Category Archives: Politics

Solving the Middle East Problems is like Dating a Supermodel Who Sees You Only as a Friend

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It’s 2010, and politicians are still trying to solve the “Middle East Crisis”, and they’re doing so by doing exactly what everyone has done before and hoping for different results. As we all know by now, by the overused analogy by Einstein, doing the same thing over and over and hoping for different results is the definition of insanity.

We really need to face it: We’re not going to solve the crisis in the Middle East by doing what everyone has tried to do in the past. Getting people to talk is not a solution. It’s not even a stop-gap until we come up with a solution. One side hates the other so much it wants to kill everyone on the other side. The other side is so angry at the other side for hating it throughout history that they’ve pretty much resorted to the same tactics of killing those guys as well. Everyone involved remembers EVERYTHING bad that ever happened, and wants justice and retribution for every bad thing that happened. Neither side remembers a single bad thing they have done, so they don’t seem to see any problems but the ones being caused by the other side.

A major part of the problem is that everyone who tries to negotiate peace does so as if everyone involved has the goal of actually achieving peace. That’s not what they want. Maybe 60 years ago that might have been the case, but some decades ago, it became much more about achieving small, specific goals. All peace negotiations were centered around not achieving those goals in hopes of achieving peace. Bad idea. Not sustainable. Obviously, because now they’re back to killing each other again.

So, how do you solve the problem? Well, here’s what you don’t do: Don’t act as if getting them back to the negotiating table is actual progress. Both sides are usually willing to talk. Neither side is actually willing to do anything to create an atmosphere of peace. They both want their own gains and the demise of the other side. You really don’t have much room to negotiate when it comes down to that.

So, again, what is the solution?

Work it out over time by investing in the future of both entities. This means just giving up on the current actors involved because face it: They’re not going to do anything to further peace. But that doesn’t mean their offspring can’t be influenced. But you have to do it by setting a new paradigm and a new way of looking at things. You also have to go out of your way to not engage the parents in any way, to show future generations that we don’t reward bad people for doing bad things. Until we start to engage this way, we’re always going to be stuck with the current generation that is only going to continue to think in the ways of the erroneous past.

So, how do you do this? I mean, the parents are still around. You can’t just ignore them, right? Actually, I think you can. That’s not to say we can’t still engage them in the hopes of getting them to see the light, but we should go into every negotiation with the belief that the parents are really the problem, so we’re probably not going to achieve any success from them any way. However, we should constantly let it be known that we’re investing in their future, not in them because we’ve already seen that no matter what we do, they’re just going to screw up the future regardless.

This doesn’t mean we just disengage. What it means is that we take a different approach in all things foreign affairs. Our goal should be to start influencing neighbors everywhere by a process of dealing with foreign countries on an honest, straight-forward approach. I know this is a lot different than the old CIA-overthrowing dictators technique we used before, but it may take a generation or two to convince people of our resolve, but once on that path, we’d have a chance of influencing the rest of the world in a new way of handling international affairs. This might also bring to the table the future generations of these countries in the Middle East whose parents we gave up on after realizing that they are never going to understand anything but hate.

I know I’ve made a lot of jokes on how to handle international affairs (Puppy Diplomacy and the Elmo Theory of Containment), but I’m pretty serious about this. I originally called this approach the Friendship Over Time (FOT) Theory, and it’s a mathematics-based foreign affairs approach that involves iterative contacts with countries rather than incremental approaches and our current method of unilateral tit for tat (but never following it up) diplomacy.

As the title of this post indicates, our current process is a lot like dating a supermodel who is only capable of seeing you as a friend. It sounds like a great idea, and it might make you look good when you’re out on a date, but in the end, you’re going to go home every night hating yourself, wondering why she can never see you as anything better. For women, it’s a lot like dating me. Okay, that doesn’t make sense, but I assure you there’s a really funny joke in there somewhere.

Right now, Secretary of State H. Clinton is trying to make a name for herself by deluding herself into believing that bringing the Middle East heads of state to the table is actually accomplishing something. Instead, what it is going to do is set up a new process of disappointment that will most definitely lead to hostilities, broken promises and further deterioration of potential peace in the Middle East. I really wish people could see that instead of leading us down a false path of hope, thinking that somehow people who hate each other are somehow going to change their natural way of being.

Is Craigslist Really the Enemy They Claim It Is?

Politics, Religion, Social Networking, , , , , , ,

Craigslist recently announced that it is going to be suppressing its listings for sex ads. Instead of the adult listing, it now shows up as “censored” on their site. Public interest groups are now high-fiving themselves because they seem to have won some sort of Quixotic victory that they believe has somehow made things better. Others, of course, still say that it’s not enough and want pretty much the universe when it comes to compliance. I thought it would be interesting to examine this and see what’s really going on.

