Do We Believe in Ghosts?

Well, since it’s Halloween, I thought I would regale you with a story that happened several years ago.  I am already creeping myself out with this, but here is my story of the only time in my life when I have questioned if the supernatural ever exists.

My grandmother’s name was Mary.  She is the most important person who has ever been a part of my life, even to this day.  All that I am, I have gotten from her being a part of my life.  She died when I was…well, I’m a little unsure.  Every memory that I have pre-head injury is a little muddle.  Well, a lot of memories, not all of them.  Anyway, I was very young.  I think it was when I was in fifth grade, but I’m unsure.  Anyway, she died, and I felt the way everybody feels when somebody that they love dies.  I was distraught.  I was disheartened.  I felt my world crumble around me, and I felt that I had no place in this world.  Life seemed to have no meaning to me.

Well, that isn’t actually exactly how it is.  For anybody who has had somebody close to them die, they know, that for the first couple of days, or even the first couple of weeks, it doesn’t feel real.  It’s like that person could just walk into the room any second and say, “sorry, I stepped out for a while.  Anybody miss me?”  That was how it was.  It was that big a thing.  Anyway, I felt that way after she died.  It didn’t feel real to me.  Of course, I have never really understood exactly what it means for somebody to die, but that is a story for another day.

So, it was after her funeral, and everybody was kind of winding down.  I went up to her room, and I walked inside.  I saw that nothing had changed.  It was a god-awful mess.  That was how it always was.  Mary could never keep a very neat andtidy home.  Not that I remember, anyway.  So I walk inside, and I look around.  I am trying to understand, trying to bring myself to the understanding that she is actually dead.  It is a bright and sunny day outside.  Of course, the shades are still kind of drawn, so I can only see shafts of it entering the room.  I walk around, looking at some of the various things.

There are her pill cases.  She was old, after all, and all old people have those cases, with all the days of the week on them.  They still had pills in them.  There were her diabetes stuff, because she was diabetic.  She lost a foot to that, and also to the fact that she didn’t especially take care of herself.  I don’t judge.  Anyway, as I am walking around the room, looking at things, I can feel that something isn’t right.  The hair on my neck stands up.  I feel shivers running all over me.  I recognize the feeling.  It is the feeling of being watched.  My whole body is on edge.  The urge to flee this room is running through me, and I am almost too stunned to move.  The shivers are now running through me, as I can feel the force that is watching me getting closer.

I turn around suddenly, but there is nothing there.  I want to scream, to run away, but something won’t let me.  My legs don’t move.  I suddenly fall backwards, onto the bed.  I sit up suddenly, only to feel the force of a human hand on my back.  I did scream.  I screamed very loudly.  I stood up, and for a split second, one of the shafts of sunlight actually was making a shadow.  It was the shadow of a human being.  I quickly leave the room, and since there was no door, I ran out of the house.  After that day, I was never able to go back into that room again.

So, did a ghost really come to me?  Was Mary in the room with me?  I have no clue.  To this day, part of me is just dismissing it as being just my nerves talking, abut there is another part of me that says that I was not alone in the room that day.  Not alone with the dust, the clutter, and the sunlight.  I have never, ever, experience terror like that, before or since.  Do I believe in Ghosts?  I don’t know.  All I do know, is that that is an experience that I will always have with me.  Always.

Until next time, a quote,

“When one has the feeling of dislike for evil, when one feels tranquil, one finds pleasure in listening to good teachings; when one has these feelings and appreciates them, one is free of fear.”  -Buddha

Peace out,

Lucien

What is Anonymous?

Check this out. All humanity needs to understand.

I Hate Cops II

I caught a lot of crap because of of my last post about why I have a very big problem with the police.  There will always be those who defend all the evil things that the cops do.  There are people who, with the examples that I am giving now, who will say that this is just “a few bad apples.”  There was a person in the comments section of my last posting who said I am probably a drug dealer and a rapist because I bash the police.  The fact that that person is an idiot who didn’t read what I wrote is one thing, but this is just tragic.

Here’s a fact about the police – we are giving people with absolutely no power a position of employment where they can exercise their newfound power over other people who have no power.  This is a position that requires VERY little qualifications.  You don’t have to have a huge series of qualifications to be a cop.  Just be a trained gorilla, go through police boot, get a series of lectures about how you are supposed to enforce the law, then you’re given a gun and told to exercise your authority over other people.  How do people not see this as something that is going to go wrong?!

And the worst part about these police having so much power is that they have almost NO fucking accountability to the people they serve!  When a cop does something really horrible, like beating a 14 year old girl, or doing what one cop in California did, and just macing the girl while she is hand-cuffed, laying on top of your car, the rest of the police come out and talk about why they are the victims.  I’ve heard it all!  There is the “we protect you” speeches that they give.  There is the “we put our lives on the line” speeches.  There are all the speeches that they give to try and convince people that they are the victims, and that they are the ones who need sympathy.

