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Thursday, May 29, 2014

Can We Stop Confusing Remorseless Hatred With Mental Illness?

Unless you've been living in a missile silo the last few days, you've likely heard about how one Elliot Rodgers spent his Friday night on May 27 (spoiler: he killed six people).  And you've likely read his 140-page wall of text or seen his videos, or at least heard about their content.  And I'm sure you've likely heard everyone who has uttered a single word about this tragedy use six dead people as props for a useless gun control debate (because California has some of the strictest gun control laws in the entire country and that obviously didn't stop this guy) before they've even been embalmed.  Or worse yet, as props for a debate on mental health, because clearly a guy who murders six people in cold blood has got to be nuts.

Well, this isn't a rehash of any of that, so pay the fuck attention.

Elliot Rodgers was not crazy.  Elliot Rodgers was pure fucking evil.  Do not contribute to the stigma that those with mental illness face by confusing the two.  Because it's entirely possible to be a violent, dangerous person and still be perfectly sane.  As in you are perfectly aware of reality and perfectly aware that what you're doing is wrong, you just don't give a shit.

Rodgers made the motivation for his killing spree more than obvious.  He didn't think the people he killed were demons or space aliens or government spies.  He didn't think there was some vast global conspiracy out to get him.  He planned his killing spree as revenge on others who had what he did not, or who didn't give him what he thought he deserved.  He hated women for not finding him attractive.  He hated men  for being attractive when he wasn't.

That doesn't make him mentally ill.  That makes him vindictive, self-absorbed, and violently petty.  It speaks not to a sickness of the mind, but to a sickness of the society that taught him to be vindictive, self-absorbed, and violently petty.  It speaks to a toxic culture of privilege and entitlement that, when unchecked, produces those with the inability to empathize with others, or to care about anything but their own wants and desires.

Rodgers was rich, the son of an assistant Hollywood director behind a very lucrative film franchise (The Hunger Games).  And if you have the stomach to read his rambling manifesto, it becomes apparent that he didn't hear the word "no" a lot as a child, at least in regard to material possessions.  So when he got to high school and college and started getting the word "no" from women who didn't want to date him and men who didn't want to hang around with him, he eventually heard it one too many times and decided he'd had enough.

Because to Elliot Rodgers, there was no difference between people and possessions.  A girlfriend was no different than a sportscar.  That's why he didn't want just any woman to find him attractive.  He wanted a hot blonde sorority girl.  She would be as much of a status symbol as a pair of Armani shoes and nothing more.

No doubt you've heard many feminist blogs talk about the issue of misogyny in Rodgers' motives.  And yes, to a point they're right.  He was raised to see women as objects and trophies, and hated them when they defied his will by rejecting him; he took it as an insult to his entire being that they didn't act like the characters in his father's movies and throw themselves at him because he's The Hero.

But his pathology went beyond simple sexism and rape culture.  Hollywood is also the epicenter of toxic human consumerism, where people are used and thrown away daily like condoms in a nightclub restroom.  Thus, Rodgers rejected the idea that human life has value beyond amusing and entertaining him.  If you could not (or would not) pump a neverending supply of air into his bloated ego, he had no use for you.  Why shouldn't he kill you if you pissed him off?

We might be quick to call him delusional or a sociopath, but we would be wrong.  Because to do so is to remove his agency.  And with it, his responsibility for what he did.

And worse yet, when we dismiss people like Elliot Rodgers as "crazy", we inadvertently tar all the mentally ill with that same brush.  We punish everyone else for the sins of this waste of oxygen.  We reinforce the idea that mental illness inherently causes violent behavior, when the opposite is true; the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence, not perpetrators.

And all this tarring strengthens the stigma that mental illness already has and makes those who do experience these problems, from depression to schizophrenia, less likely to seek help.  Because doing so is admitting you have a problem in the first place.  Admitting you're "crazy."  Admitting you're a time bomb.  Admitting you are all of the things that we associate with Elliot Rodgers.

So please, the next time you see someone refer to Rodgers or anyone like him as "a nutcase", do kindly correct them.  Take that brush away from them and call people like Rodgers out for what they are: products of a toxic culture that devalues people -- all people -- into playthings and tools of amusement, taken to its extreme logical conclusion.

Elliot Rodgers wasn't crazy.  He knew exactly what he was doing.  He knew it was wrong.  He knew why.

He didn't give a shit.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Why Religion and Law Mix Like Coke and Grape Soda

They mix, all right, in the sense that they form a solution that doesn't separate if it sits in the back of the fridge for too long.  The problem is the mixture tastes like shit and you'll be looking for a potted plant to dump it into the minute you try to gag down that first sip.  There are three root problems with a theocracy.  Three core issues of why, much like that one friend's off-and-on romance, government and religion can never reconcile without somebody getting fucked, and they're better off acknowledging they aren't made for each other and going their separate ways:

1. Religion and government were designed for incompatible purposes.

Religion was developed with two major purposes: helping people deal with looming mortality, and simplifying observations that made ancient people's heads hurt because we didn't have the technology to explain them yet.  These purposes have gotten corrupted over the years to serve terrible, selfish leaders, but those were the initial reasons we came up with invisible sky-parents.

Government, on the other hand, was designed to maximize the survival of our species by creating a lawful society; that is, rules and norms that encourage fairness and cooperation so that we can better survive shit like harsh winters and bear attacks.

The reason the two purposes are fundamentally incompatible is because people who do not fear mortality any longer have less incentive to cooperate in order to survive.  And people who are happy with overly simple explanations are more likely to ignore the nuances of a situation that lead to fairness and teamwork for the greater good.  In essence, you get people who are afraid of knowledge, but not of death, and this can't end well for anybody.

