I Don't Have A Life So You Don't Have To: I'll Take Yours

Leave it to The Onion to address one of my main beefs with the world - the idea I live, literally and figuratively, with intellectual cowards. I thought I'd get online and meet all these stimulating minds, but what's here? Ann Althouse and her public nervous breakdowns - but no apologies - when challenged? Glenn Reynolds and his insistence on quackery, and let's-try-to-walk-the-line, race-based tomfoolery? Other famous feminists? Other famous libertarians? (Does anybody even care libertarians don't win elections?) NewAgers? Anybody, who can't stand the idea of society nailing down anything, but Jesus to a cross? They're all in this piece:

Courage requires us to remain steadfast in our beliefs. It asks that we stand by the convictions we express and never give an inch, no matter what the cost. However off base, wrongheaded, or patently false a position we’ve staked out may be, courage nonetheless demands that we blindly pound home our stupid fucking point, never letting up.

True valor is the moment in a conversation when you realize that what you’re saying is completely and utterly wrong, but you continue to say it over and over again anyway, only louder.

Suppose you’re discussing current events with a group of friends, one of whom politely challenges an assertion you’ve made about a particular issue. In such congenial gatherings, it can be tempting to back down, especially when someone has just put forth evidence that soundly debunks everything you’ve been saying. The courageous path takes more discipline. It means looking that friend in the eye and—though you know full well that you are totally wrong—saying, “No, I’m right.”

The same dilemma applies when you’re arguing with someone who obviously has far more information about a subject than you do. Basically, you have two choices: You can admit that you are out of your depth and that your lack of knowledge led you to the incorrect conclusion. Or you can dig in your heels, grit your teeth, and defend your misguided, uninformed opinion with every fiber of your being—even to the point of hysteria.

What is the measure of bravery? I think part of it has to do with how firmly we stand our ground when we have absolutely no fucking clue what we’re talking about.

Like sand through the hourglass, these are the days of their lives:

And, considering the weight these fools bring to bear on those below them, we should reconsider the worth of that whole stockade-in-the-public-square thing.

College campuses are perfect,...

 

When This Man Is Your Hero I'm Proud To Be A Pariah

He's made millions, spouting sciencey-sounding malarky, and all because they'd eat it up:

“However, instead of completely melting away, the polar icecap is at now at its highest level for this time of year since 2006. 

Satellite photos of the Arctic taken by NASA in August 2012 and August 2013 show a 60 percent increase in the polar ice sheet, more than half the size of Europe, despite “realistic” predictions by climate scientists six years ago that the North Pole would be completely melted by now. Instead of shrinking, the NASA photographs clearly show that the Arctic ice sheet is much larger than it was at the same time last year. 

The thick layer of summer ice, which currently stretches from Canada to Russia, is preventing ships from using the North-West Passage.”

I remember almost being thrown out of someone's house, for trying to calm a woman as she screamed about the polar bears - a result of misinformation, few consider, as the claim it's all so harmless revolves. It's not. These fools think they're just talking but, in ways large and small, society stops working. Lives are put in peril.

Ha! Listen to me. I forgot - this is post-Syria America now:

Nobody has to care about any of that anymore,...

 

Worshiping At The Alters Of Our Greatest White Falters

Yep, I am back to whip everybody, while still asking for donations - you know why?

Because, while my back is broke, my balls are still that big:

American families are becoming increasingly polarized along race, class and educational lines, according to a new report released Wednesday, a sign of growing economic inequality that was exacerbated by the Great Recession. 

The report, “Divergent Paths of American Families,” found a widening gap in recent years between families that are white, educated or economically secure and minority families, those headed by someone with a high school degree or less, and poor families.

Sigh. "Polarized" again. But I hear you:

Whites in America have historically outnumbered everyone else, by so much, that white crime has been just "crime" committed by a "man" or a "woman" - no more colorful description necessary.

But those days are long gone - since something happened somewhere, to someone, last night:

Guess what COLOR the perps were?!?

I read something like that - exclusively on conservative sites - multiple times a day. And, as a conservative, it gets tiring. Not because blacks commit so many crimes, but because I know the Right-Wing idiots aren't looking for anybody else committing crimes, as they hide behind the claim of being colorblind.

A 67-year-old has been jailed for 35 years after raping his son's prom date when she stayed at their home after the dance. 

