Top 5 WORST Things About Christmas Shopping

Once again, it is Christmas.  You might suspect, dear reader, that I’m about to go off on another tangent about the War on Christmas, but you’d be wrong.  Instead, let’s talk about shopping.  Not in the ethereal, abstract sense of complaining about the commercialism of Christmas, but my personal pet peeves regarding Christmas shopping and shoppers.  Just some things I observe every year, while trying to finish my Christmas shopping, that really get on my nerves.

5. Competitive Shoppers

We’ve already seen the video of a woman pepper-spraying other shoppers in her mad dash to get the Xbox for her kids.  “It’s all part of Black Friday,” we tell ourselves, “but once the day’s over, we can get back to regular shopping for sane people.”  WRONG!  Black Friday just kicks off the waves of stupid in the stores.  The whole month between Thanksgiving and Christmas is rife with crazy.  I talked to a guy two days ago who’d been assaulted by a ten-year-old girl over a pink iPhone cover.  He’d picked it off the rack for his wife as a stocking-stuffer, glad that they still had one (it was the last one) in her favorite color.  Just as he was ready to put it in his cart, though, some kid came up and kicked him in the shins until he let go of the iPhone cover, then grabbed the thing and ran back to her mother.  The guy expected the mother of this kid to scold her spawn, apologize for the kid’s despicable behavior, and return the item.  Instead, the mother patted her little creature on the head in appreciation of a job well done.

These are the kinds of competitive shoppers I’m talking about.  Those self-important jackasses who insist that they are so awesome because they managed to somehow get a thing that was almost out of stock (*gasp!*), or hard to find because it was in high demand.  And they brag about the dirty, shameful things they did in order to get said item, as though it somehow makes them special.  I have news for you people: it doesn’t.  Having your kid attack someone over a cheap piece of Chinese plastic doesn’t make you special, it makes you an asshole.  Seriously, people, let’s get it together and start acting like we have some idea what civilization is, could we please?

4. People Offended by “Happy Holidays”

You know the ones.  When a retailer wishes them “Happy Holidays” on their way into or out of a store, these people always stop and correct them, emphasizing “Merry Christmas.”  Look, crazy right-wing religious fanatics, when someone wishes you “Happy Holidays,” Christmas is included.  The retail clerk doesn’t know your religion.  For all they know, you’re Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist.  Maybe you don’t celebrate Christmas, but you have friends who do and you just want to get them something for their special time of year.  No one should ever be offended by “Happy Holidays.”  It’s not an affront to your Christianity.  If you’re Christian, “Happy Holidays” means “Merry Christmas,” and if you’re not, it means “I hope your holiday, whatever it is, is a good one that you enjoy thoroughly.”  So stop being offended by it, you’re making an ass of yourself.

3. People Offended by “Merry Christmas”

The only people more annoying than those who are offended by “Happy Holidays” are those who get pissed when someone, in passing or whatever, wishes them a “Merry Christmas.”  Hey, I’m an atheist, I get it.  It’s fucking irritating when some religious fanatic decides to try and shove their religion down your throat or deny you citizenship if you don’t fit into their narrow view of the United States as a “Christian Nation.”  But the fact is this; 80% of the country identifies themselves as Christian.  It’s a pretty easy assumption, then, when people wish you a “Merry Christmas,” that they think they’re being nice.  If you’re getting offended when someone tries to say something nice to you, just because it’s not your particular religious belief, you’re being a huge and horrible ass.  And the reason it’s worse that group number 4 is that at least those people are in the majority.  If you’re in a small minority that no one would know about without asking, you don’t get to be offended when someone assumes you’re part of the huge majority that looks just like you.  Stop getting mad when someone’s trying to be nice (this goes for groups 3 and 4).

*This section does not apply if someone knows you’re not Christian and they insist on emphasizing “Merry Christmas,” just to press the issue.  Those people are gigantic douche bags.*

2. Parking Lot Assholes

This is kind of a year-long gripe of mine, but it goes double for this time of year.  For God’s sake, stop jockeying for a parking space twenty feet  closer to the store.  If you’re handicapped, there are handicapped spaces nice and close to the front.  If you’re not handicapped, you don’t need a closer space.  There is little else in this world more infuriating than someone who stops and waits for someone pulling out of a spot so they can take it and avoid having to walk an extra hundred feet to get to their shopping.  Your legs aren’t broken.  Park further away, get out and walk your happy ass into the store.  By the time you get that spot a hundred feet closer, you could already be in the store.  And what’s worse, I could already be in the store (or out of the parking lot) except that I had to stop and wait for your stupid ass to get out of the way.  How lazy are you?  The real killer (for me anyway) is that the person who does this is almost always some yuppie soccer mom who makes it a point to go the gym every day with a personal trainer and everything, but she’s to lazy to walk through a goddamn parking lot.  Move it, lady.  There are people here with working legs who need you to get out of the way.