2. Religion is too fatalistic to function as a basis for ruling society.

This should be obvious, but for anybody not familiar with various religions (because it's not unique to Christianity), lemme 'splain you a thing.  Religions tend to have one of two common fatalistic threads: outright prophecy, or at the very least a simplistically negative view of human nature.  If they aren't predicting doom and gloom (either in apocalypse form or an endless cycle of suffering, death, and rebirth for the individual), they're agreeing that humanity is awful and only their particular beliefs can motivate people to be good.  Occasionally, a combination of both (yes, Pentecostalism, I'm looking at you).

This takes all point and purpose out of governing.  If the world is going to end or we're just going to suffer and kill each other while boning lamp-posts anyway, then what's to be gained by trying to govern ourselves at all?  It's like washing the windows on the Hindenburgh.  None of it's going to matter once everything goes down in a giant fireball because God hates us.

3. Religion declares inequality from the outset, ensuring that fairness is impossible under a theocracy.

The other thing you'll find about virtually all religions is that there is a baseline inequality inherent in the doctrine of each one.  There are those who are "chosen", those who are not, and those who are condemned (with those last two often interchangeable).  When your basis for law has already decreed a certain subset of people as worthy or unworthy from the start, it's impossible for a society based on such doctrine to treat each other fairly.  And fairness is the cornerstone of a successful and functioning society because when things are unfair, the people who are being treated unfairly tend to get pissed off.  And as both history and the modern era have demonstrated, there is only so much they will take before shit gets real.

And this is not even counting the fact that religious people are not a homogeneous hive mind, even within the same religion or the same faction of that religion.  When a government seeks to limit rights rather than grant them for reasons that -- to the people -- do nothing for the public good or are outright insidious, that government isn't going to last long once the people figure out they have their government outnumbered.

This is why the separation of church and state is one of the first laws we ever wrote as a country.  Because our Founding Fathers, coming from England, saw what happens when you weave religion and government together and said "oh hell no, we are not having that shit here." And they thought it was important enough to list it as law right after freedom of speech and the press.

That's right; despite what the Tea Party wants you to think, the U.S. was never intended to be a Christian nation.  It was never intended to be a religious nation of any sort.  Because, as the Founding Fathers believed, religion is a personal matter between the individual and their deity of choice.

Plus, you get way fewer civil wars and shit that way.

Barack Obama: Worst Socialist Dictator Ever

The two favorite insults that those on the right love to throw at the President: "socialist" and "dictator" (or "emperor" or "king" or something equally scary).  But like a sheltered suburban teenager who just discovered Urbandictionary.com, calling Barack Obama either a dictator or a socialist requires Opposite Day to become a federally recognized holiday.

See, if Barack Obama was actually a dictator, the 2010 midterms wouldn't have mattered, because he would've ordered every single Republican congresscritter (and their aides) to be marched onto the White House lawn and executed by firing squad.  Because that's what dictators do.  A dictator -- or any ruler with absolute power -- does not follow a checks and balances system.  A dictator eliminates enemies by whatever means necessary, full stop.

Ah, but the infamous executive orders!  He's going over Congress' head, and that somehow makes him a monarch in the eyes of the Koch brothers' personal army.  Well see, funny thing about that: Barack Obama has issued fewer executive orders than nearly every other two-term president in the last century.

So if Barack Obama is trying to be a dictator, he's doing a lousy job of it.  

But there's still socialism, right?  After all, the ACA--

Yeah, stop.  Right there.  Because if you equate the ACA with socialism, you've just proven you have no idea what either one of them is.

Socialism is not a system of government, for one thing.  It's an economic policy wherein the means of production is owned by the people.  Or in smaller words that conservatives can digest, socialism is when people work to produce what is needed and make sure that everyone has enough, rather than to make as much money as possible.

The ACA has about as much to do with socialism as Christmas does with Bastille Day.  See, the ACA is not socialized medicine.  The law doesn't change who the doctors work for.  Only how they get paid.  That is, the law is making private insurance available to everyone and requiring everyone to have it, in order to make sure that everyone can see a doctor when needed (and that doctor can get paid).  The only part that is even vaguely-socialist-if-you-squint is the subsidy program.  But the insurance itself is still not provided by the federal government; the federal government is merely footing part of the bill.

Yes, there was a comment from Obama in a speech from 1998 about redistributing the wealth:
"The trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some [wealth] redistribution -- because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot."
Now, if Republican Tea Party Fantasy Island denizens could rip out the Kool-Aid IV for five minutes and read that with a clear head, they'd understand that the federal government is not coming for your paycheck with a fully outfitted M-1 Abrams. In this case, the redistribution of wealth means a better use of the taxes you already pay. Because that's what "government systems that pool resources" are.  That's what taxes do. Taxes already redistribute wealth.  Obama's idea then was that we should be using that tax system more efficiently and fairly.

See, if Obama was a socialist?  He'd be calling for the dissolution of private-owned infrastructure altogether, in favor of resources and utilities being controlled by the state, because that is what socialism is.  The public ownership of agriculture, finance (banks and credit), energy (both electric and gas/oil), water management, waste management, healthcare...you get the idea.  Or I sure as hell hope so because I'm running out of small words.

Advocating for a tax system that gives people more money to spend buying privatized resources they can't live without is the exact opposite of socialism.

So the next time you see someone complaining about the socialist dictator in the White House, ask them who they're talking about.  Because ironically, if there was anyone in the White House who was remotely close to a socialist dictator (and even then, only if you squint) -- someone who imposed wage and price control strangleholds and circumvented checks and balances to grab as much power as he could -- it was Nixon.

You know, a Repu--

...Oh yeah.  Nevermind.