mighty forces

Dark and light

At first I didn’t get Facebook – I thought it was just another way to waste time online. And while it is that, it’s so much more. To me, it’s a fascinating sociological experiment where millions of people gather and show off, indirectly, what makes them tick.

I like Facebook status updates especially, because rather than being a vehicle for “I just had soup” sort of life updates that no one (including the writer) would find interesting, they become a sort of personal performance art. What can I say that’s funny, interesting, witty, charming, smart?

It became clear early on that the range of emotions acceptable in a Facebook update message are limited, especially on the dark end of the scale. Being elated over a new job is acceptable, as long as you don’t dwell on it. Your friends might even join in with congratulations, if the mood struck them. But being depressed, angry, or upset? Frowned upon, if not openly mocked.

For a while I didn’t understand why this was. If this was an avenue for expression, why not the whole spectrum? But then I realized: negative emotions aren’t allowed to be openly expressed in “polite” American society at large either – so why would they be allowed on Facebook?

Of course, it can get tiring to hear your friends bitch and moan about their problems in real life. But I think it goes beyond that – to a denial of those dark feelings themselves. After all, if we stick our fingers in our ears and shout “la la la I can’t hear you!” when others are in pain, it’s just one coping technique for helping to deny those feelings in ourselves.

No wonder we’re a society that is addicted to mood-altering substances across the spectrum. We drink, take drugs, smoke and overeat, cocooning ourselves with TV and internet, and fill up credit cards with purchases from infomercials. Where are the connections? I think one reason we find it so hard to connect is that our society tells us to grin and bear it, lest we upset the neighbors.

Expression is painful, messy, and inconvenient. But suppression is infinitely worse.

Loathing

I feel revulsion toward all different kinds of crapweasel right-wingers. But I’ve come to realize that I have a special loathing for those, like “comic” Dennis Miller, who considered themselves liberals until the “wake-up call” of 9/11. This isn’t even about Miller in particular. It’s about all those weak-willed, weak-minded souls who decided on 9/11 that it was OK (not only OK, but productive and correct) to hate Muslims and the poor and union members and anyone else who might threaten the already fake version of their lives they had built in their heads.

Millions of bullies were created on 9/11. And the fact that they had to live through the same harrowing events and images as the rest of us doesn’t excuse them.

An amazing day

Common sense on Prop. 8

In all the brouhaha over the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which enshrines discrimination in the state’s Constitution by denying gay people the ability to marry, it’s easy to forget that the liberal hero Barack Obama has been able to quietly assert that he’s against gay marriage because of his Christian faith.

Hmmm. As the Church Lady would say, “conveeeeenient.” And ironic to boot.

But the fact remains that even liberal stalwarts can’t seem to find the words to defend something that for their “base” seems so easy to defend. So I’m going to repeat something I wrote for Hillary Clinton in 2003, when she was having some problems explaining exactly why she didn’t support gay people getting married. If anything it’s more relevant today, now that Californians haven’t let the futures of thousands of happily-married gay people stop them from voting discrimination into their state’s founding document.

Why can’t Democratic politicians just say:

I think what’s important here is to understand the difference between civil and religious marriage. Religious marriage is a sacrament, and I don’t believe the government has any business telling any religion who they can and cannot marry. If the government ever made any kind of move to force any church to marry anyone they did not want to, I would be on the front lines protesting that.

But civil marriage is not a sacrament. It is simply a legal contract that’s enforced by the state that confers rights on the citizens who enter into that contract. I believe Americans are a fundamentally fair people. And this is about fairness – allowing people who want to enter into committed relationships, relationships that strengthen the society, to get the rights conferred by civil marriage.

There’s a lot of talk about civil unions these days – trying to create a system alongside civil marriage that would involve the same rights. But why create a new system, a new bureaucracy, to try to simulate something already in place? Is that fair? I don’t think it is. “Separate but equal” didn’t work in the civil rights era, and it doesn’t work here. I know there are a lot of Americans who are uncomfortable with homosexuality. But that unease shouldn’t be enough reason to deny basic rights to citizens of the United States of America.

See? That wasn’t so hard.

Crushed

After weeks and months of the worst and most unrepentantly evil culture war fucktardery I have ever seen (Muslim, terrorist, Communist, homo agenda, godless, traitor, nigger, Sammy Davis Jr., watermelon and fried chicken, voter fraud, baby killer, turban, white flag of surrender, small town values, gay weddings, Osama-Obama, Hussein, kill whitey, halfrican-american, sex ed for kindergarteners, community organizer, you betcha, elitist, that one, lipstick on a pig, Joe Not The Plumber, birth certificate, Wright, Ayers, ACORN), I admit that I’ve had fucking enough.

I don’t want them to lose. I want them to be crushed. I want them to be humiliated. I want them to be dragged through the streets. I want them to be thrown in jail. I want them to be required by law to attend gay weddings of two hermaphrodite late-term abortion doctors. I want the idea of them winning an election in the remainder of their sad, sick lives to be a distant fantasy.

Personally, I don’t think I’m asking too much.

“Douche of the Week” Award

Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review Online’s The Corner:

I keep reading—most recently in an email Kathryn posted—that Palin is anti-intellectual. Now I can readily see that Palin is not an intellectual herself, as most people are not, and is not interested in the type of things that intellectuals are. But why do people say she is anti-intellectual? Has she given a speech belittling book-larnin’?

If these people had an ounce of self-awareness, they would be dangerous.

Maybe I should move to the U.K.

When I place an order with Amazon.com, I get an e-mail with this subject line:

Your Amazon.com order has shipped

Yesterday, as an experiment, I ordered a book from Amazon.co.uk that’s not available in the States. And the e-mail subject line was:

Your Amazon.co.uk order has dispatched

That sounds so much friendlier, don’t you think?

Quote of the week

“So the necessity is some sort of power-sharing arrangement between what have really become two completely different civilizations, unable to agree on even the most basic propositions about what society is. Furthermore, any such arrangement must be designed to be self-stabilizing and self-enforcing. The time is near when we will prefer any experiment, no matter how rash or misconceived, to the status quo.”

-Blogger Interrupted commenter Frank Wilhoit, on the seemingly unspannable gulf between the red and blue states

I pretty much agree with Frank. I wonder if we’re more divided on a basic, fundamental level today than we were at the dawn of the Civil War. When the words “society,” “democracy” and even “civilization” don’t have commonly-shared meanings, maybe it is time we go our separate ways.

Stupid is…

After my mother read my “Culture war” post, she told me I needed to better define what “stupid” meant in that context. (I thought I made it pretty clear, but she does a good job of keeping me honest.) Well, here you go.

Economics

Congress voted down the Wall Street bailout the first time partly because at $700 billion, it was too expensive.

The Wall Street bailout that passed this week clocked in at $850 billion.

It took 40 years of superpower conflict during the Cold War for the former Soviet Union to spend itself into bankruptcy and ruin.

With us, all it took was a few flying lessons and a handful of box cutters.