However, all of these speeches are for naught in the face of what has happened at Occupy Wall Street, and at several other of the Occupations that are going on around the country.  The police have proven exactly why I have a problem with them.  I have a problem with these people because, as many decent and good cops as there are, they are the protectors of the corrupt system.  They will drop their mandate to protect and serve the moment they are intructed by the system to fight against the people.

Oakland was a perfect example.  They just ran right in and started tear gassing and shooting people with rubber bullets and bean bags.  They opened fire on teenagers, people there with their kids, you name it.  These bastards believe themselves to be above the law, and you know what, they are!  These people don’t feel bad for what they did.  They don’t feel bad for trampling on the people’s right to peaceably assemble.  There was a brilliant parallel that was done on The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC where Glenn Greenwald talked about how the police have been used against the common man before.  They were used against a peaceful protest that veterans were doing after World War I, when they didn’t get the benefits they had been promised.

And anytime you talk about how the police are against us, the apologists come out of the woodwork and say that they are protecting us.  Here’s a question – from what?!  Who are we in danger from?!  Criminals?  Yeah, I fear an organized effort to subvert my rights (the police) much more than a crack-head in an alleyway.  I fear the cops more because they are an organized effort and will openly do whatever they want with little to no fear of the hammer of their law.  Look at Anthony Bologna.  He maced a bunch of women and all he got was some vacation days lost.  Well, glad to know justice is on our side!

What makes this all so much more tragic is that these cops seem to have this belief that they are the victims.  We common citizens are the people who are brutalizing them.  In New York City, a group called the New York Sergeants Benevolent Association has threatened to sue the protestors if they ever get violent with the police.  The police can get violent with them and fear no repurcussions, but if the common man ever decides they don’t want to be a doormat anymore, the cops are allowed to bring the hammer down on you.  Don’t believe me, check out this quote -

In light of the growiving violence attendent to the ‘Occupy’ movement across the country, as particularly evidenced by the recent events in Oakland, I am compelled to place these so-called ‘occupiers’ on notice that physical assaults on police officers will not be tolerated.”

That was a quote by Ed Mullen, of the Sergeant’s Benevolent Association.  Riddle me something, you ”upstanding” asshole, when have the protestors ever been violent?!  Take a nice long look at Oakland, you pretentious son of a bitch and you’ll see that it was the cops who got violent.  They went in with riot gear and started to attack the people.  They even cracked the skull of a vet who was there protesting.  As much as I hate the wars we are involved in right now, a soldier who was fighting comes home to see that what he was fighting for was for the people to be attacked by a private army of thugs that are part of our bought and owned government.

This is pathetic, and the people who endorse this kind of behavior even moreso.  The cops are brutalizing people all over the country, but do the corporations care?  No.  Does the government care?  No.  Does the President of the United States care?  Yeah, but only enough to tell people not to do what they are doing.  This is why I hate the cops.  More than any other group, these are the people that I have a problem with, because they are ignoring their mandate to protect and serve, instead allowing those with money to tell them what to do.  And it pisses me off when I have to sit here and listen to some asshole tell me how the cops are not guilty, or how it is “a few bad apples.”  It’s the system, dumbass!

Take a nice long look, you might just learn something.

Until next time, a quote,

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”  -John F. Kennedy

Peace out,

Maverick

Augmentation vs. Purity

Now, a lot of you are probably going to have NO idea what I am talking about with this post, but don’t worry, I will explain in detail, because honestly, I believe that this is a really interesting concept that will probably be a real conversation at some point in our lives.  This concept comes a video game called Deus Ex: Human Revolution.  It is the newest of a series of games that are set in a cyberpunk future (if you don’t know what cyberpunk means, get a clue).  It is set in the year 2027.  In this future, there is a new kind of medicine that has evolved – augmentation.  It is when people can get nanotechnological augmentations to their existing systems, or get biomechanical limbs, should they have enough money for one or lose one.

This is a very chaotic future, and the game did a very good job of creating it.  You got to see the wonder and the tragedy of such a future.  These procedures are a very double-edged sword.  While they can augment literally anything, including your mental capabilities, there is a price.  The human body starts to reject the augmentations after a while, and those who get them have to take some pretty potent drugs to keep the body from coming apart, literally.

But for this trade-off, a person can literally make their body into a perfected machine.  Nowhere is this better shown, than with the main character of the game, Adam Jensen.  He is the head of security at Sarif Industries.  He gets himself involved in a conspiracy that is much bigger than himself.  But his body is not only cool, you can add onto the badassness of him as you go along.  And you get to see a whole world of people who are of this same mindset.  You can augment anything you can possibly dream of.  If it exists, you can augment it.

