Round & Round We Go

Heyo, kiddies. Normally, Uncle Jeremy has a Ragebooks moment and craps out a steaming pile of fury. Today is not that day. Today, Uncle Jeremy is blogging, because it's been a while and I feel like it. Yay new meds!

So, lacking a Ragebook-boner, what shall we talk about? Let's talk about guns. Because it's been a while since my Ragebook friends list cleaned itself.

Guns! (Source.)

Standard disclaimer is standard: I do not own a firearm, for personal reasons.

'K? 'K.

Now then, point the first: guns are cool. Guns make an awesome noise and spew metal at near or faster than sound speeds, several times, and there are few things better than the feeling of a precision machine that fits in your hand and does something incredible at the flick of a finger.

What? Just 'cause I don't own one doesn't mean I don't know how to use one and never have. I'm a damn fine shot, actually. I favor long arms, because I'm more precise with them, but a nice 9mm compact can get the job done.

Point the second: there are any number of reasons to own a firearm. Hunting, self-defense, because they're cool, being an aficionado (not the same thing as "it's cool," more like, "it's art"), target shooting, and so on.

Point the third: I live in America, and guns are somehow part of our heritage. Strawman Shmoe is bouncing up and down to argue my use of the word "somehow" in that sentence, but we'll get there, Schmoe. I'm just laying it out here.

Are we all on the same page? Good.

So, point one: guns are cool.

Why?

I mean, obviously, any piece of precision machining and technology has a cool factor. Also, anything that makes loud noises, or successfully harnesses explosions. But let's take a step back here: a gun does precisely one thing. It eject a small object, usually metal, at high velocity for the purpose of placing a maximum amount of force in the smallest area possible. This application has limited potential for use. Namely, it puts holes in things at moderate to great range. Despite this, we've found a number of applications to justify their existence.

Look at other things with similar base conceptual technology: fireworks make a loud noise, require a certain level of precision, do one thing only, and harness the power of explosions. Their purpose in life is to be pretty and make a cool noise. That's the whole thing. Art in 2.5 seconds of boom. And while we've only found one modern use for the things, that use is more than enough to justify their existence. Because seriously, pretty.

Cars harness the power of explosions, require precision machining, do one thing, and often look freaking awesome. On the other hand, they have formed the backbone of culture for a long time. They are a convenience, a conveyance, a necessity in a culture that has spread out in response to the ability to travel greater distances in shorter times.

The same above can apply to airplanes, with one key difference: holy fuckballs, we can fucking fly! We can fucking defy the inborn limitations of our species, flip the bird to birds and warp the restraints of gravity to our will as we fling ourselves through the atmosphere in armored shells powered by explosions and tornadoes. Airplanes are fucking awesome because holy shit, airplanes, you guys.

Airplanes! (Source.)

Ok, but back to guns. Looking at conceptually similar stuff, the question starts to creep in: cars go places, airplanes go places and holy shit fly (I'll stop now, I swear), both of the above support our culture in intertwined and complex ways, fireworks make a cool noise and are pretty, and guns...guns put holes in things at high speed. Yes, they make a pretty noise, and they're precision machines, and all of that, but...

Well, bluntly put, there's a purpose beyond function for cars and planes. They do work, they serve society. Fireworks, conversely, are essentially loud toys, but the big, dangerous ones are (generally) restricted to a certain time of the year, certain places, and in quite a few instances, to certain people. Because explosive art is dangerous art.

Buuuut...why are guns cool? What's their purpose beyond function, or if they're toys, why is the culture surrounding them one of legitimate function? What, in short, about the use of a firearm is inherently cool in the way that the use of a car, or a plane, or a firework is cool?

To break into that, we have to head to point two: reasons to own a firearm.

There's a few arguments to made for guns here: that they do work (hunting,) that they serve society, (law enforcement, military, self-defense) and that they have a purpose as a loud toy (because they're fahking awesome.)

And now, to summon the hordes of dissenters:

No, yes, maybe.

Honestly, we live in a world where food is just a ten minute drive away (not counting nutrition deserts, which are another post.) Yes, meat is expensive, and yes, there's nothing quite like going out and bagging a meal at gunpoint, but...it's literally a game for (assumption!) 90% of people. It's not work: it's play.

Yes, the military obviously needs guns, because the other guys have them, and they're not going to chuckle in bemusement and go away on a fair showing if we hurl rocks at them. Leaving aside the question of who the hell we fight and why, the purpose of a military is to saturate a given area with arms and ordnance to gain something we call victory over whoever the guys at the top happen to dislike that year. Sometimes for good reason, sometimes not, but at the end of the day, I'm not seriously going to sit here and say that soldiers shouldn't have guns.

(Side point, because I just have to say it, my preference wouldn't be to disarm soldiers, it would be to eliminate the need for a military at all. Given the sheer number of people that feel the need to yell at each other at ordnance point, I don't see that happening any time soon, so give the poor bastards on the ground firearms.)

Police: Not to beat a dead horse, but Britain. Gun control works fine there.They have a (largely) unarmed force, and when they do see a gun, they cordon the area, summon SWAT (or SWAT equivalent) and politely inform you that you're going to put that down or freaking else. We make fun of them for it, but frankly, it works.

Sources you say? And: go.

Biased source may be biased (depending on your point of view; I found a decent balance between things there), but I will note that the Skeptical Libertarian appears to be for 2nd amendment rights, so there's that.

Why one source? Because the guy sources himself all over the place. I could spend three hours hunting sources and counter sources, or I could send you to someone who already did the thing. Three guesses which way I decided to go, and the first three don't count.

 Continuing onward: self-defense. Hoo-boy.

Maybe. This is a self-fulfilling argument. We need guns to defend ourselves because the bad guys have guns. Which they have because we need guns to defend ourselves.

