Tag Archives: politics

Bigotry, Not Empathy!! Oh, wait.

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So, I read an article this morning.

News Article Link

If you’re too lazy to read it, I’ll give you the gist. Mexican man has stomach cancer. He works at Golden Farm to support himself, his wife, and children. They do not allow holidays or sick days for the man to get chemo treatments. He shows up to work every day, basically until he is too sick to do so and is sent to the hospital. Man dies.

Sad story, right? I thought so. Is it really legal for companies not to allow sick days? Apparently so, depending on the state. Not only that, but the man is quoted in the article to say that he didn’t want to take a day off for fear of his job. God forbid he take a day off FOR CHEMOTHERAPY.

Now, the article bothered me. Of course. Regardless of who it was written by or biased towards, it seems inherently evil to me that the workers at this place don’t have any kind of a feeling of security in their jobs. They’re easily replacable. Sick? Too bad, find another job. Piece of cake in this economy. I’m fucking loaded, so I can find any old Mexican off the street and offer him a job for shit wages. I don’t give a shit about you or your chemotherapy.

But further than that were the comments on the article. I am literally ashamed to say that I even inhabit the same planet as these sad, bigoted pricks.

There are currently 6 comments total. Of the 6, 5 of them think the man’s death is his own fault. The 6th talks about which City Council speaker should win.

Let’s take a look:

“He should have gotten chemotherapy on his 147 sick days, two days a week off.”

Yes, I’m sure he did. But if you’ve ever had or known someone who has had cancer, you need to get chemo more often than that. God forbid these immigrants (because immigrants /= people) are allowed two days per week off. They should be working seven days a week WHILE GETTING CHEMOTHERAPY at night so that they can survive. Sick days? Man up and work while you’re on chemo. Pussies.

…

Really?

Have these people ever had chemotherapy? Have they ever REALLY been sick? Here’s where the whole empathy part should come into play, but it doesn’t. Everybody who works should be working 40-70 hours per week, and… health care? Days off? …Puuh-lease.

Others took it a step further:

“As sad as this is, if they are going to demand sick time, then they should all be on the books, paying into the till.”

Yeah..okay. Who said they weren’t on the books? No one. They’re Mexican; that automatically means they’re illegal immigrants here, apparently. Whether they’re illegal or not, they’re probably not “paying into the till”, so. Their problem! Obviously.

…

Seriously?

And a final one:

“He had 14 hours each day (the hours he did not work) he worked to go to the hospital……..he did not have to worry about the kids, as his wife did not work (hmmm–is this code for illegal immigrant)”

Oh, okay. So he should have worked for 10 hours, then gone to the hospital for a few hours of chemo, then to bed, then back to work the next day? I’ll refer you to the “Chemotherapy Side Effects” section, below.

Oh, and the wife not working is code for illegal immigrant, huh? Or could it just be BECAUSE SHE HAS TWO FUCKING KIDS TO TAKE CARE OF AT HOME? GEE FREAKING WILLIKERS.

God forbid she needs to stay home to give her children an actual education and upbringing instead of shelling out however much it is per week to have her children taken care of by some random assholes for five days a week. Nope, it must mean she’s an illegal immigrant. After all, her skin IS brown.

It seems that these bigoted pricks are the same ones who bitch about how illegal immigrants are destroying our country and that we should randomly do searches on people who aren’t white, or pull them over. The same ones who think that everyone should make it on their own, without welfare and food stamps. The same ones who think that poor people getting enough tax cuts to buy a FRIDGE is exorbitant.

And so on.

No one seems to be able to put themselves into other people’s shoes.

Chemotherapy? Psssh, deal with it. Lose your hand? Pssh, deal with it. Three kids to support? Pssh, deal with it. All your problem.

But have they ever HAD that experience? Have these people ever been just born into poverty?

Some will claim they made their way all by themselves. Sure you did. Your parents never helped you or gave you money. You never received a loan from a bank. The government never helped you. And it shouldn’t help others who are in need, either. Why? Because it’s THEIR FAULT that they’re in need.

Even further than that. Have these people ever had cancer? Or chemotherapy? The fact alone that this man worked while receiving chemo on and off is bloody heroic. Here’s a list of side effects from chemotherapy:

Chemo Side Effects

I challenge all of you bigoted, entitled assholes to get that sick and still go to work without ever asking for a sick day. Pick about 15 random symptoms from that list and imagine yourself with them every day for a year. Or better yet, make two or three lists of 15 symptoms apiece and switch up the lists on a daily basis.

