Wednesday, March 31, 2010

The Difference Between Democrats and Everyone Else

This video just about sums up what happens when racism, bigotry, and a Texas schoolbook education meet up with the reality that Teahadist crazies didn't get their way over Health Care Reform.



Then there's this. One of their own turned on them and actually said those kind of crazies in the video were responsible for the defeat. Of course, as is the case with extremism of any kind, there can be no individual opinions outside from the sanctioned herd talking points. So, of course, for his honesty, David Frum was fired

This eating their own is what separates the Goposaurs and Teahadists from the Democratic Party. You see, Democrats know that no one will ever agree on anything because Democrats understand everyone is different. It's why there's a Democratic Party. It was needed to include everyone that was rejected by the Republicans as not being rich, white, male, or ugly enough. All those orphans had to go somewhere.

And then there's this whole leadership thing, as in being led around by your nose by a leader. Democrats just aren't into that kind of thing, kinky though it may be. Democrats certainly aren't adverse to kinky, but they prefer that their leaders aren't peeking in the bedroom window and judging them for being kinky. Democrats prefer that kinkiness remains a personal matter between them and their current favorite BFF's.

And that everyone shares a brain thing? Uh uh. That's too Borg-like for most Democrats. Anyone telling them what they should think is more likely to get an answer that explains in multiple footnoted and annotated examples, exactly why they can't go along with that idea when so many other ones exist that may "possibly" be better. Notice I said "possibly." No true Democrat would risk offending someone by implying they weren't capable of being leaders too.

And in that one small but very vital difference is what will eventually empower the Democrats so they're actually able to create the world we all want to live in together. The Republicans are so caught up in being absolute rulers that they fail to see the value of their followers. To them they are people to be used, paid, manipulated and lied to for corporate gain. That's why crazies like the fetus paraders and the Teahadists grow from them like boils on a giant ass. They all want to lead and no one wants to follow.

To see the power of how this works in favor of the Democrats, check out this video about leaders and followers. It will show you what true strength really looks and feels like, and let me tell you, that kind of power gets shit done.





In order to spread this wonderful message of communal following, I offer the following for your amusement and use.


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Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Hate and History

The older I get the more I look back in time and patch it together with the present. Things only seem different until you lay them side by side, strip away the defining edges of time, and let them exist as separate entities.

In doing so, the ugliness that intermingles with the good becomes a common pattern. As a woman I don’t have to physically go back in time to hear the taunts, the ugly accusations, the hysterical fears that were part of women gaining the right to vote three short decades before my birth.

I heard and lived the same language in the late 1960’s when as a young woman I fought for an equality granted to only half of America’s citizens at the time. I was spit on, had garbage thrown at me, was accused of trying to destroy the sacred American family by wanting to be paid the same as a man for doing the same job.

I didn’t let them stop me because I’d heard them before as a young girl, the same hateful words, the same spewing hatred from the mouths of bigots who tried to stop the civil rights movement and failed. But not before people died so others could live as equals in America. Not before my heroes were gunned down by men who feared equality, who fought against it with an ugliness that not even time can ever forgive.

Over and over again I heard the hatred, the ugliness, the lies invented out of nothing to control any kind of change trying to reweave the American fabric into something more humane, more in tune with the visions of its founding fathers.

I heard that I was a communist, a socialist, a traitor, a godless damned inconsiderate feminazi bitch for daring to want a world without war, for daring to have the courage of my convictions by refusing to support war in any way, refusing to see it as inevitable, as necessary, as anything but an unspeakable act of sanctioned murder committed for political gain.

But the hatred didn’t end there. It continued again wrapped in religion and the flag so it could be patriotically directed against Gays and Lesbians.

Religious bigots found Jesus was a convenient excuse to justify meanness and hatred against anyone different. They dug up  those ugly old words from the past and used them to deny equal rights to their own Gay/Lesbian family members and neighbors.

They used the same old hysterical fears to rage against Americans who were not white, Christian and Republican with a venom that steadily poisoned the last drop of compassion from their hearts.

And since the election of President Barack Obama, they don’t even bother with the hooded sheets anymore because hatemongers such as Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, and those pathetic tools of the Insurance Corporations and Wall Street bankers—the teabaggers, spread their hate for them.

But maybe, just maybe when they let the the majority of American people who are still somewhat sane and fair-minded human beings see their actions over Health Care Reform, it’s possible they caused some well-deserved dirt being kicked over them for yet another generation.

Their behavior was shameful. It was ugly. It was the mentality of mobs who were directed by their own hatred, whose chains were sufficiently yanked so they would the bidding of anyone who stirred their fires of hate.

For all their claims of independence, they were the most completely manipulated crowd of fools ever assembled for someone else’s purpose. Their grandchildren will cringe in shame at the blood these “morans” contributed to their veins. They will deny kinship with them. They will mock their stupidity. They will curse their legacy. And they will never forgive them for the darkness they brought upon the land.

But if they have one purpose for those with an ounce of sanity and compassion inside themselves, it’s to pay attention because hatred and bigotry don’t go away just because inroads are gained into the darkness of its mean little heart. Equal rights won’t guarantee equal respect. Civil rights won’t create an equal world.