First off, let’s look at the original problem. Craig Newmark started Craigslist back in 1995 in San Francisco. The idea was to give people a one stop marketplace where they could take care of their every need. You could find an apartment, get a job, sell that old TV you could never get rid of, and yes, even hook up with a potential partner, if that should be your current desire. Not surprisingly, that latter option has opened up all sorts of controversial issues with the online distributor of trade.

In 2002, according to Wikipedia, because of complaints, Craigslist started adding warnings to some of their personal ad areas, such as “men seeking men”, “casual encounters”, “rants and raves”, and “erotic services”. Already, these areas were causing problems with the mainstream segments of the population.

From this point forward, Craigslist has been on the attentions of quite a few public interst groups, and not surprisingly, law enforcement officials.

Up until this time, erotic services were pretty much an entity you had to search through some pretty creative methods, often involving a lot of bait and switch circumstances that one had to navigate solely on the hope that the next time would be better than the last time. Massage parlours were often a place men would go to seek prostitution, and after a lot of false leads and deception, it was not unusual for a man to pay hundreds of dollars to receive absolutely no desired experiences. Some got lucky, but most didn’t, and it was quite often a very discouraging experience.

The Internet was supposed to change all of that. At one’s fingertips was now immediate access to all sorts of information. Craigslist jumped into the game, and people were now following want ads for what they were seeking, and in conjunction with a lot of other erotic services on the Internet, people were actually finding what they were seeking. It was not unusual to see someone’s want ad on Craigslist, then check out the profile on one of the other erotic feedback sites, and then decide whether or not to book a session with that person. Very hard to find erotic services were now being much easier to find because they could now be found on Craigslist. Many people may not realize it, but there are a lot of people out there looking for some very specific types of encounters, and having everything in one place made it much easier for these people to connect.

Well, this didn’t bode well for the industy when there were people who would do everything possible to make sure that such people could never make any such connection. But this probably wouldn’t have been that much of a problem if another entity did not show up, which made things even worse. I’m talking about the scammer.

People may not realize it, but the entity of the scammer has pretty much destroyed every good thing that has ever come across on the Internet. Porn didn’t hurt the Internet, as the fuddy duddies would like you think it did (it actually served to fuel the Internet in its infancy, which is somewhat ironic if you think about it). Scammers did. Most of your email is now pretty much worthless because scammers found out they could profit off of naive people. You are required to buy special software to protect your computer because scammers discovered they could infect your computer just by hosting evil programs on sites where you wouldn’t expect them to be. Ebay used to be a great place to buy things; scammers and thieves put a wrench in the trust factor of that entity. So it is not that much of a surprise that scammers showed up and pretty much destroyed Craigslist.

Some of the biggest crimes that have rallied people against Craigslist have been people who have been cheating other people on the Internet. Call them scammers. Call them thieves. Call them the mob. Or whatever, but it’s this group of people who have caused all of the problems that have made Craigslist the cesspool that it can often be.

Because face it. Women being prostitutes has never caused all that much of a problem, unless you’re Tiger Woods. But people forcing women into prostitution has. Child predators looking for children for sex causes problems. Again, those same people are the ones that make this sort of thing available. These people are criminals who care little for the activity but everything for exploitation and making a quick buck. Unfortunately, they serve to diminish an activity that others might be providing in a more positive way, and unfortunately, there’s often very little way to separate the two.

There are a lot of honest people who are into the sex business who aren’t trying to steal from other people or to hurt other people. They easily get pushed aside whenever the bad class of people show up, and unfortunately that bad class shows up way too quickly and way too often.

All of the issues that have caused public interest against Craigslist have come from these bad elements of our societies. No one rallies around a leader seeking to stop prostitution. But everyone rallies around anyone seeking to stop child exploitation and people who wish to develop nonconsensual slavery circumstances.

This is the problem that Craigslist has fallen into because the owners of that site really didn’t care who was posting on the site. They were more interested in developing a site that brought in money. I can’t see that I blame them, but because of this, they have become the victim of their own success. With great success comes great responsibility, to steal and destroy a great line from Spiderman, and unfortunately Craigslist hasn’t really come up to the plate for the responsibility thing. It played a lot of shell games in hopes of getting people to think it was on the right side of morality, but when it came down to it, it was really only thinking of itself. When the public finally started to become a hammer to be used against them, they censored themselves and then tried to act all First Amendmentish and posted “censored” where they censored themselves.