1. Children

Not mine, mind you.  I love my kids.  And I may not even hate your kids, depending on who they are.  But if your kids are running around stores knocking things off the shelves, throwing a temper tantrum in the line to see Santa at the mall, or just generally acting up because you’re not controlling them, know that you and your kids are ruining Christmas for everyone.  This year, some woman waiting to see the mall Santa told her seven-year-old to hold their spot in line while she went over to the iPhone kiosk to see what kinds of deals she could get.  Or worse, our mall has a play area where parents can bring their kids to run around and climb on some foam-rubber mountains and wear themselves out.  But based on the ratio of kids to adults in this play area, one would assume that each parent present had a minimum of seven kids, based on how the children outnumber the adults there.

So after they saw Santa, I took my kids over to play (I actually pay attention to my kids when the play there).  Some eight-year-old little boy came running smack into me, and then had the gall to look at me and yell “MOVE!”  Now, in any decenty run society, I should have had every right to knock the kid on his ass, and then pimp-slap each of his parents for allowing their offspring to act this way.  But his parents were no where to be found, and I’m pretty sure mall security would have pepper-sprayed me or something had I just chucked the kid through the window of some store front.

The real problem, though, is that some people have come to the conclusion that the phrase “it takes a village” means that they can dump their kids off on the rest of the villagers while they go shopping.  But they never thought to clear it with the villagers.  I’m not your babysitter.  If you’re assuming I’ll watch your kids for you, for free, without even asking me, don’t be too surprised when I trade them to some competitive shopper for an Xbox360, after I convince them that the real hottest gift this year is a living, breathing, parking space holder, who knows both the phrases “Happy Holidays” and “Merry Christmas.”

That’s pretty much my list.  Anything you care to add?

Jesus, Darwin, and Social Responsibility

Is it just me, or does anyone else see it as the utmost height of hypocrisy when right wing “Christians” refuse to admit to the scientific fact of evolution, and call the United States a “Christian Nation,” but never seem hesitant to invoke Darwin when looking for an excuse to defend the grossest inequities of our society?  Worst of all, both of those men are wildly misrepresented when it comes to what they actually said.  Something’s up here, and it smells.  Why are so many in our society able to point to personal responsibility as an argument against social responsibility?  The fact is, personal and social responsibility are inseparable parts of the same whole.  Let’s explore…

Jesus

We’ve talked before about how un-Christian the so-called “Christian” right actually is.  It’s no secret that the biggest promoters of the Tea Party are the religious right.  In fact, the best predictor of whether someone is a Tea Bagger is that they are a Republican, and the second is that they want more religion in government.  Now, those aren’t necessarily predictors of whether someone is opposed to helping others, but here’s what Tea Baggers do when someone suggests letting a man die because he can’t pay for his health care:

 

Yup, let him die.  I know it’s an older clip, but little else better demonstrates Tea Bagger antipathy toward their fellow man.  What’s most troubling is that such a thing would come from people who, by and large, claim to follow the teachings of a guy who said “How you treat the least among you, so you treat me” (Matthew 25:35-40).

The good old Golden Rule applies to every major religion, and almost every major belief system in existence, excluding certain sociopaths and their followers.  Yet, many seem perfectly happy to let every man and woman fend completely for themselves, and point to competition and “survival of the fittest”  as a rationale for why we shouldn’t be providing for one another.  After all, doesn’t natural selection determine who will succeed and who will not?  Wouldn’t we, as a society, be doing irreparable damage to ourselves if we allowed weakness to flourish?  Isn’t that what was proposed by…

