</a><br />
<br />
A "Master Post" of violence in the name of "protecting trans people" effected upon other people (because nothing says "I'm all about protecting transgender people from harm" like harming another human being over disagreeable words)<br />
<a href="https://bannedbytrans.wordpress.com/masterpost/">https://bannedbytrans.wordpress.com/masterpost/</a><br />
<br />
An honest and learned review of "I am Jazz"<br />
<a href="http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/04/21220/">http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/04/21220/</a><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
A reflection of the violence directed at women by the trans-cult:<br />
<a href="https://medium.com/@julian.vigo/violence-against-gender-critical-women-from-hyde-park-corner-to-the-anarchist-bookfair-e42bcf028415">https://medium.com/@julian.vigo/violence-against-gender-critical-women-from-hyde-park-corner-to-the-anarchist-bookfair-e42bcf028415</a><br />
<br />
Gender-Inclusion Policy and Increased Sexual Violence<br />
<a href="http://womanmeanssomething.com/1034-2/">http://womanmeanssomething.com/1034-2/</a><br />
<br />
An analysis on why trans-cult will harm homosexual rights<br />
<a href="http://thefederalist.com/2017/05/02/trans-activists-will-destroy-homosexual-rights/">http://thefederalist.com/2017/05/02/trans-activists-will-destroy-homosexual-rights/</a><br />
<br />
Similarities between synanon brainwashing and the trans-cult<br />
<a href="https://transanityca.wordpress.com/2017/08/13/synanon-the-brainwashing-game-and-modern-transgender-activism-the-orwellian-implications-of-transgender-politics-by-jenn-smith/">https://transanityca.wordpress.com/2017/08/13/synanon-the-brainwashing-game-and-modern-transgender-activism-the-orwellian-implications-of-transgender-politics-by-jenn-smith/</a><br />
<br />
Autogynephilia<br />
<a href="https://autogynephiliatruth.wordpress.com/2015/05/09/the-faces-of-autogynephilia/">https://autogynephiliatruth.wordpress.com/2015/05/09/the-faces-of-autogynephilia/</a><br />
<br />
Connection between trans-cult and neutering children<br />
<a href="http://theconversation.com/eugenics-and-the-practice-of-transgendering-children-3838">http://theconversation.com/eugenics-and-the-practice-of-transgendering-children-3838</a><br />
<br />
Ludicrous deflections around the implications of trans-cult activism in refugee camps<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKBEpngVLz8&feature=youtu.be">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKBEpngVLz8&feature=youtu.be</a><br />
<br />
Can has science?<br />
<a href="http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/is-science-offensive-the-blurry-line-between-transgender-athlete-and-cheating/">http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/is-science-offensive-the-blurry-line-between-transgender-athlete-and-cheating/</a><br />
<br />
More violence from trans-cultists against women:<br />
<a href="http://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/02/02/trans-identified-male-verbally-attacks-rose-mcgowan-barnes-noble-talk/">http://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/02/02/trans-identified-male-verbally-attacks-rose-mcgowan-barnes-noble-talk/</a><br />
<br />
We're not actually against each other - seriously:<br />
<a href="http://www.thenational.scot/news/15919299.Fighting_each_other_over_gender_is_getting_us_nowhere/?ref=twtrec">http://www.thenational.scot/news/15919299.Fighting_each_other_over_gender_is_getting_us_nowhere/?ref=twtrec</a><br />
<br />
Actual consequences of pretending men are women in our prison systems:<br />
<a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2018/01/marie-dean-story-shows-there-s-no-simple-answer-how-we-treat-transgender">https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2018/01/marie-dean-story-shows-there-s-no-simple-answer-how-we-treat-transgender</a><br />
<br />
We register people as they identify (consequences of sex-as-identity on sports)<br />
<a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/apr/9/boston-marathons-transgender-policy-sparks-fairnes/">https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/apr/9/boston-marathons-transgender-policy-sparks-fairnes/</a><br />
<br />
<img alt="Image may contain: one or more people and text" src="https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/27657891_10155497631329755_6400076560771617843_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&_nc_eui2=v1%3AAeHJLVjCfLecmfHsymK6X6OxUbhPebvLesqa9iqA7pr9h5IGygek6qfjiGw9THjhNWcz4N0Q7t-2rSbM_sRrkcCkd-3xsFCxpIy9QCX8Uni1Uw&oh=842156414c9a9766835cfcf36515f19a&oe=5B589ED4" /><br />
<br />
<i>Many thanks to the many folks who helped me to understand this issue when I first encountered it, and to Julianne Jazz and many others for assembling and sharing some of these resources to help shine a light on this dark and foolish corner of human socialization.</i>Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-74822528088738249562017-10-12T09:57:00.002-07:002017-10-12T09:57:04.679-07:00"White Privilege" and "Racism" are not about name-calling"White Privilege" and "Racism" are not about name-calling.<br /><br />
I'm not shaming anyone - not in the sense you probably think I am.<br />
<br />
I don't require anyone feel bad more than they already do (this is push back I get from conservatives especially - "you want to feel ashamed of your (country/race)!")<br />
<br />
Naming racism is about naming racism - its reality - its effects - its interwoven nature - just as classism is.<br />
<br />
You have been lied to your entire life to believe that "racism" means "racial bigotry."<br />
<br />
That's not actually what racism means - and before we get into a long drawn out argument over word definitions - we're not going to agree on - just cut to the chase and agree that there is such a thing as systemic racism - and that - like classism - it is pervasive and doesn't need your conscious effort to remain in place and controlling our lives.<br />
<br />
Taking responsibility for a thing is necessary. It's about having heart, and growing up and becoming a mature person.<br />
<br />
Denying responsibility because it "feels bad" (or you don't want to "feel ashamed") is about shirking responsibility - about remaining a small child and refusing to take on adult responsibility in life.<br />
<br />
Americans are mostly stunted people. They - white Americans in particular - are used to be molly coddled and catered to - so that they don't have to experience much that makes them feel uncomfortable and unsafe and unsure of themselves in the world.<br />
<br />
That is not true for almost anyone else.<br />
<br />
Asking white Americans to have to suffer some discomfort in order to understand that they are participating in a racist system - should not be an impassable obstacle for anyone who is genuinely interested in being an adult - a humanitarian - a genuine equal in all things - including in bearing the burdens of helping to fix the world.<br />
<br />
Saying "whites are mostly racists" is exactly like saying "most whites are classists" - they didn't create the system - but they're a part of it - and it is not more or less pejorative except in their own minds - and only because they've been duped into identifying with racism and "whiteness" and hence feel a need to defend it ('cause they believe attacks on it are attacks on their identity).<br />
<br />
That is what I've been trying to tell you:<br />
<br />
>>> This is all about identity. <<<<br />
<br />
People identify as White - not just their skin color - but all of the baggage that "White" carries with it - including "racism".<br />
<br />
It's time for folks to let go of allowing "White" to include "tacit racism" and start to mean something else (or stop with separating into "White" at all - just be "People").<br />
<br />
And that can't happen while folks remain staunchly opposed to realizing that these ideas are connected - and that this realization and recogning has to happen.<br />
<br />
It's not just a "political goal" - it's also a profound and necessary personal journey.<br />
<br />
For me to treat a "black person" as my true equal - I have to understand how that I have been conditioned to think of myself as more - I'm "white" so I'm "safe" and I'm "respected" and "I'm the default in everything".<br />
<br />
And that this awareness - this "whiteness" - forces me to think of "them" as less - even if I consciously avow "them" to be my equal.<br />
<br />
It's not enough.<br />
<br />
We have to look at the systems that are in place - and at the programming that is underneath our consciousness - that enables and continues this sick cycle.<br />
<br />
I have to grow up.<br />
<br />
You have to grow up.<br />
<br />
We all do!<br />
<br />
Or we are going to die as a species in misery and depravity.<br />
<br />
Merely sidestepping racism in favor of "focusing on classism" means that racism remains in place for another generation - and any attempts we make to address economic issues will inevitably carry with them the foundation of racism should we fail to address them.<br />
<br />
So - to actually move forward - we must jettison not only classism, but racism as well (and sexism!)<br />
<br />
Equality demands True Equality - not "partial" equality - that's not equal - that's un equal.<br />
<br />
There is no way around this but to own it wholly, and work with it as an interconnected piece that cannot be isolated neatly and some parts ignored in favor of other parts (that are less threatening to whites).Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-87490622911810954392017-10-12T08:06:00.003-07:002017-10-12T08:06:45.372-07:00Culpability shouldn't be a sticking point<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">I see racism through the same prism that I see colonialism (aka globalism).</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">We cannot claim not to be colonialist. Just because we didn't set up this system of exploitation doesn't mean we're not participating in it every single day.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Just because we didn't create globalism doesn't mean we didn't - and aren't continuing to - profit by it.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">And to the degree that we participate in, and worse, actively encourage such systems, we have some real, honest measure of culpability.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">---</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">I guess that for some folks they need to believe themselves to be pure victims. That they had no hand in anything and are not responsible for anything that has happened to them or to others in their lifetimes. They're pure white snow, unblemished, not-responsible.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">---</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">For me, I see that as a cop-out - a lie. You are responsible for everything you are and have done and will do, even as I know that nobody has pure choice and liberty to just unilaterally decide to go off the grid and not be racist and not benefit and not have a job...</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Most of us have little to no control over our lives in any practical sense - i.e. we could choose not to participate should we be resigned to homelessness and begging...</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">But if we have kids or spouses or even aging parents or even self-love and wish to care for ourselves and minimize our own suffering - then we are beholden to participate in this nation's economy - which by definition makes us complicit participants in its colonialism, its racism, its imperialism, its patriarchy.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">These things are inseparable.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">That doesn't mean you get to do that and still claim zero responsibility. Not in my book!</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Sure, I have compassion for you and the tough choices you face - just as I have self-compassion for the tough choices I face.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">But I want to hold you accountable for what is real. For the degree to which you are making a choice - even if you refuse to see it, I cannot unsee it.