Americans Can Still do Awesome Things for the World

It seems to be the consensus that America has little left to do in its future before its inevitable demise. While America may not be able to do much more for the world, Americans still can.

Forget America. Whatever America was, it is dead. But Americans still exist. By "American" I mean those who still have a glimmer of hope, as well as a vague recollection of whatever this idea of America was. Those who still hold on to a dream that all people are equal, and that we all can have the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those who still think they can bring a child into this world, and there still be a world left for those children who will inherit this world from us. Those people are Americans, and they still live strong. They are the 99% (the 99ers, if you will). America is dead. Americans live.

Americans can still do absolutely awesome things for the world... STILL! What have Americans done lately to deserve this utmost respect from me? They have inspired the world. They have given the world a voice again. We have once again stood on the side of the oppressed, the sick, the poor, the hungry, the tired, and the weak. And the world has joined Americans in a global (and unprecedented) uprising to express how we all feel, not as nations, but as the people of a tiny blue planet spiraling about a small, insignificant, yellow star amongst billions in a secluded corner of a galaxy (which we so happen to call "home").

The Occupy Wall Street movement has spread, not only throughout the States, but throughout the world. This is no longer a fringe movement. Far from it. This has sprung up in Tokyo, Italy, France, London, South Africa, Australia... you name it. The entire world is joining in on this movement against being oppressed by corruption of power and money. And Americans started it all! Albeit, I would like to give credit to the Arab Spring, which I think was the predecessor to Occupy Wall Street. At the very least, Americans only strengthened what the Arab Spring started, which became viral in the course of a month.

This isn't just about the amazing things Americans can still do. This is about the amazing things people of the world can do. And we, as a the inhabitants of this small rock we call Earth, our home, are freaking awesome! My hat is off to, not just Americans, but to the people of the world who have and are still standing against all those who oppress.

Remember Reagan's dream about aliens coming to Earth to destroy us? And then the people of the world unite to stand against extermination? Yes, like in the movie Independence Day. And, yes, Reagan actually talked about this. Well, this Occupy the World movement makes Reagan's dream look like some real wussy stuff. We don't need the treat of aliens from another planet to make us unite. We just need the threat of the despots and oligarchs amongst us to cause us to rise up.

I have said it before, and I will say it again : this is far from over.

"And at last the time has come, to unite again as one to the power of the Earth."
~Dream Theater

The spread of Occupy Protests across the globe (October 15th)

The Rule : There Will Always be an Exception

So I recently received some grief for my Southern Nice posting, because not everyone is like that. I am really only writing this to illustrate this point once and for all, so I don't have to reiterate this point on every post :

There will always be an exception to the rule.

That's the rule. Nothing goes faster than the speed of light, except neutrinos. Steve Jobs was an evil, greedy man who did absolutely no charity, except when he gave computers to schools (hardly charity work, considering it was a marketing campaign). Jesus was a great and moral teacher and human being, except in the Infancy Gospel. Christians are some of the most intolerable people I have ever met, with the exception of a few I have met in my life that I would actually call Christ-like. Southerns are racist, with the exception of a few (that exceptional few don't include people who like their drug dealer, who tends to be African American or Hispanic). Infinity will always be equal to infinity, except in Cantor Sets. Need I go further?

There will always be an exception. I am only writing this so I can paste a link of this into future blog postings so I never have to write this again.

My blogs end with a picture, except this one.

Self-Fulfilling Persecution

One pattern that keeps cropping up over and over again is the majority claiming they are being persecuted. That's cute. We see it with the top 1% and Wall Street screaming "Class warfare!" over the protests on Wall Street. That's so adorable. Or the Evangelical Christians claiming they are being persecuted in this country... also incredibly adorable. Or Apple users claiming they are misunderstood and everyone hates them because they use Apple products... you don't get anything cuter than that.

Take for instance the "class warfare" being committed the Occupy Wall Street protests. The wealthiest of all the wealthy hold the most money in this country, as well as the most political pull in Washington (giving them a lot of power), and yet claim class warfare is being committed upon them. I can't tell you how cute this is. If you hold all the money and all the power, you will be the ones committing class warfare. That's generally how class warfare works. Those with the power and money will keep everyone below a certain income level at the bottom, if not simply run them even further into the ground.