The world of augmentation is kind of a dark world once you get underneath the glamor of it all, though.  The people of the America are in extreme poverty.  There are a lot of good metaphors in the game to what is happening now with Occupy Wall Street.  A lot of the augmentation is going to the military, and the whole world is cashing in on it.  It is a new kinds of arms race.  Plus, those who have the license to augment charge ungodly amounts of money to the regular citizen, while cashing in most of their contracts with the military.

But it is still cool.  For a man who loses an arm, he can a new one that is just as reliable, except stronger and better, and able to be equipped with special upgrades.  For the person who is blind, they can augment and give you sight.  For the person who was bad in social situations, they can augment your brain and make it so you can tell what people are feeling, and can guage to see what kind of answer they are looking for.  It is an endless world of wonder and science at its finest.

However, there are those who deny this kind of existence.  They believe that tampering with Mother Nature’s work is something that is wrong.  The religious community seems to believe that this is an affront to God (yeah, because humans were created SO perfectly, right?).  There are those who believe that civilization is moving too fast, that we need to pace ourselves, and figure out if this is the right thing to do.

The problem is that this movement, while most of it grounded in rational ideologies, has become two movements.  There is the first movement, which is trying to be political and peaceful, and there are the terrorists who blow up factories and kill those who make “Augs,” as they call them.  And because there are those who are terrorists with this way of thinking, those who want to pursue this avenue peacefully are losing ground.  This battle of two human cultures colliding is part of what gives this game a lot of the uniqueness that it has.

Here is something that a video games that is so artistically has given me that I haven’t seen this played out in a game before – a societal conflict that is actually interesting to think about.  Really, when you think about it, if you could augment any part of your body, anything you want (within biological reason), would you do it?  Is the idea of becoming superhuman that intoxicating?  Is it worth losing who you are along the way?  One of the things that comes up in this game is that those who get augmentations tend to lose themselves to it.  There is a woman who was augmented in her brain to be able to sell better to clients.  She becomes addicted to this power.

The leader of the peaceful side of the “Purists,” may just have a point.  Like most technological breakthroughs, we tend to run down the road too fast, and as Ian Malcolm said in Jurassic Park -

You were too busy asking if you could, that you didn’t stop to ask whether or not you should!”

Will there come a day when our technological understanding rise above what nature is even capable of?  We are mixing species with gene splicing already.  There are signs that the kinds of tech that is in this game is already on the way.  Will this debate come to the stage?  A friend of mine believes it won’t, that the idea of people thinking this way is absolutely ludicrous.  I mean, giving people the ability to walk again, just like before, who would pass that up?  It is a legitimate question.

So now I put the question to you – who would you be?  Would you turn down all the power in the world, even if it didn’t come with the problem that came in the game, or rejection after a while.  Would you say no to something that could better your life by leaps and bounds?  Where do you stand?

Hit me back in the comments section, I really want to know.

Until next time, a quote,

“You can’t stop progress, Taggert!  Eventually, people will use this kind of technology.”  -Adam Jensen, Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Peace out,

Maverick

Modern Feminism is a Joke! (Part IV)

I am getting so unbelievably tired of talking about this.  It is becoming almost a little bit annoying how constantly I am hearing crap about how my posts in this regard are so wrong, when I then turn around and see shit like Feminist Frequency.  This is a YouTube channel.  It is run by a woman who is part of this modern distortion of what real feminism is – the fight for equal rights for women.  Honestly, I am getting sick of hearing about how I am wrong, when I turn around and see shit like this.

Let’s start right into this.  She is one of those people who believes that all modern culture is sexist, how the patriarchy runs America and the Western world, and how all of us men are horrible creature who want to fuck women silly and make them stay in the kitchen.  These people get on my nerves.  For guys like me who really respect women, hearing about how all men are evil just pisses me off.  And all of my posts on this subject have shown this exact same thing.

We are part of a culture who gets offended about everything.  Every time there is something, anything, that happens, people have to whine and bitch about it.  We used to just let this blow off of us, but now we have this culture that has the need to bitch and moan whenever we are feeling uncomfortable.  Feminist Frequency is the perfect example.  That said, I have some problems with Feminist Frequency.  Here’s a choice quote from a video of hers about how the Powerpuff Girls are evil.

The girls are influenced by femme fatale’s malicious rhetoric to see benign, routine, everyday things as a conspiracy against women and against them personally.  The writers of Powerpuff Girls have carefully created a fantasy world without gender oppression, so they can have the girls start seeing oppression where none exists.

