Calm Down, Liberals are Idiots Too

Contrary to popular belief, yelling over and personally insulting someone you consider a "neocon" will not help you win an argument.

Throwing out the projected number of how many Iraqis have been killed since 2003 won't win you any points either. Do you actually think there are Americans who check the Iraqi body count each day? I think they're probably a bit more concerned about the lives of their enlisted children.

Liberals love to blame all of America's problems on the people they don't like, such as George W. Bush. Although W is a moron, and many of our problems today are the fault of him and his high-roller friends, I'm sure there are few people who would call Bill and Hillary Clinton, who pushed NAFTA on us, the architects of a golden age.

Liberals love to say that there is a Zionist conspiracy, that Israel tells the United States government what to do. Yeah, okay. I think that the United States government is a little more worried about undermining the enormous Russian state than it is about appeasing the minuscule Jewish state. Whatever actions the Israelis could take to preserve their interests in the Middle East, they can be nothing compared to those of Russia.

It's become obvious that liberals love to raise Cain about the most distracting points to deceive the average American prole about what's going on the world. What we're seeing in this Iraq mess is history as usual: a big nation wants resources, so it goes to take them from a smaller nation. That's it. Human beings have been doing this for thousands of years. Animals have been doing it for millions of years. For some reason, though, liberals have turned it into a frightening, shadowy conspiracy, with shadow groups and think tanks and evil corporations all pulling strings behind the scenes. Maybe that sort of shit is going on, but when did war profiteering become evil and shocking? That's what war is: a battle for profit. You fight to get more than you had before. You can say you won sovereignty, recognition, or clout, but the fact is that somebody's gettin' rich. Somehow land or resources changed hands. That's profit. If your war ends, and you have less money than you had when the war began, it doesn't matter if you killed all your enemies or not. You lost.

Liberals also like to point out how terrible it is to go to war, and how it scars the psyche and damages the planet. I don't like war myself, because I don't like the idea of dying, but I've learned enough about history and biology to know that life-threatening conflict is about as natural a state as we can ever expect in this world. If we're not at war, we're on the brink of war. And I'm not above it, either: there was a day when I was a little kid when I had a candy bar, and my older brother didn't. He wanted the candy bar, so he took it away from me. I wanted the candy bar too, so I pounced on him, slapping and clawing and kicking to get it back. Pacifist or not, I was willing to fight for what I wanted. This is what happens on planet Earth. It's not a phenomenon. It doesn't need explaining. It's nature.

Liberals and conservatives both like to say that human nature is above such primal simplicity. It's not. They overestimate humanity to make themselves look impressive and civilized, and in turn, to make the people who vote for them feel impressive and civilized. Then they turn on each other and sound like idiots, and like children mimicking their parents, the voters turn on each other and sound like even bigger idiots.

This approach doesn't breed loyalty, though, because it dissolves over time. Americans can't keep their heads in those righteous positions for too long, and I imagine that pisses the politicians off something royal. The real reason Karl Rove failed to win over the American populace and turn the United States into a one-party nation was not because the liberals filled their heads with lies. It was because people in America don't give a shit about ideals. Not at their cores, they don't. Not at their hearts. The political affiliation of a working American is like moss on a big, heavy rock. It's a lovely surface covering, but it doesn't move or change the rock in any way. And how can it? Working Americans are too concerned with their own lives, their own families, their own money to seriously consider the direction of the nation. Fuck the nation, we got bills to pay!

Apathy and self-interest, loathsome qualities both, nonetheless ended up working in favor of the war. Americans bought into the conservative pro-war rhetoric about "saving the poor, tortured Iraqis" in the same way that they care for those Save A Child kids. The thought process goes like this: "Okay, I'll throw a little money at some people who say they'll fix the problem, stroke myself for a little bit, tell myself I'm a good person, and then go spend more money at Starbucks, more money than I just gave that poor kid, on another Frappucino." So long as there's no real commitment involved, Americans are thrilled at the idea of feeling noble, and they love to use it in their arguments.

"I think freeing the Iraqis was one of the most admirable and necessary things we've ever done," the pro-war folks said. You'll notice, however, that once the gas prices started going up, the economy started to suffer, and the portent of sacrifice entered the picture, these people turned tail real quick.

