BrockLi Soup

Sometimes, I feel like I’m having an ideological war with myself.

Half of me is the capitalist. I want nice things. I want enough money in the bank so that I never need to think about it, so I can buy gadgets and the occasional plane tickets without having to worry about the impact on my budget. I want to be able to go out for dinner and drinks with friends whenever I feel like it.

The other half is sort of a socialist. I want everyone to get fair wages. I want everyone to receive the health care they need. I want a college education to be available to anyone who wishes to pursue it.

Those are the reasonable parts of socialism, the parts that don’t conjure images of a hippie commune where everyone shares all the money and belongings - and work. Let’s be honest, something like that could never work on the big scale, simply because enough people would take advantage of it to make it impractical. Even now, we have issues with people exploiting welfare and other public services. The liberal part of me would like to believe that people on welfare have just fallen on some hard times and need a hand getting back on their feet, but there’s no doubt that some percentage of beneficiaries are just gaming the system.

So where is the middle ground? I think everybody wants health care and education for all, but no one is willing to pay for it. The American Dream is to work hard, be successful, and live a good life - forfeiting your hard-earned gains for the sake of someone else’s good life has never been part of the Dream.

In the grand scheme of things, I’m pretty comfortable. I’ve got a nice apartment, where I keep my college diploma. I’ve got a steady job, with health insurance, that pays pretty well. If I want to pursue the fair, socialist utopia, I should be more than happy to give my share to the greater good. But that diploma came with one hell of an invoice, and weddings don’t come cheap, and Erin and I would like to buy a place of our own before too long, so I’ve got a lot of incentive to keep working to pursue the Dream and amass as much wealth as I can get my hands on.

Do we really need to sacrifice more for the greater good? A couple hours ago, I would have said no. I remembered seeing figures that put our defense spending significantly above all social services, and was going to say that more of that money should be used elsewhere. But, if Wikipedia is to be trusted, the 2008 federal budget is a lot better than I would have guessed. Some highlights from mandatory spending:

• $608 billion (+4.5%) - Social Security
• $386 billion (+5.2%) - Medicare
• $209 billion (+5.6%) - Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)
• $324 billion (+1.8%) - Unemployment/Welfare/Other mandatory spending

The percentages are the percent change from the 2007 budget. Not bad, really: according to this list, these programs are getting more money than I expected. At some point, I saw a pie chart of federal spending that led me to believe these programs got considerably less money than they do, but I was mistaken. Well, mostly; here’s the discretionary spending:

• $481.4 billion (+12.1%) - United States Department of Defense
• $145.2 billion (+45.8%) - Global War on Terror
• $69.3 billion (+0.3%) - Health and Human Services
• $56.0 billion (+0.0%) - United States Department of Education

Spending on the “Global War on Terror” is up 45% from last year? I mean fine, I can sort of understand the DoD budget, even if I preferred it were scaled back and actually used for defense. But another $145 billion for the War on Terror - up a whopping 45% from last year! - when only $56 billion is going to education? Seems to me we should be able to spare another $25 or so to make sure our kids can at least find the countries they’ll be sent to fight in someday. Even so, I can’t get too fired up about it, because it’s not as bad as I thought. If you expect the worse of your government, it’s easier to avoid disappointment, I suppose.

But let me bring it back to my original train of thought for a minute here: do we need to sacrifice more so that everyone can have enough? Maybe, maybe not. It seems that a hell of a lot of money is going into public health programs already, but honestly, I don’t know enough about them to say whether or not it’s working (my gut says “no”). I would love to see more money put toward education. Our schools are falling apart as it is, and college just isn’t even an option to a lot of people, financially speaking.

I guess I don’t really have a conclusion. I didn’t really have anything in mind when I started writing, sort of how Paul Graham described essays, a concept I really like:

An essay is something you write to try to figure something out.

Figure out what? You don’t know yet. And so you can’t begin with a thesis, because you don’t have one, and may never have one. An essay doesn’t begin with a statement, but with a question. In a real essay, you don’t take a position and defend it. You notice a door that’s ajar, and you open it and walk in to see what’s inside.

So, um…the end, I guess.