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">I hold myself accountable for the real choices I am making as well, even as I struggle with all of the implications.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">---</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Many people, in my experience, look at all of this and decide either:</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">A) If I'm evil then fuck it all I don't have to worry about it because we're all evil so it's all meaningless and I can be without guilt as I take every advantage of others that I can to be selfish and ignore other's plight in life.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">-or-</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">B) I am in no way responsible for any of this so you cannot hold me responsible for any of this whatsoever. So I am pure and not-a-racist and not-a-colonialist and not-a-capitalist and not-a-classist and not-a-sexist etc. I am truly blameless (yet I hold all of a certain group responsible and blame them for all evil things but only them).</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Both of those positions are disingenuous.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">I see it as</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">C) I am not an evil person by nature - almost nobody is - but I am - due to no fault inherent in me - born into a very mixed system full of its evils - that I have personally benefitted by - my parents benefitted and I - the opportunities I had - the resources I had - all derive from all of the history of exploitation and slavery and capitalism and colonialism and native genocide. But because I don't wish any of that on anyone - because I have the personal desire to be a better person - to do right by my brothers and sisters on planet Earth - because I wish to leave this place better than I found - I will hold myself accountable for my choices - I will offer myself and others compassion for our crazy fucked up situation - but I will not pretend that hard realities don't exist just to soothe my ego - so that I can claim innocence, nor will I cave to the evils of the world and become a willing enthusiastic narcissist myself.</span></span>Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-89265402926159527552017-07-13T10:04:00.001-07:002017-07-13T10:06:54.789-07:00One does not simply "get over it"Tigranes Utidjian:<br />
<br />
As far as I can tell the attempts, till now, to acknowledge crimes, have been along the lines of: everybody was doing it; it wasn't that bad, some masters were good to their slaves; in the New York times recently: "We were building a great nation" we had to break a few eggs.<br />
<br />
Steve Wolf:<br />
<br />
Exactly. The messages I've gotten my entire life are:<br />
<br />
So, America did bad things - in the past.<br />
<br />
There's nothing we can do about the entire history of the world. Can't worry about what you can't change (and besides, what - are you going to give up your house? are you going to give away all of your money?)<br />
<br />
So just "make peace with it."<br />
<br />
Learn to move on. Do what you can now, and accept that things are the way that they are. Humans are greedy and terrible and war-like and cruel. Just the way we *all* are.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
I don't want to make my peace with being a people who committed genocide and "just get on with it" without actually owning up to the fact that:<br />
<br />
WE'RE A PEOPLE WHO COMMITTED GENOCIDE and ALL WE OWN IS FROM MASSIVE THEFT!<br />
<br />
I'm fine if we want to talk about reparations, apologies, real attempts to heal the wounds, and learn to all live together as TRUE EQUALS.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
But that's not what white Americans want.<br />
<br />
They want whites to forget all this stuff - ignore it all - and just continue pretending these crimes are only in the past and there's nothing to be done now.<br />
<br />
They want whites to keep pretending that we're all equals now - that things are fair now, despite overwhelming endless EVIDENCE that they are NOT EQUAL now.<br />
<br />
RACISM is HERE and NOW and CONTINUES every day.<br />
<br />
:'(<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
I want my white brethren to stop FUCKING LYING to themselves, and be HONEST for just ONE FUCKING SECOND in their STOLEN lives.<br />
<br />
And admit it - just fucking admit it.<br />
<br />
Your WEALTH (whatever degree you have) is a goddamn WAR CRIME against HUMANITY.<br />
<br />
And - if you don't like that reality...<br />
<br />
Then fuckiing step up and participate in how to fix it...<br />
<br />
So that we really can move forward as actual honest-to-goodness equals...<br />
<br />
Instead of liars, thieves, and gaslighters.Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-26721479691229823122017-05-31T09:27:00.003-07:002017-05-31T09:27:54.253-07:00Community isn't a dirty word<div style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
The need to be a part of a community, and share the rewards of our combined efforts, is inherent to all social orders.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
How fairly or unfairly we distribute the <span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">rewards vs. the hardships - that's the real question.</span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #666666; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
Americans have been made fools.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
We've been led to believe that Capitalism - "Free Markets" - are able to reward the self-disciplined and useful, while penalizing the lazy and unhelpful.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
That's pure-as-new-blown-snow bullshit. But Americans eat it like it's freaking sugar!</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
Only in some western style societies are people actually so duped by the bling of media and propaganda that they actually think that they're benefitting greatly from a system that is slowly but surely taking away their freedoms[1], their money[2], and their safety[3].</div>
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[1] Our ability to elect anyone fairly has been nullified. Our ability to communicate with one another without the government or corporations storing and possibly using that information against us has been annihilated. Our laws protecting whistleblowers who do the patriotic thing have been nullified. Our protections for Journalists have been replaced with the arbitrary imprisonment of Journalists in the name of "Freedom." Our separation of powers has been eroded. Our 3-part government has had much of its power concentrated in the executive branch. Our congress has abdicated its power and check/balance power wrt wars. Our judiciary has been stuffed with highly inappropriate and ideologically minded thugs. Our Police have been militarized - with massive amounts of "military surplus" going to local law enforcement agencies who've seen their mandates change from "serve and protect" to "enforce the will of the rich upperclass - with free reign to murder in broad daylight minorities."</div>
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[2] Poor as a class is expanding steadily since the 1980s. Middle-class and upper middle-class have been shrinking. The dollar has massively lost value over that time span. Income levels have stagnated since the housing collapse in 2008, and had been exceedingly sluggish due to two prior recessions[4], none of which have we actually recovered from, except for the extremely wealthy.</div>
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[3] As America and much of NATO continues to splurge on machines of death and destruction, and their global policy is theft of resources and fomenting of social unrest anywhere that has resources of interest to American Empire, it has spawned massive numbers of hopeless and desperate and very angry people whose greatest aspirations in life are to blow up Americans and Westerners in as large a number as possible by any means possible.</div>
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[4] Our recessions are direct result of CAPITALISM. GREED. OVERREACH by the extremely wealthy. We the people pay for them in lost wages, lost retirement accounts, ruined housing values, lost jobs, lost benefits, while the rich simply profit or have a short break in their general massive trend towards profiting.</div>
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One could add that this "Land of Freedom" is the most violent and oppressive regime that the planet has ever known. Murdering folks every single day - in more wars than any other nation in history, continuing genocide on its own minorities and many abroad, aggressively fomenting civil unrest, funding terrorism, being the worlds largest arms dealer, using WMDs on a regular basis (white phosphor, depleted uranium, giant bombs, economic sanctions that amount to mass murder of the aged, the young, and the poor).</div>
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We actively oppose all democratically elected governments and actively rig other nations elections in favor of creating puppet states we can manipulate and steal resources from unhindered.</div>
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Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-68342876891554595842017-04-06T06:54:00.000-07:002017-04-06T07:29:27.917-07:00So you really want to change things for the better?So you really want to change things for the better, and you want someone to tell you how?<br />
<br />
Nobody knows how.<br />
<br />
But hell - most don't even want to change anything at all - they spend a lot of time denying anything is wrong / justifying the way things are / telling everyone they're crazy for even questioning the way things are.<br />
<br />
If you're at least aware that society is rigged in favor of the Hillary's and the Trumps against almost everyone else, and you don't want to defend that -- then you're on the right track.<br />
A small number of people can't just decide to change it for the better for everyone - not as far as I'm aware. (the opposite is more possible - a few people can make things even worse - terrorism, for example).<br />
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For things to get better - folks have to come to accept that the way things are isn't even close to the best it can be - and isn't even acceptable... It's wrong, and inhumane, and unhealthy for all concerned - and with global warming - it's a terminal situation unless we radically change as a species.<br />
Struggle of mass of people against the owner/ruler class is the only thing that has ever worked - and for that to happen - we need a ton of folks to be willing to risk joining together to demand something better.<br />
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So - all you can do - is to help your friends and family and community to be open to the idea that things are unacceptably unjust and suicidal the way they're currently going - and that it's possible to demand a fairer split of the world's resources - and a system that is in balance with the world's ability to process our waste. Accept that's it's okay to scale back to a sustainable lifestyle that can accommodate 7 billion and climbing, instead of this insane consumption marathon we're running - apparently hell bent on destroying and using up everything to force our extinction as quickly as possible.<br />
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But that also means America can't be on top anymore - we can't be using Indonesians and Afghanis and poor kids in Somalia as indentured servants and economic slaves. We can't be turning a blind eye to our military extortion complex which strong arms peoples and nations all over the globe to rob them of resources and labor. We all have to accept that fair means fair for all. There is no other kind of fair, or world worth living in. Justice for all is a beginning, not an end. It is not a utopia, it is the absolute minimum foundation upon which to begin building a sustainable world that can allow our species to truly blossom and become something amazing.<br />