Yeah.

Keep on trucking.

Put yourselves in someone else’s shoes for once instead of just taking off your own shoe and throwing it at them. Empathize instead of immediately judging. Seriously. I’d recommend it. Maybe by the time you’re 85 you’ll feel like a HUMAN BEING again.

Mythology and the Propagation of Stupidity

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Most of us are familiar with Greek Mythology. We’ve all been told at least one story about how someone defied the gods and was punished with some kind of natural disaster. I have always been a fan of how magical and interesting these tales make the world seem. I can imagine, when there’s a tsunami, that a huge Viking-like blond dude with a trident is pissed off and playing with the ocean like a kid would play with Tonka trucks. Exciting, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, though – it’s a myth.

Where am I going with this? Down the Information Superhighway; or, in our current case, the Misinformation Superhighway.

The Internet seemed like a great thing. At first. You could get information quickly and easily without having to pay. Videos of anything you could imagine became readily accessible. One would think that from this platform would spring thousands of possibilities for education. Scientific journals would be available to enlighten us on current research topics. People already in school would easily further their educations, and people not in school could actually glean information to the point of having the equivalent to a degree.

Well, in our dreams, at least.

Instead, the Internet is currently a cesspool of propaganda and stupidity. Anyone can write a blog post or an article. Anyone has the right to believe anything they want, because all of the information is free to read and use. Not only that; it’s convincing and provocative, just like the Greek Myths. I mean, what’s more appealing; the sun rises and falls because the planet is rotating and moving in a specific way, or the sun rises because a dude in a fucking chariot driven by unicorns is TOWING the sun across the sky for us?

I rest my case.

The popularity of the information found on the Internet is inversely proportionate to the truth it contains. The more lies and conspiracies an article contains, the more “likes” and “views” it receives. My brother-in-law Kurt wrote about how reality is really mostly boring, which is why we have science fiction, fantasy, television, etc, etc, to spice up the humdrumness of it all. This is a fact people tend to forget as soon as they turn their computers on. Intelligence instantly evaporates when we are faced with a piece of writing that is controversial or conspiratorial. We have this weird human instinct to gravitate towards lies to make our lives more exciting. Let me exemplify it a few different ways:

Health: Last week, I spoke to a friend of a friend. This person, who I will call Moltox to avoid offending anyone with an existing given name, informed me of a number ways in which current medicine is incorrect. He told me that eyeglasses are bad for you and that there are other, better ways to deal with our health which, for some reason, I had never heard of! He proceeded to link me to various very poorly-made websites that preached about auras, energy, and mental strength, but sold 2500$ golden balls to carry around with you that would “align your energies”. This person told me that he could choose which foods are healthy simply by focussing on them and merging his energies with the food’s. He told me that he could move bones into place with his mind and that he has healed people this way before.

Sounds mind-blowingly exciting, doesn’t it? Maybe like something you’d catch on an old episode of Star Trek? Warning lights go off while reading it at all? Next thing you’ll hear is that this person refused to go to the hospital for lung cancer because he was convinced he could crush the cancer with his mind. Well, survival of the fittest, I suppose. If people are THAT prone to naivety, I say let them fade out. It will give the human race a better chance as a whole. It’s brutal, but it’s true.

Next example.

Let’s go with politics this time. As it is election time currently, shit is far worse. What’s really amazing is how every website and blog suddenly has accurate graphs and charts with numbers showing how Obama killed the economy. Or how much money Romney spends. Or how much he will take away with tax cuts. Amazing how everyone knows these numbers!  Do you have any idea how easy it is to make a graph from your house with a simple paint program? Allow me to demonstrate:

BAM. Amazing, isn’t it? Now check this one out. Instant conspiracy. A person’s weight graphed against the number of donuts eaten – but look at this! Lo! And Behold! If you EAT ENOUGH DONUTS, you won’t get fat anymore. The government has been lying to us all along! Obama has withheld this information from us the whole time!

Do you see how dangerous this can be? If I can spend literally 45 seconds making this graph and writing a two-paragraph blurb about how donuts are actually good for you, imagine what people with time on their hands could do.

