RE: THE AMANDA TODD SQUAD

I saw a video by my favorite YouTube vlogger, The Amazing Atheist.  He talked about the Amanda Todd tragedy, and his take was actually rather poignant.  He got me to think, and I have some responses to questions he asked in the video.

He pointed out that while Amanda Todd’s death is tragic, she isn’t the only one.  Kids all over this country are killing themselves after being bullied, and they don’t get the national stage that she has.  And people die all over the world from hunger every day.  Where are their voices?  Well, before we get to that, let’s answer TJ’s questions.

1. What makes Amanda Todd more important than Joel, Kenneth, Rachel and all of the other kids who have been pressured into of taking their own lives because of being bullied?  And if she’s not more important — Then why are you focusing on her to the exclusion of all the other victims of bullying?

Well, to be honest, she isn’t more important.  I freely admit that Amanda Todd is just one of the many victims.  But to the second question, I am not focusing on her to the exclusion of all other victims.  I am with Mr. Repzion on this.  We need to use her as an example for how this can and is happening to all sorts of other kids right now.  I am definitely trying to figure out how to deal with this on a larger scale.  Amanda Todd, to me, isn’t so much a martyr, as much as a reminder.  She is a reminder that this kind of thing happens all the time, and it goes unchecked, until the shallow society does as many have done with Amanda, and raise her on a pedestal and ignore everything else.

2. Why do you only care about bullying victims after they’ve killed themselves?

Again, I don’t.  This happens all the time, and I hate that.  I have seen it all the time where I grew up.  Back in my hometown, a good 80% of the girls in my school were vicious snakes, and the rest were their victims.  I always stood against that.  Being a titan of a man, I was able to bring those who were outcast into my fold, and give them a place and a home.  But there are many more who I couldn’t help back then, and who I realistically can’t help now.  If we are going to use Amanda Todd’s death for anything, it should be to remind people of that.

3. Why isn’t anyone talking about what REALLY needs to be done about bullying?

That’s a good question.  TJ brings up a lot of good points.  The American education system is broken.  That can’t be argued against.  I have railed against the broken education system in this country time and time again.  TJ’s solutions were pretty simple.  1. We need smaller classroom sizes.  Kids are being crammed into these rooms because the government won’t put any real money in education, because clearly, going overseas and killing people is much more important.  2. We need more teachers, and better pay to incentivise teachers to stay.  The average turnover rate of teachers is five years.  After five years, most teachers give up on the profession because the pay is miniscule, and the work is mind-numbing.  No teacher works an 8 hour day.  They work a 10, 12, 14 hour day.  If they didn’t, there would be no homework graded, no tests corrected, no tutoring, no coaching, no extra-curricular activities of any kind.  A teacher has to work their ass off, and they are chipping away at their student loans with pay that is downright pathetic.  It is shameful that we pay trained gorilla millions of dollars to throw a football, but we can’t pay the people in charge of the future generations a decent wage.  3. Children shouldn’t be left unsupervised on social networking sites before they can handle what comes with that.  4. We need to teach kids about how to fight against bullying.

TJ makes an especially good point there.  You think bullying stops the moment you get out of school?  Fuck no!  There are a metric ton of adult bullies who use their power over other people to make their lives miserable.  Kids should be taught to rely on nobody.  Remember that video where these boys were picking on a fat kid, and the fat kid got up and beat the shit out of them?  I remember that went viral.  Good on the kid who beat them.  We should teach kids to be strong, and not to take shit from anybody.  It will serve them well in the real world, away from school.  5. Exploration into the root causes of bullying.  Yeah, that makes sense.  I am with TJ.  Anybody who is against bullying should be for that.