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And nobody deserves more or better - we all deserve equality. Nor do some deserve less, or worse. You did not come by what you have purely by yourself - you are standing on the shoulders of past generations and community that made it possible, and that continue to make it possible. We owe one another our respect, our love, and our solidarity.<br />
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From there, you're doing something radical by just being that honest and compassionate in the world.<br />
Eventually change happens - it always does - on its own time. But by doing your part, you're helping to moving it a tiny bit further along, a little closer to now.<br />
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Beyond that - well - anyone who tells you this is simple or can be done quickly or claims violence will solve our problems is not working for you or anyone but themselves - and using you as cannon fodder in the process.<br />
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Ultimately none of us has the ability to make all of the difference for anyone but themselves and those around them. You can't change the whole world, but you can be a helper or a leader who helps light the way to ending injustice and cruelty. I hope we can all learn to work together in prosperity and common decency.<br />
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UhuruMordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-73514479085956978002017-03-31T06:26:00.002-07:002017-03-31T06:26:12.040-07:00On Personal Responsibility and Privilege <div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
The ideal of personal responsibility is the only part of conservatism that holds any value or appeal for me. I do agree that there is a valuable truth there, that there is something deeply imbalanced placing all of the responsibility for inner-city problems on "society" and giving the gangstas, their parents, their community a free pass.</div>
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The problem I have with conservatives (and libertarians) emphasizing personal responsibility is the total lack of appreciation for the big picture, the context in which folks are failing to raise good kids, or kids are failing to become good citizens. By emphasizing personal responsibility over the reality of ghettos, of police crime & abuse, of joblessness, of systemic racism that makes it 3x more likely for a white to get the job over a black, that makes the loans 3x more expensive for a black, that makes the car 3x more expensive for the black, ... these things all matter. Not just a little. A freaking ton.</div>
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To me, I can't understand the lack of understanding of the set & setting (the context) except to frame it for myself as a matter of white privilege. Privilege is the ability to not-think about a lot of stuff - to take a lot of stuff for granted - and not even be aware of what you're not thinking about, not worried about, not concerned about, doesn't enter your thinking at all, because it is true for you, due to your privilege, and <i>you're simply not aware of it at all because of your privilege</i>.</div>
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So, a lot of people who experience life growing up in middle class or better families in America (sometimes regardless of skin color), believe with all their hearts that if the folks in the ghettos would just work as hard as they do, they would succeed. That their sense of personal responsibility and self-determination are what sets them apart. That life is hard, but if only these other folks would put their noses to the grindstone they'd have a solid chance to succeed, just as they themselves do.</div>
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This line of thinking - is so fundamentally intertwined with a world-view born of privilege. Of seeing things work out when they try hard. Of only having themselves to blame for things not working out. When they themselves are lazy, then things go badly. Or when a friend or class mate is lazy, they see the problems that flow from this. But even then, most times, such people can redeem themselves by learning their lesson and getting with the program.</div>
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But this whole world-view is one supported by having stable parents. By having only to worry about yourself, for the most part. By not worrying about whether you'll eat today. Whether your father will come home and beat you. Or some other man your mother just brought home desperate for love and attention, even if it means the kids getting beat up a bit. Or no parents around at all, and the responsibility of feeding your little siblings falls on your 10yr old ass. Or of being shot at on the way to school. Or pressured by your friends bigger brothers to run drugs for them - which would pay some bills, get you some standing (and you'd be "protected" by your gang), and so on.</div>
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I just... I cannot imagine living under those conditions and being expected to just "study harder". "Focus on school." And worst of all - "It's my own fault - my laziness - for not doing better under these circumstances". I just... I would be livid with fury if others who have "everything" came down to tell me I'm a moral failure for being unable to cope in the way they think I should be able to when they haven't lived this life for one friggin' second of their pampered-ass privileged-ass mutherfucking-lives!</div>
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Yes, responsibility has to also be shouldered by those who live in ghettos. I think there are many, many heroes who try to stand for justice and reason every day in such communities. But corruption, police-abuse, governmental incompetence, and outright hatred of blacks get in the way time and time again, and reinforce the social structures and patterns time and again, all the while some ass-hat at Fox is screaming about you having "a refrigerator!" - as if that is what marks living the easy life, or having privilege like they do!</div>
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And to sort of head-off a really common response by other whites and privileged folks I've had this conversation with -- whatever degree of "but I grew up poor / underprivileged / worked my ass off to make it where I am today / I struggle to make ends meet / I had less than perfect parents / I was abused as a kid / etc" -- sure, all of those things are true enough - but they're a pittance compared to what ghetto kids face. And you have every opportunity to change things for yourself. You can go get a job, and are 3x more likely than any black to get the same job you're both competing for. You very likely have family with some resources to help you out should your ship really tank. You can definitely go get public assistance, and you're very likely to face a streamlined process that doesn't immediately suspect you're cheating the system and you're a lazy bastard mooching off of society. You have resources you can fall back on, so you have a level of freedom to take chances in life because you freakin' know you'll likely be okay in the long run.</div>
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Ghetto folks do NOT have this same level of assurance of support. They have much worse chances for a good outcome in every possible direction they look. You're likely to get that job, not them. You're likely to be paid more when you land that job, because of the unwritten rules that indicate that a white person is worth more than a colored. You're likely to be trusted more, given more autonomy and respect in any position you hold. I'm not saying you're going to be treated wonderfully by everyone, but you're likely to be treated better in every single thing you do and try in life, as compared to a colored / immigrant. You don't have to worry about deportation, and you worry a shit ton less about police brutality or wrongful imprisonment!</div>
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I really don't think personal-responsibility is the primary issue here. It's important, for sure, but emphasizing it is exactly what every racist and privileged person does, and it only adds more weight to pushing down the exact folks you're thinking you'd like to see succeed.</div>
Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-49884865253173606112017-03-30T10:22:00.001-07:002017-03-30T10:22:16.151-07:00On Gang Culture, Racism, Classism, and Radical Self RelianceIn response to the idea that inner city kids are a product of poor parenting...<br />
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I really doubt that this was due to the parenting - at least for most of these kids.<br />
<br />
I would suggest that it is due to living in a world surrounded by people who shoot each other - the gangs. Why are there gangs? Because of a pervasive hopelessness. Because everywhere an inner city child looks, there is poverty and guns and killing and hopeless adults who aren't able to find jobs and pay the bills, and stressed out mothers who also can't find jobs, and schools where the teachers are freaking out because everyone is shooting each other and bringing guns and knives to school and on and on.<br />
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The very conservative (and libertarian) idea that this is a product of a moral failure to raise children well is .. as far as I can tell, naive.<br />
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I'm not trying to say that culture isn't important... at this late date, there is a strong element of gang-worship, of bling mentality, of live fast because living for the long run ain't worth it.<br />
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But that just underscores the liberal point: there is no real evidence that if you're a black kid in an inner city that you have any rational reason to think that you will be better off if you study and work towards a long stable life of fitting into the larger world.<br />
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The reality is that our prisons are full of black inner city folk. The big majority are the people from their neighborhoods - their fathers, their uncles, their mothers, their brothers, and so on.<br />
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And I don't know how that anyone can honestly believe that human beings are born equal yet turn into such horrible people unless you're implying that there is a strong element of genetic predisposition to moral failing.<br />
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And there are many studies that show if you take an inner city child and raise him or her up in a suburban home, they're likely to have white people attitudes. You're saying it's entirely what their mother & father said to them that makes that difference?! Or maybe it is seeing everyone around them preparing for a life of paying the bills and being a citizen? And critically: seeing that they're succeeding.<br />
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Watching those who struggle to do right fail in the face of overwhelming poverty and racism - with the police attacking you or your friends or your parents or your neighbors; you're just not going to get the sense that you're on the same side with the cops, or with society as a whole. You're clearly the wrong color, coming from the wrong side of the tracks, and unless you're a basketball / football star, your prospects are shit, is going to give you a very different view of your potential futures and what strategies might be sensibly applied to your life.<br />
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Seriously! Parental upbringing is the problem?! That's flat-out vastly insufficient to explain the phenomenons of inner cities, and would fit well with every racist group on the planet: the Jews are garbage. The Spics, the Beaners, the whatever. Their culture is to blame. Their upbringing. There is something fundamentally wrong with them.<br />