"I can't defend Bush on this one," they say now. "Maybe that Obama character can clean things up. He's not a Muslim, is he?" It's easy to drum up support for a war, so long as the voters aren't personally inconvenienced. Why do you think we haven't had a draft yet?

Let's not go too far with all this voter talk, though. All the maneuvers discussed up to now has nothing to do with policy. It's about image. Voters don't vote for candidates they believe will make life better for them. They vote for who they want to roll wit'. Conservatives strive to look like the Holier-than-thou Hero, and liberals try to dress as the Mad-as-hell Oppressee. Working people, realizing, but not always admitting their insignificance, love to imagine themselves in one of these two roles.

There's a problem with this, though: neither conservatives nor liberals actually do anything to improve the life of the working man anymore. Sure, they'll rile him up to win votes, but when they get into office, they proceed to ignore anyone they don't work with. Yeah, maybe they'll let you or I into the chamber once in a while to take snapshots and gawk at the impressive proceedings, but they won't let you say anything.

The reason for this is that the United States isn't a democracy. I know that might sound confusing, what with all the bellicose boasting of "spreading democracy" as a reason to go to war in the Middle East that goes on these days, but it's true. The United States is not a democracy. The Pledge of Allegiance doesn't say "and to the Democracy for which it stands," it says "and to the Republic," and it's correct. The United States is a republic, and always has been. A small club of people sets the national rule. They let us vote on who is put in charge, but those candidates are first nominated by the same small club of people. The system was made this way because of the prevailing belief among wealthy people that working people are too stupid to know what's best for themselves. When I visit LiveLeak and YouTube, and I read some of the comments posted there, I am pushed dangerously close to sharing this belief. Keeping a big nation afloat requires calculation and consideration that I'm not sure we're capable of. I am compelled to concede that we should just be happy with what we're allowed to have.

Keep in mind, however, that even though the Republic is the nation that won't do anything to better the lives of the workers, the workers are moss-covered rocks who won't give anything of themselves to better the nation. It's a perfect apathetic symbiosis. And don't go calling me cynical, now, either, because that implies that you think mankind can do better. Are you willing to prove that by making sacrifices of your own? Do you think you can change or even topple a republic that knows how to maintain itself by shutting down outsiders? Or are you willing to rescind the luxuries that our warlike lifestyle affords us, and to live ascetically? I ask because those are your only options if you believe that our nature should lead us to any other future than the one we see now.

Conservatives vs. the End of the World

So this is what our cultural discourse has come to: spitting, ranting Republicans raging against the evils of a cute little robot named Wall-e. For God's fucking sake people.

This is the conservative complaint of the day: that Pixar's cute little movie, Wall-e, is pushing its America-hating, liberal agenda in our faces, and turning our children into tree-hugging potheads. They don't understand that intelligent storytelling requires that characters make, and occasionally acknowledge, their mistakes. That the humans in Wall-e are bloated, helpless sacks isn't some damnation of capitalism. It's an indictment of inaction and dependency. It's a stern finger-wagging against the immaturity that tells you things will get better if you just wait for someone else to handle them. It's tragedy. You know, like Shakespeare.

The point of movies is to be entertaining. To be entertaining, movies need drama. Sometimes the most dramatic concept of all is the idea that the world, as its characters know it, is about to end, and for whatever tragic reason, the characters are helpless to save it. Think about Tony Montana. Think about Robert the Bruce. Think about HAMLET, for God's sake. These are men who strive for what they feel they deserve, whether its money or titles or personal justice, but who are too greedy, sheltered, or doubtful to attain it. Shit, I'm no literary scholar, and even I understand this. Didn't any of you go to high school? Didn't you learn about internal conflict? Tony Montana, high on coke and ego, is nevertheless incapable of stopping his fellow mobsters from turning on him. Robert the Bruce, despite his good intentions for Scotland, betrayed William Wallace and caused the deaths of hundreds of his countrymen. And Hamlet...oh, for fuck's sake, I really shouldn't have to explain Hamlet to you.