4. Hundreds of thousands of people die every day from causes far worse than bullying.  Where are their stories?

Yeah, that’s a good point.  It is worth pointing out that America love a victim.  An American victim who they can latch onto and make into a poster-boy/girl for their cause.  And the reality is far more ugly than any of us can hope to believe.  My retort, though, would be that one has to pick their battles.  If my time being informed and seeing the world go to shit has taught me anything, it’s that you can’t take on the world.  One can only charge at windmills for so long before they are broken against it.  Now, this issue itself might be too big, but for those like me, who actually do want to do some good, this is far less of a windmill to climb than some of the others.  At least, that’s what I  think.

TJ pointed out at the end that if the story of Amanda Todd turns things around, he will admit that he is wrong in having contempt for those who have made this girl into a martyr.  I would like it noted that I have contempt for them as well, despite how passionate my post about her was.  This girl is a victim, and a tragic reminder of how our system has, and is failing.  But, like TJ, I don’t think that that will happen.  The news cycle will move on.  Amanda Todd will be forgotten,  Or, as he pointed out, we will pass some pathetic law, probably in her name, that doesn’t even try and solve the root cause of bullying.  It merely looks at the symptoms, and thinks that if we patch it up, that’s enough.  Because that is how America does.  America does what they think is just enough, and won’t cost a lot of money, because non-existent God-forbid that we actually work and make things better.  No, that would be just too much of a pain in the ass.  Instead, we will do the bare minimum, and that’s it.  Because America is the land of the lazy, and the home of the cost-effective.

Accomplishing real progress just isn’t in the fiscal plan for the year.

Until next time, a quote,

“And if you don’t like what I had to say in this video, then I urge you to prove me wrong.  Not with words.  Not with name-calling.  It makes no sense to bully me in the name of anti-bullying.  Prove it to me with your actions.  Show me that I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about by showing me how really and truly dedicated you are to this issue.”  -TJ Kincaid, THE AMANDA TODD SQUAD

Peace out,

Maverick

Christopher Columbus was a Piece of Sh*t!

Well, it’s Columbus Day, and when I see this day celebrated as a national holiday, I can’t help but think of all the hypocrisy that surrounds it.  The hypocrisies of this nation are so extreme that it has even infected national lore.

It’s at times like these that there is another part of our education system that I hate, in addition to the fact that it treats students like statistics and openly ignores the reality that not all students learn the same, and if we treat them like they are numbers, we are making our generations dumber and dumber.  And what I hate about our education system in addition to that is how history is taught.  We extremely white-wash our history!  It is like we are afraid to look at what actually happened.  There was a great quote from my favorite YouTube vlogger, and it goes as such -

People shouldn’t be afraid of the truth.  Only liars are afraid of the truth.

That’s a great quote.  So, why do we teach history that is so jaded in America’s favor?  Why don’t we teach what actually happened?  Well, the answer to that is simple – because then it would make one of America’s greatest heroes look like a total piece of shit.  Who, you ask?  Well, I speak of the so-called founder of America – Christopher Columbus.  This guy was no saint.  In fact, he was a monster.  This man was so sick that it was documented by his crew what a horrible creature he was.

When he lands in the Bahamas, Columbus comes across these incredibly kind people.  He wrote about this, saying that these people would just give to anyone who asked.  They trusted each other, and trusted these foreigners to be good to them in kind.  Oh, you poor, poor fools.  Almost immediately after landing, Columbus enslaves all of these people, taking their possessions and their land for his own.  A mere two years later, almost half the population is dead.  You see, a lot of the women and young girls were sold as sex slaves.  And the men and young boys were forced to work in his gold mines.  And if a slave didn’t produce the right amount of gold at the end of the day, they could have one of their limbs cut off, or be publicly hanged, so as to send a message to the others that they better not screw up.

By the time they left that island, there were none of those people he met left.  They were all dead, or worse.  Columbus’s appetite for killing was so sick that many of his crew left and joined the Catholic church, and there are journals that they wrote talking about the disgusting depravity of this man who we all look at as if he is some kind of hero.

Columbus was evil in a way that Hitler only dreamed of being.  One guy wrote that Columbus oversaw one day the slaughter of over 3,000 people.  Just the senseless slaughter.  Yeah, what a national hero, right?  This is somebody who deserves his own holiday.  Um-hm.  Yeah, bullshit!