Bluntly, the argument goes that taking guns away from the good guys doesn't make the bad guys any less well armed.

True, as far as it goes. One tiny problem: the argument is used to prevent any conversation about how we can fix that. Frankly, the argument (in my experience) goes something like this:

"Maybe we wouldn't have so many firearm related deaths if there weren't so many firearms."

"But then if some bad guy had a firearm, I wouldn't be able to defend myself."

 "Well, what if we maybe just started regulating firearms? Ya know, start slowing that shit down, getting a better handle on it?"

"But then if some bad guy had a firearm, I wouldn't be able to defend myself."

"That's...not what I said?"

"Second Amendment."

"Uh, not saying you can't have it, just saying maybe we should regulate it better?"

 "Government overreach."

And that's where it stops. I have guns, I have a right to have guns, and therefore, regulation is bad.

Uhhh...righty-o.

So tell me: other than giving cops more tools to deal with those who misuse them, what has car registration done for the ownerships of cars? Other than making it more economically feasible to operate an explosion powered speed machine, what has mandatory insurance done to the ownership of cars?

Made it more expensive? Yup.

Made it more onerous? Yup.

Made it unfeasible? Not by a long shot.

Honestly: why is it government overreach to want to keep an eye on the movement and sale of a machine that has, as its sole purpose, accelerating small bits of metal to put holes in things?

More to the point, how does a gun "defend" you? If the other guy doesn't have a gun, sure, it can be a great show of force. So can a kitchen knife. So can a baseball bat. And I'm not saying an armed householder isn't a deterrent to an unarmed intruder.

But so is a dog. So is an alarm system.

To an armed intruder, the question rapidly becomes, "who shoots first?" A gun, even in the hands of a professional, does nothing to stop the other guy from shooting. The sole benefit of having a firearm in an armed v. armed situation is that it allows you to shoot back. That's the principle of "the best offense is a good defense."

Problem: trained professionals have a hit rate between 37% and 23% on average. Admittedly, that article also attributes it to poor training. Here's another that discusses different methods and how they can increase or decrease accuracy in a gun fight situation.

But here's the thing: firearm defense involves exposing yourself to gross bodily harm to inflict gross bodily harm on another person. Under stress. Usually with practice involving stationary targets in low stress situations, and frequently with little to no mandatory training. And in many cases, the training that is received is the exact same training the cops get.

To be clear, I ain't saying it's impossible to defend yourself with a gun, I'm just questioning the wisdom of having more than one firearm in play in an uncontrolled situation with untested factors, and most of those factors being civilians. 

Quick test: someone opens fire in a civilian area. You have a gun, you return fire. What happens?

Regardless of the fact that you are returning fire, and not instigating, three things have just occurred.

1) You are now a target. Unless you were lucky enough to paste the guy on the first shot, they will most likely shoot back under the premise of returning fire.

2) You have just introduced more whizzing projectiles into an already dangerous environment, thus further endangering bystanders.

3) When the cops do come, and they will, you are now in possession of a recently used firearm, with incontrovertible proof that you have fired it in a civilian situation. And if you were  lucky enough to paste the bastard on the first shot, you then have to deal with all the charges that come with shooting someone. Just to be clear, that's going to be a bad day for you.

As pointed out in the Skeptical Librarian's article above, the numbers of guns in an area vis a vis crime is largely a wash.

But if you open fire to defend yourself, you're not viewed as a hero by the cops. You're "Shooter #2."

Moving on to point three:guns as part of the American fabric.

Wat.

When guns were appropriate, we used them as tools. In backwoods situations, living out on land, dealing with snakes, predators, etc. guns are still a viable tool. The same goes for most places: if there's a high chance in your day to day life that something's going to try and eat you, guns are an important equalizer.

As near as I can figure, guns are a part of our lives because we want to believe we're still frontiersmen. Honestly, half the world had guns before we did. There's still a culture of gentleman sporting here and there, and of course, there are war torn countries where guns are simply a fact of daily survival.

But not here. We don't have to kill for survival, we don't (necessarily) live in a dictatorial warzone (jury's still out on whether that might happen). We have a culture of sporting with firearms, but there's a difference between bopping out with the old fowling piece for a spot of what, and building a small armory. Sure, there's some people that own one rifle for hunting, but I've heard many of those people list "self-defense" as a primary reason for owning it. Not all these things are true for all cases, but unlike many other cultures, we enshrine guns as part of our heritage. Part of who we are.

Simply put, there's no need for it. Further, there's no reason for it, except that we've been raised on stories of cowboys who had guns, soldiers who had guns, and frontierspeople who had guns, and miss the part where they all needed guns to survive, and go straight for the part that "ancestors needed guns = guns are part of hertage."

And that's kind of silly, in my opinion. Our ancestors also needed leeches, horses, land to plow, hunted for food, have to manually drive cattle, and were drafted into wars. We don't need any of those things anymore. We ride horses cause horses are beautiful animals. We have machines the size of small buildings that plow for us. We've dropped the draft, we send cows by train and truck, and we get our food at the local megamart.  One of the few things we've kept from these cultural necessities is the firearms.

Down here, then, a point: taking all of the above, all the wrangling, let's not forget the primary purpose of a firearm. Namely, killing things.

There's an old saying about "guns don't kill people, people kill people." What's left out there is that people often kill people with guns. We can talk about hunting, we can talk about target shooting, we can talk about responsible ownership, and collecting, and so on. But at the end of the day, there's the overriding function of a firearm: accelerating that tiny piece of metal the ludicrous speeds for the purpose of putting holes in living things.