What I'm trying to say, conservatives, is that this is drama. Filmmakers are paid to imagine stories that will draw out the greatest emotions from their audiences. You must keep in mind that while Wall-e bears the heartbreaking image of an Earth choked with garbage, it also contains a sweet, sentient robot so cognitively advanced that it is capable of falling in love. Do any of you really believe that we're going to see either of such things before our economy collapses, anarchy erupts, and China and Russia swoop in to conquer us?

See, I bet it upset you that I even thought of such a scenario, but you know what? It's not going to happen. I was being dramatic there. That's what storytellers do.

I can understand your concern. Maybe there are some nutcases out there who think that every extinction-level event presented in the movies is plausible and likely, but folks like these have to remember that movies like Wall-e also have singing, dancing robots. I completely agree that anyone who has that much trouble differentiating between fantasy and reality shouldn't be allowed outside of his house. However, there are also a lot of nutcases who think that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11, and that Barack Obama is related to Osama Bin Laden, and who think that we can keep fighting insurgents in the Middle East for the next hundred years without it having any effect on our nation. Those ideas are also fantasy, and like movies, I think they are clutched so their owners can better cope with the pains of the day.

Wall-e is not a threat to your comfort zone. It can't be a threat to your comfort zone, because it's a comfort zone itself.

This paranoia, this insistent batshit belief that EVERYONE is out to shit on your precious little ideals, is part of the same self-obsessed, hermetic fear-mongering that put us in this fucking recession. It's why the American dollar has shrunk to half its value. It's why people are losing jobs left and right. It's why everybody's socking away their Stimulus Packages to pay for gas. It might not be October 1929 all over again, but it's pretty bad, and it's REAL. Not a movie. No spaceships, no robots, just a bunch of hard-working people with nothing to show for their efforts. Now, are you going to sit there and cry about how a fucking Pixar movie MIGHT derail America, or are you going to stand up and make an effort to fix what's breaking down now?

Oh Dear.

Hey everybody, it's your old pal Travis here, with a small update about my life. I'm sorry to tell ya, but it ain't good news.

Yep, I done been fired from Mervyn's. Darn it.

I don't know what I was doing wrong. I was folding those ties all nice and neat, I was friendly to everyone I saw, I was yelling my lungs out for that Mervyn's card recording. Then one day ol' Shelley came up to me and told me things just weren't working out. She also said she hearda rumor I was stealin', which was really confusing.

Strange thing about it is that this happened right as I was gettin' ready to celebrate my one-year anniversary there. I was beginnin' to feel like I really belonged there. I was so proud. I haven't held a job this long for a long time. I was real excited about my health benefits finally kicking in, too.

Well, at least I'm taking it better than I did last time. Wish me luck as I hit the pavement one more time! That's me, good ol' Travis Finn, professional job-hunter.

Fat Will Kill You All!

How wonderful! Operation Flib-flab is nearing completion! Soon, the world will be helpless before the might of my minions!

My brilliant plan to convince all Americans that they're fat and ugly has them so distracted that they'll gladly drop their arms when my invasion begins! Yes, your weakness is not your failing manufacturing capacity, your disconnection from your leadership, or even your desperate addiction to money. It's your WOBBLY, GOBBLY CELLULITE! Now, for the Holocaust of the Fatties! Muhuhahaha! MUHUHAHAHA!

Tips for YouTube Losers, er, I Mean, Users

It's time for amateur hour on the internet, folks, which means we get to watch a myriad of morons pretend they have talent. They'll use their cheap webcams and Windows Movie Maker to tell us their oh-so-important opinions about our wacky culture. It's YouTube!

Hell, I'm no Voltaire myself, but I'm not trying to be a TV star here. If you're reading this, you're probably someone who knows me, so my opinion is at least somewhat valid to you.

Anyway, after getting pissed off while watching some YouTube videos, I have some suggestions for our amateur video uploaders over there. Hey, if you want to graduate to semi-professional someday, you're going to have to take some constructive criticism. Here goes.

1.) Stop using that fucking blue background for your title cards. It looks cheap, and shows that you can't be bothered to at least look at some of the other options Movie Maker provides for you. And try a different fucking font, too, while you're at it. Show some individualism.

