RFM

It sucks to have a racist family member, especially if it's someone you care about.  But sometimes the back-and-forth is hilarious... but depressing.

Me: "There's a new hot white girl at my job.  There are a lot of hot girls there, but not many hot white girls.  She's kinda country, but really hot."

Racist Family Member: "If there's no hot white girls there, there are no hot girls there."

Me:  "What, a girl has to be white in order to be hot?"

Racist Family Member: "Yes."

Me: "So nonwhite girls can never be hot, according to you."

Racist Family Member: "Correct."

Me: "No way.  That Muslim girl i used to work with was mad hot."

Racist Family Member: "It doesn't matter how they look.  Even if they're hot, you know that underneath it all, all they're thinking is "kill Whitey."

Me: "You realize that the only reason why you think everyone else is racist, is because you're racist and you're projecting it on everyone else?"

Racist Family Member: "Everyone is racist."

Me:  "That hot Muslim girl wasn't racist.  She loved white guys.  All she ever talked about was how much she loved Channing Tatum."

Racist Family Member: "That doesn't matter."

There's just no reaching some people.  It's sad.  It's sad.

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Rush is right?

Sometimes, conservatives do speak the truth.  The issue is how they say it.  It's not the steak, it's the sizzle, you know?  Remember when Rush Limbaugh said that feminism was invented to give ugly women access to the workplace?  Let me find the exact quote...

"Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society."  -- Rush Limbaugh

Sure, it's any decent person's natural instinct to be repulsed by this boorish drivel and declare it untrue, but then, you think... hey, i've never watched Mad Men, but yeah, wasn't there supposedly a time in America when women were valued most for attractiveness, because their best chance for success in life was to woo and marry a successful man?  And if they couldn't, they had to work, and in the fields open to women, such as secretarial work, the men hiring them would base their decisions on whom they'd like to ogle and maybe pressure into illicit sex?  And that skilled women, older women, women who were good workers, were at a disadvantage against young babes with perky boobs?

Hmm.

Well, that sounds like a kinda fucked-up world.  Maybe that is why feminism was invented, and it sounds like a good thing, if you have any decency or sense of justice and aren't a complete and total sack of shit.  Why does that bloated drug addict say it like its a bad thing?

^__^

I mean, they do that with a lot of things.  When listening to conservative radio, they paint the following horrific scenario...

....in a few short decades, unless things change, America will be filled by people who are mostly tan.  All the races will interbreed and the white gene pool will be diluted by all those sexy latino and asian and african genes.  You won't even be able to tell if that dreadlocked young person handing your your morning ultraccino is a blackanese Hawaiin, or a Chinese-Mexican-Samoan,  or a Soledad O'Brien, or a Vin Diesel, or maybe even a Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.  Instead of five races we'll have a million.  Race might even become meaningless.  Even worse,  traditional religion will no longer control people's lives.  It will no longer be the norm to marry the first person who comes along and stick it out forever.  Homosexuals will no longer be discriminated against, and there will be bisexuals and all manner of lesbians, and sex will be rampant and free.  A lesbian might be president, even, in this new world that isn't like the one we know.

Ummmm.

Hmmm.

Hey, that's probably true.  Why do they keep saying it like it's bad?

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Mass Shootings are Bad

I don't suppose i'm alone in wishing the best to the families of the victims of yesterday's senseless attack.  And wondering why the hell people snap like that.  And a tiny amount of satisfaction that the diseased scumbag who perpetrated the act is stone cold dead.

That all goes without saying.

But please, can we get over this ludicrous argument over whether acts like these are "terrorism" or not?  It's more of a sematic quibble than anything.  Because if you want to get technical, it's only terrorism if the person carrying out the act part of an organization or movement with a specific political goal in mind that the violence is supposed to advance. 

If it's just another case of someone who is mentally disturbed (Jared Loughner) or a loser (Adam Lanza) going nuts because they can't stand life and want to take out as many people as they can, then it's not terrorism.  It's just insane, pointless violence.  Teenaged violence, workplace violence. 

And then, sure there are gray areas like the case of Nidal Hassan.  If an incompetent, sadsack loner like Hassan is influenced by islamist websites or the speeches of religious fanatics, if he self-identifies with a cultural movement like jihadism, but isn't receiving orders from anyone, and his actions are purely to satisfy his own sick desires -- and have no clear political goal that can be achieved -- is it terrorism?  Is it any different than a twisted child like Lanza being influenced by movies or video games?

Me, i don't give a crap.  In any case, i doubt that our media classifications will have any effect on the actions of law enforcement.  They will always seek out any possible conspirators, whether they are motivated by ideology, mental illness, terminal butthurt, or some combination of all three.

Get over it, people.

Also, no one gives a crap whether this murderous loon self-identified as a Buddhist or not.  What, do you want to start bombing Buddhist countries or something?

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This is Syri-ous.

