I felt sick and angry to hear about a congresswoman getting gunned down in Arizona, which, with its combination of the worst elements of the conservative and liberal spectrum (thanks a lot rich boomers!), isn't shocking given the particularly nasty strain of politics going down there.
And don't tell me this is loaded imagery, because it damn well is. I don't blame Sarah Palin for this incident any more than I blame Marilyn Manson for Columbine, but for all the complaining about being stereotyped by clinging to guns and religion, this does nothing but perpetuate.
I'm almost relieved that the guy was more nihilistic than crazy and religious but that doesn't change the fact that people are dead. I'm glad that the condemnation of this has been universal on all sides because trivializing ignorant comments don't do any good for anyone.
I've been told by people who are more conservative than myself that the reason that I don't like Sarah Palin is because it's not cool too, and because "the media" is mean to her but that couldn't be further from the truth. She feeds just as much off the media as it feeds off her.
I see a rank hypocrisy, political incompetence, a crass opportunism, and an enjoyment of the media circus, where truth and honesty is subverted in the name of "Real American Values."
She has set herself up as the spokesperson of an entire group, talking about good governance when she quit her job to make a lot of money promoting a bestselling book and a 'reality' tv show. If anything, she's the Al Sharpton of the right, an opportunist who jumps on bandwagons, shows up on TV all the time, makes herself the center of attention and won't shut up.
I don't want to hear about her great morals or middle class values, because morality is more than saying that abortion is bad, it has to do with your character too, being an honest person and a decent human being, as opposed to being a greedy, bullying, loudmouth.
I dread voting in this coming election watching the Republican party eat its young and alienate everyone who isn't rich and old and white, while the Democrats carrying on the same-shit-different-day policies of the last fifty years. Power corrupts whether you're red or blue.
Some days, I think I'm a bit of both. My faith in God is a daily struggle as it is, and I lost faith in humanity and its systems years ago. I do my best to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love my proverbial neighbor as myself, neighbor being anyone who comes across my path in life, especially those who are vulnerable to getting massively screwed over.
I fail at all of those things frequently. I probably spend more time taking care of yours truly than the others in my world. I say things that I regret and don't always do what I could have done. I rant about the hypocrisy of others to feel better about myself. But I do what I can to not be a jerk and try to seek truth and love mercy and walk humbly with God and others. I don't expect to be perfect or have all the answers, but it's the best I can do.
Seriously people, this year on my corner of the world won't all be about Alice in Chains, generational conflict, and the travails of life in the Rust Belt.
Randal is way more entertaining than myself about a book that came through here about personal branding and I honestly don't know what planet some of these people live on. It had to do with shampoo and a trademarked "YOU" or something and talked about how the reason women are sexually harassed is because they don't wear proper business attire and that men are judged by what shoes they wear.
Because women are "totally asking for it" and we should judge a man by the pattern on his tie. Right.
It's bad enough to be judging someone by what brands they wear, but when we start talking about what brand a person IS and that some are more desirable than others, well, what the heck? And we do judge if we're honest. I don't tend to trust people who wear expensive suits who want me to vote for them or who try to sell me something, and I can't take someone's ideas seriously if they can't spell.
I guess we call this labeling and typecasting by any other name which I thought was a bad thing and there's this strange cultural social Orwellianism of all of us theoretically being equal but some of us still being much more equal than others.
I like to give my boomer compadres a hard time, but my fellow millenial spawn appear to be taking the narcissism to a whole new level and we don't even get some good music or something resembling the civil rights movement out of the deal. Just a lot of tweets and likes.
I really wonder about my generation when I see these other people who are my age who have bought into this whole idea of not just marketing as something you do to pay your bills, but as something you make a life out of because you're just so damn special and so damn interesting in a calculated kind of way.
And I know I don't work in an environment or culture with such individuals, and they probably don't attend the esteemed academic institution I work for because they consider state schools beneath them. I wonder where these people live, where they party, how they sleep at night, what kind of relationships do they have? Clearly they don't live here, I think, having blown this popsicle stand for places like Chicago and either coast. Their parents probably live in a nice house and wouldn't talk to mine because we don't have any social capital.
But then I remember that there was this guy when I was at Kent who was my age but throughout undergrad wore suits every day and was one of those people who everyone knew and all that. I think he's probably gone on to be successful and I guess people like him are the kind of people that get things done but that's just not how I roll I guess.
And the subbacultcha is all about the personal brand just in a collective tribal sense... having the right haircut, the right band t-shirts and accessories, the right attitude, and it can be just as catty as any celebutante reality show, only with a heavy dose of sour grapes and "at least I'm not like THAT" thrown in.
So I look at these nebulous questions like "What is YOUR personal brand?" or "How does your appearance enhance your brand?" or people promoting a "personal brand toolkit." It's already a soul-sucking enterprise to sell things, but to sell yourself often at the expense of others...
I don't even have words and it sounds childish and immaturely punk rock to say corporate whore but what kind of other real description is there? Not that I'm advocating the absurdity that is Adbusters, and it's true that people do still judge, but to wholeheartedly embrace it seems so profoundly wrong.
