Tuesday, January 12, 2010

I'm mad as hell

And why shouldn't I be? Do you read the New York Post, or at least look at their headlines? Do you listen to talk radio constantly, or watch Fox News, or EWTN? Do you even know what EWTN is? Do your parents scoff at terms like "heterosexism" or such ludicrous left-leaning media outlets as... The New York Times? Does your whole extended family find nothing wrong with fundamentalists brainwashing little children into thinking their bodies are immoral vessels worthy only of contempt, except as baby-making apparatuses over which they have no right to control? Is your whole rational worldview persistently under siege by pestering about imperfections in the scientific method? Do you know what it feels like to be religiously proselytized by your own mother? Have you ever had your mind under constant siege from all of this bullshit at the same time for as long as a month or more?

Is it any wonder that I'm the psychological mess that I am today?

Goddamn, everything in this house seems like an insult both to my intelligence and to humanity at large. Think about what right-wing media does for a sec, and don't bother listing examples of left-wing bias either because all they ever do is highlight the icing on this shit sundae that is the religious right, and any way you put it they don't even stack up to what "Fox and Friends" do alone. Right-wing media is essentially telling America that half of Americans are irredeemable assholes who know nothing about anything and want to destroy America. Half. Anyone with a progressive or non-conservative idea in their head is presented as some kind of hippie/socialist/satanist. And that probably includes you, if you're reading this. How does it feel to have yourself collectively condemned with half of the nation for not being religious or nationalistic enough?

Do you realize what this means? It means that these media asshats are antagonizing conservative Americans into hating half of the nation's population, disregarding everything that half says and needs, and enforcing some loose form of authoritarian corporate theocracy. You may think that's an extreme take on the situation, but what the hell do you think the people who support this kind of garbage want? They want some idyllic perfection of the American dream, like some ultra-orthodox status quo middle class 1950's suburbia with not a tolerant or deviant thought in anyone's head. And since that Dream is impossible since half of Americans don't fit the standards to make that happen, the Right's failures will be continuously blamed on liberals until the right people are elected into office to implement enough of the right kind of control over people's lives so that the right people will be happy and the wrong people - people who, say, might think the idea of global warming might have some merit - are nicely marginalized into socioeconomic oblivion.

You don't fit the ideal? Into the loony bin you go. Because if you even think for a second that maybe gay people should be allowed to marry the person of their choice and adopt some kids, you're automatically lumped into the same category as pedophiles and incestuous devil-worshippers. (And where the hell are these secret enemies-of-the-state, these supposed gay atheist cultists who do nothing but devour fetuses and rape children so that they instantly become homosexuals? Do fundamentalists still believe that Dungeons & Dragons groups actually engage in witchcraft? And I have to wonder, where do these witches and sorcerers get their magical powers? From Satan? I didn't even know God let him give human beings any kind of powers, but that's theology for you.)

And I have to say here that the Right is very much concerned with controlling your life in particular ways. You can't get or provide an abortion, you can't get contraceptives, you can't be taught evolution without being told it has as much merit as 4000-year-old fair tales, you can't have any reasonable control over what substances go into your body, you can't trust scientists, you can't demand things of your government, you can't depend on anyone for food and shelter since that would perpetuate a "welfare state", you can't have dependable access to healthcare, you can't bring any charges against white-collar criminal pricks, you can't get married to the person of your choice, you can't adopt a child without the church's say-so, you can't demand better standards of living, and you can't care for the rest of the planet in any way whatsoever. But you can enlist in the army and fight wars nobody but a select group of people have interests in. You can mercilessly beat your children and force them to think the way you want them to think. And you can choose between a select range of expensive healthcare plans, low-income housing developments, and unhealthy fast food diets which a few big names in business and industry will be happy to oblige. And you're perfectly free to have no resources or choices or expression or freedoms of your own, as so many of our 3.5 million homeless do now.

But what can you do if the people closest to you since childhood (literally close in this case) actually believe this kind of bile that spews forth from the radio every minute of every day? What are you supposed to do? You can't very well get a new family, and you can't make a stand if you have to live under the same roof. But that's my situation, and it becomes more difficult to ignore all the time.

You know, it's not so much the ideological conflict that gets to me as it is the sheer offensiveness of the things being said. I can't help it if there's no reason to believe in God, so why am I condemned as if I'm some kind of anarchistic terrorist? I'm just a college student who's trying to find his own way in life, I can't be crammed into this picturesque world of religious devotion and political fervor. Hell, I don't ask the same thing of anyone else. I don't tell religious people to stay at home and not let me know what they believe, and I don't expect people to join the Communist Party or anything. I don't even expect anyone to like gay people. I just want to be left the hell alone, without having my ideas put into a forbidden category. I want people to coexist without fighting over the survival of their ideologies, as if their lives and their prospects at happiness depend on it. I'd rather people would learn how to manage their lives better and look at things a little more rationally and have more compassion for people who are just different and do no real harm.