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No, there is something fundamentally unfair about the world, and kids aren't stupid. They get it by the time they're about 10 yrs old. This shit is rigged, they're on the losing team, and any attempt to change teams will be met with fierce opposition by both sides. They're fucked up, down and sideways. So, if they're fucked, then there's nothing for it but to get what you can before you're shot. To do your best for your tribe. There's honor in that, clearly. Fuck the man.Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-16212610521611401932017-03-30T06:58:00.003-07:002017-03-30T06:58:35.108-07:00"Liberal"For those who are still confused by the vitriol aimed at "liberals" and "liberalism"<br />
<br />I'm far from the first to point any of this out, but it seems to me that many continue to be baffled by why "liberal" is a dirty word in my book:<br /><br />
Basically, American "liberals" (self-identified) are better referred to as "neoliberals" or "bourgeois liberals" - liberals of middle and upper classes who wish for personal freedoms and ignore the suffering imposed by liberal capitalist markets at home and abroad.<br />
<br />Certainly that is the core of my criticism - "liberals" in American common parlance - i.e. as most Americans understand the term (i.e. those on the "opposite" side of the political aisle from "conservatives/republicans")...<br />
<br />That sort of liberal is happy to be ignorant or self-deluded about the evils perpetrated in the name of America and Capitalism and Globalism to untold billions of suffering fellow human beings who are effectively made to live in slave labor in nations which are themselves enslaved to America or its western allies.<br />
<br />It robs people of their autonomy, dignity, self direction, local accountability, right up to and including death by near starvation wages and inhuman working conditions.<br />
<br />This is not a happenstance or a fringe effect of American style capitalism - but rather a direct desired result to grease the wheels of resource extraction - whether it be raw materials robbed from the ground, water, wildlife, or vegetation; or human labor robbed from the populace...<br />
<br />Rather, this outcome is intentional and deliberate and orchestrated with the use of propaganda and terror viz the CIA and black ops and outright military intervention and color revolutions and bribery of local officials. This terrorism includes the funding of local (or even non-local) violent groups - who are often trained, armed, and aided by the US in order to carry out attacks against any who oppose our enslavement - most often targeting the civilian populations in order to murder and instill fears or mislead them into believing that they're actually being attacked by another group and should help the American agenda for their own good.<br />
<br />American "liberals" claim to be the dictionary definition - accepting, loving, compassionate, open to change, etc., while absolutely turning a blind eye and deaf ear to all of the above - denying its existence - insisting it is all propaganda - siding with the USA's doctrine of "Exceptionalism" to "justify" the rape and pillaging of most of the planet so that they get the material benefits of a bourgeois lifestyle.<br />
<br />It's a quid-pro-quo arrangement: I, the American Liberal, will turn a blind eye to the evils you perpetrate and not agitate politically for reform as long your evils keep me relatively well off.<br />
<br />That's the core of "American Exceptionalism" - we can do what ever we wish to the planet and are above international law or even the most basic levels of human decency because we're full of "exceptional" people who deserve only the very best at any conceivable cost...Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-26855749412260017362017-03-01T08:53:00.000-08:002017-03-05T04:56:48.367-08:00Atheism is not a religion - or How 5 is like pie... (or NOT)<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">From Wikipedia:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">"...most agnostics see their view as distinct from atheism, which they may consider no more justified than theism or requiring an equal conviction.[43] The supposed unattainability of knowledge for or against the existence of gods is sometimes seen as indication that atheism requires a leap of faith.[44] Common atheist responses to this argument include that unproven religious propositions deserve as much disbelief as all other unproven propositions,[45] and that the unprovability of a god's existence does not imply equal probability of either possibility."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Arguing that Atheism is a theism, is akin to arguing that "5" is a "fruit". It is not, by its very nature, and cannot possibly be. One can confuse the issue and make confusing observations such as "there can be 5 fruits, 5 fruits taste delicious, my favorite pie has 5 fruits in it..." and so on. But you're simply confusing the issue... not proving that 5 is a fruit, or fruit is a 5.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A person could, to my mind, spend all eternity positing unprovable possibilities, and then engaging in the pointless exercise of trying to prove or disprove each of them until he or she collapsed with their last breath. Such a life is, to my mind, wasted. I much desire to avoid that fate. To give credence to the argument that in order to not believe in god - to outright claim that it doesn't exist - requires such a meaningless waste of a lifetime is tacitly buying into religion's frame of reference - the very world-view that leads to so much human suffering.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I reject outright any such frame of reference, so I don't need to waste my life disproving every possible proposition, no matter how ridiculous. And any argument that requires that we limit our minds to that frame of reference has already lost - has already proved itself a doomed enterprise, by failing to recognize the absurdity, the suffering, the pointless waste that it is to try to disprove every goofy thing that could-possibly-be-but-there-is-no-reason-to-think-it-might-really; and by that, proves the questioner to be profoundly confused and ignorant of the underlying truths - essentially to be ignorant of the most important thing: their frame of reference.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">New Atheism - the kind that doesn't piss-around with useless "we cannot know therefore we cannot really say", or the equally mealy-mouthed "we don't think it's likely, but we respect every goofy thing everyone might believe no matter how destructive to society and the very health of this planet" - is not trying to win hearts or minds or play the stupid game that religions do. New atheists acknowledging what is inevitable, indisputable, fundamentally true. What science shows to be fact.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">All religious beliefs are by their very nature mental masturbation and wasteful of life, mind, and existence, due to the fact that they don't have any error-correction mechanism. They can posit any ridiculous notion and because someone believes it - it is sacred and indisputable.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I don't mind others having all sorts of goofy religious beliefs, per se. But I don't need to waste my time on them, insofar as they don't curtail my own life, or insofar as I don't care about the poor schmuck who's so abused him or herself with those blinders.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">However, I take passionate unction towards anyone who tries to shoe-horn the conversation of atheism into one that can only support the untenable world-view that proof of the ridiculous is required in order to dismiss the ridiculous.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I understand that emotionally and culturally (and even humanly) that folks often find that they are afraid. Afraid of death. Afraid of the unknown. Afraid of pain, loss, suffering. Human beings often feel the need to appeal to a higher authority, someone they feel they can trust to tell them what is the right thing to do.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is a need to feel that there is a parent-figure watching over them so that they can feel confident that everything is okay.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">However, that is an emotional short-coming on their part, and by no means requires that I, or anyone else, participate or prove to them anything, nor justify my own rejection of such stupidity and short comings for any purpose whatsoever.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Again, the perspective that a world-view, or frame of reference need prove itself to be "good" is already devolving into the blinders of religious dogma and foolishness.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Atheism doesn't try to justify itself. It doesn't acknowledge a connection between one's religion and whether you're a good or bad person. Goodness and badness are relative to who benefits, who suffers. People's behavior is far more motivated by our basic biological necessities and circumstances than by such ephemeral minutia as religious beliefs. We're the product of millions of years of trial & error, of brains that got eating and shitting right, and later mastered social grouping behaviors. We are quite literally layers of minds - deep down we have our lizards stems, and above that a much larger mammalian layer, and above and to the fore of that we have our uniquely Human frontal lobes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Atheists have a wide variety of spiritual beliefs, have a wide variety of "goodness" or "badness" or "charisma" or "bluntness" or any other characteristic you wish to name. None of those traits has anything whatsoever to do with Atheism per se, any more than 5 has to do with pie. They're not related. At. All.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What sparks me about conversations with religious folk is that I see you as requiring that we speak in religious terms: goodness, badness, beliefs. Atheism doesn't doesn't exist inside of any of those. It is not a belief, nor is it a faith. It is, inexorably, incontrovertibly, the search for that which honestly, truly is. It is in fact the very essence of 'reject that which has no evidence,' and simply trying to find 'that which is.'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is quintessentially why atheism lends itself to science. Not the magical pseudo-science that most religious and laypeople believe in - but rather in the actual, provable, incontrovertible, inescapable, what-is (or in Buddhism, suchness: Tathātā/Dharmatā).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It is also worth awakening your mind to the fact (not belief, not faith) that Buddhism is not a theism, and should not be lumped into religion anymore than Enlightenment or Humanism or Secularism should be. Philosophy is better term, because it is better grounded in an honest desire to discover the truth, rather than the deceitful desire to hide the truth from oneself in order to conform to the will of others and "fit in".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I would posit that the word belief is inappropriately applied to Atheism by religious folk. Atheism is not a belief - it is not subject to the "might be true, might not be". It simply rejects that which has no basis in reality. Religion exists within the world-view of belief - it might or might not be true, and it desperately tries to hide the truth and divert people's attention away from even thinking about the truth or falseness - the likelihood of what it posits to be truth. If you don't look too hard, don't think too much, you can stay happily ignorant in the fold of religions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But science looks for what is, what is repeatable, what can be observed by everyone, consistently, repeatably. Its only "belief" is that these things constitute solid evidence of what is, and that there is something that-is in the first place. i.e. that there is a reality that we all share that is independent of our desires for what it should be, but simply is what it is.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I certainly believe in science (i.e. I have no way to prove the existence of existence). Science is the most useful philosophical point of view I have encountered in my life, and requires the least faith of any philosophy. Again - only the belief that there is something real that we're learning about.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But atheism is even simpler: It only rejects the silly magical invisible guy in the sky stupidity. It makes sense from multiple logically self-consistent frames of reference, and I know it equally from several coherent spiritually satisfying frames of reference.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But what you choose to believe, or come to know for yourself, is your own business. And I couldn't care less (other than a basic desire to see you not force the suffering upon yourself that comes part & parcel with all theism and religion in general).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But please do not limit your thinking so drastically that you insist that 5 is a fruit - that atheism is a theism. It is not, nor ever will be.</span>Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-67649106488795098832017-02-07T13:45:00.000-08:002017-02-07T13:45:02.949-08:00We are a nation in existential crisis1. We are a nation in existential crisis.<br />