Please don’t vote for McCain. Unless you’re over 60, you have no excuse. McCain is older than the Golden Gate Bridge, chocolate chip cookies, Alaska, and Bugs Bunny. Is that ageism? Maybe, but I don’t think it’s too much to expect a president to survive his term. And come on, the world is changing faster and faster every day - we need someone that can keep up and has a chance of understanding the technology that drives it. If a president has to be over 35, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say they should be under 70, too.

Vote for Barack Obama. You know, unless you hate America.

Hurrah!

“In contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation,” the court said in the 120-page ruling, “and, more generally, that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.” (emphasis mine)

Link to CNN.com

I don’t know anything about Webb or his politics, but I think an elected gay black man means we’re making progress - in Virginia, no less (well, Northern Virginia, but still). Link

You may remember that I’ve been reading What’s So Great About Christianity with the intent of writing a rebuttal. Well, I finished it last week, and I’ll post it as soon as I find some time to write a post about it.

In the meantime, I’d like to direct you to The BEAST 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2007. I don’t agree with all of them, but they have the same opinion of Dinesh that I do:

29. Dinesh D’Souza

Charges: Wrote a book blaming 9/11 on — who else? — liberals, because if we didn’t live in a free society, then fundamentalists wouldn’t dislike us so. Even conservative nuts blasted D’Souza’s empathy for poor al Qaeda. Lately, he’s been engaging prominent atheists in debates, revealing himself to be a pseudointellectual ass, and then declaring victory. D’Souza’s master plan for attacking atheism is the ridiculous Pascal’s wager: Atheists could be wrong, and then they’d go to hell, but if the religious are wrong, then they suffer no ill effect — aside from living their lives in delusion, of course. And possibly going to someone else’s hell for believing the wrong religion. D’Souza seems to think that if he speaks more loudly and rapidly than his opponent, he is winning, but his arguments are weak and idiotic, and he never even attempts to truly debate the existence of any god, which is the ostensible point of these debates. Instead, he likes to compare body counts — Stalin and Mao killed more than the religious leaders of their time — rather than actually debate whether there is a God, or for that matter a Jesus. This, of course, is because there is no case to be made.

Exhibit A: “[Atheists] are God-haters… I don’t believe in unicorns, but then I haven’t written any books called The End of Unicorns, Unicorns are Not Great, or The Unicorn Delusion.” But what if everyone you met did believe in unicorns, and not only that, but worshiped a unicorn, held a book about unicorns to be the divine truth of the universe, invoked unicorns in political contexts, and speechified about how non-believers were indecent people waging a war on morality, which could only be predicated on the unquestioning belief in unicorns? Then, maybe, D’Souza would think about writing that book. But of course, that’s not really true, because if that was the world we lived in, then Dinesh D’Souza would believe in unicorns.

Sentence: Spanish inquisition.

And unrelated, but also amusing:

9. You

Charges: You believe in freedom of speech, until someone says something that offends you. You suddenly give a damn about border integrity, because the automated voice system at your pharmacy asked you to press 9 for Spanish. You cling to every scrap of bullshit you can find to support your ludicrous belief system, and reject all empirical evidence to the contrary. You know the difference between patriotism and nationalism — it’s nationalism when foreigners do it. You hate anyone who seems smarter than you. You care more about zygotes than actual people. You love to blame people for their misfortunes, even if it means screwing yourself over. You still think Republicans favor limited government. Your knowledge of politics and government are dwarfed by your concern for Britney Spears’ children. You think buying Chinese goods stimulates our economy. You think you’re going to get universal health care. You tolerate the phrase “enhanced interrogation techniques.” You think the government is actually trying to improve education. You think watching CNN makes you smarter. You think two parties is enough. You can’t spell. You think $9 trillion in debt is manageable. You believe in an afterlife for the sole reason that you don’t want to die. You think lowering taxes raises revenue. You think the economy’s doing well. You’re an idiot.

Exhibit A: You couldn’t get enough Anna Nicole Smith coverage.

Sentence: A gradual decline into abject poverty as you continue to vote against your own self-interest. Death by an easily treated disorder that your health insurance doesn’t cover. You deserve it, chump.

After my post on Monday I was asleep by 9. I felt OK yesterday, and despite a lot of coughing and sneezing, I felt just fine most of today, but now I’m getting achey and tired. This has better clear up tomorrow, because I’m got Friday off and I’ve got big plans.