Gee, that’s an interesting position to take.  Here are the names of a couple of videos that she has made -

Bayonetta: Innovative Advertising or Sexual Harassment Training?
Too Many Dicks – Video Games
What Liquor Ads Teach Us About Guys
Glee, GQ, and the Sexualization of Young Girls
Fembots, Advertising a Male Fantasy

Yeah, she is making huge statements about huge ways that women are oppressed.  She also have videos showing how clothing ads are a way for men to have their sexist desires be shown on television.  I have a question for you, FF, does the fact that men are attracted to women just bug you?  For real, she has a problem with any outfit or anything that shows that men are attracted to women.  Anything even slightly sexual is something that we have to fight against.

This is a sentiment that just plain bugs me.  Rebecca Watson and her little campaign to paint a scarlett letter against a guy who made her feel uncomfortable is part of this.  If people don’t like something, they call it something against women.  I hate to break it to you, ”feminists,” but this shit is not oppression of women.  I HATE how women in this country seem to feel the need to bitch about how they are so oppressed.  Bull-fucking-shit!  You live in the Western world, where women have more rights than anywhere else, and you are being treated like you are scum.

I would have a modicum of respect for FF if it weren’t for the fact that her and all those like her seem to feel the need to make personal discomfort into some massive conspiracy against women.  Not to mention, biology, bitch!  Yes, we have ads that display women being sexual.  Yes, there is porn.  Yes, we have clothing in the world that shows women’s features.  I hate to break it to you, but men have been into women for a long time.  Men like boobs.  Sorry, but no amount of old-Irish Catholic clothing is going to stop men from liking boobs.  Your refusal to understand this is interesting.  So is Rebecca Watson’s, so is Eve Bit First’s.  All of these women seem to not understand that the liking of boobies is perfectly natural.

This all seems so insulting to the women who actually gave something to this movement.  For the women who got other women the right to vote, for those who got them rights to work, for those who got them a future, this is such a pathetic insult.  These people are what is wrong with this country, in my opinion.  How are women who are empowered no offended by shit like this.

“Listen to us, we know what’s best.  We’ll tell you about the whole world.”  How does the misogyny of that viewpoint not just piss people the fuck off?  Feminist Frequency will tell you about what is wrong with all this culture.  Instead of looking at the really important things, like women’s reproductive rights, women’s right to better work environment.  No, none of that matters.  Instead, we’ll talk about how True Blood is some huge patriarchal conspiracy.

Does FF believe that this modern pop culture equal the cause of all sexual attraction?  Yeah, a woman is shown with cleavage on television, that’s where the urge for men to like boobs come from?  FF, do you buy that?  Do you really believe that men being into women is a modern problem?  Or do you have a problem with men being into women?

Question – how should men act around women who they are sexually interested in?  Do men just NEVER bring it up?  Do we just pretend that things that naturally evolved to evoke a sexual response don’t exist?  The fact that women have breasts all the time, not just when they are nursing young evolved directly for the purpose of engaging the sexual desires of men.  The modern image of a stick-figure, I’ll give you that, but so what?

How is that an issue of feminism?  That could be construed as a biological issue, since it is proven that having a couple extra pounds is a good thing, but we’re ignoring the fact that this isn’t about WOMEN’S RIGHTS!  This is about the fact that sexual desires change with the culture we live in.  It used to be that women of weight with wide hips was the sexual image.  Culture is an ever-changing force.

And now you know why I think modern feminism is a joke.  This stupidity is bullshit!  This worthless crap that Feminist Frequency is spewing is an insult to the women who made real change for the women of today.  The women who got women the right to vote are spitting in their graves having to hear about this stupid bullshit.  Women in America are not oppressed.  There are still some issues with equal rights to work out, but Feminist Frequency is NOT going to help you there.  She’s too busy looking at why there are too many men in video games.

Until next time, a quote,

“Cause before that commercial, I never noticed any of that.  I never, you know, like guys used to just totally respect women’s cleavage and stuff.  If there was a girl with a big set of boobs, guys were just like ‘what time is it?’  They didn’t even pay attention.  But then that commercial came out and guys are like ‘hey, I guess I’m supposed to look at it.’  Cause that commercial informs my thinking.”  -TJ Kincaid, Everyone’s A Cry Baby 

Peace out,

Maverick

Am I a Fake?

This thought was recently posed to me tonight.  I won’t say by who, or why, but I’ll say the thought – that I have never had a single original thought, that I am completely fake, just spewing what I read on the internet or what I see on the news.  I won’t lie, this question has hurt me.  It has hurt me so profoundly that my usual insomnia is worse right now because here I am, trying to find the silver lining to something that has none.  It is just a horribly painful thing, and something that has made me come to realize that maybe, just maybe, there is no place for one such as myself to belong in this world.

First, a little background.  One thing that you all should know about me is that I am a person who tends to overthink everything.  Every little tiny thing is a deep point of introspective thought with me.  Well, not every little detail, but I do think about things a great deal.  I have kind of always been that way.  It’s one of my less-charming personality quirks.  But I think about these things because I believe that they are important.  For real, this isn’t just me blowing smoke.