Those are battles that must be fought generation after generation because the same words, the same language, the same hatred and lies lay dormant waiting for the next paradigm shift to make itself known. And then they rise up from the cesspool  of the past and try to destroy progress once more.

To paraphrase several versions of the same idea: those who remain silent in the face of evil, allow it to flourish. Speak up now or force your grandchildren to apologize for you decades from now. The choice is yours.

 


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Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Some thoughts on Extremism

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but lately I'm coming to the realization that extremism is synonymous with stupid. You sure as hell won't see an Atheist come knocking on your door demanding you become an Atheist.

But every crazy ass christian thinks they have the right to bother me with their ridiculous fairy tales. They memorize a few phrases that suit their agenda and discard everything that doesn't (Do you hear me, you gay hating shrimp eaters?)

These same so-called Christians have read very little of the Bible and instead rely on some unholy intermediary to mainline them meaty chunks from the pulpit--along with an underlying political agenda cloaked in the dubious morality of religion. Atheists aren't nearly that stupid, and most of them can actually read an entire book all by themselves. And gasp! Think for themselves, which makes them mostly immune to religion.

As an Atheist who prefers to mind my own business, I have no desire to go invading their churches with my ideas and opinions of how the world should work according to me, but their intolerance and fear of anything different regularly sends them to my Godless Heathen store for no purpose other than to inflict their religion on me.

This is what I mean when I say extremists are stupid. Do they really think they can annoy me into giving up my ideas for theirs? Do they really think that by flooding my comments section with stupid crap (usually filled with "creative" spelling), they can convince me of anything?

They have done more to destroy religion with their intolerant and mean shit than any Atheist could have done, and yet they fail to see this. They fail to see when a church gets involved in politics, they are no longer a church. They are a political arm of lobbyists and proponents of agendas that see them as no more than tools to be used to gain wealth and power. No Atheist would allow themselves to be used so stupidly.

They've also pretty much destroyed the whole god is love argument with their use of religion to justify hatred, intolerance, bigotry, and the subjugation of the poor and helpless. Somehow they've convinced themselves that religion means keeping people from having things they don't want.

The idea that if you're against abortions don't have one, or don't marry a gay person if it freaks you out that much, is alien to them. How would they feel if I denied them the right to eat chocolate ice cream ever again because I prefer vanilla? How is it any freaking different than what they're try to inflict on everyone?

But this extremism doesn't stop with religion. Take this idiot for example, who wanders into a store for Child-Free by Choice and calls the store owner a douche bag. Does he think that's going to make those who've made that choice suddenly decide he's right and they should breed like fucking rabbits? Or does it more than likely say, as the response pointed out, that misery loves company and he can't stand that someone else is having fun he can no longer have?

Once again, rather than change anyone's mind, this extremist idiot has only succeeded in pointing out his intolerance, his misery, and his flat out jealousy over not knowing he had a choice until it was too late.

I have a mind and I'm not afraid to use it, nor do I allow anyone to do my thinking for me. That means I'll never succumb to religious dogma or embrace hate as my personal savior. I like having my own mind.


I try and not let the extremists get to me because like all phases of existence, they too shall pass. One of these days they'll take that book written by people who believed the earth was flat, and ride off the edge of the planet like strings of lemmings following each other into the abyss. Once there, away from all the nice people in the world, they'll have nothing better to do than turn on each other and leave the rest of us alone.


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Monday, March 08, 2010

The Flowering Self

"Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality." -Nikos Kazantzakis

One of the most life changing lessons for human beings is the realization that everything in life is a choice. From the moment we get out of bed in the morning, we choose who we will be, who we will present ourselves as to the world. We put on our clothes as costumes, as disguises, as props for what we want to convey and then we step out on the stage and perform to audiences of individuals all doing the same thing.

There's an absurdity in this behavior, an unconscious mocking of ourselves for playing along with a game that gets refined by whatever hands are currently pulling the strings. But the thing is, we give our puppetmasters the strings to control us with. It's our script they're using to control us. It's our fears, our biases, our intolerance, our judgments that create the strings for others to use on us. As a result everything we are is a costume someone else has dressed us in so we can perform in their version of reality.

The tragedy is that we aren't born this way. We came into the world as optimists, as believers in the theory of all possibilities that could be picked up, tasted and swallowed. The world revolved around our own vision of things. It took shape according to what we wanted from it, what we perceived as our place in its universe.

But somewhere along the way, the shaping of group consciousness took place and the individual self was subdued and steadily beaten down by tools such as religion, school, and that scourge of all decent humanity--consensus. We were no longer free to stick things in our mouth and taste at will.

If we tried to stray from the path set out for us, we were reminded of the perils in doing so because there were no good ways to say individual. Instead such people were described as anti-social, not team players, fringe dwellers, and lone nuts.

And yet we worshipped the cult of the individual, especially the rugged variety. It was a mythical cult that was and is still written about with awe, with wonder, with the sanctity of breath reserved for wondrous things and unattainable desires. It's like heaven and the old saying that everyone wants to go to there, but no one wants to die to get there.