Are we going to be a land of freedom, liberty, and justice; or are we going to continue to decline into capitalistic greed and an American flavor of fascism (tight coupling of state and private business interests, using the state as the bully stick to force workers into line for private for-profit interests against the will of we-the-people)?<br />
<br />
2. This IS NOT NEW.<br />
We've been going down this path for a very long time now - certainly since WW2's expansion of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC), which was vastly ramped up with Reagan and continues to this day - with every - single - president & congress in those intervening years supporting and expanding the power of the MIC and, more recently, the Surveillance State - the CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, and etc.<br />
<br />
3. President Trump is NOT an ABERRATION.<br />
He is merely the next in a long series of flip-flops between the Republicans and the Democrats holding power - almost like clockwork, going back to Reagan.<br />
<br />
Every 8 years, the populous is sick and tired of the current party's excuses for not doing almost anything whatsoever of its promises of hope & change - and instead has delivered endless more-of-the-same - sellouts to big money. <br />
<br />
Whether we're a Democrat or a Republican, the bottom line is we see that the administration has failed us. Many of us become disgusted by this, and we don't come to vote for our party - which allows the other side - which has become enthusiastic about ousting our side during the interim - to come in and garner enough votes to swap an R for a D, or a D for an R.<br />
<br />
4. This CYCLE allows for continuation of American POLITICAL evil.<br />
It wasn't President GW Bush who was truly at fault for the problems of American Imperialism. Nor was it President Obama, who continued the same policies - in fact - expanded on them for his eight (8) years in office. Nor was it congress fault entirely, who overwhelmingly went along with expanded wars, and surveillance, and expansions of executive powers during these past 16 years.<br />
No president is solely to blame. And no congress, no matter how obstructionist, is entirely to blame. Not even a significant minority to blame. They're just doing their acting roles in a larger play that is being put on for our endless entertainment.<br />
<br />
5.Our willingness to believe in these actors and this play as being real - having real power and mattering - or of us having some real - meaningful degree of influence over this charade by being active in the system - voting, campaigning, advocating for (D) or (R) candidates - that is a huge part of the problem. This charade is being performed to keep us interested in "The days of our government's lives" daytime soap opera and not out in the streets refusing to allow this to continue.<br />
<br />
6. Trump is bad.<br />
7. Obama was bad.<br />
8. GW Bush was bad.<br />
9. Bill Clinton was bad.<br />
10. H. Bush was bad.<br />
11. Reagan was bad.<br />
<br />
These presidents all expanded executive power, set precedents of corruption, executive dictatorial power grabs, expansion of the MIC and Surveillance State, the erosion of privacy, of individual liberty, of perversions of the constitution to enable greater latitude in being openly corrupt and pay-to-play.<br />
<br />
Every single president here is guilty of going along with, or actively wanting to create, the global capitalistic dominance of the planet and hand-in-hand the global militaristic dominance of the planet by America's corporate and military might.<br />
<br />
This, folks, is the actual textbook definition of "Fascism."<br />
<br />
Not racism, per se, not jack-booted thugs, not burning Jews or other pogroms - rather, the intimate conjoining of private business interests with the military and governmental powers of the state.<br />
<br />
America is Fascist and has been for quite some time.<br />
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Trump has only made it minutely more so - expanding on a vast set of precedents and foundations laid by his predecessors.<br />
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These same actions that many democrats are now decrying were actively done by Obama, and all prior administrations, especially including (D) administrations.<br />
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In fact - many of the most pivotal moments have happened during (D) administrations. The vast expansion of the incarceration of black and poor folks was accomplished by Bill Clinton, with democrats cheering him on.<br />
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The vast roll-back of entitlements that had previously greatly helped poor people and single mothers to make ends meet, was ripped out and gutted under Bill Clinton with Hillary Clinton being an instrumental wheeler and dealer in accomplishing this change. (This being one of the strongest criticisms of HRC as being very much NOT a defender of children, but rather someone who throws them under the bus whenever politically expedient to do so).<br />
<br />
The dissolution of the Glass-Steagall act and passage of the "Commodity Futures Modernization act" by Bill Clinton with the help of the republican congress - removed the protections against global economy-destroying overreach and greed by Wall Street which had successfully protected us since the Great Depression.<br />
<br />
Removing Glass-Steagall lead directly to the Savings & Loan debacle and recession, and the growingly massive recessions and depressions we've had since.<br />
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The housing loan derivatives market which was legalized by the "Commodity Futures Modernization act" directly lead to the housing collapse & recession in '08/'09.<br />
<br />
According to statistics on the global economy - we have a recession every 4-7 years on average. The last one was in '09, which means we are DUE for another RECESSION, and since we have failed to reinstate Glass-Steagall, it may bring the entire global economy to a state similar to the '30 Great Depression!<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
To summarize:<br />
<br />
I. We're a fascist, imperialist, colonialist, racist nation and have been from the start.<br />
<br />
II. Trump is not an aberration, but a culmination of our continued denial of who we really are and our collective failures - especially as white people - to do a goddamn thing about it.Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-75704432847224211412017-01-26T15:48:00.003-08:002017-01-26T15:50:08.682-08:00We are the reasonThe real problem is that the born-here American people - from truck driver to CEO to Soccer Mom to Cable TV dad to Senator are complacent with American Imperialism.<br />
<br />
The real problem is that Liberals accept a lying, cheating, warmonger in stride, they don't even notice that it's at odds with the concept of liberalism. Americans turn a blind eye on foreign policy with a pervasive attitude that "what happens elsewhere in the world is of very little importance, really."<br />
<br />
They accept the deportation of jobs and industry in the hopes that the dropping prices at walmart will compensate, that their standard of living will remain much higher than the world's average, that they will have a chance at becoming filthy rich in "the land of opportunity."<br />
<br />
The real problem is that white americans who are really feeling the results of austerity measures (a term intended to facilitate the takeover of our government by the oligarchy) are the very ones who are angry and lashing out against immigrants and people of color, angry at their loss of status and income, but much, much, much too ignorant and culturally unprepared to cope with the reality that capitalism is their worst enemy.<br />
<br />
The problem, my friend, is that Liberals have fallen into a complacent stupor - unwilling to criticise in any sort of a serious manner their own "leaders" - Jon Stewart, John Oliver, Bill Maher, Samantha Bee, & etc., all get doughy eyed around Democrats and are so frightened of the current right-wing threat that they decided that they cannot criticize their prevaricating, greedy, in-cahoots democrats for fear that something even worse will get into office.<br />
<br />
And so, my friend, you, me, everyone who claims to care about liberal issues has fueled the race to the bottom - to Hillary & Trump. Some of our friends were saying "this is an untenable pattern - it will lead to the bottom" for years, and yet you, and I, and most every liberal around ignored them as the "crazy fringe" .<br />
But - and I cite reality here - they were resoundingly right.<br />
<br />
So, although I respect everyone's right to make choices for themselves - that's a core to my progressive-humanist values - the fact is that it is this continued blind faith in the status quo and a real deliberate looking-away by liberals that allows this system to accelerate towards - if not outright to WW3, then at the very minimum degradation of the biosphere to catastrophic degrees of CO2 emission, sea level rise, the 6th extinction, and a return to slave or near slave labor for most of humanity in a senseless pursuit of profit for 1% of 1% of the population.<br />
<br />
We're text-book insane as a nation. And since Liberals will not acknowledge this - or their place - their complacency - and the dire degree to which all of this is real, on the ground reality here and now - I see no hope of turning the tide here in America.<br />
I honestly have no sense of what - if anything at all - will turn the tide short of self destruction on a grand scale.<br />
<br />
And I cry for the children bombed in Somalia because America doesn't consider the people there to be people, and they were just in the way in some geopolitical move that the Clintons wanted to make.<br />
<br />
Or for the children in Syria, who are dying under our 45,000 bombs dropped this year so-far by the Obama administration - 24hrs / day, 7 day / week - while liberals and americans and journalists pretend that this is a "just war" which is "borne of humanitarian reasons." (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8JppJyVxYU&feature=youtu.be">See here for another perspective</a>)<br />
<br />
It's sick - it's cardboard cutout cartoon villain level of bullshit - that you, and my previous self - and most everyone we know happily barely acknowledges and hides our war mongering away in their peripheral vision so that they don't have to think too hard about it and just trusts the idea that america as a reasonable sane place with flawed but overall sensible well-meaning leaders (well, R's think theirs are the sane ones, and D's think theirs are, while in truth they're both beating the same war drums and taking the same corporate pay-to-play cash).<br />
<br />
Liberals willfully buy-in to the "Assad is a bad guy" pre-chewed narrative and go along with the idea that this somehow gives the USA carte blanche to bomb and starve and terrorize civilians in order to bring about a regime change that suits our geopolitical interests better even though this is a flash point for Russia and China and seriously endangers sparking a WW3.<br />