Charles Darwin

Over the last hundred years or so, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species has been used as a justification for any number of belief systems, including eugenics and Nazism.  The most common, of course, bears his name.  The funny thing about Social Darwinism, though, is that Darwin had absolutely nothing to do with it.  The concept was the brainchild of Herbert Spencer,  in defense of social inequality.  Darwin himself was actually in favor of people having a sense of social responsibility.  In Descent of Man, Darwin posited that a social conscience was an evolutionary benefit, and that it served to strengthen civilization, the existence of which is what put man on the top of the food chain in the first place.  After all, it’s not as though a human being, all alone on the wilderness, is anything close to being “the fittest.”  We’re relatively weak and slow, have no weapons save those we are able to fashion with our own hands, and have virtually no natural protection against the elements.  It’s only because of our advanced intelligence and cooperation that we are able to dominate the planet and exercise our will to a greater extent than any other creature ever has.  And since all men are not born with identical abilities, that cooperation means that we invariably help those less “fit” for circumstances as they are at any given time, as they in turn helps when we are in need.  And that, according to Darwin, is why “the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them.”  Helping one another is not a promotion of weakness.  It is the source of our strength.

So What?

You might be asking, dear reader, why do I bring all this up?  Well, it all comes down to this:

 

Now, a lot of people took offense to this statement by Herman Cain, and rightfully so.  Cain was basically trying to say that people who were down on their luck deserved it because they had not worked hard enough or something (it’s hard to really discern Cain’s rationale, especially when he says “I don’t have facts to back this up, but…”).

But here’s the thing:  we are to blame.  All of us.  As a society.  As a civilization.  As a nation.  As a culture.  As a people.  We should blame ourselves.  George Carlin, better than anyone ever has, tells us why (in the first minute and a half of this clip)…

 

That’s right.  The public sucks.  We suck.  When it really comes down to it, there is no separation between social and individual responsibility.  We have forgotten that as a people, and that is the single biggest reason we face the kinds of problems we have today.  Just as Jesus would say that we treat no one any better than we treat the least among us, a society is no better than the people of whom it is comprised.

We have an individual responsibility to hold ourselves responsible for our society as a whole.

That’s the key thing here.  Sure, we have charities.  The proponents of “every man for himself” Social Darwinism will tell you that that’s all we need.  “The churches can handle it” they say.  Well, there was a time when the church was the only entity through which we helped one another, and it failed.  That’s why 80% of the elderly in 1920 were malnourished and below subsistence.  You know why that’s not the case now?  Social Security.

See, that’s why we have government.  It exists to exercise our will in the realm of social responsibility.  If not as an engine for social responsibility, what the fuck is representative government supposed to be for?  Fascist regimes are more efficient for defense.  Monarchies are better able to create and enforce laws.  Even anarchy, having no government at all, can arguably support more individual liberty than anything else can.

We have a representative democracy so that we can exercise our desire to shape the culture as we wish.  Our government is the engine by which we enact our will as a people.  That’s it’s specific purpose, and it has no other.  We have social security and medicare because we decided it was unacceptable for our elderly to suffer throughout their old age.  We have a military because we decided it’s important to maintain a strong national defense.  We have public education because we decided it was important for our coming generations to be learned and knowledgable.  And when these programs begin to fail, it is because we don’t consider them a high enough priority to prevent it.

I always tell my kids that no matter what, they are guarnteed to get the level of education they demand for themselves.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that they will have the degree or credentials they demand, but the will have the knowledge.  The same goes for the rest of us.  If we want our society to be better than it is, we have to demand it of ourselves.

Notes From the Occupation: Class Consciousness and Loyalty

Yesterday, as many of you know, the Tea Party held a counter-protest opposite Occupy Denver.  Well, sort of.  You see, the counter-protest was officially cancelled, due to the cold, but some people showed up anyway.  But I’m not writing to compete over numbers.  What I want to talk about is class.

See, the average Occupier is working class (or, looking to find work so as to become working-class).  The average Tea Partier is also working class.  I say working class and not middle class because, let’s face it, the reason both groups are pissed off is because there really is no middle class any more.  There’s the working class, and the ruling class.  And, if one of yesterday’s rallies was in support of the working class and the other was in opposition to it, then the one in opposition must be in favor of the ruling class, right?  And which one does the Tea Party support?

I bring this up so I can tell you a story.  I’ve never really gotten into what I do for a living at this site.  I’ve talked a lot about my time as an educator, and occasionally various other professions I’ve had.  But I’ve always kind of left my current profession out.  There are a lot of reasons for that, but one of the main ones is that my job sometimes makes me feel like a traitor to the working class.  The industry in which I make my living is widely viewed by my fellow leftists as being part of our very own Axis of Evil, and there are times when I look down on the street from my office window and wonder if I am indeed a sellout.