Speaking of branding, this one was big among my old crew back when Sub Pop was awesome.
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me? I look pretty good but I'm just back-dated as it is.
Everyone remembers when 9/11 happened and I was a senior in high school in between classes at Tri-C, how it was a totally beautiful day outside and yet something really bad had hit much closer to home.
I was younger and more idealistic and hoped that the people of my country would do some soul-searching, but instead someone drove their car into the Islamic center around the corner, the Egyptian kids who were Coptic got harassed, and suddenly high schools were saying the Pledge of Allegiance, everyone was wearing red white and blue, and these decals with slogans like "the Power of Pride" started appearing everywhere.
Being a snarky punk of a kid still with some born-again fervor, I remember thinking about how the power of pride is usually a bad thing, but evidently no one else saw it that way. Wasn't it pride that comes before the fall, didn't God tell us to be humble?
I played bass in a terrible punk band where we wrote songs about not going to war, jammed around to "California Uber Alles" and was so glad that I wasn't the President, because I wouldn't know what the hell to do.
I remember being creeped out by the Patriot Act and thinking about all the ways that power could get abused. I must have been so naive to think it wouldn't go as far as it did. It sickens me when I hear otherwise decent people justify torture, to think that we can act like we're on this moral high ground saying that the terrorists are doing this and that so they 'deserve it.' Like the Japanese didn't have suicide bombers or the Nazis didn't do what they did.
And my heart breaks for women who risk losing their lives to learn how to read, whose words mean nothing, and for boys that are the victims of pedophilia because of men and women aren't able to relate to each other normally. I can't imagine living in a country where I could not listen to or play music without fear of death. And for whatever attitudes there might be against us around the world, these people that we've never met are God's children too, and we are all equal before Him, just as much in need of redemption and grace.
Where does this whole bombing back into the stone age and American pride fit in with loving our neighbors and praying for those who persecute us? Do we lower ourselves to the standards of those we don't want to be anyway? Just because "the Satanic Verses" gets burned does that really mean it's a good idea to burn the Quran? Why is anyone giving this guy attention anyway? That's the last thing anyone needs.
Is it that we've gotten so desensitized to violence and torture that we don't care? Is it that we've lost some sense of humanity somewhere? I know none of this is new, but to see it so out in the opening and to hear it attempted to be justified as okay when it's not... I just don't believe that we can justify the unjustifiable.
I wonder if Bill Clinton had pulled these stunts if the response from the right would have been nearly as enabling. I remember reading the Gulag Archipelago, and for all our talk about freedom, the same things that they did in the Gulag are what's being done here.
The political discourse seems to grow more toxic every year. I thought it was bad at Kent in '04 when it was Bush vs Kerry and everyone talked so ignorant around me, resorting to groupthink, generalizations, and name-calling and pointless protests, and the way that people like Ann Coulter and Michael Moore made a lot of money out of partisanship.
And nine years later, we're still in Afghanistan but no one's really talking about Bin Laden. It feels more and more like Vietnam, where no one really knows why we're there, what the hell is going on, and maybe it's even worse. Anyone who's tried to go in there has screwed themselves over. And, as my esteemed coworker quotes from "the Princess Bride," one should "never get involved in a land war in Asia."
Our current president declares victory in Iraq again, but we've still got 50,000 soldiers over there. All this talk of "change" and the CIA is still authorized to assassinate, no one is going to be prosecuted for war crimes, Gitmo is still open, the School of the Americas still exists, we are still holding people without trial who may or may not be guilty, and we alternate between bombing Pakistan and sending it aid to rebuild. Blackwater is still getting our tax dollars.
Somehow this is ok because it's not the Republicans doing it. But it's a continuation of the same thing with a nicer face and a better speaking voice.
It's bread and circuses on the homefront and I wonder if this is what it was like living in the last days of the Roman empire sometimes, with all this imperial expansion and enough bones thrown to the masses to keep them complacent, keep them sufficiently entitled and entertained, "informed" but uninvolved. I am guilty of this considering that I vote third party and am ranting on a blog instead of getting arrested in front of the White House.
I can't remember a time when we weren't bombing someone. What does that say about where we are?
"Rockin' In The Free World"
There's colors on the street Red, white and blue People shufflin' their feet People sleepin' in their shoes But there's a warnin' sign on the road ahead There's a lot of people sayin' we'd be better off dead Don't feel like Satan, but I am to them So I try to forget it, any way I can.
Keep on rockin' in the free world,
I see a woman in the night With a baby in her hand Under an old street light Near a garbage can Now she puts the kid away, and she's gone to get a hit She hates her life, and what she's done to it There's one more kid that will never go to school Never get to fall in love, never get to be cool.
Keep on rockin' in the free world,
We got a thousand points of light For the homeless man We got a kinder, gentler, Machine gun hand We got department stores and toilet paper Got styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer Got a man of the people, says keep hope alive Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive.
Keep on rockin' in the free world Keep on rockin' in the free world, Keep on rockin' in the free world.