We grew up worshipping the individual but feared him or her at the same time, and it's easy to understand way. Think of a herd contained within a wild pasture. See the comfort of knowing all the animals are in place. Visualize the ease of drawing a pen around them all in one flawless slash of movement.

Then imagine that one little sheep, that one individual little creature who never stepped outside the "taste as you go" school of life, but instead kept stopping, kept rewriting the plot to reflect changing consciousness, different realities, new ways of looking at the world. This little sheep became the source of all fear just for getting up in the morning and being his or her own sheep.

It is why churches came along and put controls on sex and love, two states that no amount of self-righteous pontificating can interrupt once they are set in motion. There's more rules for controlling those two behaviors than any other. But it is wasted effort, a moral version of beating one's head continually against a wall in the hope that the wall will collapse before the head does.

It is why forests and all wild nature was either destroyed or put under control of some entity that wanted to either exploit it or preserve it by keeping anything but sanctioned and approved individuals from it.

The control freaks saw that Nature was far more powerful than humans, far more powerful than any deity. They saw it had the ability to capture, to hold in its grasp and transform the ordinary in us to the extraordinary that goes beyond self. Once that metamorphosis took place, they knew control was a lost cause.

It is also why any kind of substance that allowed mental escape was controlled and either outlawed or puritanically dispensed at high cost. Drugs were designed to put people in a state where there was no disturbing reality, no too obvious change from one mood, one truth to the next. Variation of mood, of being, of relating was seen as wrong. Stability of existence was seen as a positive instead of the most spirit killing weapon ever devised--other than religion.

And it was especially why hate and division was always promoted over love and tolerance. Like those penned up sheep, humans wer easier to control if they were all hungry, tired, horny, and ready to be eaten at the same time. It was far easier to pipe canned entertainment into the pen than it was to hand the stage over and invite something new to emerge from the chaos.

But within that stew of overly simmered sameness, there was always the sheep that strayed outside the herd, the one that was a bit odd, who preferred the taste of flowers instead of grass, who gazed at the sky and saw clouds and birds and tall mountains instead of some scolding, foul-tempered deity.

That was the one I wanted in my life. That was the one I wanted teaching me. That was the ones I wanted to love and call friend because he and she were what gave meaning to my life. But more than anything, I also wanted to be that for them as well because without the circle that leads us back to each other, we don't really exist as authentic, empathic human beings.


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Friday, March 05, 2010

Fighting back with Humor

One of the best counter-protests to hatemongers was this one and others that used humor to fight back. I laughed so hard when I saw the signs protesting that cesspool of religious bigotry called Westboro Baptist Church with silly signs. And of course because this manner of protest was so unique and funny, the media focused on it instead of helping spread Phelp's sick and twisted message with their coverage. It effectively neutered him and his message in a non-violent and uplifting way. What a wonderful way to fight back!

Let's face it, folks. We live in a world where wingnut tools like Limbaugh/Palin/Beck serve masters that benefit from a divided country. Hate is the most effective method of control ever invented, and these bile-spewing cretins are doing everything they can to make sure we are so filled with hate we can't think for ourselves. So, here are some suggestions to neutralize the poison they spew on a daily basis.

1. As a political junkie, I tend toward seriousness and present the assorted crimes of congress critters with varying degrees of outrage. Lately I've tried to find the humor in what they do, because it certainly is there. For example, there is no more worthy of ridicule figure in the Health Care Reform battle than Mr. Fake Baked Boehner.

Rather than spend a lot of time writing about his ties to corporate masters which has been discussed to death already, why not start a movement to outlaw tanning booths because they cause cancer? We could call it the Bad Boehner Skin bill. Or we could do something like tax tanning booths to pay for Health Care Reform.

2. One of the most ridiculous and twisted things I've seen are the anti-choice idiots waving jars of pickled fetuses around at their demonstrations. Why not show up with canned hams and wave those around with signs that beg people to save Babe the Pig?

3. And of course there's the pathetic teabaggers who named their grassroots movement after a sex act and then got screwed by the astroturfing of their little party by the Goposaurs, who did the exact same thing to the wingnut Christians. So guys, how did that promise from Karl Rove to outlaw abortion and send Gays to Gitmo work out for you?

But I digress into a painful memory for the poor deluded American idiot version of the Taliban. They really did believe Rove and just don't want to talk about it anymore. But you can show up at the next Teabagging party with your own signs demanding that Karl Rove produce his birth certificate.

Seriously, the best way to fight back is to lift up the rock and let everyone see who these people are. Any video clip of Michele Bachmann is good for hysterical laughter because she puts the crazed in fucking crazy. Same for DeMint, Bunning, and the assortment of bottom feeders who crawled up from the sewers to represent the most ignorant and inbred of their bible-thumping constituents, and moral cretins like Gingrich, Limbaugh, and Beck. Sometimes embellishment gives the fake veneer of truth to their words, and letting them speak for themselves does far more to discredit them than any amount of ridicule could. And of course, a funny sign or two can't hurt.


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Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Message Of The Day


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