And we accept this reflexively. In movies, guns are elevated out of the role of "weapon" and into the role of "endless bullet spewing death god." Lady nipples and dicks are too racy for TV, but let the bullets fly. Two men kissing is an outrage; two men trying to kill each other is entertainment. There are states where it's illegal for consenting adults to make porn, but legal to buy enough weaponry to arm a small militia.

And it's not even like we try and excuse it. Hollow points, fireball and flechette rounds for shotguns, armor piercers, Teflon coating...we make bullets that are better and better at killing shit, and sell the weapons that fire them for $200+. Guns are cheap, and even cheap ammo gets the job done as well as the fancier stuff.

So...yeah. Personally, I'd like to see at least tighter regulation of guns. I'd like to see tighter regulation of what kinds of round are available on the civilian market. I'd like to see a national registry.

But mostly, I'd like to stop reading about gun violence, and then seeing all the people come out to say that that person didn't get shot because Guy X had a gun, he got shot because Guy X was disturbed in some way. Because that leaves out the main question: how would that person have been shot if Guy X didn't have a gun?

Conversations With Brain

(Source.)

Me: "Brain, why do we play solitaire? It's a pointless exercise in frustration that makes me want to scream and throw things."

Brain: "Do we?"

Me: "Do we what?"

Brain: "Throw things."

Me: "No, of course not."

Brain: "That's why we play solitaire."

Me: "To learn not to throw things."

Brain: "Yup."

Me: "..."

Brain: :-)

Me: "Where is this zen bullshit when I'm so depressed and paranoid I can't get move, Brain?"

Brain: "Talk to Emotions, those aren't my department."

Me: "They sorta are."

Brain: "Nope."

Me: "Sigh. Fine. Hey, Emotions-"

<FEELS>

Me: "Yes, Emotions, I'm aware of that. Have you tried this Zen thing Brain uses-"

<FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELS>

Me: "Brain, I kinda wonder if you shouldn't be helping with this."

Brain: "Nope, too busy calculating how many cats could fit into a Porsche if we assume cats are a gelatinous solid that have no need for air."

Me: "What!? Why in goddess' name would I need to know that!?"

Brain: "Dunno, just seemed like something to do."

Me: "You could help me function maybe."

Brain: "Nah. But as long we're talking about functioning, how's that novel coming?"

Me: "It's being crushed under the weight of a depression so black that I could blind an emo at thirty paces."

Brain: "Gee, that seems like something you should work on. I'll be over here with this highlights reel of all the times you ever failed. You know, if you need to talk."

Me: "...fuck you, Brain."

UPDATE: The Captain Obvious Tarot

Hello, all. Normally, I don't talk too much about my spirituality in specific. I'll talk about spirituality in general, I'll talk about religious fanaticism, etc. But today, kiddies, we're going to talk about Uncle Jeremy's Tarot deck.

Let's get the laughter done with first:

(Source.)

I use the Greenbriar Tarot, aka the Dollar Tree Tarot. So first, we'll cover the flaws.

1. It's cheap as hell. 

Thin cards, unlaminated, not even cardstock. I wipe my hands off before I use it for fear of damaging it with just the fine film of sweat on my hands.

Solution: $5 worth of baseball card sleeves.

2. They buggered the design.

The deck is advertised as having 78 cards. And it does. They even managed to print the majors properly, and got all the court cards right.

But eight of those 78 are "special" cards that have nothing to do with the tarot. They're layout markers, so you can use them to remember what order and placement you use for the spread they reccomend for the deck. Further, they printed the deck with an Ace of each suit, and a 1. that means the suits go ace, 1, 2, 3, etc.

For those playing along at home, that means that each suit is short three cards. Specifically, 8, 9, and 10. So each suit goes:

 A, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, Page, Knight, Queen, King.

Solution:  Screw the numbered cards. I made a short deck of the majors, courts, and aces.

3. They put weird interpretations on all the named cards.

(Source.)

Every single major, every court card, and all the aces have these little "past, present, future" boxes on them. And sometimes the meanings are really simple or incredibly cheesy. The "future" meaning for The Star major, for instance, is "You discover YOU are a star!"

Oy.

Solution: Actually, it's not that bad if you remember that this is a tarot deck. Reading those interpretations allegorically, they can be really quite useful. And most of them are vague enough to be as interpretive as most "normal" tarot readings.

So what are the upsides here?

LOOK AT THIS ART:

(Source.)

LOOK AT IT.

Omigah, is it beautiful. Before I figured out how to use the darn thing, I seriously considered just framing the 42 unique cards and hanging them on my wall. It's comic-esque, but with a depth that just...agh, I could spend hours just looking at the bloody thing. Gorgeous.

What? Yes, I do look at art first when I buy a deck. I'm a friggin' artist. I have a perfectly serviceable mini deck that has all the cards needed for a proper tarot reading, and I've never used the darn thing because I just can't with the art.

Next upside: 42 useable cards. I'm a huge nerd, and I get a kick out of doing divination work with a deck that has the same number of cards as the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

Finally, it doesn't need the pips. I've been doing three card readings (past, present, future) for a couple of weeks now, and it rarely fails to give me something sane and understandable. On the occasion that it's abstruse, it's because I haven't had my coffee yet, and I forgot to keep track of the order I drew the cards in.

I've tried other decks, you guys. I bought and briefly used a Gilded Tarot, and it just never worked for me. I ended up giving it to my sister (hiya, Twin!) because I couldn't get a reading out of it to save my life. I have a Running Press minideck, and again, I don't use it because it just feels too simple, too..."meh."

After those, and after looking at a berjillionty decks and not seeing anything that resonated, I started doing the Gypsy 52 playing card divination, and that worked fine. But it just doesn't feel the same. (Although if you're interested, grab a deck of playing cards and go here.) I still do it, and it's great.

But about a month ago, I was looking at the Greenbriar and thinking, "there has got to be a way to make that thing work." Whereupon I stripped out the pips, and ta-da! It works.

