Monday, February 1, 2016

The Free Speech Paradox

Now I could go all no-conservative here & point out some interesting facts on hate crimes.

I could bring up how there was a little white boy that had his throat slit in his great-grandparent's front yard by a Black man yelling racial slurs, who it was later found to have an apartment filled with hate paraphernalia.  And I could bring up that it wasn't considered a Hate Crime because the victim was White.

And I could bring up the woman that was brutally raped as a revenge for slavery....but again, she was white & because of that...yeah...it's not a hate crime.

I could also point out that 80% of violence is of intraracial & not interracial. And then I could point out that of the 20% that is interracial the perpetrator is generally of a race that prosecutes are not apt to stick the hate crime label on.

But by now I already have you frothing over.  If you are a liberal, just bringing up things like that is probably boiling your blood & you might even be filled with violent thoughts of righteous rage & the pain you are going to inflict on my bigoted ass.

BUT...before you do...did I say anything that was really racist?

Have I actually said anything that is racist against a single group?

Have I stereotyped a single soul?

Because, you know, I'm Irish Catholic.  I know all about racist stereotypes.

Seriously:





Fine, maybe I have said a few racist things in reporting that sliver of news.

I'll take responsibility for all of that.

How about this little fact:

Did you know that Latino's are White?  Or, specifically they are Caucasian?  This is not bull shit at all.  In most law enforcement communities across America there are only two races, White and Black.

Latinos are White.
Asians are White.
Native Americans are White.

What that means is that, if you kill a Latino, chances are, even if it's racially motivated, it won't be a hate crime.  You really have to play a few political games to make a Latino not White enough to get charged with a hate crime for killing him or her for racial reasons.

It also plays a bit into Affirmative Action as well.  Even though Asians and Latinos are covered under Affirmative Action laws, it's sort of a good deal harder for them to reap the benefits of such laws.  I mean, racists call it "Affirmative Blacktion" for a reason.  If you aren't an African American, it doesn't really help you all that much.

And let's be honest, Latino's need help.  We don't exactly have a level playingfield...now to be fair, we never did, but today it's more weighted than ever before & as the newest mass of immigrants to the United States, it's in our best interest to give them the same help that we give to other minority populations.

But we don't...And pointing that out is, well, sort of racist isn't it?    What I'm trying to say is that Latino's deserve the same help as African Americans.

But that is racist, because it implies that African Americans have it easier than Latinos.

And of course we are ignoring the cast that Asian-Americans have to have a near-perfect SAT score of 1550 to get into most ivy league colleges because of Affirmative Action, even higher than non-legacy White students who need a 1410 compared to the 1100 for African Americans.

But again, pointing that out is, well, racist, isn't it?

Believe me, I know, I'm Irish, I am well aware of racism:


Trust me, I know all about racism.  I'm Irish, I am from the ONE group of people in America that it is still perfectly safe to say racist things about & to stereotype in all forms of media.





Fucking Lucky Charms, try pulling that with any OTHER group & you're going to get your ass sued off.  Seriously, you can't even have a football team called the "Braves."

But now I am losing you.  I mean, I'm a straight White Irish-American Christian Male...I shouldn't complain at all about racism, even if it stares me in the face every time I walk down the cereal aisle.

We were talking about hate speech, we were talking about racism & you can say whatever you want about me.  I honestly don't care...but I did capitalize the "W" in "White."

You really aren't supposed to do that.  I mean, you are racist if you do NOT capitalize the "b" in "Black" but that doesn't mean that you are allowed to also capitalize the "W" in "White" when referring to race.  You do that & you are a racist.

I also have yet to apologize for white privilege.   And I'm not going to.  I'm also going to point out that my family didn't come over here until the Civil War & then they were instantly conscripted into the Union Army so, you know, I'm also not going to apologize for my family owning your family because that NEVER happened.

And not doing that is TOTALLY racist.  Someone should shut me up.  There is nothing funny about racism.


OK, so that was racist & it was still pretty funny.  But only because it was racist against the right people.  Make that joke about any other people and you are being inexcusably racist.

I totally know what you are thinking, I'm a fucking racist.

Now that I pissed you good liberals off it is time to change gears.