One thing that I take VERY seriously is my personal identity.  My views as a human being are a huge part of myself.  I have spent a lot of the endless amount of introspective time that I dedicate to these things.  I am part of a generation who has grown up having endless amounts of media thrown at them.  I won’t deny, I have used a lot of videos as inspiration points for a lot of what I have said and do.  But don’t think for a second that I have not come to my own conclusions.  I love borrowing quotes from great thinkers, but I have taken the time to ask myself where I stand, and to confirm my own beliefs on these topics.

So, when I use a quote from people like my favorite YouTube vloggers, George Carlin, or a million other sources, know that while I take the words of others, I mean them.  So, when I am told that I am pretty much fake, it burns me down to my very core.  And I have been sitting in the dark of this room wondering just who I am, and what I believe.  So, with that said, here are the beliefs of a creative intellectual -

Firstly, I believe in people being better to one-another.  I am too much of a cynic to believe that such an ideal world can actually happen, but I am trying to realize such a concept because I care about a few people, and those that I do care about are people who I would change this world for, if I could.  However, that is not the case.  But my belief is that if the world could be a wonderful place, it could be that way for everybody.  I would make it so for the whole world.

Second, I believe in the progressive-liberal political philosophy.  I have simply seen no reason to believe that modern conservatism will work, on any level.  It has done more harm than good, and unfortunately, that is a fact.  It is taking the rights away from people, driving our economy into dust, and is horribly bigoted and outdated.  By the same token, the Libertarian philosophy is one that I disagree with, mostly because it has become a weapon of those in power, and also because it seems disorganized between liberal leanings, and Randian objectivism, which I despise, and the political and philosophical community despised.

Finally, I believe that there is no God.  As Penn Jillette put it, “I’m beyond atheism.”  I do believe in a higher power.  I believe in the power of science.  Another friend of mine is going to think I am ripping that off of her, but honestly, I am not.  I believe that science is the ultimate power in the universe.  Since all things in nature happen according to natural laws, I see no place that a God or gods would have in this world.  I see no possible reason for such a creature to exist, if only to get the whole process moving.

So those are the beliefs that I have.  These are the key positions that I take on the most prevalent issues that occupy my daily life.  This brings us back to the opening question – am I a fake?  Well, let’s examine the fact that a lot of the views I have often mirror those I look up to.  There is not a single person who hasn’t had a guru or two that they look up to and who they believe has the views that they most agree with.  There isn’t a single person anywhere who doesn’t have a person or group of people who they believe is saying the words that they want to say.  And nobody can say that they have had all their own ideas.  All of us take in the world that we consume, and we come to our own conclusions.  Whether it is things like religion, or our morality.  We are people who follow the ideas that we take in, contemplate, and speak.  And in that exploit, you are often going to sound like the people you idolize.  Me, I don’t mind that very much.  If a person has a good point of view, and you agree with it, why not mirror it?

I wrote a post not too long ago about how the concept of plagiarism is outdated.  Now, with things like personal ideals, it is also completely impossible not to sound like somebody else.  Don’t lose heart if you do sound like somebody who you look up to.  As long as the conclusions that they came to are ones that you also came to after examining the issues critically, then it is perfectly alright to agree or emulate those you look up to.  Don’t let it get to you if you feel like you are sounding like somebody else.  If you have no ability to think on your own, that is a problem.

So, the person who said that I have no original thoughts, I was deeply wounded by.  But, like always, I’ll keep it to myself, and in the end, it doesn’t really matter.  Some people are just meant to be alone.  That is how the world works.

Until next time, a quote,

“That’s all you ever hear about in this country is our differences! That’s all the media and the politicians are ever talking about! The things that separate us. Things that make us different from one another. That’s the way the ruling class operates in any society. They try to divide the rest of the people. They keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they, the ric…h, can run off with all the money! Fairly simple thing! Happens to work! You know-Anything different! That’s what they’re gonna talk about race, religion, ethnic and national background, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality, anything they can do, to keep us fighting with each other, so that they can keep going to the bank!” -George Carlin

Peace out,

Maverick

The Circling of the Drain of News in America

There are times when I watch the news and I think to myself – this is great reporting.  This guy or gal got the best information.  They weren’t worshipping the false god of objectivity, instead, they were trying to rationalize it out, and give the best information that they  believed the people needed to know.  Every once and a while, I get that feeling when I think to myself – that is just what I want to do!  I want to be that person, sitting in that chair, or on that screen, or in that radio booth.  I think to myself, I’m majoring in this, god-dammit, so why can’t I do stuff like that.