The problem is that the supposed "persecution" will inevitably become a self-fulfilling prophecy. There will come a point when the bottom of the economic barrel can no longer sustain their own existence, and with advertisements for iPads and Droid phones being shoved in their faces, without any means to get access to these products and goods (especially if welfare is cut), they will rise up. They will do exactly what Glenn Beck hysterically said they would do : drag you out of your homes and kill you in the street. And while Beck is a moron who is completely over exaggerating, albeit I do not ever think it will come to "dragging you out of your house and kill you in the street", if the masses are not provided for, then they will do exactly that. It's called "bread and circuses" : keep them fed and entertained and they will stay out of politics and not rise up. Too bad the Romans failed to do this for the tribes they conquered, which led to the demise of Rome.

Again, when the market is skewed, heaven forbid if a marketing target isn't the majority. Take for instance chocolate. I'm a guy and I love chocolate. I like Lindt and Dove and Ghiridelli and... and well almost any kind of chocolate (and I know plenty of other guys who do too). What is the target market for chocolate? Women. They forget that men like chocolate too! And heaven forbid if Dr. Pepper decides to market a low calorie soft drink for men! Some women think Dr. Pepper 10 is chauvinistic for not being marketed to women as well. Well, when everything gets marketed for women, and occasionally for men as well, because some women claim chauvinism on everything (I read an article once on how scientific writings are chauvinistic (sorry for the meta-parenthesis, but that article has some validity)). But their crusade, like any crusade, tends to put them in a bind. Sometimes things are for men. Sometimes things are for women. And sometimes they aren't chauvinistic. If I may quote Freud : sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But when a cigar is just a cigar and something else is imposed on the cigar, that's when trouble comes knocking.

Or again, Apple users claim they are misunderstood as creative artists. SO ADORABLE! I sit in Architecture In Theory class every Wednesday and see 7 of 18 people (including the instructor) using Apples, while only two use a Dell and an Acer, two people sleep, and the rest of us use an old fashion pen and paper. Funny thing is the Apple users all tend to sit on one side of the round table set up, so I always see seven Apple icons in a row. If you're the majority, how are you misunderstood? If anything, the people who get grief for using PCs are misunderstood, because not a lot of people understand them for using something that's not an Apple. If I may use Maddox's rhetoric : what's the only thing PC users can do that Mac users can't do? Shutting the hell up.

I could rag on Christians, Muslims, conservatives, Fox News, architects, liberals, Obama, Thomas Edison, et cetera, but that would be too easy. So I leave all of this with an example most of us have gone through : hating your parents. There comes a point when you think your parents hate you so much that eventually it becomes self-fulfilling. If you think your parents ground you because they hate you, they will just ground you for your rhetoric. I had a friend in high school who talked about how his dad used to hate him so much that his dad would beat him. It all ended when he got into an actual fight with his dad because he was taken home by the cops, and ended up killing his father. Prophecy fulfilled.

If you hoist yourself on your own cross to show you are being persecuted, then you are only persecuting yourself. So get down off your cross, use the wood to build a bridge and get over it.

Southern Nice

Recent I was recommended by a friend to read the mathematician Bertrand Russell's essay "Nice People", because he thought it was the closest anyone has written on what I call Southern Nice. Russell's essay didn't even come close.

So what is this thing I call Southern Nice? Some of us have heard of Minnesota Nice, which is demonstrated par excellence in the Cohen Brother's Fargo. Minnesota Nice, overall, is general politeness. Regardless of who you are talking to, you are just generally nice when you talk to them. You can hate the person, love them, never have met them, they could have slept with your spouse, it does not matter... in public you are nice to them. Southern Nice differs from this in many ways. The key thing to understanding Southern Nice is hate. Southerns hate everyone; even their family.

How can you spot Southern Nice?

For people who come from more tolerable cultures, Southern Nice is not easy to detect. You will tend to think that these people are friendly, or, at the very least, simply indifferent. It's as if the South is just radiating with a "charmingly friendly" culture. This is not the case at all. It is usually a mask of friendliness, but beneath that mask is animosity. When I was living in Boston my sister once asked me if people were actually mean up north. I told her : people in the South act nice to your face and talk shit behind your back, while in the North they just skip the niceness and talk shit to your face. That's about the only difference : one form of hatred comes raw, while the other comes with a pretty red bow and the scent of roses.