You can't put this on the air any longer.  The Dukes of Hazzard has been successfully boycotted in re-run form.  It's offensive to African-Americans.  Not because the show dealt with race at all, it didn't, & it also didn't portray any African-Americans in a negative manner.

In fact, the only real people it did portray negatively was, well, an old rich white man.




Unfortunately, however, the show needed to be taken off the air, because despite the fact it never once said anything remotely racist or endorsed racism in any way, shape, or form, it had a confederate flag on the car & that is deeply offending to certain segments of our community.



It is deeply offensive to some people.

And it offends the wrong people.

And when it offends the wrong people, when it stereo-types a certain group, then it is yanked off the air and shut down with thunderous applause...

...from the LEFT.

That's right, if it is at all offensive to groups protected by the Left than it is censored.

Censored.
Censored.
Censored.
Censored.
Censored.

And that is sort of the point of this post.  All that other crap, it was just, well, it was just to evoke that one emotion.  The one that is dominating the left at the moment.  It was intended to cause the liberal outcry of "shut him up!"

And if you think about it, none of it was really that bad.  I mean, it was pretty fucking far from Donald Trump/Strom Thurmond bad.  But that doesn't matter, not at all.  It was "racist" enough to piss off more than a few of you.

And I'm talking about the people that are advocating ripping down historical monuments because they are vaguely offensive.

It's not just Stone Mountain.  There are actual calls to tear down historically preserved plantations because the history of slavery is offensive.

History is offending people because it was racist and horrible & despite this common attitude the Jews are still saying...





Because, you know, as totally offensive as the holocaust was, they see the value of preserving that history if for no other reason than assuring the world that it won't happen again.




OK, fine, CLEARLY the whole remembering history thing isn't a 100% guaranteed effect means of prevention.  I mean, genocide is still happening...

But now it is happening with a slogan:




And sure, Israel might be having a little genocide of its own but, well, even then, now we have a slogan, & that slogan alone means that people are informed.

INFORMED.

That's sort of a big word isn't it;  "Informed."  There are definite connotations behind that.  That totally means that people have more ability to think about the topic, more information to guide their awareness, & that might mean that they are more likely to look that Fascist officer in the eye when he tells them to shoot & say "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me."

I mean, you start advocating that we silence and censor everything that is mildly offensive & suddenly that word INFORMED that is so important when it comes to awareness & decision making becomes this:

A blank fucking slate.

But it does get worse than that.


That video you see, it's called "Blurred Lines"


There was an incident behind it.  It was a horrible act of censorship.

You see there was a college campus & there was a club near that campus that catered to the students, and there was a DJ at that club, & there was a student that went to that club to hear that DJ play, & that DJ played the above song.

And that song created rape.

Wait...What?

Now I know you are a rational fucking human being & as one you have certain views about rape.  You understand that there are certain things that cause rape & they break down exactly like this:





But the thing is that "Offensive music" & I Spit on Your Grave & I Spit on Your Grave 2 & movies like that & The Bloodhound Gang & video games & all men & panties by Victoria's Secrete with suggestive sayings on them & just this fucking culture of rape that makes men want to just rape, rape...RAPE!!!!

Well none of that is on that list.

It's not on that list because as a rational fucking human being, you understand that rapists are the one and ONLY cause for rape.

You're intelligent, you aren't going to look at a woman & claim that she caused a man to rape her by wearing revealing clothes...the type of clothes that, as a horny male, I totally encourage all women to wear, strictly for my own perverted enjoyment

Of course you're not, if you blamed the clothes or the woman on the fact that she was raped you would be taking the blame away from the rapist.

You understand that it doesn't what the woman wore, what she said, if she drank, what community she was in, the fault likes entirely on the small-dicked sunovabitch that raped her.

Well, that is unless you find a song offensive...& if you are liberal...well, it's getting to the point that we are blaming a "rape culture" rather than a rapist...

...but we are still blaming the rapist...but...

Enter FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture that, a few years back, hijacked Victoria Secret's Pink line:




Now we all know, unfortunately, that women save their best undies for the nights they know they are going to get laid...at least we are aware of that unfortunate fact if we've ever actually lived with a woman before.