The fact is: They could have dealt with this a lot easier by actually policing their ads in the beginning to see how much exploitation was going on. Instead, they dropped the ball and lost the whole game. But for lack of stupid analogies, I’ll take this one step further and say that they haven’t lost the whole season yet. They can still do something about cleaning up their site without destroying what they set out to do in the first place.

There are a lot of sex workers who do rely on Craigslist, and unfortunately because of this action, they are forced to start using more exploitive sites out there that are much worse, and that’s sad. Craigslist could step back up to the plate and decide where it wants to be in this debate. It can kowtow to the Bible thumpers and give in completely, like it’s doing right now, or it can bite back and work hand in hand with the communities that have grown up with them, making sure that the evil ones are ostracized, but the ones who are there for the right reasons still have a forum in which to do what they do best.

Unfortunately, it looks like Craigslist may take the easier road because it is filled with fewer obstacles. In the end, it may be a road that leads nowhere.

I’m Confused About the End of the War in Iraq

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Okay, maybe I’m just not all that adept when it comes to military things. Let’s discount the military background I actually have, the numerous degrees and my fascination with girls who shoot guns for a moment so I can somehow understand what’s really going on here. Some time ago, the actual ground battle stopped in Iraq, which is why the bombs stopped dropping, the soldiers stopped invading and the airplanes stopped flying nonstop combat missions. So, somewhere after that we started walking around the country and getting fired at by civilians, or terrorists, or Imperial stormtroopers working for the Empire, or whatever, and we were, um, fighting?

Now, we’re going to stop fighting, turn the mission over to the Iraqis and then go home? Oh wait, we’re not going home. We’re going to hang out in barracks and do nothing? But why do I have this feeling that we’re still going to get daily counts of Americans dying while sitting around in the barracks?

What exactly is changed? Or changing? Is the war really “over”? Or are we just looking for something to sound good so we can say it’s over?

I’m really confused about this because I don’t think anything’s really going to change other than a different president is is charge who promised the end of hostilities in Iraq, so he’s telling us it’s over, but we’re still going to be there in the same exact places where the enemy is firing at us on a daily basis. Or am I wrong? I mean, I could be. What do I know about such things anyway?

I really hope it means good things, but I just don’t understand what it means other than a change in rhetoric. Are the al qaeda guys listening to rhetoric? Or are they too busy trying to kill Americans?

I apologize for being confused here. It’s like I turned into a season of Stargate only to find out that I missed an entire season while playing World of Warcraft every day instead, so I don’t understand why there are strange people on the show. Can someone get me up to speed? Or should I just go back to playing WoW?

Even though they’ll probably kill me, I still love eggs

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The whole egg recall thing has me worried. But not because I’m scared of eggs, or think that I’m going to die. What worries me is that there’s so much information about the whole egg thing roaming around the airwaves that I haven’t a clue about what’s really going on. Either the industry leaders are only interested in profit and don’t care if I die, or they’re great down home farmers that have my best interests at heart and this is all just some kind of overreaction. Or it’s something in between. Or none of these things. To be honest, I don’t know the details because the media has managed to ramp up the scare tactics so that I’m afraid of drinking potable water these days so that anything they say about eggs really seems somewhat irrelevant.

And that’s the problem. There is so much information that is clashing with more information that no one really knows what is real and what is made up. Everyone claims to have our best interests at heart, but after you unpack that, you start to realize that people are telling you things to maintain profits, or because they’re just nuts and want to be heard. In fact, no one really knows anything, and there’s a lot of disinformation available. There’s just no way of knowing what to trust and what not to trust.

But the simple fact still comes to light: I like eggs. I like eating eggs. I only eat them on the weekends, but it’s my one guilty pleasure. Well, aside from that other one, but I can’t talk about that one because the government is listening, and the tinfoil hat I usually wear is in the shop, so I have to be careful about what I say in public.

But I like eggs. And I want to keep eating them. I don’t know if it’s safe. I know that I need to cook them, but I wasn’t planning to eat them raw in the first place, so that’s not a problem. But even now, people tell me that it’s dangerous to eat eggs because of disease. Well, it’s dangerous to breathe as well, but for some reason I keep doing it.

What it comes down to is that at some point you have to turn out the overbearing messages and just do what you’re going to do. We can be scared of everything, like taking an airplane because of crazy terrorists armed with pen knives and box cutters, or we can just live our lives and hope that things work out. I think I’m going to try the latter, even though it might kill me.

But I like eggs much more than I like living in fear about my next meal. And sometimes you just have to compromise, like any woman who might ever agree to date me. But that’s a whole other issue.