Anywho, having defended my choice of deck:

Omigah, you guys. This deck.

I go back and forth between calling it the Obvious tarot, and the Derp Deck. It's like having an overly excited cockatoo screaming at you that a thing is happening.

HEY. HEY.
THINGS.
(Source.)

Woke up today feeling pressured that I had too much to do, and not enough time, and that's been the story of my life for weeks now. Further, I have a meeting today for a mentoring thing I do. It gave me this:

Read left to right, past, present, future.

Read those meanings.

Know that that is all the thing it do.

The Greenbriar takes whatever is the loudest, most noticeable aspect in my life right at that moment and tells me about it. And every time, I'm going, "Thank you, Captain Obvious."

But you know what? It starts my day out with a laugh. It tells me what's bugging me that day. And it takes that background deal that would otherwise simmer in my subconcious and make me grr all day and goes, "LOOK AT EET. DO YOU GROK THE THING?"

And the funniest bit is that I did a reading with it for a friend the other day, and by gods, it did the same thing. Grabbed the biggest, most obvious situation in his life and tapdanced on that dead horse.

So yeah. If you look at your deck and go, "huh?" or "well, alrighty then;" or, like me, if your experience with tarot has been one of doom and gloom reading after doom and gloom reading, might I suggest the Derpy Deck?

Although, if you want one, it's going to have to be the reprint because Greenbriar sold it to Fantasma. Who rebranded it as the Wishcraft Tarot and promptly turned it pink.

(Source.)

But you know what? I'd still use it. Because we could all use a bit of derpy tarot in our lives, I think.

UPDATE: The Wishcraft version is apparently a full 78 card tarot, with all the pips incorporated properly, and larger, better quality cards. So you can use it both in derpy mode and Tarot mode. The only downside appears to be that the cards are "marked" like a magician's prop deck. But hey, burn the booklet or don't bother to memorize the marked code (or draw blind) and it shouldn't be a problem. Not plugging the thing, but Imma buy one!

The Joy of Debate

I'm mostly posting this because it seems a shame to waste all this research.

So, a friend posted the following picture on the Ragebooks:

I commented asking why? The response was short and sweet: because she's as worthless as Obama.

Cueing the facepalms, I responded with the following:

You mean the Obama who's cut the deficit by more than half, presided over record breaking job and stock market growth, increased domestic oil production to levels that have dropped gasoline prices in half, and dropped the unemployment rate to near pre-recession levels?

The president who successfully pulled out of Iraq, is overseeing the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and is on the brink of negotiating a successful nuclear disarmament treaty with Iran?

Or perhaps we're talking about the Obama who has advanced the cause of human rights on several fronts, and is working for wage equality against the opposition of a party that frequently fights him even if it makes no sense to do so and against his own party (who disavow his accomplishments to avoid the massive partisan infighting caused by the Republicans)?

The same Obama that tried to give healthcare to everyone and who only failed after multiple concentrated attacks by the Republican party gutted the bill so they could blame him when it failed?

You know...the successful president that everyone hates for no reason? That Obama?"

My friend immediately deferred the argument to their significant other.  

A friend of theirs also commented, saying I'd "drunk the kool-aid."

I challenged that person to provide a substantive argument, and received the following:

So your saying that Obama has successfully pulled us out of Iraq and in doing so opened a vacuum allowing Isis to reclaim key cities that we had soldiers fight qnd die for. We're also trying to withdraw form Afghanistan and Isis is already looking to recruit once we leave. Iran is looking to develop a nuclear weapon , not disarm. Over 18.2 trillion in debt.  Over 92 million Americans out of the workforce.  More people on food stamps then full time jobs. Obamacare is a disaster.  The whole middle east is burning and Russia and Ukraine are on the brink of war. Yeah the stock market looks great and im sure Detroit thinks so too .

Seeing as I am an obsessive researcher, I spent two hours looking into their claims, and produced the following tract:

"So your saying that Obama has successfully pulled us out of Iraq and in doing so opened a vacuum allowing Isis to reclaim key cities that we had soldiers fight qnd die for. We're also trying to withdraw form Afghanistan and Isis is already looking to recruit once we leave."

I'm not entirely certain where you're going with this. Are you saying that, despite widespread public condemnation and heavy pressure from Congress, we should have continued to keep forces in Iraq and Afghanistan at war readiness levels on the off chance the region could destabilize?

Or are you saying that the White House should have predicted the sudden massive growth of ISIL/ISIS when the entire US intelligence community has consistently failed to track and predict the group to begin with?

"Iran is looking to develop a nuclear weapon, not disarm."

That has historically been the case. I'm not arguing that. I am saying the Obama's administration has come closer to getting them to back down than at any other time since they began their program. Further, the deal, as it is being negotiated, will give us up to a year of lead time to slap them back down if they violate the agreement.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-talks.html

Unless, of course, you believe that simply continuing to strangle their economy in the hopes that they won't simply build a bomb anyway and use that capacity to fund their broken economy is a better option.

"Over 18.2 trillion in debt."  

Yup. Hey, guess where 50% of that added debt comes from? Entitlements. See point below, please.

"Over 92 million Americans out of the workforce."

Negatory, good buddy. 21 mil are out for various reasons. 70 mil retired or left the workforce permanently.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/01/30/are-there-91-million-americans-on-the-sidelines-looking-for-work/

Hmmm...you know, it seems that 70 million people retiring would cause increases in Social Security, elderly aid programs, Medicare... It also seems that the recession would increase dependency on aid programs. But that's the next point.

"More people on food stamps then full time jobs."