For you bachelor men, sorry, I didn't give you the spoiler alert.

At any rate, the simple fact is that Victoria's Secret released a line under their famous Pink label that were mean as those panties...the ones women ONLY wear when they know they are going to get laid...the ones that men think they wear all the time & face the epic disappointment when they move in with their girlfriends & find the cold hard truth...gramma panties everywhere!!!!!

Totally kills the fantasy.

FORCED didn't like them, they thought they were too provocative...too sexy...too much a symbol of our rape culture for their own good & replaced them with anti-rape panties.

Because when you roll her jeans off & see "No Means No" it is oh so sexy.

The bottom line is, provocative & sexy is once again offensive & it all needs to stop...otherwise women are going to get raped because if they own anything sexy they are taking part of our culture of rape & we all know that it's the culture that rapes women & not rapists.

So remember, don't blame the woman for being raped, because that is totally not cool & absolutely backwards & misogynistic & ignorant...but don't don't blame the rapist either because it's culture's fault.

WHAT???

Rapists aren't evil people that choose to do evil things...they are good people that are forced to force themselves on people by culture.

SERIOUSLY??????

Of course not.  If you are a rational human being you know that the ONE & ONLY CAUSE OF RAPE IS THE RAPIST.

But now it's hip to be a little crybaby & try to silence everything that is mildly offensive so songs like Blurred Lines & panties by Victoria's Secret need to be destroyed because they are mildly offensive to certain people with certain sensibilities & thus make places unsafe because they force men to rape women & I'm trying to make sense of it...& I can't.

The bottom line they are being, to be blunt, whiny little bitches.  They are trying to silence & censor by playing the "offended card."

They are the same people that took Dukes of Hazzard off the air because it was offensive.  They are doing what we call Soft Censorship.




Victoria's Secret, by they way, & the Secret of Nimh...same secret....to quote Psych.

Even more recently, in a few University Campuses in Northern Illinois there have been anti-Gay Protests.

BUT WITH A TWIST.

The Gay community is "homophobic" for not including the trans community in their right to wed.  That lack of inclusion was a clear representation that the homosexual community was, in fact, homophobic.

When I was in college it was called the GLBTA & the A stood for Alliance.  As in they were all allies.  As in they were all on the exact same side & a victory for one was a victory for all in the ongoing battle for equality.

Now it's the GLBTQ & the Trans community is taking over...but then, when I was in college there were still only really two genders...Male & Female & even if you were a transvestite you only related to one of those two & depending how it worked you called a he a "she" to be polite & hip.

Now there are a million new genders & no one identifies as the gender that they were born into & that is placing the hip new trans gender at odds with everyone & that included the homosexual community.

Because Gay men still identify as men & because of that they must be silenced for celebrating Gay marriage.  It makes them homophobic.

If Gay men didn't want to be homophobic they would identify as women & still date women, even though they dress like men, because they feel that they should really have been born a woman or, better yet, come up with a new gender all of their own that they can identify as & then that would mean that they weren't homophobic because they weren't identifying as the gender they were born into even though they already fancy that same gender.

It is all VERY confusing now.

But the bottom line is that Gay men still like men but identify as the masculine gender, which they were born into & that means that they are homophobic or at least transphobic & are now enemies to the GLBTQ because the whole "Alliance" thing was dropped the moment Gen-X got old.

So now Gay men & Gay women must be silence because they are offensive to the multitude of bandwagoners that are offended by people that still identify as the gender of their birth.

Yeah...makes total sense.

The point is, as ridiculous as it sounds, members of the GBLTQ are attacking members of the GLBTQ.

Soft censorship pople.

The bottom line is that the left is doing it too.  They aren't calling for HUAC, they aren't doing the right-wing Republican McCarthyism.  They aren't dragging people into congress & forcing them to name names & testify against friends & family.

They are, however, black listing people & places & programs & businesses just as horribly as the right has done in the past.

They are also forgetting the most important thing:

There are only one of two stances that you can have on free speech.  You either support it or you don't & if you support it you support it precisely for views that you disagree with.  Otherwise you don't support free speech.

That does NOT mean that you agree with hate speech.

That does NOT mean that you condone the speech you are defending.