And how evil Columbus was was no secret to the people of Spain.  This man and his appetite for greed and killing was infamous.  There was one governor of Spain who filed charges, and men were sent to pick Columbus up and bring him back in chains.  Of course, the royalty of Spain were a bunch of greedy pieces of shit themselves, and they loved how much they were getting, so they totally dismissed that.  Looking at some of the other evil things that the Spanish did, like the systematic slaughter of the native tribes of Central and South America in order to take their treasure, yeah, they were all disgusting.

So, why is this depraved and disgusting monster who makes some of our most infamous historical killers look like heroes in comparison get so popular here in America?  Well, we can thank the Catholic church for that.  See, they needed somebody who was Catholic to be celebrated in America.  Apparently, having a Jew who they claim died for them wasn’t enough.  But yeah, they wanted this Catholic to be celebrated as a national hero, and no, our education curriculums don’t even talk about stuff like this.  Ain’t the Catholic church grand?

Now, hundreds of years later, we celebrate a man who was a sadistic killer, who sold massive amounts of women and girls into sexual slavery and worked everyone else to death (or they killed themselves), as an American hero.  Wrong!  This man is a disgusting piece of shit, and should be remembered by America as something that we can be ashamed of.  And he isn’t the only one!  The English, French and Spanish all did horrible things in the name of believing that they were in the right when it came to how we treated these natives.

There is a great quote that I am going to leave you on.  Something to think about when you look at history and how it is taught in this country.  We need to have a completely objective curriculum of history.  We need to teach only the facts, because my favorite YouTube vlogger was right.  The only people afraid of the truth are liars.  And America, and especially the Catholic church, is filled with those!

Until next time, a quote,

“When your people came to our land, it was not with open arms, but with Bibles and guns and disease.  You took our land.  You killed us with your guns and disease, then had the arrogance to call us godless savages.  If there is a Heaven and it is filled with Christians, then Hell is the place for me.”  -Anonymous

Peace out,

Maverick

America: Stupid Beyond Reason

There are a lot of days when people can look at this country and feel just a touch bit of shame for this generation, and any who might follow it.  There are days when you really think that perhaps it is a good thing that this country is going straight down the shitter, and really fast.  Days like today, when you see things in the news, and you think that it really can’t get much worse.  Days when you see things that are so stupid that you honestly just want to lay in a corner and cry.  Days when you get to see that the people of this country can’t really get any stupider.

Bill Maher was having a debate on his show.  The topic was voting.  There has been a very measly turnout for these primary votes.  It is a fact that the Republicans hate the candidates who are running right now.  Most Republicans are moderate.  Most of all voters are moderate.  The moderates are the overwhelming majority in this country.  And while our media has been good at not talking about anything that matters, they are showing the Republican candidates for who they are.  And that is pretty useful.

So, the guy Maher was talking to, Eliot Spitzer, had this idea to get people to the votes – bribe them!  After Maher suggested that they might want to schedule voting days for Saturday, when people aren’t at work, Spitzer said that there should be a lottery.  Everybody who votes is elligible to win something like $1 million.  Of course, Maher was rather shocked at this, asking if we should be bribing people to care about what happens in this country.  Spitzer immediately replies – yes!

Why the hell should the future of our country be contingent on bribing people to get to the polls?  If you have to bribe them to get their lazy asses of the couch, then I don’t want the future of our country in their hands.  Honestly, I would prefer that 1000 people vote in total than a group of worthless losers who have to have the promise of money to get them to the polls.

But you know, maybe it’s a good thing that the turnout is so low.  Take a look at America.  Only 4 out of 10 people in this country accept the theory of evolution.  A theory that has a mountain of scientific evidence.  It’s a fact (these terms are not mutually exclusive, by the way – theory and fact.  Not in the science world).  And 6 out of 10 people don’t buy it.  They don’t accept evidence.