<br />
But, you know, "bad guy" = them, and "good guy" = us, and all is right under the american pie.Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-51089396040116252022017-01-24T11:29:00.002-08:002017-01-24T11:29:15.414-08:00The DNC is a reeking corpse...I agree with all <a href="https://www.facebook.com/iamaliceanil/videos/1449151615112889/">Alicé Anil</a> has to say in that video except the idea that we can do anything at all useful with the DNC. They're extremely well funded and corporate-money controls them to their core.<br />
<br />
There is no we in the DNC - no populous anything - just a lot of neoliberals trying to blow up the world for fun or profit.<br />
<br />
The DNC is pro-war, pro-repressive regimes, pro-puppet regime change, pro psy-ops, pro-globalization, pro-human rights abuses, anti-humanist, anti-working class, anti-democracy on every possible level.<br />
<br />
So - YES! The DNC couldn't have been more stupid - more self-destructive - more destructive to our nation if they tried (wait - they did try - they did their absolute damndest to retain power at the expense of all moral and ethical value - all reason to legitimately want power in the first place!)<br />
<br />
The DNC sold their soul when they chose to follow Bill Clinton and his advisors from the DLC into "3rd way democrats" - i.e. wooing big monied interests by agreeing to help them with their agenda while simultaneously trading on the good name they still had from FDR and Kennedy to woo us voters.<br />
<br />
But they haven't helped minorities, or the poor, or really fought for women's health in 30+ years.<br />
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And time and again when they lose big (as they did in 2010 midterms, and before in 2000 when they lost to GW for christ's sake!) - they just say "oh, it was /anything-but-their-failures/ to blame.<br />
<br />
They never acknowledge that their focus on pleasing big money has utterly hollowed out their party and left it a vampire that feeds on the lifeblood of those who still believe in the goodness of people, of FDR, of JFK, or MLK, and wrongly believe that the DNC is in there fighting the good fight with them.<br />
<br />
No - the DNC is not our friend - nay - it is indelibly our sworn enemy - the enemy of all goodness and human interests for the mindless pursuit of power and money.<br />
<br />
Do not be a fool and fall for their lies.<br />
<br />
Do not be naive and accept that there is ANY path to redeeming the DNC.<br />
<br />
They are dead, dead, and dead.<br />
<br />
All that's left is for us to bury their stinking reeking corpse, and to birth a new political system - not a goddamn two -party duopoly - but a real democracy with a real parliament or something similar that's open, inclusive, diverse, and multiethnic, multi-inclusive, as America really ought to be!!!Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-53697749678545786842017-01-24T11:16:00.001-08:002017-01-24T11:16:22.028-08:00It begins with a process of reconciliationI watched a TED talk recently where a man - a black man - Bryan Stevenson - works with incarcerated youths who were tried as adults and imprisoned for life.<br />
<br />
Of all of the so-called developed nations, this only happens in America - that we take 14yr old children, try them as adults - and give them life sentences.<br />
<br />
One of his remarks that most struck me was this idea that America has not yet really committed to the process of reconciliation - and that process requires a full commitment to truth.<br />
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We are a nation that is literally founded upon a genocide as grave and enormous as the Nazi attempt to annihilate Jews of Europe. We literally sit in houses built on stolen land, having murdered almost all the people that rightfully owned it.<br />
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We are a nation whose wealth was initially created - but largely continues to be created - through the enslavement of millions of black Africans - hunted, captured, chained, and shipped here to die as cattle for our greed.<br />
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We are a nation whose infrastructure was built on the backs of mistreated and abused immigrants whose search from something better landed them in a place where their labor was cheap, their lives cheaper still.<br />
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We are a nation whose military dominates this globe. We use that military to bomb 7 other nations currently. We use that military to coerce other nations to give us access to their oil, their metals, their water, any commodity that we covet. We use that military and our CIA to undermine foreign governments - often democratic governments - who do not jump in line to offer us access cheaply enough or freely enough for our greedy exploitative corporations.<br />
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We are a nation that believes itself to be exceptional. Exceptional in the sense that we do not owe respect to any other nation, nor to international norms, or international treaties, or international laws. We do as we please, where we please, when we please, and we claim that it is because we are a special people and these lesser restrictions do no apply to so exceptional a people as we.<br />
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We are a nation that lies to its own citizens while singing songs of freedom.<br />
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We are a nation that condemns other governments for human rights abuses as we attack the water protectors in North Dakota who are trying to protect their water sources from yet further ecological damage from greedy oil corporations.<br />
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We are a nation that has unilaterally given itself the right to assassinate anyone, anywhere - including American civilians - if the president decides its in his best interests without judicial oversight and against international treaties, norms, and laws.<br />
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We are a nation that tortures.<br />
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We are a nation that steals.<br />
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We are a nation that lies about its past, its present, and its future.<br />
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We are in desperate need of some honesty.<br />
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We are in desperate need of acknowledging our unlawful, immoral, unethical, abusive, and intolerable behavior towards every culture on earth that isn't white upper class Americans.<br />
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I agree with that fellow in the TED talks:<br />
<br />
We need a serious and honest commitment to reconciliation -<br />
<br />
And until we do that, we cannot honestly nor reasonably have any hope at all of being able to move forward and stop repeating these same crimes and abuses over and over.<br />
<br />
So, no, we cannot stop talking about the war crimes and crimes against humanity that Obama and Hillary and GW Bush and Rumsfeld, and the rest of our leaders have committed.<br />
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We must continue to act as our conscience until we as a whole - we as a community - we as a nation - stop lying to ourselves and face the truth to begin walking in the path of justice.<br />
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We must prosecute our criminals - starting at the highest levels and working our way down until we have renounced to our very cores exceptionalism once and for all.<br />
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Germany reminds itself annually of its criminal past - and has memorials in many prominent places to remind itself of its dark past. It teaches of itself honestly and openly in its schools so that it never makes the same mistake again.<br />
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America needs to own up to its global crimes and begin that same process.<br />
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As Bryan Stevenson notes - the opposite of poverty is not wealth - it is Justice.Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-43661623110796903112017-01-21T07:38:00.002-08:002017-01-23T08:40:20.479-08:00On Honesty & American Denialism<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="c46vp" data-offset-key="bhu8s-0-0" style="background-color: white;">
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<span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">My sense of the world that you and I live in is that folks want to believe whatever they believe and are very quick to turn away if what someone else has to say disrupts that belief in any way.
I can count on my fingers the number of folks I know who consider content more important than tone, and I think when push comes to shove, tone is ultimately critical to them as well - myself included.
But I don't think that makes us all equal in this regard.
Even the intention of putting content first - at looking through the ephemeris of the message to its core is important. It's a philosophical point of view that I hold dear. I suppose it's a belief I have: That attempting to understand what is true is more important than making everyone feel good to maintain the peace.
I don't hold the belief that there is only one truth, however. Understanding what is true is more of a process of eliminating those beliefs that simply cannot be true. That are at odds with reality, insofar as we can actually say with some degree of confidence what some part of reality is.
That doesn't mean that I feel the need to require everyone to believe a certain way - but it does mean that I don't respect a person's beliefs that are in conflict with known facts, especially when those facts are readily available to them - that it is a matter of wilful ignorance, not a matter of innocence.
I can and often do empathise with people's desire to believe things that are demonstrably untrue, or radically unlikely. And I have a basic empathy and respect for everyone wherever they're coming from even if they're deeply wrong about any number of things - as far as I can tell or know.
Again, It's not that I believe I have some special line to "objective" reality - but I don't find that there are that many in my spheres of experience who give a flying tomato for what is true over what they wish or were brought up to believe is true.
The point being, I would just like to have more folks who are willing to look for what we can know to be true (or at least not demonstrably false) and have the conversations that flow from that starting point or minimum adherence to reality.
A friend recently put it thus - that all truth is human truth - subjective - because at best we approach what is potentially objectively true by continuous refinements - it's an asymptotic relationship. All of science is like this. As a hypothesis is well tested and shown to be predictive and useful it becomes a theory, but theories are still conditional - they can still be modified and over time usually are. Not discarded whole - rather updated or modified to better encompass additional understandings that were poorly or incorrectly handled by the previous incarnation of the theory. Newtonian physics being expanded and deepened and corrected by Einstein's theory of gravity and spacetime. Newtonian physics didn't cease to exist - it's explanatory power didn't end with Einstein's discoveries - rather it was given context and its limits better understood and we achieved through Einstein new insights on how to go beyond those limits (but the new limits are still limits, and I have no doubt that we will come to modify our understand of reality again and have new insights that allow us to understand more deeply than either Newton or Einstein did, continuing the refining process, or the expanding understanding process).
Again, my sense of talking with people about politics or social theory is one of constantly running into people's emotionally held beliefs and anger at having those beliefs thrown into question.