A snap of the fingers, and…

The president wasn’t really born here anymore! The government only puts grains on the top of the food chain because it’s the cheapest food to produce, and grains are causing the diabetes epidemic!! Ye Shiwen didn’t really win any Olympic medals! Table salt is actually ground up glass and sand! The President is secretly trying to suppress us all and has opened up secret concentration camps to torture people! Using a piece of paper instantly kills five trees in the rainforest! There are abortion factories where the Devil encourages young people to have sex and then profits monetarily from their abortion procedures! Oh, and Harry Potter is not only written by the Devil himself, but reading the books gives you magical (Satanic) abilities like telekinesis and pyrokinesis!

Believe it or not, these are all articles that have not only been written (some by the Onion), but BELIEVED. By millions of people. They caused a spread of propaganda over the Internet in a matter of hours. It is embarassing that this is what people are doing with their time instead of using the Net as an educational tool. They read and wait for the familiar feeling that “Wow, I was right, the government is screwing us over.” It’s almost like a drug. The more unbelievable the article is, the more they are inclined to believe it.

Can this be reversed? Probably not. But I implore anyone who is reading this to do more, better research when you hear/read about or see something. If this blog post scared you, good. It should. Stupidity is contagious and we need to vaccinate against it.

Don’t take anything at face value.

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Extra thanks to Kurt Foster for writing his own rant and further inspiring me. If I can get a link to his at some point, I will include it here.

You Didn’t Build That

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I was not going to write about this. I was going to let it slide. I was going to ignore all the jackasses whose only mission in life is to ruin the remainder of the day for the rest of us. Not that there are very many of the rest of us left. Everyone is either a conservative or a liberal and they’re all nuts.

I consider myself to be neither. I do not blindly back democrats or republicans. Conservatives may plant their lips on my right ass cheek while the liberals are busy making mouth love to the left one. I am a realist. The second you step foot to either side of that imaginary political boundary you lose sight of reality. Unfortunately, that includes almost everyone.

Anyway. There has been a lot of horse shit floating around about the president’s speech involving small business owners. Horse shit that has mainly been propagated by the media in a transparent assault on what little remains of the integrity of the medium. The primary method is clever use of video editing. They cut out the parts that are actually important and you’re left with “You didn’t build that!”.

The fact of the matter is YOU AREN’T GETTING THE FACTS OF THE MATTER. The president is trying to celebrate the environment that has been created by all of us as a nation, the things that have happened over the last century to empower small business owners and give them the chances they need to survive, and in rare occasions, thrive. He was not trying to say that your business succeeds or fails based on the federal government’s whimsy, that your hard work means nothing. He was asking us to look at what we’ve created together, small business and government.

Unfortunately, the average American is too fucking stupid to bother looking up the facts. They just assume that the major news broadcasting corporations wouldn’t dare lie to them. Here’s your news: the media lies. The media probably lies more than the government ever has and ever will, yet assholes still glue themselves to the television and pretend that what they’re hearing is the truth.

I suppose it’s most upsetting to me because there are a number of people I know–knew, grew up with, would still like to maintain friendships with, etc–who are among those aforementioned asshats who can’t be bothered or don’t want to know what the facts really are. No one cares about the truth, they only care about what they believe, or what they think they’re supposed to believe. They will then hold onto that belief in spite of anything that points to the contrary. Gravity, love, and stubborn ignorance. These are the most powerful and mysterious forces on Earth. Be afraid.

Maybe if the news aired impartial commentaries to help educate the public about current events we would have fewer slack-jawed mouth-breathers jamming their heads up their own asses by repeating what the paranoia machine tells them. And maybe I shit gold nuggets every half cycle of the moon.

Take this guy, for example:

He’s so proud of his business that he hangs a banner outside for everyone to see how much of a dipshit he is. I don’t even have to meet this person to know that they lack the capacity for cognitive reasoning. This is not someone I would be capable of having a conversation with because deep down I already know they’re just too stupid to help.

I challenge you to find the president’s unedited speech and watch it.  Understand it.  Then tell me the media aren’t just trying to blow smoke up our country’s ass to make people like Ray Gaster look like a fool.  Maybe he is a fool, or maybe he’s just as gullible as the rest of us.