Can't Call It "Bigotry"

For every claim that the term "racist" or "homophobe" is used to shut down legitimate debate, there seems to be a legitimate amount of covert bigotry from the accused.

Today, criticizing bigotry with calling it as it is, is almost as stigmatized as overt bigotry itself. You can't use the "N" word openly in debate just like you can't call the fence between America and Mexico racist. Hell, gay marriage opponents aren't even "homophobes" today. Instead they're "advocates for the sanctity of marriage." Because you know... people REALLY give a shit about the sanctity of marriage.

And racism is no longer racism. It's "black folks just need to pull themselves out of any situation their in despite any historical context which I chose to conveniently ignore." And as for their disproportional rate of poverty, it's simply because of their backwards culture. They have done it to themselves (sarcasm)!

I'm sorry but color blindness is just a modern day revival of the old racism. It's denying white privilege. It's denial of a history of racial slavery. To deny homosexuals the chance of marriage is to be fearful of homosexuality which is... by its very definition... "homophobia." There are ideas which many people hold and would still deny their own bigotry.

Don't mind me... I'm just playing the race/ gay/ woman card because... some people need to be called out on their shit.

As Long As We Don't Have to Self-Reflect

A few days ago, conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh made a slut-shaming comment on air and liberals every where were up in arms with moral outrage. The poor PR this drew up resulted in his sponsors dropping him which in return resulted in his plea to save some of them... *cough* I mean his apology.

This leads me to wonder two things. First off, since when are liberals the bastion of hope for feminist issues? And two.. since when is Rush Limbaugh even relevant? Seriously, he's like the Cousin Skeeter of politics... except... you know... he is racist.

It's easier to be morally outraged at some old right-wing bigot than to look at yourself and check your own privilege. It's easier to hope that some corporate sponsors hit a rich man in his wallet where it hurts than to actually deal with the social issues at hand. Slut-shaming is as American as genocide... ehem... I mean apple pie and it's a big concern even to this day. Liberals are not immune to the misogyny that runs rampant in our society and the hypocrisy is almost embarrassing.

Revolt, Flee or Submit

When faced with oppression, a person can either revolt, flee or submit. These would be in order from most difficult to easiest. I find it both sad and familiar to myself that we usually choose the easiest option.

A Personal Account of Past Insanity

For me, my own past has always had a weird relationship with my present-day self. Whether it be confusion over dreams of nostalgia or the recurring nightmares of my own past sheer insanity, it's sometimes hard to grasp the history of my own brain.

I guess, if one were to sum up my childhood they could say it was a collection of the most blissfully tragic memories of terrorizing school days and complete loneliness mixed with an over abundance of joy and passion. I would jump from one end to the other, sometimes within minutes.

Eventually I began to socialize with others more normally at around the time of 7th grade. That's when I sort of began my friendship building (and destroying) and learning how to really hang out with other people.

Without getting into too much detail about the more terrorizing stages of my mental state through childhood, I want to instead address the lows of my past and how they may still be relevant to today... or tomorrow for that matter. I don't want to live in these extremes. The euphoria doesn't compensate for the anxiety and I rather live on the middle ground to where I currently feel most comfortable at, because indulging in moderation is truly the way to go.

This leads me to my next worrisome thought. How will I leave this world? Will I fall back into my early mayhem stages? Where will it all take me? Thinking back makes me realize how important people are to me. And honestly... sometimes I don't feel that way. Sometimes I think I have my head on backwards and I'm just emotionally cut off from the world. If this were ever the case though, I don't know if I'd be ready to handle it if it was even possible. I don't think I'm willing to experiment with this.

Stomp Someone Down the Nice Way

To just flat out kick somebody to the ground looks pretty bad, to say the least. It's a very bold way of keeping your minions in line. But if you would rather maintain a clean social image, a better way to lay down the law is to offer people two options with which both will lead to failure!

A certain failure can add legitimacy to your commands! And it works this way quite often. For example, take the witch hysteria from the older days. Back then, to test a woman to see if she was a witch or not, she would sometimes undergo a "swimming test." Basically what they would do is test to see if the woman in question was a witch or not, by seeing if she could breathe under water. If she could breathe under water she was guilty and if she drowned then she was innocent. She had two options, you see? She could... a) die or b) die. When you set up someone's fate like this, it isn't to offer justice or fairness. This was to create a system of hatred towards females. Witch hunting was the sport of misogyny!