It's like the reaction of the Catholic Church to Galileo. His ideas upset their beliefs and that was intolerable to them. Not that they were interested in refining their understanding of the world - just that it was upsetting and they wanted the upset to go away. Not, mind you, that I am comparing myself to the genius of Galileo! Rather, that even my meager desire to be truthful and honest and refine my understanding of what is true - to apply science to my own understanding of life as I live it - leads to analogous encounters.
I am constantly bombarded by former friends and family who want me to stop questioning their beliefs. I am told that it's how I say it, not what I'm saying. But no matter how nicely I say a thing - I'm still asking them to question their beliefs which is a fundamentally painful experience - and as far as I can tell - that's the real issue.
As such, it is impossible to avoid the pain and the backlash (or would you like to point out the scientist who was a greatly beloved member of his or her society and brought about great insights into the world without upsetting folks around him or her?)
Learning ugly truths about Hillary when Hillary was our best chance for a female to rise to President of the United States thus far is not going to be welcome news to anyone for whom having a woman hold the highest office in this land is a strongly held desire.
Everyone has the ability to do the research - to look a few things up about her - to discover "is she often a good person and in alignment with my personal values or is she often what I consider to be a bad person - out of alignment with what I value and believe others should value?" (Or, perhaps being a moral person is not a virtue for you?)
The same is true for Obama. Or democrats as a whole. Or the United States domestic or foreign policy as a whole.
These things aren't hidden if you simply look beyond the immediate surrounding veil of surface information. Listening to CBS evening news certainly isn't going to challenge the predominant narrative that America is great. Listening to NPR isn't going to give you one shred of evidence against the righteous democratic and glorious nation of our motherland. Talking to your friends, coworkers, and family - who also only go by these same sources for their information - isn't going to challenge anything you've been taught to believe your entire life by a culture that is intent on having you be a supporting member of its cast.
America wants you to see America as a great, good, just, righteous nation. That - is - at - its - core - for its own survival: your allegiance, your faith, your cooperation and participation.
And other Americans in power wish to keep their power and so they also work hard at generating this sense of positive messaging about America. Because it makes them powerful. Your allegiance makes them powerful. Whatever America is doing has made them very powerful, so it is insanity to question it. The higher a person is on the economic ladder in America, the more they're going to be a true believer in America - regardless of any objective ethics - because it is working for them very well, or very, very, very well.
It is not a failing on my part to ask you to go beyond your inculcation - your programming - your illusions and your jingoism.
That push-back, that desire to denounce me, that feeling of anger and unhappiness is a desire to kill the messenger - perhaps it is a sign that I am actually on to something and at that point it is up to you to figure out what is true:
Is your understanding more correct or not?
Do you have supporting evidence from reasonably neutral, reliable sources, from disparate sources, which bolster your understanding and creates a holistic view of what's going on to give context to my concerns that render them no longer upsetting because in the larger deeper context you know their place and their place is small?
Or, are you simply not interested in what is real - what is true - not even interested in approaching reality as best we can - but perhaps your real desire is to be left in peace with the beliefs you were given as a member of society and leave it at that?
Stepping outside of the accepted norms of society is scary. It's potentially deadly, it's potentially very bad for your social and economic positions.
In fact, it directly means coming to terms with the fact that you and I and everyone we know owes their economic surety to the life's work, sweat and tears of enslaved peoples. A vast cruelty that is hard to imagine in depth and scope. The enslavement of 12.5 million black Africans captured as if they were but animals, all rights stripped, all decency, all empathy, all humanity unilaterally stripped for the immediate benefit of our great great parents - but which almost certainly benefits you and me to this day.
Many of my black brothers and sisters speak of reparations. Reparations that they are owed. I agree. America is one giant spoils of crime. Of a genocide of many native peoples who existed here before my European ancestors did, and murdered them en masse. Whether genocide was better or worse then racially based mass slavery is impossible to know, and probably pointless to debate. Both were crimes against humanity. Both were as monstrous as Auschwitz and the other ethnic pogroms of the world.
Yet we don't talk about it.
Yet I am attacked when I point out that these United States of America exist entirely upon the blood of millions in genocide and in human chattel.
When I attack Hillary's record - when I attack Obama's record - when I attack the DNC's record - when I question this nation's goodness and history and righteousness and lack of justice - I am directly asking you to step out of your comfortable lies and illusions that allow you to ignore the reality that all you have exists only because your forefathers stole it or beat humans into creating the conditions under which it was created for them and for you.
We Americans owe a debt to the world that in all reasonable conscience we can never repay.
How can we un-murder millions of native peoples?
How can we un-enslave millions of black people?
How can we restore the hundreds of millions of children never born to those people?
How can we restore the dignity we robbed? The lives we destroyed through poverty or incarceration? The suffering we administered on people... on humans - on our brothers, our sisters - for our greed?
America is one big circle-jerk - one big amalgamation of the children of crime lords arguing about how just and righteous and honorable a people we really are.
We have the audacity to claim exceptionalism - a right to stand above international law and ethical norms - to do as we please through might and extortion and war and assassination and global theft - and we claim it's because we are better than the rest of the world. We are just that exceptional a peoples.
And folks get angry at me. Americans feel upset by me. They have their feelings hurt by me pointing out that our leaders are all of those things - that if you bother to pay even a little attention to what is actually true - and not the Disney story of America - but the factual record of one Hillary Rodham Clinton - you see all of these crimes and more writ in plain English in our very own public records within OUR lifetimes - contemporary crimes against humanity occurring NOW! Not in some comfortably far off yesteryear, some blameless place remote in years from our existence. But in the here and now and - not even becoming less criminal! Instead, accelerating and becoming more criminal! More heinous, more cruel, more inexcusable while we American citizens argue over which of the insanely unworthy crime lords propped up for our perusal we should have elected as the face of the global war crimes machine.
I try - I really try to be gentle. To deliver this information to folks in small bites, in easy to understand pieces backed up by articles by good journalists who've done their homework to bring you and I some insight into the world.
But y'all don't listen. Y'all just want to shoot me, the messenger, and gaslight me, and tell me I'm the crazypants, the tinfoil wearing nutjob who will believe any old conspiracy theory.
I hereby formally reject that lie.
I am - to the very best of my ability - a discerning person who does his honest best at determining whether the information is true, fits the scenery, connects with other information, and genuinely fits the whole.
I am also - to the very best of my ability - willing to change my mind when sufficient evidence is found or presented that refutes a point I used to believe. I am willing to refine my hypothesis and theories and learn from my mistakes and work with you if you you're but willing to be brave enough to work with me, unflinchingly honest and in integrity with what is actually to the very best of our ability to understand or uncover to be true.
I am looking for allies, friends, brothers, sisters of the faith in honesty, integrity, and virtue of becoming a better people for the greater good of all humanity.
If there is any way to restore balance on this planet - I believe that it is to renounce our criminal ways of the past - and to work as TRUE EQUALS with all HUMANs everywhere on this blue marble.
It is our spiritual salvation. Our ecological salvation. Our material salvation. Our one true road forward to a time when we can be honest about who we are AND FEEL GOOD ABOUT IT.
Please stop participating in the theft by hiding from the ugly truth of human history - especially of American history - and work together to put an end to the violence, the thievery, the gaslighting, and the small-minded self-destructive greed that we are all complicit in by staying silent or by defending the very politicians and political systems - including our police - and military - which continues to execute those same crimes here, there, and almost everywhere around this earth.
I'm not claiming to be perfect or know all of the answers. But I am eager to discuss any and all of this with you if you're willing to be intellectually honest with me towards refining an understanding of truth instead of obfuscating it on behalf of fears.
We can take responsibility for who we are and where we are and who we owe for that. For me, that must be grounded in honesty. A commitment to the truth and a real process of reconciliation in which we admit that our very way of life as Americans is predicated upon global theft, and we stop it. We. Stop. The. Evil. Machine. Together. First, by simply being willing to realize that this is the situation, and no longer being willing to be a defender of it out of our own shame or fears.
We can create a future worth existing in. One that can sustain humanity.
But it cannot be one whose foundation is not firmly set in love, integrity, and peace.