Vote for Elmer, my stuffed animal frog, for office

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I’ve been noticing that there are a lot of political signs up on the sides of the road these days, all instructing me to vote for people I’ve never heard of, promising me that these unknown people somehow have my best interests at heart. But whenever I read the newspaper, I read nothing but bad things about the people we elected, and the bad articles go on for days, never ending until the next corrupt person enters office and starts the cycle again. I read the letters to the editor section of every newspaper, and there are so many people trying to convince me that some  unknown dweeb has the best qualifications to be elected for some random position.

Then someone will come on the news and berate me for not wanting to vote. In some sanctimonious tone, some rich, privileged individual will tell me, matter-0f-factly, that by not voting for a bunch of people I know I can probably never trust, that I’m somehow responsible for the bad state of affairs in this country, in my county, my state, my district or wherever. It’s always my fault. If I vote for someone, it’s my fault. If I voted against someone, it’s my fault. If I don’t vote, it’s my fault. Not once has anyone ever thought of the possibility that maybe the fact that we’re voting for people in the first place means it’s THEIR fault.

That’s why I’m proclaiming Elmer my choice for every political office under the sun. Oh, I know you won’t vote for him, because you’re so convinced that Joe Politician has your best interests at heart, even though he’s never done anything personally for you, has been accused of all sorts of crimes of stealing OUR money, but because he’s actually a living, breathing person, he’s a much better candidate in your opinion.

Well, let me tell you about Elmer. He’s never cheated on his taxes. Not once. He’s never even thought about it. Not once did he vote to send troops into harm’s way. He’s never even written a letter to the editor claiming that would be a good thing to do. Not once has he ever taken money that didn’t belong to him. He’s never been friends with anyone who did either. He’s just that good.

Let me tell you what he has done. He’s ALWAYS been a good friend no matter what happens. When I came home drunk from that party and didn’t score with that girl I was trying so hard to win the heart of, he was there for me. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. He’s just that kind of guy. Instead, he sat there and let me figure out how to get ready for the next day without any condemnation. A politician would have thought less of me. But not Elmer.

Elmer has also never lied. Not once. Whenever he speaks, he speaks the truth.

He also cares about everyone. He’s willing to let everyone hug him and be his friend. And he’s never taken back that friendship from anyone. He’s just that way.

So, when the next politician starts lying to you to gain your vote, think about Elmer. Would Elmer do that? No, he wouldn’t.

So vote for Elmer next time you vote. You’ll have to write him in, but that’s okay. He’s not proud. He’ll take whatever he can get. And he’ll even work for free. Or hugs. Whatever you want to give him.

Let’s see another politician promise that, and mean it.

Relative Probabilities and Why the World Is Incapable of Second Level Analysis

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Yeah, the title sounds a bit complicated but it’s not. The premise is simple: People are capable of simple logic, but whenever it comes to the leap level of complication concerning logic, most people tend to fail, leaving most issues bogged down in simplistic thinking, and stupid generalizations. Think about it. How many times have you heard the start of a great argument on a subject you already know a lot about through daily exposure, like something new on immigration, but then before that new perspective can be explored, the argument gets bogged down in the old arguments with no attempt to look at the issue from the new direction? I know it happens to me all of the time. Years ago, I was watching a debate take place between two really good university debate teams from the USA and Ireland. The issue just so happened to be about immigration, and the US team looked like they were going to win by default alone (I mean, who knows more about immigration in the US than people from the US?), but then out of nowhere, the Irish team took a completely different perspective and pretty much wiped out the US team by analyzing the subject from a contributive perspective (how much immigration actually improves the economy rather than bogs it down), and it was obvious that the US team had never even considered such possibilities. In the end, after the debate (there was no real “they won” narrative after it as it was a friendly debate), one American student who was watching said: “Yeah, they had a good argument, but immigration is still bad. It takes away our jobs.”

Yes, a long story to get to the point that sometimes people just aren’t capable of handling a higher level construction of a conversation. In the end, people tend to bring things back to what they already know, so that newer breakthroughs of knowledge of rare, and quite unlikely to be achieved.

But let’s look at it from the simple method of probability. In the very beginning of the study of math, once you got past algebra. Um, we did all get past algebra, right? I hope so because there’s going to be a quiz after. Make sure you get out a pencil and some scratch paper….

Say you have a coin and decide to flip it. What are the possible outcomes? Heads or tails, right? So your probability is 50/50, or you have a 50 percent chance of achieving a head or tail on the flip of the coin. That’s pretty simple. The next step in cognitive probabilities is to use two coins. What are the outcomes with two coins, and what is the percentage chance of getting a heads twice?