Much like the older sport of misogyny, today a new sport is played and it's all dressed up for the 21st century. There is a new couple of options given to women these days. The first option is to be a "slut" which is a term given as much of a negative connotation as it is feminine. (Sure, one can be a "male slut" or a "man whore" but unlike a "fireman" or a "mailman," the "man" part of "man whore" diverges from the default definition of a "whore" usually being a woman.) The second option is to be a friend zoning, cold, frigid "bitch." So as a female... you can either put out and be shamed for your lack of self respect or you can turn a man down and be the girl who "friend zoned" her buddy. Either way, you lose! Misogyny!

And it's not just patriarchy that oppresses through lose/lose options. Government elections offer no solutions, our economy guarantees poverty, drug laws generate criminals... etc. etc. When the hand of oppression knocks us down, it's only doing its job.

Equality Within Communism

What does "communist equality" sound like to a capitalist? Well, it probably sounds like a place where everyone wears the exact same uniform and marches to the exact same drum beat in an impoverished nation under the guise of a merciless regime. You've got to love that Cold War propaganda!

To be fair however, capitalism to me sounds like a country full of micro-dictatorships where all the workers serve their masters while wearing identical uniforms and listening to the same corporate radio stations. Actually, that's based more so on my real-life experience though and not just propaganda and rhetoric.

You see, to imagine that one could desire equality while also embracing an elite ruling party is such a contradicting concept that if I were to try and make sense of it my brain would probably go through a melt down. And capitalists pride themselves in opportunistic equality because anyone could some day make it to the top and have their own glorious enterprise dominion. It's such a beautiful thing when the exploited take their unprivileged opportunity of social mobility and become the exploiters. (Was the sarcasm apparent enough??)

All jokes cast aside, equality in reward for labor in no way implies equality OF the types of labor. When labor becomes enjoyable and non-oppressive, it becomes an honest obligation rather than a burden to the individual. And of course equality of reward doesn't imply no specialization. No one ever said that everyone is expected to know everything. A logical division of labor does not imply an irrational inequality in living standards.

Religion Is Merely A Tool Of Convenience

Today as I was reading some online essay on Reducing the Ego (http://www.taoism.net/theway/ego.htm), which was correlating Taoism to the idea of minimizing your own "false self-image" (ego), I had wondered, "Who would be inclined to actually read into Taoism?" Would an egomaniac be inclined to read about destroying their own ego? Would a humble person be inclined to read about boosting the ego? In all honesty, it seems that people with certain tendencies would be naturally swayed towards a familiar philosophy.

Like many religions however, Taoism has also been cherry picked by people with all sorts of tendencies. Some claim it is critical of competitiveness while others have written articles on Taoism supporting a laissez-faire system (free market capitalism). Also, consider how religion has been used in cases of civil rights. The same religion that influenced Martin Luther King Jr. to struggle against defacto, racial segregation in the south also influenced others to support slavery prior to that (http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_slav1.htm).

For these and other examples of contradicting beliefs stemming from single religions, I want to correct my previous claim that Christianity itself "influenced" MLK. Christianity really didn't influence anything for the most part. It was just used (and still is to this day) as a tool of convenience. It's just a toy box of moral scriptures that people dig into to find what ever matches their already preconceived notions of morality. These preconceived notions of morality stem from culture and education.

This leads me to another worrisome observation. It seems that within the atheist trends today, some anti-theists flirt with the idea of ethnocentrism. The thought goes, "Christianity has done plenty to harm LGBT civil rights in western society, but we're still better off than the Muslim nations who embrace Sharia Law to the east." Ethnocentrism isn't exclusive to atheists, but it does unfortunately get thrown in with the criticism of all religions. This is why it is important to recognize that culture creates religion and morality and not the other way around. Both western and eastern cultures have been shaped by domination culture and various political conflicts and colonization (and the limitations that have been put into place by these factors) have been the leading influences on morality.

To conclude all of these observations, I would just like to state that religion is really an illusion in more ways than one... especially in politics. Religion is just a tool people use to rally in supporters. "I believe this and SO DOES GOD!" It's all tied in to the idea that our ideologies and tendencies should dominate and control populations of people. If one is to reject religion, one should also reject its significance.