2.) If you're making a video that incorporates other video, and you find yourself pointing your camera at a television, fuck it, just give it up. It's going to look like shit. Capture cards aren't as expensive as they used to be; get one. If your directorial urges are strong enough, you'll find a way to fit it into your budget.

3.) Try editing, for christ's sake. Too many of these YouTube videos are cratered with slack-jawed pauses, allowing the rest of us to enjoy the sight of some dork's drooling maw. Either rehearse beforehand, or edit this shit out. I'm not going to keep my browser tab open just to wait for you. You watch those shitty interviews on Extra and Entertainment Tonight, you should know what to do. Use weird flashes or fast zooms to compress time and get to the good quotes. That's all our attention spans have time for these days anyway.

4.) This one's for the commenters, and it's kind of a double suggestion, a twofer. Here's the first part: STOP CELEBRATING WHEN YOU HAPPEN TO BE THE FIRST PERSON TO POST A COMMENT. God damn, these people are stupid; they honestly think it's exciting and fun to be the first person to post a comment on a video. "First comment! Yay!" Sometimes, that's all they fucking post! It's like they don't even care about the video at all, they just want to plant their flag and take off. Then there are the folks who think it's cool to type the way they think a gangsta talks. "Datz da shit fuk that lol way2b foo wut it due," and so on. God DAMN, these people are really fucking dumb. After all, a real drug-slinging, heat-packing, woman-beating gangsta bastard would probably be too busy bribing cops and slitting rival throats to bother sharing his opinion on the latest episode of Dylan's Couch, okay? Gah, I can only wonder if these misguided trogs write everything this way, including their essays (as I can only assume they must still be minors).

These are the people we actually have to deal with on the internet. This is the result of popularity. Anyone who seeks to be famous will have to be ready to put up with this crap. Are you prepared to face the idiots of YouTube?

We Have Commercial Sign

Have you ever seen those poor working stiffs on street corners who have been tasked by their employers with waving broad, cumbersome signs to oncoming traffic? They're all over the place where I live. They shake and shimmy about, braving the cruelty of the elements, hawking five-dollar pizzas and newly-opened residential subdivisions. I have always felt sorry for these people, who are heartlessly forced to depressing indignity by the corporate calculation that live signs cost less than fixed ones.

It seems that there are some folks who don't much mind this sort of dehumanization, though. Well, to be plain, they aren't actual "folks," per se. They're actors hired by large companies to portray ordinary consumer schmoes who are "expressing themselves" by silently holding up signs in stylish advertisements. They usually give a coy, private smile while they do it, as though they're revealing to us some small but significant desire.

I wish that I understood what this image is supposed to mean. Not being a photographer, and lacking any formal education about modern art, I accept that I am poorly qualified to make an opinion about these campaigns. I'm willing to trust my guts, though, when they twist and clench in response to the sight of these sickening sign-holders, as legitimate detectors of pretentious bullshit that needs to stop.

When these creepy, mute actors aren't flashing sheepish grins, they're masked with brazen, proud expressions, as though the slat in their hands is some faux-impressionist painting they just finished in art class. I don't get it; what exactly do these people have to be proud of? That they're being paid to carry giant fortune cookie contents? As though these advertising bastards really think they're in touch with the mindset of the "common man." Yeah, here's what these advertising dicks think of you, Mr. and Mrs. Sixpack: you're just another venue for extolling frivolous pharmaceuticals and hokey environmentally-conscious vehicles. So long as the price is right, you won't even care if your actual thoughts are heard, you'll hold that strip of paperboard and smile like you really believe in whatever is painted on it in post-production. I may be just some boring, misanthropic slob, but I'd much prefer to turn that fucking music down what's drowning me out, split that board over my knee, and start yelling about what I demand from these cheapass, money-grubbing corporations. Sure, nobody wants to see a commercial with people yelling, but that doesn't stop your local car dealership from making them, now does it?