This feeling was brought harshly to the forefront of my mind, screaming and yelling and waving its arms, while I marched with the Occupiers down the 16th Street Mall yesterday afternoon.  Amidst chants of “The People… United… Will Never Be Divided,” my own voice was barely discernible to my friend next to me, as I described to him my fears of being spotted by my colleagues.  After all, we walked right past my place of business, and we walked right past it on purpose, because that part of town is where many of those against whom the Occupation is protesting can be found.

That includes me.

Sort of, anyway.  I’m not part of the 1%.  I make a pretty good living, but nothing close to what would qualify me as part of the ruling class.  And followed by my concern about being seen by the wrong people was an even worse sensation of shame.  Shame that I would ever let something like that get in the way of doing what I know for a cold, hard fact to be absolutely right. So I marched.  Proudly.

But I told you that story so I could tell you this (and thank you, Ron White, for coming up with that ever-so-appropriate segue).

People in the Tea Party never experiences these types of conflicting emotions.

Yes, that is a very broad generalization, I know.  But I hold it accurate.  The Tea Party membership is not self-aware.  Here I must distinguish between the membership and the leadership, because the leadership is, in fact, the ruling class.  They run the Tea Party.  They write its talking points.  They determine its agenda.  Shawn Mitchell, State Senator (and Colorado President of the ultra-right-wing-Tea-Party-before-there-was-a-Tea-Party Federalist Society) was the one who organized yesterday’s counter-protest, which the local news had the unmitigated gall to call “grassroots.”  But the membership of the Tea Party isn’t the ruling class.  They membership is working class, just like those in the Occupation.

Some people recognize our common cause.  This guy does…

… and he recognizes that while there are differences of opinion on how to solve those problems, those differences are based more in the misinformation of some than they are based on the availability of a wide variety of valid solutions.

While Tea Party folk hold that “The Occupy Wall Street movement correctly identifies some of the problems our country faces… However, instead of proposing solutions that would take our country toward renewed prosperity, OWS instead advocates policies that would make things worse. History shows us the way forward: what we need instead are more free markets and more liberty…”

…and Shawn Mitchell tells us that “what we need is not more government, but more freedom… the answer isn’t to kneecap corporations… The answer is to reform government and get it out of the business of trying to manage the economy.”

Of course, what this really means is that we need to cut governmental oversight and social programs, and institute more tax cuts.  Which we’ve been doing for over 30 years.  And it’s worked out really well for some people.  A small group, to be sure, only 1% of the total population.  The other 99% of us, Tea Party membership included, have been getting trickled on by trickle down for at least a generation.

I guess what I’m getting at is this:

If you’re a member of the Tea Party, and you’re supporting plans like those put forth by guys like Shawn Mitchell, you are working against your own best interest.  You might think that history has proven out your assumptions, but I challenge you to find a single example of such a thing actually taking place.  I’ll save you some time; there are none.

Tea Party membership, I leave you with this message:

Stop being deceived.  The people you are following are using you as cannon fodder in your own subjugation.  You are the 99%.  We are the 99%.  We are all the working class.  Tea Party leadership is the 1%, , the ruling class, and they do not have your best interest at heart.  They divide us so as to conquer us.  And as long as they are successful, none of us will ever see our dreams realized. If we are to be free, we need each other.

Notes From the Occupation: Black Friday Edition

So, can we be surprised by this:

When authority figures do this?

Let’s face it, people in authority legitimize behaviors when they engage in them.  Just as we learn behaviors through childhood by watching our parents and teachers (the authorities), as adults we tend to consider the actions of authority figures to be legitimate.  Therefore, when the authorities assault peaceful people who are in the way, it can be no surprise when regular people do the same.

Something about leading by example comes to mind…

Veteran’s Day 2011

So I thought a lot about what to write for Veteran’s Day.  It’s hard, as someone who did not serve in the armed forces, to have much of anything to say about it without sounding trite and manufactured.  I thought so long about it, actually, that my Veteran’s Day post did not make it up in time for Veteran’s Day, much to my chagrin.  But, without further introductory digression, here goes…

My daughter’s 5th grade class wrote letters to our service members in Afghanistan and Iraq this week.  Most had similar themes, all of which I would say are extremely important.  They wrote about our gratitude for the sacrifice of our men and women in combat, and how much we appreciate their service in defense of our nation’s security and our liberty.   They wrote about how they thought soldiers were admirable Americans who embodied many of our most cherished qualities.  Some wrote about how strongly they wished to see our soldiers home safe and sound.  Many wrote about how much they missed their own family members who were overseas in service to the United States.