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/jan/28/terry-jeffrey/are-there-more-welfare-recipients-us-full-time-wor/

Go have a read over that. I think it might interest you to know that those numbers compare total full time workers to number of households receiving aid in any way. Also, somewhere around half of those recipients are children. So unless you want to add children and the elderly to the labor pool, those numbers are going to be off when compared that way.

Oh, and bonus: 23% of households with a full time income are receiving benefits of some kind. 28% of working adults receive Medicaid. And 60% of working age, non-disable food stamps recipients are employed while drawing benefits.

Basically, no. The only way to get that number is to overgeneralize massively.

"Obamacare is a disaster."

Not really, no. See, there's been massive gains in insured individuals amongst historically underprivileged groups. Also, the biggest determiner of whether or not the ACA helped a person was what state they lived in. IN states that already had progressive insurance policies, there was little improvement because insurance was already ok there. In states where there was a mass gap, there was a huge surge in the number of uninsured folks.

Unfortunately, as you can see by looking at the map at the very bottom of my support article, the states that needed it most fought the ACA, resulting in a higher number of uninsured in those states.  

This, by the by, supports my claim that the ACA would have produced greater benefits had the Republicans, and more specifically Republican controlled states, not fought to gut the bill. Here in Oklahoma, despite Mary Fallon refusing...I'd have to check, but I believe it was a few million dollars to create a state health exchange (the existence of which, if you'll read the article below, is the greatest indicator of the ACA's success) it is still generally believed that the ACA failed on it's own merits.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/29/upshot/obamacare-who-was-helped-most.html?abt=0002&abg=1

"The whole middle east is burning"

The Middle East has been burning for hundreds of years. I'd like to remind you that Bush, Sr. and GW Bush both started massive destabilizing wars in the Middle East, whereas Obama has at least tried to step back from a wartime platform. The fact that, as Cards Against Humanity would put it, "The complex geopolitical quagmire that is the Middle East" exploded the second we stopped bombing the bejeezus out of it/maintaining troops on the ground isn't anyone's fault. Again, the ENTIRE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY failed to spot ISIL/ISIS.

"and Russia and Ukraine are on the brink of war."

Sooo...Putin is Obama's fault how? I mean, seriously, have you looked Putin up recently? He wants to return to the USSR Motherland! All of Europe, every political force allied with the EU and the US are fighting to push Russia back in line, and short of outright warfare with one of the largest nuclear and economic powers on Earth, that's going to come down to Putin, not Obama.

"Yeah the stock market looks great and im sure Detroit thinks so too ."

Why yes the stock market does look great. I'm not sure what that has to do with Detroit. Detroit collapsed due to a number of factors, including the Recession (which Bush oversaw, just to clear that up) financial mismanagement, corruption, industrial collapse, population erosion, urban decay...Not  single bit of which has anything to do with Obama. Or, in fact, the stock market. Unless you're arguing that the stock market recovery after the recession should have somehow magically reversed the decades of decline Detroit had experienced?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/29/detroit-corruption_n_3837180.html

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Detroit

So, at the end of this...no. Much of your argument is propaganda that doesn't hold up under closer inspection, or ("Iran") is simply facts stated without any actual argument attached. The one point that does hold up, the increase in the debt, fails to account for the massive increase in retiring and retired individuals drawing on entitlement benefits due to the Baby Boomer generation hitting that age. Since the president can't be held accountable for old age, I'm not sure how you'd like to see that number changed.

And just for funsies, given where this discussion started: guess who the last president was that presided over a simultaneous drop in the deficit and debt?

Oh, look. It was Clinton.

Alright, so the last dig was rude. Now, the OP had asked us not to have arguments on her timeline, so I sent Poster 2, whom I'll call Kool-Aid, the above tract through FB messaging, as well as a friend request, and an offer to continue the discussion in a public forum if they'd prefer. Their timeline or mine, I was up for either.

Surprisingly, the friend request was accepted. Utterly unsurprisingly, I received the following just minutes later.

Sorry I really don't have the time or patience to answer that huge response you sent in my messenger.  Personally I wasn't going to accept your request because i didn't want to hear you comment on everything I post . I'm conservative so I'm never going to see eye to eye with you and I don't spend that much time looking things up on the internet.  I took a chance by sending you a request and I got back what I expected.

So, yeah. That ended essentially the same as every debate I've ever tried to have with a conservative, save one (I got into a debate with a friend's aunt on the Ragebooks and I ended up losing my temper and descending into namecalling. It was totally my bad on that one.)

Why won't anyone argue with me? I mean seriously, I'm not that much of a research and logic god. I make mistakes, I fall into logical fallacies. While I doubt you're going to change your mind, if you can provide a decent argument backed by sources that are at least moderately unbiased, I'll happily concede your point.

And yet, I cannot find a conservative who'll friggin' debate.

Oh, yeah, the OP's significant other? They posted and said that while we both seemed to have posted valid arguments, he wasn't going to join the debate because it was moot: obviously, Obama is going to find some way around the term limits!

That Place I Live: Ethnocentrism, Nationalism, and You

Greetings again, from the dark and paranoid end of the internet I inhabit. My sister is hounding me to blog, so blog I shall. And that's "hound" in the good sense, twin. Like, friendly thwapping upside the head to get me motivated.

In other words, we're Irish.

Also, Ceiling Cat is on her side.

Moving on.

Normally, this is the part of the show where Facebook comes out and sings a silly song. However, in their infinite wisdom, the FB design team has added a lovely function to their algorithm that erases whatever I'm lookng at if I scroll. Buh. I swear, there are days I feel my paranoia is justified. Anywho.

I saw a photo on the Ragebooks of a typewritten thing. Predictably, it produced a rage boner, and equally predictably, it vanished as soon as I clicked on it.  I shall attempt to reproduce it from memory.

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of Ameria, and to the Republc for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Kids used to recite this in school every morning, but now we don't for fear of offending someone. Repost this is you're a real American!"