As i write this, i am listening to Michael Savage bellow and sneer at the hypocrisy of THE LIBRULS.  Every liberal, every person who ever voted for Obama, is and has always been a lifelong opponent of war in any form; a hippie, a peacenik, a flower child... and now they are utter hypocrites for thinking it's okay for the US to intervene in Syria.  How unlike those hardy conservatives, whose beliefs are set in stone and never change!

In certain cases, i'm sure he's correct.  There are plenty of people out there who support Obama now, but would have opposed Bush doing the same.  Hypocrites exist.  It sucks but it's true.

(Wait, what about the old slight that Democrats like Kerry and Hillary voted to go into Iraq, and thus are equally culpable for that failure?  Does that mean they're just as patriotic as Republicans, or just as stupid?  I've lost track...)

Of course, Savage would never hold the mirror up to his own audience and berate them for now saying the EXACT same things that anti-war liberals did in 2003.  I mean, it's amazing, it's like they're digging up old Code Pink speeches, hitting CTRL-F, and replacing "Iraq" with "Syria." 

• America doesn't have the moral authority to intervene in other countries' struggles.
•  We should save that money and spend it here at home.
• The Middle East is a complex web of allies and enemies, and any action we take will have massive unintended consequences. 
• The idea of a single quick strike is naive; we will end up in a quagmire with boots on the ground.
• Tyrants are bad, but the chaos left after their ouster is usually worse.

....it's the same.  They say the exact same things that we were saying ten years ago.  I wish they'd at least acknowledge that.  I wish they'd say, look, it was after 9-11.  It was after 9-11 and there was a Christian President, and god help me, i ain't that smart.  George Bush said that blowing up the middle East would magically spread democracy, and i believed him because i thought Jesus would wave his magic wand and make it so.  Heck, if Bush had told me that we should start raping cats and eating dogshit to keep the turrists from winning, i'd have done that, too.  It was after 9-11.  We were confused.

All snark aside, i think this is a positive development.  It proves that, yes, conservatives can change.  The Conservative ideology is not set in stone.  For fifty years, the puppetmasters of the Republican Party have effectively brainwashed their working-class grunts into accepting a bundled package of beliefs and stances that don't necessarily have to go together. 

Christian?  Then you want taxes cut for the rich.

Like guns?  Then you hate unions.

Don't like abortion?  Then you think the EPA should be dissolved.

Bundles.  If you've ever dealt with a cable company, then you know that in order to get the one thing you actually want, you have to buy a lot of crap that you don't.  That's how we end up with dirt-poor rednecks driving their sputtering pick-ups to a shift at the sausage factory and nodding in agreement when Rush Limbaugh tells them that the capital gains tax must be lowered, and the payroll tax raised. 

You know what i'd like to see?  You know what might be a positive sea change in the following decades?  If the conservative base changed its tune on labor issues.  It can happen, it probably will happen.  Look, if Obama stood up and gave a sonorous speech about how every worker in America deserves certain things, they'd jeer and scream about socialism...

...but if a good old boy gave the same speech?  If they heard those ideas repeated by others?  Then they'd be on board.  Hell yeah, hoss, this is fucking AMERICA.  I'm a fucking MAN and i have a fucking RIGHT to be able to support my family if i work hard.  I fucking DESERVE at least $12.50/hour minimum wage, ten sick days and one week of vacation per year, and a minimum level of preventative medical care.  This is fucking America!  You gonna listen to all these librul elitists who think you should work two jobs and live in a shack like a fucking Mexican and go bankrupt over a single health crisis because them billionaires want to pay less taxes?  Fuck that!  That ain't America!!!
Tell me that's impossible.

If they can go from being fiercely pro-war and interventionist to being anti-war and isolationist in one decade, then anything can happen. 

If Michael Savage is still filling the airwaves with his hilarious filth in ten years, he'll probably be screaming that he was always in favor of Obama... er, i mean Boehnercare, and god damn you if you say otherwise.

Wait, didn't this start off being about Syria?

Syria.

I don't think we should intervene in Syria.  Supposedly, the last time intervention worked was in Kosovo, and i'm too young to really remember that.  When that shit was going down in the '90s, i was busy watching cartoons, listening to Metallica, and discovering masturbation.  Kosovo, ain't nobody got time for that.

If it does happen, i hope the people doing it know what they're doing.  

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Ahead of the Curve

You can go to a lot of teablogs these days, the dens of the true blue conservatives, and read the equivalent of the following...

George W. Bush was a disaster, an honest but clueless dimwit who foolishly overspent and got us involved in two overseas wars that we had no business being in.

Bob Dole was a doddering old establishment hack.

John McCain is a mentally unbalanced, trigger-happy loon who should have retired years ago because he has no idea what is going on and is just embarrassing himself.  A soulless sellout and a shellshocked tragedy of a man.

Mitt Romney was a pompous, overstuffed fraud, a spoiled goofball, and a perfumed, manicured weakling who had no business ever running for President.  The worst candidate in modern memory.

.....and i agree.

Republicans, we are more alike than you think.  We both hate the people you put up for President, it's just that we realize how full of shit they are BEFORE they can win.  You figure it out two years later.

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