And one little boy wrote, “I think you guys are awesome because you kill people.”

My kid was troubled by this, enough so that she felt it necessary to talk to me about it (and if you have kids in the pre-teen or teen years, you know how big a deal something has to be before they’ll talk to their, ugh, parents).  She didn’t feel that her classmate really appreciated the overall point of the exercise, sure, but more than that, she was bothered by the concept of someone being admired for taking the lives of others, and the idea that some soldiers might actually only be interested in that aspect of their service.

It bothered me a little, too.

But as we talked, a realization came to me.  Soldiers are people.  And just like any group of people, there is no complete homogeneity when it comes to motives.  There are soldiers who join because they genuinely desire to serve the nation, and to be a part of something greater than themselves.  Some join because it is a family tradition.  Some because it offers far greater opportunities than they would otherwise have access to.  Some because they want to see the world.  I’m pretty sure my brother’s main motivation for joining the Marines was because it was a great workout, and he wanted to prove he could hack it.

And there are probably those who join because they want to kill people.

After all, while the purpose of the military is to defend the nation (and our military is damned good at that, no question), the means by which they do it often require killing those who would otherwise do harm to the rest of us.  There’s a reason that, whatever their specialized training (flying planes, intelligence work, engineering, etc.), one thing that all American service people learn is how to kill people.  They’re better at it than anyone else in the world.  It’s not something that the vast majority of our military wants to do, mind you.  I’m not calling soldiers a bunch of bloodthirsty thugs, and I would never be so ignorant as to lump them all together like that.  But there are times when they have to kill, and there are those who enjoy it.  To say otherwise is to deny that they are human.

And here’s where I get to what I really want to say.

This Veteran’s Day, can we, who have not served in that capacity, finally stop fetishizing the military?  Our men and women in uniform are, by and large, remarkable people, possessed of great courage and exemplary character.  But at the end of the day they are people, and as a society we have turned them into the infallible heroes of ancient tales, immeasurably strong and completely above the failings of we mere mortals.  Many in our culture have taken the leap from admiration to worship, and it’s unhealthy for all involved.

Think about what it means when we think of our military in this way.

Is it fair for us to hold people to such a standard?  No question that the service they provide is noble, honorable, and definitely necessary.  But these are still people, with human failings and human frailties.  No matter how much we might like to think otherwise, our soldiers are not supermen.  And when we look at them in this way we are much more likely to be cavalier about putting them in harm’s way.  I’d say the job is probably hard enough without the rest of us thinking that they can handle anything and everything without any difficulty.  Maybe some of the sabre-rattling we hear would die down if our leaders didn’t just assume the military is full of ultimate weapons.  I suspect that both civilian and soldier alike would benefit from society being more apprehensive about going to war, don’t you?

When we view the uniform as a superhero’s costume, it becomes that much easier to say “suck it up and be a man (or woman, as the case may be).”  It gets that much easier to deny that there may be catastrophic events in their lives, from which they may never fully recover.  It’s that much easier to call PTSD sufferers weak and deny that they suffer at all.  It’s that much easier to tell a soldier, who served in combat and is now out on medical discharge, that he couldn’t hack it in the real man’s military.  It gets that much easier to deny benefits to veterans so that we can pay a fraction of a percent less in taxes.  Failing to provide proper equipment weighs on the conscience so much less when we all know Superman is bulletproof anyway, right?

Not every soldier suffers such trauma.  A great many look at their service as the experience that most positively affected their lives.  Many go through their entire military career without anything causing them much in the way of emotional stress.  Many look at their service as the very best time of their lives.  Others take immense pride in performing their duties to the very best of anyone’s ability, let alone their own.  Others are ashamed of having done it.  Still others would say it was the worst thing they ever did.  And some have been destroyed by it.

That’s the point.  All of our soldiers are people.  Beyond that, saying they are all anything is to deny them their humanity, and thus cease treating them like people.  We really should stop doing that.

