I am just going to get a few things off my chest. There are some things in the immediate present that are bothering me, and then there's a pet peeve of mine that has always been banging around in my head but I've never taken the time to put it into words. Until now. And all three are related, as you'll see. It all relates to the fact that I am a moderate. If you absolutely had to find my precise place on the left-right political scale, I suppose I'd be a teeny bit to the left of the center. After all, being at least somewhat liberal is almost a requirement of being a creative person, as you are creating something new, something that wasn't there before, and usually those are accompanied with new ideas meant to make the world a slightly different place after you've left it. Extreme righties will look at my first point and call me a raving anti-Bush liberal. Extreme lefties could probably take my second point and call me a right-wing racist hate mongerer. (While I did not vote for Bush, the former is not exactly true and the latter would not be true at all). But do with them what you will:
- So gas prices are getting insane. I don't know how it is over in Europe or the UK, but they're pretty bad over here in the United States. People are shouting about President Bush doing something about it? What can he really do, though? Ask his Saudi friends very nicely to please pump more crude? Well Bush didn't do that. Instead, he signed a bill into law, an "energy" bill, on Tuesday, August 9, 2005 aimed at promoting a quest for cleaner, alternative energy and less dependence on foreign oil. While I think that tax break on buying hybrid cars sounds nice (it will supposedly help you save up to $3,500 - yeah, we'll see), the major part of the bill is not going to do jack shit, not only not in the short term (which proponents of the bill had admitted) but it's not going to do any more good than pissing on a five-alarm fire in the long run either! What is chapping my ass is the billions of dollars in tax credits he's giving to energy companies! With fuel prices what they are now, with the profits they're making now, they are just raking in the dough! They can practically swim in all the money they're making now like a certain Scrooge McDuck used to do on Duck Tales. So the solution is to give them even more money?! Oh yeah, supposedly they're supposed to spend it on research and development. Yeah, right! It's more likely that the corporate heads will use it to buy new boats or small islands in the Pacific. This is just another example of Bush' policy to give gifts to his corporate buddies, him and Cheney. Some would look at what I just said and call me a left wing conspiracy theorist. I think it's just common sense! Where there's smoke there's fire. Just look at it without rose-colored glasses, you don't even have to be cynical! So, anyway, thanks, Bush! This new bill is reeaaally going help me out at the pump and with the vulgar gas bills I'm going to get come this winter. Just extend that vacation you're on, OK, maybe another month, you're doing nothing anyway. Fuck you, Mr. Bush, fuck you very much for that awesome energy bill!
- Locally, in the St. Louis area, the Parkway School District is located in an afluent sector. Let's go ahead and call a spade a spade, a mostly white area. Blacks are bussed to the school from less affluent areas, but bussing isn't the issue I'm going to talk about. A few years ago there was a big hoobob about a ten-year-old white boy calling an eight-year-old black girl a "nigger" on the bus. The boy was disciplined but lots of folks wanted a stiffer punishment. To make a long story short, with that event being the genesis, a new anti-harassment policy was just adopted in the Parkway district to impart stiff penalties on anybody who harasses anybody in a "socio-economic" context. (Harassment for sexual orientation was also thrown in there but as an afterthought). It is meant to curtail students calling other students "niggers" and the like. Which is all well and good. I never use the term, I despise it and everything it stands for. However, the clever usage of the term "socio-economic" in the policy basically means that it is only the white kids that cannot do the harassing while the blacks or other minorities I suppose get a free pass, because the black students in the district are largely considered to be of a lower socio-economic class than the whites. This was discussed on a local morning radio talk show and emails sent in response to this from people in the district claiming that a lot of fights are caused by the blacks (yes I question the validity of that claim, too, but I believe there's at least a grain of truth in it). And it's another quagmire altogether that the black students often call themselves by that word. Do you suspend them, too? My main point, though, is this: Why is it that time and time again, blacks are given a free pass, with few exceptions, to do or say whatever they want about whites whereas whites have to be extremely careful as to what they say about blacks? And why when they are anti white it's called "reverse racism" WHEN IT IS RACISM PERIOD, and why when any white person has the balls to bring this issue up (like I am now) WE ARE OFTEN LABELED A RACIST?! Is it because supposedly white people are much richer (I had to use a credit card earlier this week to pay for gas because there wasn't enough in my checking account; see the first bullet)? Is it because of slavery? Do we still have to apologize when it's been over 150 years since we ended it? Do we have to for another 150? Will my great-great grandchildren finally be forgiven? Sorry, I'd better stop, I could rant on for another four pages, but I think you get my point by now.
- As I said above, I am a moderate. I feel that that allows me the luxury of thinking for myself...by not automatically having a policy of completely discounting any opinion that is "left" or "right" just because they are so, without thinking. While I realize a big part of it is for ratings, conservative talk show hosts piss me off by automatically condemning any viewpoint they deem as liberal, or all liberals themselves. You might as well put robots in programmed to do that. I wish more people could approach issues with an open mind, why are so many people so myopic? And this goes for radical liberals, too. Why do the conservatives always have to be anti-environment and the liberals are always pro spotted owl? Why do conservatives never ever find absolutely nothing wrong with the War in Iraq or Bush's policies on it and the liberals seeing absolutely nothing good about it? Why do the conservatives always ad naseum go on and on about the liberal media, everything that anybody reports (except Fox News) is wrong or skewed because they are a bunch of raving liberals? Why are these conservative talk show hosts always portraying any Democratic Senator or Representative as stupid, or the liberal people in the media seeing any Republican as potentially racist or a hate mongerer? Why are conservatives always so pro religion and anti-evolution and liberals so venmous against religion? THINK FOR YOURSEVLES, PEOPLE, don't just think what other people in your party expect you to think! Gosh!!.
Serenity now!