Instead, they have their own theory – that Jesus did everything!  And Gawd made the universe, and all of us peoples.  We didn’t come from monkeys! (insert stupid southern voice for all the text in this paragraph)

Of course, what do you expect from people who are getting one of the worst education systems on the face of the planet.  Education in this country is a joke.  And before you libertarians go getting on the privitization bandwagon, it isn’t the public educators fault.  It is the mother’s fault.  The average dim-witted mother is the worst thing to happen to public schools.  Teachers are constantly having to question everything they do, and to always have to tip-toe around these dumb-fuck mothers who want to whine and complain about how classes are too hard for their equally-stupid kid.

The reason that test scores are so low, teachers are teaching tests, and the standards for students are so low is because mothers are constantly complaining about how hard things are.  They don’t want their kids to hear that character-building words – “you’re a loser, Billy!  You suck!  You’re stupid!”  Those words build character, and can teach student some things.  Everything wrong with America’s education system, you can blame on mothers who like to bitch about how their kid isn’t doing well.

And these stupid people are the kind that Spitzer wants in the voting booth.  I have an idea – how about NO!  How about we get these Christards away from our government!  How about we embrace logic, and reason, and rationality?  These people are scientically illiterate.  Keep them as far from the voting booth as possible!

What’s more, we can’t shame these people anymore.  It’s now out of the bounds of acceptable behavior to basically turn them into the modern version of the village idiot, and throw tomatoes at them (figuratively speaking).  No, we can’t shame the stupid, because we love the stupid!  We absolutely love them!  We give them television shows.  Shows like Jackass, The Jersey Shore, Real Housewives of…wherever.  We laud these people and give them all the notoriety that they can handle.

But if all that I have said before hasn’t convinced you that America is stupid beyind all reason, here is the proof above all proof – Snooki, the tiny and absolutely retarded bimbo, is a New York Times best-selling author.  No shit!  Her latest book, “Confessions of a Guidette,” is on the top of the New York Times best-seller list.  If you needed any more proof of her stupidity, you got it.

What kills me is how the American public thinks themselves so superior, pointing and laughing at how stupid these people are.  They never realize that at least the idiots on that show are getting paid to be as stupid as they are.  They are getting filthy rich to be stupid, white bimbos and meat-heads.  While you, the person laughing, is probably just as stupid, but is working at McDonald’s or at WalMart.

Here is the ultimate truth about America – you’re stupid.  You’re stupid because you accept mediocrity, and never ask for anything more.  You’re stupid because you are just fine with your culture dying.  You’re stupid because you don’t get outraged at the fact that the bulk of the people in this country are scientifically illiterate.  You’re stupid because this kind of pathetic shit is totally acceptable to you.  But most of all, more than anything else – You are stupid because you have to have Eliot Spitzer offer you a million dollars to get your lazy, unmotivated ass to the voting booth to give a shit about your country’s future!

I can sum up my feelings about this country’s normal public in two words – fuck you!  You’re dumb!  Go away!  Take your pick which you like.

Until next time, a quote,

“And don’t tell me, by the way, that I hate America.  I don’t hate America.  I just hate you!  I hate you stupid fucks, that ruin America for the rest of us.”  -TJ Kincaid, TOO DUMB TO VOTE!

Peace out,

Maverick

What Makes America So Great?

You know, I never stop hearing from the conservatives in this country about how America is the greatest nation on the face of the planet.  I find this argument to be very interesting for a number of reasons.  It is just so weird how these people all seem so completely convinced that America is some kind of great archon in the industrialized world, and honestly, it seems kind of pathetic how we believe ourselves to be the greatest of all nations.

My first question to those who believe this country is so great is – how do you measure this greatness?  By what standard to you measure the greatness of a nation.   Is it by how well-off the citizenry are?  Well, let’s keep this to the industrialized world.  If we look at the not so industrialized world, that is depressing.  But yeah, given that we have massive unemployment here, and that doesn’t even include the 99ers who have just given up looking for a job because their community has no opportunities that their education can provide.  The middle class is rapidly disappearing, and the rich seem to not care.