That does NOT mean that you can't argue with the people that are making the offensive speech.

All it means is that you are doing the American thing & defending their right to say it.  That is all.  It's that simple.  They have as much of a right to speak as you do & you need to recognize it.

Because at the moment you have public opinion on your side...but that changes.

Today it's cool, Obama is in office, we are thinking of bigots as repugnant.  And it's cool to run with that & attempt to take it as far as you can.  It's cool to censor everything that is even remotely associated with bigotry.

But Trump could win too.  They could take that ball & keep it rolling.  The tastes could change & the next thing you know there will be calls to rip down monuments to Martin Luther King Jr.  To rename the streets named after Malcolm X.

You need to realize that, like myself, you are not wise enough to determine what speech should be free & what should not.  You need to realize that is offensive changes & it isn't always right.  You need to realize that no one should have the power to censor anyone else.

That is a dangerous power give to people.  It's a power that means the difference between freedom & equality & totalitarianism.

The right to free speech was the 1st Amendment for a reason.  Protect it.  Even if you are protecting what offends you.

So you know, Irish the fuck up.

Take all the stereotyping & the racist crap with a grain of salt.  Stop being so offended by everything that you feel the need to silence it all.

That's not freedom, it's fascism & what's worse it's boring.

You have right to be offended...just as long as you understand that everyone has the right to be offensive.

I'll leave you with this:

















Saturday, September 5, 2015

Astrology



Astrology.  Wow, didn't think I would be making a post about this.  But, I met this girl who mentioned it all the time.  I mean, ALL the time, &, well, you know how that goes.  It gets you wondering.


She said I was a Virgo, & that I can agree with even though I never really gave astrology even lip service.  I mean, I'm sort of a skeptic on most things.


Sure, I believe that Allen Dulles had JFK killed, but he was the boogie man anyway & besides, the House Select Committee on Assassinations ruled that Kennedy died as a result of a conspiracy, Jim Garrison seemed to make fairly good points, & unless Magneto shot from the book depository that whole "Magic Bullet" theory sounds like, well, magic.


I never really believed in magic.  Slight of hand & illusions I totally believe in, but not magic.

That's really about it.  I mean, yeah, I believe in extraterrestrial life, but that's me just playing the odds.  There's a lot of shit out there & to gamble against it seems like I'd be just throwing my money away...long after I'm dead.


The long after I'm dead is sort of important to.  My belief in Little Green Men only goes so far.  Area 51?  Yeah, I believe that it is a secret military base, but that's about it.  Do I believe in the Area 51 Roswell Aliens?  Of course not.  But that's the playing the odds as well.


The 9-11 Conspiracy?  Not a chance.  What you are asking me there is to believe that the thousands of people that had to be involved to pull it off didn't leak a Goddamned thing to the press, to Wikileaks, to the American public.


Sorry, I'm not about to believe that.  Unless E. Howard Hunt comes out on his death bed & says he was one of the thousands of hobos that wired one of the twin towers with explosives without anyone noticing I'm going to continue to play the Bull Shit card on that one.


This is Hunt by the way.



And this is a book he wrote about spies, neat, huh?




I'm thinking that he was really this guy:


You know, the Cigarette Smoking Man, the Cancer Man.

I'm not a Cancer.

I'm a Virgo.


My Zodiac sign is a Virgo & this girl I met said I was a "total Virgo."

I never believed that crap.  But she said that I was a Virgo because I was neat, analytical, & skeptical.  We all know I'm not any of those things. 

My mother would NEVER call me neat...but then she sort of wanted her house to be like a museum & even measured the inches of trinkets she put on the mantel to make sure they were all even.  She wanted the beds made with a military tuck & wanted the lines on the carpet from the vacuum cleaner to be straight as an arrow.

Mom would NEVER call me neat...normal people might.  At least if they saw where I lived.  If they saw the inside of my car on the other hand....

Skeptical?  OK, maybe there is a point there.  I might be a little skeptical & a little analytical, a little over-analytical.

I might be over-analytical enough to have met a woman that constantly referenced Astrology & felt the need to take the time to read about it & over-analyze it.

But hey, that's what this blog is all about, right?  I mean you are reading it because I over-analyze history, with a skeptical eye, try to bring it back to the present, or just rip the shit out of it & turn it into a joke.

