Posts Tagged politics

Date: April 28th, 2011
Cate: drama, society + culture

skepticism regarding trivia isn’t laudable

‘Birther’ is a dumb term. Let’s get that out of the way.

First, let’s look at this:

Now, look at this: (note -- hosted on whitehouse.gov, which is about as legit as it gets)

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-long-form.pdf

Next, this:

He also raised questions anew about Obama’s educational record and how he got into college. But he again offered no proof of anything amiss.

- AP: In NH, Trump takes credit for Obama birth info

And finally this:

Moving the goalposts, also known as raising the bar, is an informal logically fallacious argument in which evidence presented in response to a specific claim is dismissed and some other (often greater) evidence is demanded.

- Wikipedia: Moving the goalposts

Some people are never happy.

Date: March 18th, 2011
Cate: matt's life, observations + conclusions + beliefs, society + culture, things to think about

my experiences with being governed

Should I be worried that  as a citizen of a representative democracy, I don’t notice any difference between representatives? And I mean real, discernible differences that have a significant impact (positive or negative) on my life – I’d settle for a trivial impact, even.

All the changes in my life over the past 5 or 6 years have arisen from decisions that I’ve made - opportunities that I’ve taken advantage of, limbs I’ve gone out on, risks I’ve mitigated, mistakes I’ve made, people I’ve met, things I’ve read, etc. But ‘people I’ve voted for’ doesn’t fit in that list. I try to do the ‘right thing,’ research who I’m voting for, make sure I’m making an informed decision, but lately I’ve started to become curious whether it matters. I’m tempted to choose what I vote for randomly, the next election season.

I’m not complaining that my vote doesn’t count, it’s something more profound than that: that we’ve gone from an ostensibly dumb conservative republican president to a conversely smart liberal democrat president, and I can’t tell what’s different. We’ve still got soldiers in the middle east, and don’t-ask-don’t-tell might be repealed, but I’m not a soldier, you know? I’m not saying I don’t have opinions on those subjects, but they’re all in abstract, because none of it effects me. Financial crises? I’m doing about as well as ever. National disasters and civil unrest in those other countries somewhere across the sea, where I don’t know anybody and will never have to deal with their problems.

This might sound like bragging, or possibly uncaring, but it’s really not either – it’s complaining. If anything it sounds stupid, even to myself, when I wish that something drastic would happen, a touchstone I could look at and say, “X impacted Y, because I voted for Z.” What if we completely cut ties with middle eastern oil suppliers, and gas price quadrupled overnight? That’d be something. What if suddenly homosexuality was made illegal? What if the draft was reinstated? What if marijuana was legalized? Something big, something to be up in arms about. Something I’d feel good about dropping everything else to either fight or defend.

Short for a blog post, maybe, but the list of ways that my government impacts my life is shorter. I feel like that’s a problem.

 

Date: February 11th, 2009
Cate: society + culture
1 msg

‘gay rights’ are really ‘equality’ and ‘civil rights’

This is an interesting point, one which I think I agree with… at least for the first two sentences.

” What’s with the label? Gay rights. Do they need seperate rights? Do they need a gay Bill of Rights, and a gay right to vote too? Please. Irony is not the fact that tolerant peoples do not want the legislation passed. Irony is the fact that Gays don’t want to be singled out and labeled, yet they have their own community (gay community), and they want Gay rights. Wow – I am going to start telling people I want White rights…i want a fair share and have people not worry more about minorities than me. I am an individual, just like everyone else. I want equal, white rights, too. Ironic…Don’t you think? “

Gay-rights advocates press for change in N.D. law [bismarcktribune.com], comment by ‘Dante’s Inferno’

Kind of weird how he (apparently inadvertently) points out that the struggle for ‘gay rights’ is really a struggle for ‘equality’ and ‘civil rights,’ period – but then he immediately makes these sweeping generalizations about the ‘Gays’ (with a capital ‘G’) who ‘want Gay rights’, which he says is as ridiculous as ‘Whites’ wanting ‘White Rights’. Which is right – but he’s not saying it in a very considerate way. I wonder if one of my few concessions to political correctness is attempting to keep generalizations concerning characteristics of ‘groups’ of people to a minimum?