Also, we won the House, Rummy done quit, Britney done split, Virginia’s on the fence for a couple more weeks and maybe I should have voted, but I don’t technically live here.

For those of you in Virginia, CNN has a statewide summary available. There’s nothing there yet, but it will probably be more interesting in a few hours when exit polls start coming in.

I was talking to my Dad on the phone yesterday when he wrapped up on the conversation with, “Well, I think I’m going to go online and check my e-mail. I haven’t looked at it in a few weeks.”

“I know, I haven’t gotten a barrage of forwards in a while.”

My Dad doesn’t use the computer much, so I always known when he’s been online because I’ve got a bunch of forwards. In any five e-mails, it’s usually one that’s funny, two political, and two religious (usually something like “we’re always so willing to forward jokes, but hesitate when it’s about Jesus” sort of things). The funny ones are usually nothing new, but entertaining to read in a “I haven’t heard that joke in six years” sort of way. Sometimes I’ll scan the religious ones quick before archiving them - religion just isn’t something that I’m going to respond to either way (one of these days, I’ll write a piece about my take on religion).

My favorites are always the political ones. I’m not politically involved - I don’t watch the news, I don’t read newspapers, I don’t take part in any kinds of rallies or groups of any sort. For the most part, my notions of current politics come from what I read in dozens of blogs every day, including sites like Fark and Sploid, which mostly just link to important news stories. I don’t follow things closely, but I hear about the big stuff and try to get some details about it. As such, I don’t really consider myself to be highly political, but I know that I’m still more in touch than most of the American population.

This is part of the reason I love reading the stuff my Dad sends me. Some of it is so over the top, so incredibly wrong and ignorant, that it’s just fun to read. I’ve seen essays purporting to be the writing of Robin Williams and a half dozen other celebrities, along with all sorts of diatribes about how we shouldn’t buy gas from Sunoco or BP for one reason or another.

Almost every time I get these, I get all fired up about it and find a bunch of articles that refute whatever thin arguments it might make, or find the Snopes page discrediting whatever by-line that might be attached. I’m always THIS close to responding and just tearing the whole thing apart, but I never do because I love my Dad and I don’t want to be a dick.

Which is sort of odd, because we argue this shit all the time when I’m home. More than once, my Mom has had to yell at us when we get to hollering at each other out in public. I quite enjoy it because I’ve always been fond of arguing, but she doesn’t like us making a scene.

Anyway, I finally responded to one of my Dad’s e-mails - one about the immigration issue. Assuming he’s actually behind all the arguments made in the article he sent me, we agree on a lot of points. I’m not sure where I stand on thing, really, but at least it was a non-partisan “shit needs fixing” take on it. Of course, given the arguments I made against the parts I’m sure he agreed with, he may never send me anything ever again, but I’m hoping he does. I figure, fighting on the Internet is less offensive to Mom, and I love arguing, even if it’s more typing than shouting and table-pounding.

I love America as much as the next guy. This country was founded on strong principles and the flexibility for cultural change. For the most part, it’s full of hard-working, honest people that love their families and strive to be good people. We haven’t quite gotten over that Jesus business, but I can overlook that for the time being. America is a powerful world leader, and considered against other countries around the word, I’m glad I was lucky enough to be born and raised here.

However, it has come to my attention that some 40% of American voters still think that our ignorant brow-furrowing idiot king hasn’t driven this country straight into the ground. How he slipped in there for another four years is beyond me, but the fact that anyone still thinks he’s a competent leader focusing on the important issues just makes me want to punch random mid-westerners.

I was struck this afternoon by the absurdity of his justification for the War on Terror - because the terrorists “hate our freedom”? Are you serious? Granted, this was five years ago, but I’ve been a little behind in my e-mail, so shut up.

Allow me to craft an analogy for you, if I may.

There are quite a few people in the area who, for one reason or another, don’t work during the day. Maybe they’re rich, maybe they’re on vacation, maybe they’re just layabouts - it doesn’t really matter. The important thing is that these people enjoy a daytime freedom I can only dream of. Am I jealous? Sure, a little. But do I spend my mornings waiting in Starbucks, sucker-punching anyone who comes in to read the paper? Do I hang out by the pool all afternoon, using sunscreen to write dirty words on the backs of napping sunbathers?