It's clear that someone, somewhere out there in the absinthe-sucking art world still finds this saps-holding-signs theme aesthetically appealing. Me, I found it annoying way back in 1986, when INXS did it in their music video for Mediate. I can live with that instance, though, because that was a cry for peace and tolerance; these are just bored directors and unimaginative ad execs who think that the dramatic value of slow-motion and the cost-effective lack of speech will work to suck away a little more of your money. Don't buy into it, people. These frozen fuckers you see holding up meticulously planned phrases on television are not your watchful brethren. These are paid shills with opinions thrust upon them, mouthpieces who are in no better position than those wretched souls who haul sandwich boards in the rain, as they try to make peace with those hours they've spent as walking billboards that they can never get back.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams's beloved comic novel is not about some astonishingly lucky guy named Arthur Dent. Nor is it about a two-headed, three-armed, stoner politician. It's not even about that voluminous precursor to the Amazon Kindle called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

No, this slim, unassuming little book is about no less than a twenty-million-year quest for the meaning of life. It tells how a number of tremendous technological efforts, put forth by a race of superintelligent pandimensional beings, fail to find this great Answer, and then how a lonely, burned-out shoreline artisan figures it all out by himself.

There are many lost souls in Galaxy, ranging from the desperate egotist Zaphod Beeblebrox, to the endlessly thinking Marvin, to the money-grubbing, brain-stealing mice from another dimension. Each of them gropes in his own particular way for meaning and truth, and each of them comes up short or has to fudge his way to success. Zaphod and his buddy Ford Prefect are constant freewheelers; clever though they are, they rarely put their minds towards some grand good. They prefer to steal valuable machinery, evade authorities, do whatever comes next, and get wasted when they can.

Marvin and Arthur are more careful and logical in their approaches to life, but they allow their thoughts to carry them away, and they sink into sadness and anxiety. Marvin, being a robot, is gifted with mighty calculative capabilities, and thus he is especially crushed by this. He can navigate complex philosophies and analyze natural phenomena in nanoseconds. With no fulfilling challenges left to him, his boredom strikes him lame.

Other characters just want to keep their jobs, their money, or their reputations, and then get through the day without going crazy. Even these people aren't entirely happy, though. Theoretical scientists lynch each other when they're outsmarted. Colossal civilizations wage interstellar war over petty insults. Boring bureaucrats insist on being seen as creative and exciting, while their poetry is considered an instrument of torture. Even the super-wealthy can't find contentment, as they resort to ordering custom-made planets in their futile search for satisfaction.

So who is the one man who really understands the meaning of life? It's none other than Slartibartfast, one of the craftsmen of the planet Earth, who won an award for designing the fjords of Norway.

Here is how he puts it:

“Maybe. Who cares?” said Slartibartfast before Arthur got too excited. “Perhaps I’m old and tired,” he continued, “but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me: I design coastlines. I got an award for Norway.”

He rummaged around in a pile of debris and puled out a large Plexiglas block with his name on it and a model of Norway molded into it.

“Where’s the sense in that?” he said. “None that I’ve been able to make out. I’ve been doing fjords all my life. For a fleeting moment they become fashionable and I get a major award.”

He turned it over in his hands with a shrug and tossed it aside carelessly, but not so carelessly that it didn’t land on something soft.

“In this replacement Earth we’re building they’ve given me Africa to do and of course I’m doing it with all fjords again because I happen to like them, and I’m old-fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely baroque feel to a continent. And they tell me it’s not equatorial enough. Equatorial!” He gave a hollow laugh. “What does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I’d far rather be happy than right any day.”

Adams quietly tucks this winning philosophy into his tale as a way of defusing the restless ambitions that constantly boil in his mad universe. Slartibartfast's attitude is very serene; almost Buddha-like. He's even given up on learning where he came from or why he exists. He desires little other than the joy he derives from the work that he does.

In a later book in the Galaxy series, Arthur finds himself in a similar position to Slartibartfast, when he becomes a sandwich maker in a remote village. Sadly, this calmness doesn't last for him, but he does acknowledge it as the one precious slice of time when he felt truly content. I think there's a lesson in that.

People write off the Hitchhiker's books as rubbish novels, but I find it hard to agree with that. They may be comedies, they may be a tad baked in their efforts to be quirky and random, and some of the dialogue is implausible, but I think there is a relevant and universal message buried in there somewhere. You're not going to find it in Marvin, though, so let the little guy go.