______________________________________________________

*To all who have served in the uniform of the United States, I am grateful to you for your service.  In performing it, you honor all of us, and we honor you.  Most importantly, I respect you as people.  Happy Veteran’s Day.*

Notes From The Occupation: Introductory Edition

So Occupy Wall Street and its spinoffs have been going on for a couple of months now.  Here in Denver, it’s been about five weeks.  It seems mainstream media is paying more and more attention to the movement, but even with the increase in news stories about the Occupation, and even with more commentators discussing issues pertinent to the movement, there seems to be a lot of confusion out there regarding what the Occupation is about.  There’s a very good reason for this:  No one really knows, specifically, what the Occupation is really about.  In some respects, it’s partially because the media has no real vested interest in actually exploring, in depth, the root cause of the protest. There is also the fact that there are no real spokespeople to speak for the Occupiers, and therefore there’s no concrete message to point to.  And of course, there’s the fact that the Occupiers themselves can’t seem to agree on any definitions, and in fact seem genuinely opposed to having clearly defined goals.  But all that being the case, please allow me to give you a brief introduction to Occupy Denver, as I see it based on the people I meet.

Weekend Occupiers

I have a good job.  I’m lucky in that respect and I know it.  That being the case, I tend to only join the Occupiers on the weekend, when I have some free time between my responsibilities to my job and to my family.  On those weekends, there are a lot of people like me present.  These people are responsible, working adults.  Typically, they have enough education and experience to know how to work within the system, but because of their knowledge of the system, they are privy to its failings.  The weekend Occupier has a very clear view of the glass ceiling we all face in the business world, and they recognize how difficult it is to make it, even with gainful employment.  The weekend Occupiers haven’t been as victimized by the Great Recession as others, but they also know they could be, and they want to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Professional Occupiers

Professional Occupiers are the reason the Occupation has its name.  These folks have lost everything, or almost so.  They would love to have a job to go to every day that would take them away from Occupying Wall Street (or Lincoln Park, as the case may be in Denver).  The fact that they don’t, and that their prospects of getting one despite their qualifications are slim at best, coupled with the fact that their finances have been predated while their employment opportunities have been shipped overseas, leaves them with little else to do.  They would attend town hall meetings like the Tea Party did, but there are fewer and fewer town halls to attend, and many are now charging admission that the unemployed cannot afford.  And while I agree with the remarkably insightful and intelligent Jim Wright over on Stonekettle Station that voting is absolutely key, there is more to forcing change than the ballot.  Time and again we have seen politicians get elected based on one platform, and then immediately do an about-face to pursue something entirely different than what they were elected to do.  What, then, are people left with?  Whether you agree with them or not, they are making their voices heard in the only way they feel they can.

Opportunists

Not all opportunists are bad.  Some are simply homeless people who have seen a large concentration of free food, supplies, and company.  This is how many of the homeless have spent years of their lives, small wonder that they take the opportunity to avail themselves of such resources now.  And besides, of all the people victimized by institutionalized greed and the indifference of the “haves,” aren’t the homeless the group with the most significant grievance?  They belong there.  And they should be helped and aided by anyone who identifies with the 99% movement.  They are the first victims of class warfare.

But there are other opportunists.  Drug puchers.  Pimps.  Thieves.  Violent extremists and various other criminals.  While I admire the inclusiveness of the Occupation, there have to be limits.  When it comes to these people, the ones who give the movement a bad name (and frankly, whose behavior is opposite the non-violence the movement is trying to promote), the Occupiers need to make sure these assholes know that they will not be tolerated.  It needs to be crystal clear that if you’re hurting or exploiting people, you are not one of us.  You are everything we’re against.  You need to get the fuck out.  I have no patience for these people, and I have no problem excluding them from an otherwise very inclusive organization.  No one is better for being so open-minded as to tolerate that shit.

Anyway, that’s how Occupy Denver looks to me.  I’m actually traveling for business for a while, so it will be a couple weeks before I get back down to the Occupation.  But I’m optimistic that the Occupation will still be going strong when I get back.

Just When I Though I Had The Perfect Post…

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi beats me to it.  Oh, well.  You should read him anyway.  Pretty damned good stuff.

But there will be more about the Occupation in TWOP, coming very, very soon!

