Tag Archives: news

What’s the with all the old guys and child porn these days?

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Am I the only one noticing that way far too many “responsible” adult males are being charged with child porn crimes these days? You can’t seem to go an entire week without a pronouncement of some politician’s career being destroyed by allegations of child porn, some college sports guy running a “charity” that seems to be another word for “access to kis for sex” and now we have some university professor of engineering who allegedly was viewing child porn on his laptop on a plane in first class when he was photographed by another passenger and asked to stop viewing child porn by the stewardess. I’m not even going to comment on the allegations, other than to say, what the hell is wrong with people? Okay, what the hell is ALLEGEDLY wrong with people?

Okay, a long time ago, about the time Socrates was put to death for influencing children, old men seemed to have this thing for little boys, and back then it was one of those not talked about “discretions”. Fortunately, we’ve evolved way beyond that to where using children for your sexual needs is now straight out illegal, and yes, wrong.

Now, I’ll go out on a limb here and say that when it comes to personal mating things, I’m not exactly the poster child for normality, but come on people. Why are grown men thinking it’s okay to go after children? And then when they get caught, after they lawyer themselves up, they act like they weren’t doing anything wrong, almost as if they really want to say “come on, everyone’s doing it, right?” No, everyone’s not doing it, and not too many things freak me out or cause me to think there’s something seriously wrong with our civilization, beyond the usual things that make me think there are serious things wrong with our civilization, but this one just simply continues to evade me for any ability to understand it. And again, I’ve done some pretty bizarre things in my time that would cause a church lady to faint (or pass me her phone number…call me), but there’s one point that should never be crossed by anyone, and that’s the idea of consensuality, and NO, a child has no ability to make a consensual decision, no matter how convoluted your thinking process may be to imagine that such a thing is possible.

I’m sure a psychologist could explain all of this, but I fail to understand how someone can find this appealing in any way. But even worse, I find it hard to believe that someone doing something like this doesn’t realize it’s wrong and still manages to do it without ever seeking some kind of help. If I ever found myself doing something that was hurting others without their consent, I’d be seeking medical assistance immediately. At what point of cognitive dissonance does someone allow himself to think something like this would ever be okay?

All right. My rant is over. I hope I haven’t hurt anyone nonconsensually who ended up reading this. If so, I might have to seek out medical assistance.

Why Sasha Grey, the Porn Star, Isn’t Allowed to Read to Children in School

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In case you missed the ground-breaking story, the former porn star Sasha Grey, was discovered reading to little children at a public school, Emerson Elementary School. She claimed it was for Read Across America Compton, but according to Read Across America, they do not show any record of Sasha Grey ever having any affiliation with that group, or that she was reading for their program. Regardless of any of that trivial stuff, the uproar that came along was that a porn star, or ex-porn star, dared to read literature to little children who might be so impressionable that they’d start up porn careers, or whatever it is that paranoid parents assume is going to happen because of this. Believe me, they’re a lot safer around Sasha Grey than they are any Penn State football coach who might be volunteering to help out. I’m just saying.

But what’s even more interesting is this whole fascination with redemption that Sasha Grey is attempting to go through, and miserably failing. You see, if you’ve ever been a porn star, you’re doomed to be a porn star forever. In the United States, any sex-related career is about as low as you can possibly go, and any attempt to “better” yourself will always end up with some sanctimonious asshole holding that previous career against you because it’s so easy to do in our prudish environment.

Personally, I have zero problem that Sasha Grey used to be a porn star. So, I don’t care if she reads to children, administers mass during Christmas, or continues having sex with blindfolded midgets. However, I can’t speak for the rest of our society that seems to have problems with anything involving sex, even when serious incidents of hypocrisy are screaming in our face.

The real problem for me is that Sasha Grey is attempting to capitalize on her fame as a porn star and turn it into fame as a mainstream star without suffering any of the backlash for tying her fame to a questionable past. If she wants fame in our society, a society that frowns upon porn activity, then it’s really hard to cry foul when she has done nothing to separate her desire to be famous from her desire to be famous as a porn star. You see, Sasha Grey is most likely not her real name. It’s her “porn” name. If she wants to be seen as mainstream, she needs to completely separate her porn name from the name that she uses as a future star. But she’s not willing to do that because she’s gained a certain amount of notoriety for being a porn star.

The problem is the baggage she brought along with her. And that’s really no one’s fault but her own. While I don’t have a problem with her being a former porn star, I’m not the one she has to convince. She has to convince the rest of mainstream America, which is founded by a bunch of prudes who are two steps away from being a fundamentalist church state. If she wants to make her way as a famous actress, she’s going to have to live with the fact that a lot of people are going to hold her to her past, as long as she’s going to keep using that past to propel herself into a productive future.

And that means facing the fact that the majority of our nation is pretty shitty when it comes to holding people to standards they themselves can never reach, nor would they even try. That’s too bad, but no one actually has the right to be famous and rich. To do that, you have to actually go to the people who allow you to become rich and famous. And they’ve spoken. And what they said amounts to not wanting a porn star reading to little children.

Sure, it’s wrong in so many ways, but when has the path to fame ever been based on right and wrong?

For me, Black Friday is Just the Day After Thursday

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I noticed that retailers are starting to send me their “Black Friday” advertisements, telling me of all of the great savings they will be offering on the day after Thanksgiving. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I don’t care. Black Friday is one of those “holidays” that comes once a year that I completely ignore as much as possible, no matter how much hype keeps coming my way concerning the pseudo holiday. You see, I’ve discovered that over the years almost always one of two things happen with a Black Friday sale for me: It’s either sold out by the time I get to it, or it wasn’t really much of a deal to begin with.

The first problem is easy to understand. There are people who stay up late at night and rush the store the second it opens. People fight each other in the aisles, trying to get at that on sale sweater that they never would have bought on any other day, but they’ll kill you for the chance to get that sweater to the cash register. Sure, every now and then you hear about someone getting a “great deal” on something they bought, but for the most part, every person who raves about Black Friday to me usually tells me about some red and green sweater she bought “for only five bucks!” or some electronic item that they managed to pry from the dead hands of a child they beat like a baby seal for the pleasure of paying for it. And I nod, like I’m supposed to do, and I think about how I’m so glad I didn’t have to deal with the crowds that day.

You see, I hate crowds. Especially the kinds of crowds that come out on a Black Friday. These aren’t people watching crowds, flocks of friendly people partaking in holiday cheer, or even underfed supermodels who might be interesting to stare at as they shop for diet Yogurt, but these are crazed, ravenous creatures who seem to equate sales with a necessity on Maslow’s heirarchy of needs, and I just don’t buy into it. For me, dealing with hellbent people who are after sales is a lot like fishing with zombies. It might be interesting to experience in theory, but I’m not sure I’d want to spend the day throwing a line into the water around a bunch of people who want to eat my brains.

So, this year, when Black Friday comes around, I’ll stay at home and do something different, like anything that’s not shopping. For the rest of you, good luck on finding your sales. I’ll listen to your fascinating stories of beating up a school kid who was after that pair of shoes you just had to have, but that doesn’t mean I really care.

What Political Issues Should Be Focused On?

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Every time we come close to a major national election, I’m left scratching my head at the innane subjects that end up becoming “important” politically. You know the things I’m talking about. Stuff like abortion, stem cell research, soccer moms and legalizing marijuana. Sure, some people find them important, but for the most part, they’re fringe topics that tend to get people galvanized around unimportant issues that end up costing votes for elections. And we fall for it every time. So, I decided to look into a couple of topics I thought SHOULD be issues, and then ask if you have any thoughts or ideas of your own.

1. While the economy is an important subject, just focusing on “the economy” or “jobs” are useless endeavors because they really don’t get down to the point of actually doing anything. Sure, I could run for office and say “Duane is FOR a good economy and believes we SHOULD put people to work! So vote me for me!” Sadly enough, a bunch of politicians are probably already preparing their campaigns to say almost that. In rhetoric, it works great. In substance, well, not so much. Mainly because it doesn’t mean anything. Killing puppies is bad, but no one is actually advocating killing puppies, so getting on the side of the pro-puppy crowd doesn’t lead anywhere but to banal arguments that don’t lead anywhere. That’s the economy problem.

So, if I was going to talk about fixing the economy, I could probably focus on taxes, even though those often fall into banal areas as well, because then we end up in a pro-left “more taxes” or pro-right “taxes are bad”. Instead, I say that we k now that taxes are inevitable, so why don’t we focus on what exactly we’re taxing in the first place. And I don’t mean whom, such as rich versus poor. Yeah, I think the rich could probably afford to pay more taxes, but let’s be honest and think about the possibility that perhaps that’s not exactly right either. While they CAN afford more taxes, is it really right to say they SHOULD be paying more taxes? While I could argue that they’ve probably benefited more from capitalism than someone who is poor (which WOULD be a good argument), I’m going to take a different tact and focus on what should be taxed, because I think there are avenues where we are completely missing the boat.

Here me out here. What I propose is that we legalize prostitution and then tax anything and everything that has any ties to sexual barter exchanges. Right now, there is a HUGE blackmarket industry that is nothing but this type of behavior, and the only reason we don’t tax it is because the people who would pay those taxes are afraid to report it because they’d probably then get arrested for all sorts of blue laws we have instituted in our scared of sex morality that exists in our society. Face it. There are people paying other people for sexual behavior, some of it pretty innocent and some of it pretty damn bizarre involving all sorts of devices, machines, trapeze-apparatus mechanisms and some involving things that still shock the crap out of me. But I know it takes place because there are people out there doing it and enjoying it. None of them are evil, bad, dishonest or any other letter-wearing designation either. They’re normal people who have decided that that is how they interact with each other. And some people throw a fit because it doesn’t fit into their sense of morality.

Get over it. If you don’t like it, don’t participate in it. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be acknowledging it and taxing it. Believe me, there’s a LOT of money that changes hands here in this area, and once it becomes legal, you start to clean it up as well. Sure, people are still going to do their naughty things, but legalizing it gets organized crime, gangs and predators out of the business. It also allows women to have an easier avenue to protect themselves from some of the problematic people out there who prey on them because they figure the illegal nature of the business keeps them from every having to face justice.

Now, we could also legalize drugs, but at the same time I realize there’s a more health-related problem involved here that needs to be dealt with. Perhaps if we went into it with all eyes open, we might see drug behavior as a problem that needs to be dealt with through therapy and positive actions, rather than having someone try to get off drugs while in lockdown, waiting for his court case for possessing illegal substances.

2. International Diplomacy. We haven’t gotten this right in over a hundred years now. We’re still dealing with foreign entities as if we’re still part of the Napoleonic era. Governments aren’t that way any more. Major powers don’t really deal with each other on the international stage as they used to with detente and brinkmanship. What is needed is a different perspective, involving a more game theoretic foundation of tit for tat and compliance understanding than “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” nonsense. If you look at the problems the US is having with Middle Eastern countries, almost all of them stem from brinkmanship and religious intolerance (from both sides) than it does from actually attempting to engage with people as part of a give and take relationship. Right now, our foreign policy has more to do with where we might get our next barrel of oil than it does with how we get along with people who like types of music you can find on iTunes, yet much of our actual engagement comes from those avenues through social networking sites than they ever will through economic business ties being handled by corporate entities trying to corner the market on petroleum.

Years ago, I used to have disagreements with a young man who was fresh from Iran (shortly after the Shah was deposed). He was a strongly ideological Persian who believed in east versus west superiority (for whatever reasons, which surprisingly were not religious), but we actually became friends and arguments and conflicts practically ended overnight when I discovered he was a fan of Madonna, and I managed to get him a copy of Madonna’s “Sex” book that he so wanted but couldn’t bring it to himself to buy for himself. To be honest, I never heard an anti-western comment from him after the day he received that book. While I can’t verify he still didn’t feel that way, it was amazing what a sea change was made over such a simplistic gesture.

That our government has NEVER figured this out shocks me more and more as the world becomes a much more dangerous place while still moving towards some bizarre sense of a global economy.

3. Education. This, to me, is probably the most important issue that our country should be dealing with on a daily basis, almost with the same sense we gave to putting men on the Moon. Our whole country should be rallied around the idea of improving our educational system not so that we somehow obtain minimal standards, but that we start to surpass the very dreams we had back in the 1960s about the great civilization we hoped to one day become. Children should be taught calculus by sixth grade as a standardization and expectation because it should be almost second nature. Parents should be irrate that their children don’t know more than they did at their age and do everything possible to make sure that we don’t continue to churn out stupid people. Reality show programming should be seen as the embarrassment to America that it really is, instead of some kind of ideal that people look up to. My god, there are people who want to be Snooki and the Situation, and somehow seem proud of that. College should be an expectation for all, not because it’s an enlightened goal of the few, but because it’s necessary to build a society of free thinkers who should be challenging everyone about practically everything. I would like to see a presidential debate that is moderated by the audience who shows up to the event wanting to know the answers to real questions, not just packaged answers to questions pre-screened by candidate panels beforehand.

That’s all I’ll go with for now, because now I’ve depressed myself as I realize we’re never going to achieve any of this, and we’re doomed to go another century with people striving for the lowest standards possible, mainly because they never learned to challenge themselves.

Is Being Upset Enough to Sustain a National Movement?

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The Occupy Wall Street movement is turning out to be a very interesting flashpoint in modern day history. If you follow the news, commentators are going out of their way trying to explain away something they can’t explain by using metaphors and comparisons to previous movements that are completely void of any dichotomous connections. What is simply happening is that something new has emerged, and the media has no way of explaining it.

So, let me explain what is really going on. What we have are a lot of people who are pissed off because the American Dream (or whatever international aspirations they might have if they’re not Americans) isn’t working out as originally sold by the marketers known as government and media. It used to be if you worked hard, put in your time, and did the right things, you would come out ahead, and that your children would end up doing better than you did before. This would continue on for generations until several generations later the new species wouldn’t even recognize the old species.

That works great in theory. However, the theory doesn’t account for the concept of greed. A capitalistic system works really well at bringing the society to a higher level of achievement, but what doesn’t get discussed is that not everyone rises up with the new tide of prosperity. In reality, a capitalistic system is designed to benefit those who are capable of taking advantage of the process, and in a zero sum economy, someone generally has to do horribly bad in order for someone to do horribly well. Socialism is the economic system where everyone comes out equally, although not always at the best they could be (as government isn’t known for raising tides of boats of economies all that well when there’s no incentive to provide for upward mobility). But capitalism is a different animal, and equality has never been a promise, a guarantee or even a necessity. Instead, capitalism promises prosperity for some, and desparity for most others. What we’ve only recently discovered is that 99% is desparity while 1% is prosperity in this zero sum game.

That is why people are pissed. You see, most people don’t want to be part of the losing side of economics. Yet, whenever this gets addressed, the 1% (and the clueless numbers in the 99% hoodwinked by the 1% to believe that they’ll one day have a shot at being one of the 1%) does everything possible to make the 99% sound clueless, making such commentary irrelevant, and even more important: Unheard.

But one thing happened that wasn’t a part of the capitalistic dilemma: Education. Many more people achieved education than a capitalistic system can actually maintain. Oh, this works out well if the education is vocational in nature, in that everyone exists for the purpose of feeding the greedy animal, but if the education is social in nature, and people become made aware, rather than compliant, then there would eventually be a reckoning. It’s somewhat inevitable, although I don’t even think Marx or Hegel predicted it would happen as quickly as it is beginning to occur; they suspected much more saturation would have been necessary first, but who knew?

That’s where we are today. The movement has no leadership because there is no one who can steer a crowd to inevitable collapse. There is no rallying cry that can push people in that direction. And there is really no rallying cry that can push a population back in the other direction once the masses have been unleashed.

So, the question is: Are we there yet? If we’re at the inevitable saturation point that leads to eventual destruction of the capitalistic system, then nothing exists that can push the movement backwards. If we’re not there yet, the people who hold onto the reins of power will continue to use their influence to push the masses back to compliance again. But one thing is certain: There will be no actual compromise because the holders of power cannot compromise without acknowledging that the system was flawed to begin with.

So we’re left with the question of whether or not there is enough anger, frustration and disgust amongst the population to fuel a movement further to a point where changes will actually take place. As collective action theory points out, people will gather together for a common purpose, but if they do not receive a payoff for their efforts, the movement dies until it raises steam again. If they do receive a payoff, they may settle down, thinking they achieved their goals but not really satisfied (meaning they will eventually have to rise again and start over from scratch), or they will be so insulted by the compromises asked of them that the movement will fuel itself and sustain itself further until it actually acquires the goals it sets for itself.

Either way, no one is going to sit down and write out a list of wants and needs to sustain the movement (something the media keeps asking for). It will either achieve what it needs to achieve (fulfilling a sense of punctuated equilibrium) and return rhetoric to a sense of order again, or it will overwhelm everything until it becomes the new world order itself.

Only the future can really tell.

Netflix drops Quikster but Duane really doesn’t care

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I received an email today from the CEO of Netflix. How nice. Not long ago, I received another email from him, indicating that he was raising the price of Netflix by a LOT. And then he sent me another email explaining that he was going to be splitting up Netflix into Netflix and Quikster, basically forcing me to have to use two different services to get the same service I get in one place previously. And then he went on the news and started talking to Netflix customers like a mother talking to a five year old kid who doesn’t understand why mommy and daddy are splitting up, and then decides to explain it by saying that daddy is leaving mommy because you were bad.

Anyway, so this latest email was explaining to me that he decided NOT to split up Netflix into two companies, but sorry about the price increase. That’s sticking because Netflix needs to make a profit, and I’ve been getting too good of a deal from Netflix. Well, he was right. But when he sent me those rude emails a few months back, I did what came naturally. I cut off Netflix for good and decided while it used to be a good deal, I kind of wanted to do business with companies that don’t make me feel like a five year old kid. Yeah, I threw a temper tantrum, like a five year old kid. And I left Netflix. Not coming back, so their CEO can send me all sorts of emails about how he’s changed and isn’t going to hit me any more, but our relationship is over.

I moved on. It’s not me. It’s you. Sorry. And please stop hitting mommy. The neighbors are getting tired of banging on the walls.

Comparing the Ipad 2, the Kindle Fire and a block of wood

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I know everyone has been wondering about the similarities and comparisons of these three media devices, so I’ve decided to devote a column to examining just that. Now that Apple has had its Ipad 2 out for some time, Amazon announced its Kindle Fire to be released in November, and Home Depot has chopped up a block of wood into the size of a cube, I figured it was time to see how they differ from each other.

The Ipad 2: It’s a lot like a Star Trek data pad, and it runs on some kind of processor that may or may not have powered the space shuttle. It has been known to make really geeky guys very popular with hot supermodels, and the first time I turned it on, it made my IQ go up a whole 25 points.

Specs: It has a color screen, it has some funky icons on the screen that don’t make a lot of sense, but you can touch them and they do all sorts of weird things. Sometimes, when you’re not paying attention, it plays music, sometimes even from your own music library. One person who worked at the Apple Store referred to it aptly as “magical”, and that’s about all the information I have on it.

The Kindle Fire, of which I don’t have an actual picture because it hasn’t appeared in flesh yet, is a lot like the earlier Kindle, except more expensive and it does more stuff. It is also in color and from the picture seen, beautiful women have them on the beach, pretending to read them while they really sit there looking pretty, knowing that I’m watching and they’re not going to talk to me no matter what sort of line I come up with, like “Hey, Baby, I saw you over here, and I was over there, so now that I’m over here and, um, well, I, uh….” yeah, that’s how most of my pick up lines end up. Yeah, I’m not really proud of that.

Specs: Like the Ipad 2, it’s magical. It has little gnomes inside it that retrieve information for you from the Internet, and if you feed them well, they get you more information that you can use at a later time.

 

A Block of Wood. Surprisingly, this doesn’t compare well to the Ipad 2 or the Kindle Fire. It’s only value is the fact that it’s been around a very long time, and you can make things with it, like wooden Ipad 2’s and wooden Kindle Fires. But it doesn’t retrieve information from the Internet. It just sits there, doing nothing, like a stupid block of wood.

I really hate it. I wish I never bought it. Stupid salesmen and their Mad Men approach to selling crap I don’t need!

Just Because I Signed Your Petition to Save Cute Little Bunnies Doesn’t Mean I Support Your Political Agenda Against Something Else

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After all, it's all for the bunnies

The other day, I signed an online petition to advocate authorizing the government to forgive student loans. As someone in serious debt to the government for financial aid loans (I think I may actually owe enough to buy two brand new aircraft carriers for the US Navy), I felt this was a GREAT cause. However, since then, this organization has been sending me messages, letting me know that through them “we” can now stop global warming, the “murder” of some guy on death row for killing a police officer, evil Republicans who are trying to destroy America by getting more Republican elected, and something involving a plan to use Katy Perry to somehow turn Madonna into a virgin again. I might have been off my medication when I read that last one, but it was still pretty confusing.