Hey, while we’re talking about citizenry, how about health care?  The World Health Organization ranks us very low among the industrialized nations for quality of health care.  We spend the most on health care than any other nation in the industrialized world, which would be fine, if what we were getting back was of equal merit.  Instead, we have a patch-work health care system that keeps millions of people from getting the necessary procedures that they can get.  Then there is the fact that our nation’s health care system is the most inefficient when it comes to the bureaucracy.  Part of that is because we don’t have universal health care.

And while we’re talking about health care, how about the systems we have in place to protect the poor?  Our social safety net is a joke.  Those who need it are getting nothing, and those who are making six-figure salaries are getting it.  It is a joke how bad we take care of those on the bottom in this country.  And meanwhile, there are idiots like all the Republicans (including Ron Paul.  Seriously, he is just as much a Republican as the rest of them) talking about how we should abolish Social Security, talking about how there are all these lazy people who don’t deserve it.  Yes, because America is clearly a nation where effort gives you equal reward (cough*bullshit*cough).

So, while we’re on the subject of the poor, how about our prison system?  Well, here, we are so ahead of the curve!  We have more people in jail than any other nation in the industrialized world.  Of course, most of these are drug offenders and have done nothing wrong.  The system just says they they are wrong.  Never mind that somebody didn’t kill or steal from anybody, they are criminals!  Yes, that makes a whole lot of sense.  Let’s throw people in jail because we arbitrarily decide to make what they do a crime.

Next up, do we have the biggest array of artists in this country?  Do we have the largest amount of culturally relevant works coming out?  Well, if you look at anything that Michael Bay has made, it is easy to see how that is a lie.  America not only doesn’t have the biggest amount of artists, we don’t have a country that endorses artisans.  When we have people going out and telling art majors to drop it because there are no opportunities for them here.  We are already telling people like my best friend Emily that pursuing the dream of doing great artwork is not a worthwhile pursuit.  So that is out.

While we are looking at the future, how about science?  Is America leading the way in technological mastery and scientific development?  That is a flat-out no.  South Korea is a nation that is half the size of Georgia, and it has the greatest internet service in the world.  America absolutely refuses to start investing large-scale into alternative energy.  We have no high-speed transit system in this country.  The system that we do have right now is a joke.  Almost all the major scientific developments are now coming from other places.  The fact is that America is not some kind of major player here, either.

We also, in a lot of sects in America, actually condemn science.  The religious right is always attacking scientific institutions, like those doing stem cell research, because a microscopic bit of goo might turn into a future Republican.  We have a holy war against doing anything sane.  That brings us to how we are in secular systems.  America is having a civil war (metaphorically speaking) about the religious beliefs of this country.  We condemn the Islam faith, while Christianity really has no room to talk.  Between all the killings done by Christians in the past, and all the ones that are being done now in the name of religion, the Christian right really has no room to attack those who believe in Allah over their God.

This doesn’t look good for America being the greatest nation.  What about the education levels of our young people?  With student loans at colleges being completely beyond control, it is easy to see how education in this country is not the greatest.  High School dropout rates are insane.  At my college, UAA, only 1 in 4 students is able to stick it out until graduation.  Those who come to America to learn don’t stick around here to put their skills to work helping us.  They go back home and put their skills to work to get their nations ahead.

The fact is that America is not the greatest country in the world.  We are very quickly starting to lose our place in the world.  While the Republicans, Libertarians, and Tea Party dumbasses want to go back to some kind of golden age, the new golden age is quickly slipping away from us.  The fact is that we are losing our spot in the global market, and if we don’t do something to change things soon, there will be no place for us in the world of tomorrow.  I really hope that day doesn’t come to pass.

Until next time, a quote,

“Conservatives want live babies so they can turn them into dead soldiers!”  -George Carlin

Peace out,

Maverick

Is the Concept of Plagiarism Outdated?