But then I turn to a different network, and I see some poor schmuck who is talking about the most worthless stuff.  I turn to Yahoo news, and on their little reel, they have stories about things like “Christina Aguilera’s alarming outfit,” or “12 year old YouTube hit now a HS star.”  This is what the modern world of journalism has become.  It has become a war.  This war is being fought with words, speech, TV, radio, the web, and every weapon that people can find.  It is something that should never have been a war in the first place.  And while this war goes on, the world of journalism is slowly circling the drain.

Ted Koppel wrote an op-ed piece in The Washington Post.  In it, he talks about how the death of “real news” is happening.  This is an unfortunate false dichotomy that journalism students like me are at war with.  There is a professor here at UAA who believes in the false god of “objective journalism.”  I pity her.  I pity her greatly.  She has a whole cadre of followers who run the various news groups here at the college and are all totally blind to the fact that journalism, good journalism, has never been “objective.”  Getting information and feeding it to people like a computer is a worthless effort.  It demeans the intellects of those who watch it, read it, or hear it, and it makes the reporters look like spokespersons for the groups they are getting their information from.

The great journalists, in my opinion, are the ones who take all the relevant information, and come to their own conclusions.  Great journalists do give you facts, but offering conclusions that they find in evidence isn’t a bad thing, so long as they allow you to come to your own conclusions.  So long as they tell you where their information came from, and show you just where you can go to get it, so you can judge for yourself.

It is one of the reasons why I am such a fan of Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann.  Both of them, when they are showing something, put up information of where their information came from.  They let you come to your own conclusions, but are not afraid to say what their conclusions are.  And where was it written that having an opinion is a bad thing?  FRONTLINE does it all the time!  They give more information in their broadcasts than any other network on television!  But don’t think for a second that they haven’t come to conclusions.  Don’t think for a minute that the people doing those stories hasn’t taken the time to really think clearly about what they believe the inherant truth of the story to be.

And when people like the professor here or Ted Koppel weep for this ideological falsehood like “objectivity,” they are reminding me every single day why news in this country is almost dead.  The great journalists like Walter Cronkite, Bill Moyers, H.L. Mencken, Edward R. Murrow, they did what most people try and fail to do – digest as much as they could, and tell people what they believed to be right!  Don’t believe me, here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth -

For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer’s almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster.

That was from a nightly news broadcast that Walter Cronkite made in 1968.  He spoke about something that all of America was thinking, and anybody who said was labeled a terrorist, communist, traitor.  And what did he get for saying the truth?  He was ridiculed by those in power, and so are those who carry the banner today.  Here’s another look at a great journalist saying what those who were in power didn’t want them to say -

Prohibition has not only failed to work the benefits that its proponents promised in 1917; it has brought in so any new evils that even the mob has turned against it. But do the Prohibitionists admit the fact frankly, and repudiate their original nonsense? They do not. On the contrary, they keep on demanding more and worse enforcement statutes — that is to say, more and worse devices for harassing and persecuting their opponents. The more obvious the failure becomes, the more shamelessly they exhibit their genuine motives.

Journalism is circling the drain because at the end of the day, those who do this are making the choice that rather than ask the tough questions, than to be allowed to do what they should do and judge the situation.  Whether they judge it as a non-issue that doesn’t really matter, like what outfit Christina Aguilera is wearing, or whether they judge it as a massive problem that affects our entire country, like the protests on Wall Street that Mayor Bloomberg has promised to crack down upon.

Journalists have a duty.  In fact, all of those who have the rationality to think have a duty to get those who are not blessed to have that power to do the same!  They are required to help make the world a better place, because the rest of the mindless masses are content to do nothing, to not care about anything outside of their little world.  That is the way that the world works these days.  Journalism is circling the drain because those who make that tough choice are being ridiculed, while those who choose to do nothing, who choose to turn a blind eye and simple rely on “facts” are being misled by those who want to keep the information out of the public eye.

Humanity help those who end up being blamed because they will say that they were “objective,” when they should have been honest.

Until next time, a quote,

“I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.”  -H.L. Mencken

Peace out,

Maverick

We are the oppressed in America. We are the 1%!

Well, we are the banks.  We are the people who are being oppressed in this country.  We are being oppressed by these people calling themselves, the other 99%.  These rotten vagrants are nothing but parasites.  They leech off of the services that we provide in this country every single day, and then question the manner in which we provide it.  Where are all these supposed Ron Paul fans?  They are supposed to have our backs!  But yes, we are the oppressed.  We are being ill-treated by these thugs, and why – because they think we are somehow responsible for the problems that the poor in this country have now.

I hate to break it to you, poor people, but sometimes, a little bit of loss for everybody else is just the cost of doing business!  Sometimes, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, know what I mean?  I mean, where was all this bitching that you are doing now back when the market was great?  You all just complain when things are bad!  You parasites don’t like to admit that you like us when things are good, and then don’t when we are bad.  You are nothing but people needing to find a person to blame for your problems.  Well you know who you can blame – yourselves.