The math: 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4. Basically, the formula is pretty simple. You use the original probability of 1/2 and then factor it by whatever number of coin throws you intend to do. So, 3 coins would be 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/8. But here’s where it falls apart. If you know that your odds of getting 3 heads in a row are 1/8, and you throw the first two coins and get a head, what is the chance of getting a heads on the third throw? The mathematician will say 1/2, because that would be right, but depending upon someone’s faith, belief in karma, desire for justice and whatever, that last prediction can be quite interesting. If you went by math, you’d know your answer. But I tried an experiment where I told people I was flipping a coin, and asked them what were the odds I’d get a heads. Most answered 50 percent. But then I said that I had flipped that coin twice alredy and got a heads each time. So I asked them what was the percentage chance of a heads on the “third” try. Surprisingly, quite a few of them thought about it a bit and while some of them said 50 percent, there were a few who said that it was “bound to happen” that I’d end up with a tails on the third try, so they answered with different statistics and guesses. It was almost as if there was a belief that the next throw of the coin would end with a result that was necessary rather than logical.

It is this thinking that I am referring to today when I talk about second level analysis. Most people are capable of thinking of that first coin toss, but after the logic wears off, these same people start to think with other motivations, specifically faith and belief. I’m not talking about religion here, although it can go that way, but an inate tendency to push towards a sense of justice in the universe, so that if logic dictates a coin has a 50 percent chance of going on way or another, eventually it has to correct itself if it has been drawing too many heads. There is no logic to this, but there are people who believe this because it just seems like it SHOULD be that way. This isn’t belief in a higher being but in the basics of probabilities that people tend to believe right themselves after time.

Now, let’s bring this back to arguments of a higher level. Because people believe in these intrinsic values of logic, it becomes that much harder to argue towards a philosophical understanding of complex issues. The more math involved in the decision-making, and quite often logic involves a geometric processing of common sense (using proofs and situational constructs), the less likely someone is going to be willnig to change ones original foundation of thinking. I’ll demonstrate using a common argument that comes up in pretty much any nation, the burning of the country’s flag.

There are those who believe that it is sacrilegious to burn the flag, that is means complete disrespect for one’s country. Yet, at one point during the protests of the Gulf War, a group of former combat veterans burned the US flag to point out that they were part of a country so free that it could burn its own flag. This caused all sorts of right-wing commentators to condemn these veterans as traitors to the country, being completely incapable of seeing that there was a higher level argument being made here. In the end, very few people changed their minds over the issue. Today, if someone talks about burning a flag, there’s a good chance that person is going to be considered an enigma to the country, and in some cases there has been talk of charging such persons with a crime. The enlightened protests of such veterans meant little when it came to discerning higher level analysis over complex issues.

Which brings me to a couple of comments that I think are important to make. If most people are not capable of handling higher level analysis, we are in a bit of trouble when it comes to solving a lot of current problems, including the current economic state of affairs in the world. The solutions to our economic problems require higher level analysis and complex solutions, but unfortunately, the people who put forth such ideas are limited to having to explain such processes to people who are easily influenced by tactical politicians who are interested in immediate goals, not long term stabilization and growth. So, until people actually start explaining complex issues in a way that most people can understand, WITH THE NECESSARY PATIENCE, we’re going to have serious problems in the future, unless we can come up with simple answers to very complex problems.

USDA Race Problem Shows That Racism Still Has a Lot of Work Ahead of Itself in America

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I don’t know if you’ve been following this recent story, but every now and then a story of racism hits the main story lines, and then suddenly everyone starts acting like they’ve just discovered anything race-related can possibly exist. And then people act horrified, shocked, angry and intellectually assaulted that such a thing could be happening in this day and age. In this case, a woman working for the USDA told a group of people at an NAACP Freedom Fund banquet meeting that she, an African-American government employee, took great pleasure in NOT helping a white man who DARED to come to her for assistance at her government office. So, she went out of her way to make sure that she made his request both painful and impossible for him to gain any success. And she took great pleasure in it.

Well, obviously the people now discovering this You Tube video of her exploit are now going nuts distancing themselves from her, firing her and doing all sorts of posturing about how evil this really is, which is all understandable, but what needs to be acknowledged is that this really isn’t all that surprising. What it tells us is that racism still exists, and it doesn’t matter what side of the coin people hail from, there are still people who treat others with disdain mainly because they can. Instead of dealing with this as an actual issue that needs some kind of resolution, we’ll deal with it as a unique occurrence, as if it doesn’t happen all of the time, and when the next one gets discovered, it gives us room to keep compartmentalizing such incidents and never do anything about fixing them.