Not that many people today understand the concept of "Joke."

Especially when it's political.

And we have Laura to thank for that, you know, the woman that said "write a blog about history for people that don't like history."

The blog thing, not the joke thing.  Well, not the "I don't understand humor thing" &...fuck it...moving on.

So, what the fuck is astrology, what the fuck is the zodiac & why the fuck does it matter?


Well, it matters because I listened to Shantel & thought "you might have a point; that does seem to match my personality."  Unless she, you know, talked to my parents.

And, if you are like me, you think of Astrology as that little section of the news paper, well, if you are like me, you think of it as the little section on The Onion & really not much more...until now.




So, you know, let's learn some shit!

What is astrology?  It's essentially divination, you know, that class that Harry Potter hated & no one took seriously despite the fact that the Professor was really sort of right most of the time.

Harry Potter really is a good place to start, because that shit was taken seriously in politics & Academia up to the Age of Enlightenment.


So you know, you could go to fucking Oxford & actually walk out with a degree in Astrology & people would legitimately take it seriously.

"Wait, you're an astrologist? You must be a learned man."

There was an actual market for it to.  There were jobs in the Astrology field.  Back in the day it was serious shit.  You could make a living off of Astrology, up until the 17th century & people would respect you.

It's not like, you know, education & political science is today.  It wasn't a major that people laughed at.  It wasn't a major you would NEVER find a job in.



"Wait, you have a masters in secondary education?    What are you going to do with that?  Go to a school?  Teach history to kids?  Good luck with that, idiot, you should have majored in something useful, like Astrology."

The Indians (dots not feathers), the Chinese, the Mayans, & yes, the Europeans all had their own take on Astrology & all took it deadly seriously.  Deadly seriously.  They took it business degree seriously, not education degree seriously.

It started in Mesopotamia, which looked exactly like this:


That is, unless you believe in Indian, Mayan, or Chinese Astrology, then it was still the meaning of celestial bodies but, you know, completely different.

If you were an Indian Astrologist you thought Babylonian astrology was utter bullshit.


But in any case, it goes back 25,000 years to the cavemen.  They actually painted that shit on walls.  They carved it into bones.  They kept track of the movements in the sky.



They aren't keeping track of the night sky in this image, they are just making a fire...but I figured you needed another picture.


But it wasn't consistent.  The cult of the Cave Bear thought that what the Flintstones were tracking in the night sky was absolutely meaningless.


And the Zodiacs were totally different too.




NO THEY WEREN'T, I'M A LIBERTARIAN AND I SAW ZEITGEIST & THAT SHIT IS TOTALLY 100% ACCURATE!  THEY ALL USED EXACTLY THE SAME SIGNS & THERE WERE ONLY ALWAYS 12!!!!!



1) Aries

2) Ford Taurus

3) Gemini
4) Cancer
5) Leo
6) Virgo
7) Libra
8) Scorpio (of Simpsons fame)
9) Sagittarius
10) Capricorn (The Mini-series)
11) Aquarius
12) Pisces
 
The thing is that, back in the day, back when Astrology was a class & a major offered at predominate educational institutes the world over, there were a fuck-ton more than just 12 signs. 

You could see a fuck-ton more stars then & it was only over the ages & with the dawn of the Enlightenment that the WESTERN Zodiac was limited to only 12 signs, each for the month of the year & published daily in news papers written to be vague so it could apply to everyone.

STOP!

Is it night time?  Walk outside & take a look at the night sky.

If you live where I am, in Chicago, you can see exactly three stars. 

If you live in the country you can see a few thousand more.

Goddamned Light Pollution!

If you are out in the middle of the ocean, in that sweet spot where the curve of the Earth sort of hides all the light, you can see billions.


BILLIONS.  
                 I counted.
                      Took me an entire week of nonstop counting.

Don't forget that the Milky Way was so bright that the ancient people of this world used to build their roads sort of along it so all the stars could light your path at night.

There were that many fucking visible stars before technology.

And you think that there were only 12 Zodiac signs?  Seriously?

The ones that survived the great purge of the Enlightenment are the ones with the best mythology behind them...in the West.