I'm pretty certain I lost verisimilitude with that last line. My memory is awful. But really, the gist of it was "We don't say the pledge anymore! That un-Merican! Rah!"

"Why are you beng so lackdaisical about your sources!" gasps Schmoe. "You must support your claims!"

Well, Schmoe, the answer is simple: I'm not here to have a conversation about that post in particular, but about the nationalistic sentiments that inspired it and any of the thousands of "Real America" posts I've seen in the last year alone.

Let's break it down, shall we? Nationalism, is in essence, "fuck yeah that place I live!" It tends to be a bit crazy, especially since nationalistic feelings are often ethnocentric in origin.

Now, normally, this is where I refer to my good friend Merriam-Webster for a definition of ethnocentrism. Apparently, however, if you access Merriam-Webster from any non-desktop platform, you can no longer opt to see the web version, and must instead be relegated to i.word.com. My professors would jump for joy and refer me to the OED for a definition of "ethnocentrism":

  Tending to view the world from the perspective of one's own culture, sometimes with an assumption of superiority; limited as regards knowledge and appreciation of other cultures and communities. Also in neutral sense: aware of membership of an ethnic group, community, or culture.

Well, that's a far sight less useful than I'm used to working with. I mean, honestly, what's the point of a definition I can argue with using only the terms set forth within the definition as definitive? Oy.

Long story short, kiddies, and you can go back to Merriam-Webster on your own, ethnocentrism is commonly used to refer to either the idea that one's own culture is inherently superior, or the act, conscious or unconscious, of judging other cultures by the standards and mores of one's own culture.

Anywho. Synopsis at this point: "Real America(n)" posts express nationalistic sentiments that are often based on ethnocentrism. And yes, I find that offensive. Keep up.

Within a "Real America(n)" post, there's a few inherent assumptions, based on the ideologies I've postulated to be at their core:

1. That there is a definitive, single version of American values, against which any contrasting system may be considered flawed.

2. That "real Americans" are a universally homogenous group in which each member is identical to all other members across all meaningful standards.

3. That dissent from the aforementioned assumptions automatically makes a dissenting individual unAmerican.

3a. That by dissenting, and therefore being unAmerican, one's opinions are less valid.

3b. That a dissenter is unAmerican makes them suspect, and therefore their opinions are inherently destructive to assumptions 1 and 2. 

Starting to get a feel for why I dislike this shite so much?

Kicking these doors in one at a time:

1. That there is a definitive, single version of American values, against which any contrasting system may be considered flawed.

When was the last time you opened your door? Or turned on the news? No, not Fox, the news? If we had a single values system, none of that crazy arguing would be going on. We'd at least be headed in a single direction (even if it was toward our own destruction, it'd be a clear direction.) And politicians would spontaneously combust because they wouldn't be able to artificially divide individuals for their own gain.

Take, for example, my sister. Yes, you, twin. My sister's Ragebook feed is a constant stream of feminism.

Shuddup and siddown, I'm not done yet.

Constant stream of feminism, right. And what rapidly becomes clear when you're plugged into a datastream like that is that the world has a lot of problems. See, feminism (because apparently I'm having a definitive day) is about equality and respect for everyone. Which means that as soon as someone is being marginalized or disrespected, my sister has links, video, pictures, and thoughtful commentary about why that act of marginalization or disrespect is a load of Satan's babyjuice and the parties involved in perpetrating said act should be ashamed of themselves.

Point. I has one.

There cannot be a single "American" view of the world, precisely for the reasons my sister highlights over and over in her posts. We marginalize: half the species, anyone whose skin color is darker than Snooki's, anyone who believes in deity (or doesn't) differently than we do, anyone that has sex in a way that makes us twitch, anyone that presents differently in any way. And yes, I'm using the inclusive because I'm friggin' human and to be human is to be biased. As such, all of us have been marginalistic shitholes at some point.

First person to say "everybody does it makes it ok" gets a slap that starts in orbit and ends in the smoking, cratered rubble that will be memorialized as "the spot where the idiot was standing when the wrath of the Mad Blogger descended."

Anyway. By marginalizing all the views that don't match our own, we create a false majority. A majority that only exists because "none of those other people matter."

Since we'd like not to be marginalizing shitholes, once we take into account that there are other people we have to conclude that any "one true way" is simply an illusion.

2. That "real Americans" are a universally homogenous group in which each member is identical to all other members across all meaningful standards.

Now some of you are going, "well, gee, Uncle Jeremy, you rambled so much on the last point, didn't you pretty much answer this one?"

(Source.)

The first point assumes that there is one true way. While that's dumb, at least it has the value of being inclusive: you too can be a Real American if only you follow the One True Way.

The second point says that only Real Americans can be Real Americans. Let's clarify a bit of terminology to drive this one home.

Universally homogenous -

Completely the same without exception.

Meaningful standards -

Any measure of an individual which may potentially distinguish them from any other individual.

Got there yet? This assumption postulates that by claiming to be a "Real American" one automatically extends "realness" to all others who share one's race, religion, social class, values, and pickametric, while excluding anyone who doesn't share those qualities or support them as the true definition of "realness."

Basically, you can only be a "Real American" if you're just like me.

3. That dissent from the aforementioned assumptions automatically makes a dissenting individual less American.

3a. That by dissenting, and therefore being unAmerican, ones opinions are less valid.

3b. That a dissenter is unAmerican makes them suspect, and therefore their opinions are inherently destructive to assumptions 1 and 2. 

And there's the turn. The distinction drawn isn't between Real Americans and Americans, but between Real Americans and UnAmericans. You don't just get clocked out of the "Real Americans" club by holding an opinion that differs from that of a Real American, you become the enemy. 