Face it. Some people are dicks. It doesn’t matter what color they are, what nationality they are, how much intelligence they have, how much money they have, whether they voted Republican or Democrat, or anything else. People are still dicks. What we need to do is get together as a collective and talk about this type of behavior in a clear-cut fashion so that everyone hears our voices. But we won’t. Instead, we’ll treat it as a one case wonder, and we’ll allow others to continue to hide in the shadows, doing this sort of thing over and over again, until they get found out and we repeat the cycle yet again. We’ve never really been all that good at bringing bad circumstances to light. It would mean discussing difficult topics, and if we can’t act holier than thou, we really don’t want to talk about it.

Racism is all over the place. So is ethnic profiling. So is reverse discrimination. But what should be focused upon is not that these things exist, which is important to know about, but to figure out why. Why are people still treating other people with disdain, placing some people in subcategories of humanity in comparison to others?

I say it has a lot to do with the complex intricacies of identity politics. People like to think of themselves as part of a collective, but at the same time, they’re incapable of indentifying themselves as part of a group without identifying others as outliers from their group. As long as there are people who don’t belong, their justification for all of the things their “group” believes in become all that much stronger. What good is a group of white males if they can’t look at another group of non-white males with some type of ridicule or condemnation? Think about wars we have fought. World War II was all about identifying the “evil Jap” or the “violent Kraut”, or whatever derogatory name one can remember. By doing so, we were able to rally around ourselves and fight against “foreign” aggression. It helped in that situation that those opposing forces ALSO saw themselves with identity that conflicted with us as well. But not always does it happen that way, and that’s where our problems are really starting to emerge.

Look at the War on Terror. It started after 9/11 with condemnations of anyone who was Arabic. And then immediately there was a realization that there were a lot of Arab-Americans who AREN’T our enemies, and that is still pretty hard for a lot of people to grasp. When you are so good at creating identity distinctions and placing people in another camp, it is very hard to realize that your enemy is a lot like Pogo first proclaimed: “We have met the enemy and he is us” or some variation of that phrase.

An interesting example of this problem hails from an unlikely source, and that’s a computer game, the most popular one around, World of Warcraft. In that game, without having to learn much about it, all you have to know is that there are two sides, the Alliance and the Horde. You choose one side or other based on your choice of race you pick for the character you are going to play. From that moment on, everyone who is automatically allied with the other side is your enemy, and you are automatically identified with the races that you were allied with as well. Think of it as living in a country where you were born, and everyone in that country hates the people from another country. You may never have a single dealing with a person from that other country, but one day you’re going to meet one somewhere, and you’re expected to hate him or her, and if possible, kill him or her, or contribute to that person’s personal demise. That is the kind of thinking that the game sets up, and it’s not that much different than how we deal with other countries in the world today.

When I was younger, I was working for a hotel chain as its investigator, and I befriended a young man from Iran (who happened to always refer to his country as “Persia”). He wanted to be an American, and he was as pro-US as you could be, including a fascination for all things Madonna (including a long protracted attempt to get me to buy for him the new “Madonna book” because he was too embarrassed to buy it from a store himself). But whenever her talked about Iran, he would then immediately start drawing sickles and pointing at the US, as if he understood that he had to hate the United States whenever identifying himself as an Iranian. No amount of common sense conversation ever broke him from this thought process, and even though he was good friends with every American he came across, when it came to national identity, I would not have been surprised to see him turn against those same friends and take up arms at a moment’s notice.

This is the kind of mentality we have to deal with whenever we discuss the ideas of ethnicity and race. Some people are locked into their beliefs because of an entire life, or a societal set of lives worth of time, spent thinking one particular way, automatically thinking bad thoughts towards people they know nothing about, nor have they ever had the opportunity to even gain a single negative action that would cause them to feel that way from a logical perspective.

In this country, we really need to discuss race because the only people talking about it right now are race-baiting people who see the world in, for lack of better terms, black and white. I watched an interview the other night with Al Sharpton about his response to the NAACP’s rift with the Tea Party and the NAACP’s allegations of racial tensions stemming from the Tea Party. At first, Sharpton sounded logical, and then he fell into talking points, where he wanted the Tea Party members to automatically have to condemn their own members in order to be taken seriously by Sharpton. Sharpton didn’t like racism from the Tea Party, but he had no problem condemning an entire organization because of their membership, effectively arguing that membership in the Tea Party meant you were a racist unless you were willing to codemn everyone else in the Tea Party as a racist. Use that argument to say that you if you’re a member of the NAACP, you must condemn all racist members of the NAACP, of which they do exist, or you’re a racist yourself, and look at where that might get you.