Please, help.</span></span></div>
</div>
Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-14827671881661737332017-01-13T08:06:00.003-08:002017-01-13T08:06:27.321-08:00An Open Letter to LiberalsAn open letter to American Liberals:<br />
<br />
You're right of course that liberal governments are lesser evil than conservative ones.<br />
<br />
I wish that was enough of a common ground that we could genuinely work together in harmony (it's enough for us to work together on limited actions).<br />
<br />
I honestly wish it were entirely enough.<br />
<br />
But the problem is that I still haven't heard you call out Obama for his war crimes, or for his failures to address police brutality, or any of a very long list of humanitarian failures.<br />
<br />
And before you jump in to defend him - he's only Human, he was hog-tied by the GOP congress and on and on - those things are true to some degree, but if he didn't have a (D) after his name those things would not be stopping you from railing against him on those issues.<br />
<br />
And my aim isn't to have you criticize Obama for criticism's sake. Rather, it is the underlying ability to distance yourself from the liberal bubble that renders Trump satan, and Obama gabrielle.<br />
<br />
And not because Trump needs my protection, or because I hate Obama (I actually like his personal demeanour, his grace, his appreciation for the arts, for how he's handled himself as the international face of America, ... there's a great many things that I admire about Obama)<br />
<br />
...but because I need to have allies that are willing to stop trusting the liberal narrative.<br />
<br />
...because the liberal narrative (just like the mirror conservative narrative) keeps people ignoring the underlying causes of everything and supporting false leaders and false goals.<br />
<br />
Again - this may not be something you're available for? I don't know? People are where they are, and I spent the entire GW Bush years drinking the liberal kool-aid and lambasting the tinfoil hat wearing ninnys that kept telling me then that LEV (lesser evil voting) was wrong, and that both sides R/D were really on team Oligarchy, and etc.<br />
<br />
I remember strongly how I reacted to such information - with astonishment, disgust, scorn, amusement, disbelief, and so on. "How can anyone [who isn't absolutely bonkers] believe that Ds and Rs are equivalent IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER?!!!"<br />
<br />
And having watched what happened to Barack from '08 to today - what's happened to Bernie over the past two years - and learning much more than I ever wish I knew about Hillary over this past year - has utterly destroyed - obliterated - laid waste to my former liberal beliefs.<br />
<br />
Now I laugh at my old self and wonder how I could ever have been so naive?<br />
<br />
But see, that's the rub. I wish It didn't matter whether you believed in the liberal narrative or not. But - just as you believe that Trump is very likely to accelerate global warming, usher in the most corporatist government in human history, reinstate the most racist and reactionary conservative laws and policies; I believe that Hillary would do exactly the same in all of the ways that really matter under the surface.<br />
<br />
In fact, I am quite certain that a majority of Ds in congress will do the same.<br />
<br />
In fact, I am quite certain that all Ds and all Rs are effectively on the same page (due to being compromised by their need for corporate funding to various donors and groups), and that the smoke and mirrors of disagreements are circus for our entertainment and distraction (whether any given senator is savvy enough themselves to realize they're actors in a big farce, or if they're unwittingly so, is quite irrelevant at the end of the day).<br />
<br />
The most recent case in point is Corey Booker and the other Ds who voted against Bernie's bill to allow us to import drugs at reduced costs through Canada.<br />
<br />
Another is Democrats reappointing Nancy Pelosi as their leader. Another is Democrats failing to run Bernie in the general. Another is Democrats using false stories about Russia to resurrect red-scare McCarthyism (a very ugly page from our history) to distract voters from the unbelievably corrupt and disheartening contents of the emails penned by Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and others in Hillary's election campaign (which included, unethically, the entire DNC machine). Another is Obama's creating a 'Ministry of Truth' in his final days.<br />
<br />
The list goes on and on and on.<br />
<br />
But liberals - want to keep the current system and elect more Ds to office - on the basis that this is a good thing. The ills as y'all see it isn't that Democrats have failed the working class utterly over the past 30+ years. It isn't that their policies have effectively done zero for black rights in that timespan. It isn't that they're complicit in taking corporate money. It isn't that they've been caught red handed rigging an entire primary for POTUS. It's just that there aren't enough of them. :'(<br />
<br />
I cannot abide that. I cannot support that.<br />
<br />
It's a failed political philosophy - with a world near ready to catch fire and burn out of control possibly eradicating all Human life, irreparably damaging this planet's ecosystem and biosystems, it's gone from bad-policy to extinction-threatening-policy.<br />
<br />
I'm tired of watching good friends and family support an evil system - one that bombs 7 nations simultaneously, is the largest arms dealer to the world, has a military 10x the next 10 biggest combined, poisons our inner cities with lead and bacteria, openly lynches black and native peoples publicly and makes excuses for it, etc., etc.<br />
<br />
At the core of american liberalism is the acceptance of democrats as our only and best hope.<br />
<br />
That's a sickness.<br />
<br />
I may not have all of the answers - but I sure as hell know that aiding the cancer is not one of them.Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-15513332932737221092017-01-13T06:02:00.002-08:002017-01-13T06:02:42.983-08:00Science vs. NatureI was just listening to Naomi Klein "This Changes Everything" - and she's talking about "Geo Engineering".<br />
<br />
And a lot of parallels strike me between that discussion (is GE a reasonable approach - is there some level at which it is reasonable - what will happen should the world's feedback systems become a serious mess for human survival without it, etc.) and GMOs and the many concerns that they bring up.<br />
<br />
I have many friends on both sides of both debates.<br />
<br />
I feel like neither side is wrong, so much as both have something important to contribute if the other would just listen.<br />
<br />
Naomi Klein's description of seeding the outer atmosphere with sulphur dioxide, and similar to the ocean, and more to seed clouds that we can help control the rain distribution, and so on, and i'm thinking "Hey, this is also the discussion about western medicine and its failures."<br />
<br />
I know that my science friends will roll their eyes and dismiss everything that is essentially about creating health without using scientific interventions such as we commonly name "medicine" in the west. Pills mostly, but surgeries as well.<br />
<br />
And I'm not saying that western medicine doesn't have its uses - it's amazingly wonderful aspects. On the other hand, I'm seeing my own body and many other people's become a mess with folks trying to figure out how to manage them with pills and surgeries and the medicines tend to be more and more and more. They don't seem to do a good job of ending, but rather one starts a medication to address one imbalance, only to then need another to address a new imbalance, only then to need yet another for another imbalance (each additional imbalance at least contributed to by the previous medications taken).<br />
<br />
We all know it's true - we watch those godforsaken ads on TV about some new pill and then for two minutes straight some poor bloke is talking as fast as humanly possibly to squeeze in the endless list of side effects that may be caused by the pill in question.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
My point, and Naomi Klein's point is that western scientific approaches tend to be very intrusive and dependency-creating.<br />
<br />
So once we start with some form of Geo Engineering, we're likely to cause other imbalances (less rainfall in our best food valleys, for example), that then need additional highly intrusive GE interventions to try to manage, that then beget other imbalances.... and the cycle doesn't end until the patient is dead.<br />
<br />
Now, yes, for a Human, the patient is always going to die anyway. But for Earth... this is ... a whole different ball game.<br />
<br />
Instead of losing one patient, we're talking wiping out the Human race (at a minimum).<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
I'm tempted to wax philosophical here and remind myself that oh-well, if we all die we all die.<br />
<br />
But honestly, I'd really rather not be the cause of the death of Earth.<br />
<br />
And ultimately - the only reason we have for trying to intervene in all of these already balanced feedback loops we call the biosphere or weather or climate or nature is because we're already interfering viz. carbon emissions.<br />
<br />
The solution isn't to ignore the root cause, and find new pills to shove down the patient's throat to manage symptom after symptom, but to address the original cancer - our addiction to carbon fuels.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
Anyway, all of this has parallels with GMOs Yes, we can engineer various things - but will we ever end up with crops that are more robust in the long term, less energy intensive, etc?<br />
<br />
I know my science-y friends are screaming "YES!" - but I'm worried about the unintended - the unforeseen consequences.<br />
<br />
It would help enormously if I saw humanity as being responsible when things go wrong - saw us as having good feedback systems in our own societies that dealt with illness - in this case pollution or bad science or what not, but the reality I see is that as humans - our social structures are incredibly bad - awful - miserable at taking responsibility for when things go wrong and even worse at fixing them or addressing the messes they create.<br />
<br />
So I am not - NOT - reassured about GMOs, nor about GE, nor about western medicine & pharmaceuticals, despite also seeing that all of these has great potential for good - the good is swamped by our long, long track record for irresponsibility as a species.<br />
<br />
And to me, that's the part I need my science friends to become literate about.Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6684880558075688950.post-73057392171240481662017-01-01T09:31:00.002-08:002018-02-14T17:50:12.058-08:00Worst News SourcesSick of the constant gawd-awful McCarthyism, Red-Scare, pro-Clintonista effluent that issues from these sites:<br />
<h2>
Neoconservative / McCarthyism / red-scare:</h2>
<div>
Fox<br />
The Economist (might be more neoliberal than neoconservative, the distinction is harder to make these days)</div>
<h2>
Neoliberal / 3rd-way DNC / DLC / McCarthyism / red-scare:</h2>
ABC<br />
CBS<br />
MSN<br />
NBC<br />
<br />
NY Times<br />
Washington Post - <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-20/cia-washington-post-and-russia-what-youre-not-being-told">Funded by the CIA</a> (literally, factually)<br />
<br />
Media Matters for America - (<a href="https://www.facebook.com/kaosketcham/posts/10154295521391139">see this for example</a>)<br />
Blue Nation in Review[1]<br />
Daily News Bin[1]<br />
Nation in Review[1]<br />
Political News Review<br />
Raw Story<br />
The Daily Beast<br />
The Independent<br />
The Nation<br />
VOX<br />
<h2>
Statist Propagandist Reporters:</h2>
Jeremy Diamond (CNN)<br />
<br />
[1] These sites are owned by David Brock as part of Hillary's Super Pac.Mordachaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392190068112911050noreply@blogger.com0