So, I got to thinking about this today.  It just hit me after I got to see some friends of mine having an argument about a paper that each of them wrote.  It was about, go figure, the legalization of marijuana.  I actually read both of their papers, and both of them were surprisingly similar, but I got to thinking – how can there be no similar things anymore?  Really, when you take a long look at how much has been published, the sheer amount of things that have been published, how it is theoretically possible for what you have written to not be eeriely similar to what somebody else has done?

Now, back to the friends’ essays, I say that they were similar, not in direct wording, but in subject matter.  There was an episode of House md that did a great bit about this.  Foreman does a paper that was about the same case the Cameron did hers.  When she confronts him, he claims that it was perfectly alright.  I agree with that statement, actually.  And this ties into my friends debate because really, when you think about it, with the legalization of pot debate, there aren’t too many ways that one can look at it.  There is the fact that money would be made.  There is the fact that multiple industries would grow around the business of selling pot.  There is the fact that Prohibition never works.  There is the fact that we could let our cops be doing things that matter, like catching rapists, theives, and murderers.  There is the fact that you can’t OD on THC.  But really, aside from that there aren’t a lot of arguments that one can make.

There is something that all great writers who have ever studied literature over the years have learned – that there is no such thing as an original story.  Really, there is no concept that you could come up with that hasn’t been done a hundred times in the past.  The only thing that you can do is take the concept, spin it around, and shine it up like new.  That is all that you can do.  But when you are writing, there is an almost definite chance that what you will write is word-for-word what somebody else at some point has written.

With the advent of the internet, it is literally impossible to be original anymore.  If one were to examine each and every single thing that has ever been published at any time, what do you think the chances are that the same words, maybe even word for word, don’t appear somewhere else?  I am going to put some some thoughts, and you do a Google search and see if they haven’t been posted other places before -

Dolphins are idiots

Dolphins are evil

The mongoose is nature’s douchebag

There are no solutions to life’s problems

If there were a cogent argument to be made to keep marijuana illegal, I would support it.  Really, there is no reason to continue this pointless war on something that makes people sleepy, happy, and hungry.

I swear that I didn’t look up any of what I just wrote anywhere.  I just pulled that out of the air and put it in this blog.  And I am confident that if you go onto Google, you can find those very same words somewhere.  Or if not Google, somewhere in the vast labyrinth that is human publications throughout history.

And this brings me to the educational standards of plagiarism.  I have known a lot of times when a student did the work, got their data, and came to their own conclusiosn, and then was accused of plagiarism simply because their work sounded a lot like somewhere else.  A friend of mine who isn’t all that good at writing was given some help from me on his essay.  I didn’t write it myself.  I helped him edit.  It was a long and arduous process that left both of us very tired by the time his ten page paper was completed.  He is a good kid, and he worked his ass off on that paper.  I actually went with him when he had to defend that paper with some of the people here at the college.  He was pardoned, but it was still humiliating and rude.

Here’s the problem with the modern attitude that if you find something on Google, and the wording is the same, it was just copied and pasted onto somebody’s work.  That is not true.  Now, there are a lot of students who do this.  I know that to be true.  But really, the educators have to be smarter than to just plug something into Google and see if it turns up some matches.  Really, the chances that a person will create a work that is 100% original and unlike anything else is absurd!  There is no chance of that.  And I bet there are a lot of students who have been condemned simply because their educators were too lazy to give their students the benefit of the doubt and believe that sometimes, while there are those who choose the easy way out, sometimes there are people who come to similar or even the same conclusions as others.

So, the question is – is the modern concept of plagiarism outdated?  Well, no, it isn’t.  Not completely, anyway.  The chances that you will create a work that is 100% original is non-existent.  No matter what you say, no matter how you say it, somebody can google a sentence and find it somewhere else in some other work.  People need to realize that there are those who do the work, and who will defend what they write, but laziness of the academics is making it so that Google is the one-stop reference to get the answers.  Teachers, you have to be wiser than that.  If something is similar, talk to your student.  Be able to read if they did put the effort in, and it is just a coincidence that was unintentional, or if they are the lazy academic pukes that you make them out to be.