I mean, seriously, it's the ideas that are corrosive and stupid. Not everyone who clings to them is stupid or intends evil on anybody. But I just get so fucking pissed off when someone says something so hateful and harmful, something that flies in the face of all established forms of logic, and so many people nod their heads and acknowledge their willingness to act on this kind of idiocy. Are you out of your fucking minds?

The New Jersey senate just said no to gay marriage. Why? Why? Why? What reason is there for denying people of the same gender to marry one another? Do they present any special threat to each other by nature of their relationship? No. Do they present any special threat to any children they intent to adopt? No. Do they present any special threat to the justice system or society at large? NO. Just NO. Okay? There is no social anarchy or "sexual madness" about homosexuality. How would allowing gay marriage lead to the breakdown of American society? Because Timmy will have two mommies?? No kind of marriage between two willing persons of different families could lead inherently to any level of social unrest. EVER. But who are we kidding here? It has nothing to do with what legalizing gay marriage will do to American law or the relationship between church and state (since churches can't be required to give anybody a marriage, and frankly I wouldn't want a religious wedding anyway.) It's just that certain people don't like homosexuals. Don't bullshit me with "It's not what they are, it's what they do". That's like saying "It's not that I hate you personally, I just hate the fact that you exist."

Okay, let's get more explicit about what we're talking about here. A man and a woman may hold, kiss, and have sexual relations with each other as they see fit. Well, okay, maybe they don't have that much freedom since some would say that the only kind of sexual contact allowed is conventional heterosexual intercourse within the context of marriage without the use of contraceptives. Ignoring for a minute the... utter strangeness of that level of authoritarian orthodoxy (don't pull any cultural relativist bullshit on me, it has nothing to do with what people should be allowed to do in reality), take a look at what is considered appropriate. A man can put his penis into a woman's vagina, and rub it anywhere around that general area, and in many contexts is allowed to put it (along with his fingers, tongue, etc) anywhere else on the woman as he pleases, and the woman is likewise allowed to fondle the man in any way that seems suitable to her.

Now, what isn't appropriate is for two men to put their penises anywhere on each other for the purposes of sexual stimulation, ever. They're not even allowed to use their hands, tongues, etc, for these purposes with one another. For some reason the act of placing the penis within another man's anus is seen as abhorrent, and I have to doubt it's for sanitary issues. And women are likewise expected to not couple with one another and stimulate each other's clitorises or vaginae for these same purposes. Even kissing and caressing man-to-man or woman-to-woman for the general purposes of romantic stimulation and expression is too much for some minds to bear. Why? There's nothing in biology that says you can't do that, since it's obviously possible to do it regardless of other people's discomfort at the idea. Religious texts hold no water on this issue since they elsewhere have no moral bearing on anything (unless you want to know how long a person may be kept as a slave), and saying "God says so" likewise has nothing to do with whether or not doing something to somebody is nice. Do conservatives simply not like thinking about homosexual intercourse? THEN DON'T THINK ABOUT IT! Nobody's holding you down and forcing you to watch people have sex, even if done in public! What does it say about social conservativism in general if the main driving argument is that homosexuality is icky? "Eww" should be the paraphrasing for any argument anyone makes against same-sex marriage.

What the hell am I still doing in Jersey? I don't want to be here, I want to be back at school learning shit and spending my time with people I care about. Dammit, don't you just get so fucking pissed off, just so fucking pissed off, that you can't even think straight anymore? Any semblance of daily life become impossible around this level of bullshit. Every day I'm wandering around going "It would be nice if this semester- FUCK, THAT'S STUPID!" God... you'd think that with all the time and energy that it takes to write something down and get it revised and get it produced and get it prepared to be put on the air, that a person would think to themselves "Wow... What I'm saying is really fucking stupid!" Somebody has to know! Somebody has to realize what's been happening with all this mass pandering to stereotypes and misconceptions and myths, all over the country. It's got nothing to do with people anymore, people are just treated as vessels for ideals, harbingers of American values, effigies of unpatriotic evil. And when people are acknowledged, the world is suddenly full of saints and demons, and it's okay to sling mud at one another like we're in a fucking zoo exhibit. Why don't we just pass out white hats and black hats and sort out who has to wear which hat so we know who's on which side? "Me? Oh, I'm against the death penalty, so I'll be over here with the abortionists, Wiccans, and necrophiles, thanks."

Doesn't anybody get that I'm not on anybody's "side"? There are no "sides", if there were there'd be 7 billion different sides right now, since nobody knows anything about what they stand for anymore. I'm either on everybody's side or I'm on my own side. I like to think I'm on my own side, and my side stands for helping everybody all at once. I don't care what they think about my methods, I'm just trying to accommodate everybody's needs and dreams. It makes no sense, since it's an impossible task, but none of this makes a lick of goddamn sense in the first place. Everything's screwed up, but some things work out, and that makes it worth trying.

Somehow that's part of the definition of doodlemastery. But that's just something that exploded into existence in my head one day.

I miss you <3

2 comments:

  1. Move to Canada?

    I get to ignore this crap about 75% of the time =D

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  2. Haha It's been a while since you last suggested that :) Thanks, I'll keep that in mind if things get really bad. Well, okay, worse XD

    ReplyDelete