First, it has to be understood that the South is filled with a bunch of racists. Most Southerns will not admit to this, and usually have some pretty good rhetoric on how they aren't racist, even when they are. This is part of Southern Nice. Only the lowest of the low of Southerns actually proclaim to be racist. The rest wrap their racism in politeness and niceness. As long as a Southern is nice to an African American, they won't think their racist.

There is also a double standard to Southern Nice. While a Southern may be being "nice" to another fellow Southern, Southerns instinctively, and yet unconsciously, know when they're getting Southern Nice. It's as if they were unconsciously hearing an extra, hidden parameter to the speaker's voice that spewed animosity. So Southern Nice from one Southern to another is much more concealed. Someone not of Southern culture would not be able to hear it. Let me give an analogy : remember when you were about 11 or 12 and you saw two college kids on a date, and the guy seemed really into everything the girl was saying? As a kid you didn't know that he didn't really care about anything she was saying, he just wanted to slip his tube snake into her (sorry for the Full Metal Jacket reference). It isn't until you are out of college that you can spot this kind of hormone-induced niceness. You know now that beneath the horny sophomore's polite demeanor is pure animalistic instinct raging. Beneath Southern Nice is a throbbing urge to splash sulfuric acid in your face.

Why is there this layer of politeness over an entity of hate? It's quite simple to answer and understand : Southerns are primarily Christian. That should say everything, but I'll humor those who don't see the point. It's not Christian to be hateful, but it also is. Somehow Christians these days think God wants them to kill everyone who doesn't agree with them, and Satan is the one who wants us all to get along. This comes from the litany of the Antichrist. The Antichrist is suppose to unite the seven greatest nations and bring peace amongst the people of the world. Then the Antichrist is suppose to kill everyone and Jesus is going to come back and make all true Christians happy and stuff. And they cannot wait for this to happen. They pray for the coming of the Antichrist. Peace and death in one entity : that should sum up Southern Nice.

Because the Antichrist embodies this sort of duality, anyone who is generally nice is placed under suspicion. Anyone who is actually nice must be evil. And while Southerns may actually be some of the most vile and hateful people in the States, they shroud it with a veil of rainbows, sunshine, and tobacco enemas.

Paradoxically enough, anytime a Southern wants to actually be nice to another fellow Southern it is usually wrapped in malcontent or, at the least, ambivalence. This is done for a number of reasons in a number of different contexts. If parents are actually nice to their children, then the child is being spoiled. If an employee is actually nice to a superior, then he or she is kissing ass. If two guy friends are actually being nice to one another, then they come off as homophiles (heaven forbid there be homosexuals in the South!). If a white person is being nice to a black person, then the double standard kicks in : the white person is being a racist! The only way to not come off racist in the South is to ignore persons that are not white. Unless the black person is your drug dealer, in which case you are being "nice" for another reason.

Note : no Southern will admit to this. They won't admit to it simply because they don't know that they do it. The culture of Southern Niceness is naturalized into them. My maternal grandmother is one of the sweetest women I know, and I still see her pull Southern Nice on her neighbors, whom she cannot stand.

If only the veil of niceness could be lifted on Southerns, an apocalypse, if you will, then we would find some malicious demons walking amongst us in our own country. If I may borrow the term from Milton, a pandemonium in the South.

Hate thy neighbor... but be nice about it!

Where Evil Reigns

In recent news the world has had a number of notorious people die recently. Of them was Steve Jobs, who got all the attention. On the back burner of the news was some people that are far more influential than Jobs. Of them were :

Dennis Ritchie, who died this Wednesday the 12th. Ritchie developed the computer programming language C, as well as helped develop UNIX. Without Ritchie, Steve Jobs would be nothing. It's a lot like without your mother you would not be here.

Frank Kameny died this Tuesday the 11th. Kameny is responsible for the first gay rights lawsuit and for starting the gay rights movement. He served our Country in WWII, eventual graduated with a PhD from Harvard and joined the FBI. He was fired from the FBI for being a homosexual, and took his case all the way to the Supreme Court, and lost. Then started the first gay rights group, which set up base in Washington DC, called the Mattachine Society. He was doing all of this a decade before Harvey Milk even moved to San Francisco.