Leo the Lion, for instance, used to be a snake...& a Lion...depending on which Western Mythology you associated with & then the meanings were completely different as well.

In another hundred years, Leo will be a turtle & look exactly like this:



And, after they redefined the constellation boundaries in the 1930s, there became exactly 13 Zodiac signs, according to the modern science of Astrology, but we only name 12 still.

We totally ignore Ophiuchus...because no one can pronounce it.

Fuck you Ptolemy!  We don't want your weird Zodiac sign!  There currently aren't enough months in the year!

Because back in the day, when the Romans were teaching Astrology, December was the 10th month & about 3 months long with its own singular sign.

It's sort of hard to have 12 Zodiac signs, one for each month of the year when the whole 12 month thing is a recent development.

December sort of just meant "winter."  No, actually it meant "ten," but you get the point, the months weren't the same....

And now we live under the whims of a solar calendar & for a long time it was a lunar calendar & are you starting to see the point?

Am I a Virgo?  

Yes, I've been a Virgo since the  Julian & Gregorian Calendars.  Pretty much since 1582 because, sure, September was the 9th month of the Julian calendar, but there were 13 months then...Occasionally, & there were a lot more months with only 29 days &...

                            Mercedonius?

What the fuck is that?

If you are Hindu, sure, with the modern age their astrology shrunk down to 12 as well, but, then, they do this weird thing with the moon & planetary orbits to do the horoscopes in the daily papers & not just the stars & have odd names that are about 10,000 years-old or only 5,000-3,000 years-old depending on which historian you believe.

But, that Libertarian conspiracy theory bull shit movie was right, their 12 signs of the Zodiac are roughly the same as our 12 are...at least they have been since Alexander the Great.



Before that, well, we already talked about how Leo went from a snake to a lion & that's pretty impressive given that one is a reptile & the other is a mammal.  

Mammals have nipples. 

Reptiles might too, I'm not sure.

In Chinese astrology there is wood, fire, earth, metal, & water.

That sort of blows the shit out of the claim that all Astrology is the same & has something to do with Jesus & Isis & a vast inter-governmental conspiracy that goes all the way back to when the Death Star destroyed the Twin Towers when E. Howard Hunt was dressed like a bum.

Full circle...& you thought I was just ranting.  Yeah, I've watched that pseudo-documentary too.

In fact the Chinese also take into account the year you were born in their astrology.

I'm a goat.



When I was a kid my elementary school teacher said the Chinese thought I was a rat.

That really doesn't fit my personality.

BUT NOT A SNITCH!!!!!



I just like to hear Pacino yell...& Sam Jackson.  They are sort of the same actor aren't they, or at least we like them for the same reasons.

Nope, not a snitch.
I can hear something & take it to the grave...unless, you know, unless it's funny.  If it's funny, everyone is hearing that shit.

The Chinese Zodiac ranges from rat to pig & looks exactly like this:



Catholics & Muslims denied the whole astrology thing because they didn't believe that the will of God could be predicted in advance.

John Calvin, on the other hand, embraced it because his ass was certain that everything was per-determined & astrology was sort of the academic proof of that.  But then, he thought you were going to heaven if you were rich because wealth meant that God favored you in the present & that meant that you could do any horrible shit you wanted to, & still go to heaven, because God already determined that he would let you in & made you act like an asshole.

If you were poor you were fucked.

So Astrology sort of had a huge come back when he took off & that's why it's alive again.

Only, by then, well, the calendar changed & we only had 12 to work with.

Even then, however, it was inconsistent.  It is still inconsistent.  Astrologers don't agree with how their science works & one culture still is totally different than the other.  

Chinese, Mayan, Hindu, Western?

Well, we can fuck the Mayans, the Christians sort of destroyed their astronomical Astrological writings & we're still here after the world ended in 2012 aren't we?  Yeah, that's what happens when you judge evidence from only half the text.

So what's the point?

There is no point this time.  

If you want to take something away from all of this it's read the Onion's horoscopes.  Trust in the Onion.  Their Horoscope is ALWAYS 100% accurate,  or, at least, it's as accurate as all the others.  Or maybe as scientific as all the others.

I'll leave you with this: