Yeah... Good times.
Now I'm going to completely pretend I never said that for a little while, because I'd like to bring to light a particular piece from what I assume was a newspaper. Just some good old fashioned American sentiment. Who doesn't love that? Right? Here's the picture:
Because I'm not the type to slander or otherwise demean people in ways that I might be sued over, for the sake of this post we're going to pretend this article wasn't written by a real person. Instead, we're all going to pretend that this letter/article thing was written by an imaginary character of my own creation. I'm allowed to slander my own creations without legal repercussions, and I can always work out the psychological repercussions later with my therapist. So now we need a name for my imaginary person so that I can accurately refer to him throughout the rest of this post. I'd like to call him Captain Douchenozzle McPointyfingers, but since that's probably going to get old about the third time I type it out, we're just going to refer to him as Skippy. Why Skippy? Because Skippy is the name I would give to a small dog. The kind of dog that acts tough behind a fence or a window, barks at anything that moves, and really, truly seems to think that if he makes that barking sound just one or two more times, it will change anything at all about his current situation.
So Skippy here makes a whole lot of comparisons in this little letter which are a little bit on the monstrously biased and ungrounded side. I could literally sit here and pick apart his entire letter comparison by comparison, so I think I'm going to proceed to do exactly that. Now, I'm going to make one thing clear here which I'm fairly sure I've mentioned before. My political naivete is astounding. Politics can be fun to discuss, but I tend to avoid the nitty-gritty, and I don't really actively keep up with issues. So instead of pretending to be a political mind, I'm just gonna go ahead and flat out say that I suck at politics. Fortunately, Skippy has given me plenty of material to work with here which is less political and more just flat out ignorant.
Let's start with this one: "If we [meaning white people, I guess] dislike a black person, we're racist and if a black dislikes whites, it's their 1st Amendment right;"
Well, actually, a white person disliking a black person isn't racist. It's just a person disliking a person. I mean, I dislike my neighbor for blasting crappy rap music through my walls, talking loudly on the phone and going out to check his mail in a wifebeater and a pair of basketball shorts that are three sizes too big. And he's white. The important thing to note here (and it's a common misconception) is that just because a black person tells you you're being racist, it doesn't necessarily mean you're being racist. In today's world, "racist" has become a term which means "you and I are different colors and you are doing something that inconveniences or otherwise does not make me happy." It's used by people of all races, and it's kind of lost a lot of meaning. As for a black person disliking whites, that's actually racism. I don't really know where Skippy pulled that whole 1st Amendment thing from, but I'm fairly sure being racist doesn't have anything to do with freedom of religion, speech or the right to gather in peaceful protest, unless there's a fire hose involved. I mean, I've read over it a few times, but I guess I'm just missing the part where it says "And also, black people have the right to hate all white people without being racist. We're cool now, right?"
Moving on, here's another of my favorites: "the government spends millions to re-habilitate criminals and they do almost nothing for the victims;"
Skippy, let me explain this one by taking an example from the wonderful world of nature, and the workings of predators and prey. Let's take a good predator, like a big venomous snake. Now, our snake is hungry and since he isn't fortunate enough to live in a tank at Petco, he's actually gonna have to go hunt for food. Today he's feeling rabbit because he's had shrew the past four times and he's getting a little tired of it, so he finds himself a nice rabbit burrow. Now, do you think he goes in to tangle with Momma rabbit? I mean, he's big enough to eat her, sure. Might not even be hungry for a really long time if he does. But no, of course he doesn't do that. He waits for Momma rabbit to leave the burrow and hop away for some alone time, so she can drink a pool of fermented berry water and drunkenly curse the name of Daddy rabbit for leaving her alone with twenty-something babies for that skanky hare from across the meadow. Once she's gone, the snake slips in and noms on some baby rabbits before making his escape. Why does the snake eat the little morsel baby rabbits instead of the big drunken momma rabbit? Because if he eats the momma rabbit, he's gonna have to find a new rabbit hole because this one won't be filled with delicious bite-sized baby rabbits anymore. See, the same applies to the government's spending in terms of dealing with criminals. In a country that's already so deep in a debt hole that we're about to hit China (who will promptly ask where all of their money is that we owe them) we don't exactly have a lot of money to be slinging around. Yes, they spend millions on dealing with criminals and don't do much to help the victims. They can only afford to focus on one side of that coin. They can spend it to help the victims, but that's like the snake eating the baby rabbits. There will always be more. Without an end. It's treating the symptoms, not the disease. And I wouldn't feel too bad about the victims, because we live in America, and in case you haven't ever watched television on any given channel for more than ten minutes, we're practically swimming in independent insurance companies. Y'know, those people whose job it is to help victims of crime? Yeah, those people.
Here's another shiny one: "in public schools you can teach that homosexuality is OK, but you better not use the word God in the process;"
First of all, Skippers, if you're teaching that homosexuality is okay, you probably won't be using the word God in the process. Last time I checked, every version of the Bible (including the fake ones like the Jehovah's Witness book) pretty much states that homosexuality isn't cool. So unless what you're telling the students is "God totally isn't cool with this, but you can go ahead and do it anyway," it isn't likely you'll be facing this issue. Second of all, I really don't remember anyone ever even mentioning whether homosexuality is or isn't okay in school. In case you haven't noticed, it's kind of a hot-button topic. There are a lot of people who disagree on the subject, so for public school teachers to say one way or the other is kind of grounds for having their employment status re-examined. What they can teach, however, is that bullying people for being homosexual is wrong. Thirdly, if Rick Perry's politically suicidal campaign ad on YouTube taught us anything, it's that Rick Perry really shouldn't be allowed on YouTube. But what it also taught us is that there is some kind of wide-spread belief that all religion is banned from public schools. Except it's not. While directly teaching religious material might not be okay, students are still allowed (and encouraged) to celebrate religious holidays, pray before meals, and other things of that nature.
Living a matter of blocks away from the Walls unit where the executions take place in Texas, this next line is topically relevant to my life! "you can kill an unborn child, but its wrong to execute a mass murderer;"
Before I even start on this one, I'd just like to point out that in this case, the "its" needs an apostrophe. Slight fail on both the author and the editor's parts. Grammar aside, I was up until this point under the impression that this was written about America as a whole. Not about roughly half of America while the other half either disagrees or are on the fence about it. I guess that wouldn't have made as snappy a title. Killing an unborn child... Hoo boy. Here we go. Everybody's favorite topic. Okay, so this is the part of the show where I get a little bit opiniony, so if you're easily offended by views on the topic of abortion that probably don't match up with yours... you probably shouldn't have even read this far, actually. So, using the term "kill an unborn child" is kind of making a whole lot of assumptions here. And we all know what assume means. Makes an ass of "u" and "me." It assumes that everyone either agrees or should agree with your opinion that a fetus is, from the moment of conception, a child. Or even human, for that matter. But here's the rub, sports fans: Until the 26th week of pregnancy, a fetus is incapable of thought. It may have a heartbeat, and it may have a somewhat human-esque shape, and it might even have fingernails. But it can't think. It's alive, yes. But it's only alive in the same sense as any other organ in the woman's body. I mean, think about it. It's a little collection of cells which feeds off of its host's nutrients and is only "alive" as long as she is. And so is her appendix, assuming she still has one. Both can be removed, and neither one will care. I think I've provided a valid enough exception to the dichotomy that I can stop before I offend any more people. Now moving on to the mass murderer thing... since when? Now, I may have been hallucinating from lack of sleep, but I'm fairly sure that on the night that Seal Team 6 (trademarked by Disney, Lord have mercy) put a bullet in the brain of Osama Bin Laden, I saw news footage and livestream video footage of a MASSIVE crowd of people cheering, waving American flags and chanting "USA! USA!" in the streets of many major cities across the country. You know what they were doing? Celebrating the execution of a mass-murderer. Yep.
And moving into the radical side of things: "if you protest against President Obama's policies you're a terrorist, but if you burned an American flag or George Bush in effigy, it was your 1st Amendment right."
Uh. What? I'm really curious as to when exactly protesting against a president's policies has been considered terrorism. I mean, unless your preferred method of protesting is setting off car bombs or mailing off envelopes full of anthrax. More than likely, this statement was directed at one specific incident, and that's not really enough to base a statement like that on unless you directly reference said incident. Also, yes. It's legal to burn an American flag. Because it falls under freedom of (symbolic) speech. And yeah, it's messed up. This actually might have been a good point if it weren't paired up with one that made no sense. Half credit for this one, Skippy. I mean, the audacity. People doing things which are morally wrong just because they're technically not illegal. How utterly uncharacteristic of the entire human race. ...Oh, wait.
"we have eliminated all criminals in America, they are now called sick people;"
Well, actually they're not. They're still called criminals. How do I know this? I attend school at Sam Houston State University. Which is a school primarily focused in Criminal Justice. It isn't focused in "Sick People Justice." It's Criminal Justice. People who go to hospitals and doctor's offices are sick people. But even people who go to hospitals for crimes they committed because of illnesses are still called criminals. They're called "criminally insane." Keyword: Criminal.
Here's one of my personal absolute favorite parts of this letter: "parenting has been replaced by Ritalin and video games;"
You're kidding, right? Oh, Skipperdoodle. You poor, naive little person. Parenting has not been replaced by Ritalin and video games. Parenting hasn't been replaced. It's just degraded on a large scale. I mean, I feel like you were close to being on to something here, but you're aiming at the wrong target on this issue. Parenting isn't the root of the problem here. The parents are. I mean, let's face it. In a country were over 50% of all marriages end in divorce and most of those divorces leave unhappy kids, it's already not a good situation. But when you throw in the part where most of the people we're expecting to raise these kids (or for us cynics, expecting to ultimately fail horribly at raising them) are a generation of selfish, entitled brats who didn't grow up beyond sexual maturity, it's kind of a no-brainer. But that's one group. I know for a fact that there is still an enormously large number of families who are strong, functional family units raising good, functional kids without the use of drugs. Blanket statements are a no-no, Skippy.
Next up: "the similarity between Hurricane Katrina and the gulf oil spill is that neither president did anything to help."
Yeah. Okay, so instead of commenting on what the presidents did or didn't do, because I know nothing I try to justify or point out will satisfy you, here's what I'll say instead. Skippy, let's assume you're right on this one. And you know what? You're so right, that the next time Mother Nature decides that her period is especially bad this week and she's just gonna curb-stomp some poor part of the country, we're not gonna wait for the president to do anything. Instead, we're gonna pick up our shiny red emergency phone, and we're gonna call you, Skippy. And we're gonna say, "Skippy! Come quick! A nuclear earthquakesplosionicane just vomited Godzilla all over New Orleans and California at the same time! Use your infinite wisdom of how our presidents don't do anything and save us, Skippy!" Oh, what's that? A nuclear earthquakesplosionicane and Godzilla sounds a little more extreme than an oil spill or a hurricane? Well, when the entire country suddenly turns its eyes to you and waits for you to do something about a natural disaster going on RIGHT NOW, I'd imagine it feels pretty much the same. So good luck to you when that call comes in, Skippy.
So in conclusion, yeah. You know what? There is a lot wrong with this country. And you were almost really good at pointing it all out for us there, Skippy. It isn't perfect here. In fact, it's pretty heavily flawed. But you know what else? I'm gonna go ahead and wager that when you had to take a dump this morning, you didn't have to wipe your ass with your hand before heading off to a job that paid less than five dollars a day. And I'm also willing to bet that you don't regularly go two or three days at a time without eating 'cause that's just not something you can afford to do right now. But judging by the fact that for a whole lot of places in the world these are daily challenges, we're doing pretty damn well despite the flaws. Though, I would gladly invite you to go spend some time in one of those less fortunate countries, if you're still not convinced. Just don't die from Malaria or anything 'cause y'know... we could have fixed that over here. Just sayin'.
-The Sarcastic Soul-
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