As much as I’d enjoy it, I don’t. Their freedoms, though enticing, do not interfere with my life in any way. If these people showed up where I spend my day, though, I’d probably be pissed. I don’t want someone sunning on the floor of my office by the big windows. I don’t need some guy sitting in my chair, interrupting every few minutes to read me a particularly interesting tidbit from the Post.

America is sort of like a fat guy in a Speedo, stretched out on your desk, sucking down a Big Mac. Also, he’s drunk and keeps singing the chorus of American Pie as loud as he can, even though he can’t remember all the words. We trounce around the rest of the world’s daily life, playing with the copier, stinking up the bathroom, and bumping off upper management so our buddies can get the job.

If the terrorists hated freedom, we’d be pretty far down on their list of targets (remember checks and balances? Those were neat). I’m reasonably confident that our insistence of thrusting the proverbial crotch of our Speedo’d freedom into the face of foreign nations is the reason for discontent.

Though I must say, Mr. President, that taking away our freedoms was a creative means of defending us from those who hate us for them. Good thinkin.

Oh, and for everyone who gives me the “he’s still your President and Commander and Chief!” bullshit (usually followed by a slack-jawed look of blind patriotism), just go to hell. There were people who said the same thing about King George, and do you know where that got them? UP AGAINST THE WALL WHEN THE REVOLUTION CAME, BEYOTCH.

Join us next time for Please Tell Me That You Realize How Corrupt Bush And His Cronies Are (But Did You Hear That One Guy Died Before He Could Be Sentenced?).

Nothing says “We’d like very much to be citizens” like refusing to work for or buy from any American company for a day.

Seriously, who thought that “Nothing Gringo” was a good way to support the immigration movement in the US? Remember how everyone was upset about all the Mexican flags at the protests, so people started carrying American flags instead? Good move! A national boycott, though? Not helping.

I suppose this means that Mexico will be refusing a day’s worth of American aid, and Mexicans in the US will not be taking advantage of our assorted welfare programs and other benefits extended to those living here. So hey, thanks for that. Oh, and I guess the kids won’t be attending classes at our public schools tomorrow either, huh.

I drive to work, but I’m sure the fellas at the office will appreciate the fact that the Metro won’t be as crowded. Really, that’s about the only good thing that will come out of this.

I like to call myself a liberal redneck. I was raised on the edge of the suburbs of Buffalo, NY, right where things got a little more spread out and a lot more conservative. I credit my experiences in college with my political slant: the late-night arguments, the exposure to people who held beliefs never heard in my home town, and the anthropology classes where I learned of whole cultures I never would have known about. Over the four years I spent there, my view of the world was totally warped, twisted apart, and put back together to show me that there are a lot of people out there who don’t live their lives at all like I do.

I’ve tried to share this with other people. I’ve come to understand, almost by accident, that my life is not at all representative of the greater global community’s; I never knew how good I’ve had it, and I wasn’t the only one. I’ve known plenty of narrow-minded, ignorant and bigoted people, and I try my best to set them straight when I hear them spewing filth against other races or nations. When I’ve heard people suggest that we nuke the Mid East to a sheet of glass, I argued harder than I’d ever argued before.

However, I’m finding this harder and harder by the day. Innocent commuters in London have died. A Koran was reported flushed, and people died. Now, some Danish cartoonist prints a few sketches, and I see reports that over forty people are dead and some cleric is offering $1 million for the head of the artist.

Shortly after the Koran-flush fiasco, I remember reading some comments about it online. Basically, the author’s point was that the Muslim world flipped shit, and America was apologizing for it. Consider, he asked, what would have happened if the report was instead about a Bible being flushed, and Christians had reacted the same way? It wouldn’t have been tolerated, and certainly no apology would have been offered. We wouldn’t stand for it from our own ranks, and yet we’re supposed to respect and tolerate those who are different from us, even (apparently) when they act like barbaric savages. Remember that artist that did the portrait of Jesus with feces? Yeah, no one died for that - not even the artist.

And now, a Danish guy prints a cartoon, and Christians in Nigeria are killed for it. If this is your reaction, you obviously missed the point of the cartoon. And if there’s something I’ve missed, some justification for your deplorable behavior, please, discuss it at the next meeting and get back to me.