The point is: I don’t care about any of your other campaigns or issues. Just because I was behind that one issue doesn’t somehow make me a social advocate of all of your crazy, crackpot schemes to do whatever it is you think you’re going to do by somehow pretending to do it in my name. At what point does advocating for one issue somehow turn you into a blanket advocator of all other issues some group of crazy people actually believe in?

That’s the problem right there. An organization should be overwhelmly happy that it received attention one of its issues. But if it thinks it’s going to somehow build a comraderie with people who agreed with them once because THEY believe in something else, they’re going to lose any future support completely. It reminds me of when I signed up to receive information about Obama when he was first running for office. Somehow, because of that action, I receive all sorts of CRAP from his political action people who are convinced that my one-time interest in what he might have to say somehow equated to “drinking the Koolaid”. I don’t just blame Obama’s people for this. I also ran into the same thing when trying to find out what a particular Republican had to say, mainly cause I thought signing up for her information might actually get me some hot pictures of her, too. Oh boy, was that a mistake. Not that I would ever vote for her, but now that I receive her daily crazies, I’m scared to vote at all just because now I fear that she might be somewhere in the vicinity of the voting booth.

Look, I understand that grass roots campaigns are hard to build, but if you’re going to focus on one issue, focus on one issue and build your interest group that way. The second you go off on some crackpot scheme idea that is NOT the one that got people to sign up for your manifesto the first time, you’re going to destroy any support you ever hoped to have in the first place.

I say this, even though I know no one ever listens anyway. They just keep sending their crap to you, convinced that because you listened to them once, you’re now their friend for life. I had a girlfriend like that once. Took me six months to break up with her because she refused to believe that I was actually trying to break up with her. Then it took me a year and half to convince her to stop calling me. Now, I fear seeing anyone who even looks remotely like her, convinced it’s the evil ex, out to do whatever it is evil exes do. I was going to join a group that consisted of people who have lived through evil exes before, but then I realized once I signed up for their newsletter, they’d start sending me stuff about saving bunnies from the destruction of the ozone layer. And everyone knows how much I care about the bunnies.

I just have only so many issues I can focus on at one time.

Netflix Just Doesn’t Seem to Get It

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Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings seems to think that if he offers a fake apology, somehow his insulting rhetoric will somehow get replaced with applause. You see, a short while ago, Netflix had this “brilliant” idea of increasing revenue by splitting its company into streaming and DVD sending entities. What it didn’t do is actually consult any of its customers beforehand. Instead, it talked to them patronizingly, like an adult to a child, and told them that raising prices was somehow a good idea for all. And then out of the blue, yesterday, Hastings offered the infamous “fake” apology that companies are getting very good at offering these days.

What am I talking about? Well, you see when a company doesn’t really want to apologize, but wants everyone to think it has apologized so we can all see them as sensitive, it offers what’s referred to as the “fake” apology, which is a lot like breaking up with a mate by saying something like: “It’s really best for both of us that I dump you by stopping the car, letting you out in the middle of the most dangerous part of town and have you walk home alone. I’m sure you understand that I’m doing it in the interests of both of us.”

Hastings did that by indicating that he was “sorry” for how his message was received, not that he was actually sorry for raising prices, and pissing everyone off by treating customers like ten year olds being told it’s for their own good.

Now, Netflix has decided to up its apology to absurd proportions by completely splitting the company into two, creating some stupid-named company called Quikster, almost as if they polled the audience to find out what would cause the most people to jump ship, and the pot-smoking guy in the back yelled out: “Dude, Quikster would be so rad!” and they went with it.

I’ve been talking about the hemorrhaging of customers that Netflix has been suffering ever since they started turning stupid as a corporate business strategy. Years from now, the actions of Netflix will be taught in business management schools as the poster child of how to completely destroy your company overnight. The fact that they can’t see this is amazing to me. Yet, they keep making these types of moves, convinced that somehow its a sustainable process for growth.