Personal Responsibility, or The Difference Between Can & Should

Anyone remember this quote from Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm character in Jurassic Park?  It was always one of my favorites.  Funny thing is, I’ve always looked at this line as extraordinarily relevant to what being an American is all about, and it exemplifies that “personal responsibility” that seems to be all the rage to talk about these days.  There are an awful lot of people out there, though, for whom Malcolm’s admonition never even becomes a factor.  Sarah Palin and her crosshairs represent one such example.  Rush Limbaugh’s remarks about Donovan McNabb are another.  And then there’s this line in a comment thread from some ignorant waste of space and her attacks on people in the “Occupy Wall Street” protests:

“I’m sure if they have no jobs then they must be living off the government getting unemployment, food and probably housing and healthcare interesting how we’re do quick to jump on the wealthy but what about the bottom feeders living off of the government just because they can….. Having 8 damn kids by 8 different guys, standing in line at Walmart in their cellulite ridden stretch pants…. But let me guess it’s the wealthy’s fault that they make so much right?? “

And when called out on the utter ignorance of her tirade:

“I am entitled to my own opinions like them or not, educated or not, I can say what i want when i want.”

Of course you can say what you want when you want.  I would never deny anyone the right to free speech.  Never mind the fact that calling this person ignorant is clearly more fact-based than her ridiculous stereotypes of protesters.  Evidently, she is allowed to say whatever she wants, while people protesting in the streets are just a bunch of rabble who should shut the fuck up and get a damn job.  And to call her on such bullshit is apparently an attack on her right to free speech.  But I digress (as I am wont to do).

Here’s the thing.  Just because you can say something doesn’t mean you should.  It’s the ability to discern the difference that made the nation’s founders comfortable with guaranteeing that right in our foundational documents.  When the first amendment was written, I somehow doubt that the intent was to protect the right of every self-righteous, moralistic, emotional thinker to go out and spew false accusations of moral turpitude at entire groups of people without ever taking the time or effort to find out if there is any basis to the accusation in the first place.  The amendment has that effect, yes. But there’s that personal responsibility thing again.

See, personal responsibility, as it pertains to speech, is a lot like journalistic integrity.  There is nothing specifically illegal about a headline like

OBAMA WANTS TO SELL AMERICA TO MARTIAN SOCIALISTS!

You see, there is nothing provably false in this accusation.  Since there are no martians, and even fewer martian socialists (the red planet loves its free markets), there is no way the President could sell our nation to them.  In addition, the President lacks the authority to sell the country anyway.  And finally, one can always claim editorial license when it comes to public figures.  After all, how do we know he doesn’t want to sell us all into bondage to our socialist martian overlords, where we will work the iron mines of Olympus Mons until we all die of the martian clap.  You can’t disprove it.  One could always argue that he would if he could.  Therefore, this would be protected speech under the first amendment. It’s an opinion and you have a right to it.

But running this headline would be a dozen different kinds of irresponsible, and so you don’t see that headline coming from any respected news source.  And even more importantly, people who care about credibility do research, so that people will believe them when they say something.  Some people care about whether or not what they say is true instead of just shouting whatever moronic drivel falls from their brain like a puppy pissing on the floor.  This is where should comes in over can.

I can claim that John Boehner, Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor probably spent the weekend performing a three-way around the world with Charles (or was it David) Koch, and that he paid them all in pennies that he made them bob for in a tub full of sweet, sweet crude.  That’s just my opinion.  I have a right to it.

Or, I could say that I think all the Occupiers in Denver are a bunch of drunken, spoiled trust-fund babies who are just living off their mommy and daddy’s money while they leech off society and waste resources that are better used helping people who really need it (like Citi).  Besides, they’re just picking on the rich because they’re jealous and they think they’re entitled to have everything for free.  They should just go out and get a job, duh!

I could say all those things.  But because I’m a responsible adult, I never would (well, except for the Boehner thing.  I’m pretty sure that may have actually happened).

That’s what personal responsibility is all about.  Of course you have a right to say what you want when you want to, so long as it doesn’t directly cause harm to someone (e.g. shouting fire in a crowded theater, etc.).  I have every right to spend the next 72 hours doing nothing but watching internet porn and drinking Thunderbird “wine” until I pass out with a slick, vaseline-covered hard-on in my living room.  I have every right to simply walk away from my job, bills, and family, and tell every single person I see for the rest of my life to eat shit and die.  But just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

That’s what our nation’s framers were banking on when they guaranteed such rights in our Constitution.  They were taking a gamble that we would all be responsible adults who would think about what we said before saying it.  They bet that we wouldn’t spend our time deriding people we had never met and knew nothing about, because seriously, what kind of ignorant asshat even does  that?  They hoped beyond hope that we wouldn’t allow emotion to cloud our logic, that we’d learn relevant facts before making our judgements, and that reason and compassion would be the basis of everything we did.  They assumed that future generations would be able to tell the difference between can and should.