And if the random person believes, as Cameron did, that somebody has stolen what they said, think long and hard about if you didn’t take your idea, or get inspired to say or write what you did, by somebody else.

Food for thought.

Until next time, a quote,

“…Or get Matt Drudge to steal somebody else’s column, in which somebody else will insist that conservatives have no voice in the media…”  -Keith Olbermann, Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Peace out,

Maverick

America: The Nation that Makes War on Smart

There is a very good reason that America is beginning to be looked down upon by the rest of the world.  Really, when somebody thinks long and hard about it, it is actually pretty tragic.  We make war on smart.  We make war on everything that is socially progressive in any way.  And why?  Well, the reasons for that are varied, and all of them, to date, have not impressed me.  Here is a list of the things that this country makes war against that are smart -

1. Gay marriage.
   This is something that I would think would be such a no-brainer to people.  Really, I just don’t get where this hardcore bigot mentality of how gay marriage is such a threat to them comes from.  For real, let’s examine this issue.  There is a group of people who want to have the right to get married to the person that they love.  They don’t want anything else.  They simply want to be able to be legally recognized as a committed couple.  They want all the legal nonsense, and just the freedom to do so.  They aren’t asking the people that they raise them on a pedestal.  In fact, they simply want to be equal in the eyes of the law.  This is something that I would think that people would get behind.  But given how America and their hardcore boner for Gawd seems to still be fighting against homosexuality itself, perhaps it is not so complicated.  For real, what is with all the bigotry still associated with this?  One common argument is that if we let them marry, then soon, polygamy will be allowed!  Well, honestly, that’s fine by me.  I think if you want monogamy or polygamy should be discussed with your partner.  I am not against that, at all.  If consenting adults believe that that is the kind of relationship that they want, I think that’s just fine.  I’m with Dan Savage on this one.  Another argument is that it will open the way to pedophilia.  I like how The Amazing Atheist hit this one in his very long video answering questions.  We believe ourselves to be so important that we are not only judging the past, but we are judging the future.  Who cares what happens 50 years down the road?  This is what needs to happen today.  It is smart, so naturally, America makes war against it.
2. Universal Healthcare
   This is something that I have been talking with several people about.  Part of the problem with the debate about whether or not we should have this in America is that the politicians seem to have dismissed it off-hand.  It’s not a mystery that our healthcare system is broken.  That’s not a even a contention which can logically be made with any form of reason.  We spend more money than any other nation on Earth for healthcare.  We spend more, which would be fine, if the returning product was of worthy merit.  But the polls and the statistics show less satisfaction with healthcare in the United States than almost any other nation in the industrialized world.  So, this is something that we really need to see more of in the media.  But the problem is that the politicans and the pundits are both miscategorizing things, both giving bad information.  And unfortunately, that is on both sides.  There is an article in Yes! magazine, a very magazine that talks about how big concepts can be practically brought into the world, which talks about this.  It says that not only is universal healthcare in this country possible, but it is also practical.  It can do more than just get sick people healthy.  It can massively cut costs on things that we don’t even think about, like all the paperwork, and all bureaucracy.  Now, the arguments against universal healthcare are legitimate.  Some make a very good argument that America’s bureaucracy sucks.  They would be right.  We have the worst bureaucracy of any nation in the industrialized world.  France has the best, go figure.  But when we have nations where a person is put out of a hospital because he is a guy with breast cancer, being left to die, that is unacceptable.  But instead of just yelling about it, and saying that it is wrong, we need to have a bigger debate on a more rational and less money-driven playing field.  Of course, rational debates don’t exist in this country anymore.  That would be smart, and America makes war on smart.
3. Education