The problem is people want to equate posturing with logical actions, and no one wants to be baited into a stupid battle of words. And that’s what keeps happening.

Which brings me back to the original point of this post. I don’t think calling this woman a racist solves anything. Sure, she probably is one, but who cares? What is more important is to use her really stupid mistake (whether or not she would do it again is irrelevant to me) and try to open up a dialogue on this whole issue. Otherwise, we miss a great opportunity just so we can make stupid, irrelevant, political points. Unfortunately, that’s all that’s going to come from this moment. That, and that woman being out of a job for doing and saying something really stupid. It’s sad that we can’t get a better result that just that.

The Plight of the Hopeless Cause

Politics, Uncategorized,

Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about Haiti. CNN has been reporting a lot about it recently, including a bunch of reports of its reporters showing up there and “discovering” that things are still very bad. Not that long ago, when Haiti was all the talk, I mentioned that once Americans got over the initial shock of the disaster, we’d go back to not caring about that island nation again. And sure enough, that’s where we are.

But it is kind of important to understand why that might be. The CNNs of the world want us to think the problem is inherent in us, as if we’re responsible for the horrible conditions there. But fortunately, that’s not really the case. While we are often guilty of not caring about a certain geographical location (East Timor, Somalia, South Central LA, or wherever), this time it’s not really something to put squarely on the shoulders of those of the USA. What no one wants to face is the possibility that the problem might be a lot closer to home…their home, not ours.

Haiti is one of those places, like Liberia, where a lot of people outside of the area really care, but once we start caring, the people themselves don’t seem to care about their own plight, often neglecting all attempts to help them, either by destroying their own farmland for short term gains, or by continuing to support destructive leaders who tend to keep them locked in their plight of despair.

Americans care about people who are suffering, but there’s only so much we’re going to do before we start to think that the problem is yours, not ours. I’m sorry to say that but after awhile, we start to treat a wayward country as a family member who just can’t seem to get his crap together, who keeps knocking off liquor stores, even though we keep getting him a job at the Quickie Mart. Lots of money was raised for Haiti, but immediately after this process started, we started to see the old ways of corruption falling right back into place, so that the aid wasn’t getting to the people who needed it, but was going into the coffers of people who tend to make things worse. I’m sorry, but we’re not willing to keep giving money to destructive dictators who hold out their hands, “promising” to fix things even though they never do. Or corrupt leaders who don’t seem to understand that eventually they have to stop taking EVERYTHING and trying to do something to help their own people.

Haiti has been a cesspool ever since they cast off the reins of slavery while the rest of the world was still embracing the evil that was going on back then. It would be nice to think things might have gotten better, but they haven’t. Unfortunately, the rest of the world started to notice them again because there was an environmental disaster that cast them into the light again. Unfortunately, they didn’t do anything better AFTER it happened, so it makes it really hard for people to want to do anything when the people themselves aren’t interested in helping themselves.

It’s a lot like Somalia where the west showed up to help feed the people and then found the pirate, criminal element that was there waiting for us. If we show up with all intentions of helping and then find that the people there are more interested in playing local games and hoping to profit off of the outsiders, we’re out of there, and we’re not coming back to help. You notice how few Americans are interested in helping Somalia today? Well, that’s what happens.

It’s why North Korea is quickly pushing itself into a no help situation. The west isn’t interested in helping when the people are stupid or acting stupid. And that’s what’s happening in Haiti. Sorry, but we’re not interested in helping if the people themselves are going to act stupid. Yeah, a lot of people are suffering, but we’re not the world’s police, no matter how much George W. Bush tried to make that happen.

I’ll be honest. I hate what’s going on in Haiti. But at the same time, there’s only so much energy you can expend before you start to realize that no amount of energy is going to make things change.

Some updates, cause you know you can’t live without them….

Computer Games, Movies, Politics, , , , , ,

1. Blizzard changed its mind. I wrote recently about game companies jumping the shark, and how Blizzard Entertainment was making a seriously, horrible mistake by intituting REAL ID on its customers. The customers went nuts and protested until they practically couldn’t do it any more. The CEO of Blizzard wrote a Blog Post in which he stated, “um, sorry, we hear ya and we’re not going to do what we said we were going to do.” Wise move, and you have to admire the maturity of a company for knowing when it needs to take a step back and reconsider an action. The whole thing was obviously about trying to capitalize on their customers and make insane profits above their already normal INSANE profits, but fortunately they didn’t derail their whole company to try to increase their profit.