Poor bastards, they had no idea.

Who Knew? CRACKED is the Place for a Reality Check

There’s always a lot of talk about different problems in our country and what’s causing them.  But it seems no one ever seems to get to the real heart of the matter.  Except for CRACKED magazine online.  So here are a few articles from www.cracked.com that are not only funny, but have hit the nail on the head as far as social commentary.  Enjoy.

7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable.

How “The Karate Kid” Ruined the Modern World.

Don’t Be Like Jessica Simpson: A Lesson for Young Girls Everywhere.

I especially like the idea of “effort shock” David Wong talks about in the second one.

Public Unions, Collective Bargaining, and Equality Among Organizations

With the ongoing fight in Wisconsin between public employee unions and Governor Scott Walker, one question has been asked a great deal is “should public employee unions have the right to collectively bargain at all?”  I think it’s important, then, to break down this debate into its component parts.

Some argue that since the salaries of these public employees are payed by tax revenues, a union bargaining for a better contract is akin to a monopolistic rate hike in which the people collecting the payments for services (again, government) have the legal right to force customers to pay the bill, no matter how high the cost.  Since this funding comes from taxpayers and is part of the governmental budget, some, like FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey, are opposed to taxation of the people being used to pay for higher salaries bargained for by public employee unions.  This stance would be what prompted him, in an interview with CNBC’s Lori Ann LaRocco, to say to these unions “Why are you trying to balance the budget on my back? … These are the guys living high off the fat of the taxpayers hog.” Others claim that because unions tend to support Democratic candidates, “public employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic Party.” And the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation released a video explaining that public unions operate as a massive lobby to elect officials that will negotiate higher salaries for their members, effectively bargaining for higher taxes.

Proponents of collective bargaining rights for public employee unions, meanwhile, hold that all employees, regardless of the identity of their employer, should have the same rights as any other workers.  They see stripping these rights from public employee unions as both immoral and illegal, as well as being obvious discrimination.

As a union supporter, a former history teacher (as well a former IBEW member and former Teamster), I’d bet you can guess which side of that argument I’m on.

So the argument is that a union shouldn’t be allowed to use its numbers and vast financial resources to campaign for elected officials, lobby for laws, bargain for higher pay, or any of that because they are paid from the public coffers as taxpayer expense.  Okay, I get that.  Yes, public employees are paid using tax dollars.  So are an awful lot of private employees.  Haliburton, KBR, Blackwater, Lockheed Martin, and any number of other private contractors hired by the government to do a wide variety of jobs.  I suspect that when these companies are angling for a government contract, they negotiate a contract with the intent of gaining as much financial compensation as possible.  In fact, in the case of companies with a corporate charter, they don’t have a choice.  They are bound by their charters to always seek to maximize their profits.  So, does Dick Armey have a problem with Haliburton’s no-bid contract with the federal government with a cost-plus pricing scale that incentivizes inefficiency?  Of course not, because his friends (Dick Cheney and the like) have made a damned fortune from it.  If a corporation – a group of people who have paid to be vested in an organization that will work to maximize their profits – is allowed to negotiate contracts with government, why can’t unions?  Sounds like discrimination to me.

But unions use their influence to campaign for people who will give them more lucrative contracts, don’t they?  Isn’t that corrupt?  I don’t know, what would you call it when (not to beat a dead horse, but it’s just too juicy an example) Dick Cheney, as a former executive at Haliburton, used his influence to help his old company (in which he was still heavily invested) gain such a lucrative contract as Iraq’s entire rebuilding?  That, too, would be bargaining for higher taxes, if the people who negotiated for the government had any interest in balancing the budget.

Look, it’s this simple.  Right-wing nut-jobs like Scott Walker and the rest of his anti-worker cohorts have to face the fact that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.  A union is just like a corporation.  It’s a group of people who have invested in an organization with the intent of using that organization to maximize members’ profits.  If a corporation is allowed, then a union must then also be allowed.  Double-edged swords can cut deep, can’t they?