The reason that you all are not doing well is because you are lazy!  You don’t try hard enough!  After all, if you all simply got off the street and looked, you’d find a job.  There are jobs around, if you lazy cretins decided to have the dignity enough to go and work for it.  I mean, that’s what we do!  We come into our banks every day, and we bust our asses, playing with all of your money.  Where are our medals?!  Where are the people saying, “thank you Wall Street for doing the important job of keeping the economy running”?!  Where the fuck are you when we need you to be nice.  You think all these problems just happen?!  This isn’t our fault.

Sometimes, things go wrong.  And we’re people, after all.  So what if we just crashed and destroyed the economy, how are we responsible?  It is the government and you all’s faults for keeping us regulated!  If you took away all of those regulations, everything would get better.  Again, where are all these Ron Paul people when we need them?  Why aren’t they out there telling these worms that the free market can regulate itself!  That we should have the liberty to do as we please, and just you watch as things will get better!

But now all these protestors are forcing our hand!  We didn’t want it to come to this, but what choice did you leave us?  We are now forced to have to fight against you.  We have bought and paid for the police in this country.  And now we are forced to also back political candidates who will strike down you protesting masses.  The fact is that we must say this to you – you and your resistance is completely futile.  We will defeat you, because honestly, we own this government.  If you will not step down on your own, we will put a government body in power who will force you to step down.

We didn’t want it to come to this.  We didn’t want to have to put you in your place.  But what choice did you leave us?  When you all go on about how you are the ones oppressed, you are ignoring the fact that you are singling us banks out.  So now we have to takes steps to put you down.  We don’t want to, we shouldn’t have to, but you people and your refusal to blindly be our slaves has left us no alternative.  We’re sorry to have to do this.

Oh wait, who am I kidding.  You people are nothing but our slaves, and if you really think anything to the contrary, then you are just plain blind.  We are going to continue to oppress you, because the fact is that we can buy and sell politicians.  Your President is even bowing to us (no bullshit, check one of the videos linked above)!  You really think your protests can do anything?  Well, the fact is that you are just blind.  So, we will keep going, and unless you are willing to step up beyond just blind protest, then we will own you forever!

Until next time, a quote,

“But wishes are for children.”  -Dexter Morgan, Dexter

Peace out,

Maverick  (Occupy Wall Street, you need to step up!  Either make the fight bigger, or step off.  These people are NOT listening to you!)

What Should I Write About?

I really don’t know what I should write about.  There is the growing efforts with Occupy Together, which began from Occupy Wall Street.  There is now this group, “The Other 53%,” who are showing the ignorance and stupidity that is rampant throughout this culture.  It is still a point of interest how these people seem to believe that having nothing, that being a nobody is a bragging right.  These people are all profoundly stupid, I think.  Yes, they have nothing at all, are being completely oppressed by the system, but Wall Street, who controls the system, isn’t the enemy.  It is all so pathetically tragic.

There are religious bigots who are in the world.  That is something that never ends.  Religion, for the most part, is a world of prejudice and bigotry that never seem to help anybody.  So that is always something that is present.  Religion has always had a detrimental effect on progress.  While Oswalt may have been right, that religion got our culture started back when we were cavemen, it has no place now.  So there is that that I could talk about.

Then there are the going-ons here at the college.  I could talk about how Lefty on the Left, my column with the paper, has been axed.  I won’t go too much into that.  It is a major blow, and it hurts.  Of course, talking around campus, it seems that the paper, and the woman who runs it, are not the most popular things.  So I guess it could be worse.  It is a rather painful thing, though, since I really did love working there.  That column was part of the things that I really enjoyed.  So that could be talked about.

We could talk about the political climate currently in Alaska.  The Pebble Mine debate is voted on.  I support Pebble, but that really is beside the point.  The liberals will lambast me, but really, I am just finding it hard to tell a community of people not to want to get some capital that they desperately need into their community.  I’m all for keeping nature intact, but honestly, when a community is horribly economically depressed, what can we do?  How can we make fishing a better industry for them, especially when a lot of the permits are owned by out of state companies?  Answer me that question, and I will be with you.

So yeah, there are a lot of things that one can talk about, but we are totally unsure.  What should we talk about?

Until next time, a quote,

“For a community that has such a small economy, that kind of money can go a long way.  For the environmentalists, that seems to almost be inconsequential.  The fact that communities have been shown to grow up around mines doesn’t seem to register.”  -Lefty on the Left, The Pebble Mine Debate

Peace out,

Maverick

The Other 53% vs. Occupy Wall Street

Here is something that is really interesting to look at.  There is a group that has come up now calling themselves, “the other 53%.”  They are a counter-protest to those who are the Occupy Wall Street protestors.  When one looks at this group, there is something that should also be considered when it comes to occupying – reality.