Ralph Steinman died September 30th. He had done critical research on how the immune system worked, and discovered cells that were pertinent for the immune system to fight off pathogens. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology without their knowledge of his death, and was still given the award posthumously.

I'm sure there are more people who died recently that were far more important than Jobs. And, yet, who got all the media attention? Duh, Jobs. Personally, I do not mourn the loss of one of the most evil men in corporate America. Jobs contributed absolutely nothing to philanthropic work, non-profits, or charity. In fact, when Jobs came back to Apple he immediately ended all philanthropic work Apple worked on. When the iPhone was developed, Jobs had blocked all apps that would allow someone to donate to a charity. Yes, he went out of his way to stop charitable work. The only "charitable" thing Apple does is donate computers to schools. But note, this is not charity. It's a marketing scheme. They send computers to school with students who come from money (middle class and up). They do this with the intention of getting the students to go home and asking their parents for a Mac. Great marketing campaign, but it's absolutely greedy and selfish.

There is always the argument that goes a little something like this : but Jobs defined our computer culture, which means he defined our culture in general; without him you would not have your Droid, your Windows GUI, your iPod, or other amazing things he brought to our world. For one thing, my iPod broke, because Apple figured out how long they could make the iPod work before it broke, and the customers still have enough faith in the product to buy a new one... so I'm not getting a new one, because I don't have faith in the product. Second, if I may quote Maddox's Facebook :

"I am not defined by the products I buy. My computer is not a part of my identity. My computer is a tool. And like all tools, it's only useful if I make it useful. A brand is not a lifestyle. I don't owe gratitude to a billionaire I helped create. Steve Jobs was a business man who charges exorbitantly for his products. He didn't do us any favors. He didn't make us. We made him."

But of course, the media has to cry over the loss of Jobs (yes, that's a pun), and did not give two squats about about the loss of the man who started the gay rights movement, the developer of computation languages, and the scientist who discovered crucial aspects of how the immune system works (a development that may lead to the cure for HIV, the common cold, or autoimmune deficiencies).

But since the discourse lies in the wrong direction, and Minitruth controls the discourse in this Country, then it is fair to say evil reigns in the propaganda we stare at everyday on our telescreens. It's a sleight of hand to distract us from what were the actually important recent deaths by waving the avatar of evil in the faces of the public so they can mourn someone who was not that important. Is this evil's new agenda? If it is, we are doing a fine job of rising to that agenda.

Maybe I'm not getting at anything here. Maybe I'm just upset that three very important figures died recently and got cheated on the news coverage. In that case, then Palahnuik is right when he says, "The only difference between suicide and martyrdom is the press coverage." The only difference between being a demigod and being a dead nobody is the press coverage. I would just like to represent those who did far more for us than Steve Jobs could have ever done if he wasn't absolutely evil.

At least there isn't a street named after Jobs (that I know of).
R.I.P. Kameny, Steinman, and Ritchie.

Would Bringing Back Post-Natal Abortions Fit with Your Ideology?

Recently I found an image on Reddit of Pro-Lifers with signs that only confirm my deepest fears of how far right can the right wing nutcases go. They held signs that said : KILL WOMEN, NOT BABIES, and DEATH PENALTY 4 WOMAN WHO ABORT. I can only imagine this going one step further before the line is crossed, and I cannot imagine it going any further than this (and fear if it does) :

KILL INFANTS THE MOMENT THEY LEAVE THE WOMB, SO THEY CAN NEVER HAVE AN ABORTION.

Does that fit with the right wing ideology? Should we bring back the arts of abortion from the 13th Century? That is, bringing back post-natal abortions? It should fit with the right wing religious's ideology, since apparently the moment anything comes out of the vaginal canal, then it can just go die!

If life is sacred, then why is Capital Punishment still an option? Can we not think of the Death Penalty as a post-natal abortion? Essentially, we can think of Ted Bundy being aborted during the 176th trimester.