Ismael Cruz, was found guilty by a jury last month of attacking the 19-year-old girl as she slept at his San Antonio home in May 2012. 

The teenager told police she awoke to find she had been partially undressed and that Cruz was on top of her.

Hey - here's an idea:

White conservatives ought to wave that story around like a flag, to get some racial hysteria going, as we supposedly are trying to recruit hispanics, huh? We NEED as much racial hysteria as we can get for it. To make 'em feel at home. And to make whites feel comfortable, too. Hell:

   

As a white friend reminded me last night, until we awful, awful blacks started acting out, that's almost been the only world anybody's ever known. Somehow, white conservatives - the good guys in their own eyes - conveniently forget that online.

And, something tells me, many will until we're all fucked.

Or free.

BTW, FYI - Criminals are criminals - and not always so bad:

They're probably the only group in America who truly sees everybody else as simply everybody else.

It's like me asking for you (whoever you are) for a donation:

Criminals don't care about color:

They go wherever the money is,...

 

Tin Foil Hats? Nice Accessories (But Never Fashionable)

Yesterday I wrote, "Privacy and the NSA wouldn't be a problem if the Right Wing had some common sense". This, after avoiding the issue since it began. Today, John Fund has a column that opens with:

“It’s time to ask tough questions about the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities — even for conservatives who have given the NSA the benefit of every doubt up until now.”

You can read the rest for yourself, because I'm interested in telling you what I object to - though I wouldn't say I give this government anything - even after reading John Fund:

From Day One, there's been a kind of hysterical shock and anger that a program even exists, which has struck me as so immature I'm not surprised anyone involved would be reluctant to deal with the accusers.

The issue of the NSA has appeared to be a continuation of the election year "battle", with various groups still trying to score political points irregardless of substance, and to our detriment as a nation.

It's been conducted in the same unhelpful "gotcha" conspiracy theory-style U.F.O. hunters use - always built on the accusation, not only that something's hidden, but there's something to hide. That people, or agencies, make mistakes - though they complain about that fact daily - is swept aside.

While I understand why those who've set their own hair on fire don't see it this way, most of what they've "discovered" looks pretty routine, hardly what I'd expect from a huge agency working in the shadows with an increasing amount of data for the first time.

There's what - 300+ million people in the United States? And in 2012 they found 2,776 violations of privacy rules. Yawn. What kind of violations aren't mentioned, fueling the conspiracy theorists, who will gladly trade on what isn't known as though it has the same weight as truth. Like the characters you find at Roswell, N.M., the idea they could be mistaken in their framing of issues, innocently or otherwise, is a subject they haven't devoted equal attention to, before or after this event, and they wouldn't welcome it. Whether it's Satan-worshipping Day Care centers, or the government is out to get you, these Americans do love their hysterias.

What they hate is anybody should burst their bubble - or ruin their "fun",...

 

I'm Trembling As I Compose This (I Need To Be Held,...)

Look - we can fix this race thing. We've just gotta prepare! Like, whenever minorities get invited to appear on TV and yell, "Y'all's CRAZY!" have a scrolling translation for white folks ready, like this:

"If America’s bipartisan establishment is agreed on something, you can be pretty sure it will be a disaster. That is my reluctant conclusion, after nearly three decades of involvement in politics and journalism, in Washington and New York. 

I say 'reluctant' because I am not a populist by temperament. I respect academic training as well as expertise based on personal experience. I think that institutions are, or should be, less likely to make mistakes than individuals. I detest people who pose as “contrarians” for the sake of controversy. I would happily be an establishmentarian, if there were a U.S. establishment worth belonging to. 

But the track record of what passes for the bipartisan elite in the U.S. in the last generation has been pretty poor. Instead of sober, dispassionate analysis of long-run trends, considered from the perspective of the nonpartisan national interest, the conventional wisdom among America’s movers and shakers has consisted of one hysterical fad after another."

See? Huh? Viola! I'd go from an "Angry Black Man" to a guy who doesn't waste a lot of words.

BTW - if the networks ever decide to call me - better amend that translation to say it's no accident the NewAger's favorite question is "What are you afraid of?"

What's an accident is, whatever we fear, we can find out - fast - at The Drudge Report. 

I'm never getting on TV, am I?