2. Stupid politicians. I hate political season, which seems to be almost year round these days. This morning, I was on the shuttle bus when I heard a campaign ad that essentially went something like: “Michigan is suffering badly. It’s performing the worst in the entire country. So send Justin Amash to Washington to fix things!” Or something as stupid as that. Basically, I’m thinking, um, Michigan has problems, so sending a State Representative to Washington is NOT a solution. It means sending someone from a messed up state to Washington to make a messed up country. Sometimes, I think these people just don’t think these things through. It’s not Washington they’re complaining about in that ad. It’s Michigan, so unless their plan is to send Amash OUT OF MICHIGAN TO FIX MICHIGAN because he’s responsible for screwing things up, I don’t really see the point.

3. Stupid corporate contest campaigns. Pepsi is running one right now that involves Major League Baseball. The point is: You collect bottle caps until you have three of them that match, and then you send them in for a free baseball cap. Really? That’s it? I’ve had about 40 diet Pepsis that are part of this campaign, and today was the first time I actually got one that was a duplicate of another (meaning I got two of the three I need). Now, mathematically, I didn’t even think that made sense, but I don’t even have three of the same, and I’ve already gone through 40 sodas. Stupid contest, and the pay off is equally stupid. For the 50 or 60 sodas I’ll need to drink, at least give me the chance to win something cool. Oh, and every now and then I get a cap that offers me 15% off of MLB crap. Really? And read the fine print. It is valid ONLY if you buy $75 worth of stuff. I don’t think there’s $75 worth of MLB junk I would ever want in the first place, regardless of the discount.

4. Movies. They’ve sucked lately. This whole summer should have been discontinued. Not a single movie really worth the money. And the prices of movie are astronomical. No good news on that front at all.

That’s really all for now.

If the System is Broke, No One in Power Wants to Fix It

Politics, , ,

There’s an interesting political drama going on in South Carolina right now. I guess I should elaborate because there’s always some kind of political drama going on in South Carolina. But this time, it’s about a man running for office. His name is Alvin Greene, and he did what no one expected he would do. He upset a party politician of long standing in the Democrat primary for Senate this year. He was someone with no credentials, no money and no name recognition at all. Yet, he managed to get 60 percent of the vote from the Democrats and put state legislator Vic Rawls out to pasture in the election.

Well, now we’re starting to see all sorts of skeletons in his closet, including the fact that he’s up for some kind of felony for showing porn to some girl at college and trying to entice her to his room. Now, let’s be honest, what college guy HASN’T done that, but that’s really a different issue now, isn’t it? It seems there are all sorts of weird shenanigans going on in his past, including that he may or may not have been thrown out of the military. He refuses to comment, wanting to focus only on the issues. But for all I know, there may be absolutely nothing wrong there. He may just not want to talk about his past military service. I mean, that is his right, if he chooses to make it so.

But the Democrats are raging mad right now, demanding he quit the race, even though the “people” chose him. They’re aghast that this potential felony machine is on their ticket. Well, let’s put aside the fact that so many politicians seem to have felonies on their records these days and don’t seem to think it causes a problem to their political careers. What’s the real issue here? It appears that the Democrats just don’t like the fact that someone ran an end run past them, and they weren’t the ones in charge. The7’re claiming the Republicans must have been behind his campaign, claiming that he couldn’t have afforded the $10,440 filing fee to join the race, that some dark, sinister force must have fronted the money to hurt the Democratic Party.

What this issue is really pointing at is something much bigger. For too long now, the common person has felt out of the loop of politics, but has been subjected to it by people who feel they should be making all of the decisions. There’s a special club of politics that has a hefty membership approval process, and most of us don’t fit the mold. Alvin Greene certainly doesn’t. The two parties in this country have done a very good job of making sure only the well-connected get in, much like a union boss makes sure only his cronies are the ones surrounding him at any one time.

Alvin Greene refuses to leave the race and only wants to talk about the issues. The Democrats want him out of the race so they can focus their attention on people they already like and know. He’s an outsider, and they don’t like that.

But what this is really pointing at is something no politician wants to face or discuss, and that’s the possibility that the people are rejecting the party machines that are already established and deciding to go with outsiders. I mean, let’s face it. South Carolina has been a cesspool of politics and scandals lately, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the people of that state decided to just buck the system and choose anybody but the usual suspects. What is interesting is that the political machine in place doesn’t handle this sort of thing well, and we’re seeing a backlash as every political entity in the Democratic Party is moving forces into place to circumvent ANYONE from challenging their authority and power.

South Carolina could be a very interesting place to mark the beginning of something very significant, or it will serve as the place where a last stand for the people was made before it was stamped out forever.