You don't even have to actively disagree. Any opinion that is different from one held by the arbiter of American-ness isn't worthy of consideration. In any cases of conflict between your opinions and the opinions held by the Real American, your opinion is construed as undermining American-ness, and therefore simply by thinking differently, you are an active threat to the True American Way.

Ladiiiiiiiies and Gennnnntleeemeeeeeen (aaaannnnnd ooooottthheeeers aaaaaasss aaaaplicable) are you ready to RUMBLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-

Cough. Sorry, that got away from me a bit. The point is, by using nationalism as a platform for ethnocentrism, a fulcrum is created by which people can be divided simply by throwing the words "Real Americans are x" into a group of people.

Think about the old Greek tale of Eris and the golden apple. Eris got snubbed, and decided (as She do) to fix it by getting everyone involved to murder each other. Yeah, we do not provoke the goddess of Chaos and go home for tea and crumpets.

So She grabbed a golden apple and wrote "to the fairest" on it. Then She cracked open the door at the party She had explicitly been excluded from and chucked that apple of fuckery into the group of goddesses who'd snubbed Her. Then She went home for for tea and crumpets as the godesses threw murderbolts at each other while yelling about how each of them was the fairest.

That's what a "Real American" post is all about. Being the prettiest bigot at the ball.

(Source.)
It's funny because bigotry is ugly! Ha!

At the end of the day, I am wary of anything that asks me to declare my allegiance to a nameless, formless group by taking action, even if the action is as innocuous as sharing a Ragebook post. But when that declaration of allegiance comes at the cost of supporting blind ethnocentric nationalism, I offer to the idiot demanding my support through the application of moralistic arm-twisting a slap like unto the power of the Lovecraftian Old Ones. 

Namely, my slap will drive you insane before devouring your body and condemning your soul to a twisted eternity consisting only of my slap.

(Source.)
FLEE BEFORE THE POWER OF SLAPTHULLU!

Open Letter to No One in Particular

Hello, kiddies. I have risen from the grave to write this blog because of Facebook (who really should change their name to Rageboner. I mean really, no other social media site could get me blogging again.) I saw a post, prepared to repost it, and after almost half an hour of writing the comment, source checking, and re-writing, realized I was blogging whether I liked it or not.

Damn it, Facebook.

So, into the meat of things: now and again, I'll be talking to someone and it will come up in the course of conversation that I was raised Catholic and am no longer Catholic. No really, this happened almost a dozen times last year.

Asked why I am no longer Catholic, I will generally say something along the lines of "I don't agree with their doctrines, and I'm not fond of the actions and positions of their leaders, in particular towards homosexuals."

This is the point in the conversation where Pope Francis comes up. 

This guy. (Source.)

And on finding out that I'm not particularly fond of this Pope, I am inevitably told that I'm projecting my negative views of Catholicism onto Pope Francis due to my bad experiences growing up. I am told that he keeps saying wondrous liberal things about a new direction for the church.

I have said it before, and I'll say it, once again, with feeling: Francis is a conservative pope. What he said is that he wants the church to stop being so publicly focused on the issues that have caused them problems in the past. Not that he wants to change the Church.

For your viewing pleasure, a fun instance of "no srsly u guys, I'm not imagining things."

"Francis strongly criticizes gender theory, comparing it to nuclear arms."

Jeopardy kitten will wait while you read.

I can hear people screaming "Bias!" from all the way across the internet, so let me point out: this is where the story broke. And it's a Catholic news site.

Let's break this down, shall we? And because this is a journalistic article (yay, inverted pyramid!) we'll start at the bottom of the article and work our way up.

Working backwards, the first thing we discover is that the Pope would like not to be refered to as Marxist, and futher would like you to study Marxism before you use it as a slur. I have not read the original piece that he makes this comment in response to, nor have I read the comments he made that caused some idiot to stand up and shout "Marxist"-

What's that, Strawman Schmoe? No, I stand by the "idiot" bit. If you want to use "Marxist" as a serious description of someone's economic policies, you must be a college professor of economics, philosophy, or (surprised me too) English. Having passed those criteria, you must also be sure that the person you're calling a Marxist doesn't happen to have a non-Marxist reason for suggesting wealth sharing. Such as, I don't know, being the freaking Pope.

At any rate. His comments here, however, lead me to believe that he's more saying, "We make more money all the time, but the poor are still poor. Why is that, you guys?" But I dont know that for sure.

However, as it leads on upward, it does seem fairly clear that his theme is "help the poor" and "the global economy makes lots of money, but also more poor people."

Good stuff, very Catholic, nice sentiments. I happen to agree that trickle down economics is a shitty way of running things. While I'm not fond of government, I think this is the sort of thing regulation really should be enacted to take care of. Because damned if an economy that spawns multibillionaires through outsourcing wages, downsizing workers rather than fixing systemic problems, legal tax evasion, and a refusal to pay living wages to the vast majority of workers is going to do jack about fixing itself.

Sadly, our government is too busy trying to destroy a successful president and dictate morals to actually help anyone. But I digress. So far, this is the Pope everyone knows and raves about.

Moving on up, environmentalism! Here's a quote:

"Creation is a gift that God has given to man to keep custody over it, to cultivate it, to use if for sustenance and to give it to future generations," the pope says. 

"The vocation to guard is human before Christian, it regards all: It is the custody of creation -- its beauty -- it is to have respect for all the creatures of God and for the environment in which we live."

That seems fairly straightforward, very nice. Self-explanatory, based on good Catholic doctrine about the natural order, and man's duty as caretaker and ruler of creation. Not particularly progressive, but still very much the Pope Francis of myth and lore.

Now, having been a good little English major and presented my opponent's counter-arguments first, let's hit the other half of the article. The top half, to be blunt.