As I mentioned before, as soon as I finish watching the television show I’m watching on streaming video through Netflix, I’m going to cancel my account completely, and I will never join again. I have to believe that I’m not the only person who feels this way, and at the same time there’s a sense of regret because a long time ago, I used to hail Netflix as the rebel child it was, thumbing its nose at corporate America and offering the public exactly what it wanted and felt it needed. And then it stopped doing that, and turned into Circuit City. If ever a study on anthropology was needed, the destruction of Netflix (or Quikster) so needs its own chapter.

With that said, I wish Netflix good speed at achieving whatever bizarre plan it is attempting to fulfill. Unfortunately, this time around, I will not be around for the ride. And unfortunately for them, most of their customers will probably resonate the same response as well.

The Struggles of Teaching Political Science to College Students

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My role as a teacher

Every semester that I teach a new batch of students in political science, I find myself less and less confident in the future of America. Every now and then, a semester will throw off this natural trend, but more often than not, I find myself wondering what kind of future we’re leading to when so many students seem to have little to no grasp of the events happening around them.

I’m not talking about obscure political knowledge here. I’m talking about answers to simple questions like: “What’s going on the country today?” or “What are the important events happening in the world today?” I can understand the concept of being put on the spot to think of something. It used to happen to me when I first started my undergraduate days at West Point and an upperclassman would jump in front of your face and demand answers to “Tell me what’s on the front of the New York Times, New Cadet!” and you’d draw a blank more because you were scared to death of failing rather than actually not remembering what you read in the paper that morning. But this is different. When we finally end up with some story of current events in the discussion, like Obama’s “big speech on Thursday” I look around the class, and I’m met with completely blank stares, like they have no idea what was just mentioned. And when this continues over EVERY subject that gets brought up, you really start to feel scared when it comes to young people understanding what’s going on around them.

At one point in the past, I completely figured this was inconsequential because I started thinking, “who cares who knows anything about current events?” I figured it wasn’t all that important anyway. But it is important because significant decisions are being made each and every day in our governments, and quite often the people who influence public opinion and the decisions of leaders are completely clueless about what’s going on anyway. As Mussolini pointed out, when you have a population that is so blind to what’s going on around them, you can so easily influence them into doing anything you desire.

When we look at the last presidential administration and the atrocities that may have been carried out in our name, I look at the people of this country who don’t seem to care, and I immediately understand why so many bad things can happen at the hands of our leaders because no one will ever hold them accountable if no one has a clue what’s actually going on. When a presidential election occurs and the only reason someone votes for a leader is because of what partisan letter they registered for at one point in their life, we have a real problem. The country is divided into two camps of partisan designations, which means that the people who make up the party leadership of those two parties can practically do anything they want to do, and they’re still going to get the support of blind, oblivious constituents.

This is why someone like former Detroit mayor Kilpatrick can commit outright crimes against his own constituents, and he’d probably get reelected by the same people he cheated because their loyalties are to a mindset rather than to an individual. It’s why we have so much corruption in our governments these days. It happens so often that leaders rarely even hide it because they realize that they’re still going to get reelected because they’re not “the other guy”. This sort of thing stems from the fact that it takes a simple majority to put someone into office, and the majority of the population is filled with people who have no clue what’s going on in their government, and more importantly, don’t care.

The usual response to this argument is that “education” is the solution, but as one of those educators, I practically give up myself because no matter how much energy, how much struggle or how much entertainment I add to a class, students are generally only interested in rote memorization that will lead them to the answers for a test that they generally don’t understand. I’ve had students tell me a correct answer, but when I try to analyze the answer to see if there’s an understanding of the nature of that concept, they stare at me as if I just asked them the question in Klingon, meaning a) they don’t understand it, and b) as Klingon is from Star Trek, they figure it’s not important for them to give a rat’s ass about it anyway.

Yet, each semester I teach, I’ll receive a random email from a former student who thanks me for opening his or her eyes to knowledge he or she never realized existed, so I feel that I got through to someone. But when you have a classroom of 30-50 students, reaching two of them each semester leaves you with a sense that it’s not a successful achievement on a cost benefit analysis. You start to wonder if they would have come to this knowledge regardless, and you’re just surfing the wave that was heading towards the shore anyway. Or did you cause the wave to form? And if so, was it worth the costs of creating the wave in the first place.

I fear that not enough people are “getting it” to make a difference because when only 0.4% of the people who vote understand the process well enough to cast an enlightened vote, do the 99.6% doom us to bad choices, a doomed future and inevitable Mussolinis?