It is natural that the conservatives immediately got on the bandwagon of how the Occupy Wall Street, and now the movement that has grown from that, Occupy Together, are just a bunch of left-wing nuts who “violate the law.”  Here’s a quote from Karl Rove about this group.  This guy, what a shit.  Well, what a piece of shit.

What are these people for?  To the degree that they’re for anything it’s left wing nuttiness…One (the Tea Party) is a group of Constitution loving, law abiding people, and this is a group of left nuts whose goal is to violate the law.”

A point of interest about Rove’s statement is that the protestors have broken no laws.  The protestors have gotten very good at staying right in the law.  Part of why this movement hasn’t died out already is due to the cops overreacting to what the protestors are doing.  If they had just ignored them, if they had just let them be, nobody would care by now.  This stays in the news because of the fact that the internet is showing what these thugs, I mean cops, are doing.

But now we have a group of people who are coming into the fold, and are the right-wing answer to rational discussion.  They call themselves “the other 53%.”  They say they are the 53% of people who pay federal income taxes.  They go on and on about how they are living in their means, and how their lives suck, but they don’t blame Wall Street.  I’m not shitting you here.  Take a look at this lovely message that was done by one YouTube vlogger -

I work 3 jobs.
I have a house I can’t sell.
My family insurance costs are outrageous.
But I don’t blame Wall Street.
Suck it up, you whiners.
I am the 53% subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is one of this new group.  There are a lot of people online who are putting up these hand-written signs.  This fascinates me to death, because how stupid are these people?  TJ Kincaid made a hell of a point about this in a recent vlog he did.

First of all, why is it a bragging right these days to talk about how, ’I bust my ass to have what little I have.’  Do you have any idea how fucking stupid you sound?  When you talk about how you bust your ass to have your little shitty one-bedroom apartment.  You sound like a fucking moron.”

That is kind of how I view things.  We can occupy wherever, but in order to actually change something, we need to get people to start occupying REALITY.  This is getting almost a little too offensive for words when we have to suffer listening to idiots deliberately protest against their own interests.  This Other 53% morons don’t have ten brain cells to rub together.

That is the absolute truth here.  These people are idiots.  The system we have in this country is so bad that it crushes the poor, and canonizes the rich.  And that really tragic part is that we have people in this country who are bragging about how shitty their lives are, saying that they bust ass to get nowhere, and they they think the system doesn’t need to change.  “Suck it up, you whiners.”

It’s part of this tragic paradigm shift that has happened in this country, and is the reason I support Occupy Wall Street so vigorously – because while the protestors on Wall Street are trying to make this country better for everyone, these people will just blindly follow ignorance, blindly follow the path that keeps them in perpetual bondage to poverty.

These people just bug me.  Because they don’t seem to see that the private market these people seem to love so much is keeping them in bondage.  They are one big medical crisis away from a mountain of debt from which they will never get out from under.  Obama is a failure because won’t even talk about universal health care.

And the people who defend these corrupt banks don’t seem to realize that these people don’t create anything.  They don’t earn the money they get, they play with money that other people have earned.  It is an endless cycle of corruption, abuse, and the people not standing up and fighting for the right to be treated like human beings.  The sad fact of that is that the law is supporting them.  The law is backing the people who do this.  They take our money, gamble it away, and then foot us with the bill.  Why these other 53% are on their side, well, I’m sure Fox News can answer that question.

Here’s the real truth – the people who actually want to change things are out there, on Wall Street, and now other places, are trying to change things for the better, and Wall Street does what it has always done – mobilize the stupid and the gullible to say that the system is fine just the way it is.  A joke that should be completely stale by now, but it isn’t.

It just kills me that the people who are part of this 53% are proud of the fact that they have no chance to get ahead at all.  Yes, the fact that you are kept in perpetual poverty is a good thing!  You know, if somebody were to beat these people with a wrench, that would make the world a much better place.

The system that we have right now is broken.  The banks are still in control, and Wall Street is accountable to nobody.  The people who are doing this, among other things, they want these people to be held accountable.  The Randroid Ron Paulites viscerally hate that, but that is the truth – that these people need to be held accountable.  This movement was supposed to be a movement for all the right reasons, and instead, it has been morphed and manipulated by all the wrong people into a cause of those who are corrupt to rally.

After all the lies, misinformation, and spin, there is one truth about this – that the “Other 53%” are nothing but flunkies of a system that is broken, but doesn’t want to be fixed, because those who control it are more powerful than we can possibly imagine.

Until next time, a quote,

“By the way, you stupid fuck who thinks you live within your fucking means, you don’t live within your fucking means.  You are one, ONE, fucking medical crisis away from being hundreds of thousands of fucking dollars in debt!”  -TJ Kincaid, Occupy Reality

Peace out,

Maverick