Gender theory and genetics are comparable to nuclear weapons. Says Pope Francis.

Sigh.

No, really, go read it. It's oodles of fun.

I'll get back to gender theory in a moment because Pope Progressive says some incredibly unkind things about it, but genetics only gets a passing mention.

And why? Because that's dumb. "Genetic manipulation," as Francis refers to it specifically, so I'll not harp about the function of DNA testing in law enforcement. Instead, here's an article from the National Institute of Health about your friend and mine, gene therapy.

Notice the bit about curing cancer? Or "certain viruses" (hint: HIV is one of them)? Or congenital hereditary defects? That's what gene manipulation is freaking for. Also note that it is being tested primarily for diseases that cannot be cured through conventional means. Genetic manipulation has the potential to save lives, possibly end diseases that kill millions, bring quality of life to sufferers of things like cystic fibrosis and multiple sclerosis if not cure them outright.

So obviously, it's a big ol' box of nuclear destruction. Right? Who's with me?

In all fairness, it must be noted that Il Papa may be referring to "designer babies," the idea that you could construct your child to your personal specifications in utero by manipulating their genetic code. That is a horrible idea, and I hope it never gets traction beyond it's use to identify and eliminate life threatening congenital conditions.

But even if that is the case, just saying "genetic manipulation" and leaving it at that is...well, dumb. You're the Pope. Condemning potential cures for billions because some fuckwad can pervert a perfectly good tool would be like the US President condemning all opiate painkillers as evil because some people abuse them. It has a place, and a use, and shouting it down is really quite dumb.

Anywho. Gender theory. Hooboy.

Guys? Pope Francis does not like modern gender theory. He really doesn't.

And just in case anyone wants to tell me I'm an idiot, the author of the article goes out of his way to clarify what sort of "gender theory" the pope is talking about:

"Gender theory is a broad term for an academic school of thought that considers how people learn to identify themselves sexually and how they may become typed into certain roles based on societal expectations."

And how does the pope feel about this? Well:

But he then says that every historical period has "Herods" that "destroy, that plot designs of death, that disfigure the face of man and woman, destroying creation."

"Let's think of the nuclear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings," he continues. "Let's think also of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of the gender theory, that does not recognize the order of creation."

"With this attitude, man commits a new sin, that against God the Creator," the pope says. "The true custody of creation does not have anything to do with the ideologies that consider man like an accident, like a problem to eliminate."

Yeah...those bold bits are my own emphasis to call attention to the salient points. Gender theory, in the pope's opinion, encourages a violation of the natural order and disfigures the face of man and woman. Also, depending on how those commas were meant to fall out, possibly destroy creation. 

Now, where most sensationalist articles go at this point...actually, in all fairness, the only place sensationalist articles go at this point, is that Pope Francis hates trans people. And given a basic interpretation of the thing, yeah, I can see that. I will point out that he reportedly met with, hugged, and said nice things to a transman. 

But, as those articles came out in January, and the Vatican is not confirming anything re: saying nice things to a transman, and the "Francis does not like gender theory" article came out almost a month later, I'm not going to say it isn't at least possible that Francis was including transpeople in his statement about gender theory as a whole. 

Where I'm going to go with this is over here: 

Gender theory helps to facilitate the breakdown of arbitrary barriers created by and surrounding the concept, both practical and theoretical, of gender. Catholic doctrine, and the Catholic Chrch as a body, has been in the business of creating such barriers for quite a hile now. For instance, Catholic doctrine is fairly firm on the point that men should be in charge of things. It also has some firm things to say about non-binary gender roles (no such animal), the roles of men and women in society (men are the default heads of things, women should follow and support them), and the responsibility of women both to maintain their sexual purity (cause wimmins is for baby makin') and as being responsible for the sexual purity of men (cause mens just can't hep theyselves when wimmins show skin). 

In other words, and I'm going to write a thing that will have my sister dancing, the Church is a patriarchal structure that acts in multiple ways as the priviliged group within a broader societal kyriarchy. And gender theory undermines one of the hallmark priviliges of the Church, to define "natural order" through dictating the meaning of gender. 

So, essentially, Francis' stated dislike of gender theory can more readily taken as a condemnation of the way gender theory personalizes one's expression of gender, allows for the deconstruction of classical patriarchal control, and espouses the belief that an individual is the sole arbiter of his or her body regardless of societal programming on the use of ones body vis a vis gender roles and expression.

But hey, that's my guess as to why he Does Not Like That. 

Am I overreacting? Reading too much into this? Projecting my bad experiences with Catholicism onto an innocent bystander who ony wants peace and love for everyone? Have some more Pope Progressive!

Francis' remarks on gender theory in the book follow similar remarks he made in a press conference on the papal plane in January in which he criticized what he called "ideological colonization" of less developed countries by those with more resources.

Recounting the story of a public education minister he knew who was offered money to construct new schools for the poor, Francis said to receive the money, the minister had to agree to use a course book with students that taught gender theory.

"This is the ideological colonization," the pope said. "It colonizes the people with an idea that changes, or wants to change, a mentality or a structure."

"It is not new, this," he continued. "The same was done by the dictators of the last century. They came with their own doctrine -- think of the Balilla [youth groups of Fascist Italy], think of the Hitler Youth."

Bluntly put, no. Pope Progressive invoked Godwin's Law to describe the propgation of gender theory. When describing "ideological colonization" -- you know, the sort of evangelism the Catholic Church practiced for hundreds of years -- Pope Progressive conflates gender theory with Nazism and facism. 

So. Ladies, gentlemen, and others as applicable: I give you, Pope Francis. A pope, as I frigging said many times, who is conservative. Now stop telling me what a lovely liberal he is, and how he's bringing a culture of love and change to the Church, and pay attention to the man behind the curtain for the love of gods.