   Here is another area that people are well-aware is broken in this country.  Our education system is in tank.  The dropout rates in high schools across the country are absolute unacceptable.  Add to this the fact that college is becoming completely unreasonably expensive, this is another issue that people would think would be a no-brainer.  And when Bush, our lovely brainless Texan took office, he decided to create a policy that only made things worse.  It was called “No Child Left Behind.”  It was the most singularly destructive element that happened to American schools in a long time.  But it goes further than that.  We have massive networks of poverty-stricken inner-city schools who have outdated equipment, have to function as fortresses most of the time, due to the massive number of criminal elements in their areas, and students who are being crowded into classrooms and not getting the help that they need.  And the system doesn’t care.  The system is glad to turn a blind eye, because the poor have always been the ignored class in this country.  And as for complex ground-up reformation, well, best not to count on that happening anytime soon.  That would be smart, and smart is something America hates.
4. Peace
   This is something that America really loves to make war against.  George Carlin did a great bit about America and war.  America has always liked war.  We have always been in one war or another.  Killing people has been a very big part of what this country has been doing.  There was a rather nice bumpersticker – “Join the army!  Go to exotic places.  Meet new people.  And then kill them.”  That is just about how it should be viewed in this country.  Americans have never really allowed ourselves to be at peace.  After WWII, there was a time, but we quickly decided to go to war with the Communists of Soviet Russia and China.  And now, the new big bad boogieman has been “terror.”  Another ridiculous policy that Bush brought into this world – the War on Terror.  As Richard Dreyfuss said, “That’s like declaring war on the flanking manuever.  It’s a tactic!”  But America has never allowed itself to be peaceful.  Looking at the War on Terror, it has completely butchered our reputation overseas.  It has made us out to be the horrible villains who kill and torture people, regardless of whether it is right or wrong.  The point of examining this now is that right now, we have a huge debt problem, and nobody is willing to massively cut military spending.  We have the most over-blown military in the entire world, by leaps and bounds, and we over-extend our military, but nobody seems to want to talk about that.  That would be smart.  America hates smart.
5. Green Energy
   The single best argument to be made for this is the easiest – oil is a finite resource.  This is not an argument, it’s a fact.  Now, a lot of the people who will come out against green energy actually, as has recently come to light, used the bible as a reference to why we should keep oil the dominate economic drive that we have.  Apparently, Rep. John Shimkus (R-Il) believes that because Gawd said that he would never destroy anybody again after the story of Noah’s Ark, climate change is a hoax.  Wow, that’s almost too tragic an explanation for words.  But while I do take George Carlin’s position about global warming, I do believe that we need to start looking into green energy more.  If, for no other reason, than to start being more cost-effective.  Oil and Coal are expensive.  Oil is becoming moreso every day.  What’s more, think of all the good that we could do.  If green energy were to be implimented on a massive scale, it would be a huge undertaking.  It would require a metric ton of people to look after.  The amount of jobs that it would open up, if we actually cared about our infrastructure here in this country, would be incredible.  Simply choosing to say that we need oil is just bad arguing.  Now, I will admit that our economy is contingent on oil, but that is how social and economic progess works.  It’s a gradual thing.  But we have to start somewhere.  I like how Lewis Black put the argument of green energy in this country -  “You know why we don’t have solar energy in this country?  Because the Sun goes away each day, and it doesn’t tell us where it’s going!”

The simple fact is that this country is making a lot of really bad decisions, or deliberately not talking about things because they believe that they are too complicated, or there is money flowing around that tells them not to.  This needs to be addressed, because America is starting to look really dumb.  That isn’t a legacy that we need in this country.

Until next time, a quote,

“And if you ask, we’re not going to have solar energy in my lifetime.  A few people have it, but it should be something we all have.  It’s ridiculous.  I’ll take no flying cars, but no solar energy?!  And if you ask your congressman why, they’ll say, ’cause it’s hard.  It’s really hard!  It makes me wanna go poopie!’”  -Lewis Black, Red, White, And Screwed

Peace out,

Maverick