While all of this may seem satirical and humorous, it really shouldn't be funny, because this is how far right these religious conservatives are. I was recently informed of another thing about South Carolina, my home state, that makes me ashamed I am from there. In 1944, the State of South Caroline executed the youngest person ever executed in the United States. George Stinney (an African American) was 14 years old when he was convicted of murdering two white girls. He was executed 81 days following the murders. In fact, he was so small that he had to sit on phone books to have the electrode reach his head, and the adult-sized mask fell off during his convulsions, so the crowd had to watch the dying face of a 14 year old child being executed. He was aborted in his 66th trimester.

I can no longer defend the South. I'm embarrassed to say I was born there.

So let's understand the ultra-right wing's ideology : abortion is bad, but executions are cool. Then post-natal abortion is perfect! At least we won't have to bring back alleyway abortions and risk the lives of thousands of women with coat hangers again! The moment that baby's head starts poking out, just stab it in the head, just like we used to do Pre-Enlightenment. Returning to the good old days... ahh, yes, the Golden Days. The days when women were oppressed, daddy beat his kids and wife, black people were not considered actual people, animals had to stand trail, and we didn't have TV. Maybe we can bring back stoning people to death!

Women can still live and babies can still die! Hooray loopholes!

The Balancing of Evils : Occupy Wall Street

So the Occupy Wall Street protests are still going on. All I have to say is : good.

Here's the problem with the political spectrum today : the emergence of the Tea Party as a serious political party has moved the political spectrum so far to right that what is considered "moderate" is is now very liberal. Ronald Reagan, the god and savior of the Republicans is, by their current standards, a fairly liberal liberal (as opposed to a conservative or moderate liberal).

But these protests are so far to the left that they almost seems like they are on the right. As Scott Sworts pointed out to me when he went to New York last week, if you replaced the college kids, hippies, punks, hipsters, and the likes with balding, gray, white men over the age of 35, it would be a Tea Party rally. This is what we need : something so far to the left that it can balance out America's political spectrum.

Now, I must point out that I do not entirely agree with everything these far-left protesters are rallying behind. I don't believe in the end of Federal government, I think the bailouts for Wall Street were necessary to prevent the country from falling into an actual depression, and so forth. But are these protests necessary? Absolutely, and no question about it. The Tea Party has caused the political scales of America to tip so far to the right that the scales are about to fall off the table and crash to the floor. What we need is balance, and the means to create such a balance is necessary. It's not even a necessary evil, it's just plain necessary.

And what do these protests start to look like when one really analyzes them? They remind me of the birth of the Tea Party. Is it difficult to imagine an emergence of an ultra-left wing party? I think not. And I welcome it with open arms, for no other reason than to balance the scales again.

One reason I support these protests is that Anonymous is behind it (the infamous hacker group that embraces the ideology of V For Vendetta). Not that I agree with everything Anonymous does (or hardly anything), but they, I think, are a necessary evil. Their methods may be too radical for my tastes, and even their ideology is too left wing for me, but the potential outcome of their work I am hopeful for. Anonymous has no control over the outcome of what they are doing. What they are doing will either make the world a better place, or it will destroy everything. They can't control the outcome, they just have to keep doing what they are doing and hope that the outcome is positive. It's a bit like an anti-depressant, we have to hope that they make us better before we want to kill ourselves. But what better choice do we have? Let the Tea Party rape this country of everything worthwhile that it has and leave the rest of the country in a state of absolute destitution? I vote for the anti-depressant method if push comes to shove, and there are no other options. I vote for the better of the evils (whether that evil is greater or lesser, whatever gets things back into balance).

I don't want to be too assuring, but I feel these protests will escalate. The Occupy Wall Street protest is still growing, and smaller ones are spreading to other cities. But Mayor Bloomberg already plans on shutting down these protests on Wall Street in a few more days. Does anyone think everyone is going to go pack their bags, go home, and reminisce about their experience, like it was some sort of Widespread Panic concert? I doubt it. Let's just hope this doesn't end up with the US military being called in to remove the protesters, and we get a massacre like we did in the Detroit riots in the 1960s.

All it will take is one death for this whole situation to blow up out of control that even the President of the United States of freaking America could not touch it. The scales are so crooked that this could happen. One death and the war is lost. See why we need some balance?

Just vote for Cthulhu, because I'm sick of cheering for the lesser evils.