Apparently medieval bigotry > pseudo-democracy

I’ve been looking to get back in the blogging swing but it’s seemed like there’s just too many places to start so I’d like to thank my local ABC affiliate for providing me with a two-fer and for pissing me off.

I wanted to tune in to the democratic debate tonight, which is 8pm EST, or 5pm here on the left coast.   Except it wasn’t on when I turned on the teevee.  Instead it was the evening ‘news’ which was actually running an extended segment special on the pope.  What.  The.  Fuck.

Poking around I found that ABC is not only tape delaying the debate, but they’re also restricting use to 30 second clips.  Their reason?  They’re paying for it.  So I guess this is an official acknowledgment of a pay-per-view democracy.  I know it doesn’t exactly fit but if ABC is treating a public debate as their intellectual property, because they funded it, than at the very least they shouldn’t have been given the debate.

And as for the local affiliate and their fawning treatment of the pope that’s just salt in the wound.  You’re taking away my entertainment sham democracy and replacing it with singing the praises of former fascist who now heads up the single most repressive and undemocratic organization on a global scale?  Fuck you very much.  And for anyone wanting to defend the pope or the church I’d point you to the highpoint of my day yesterday, this clip from the local npr station about the church and the pope (it’s a realplayer clip).  It’s hilarious and includes such highlights as:

Birth control is degrading to women, no really, it is.

Christianity is about suffering, not being joyous, so evangelical churches are… bad?  Worse?

The only thing that would have made it even better is if they’d attempted to blame the sex abuse on homosexuals like they have in the past, so hey, progress.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not singling out Catholics, I find all religions equally ridiculous.  I’m still pissed off that the FLDS scandal in Texas is being spun as a polygamy thing and not a crazy fucking religious nutbag compound thing.  They didn’t rape children and abuse women because they were polygamous, they did it because they were religious.

Just because we both breathe oxygen doesn’t mean we agree

I’ll admit it, I watch politics the way most men watch sports.  Obsessively, with a beer in hand and yelling at the TV.  Hell I even vote, even though I know that makes me a bad anarchist.  If it makes my @ friends fell any better it’s mostly for local stuff and write-ins, but I digress, the rationale behind my voting will (hopefully) be explained in a future post.

Today I’d  like to talk about the most annoying development of the campaign season.  And by annoying I mean mostly for other people. Personally I’ve enjoyed myself quite a bit poking fun at the supporters of Hon. Mr. Dr. Ronald H. Paul Esq. Ph.D. DDS.

Usually I’d give the leader of lock-step drones the benefit of the doubt (with the exception of Ayn Rand and the Pope) but this story today, along with earlier reports of taking money from Stormfront (I’m not going to link to Neo-Nazi sites) pretty much cements his place as a douchebag of the first order to me.

Which is funny because according to some of his supporters I should be voting for him.  Huh?

That’s right, it seems a popular strategy, and one that has apparently won over some ‘leftist’ activists, involves pointing out that Ron Paul supports X, the person being proselytized to supports X so therefore that person should support Paul.  Usually this is an issue such as the Iraq War, or legalizing drugs.  But in my case the person hit upon Paul’s desire to ‘abolish the government’ which I am, apparently, fully in favor of.  The problem with this approach is two-fold.

1.  It assumes the person being spoken to is stupid.  So stupid in fact that they are willing to disregard all of their other beliefs that may be in conflict with Paul’s to embrace this one point of connection.  I like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but I am not so foolish as to believe that everyone else who likes PB&J is a going to agree with me on everything else.

2.  It grossly simplifies complex issues.  This one may actually be a bit of smart planning on Paul’s part.  Our modern media environment encourages this sort of behavior to a large extent since it’s all about sound bites and 30 second policy statements.  But my reasons for opposing the Iraq War are not Paul’s reasons, my reasons for wanting to end the War on Drugs are not the same either.  And my opposition to large scale federal government has absolutely nothing to do with Dr. Paul’s.  I oppose the state’s institutions because they create inequality, whereas Paul seems to oppose them because they prevent greater inequality.

So next time someone comes at you saying you should vote for Ron Paul (or Clinton, or Obama, Romney, Guiliani, etc) because they have a policy statement approximating yours think about where they’re coming from and where you’re coming from.  Or not.

Academics, the Military and, yes, People Dying

Whooo-boy.  This is one that we’ve been talking about for the past two days here.  Yesterday on NPR they ran a story about the military using social scientists to help troops deal with the insurgency and forge a tighter bond with locals.

Audio Here

This is all originally from stuff that Noah Schachtman’s been following in Wired’s Danger Room blog.

Most recent post here along with links to earlier posts.

So there are several interesting things here and some very knotty problems.