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.

Quit Shooting the Messenger Just Because He Brings You Bad News

Or, Why You Should Be Pissed Off At Your Insurance Company Instead of the ACA.

As every "Obamacare Horror Story" Fox Noise uses to try and make "fetch" happen gets picked apart with pesky facts and omitted relevant details -- the bane of every Fox story -- it's becoming apparent that the ACA is not our enemy, here.  The law is simply a convenient scapegoat for the real reason people are angry.

What the law has uncovered is the systematic fleecing of the American populace by the insurance industry itself.  And the ACA uncovered this because it's these dishonest, terrible, expensive practices that the law was written to eliminate.

The most frequent "horror story" we hear on the Scared Old White People Channel is that some poor sod's insurance company canceled their policy for ACA noncompliance, or switched them to a compliant plan with a ridiculously higher premium.  The reason every single one of these stories falls apart under even mild scrutiny is twofold: 1) Fox and other right-wing propaganda outlets purposely do not explain what a "non-compliant" insurance policy means in practice, and 2) these same outlets purposely omit any information regarding subsidies for insurance premiums.  Thus making it seem like the ACA is costing the consumer more money, when in reality it's saving the consumer from being ripped off.

See, before the ACA, there was no minimum standard when it came to health insurance policies.  A policy could quite literally cover/not cover anything.  And that "anything" was solely up to the company's discretion.  As a result, many of the plans in the individual market were actually worse than having no coverage at all.  Because at least if you don't have insurance, you aren't paying a premium.  Many of these plans didn't cover doctor visits of any kind, and deductibles ran into five-digit figures for individuals.

I should know.  I had one of these terrible plans back in 2008-2009 when I was working at a call center because it was the only one I could afford.  My premium was around $80 per month, and the policy didn't cover anything unless I was treated through the ER or urgent care.  And even then, the ER was a $100 copay, and for urgent care, $50.  And it didn't cover prescriptions, either.  Nor did it cover anything if your injuries or condition were self-inflicted (so, you know, if you were going to attempt suicide like I wanted to do so many times, you better make damn sure you succeeded).

Bottom line was that even though I had insurance, I was still fucked sideways with a chainsaw anyway if I was unlucky enough to need medical care.

What the ACA has done is made these terrible policies illegal by setting a minimum standard for what insurance companies need to cover.  Hospital visits, emergency services, doctor's visits, prescriptions, mental health, maternity care/reproductive health, outpatient, preventive care, lab services, rehabilitative care, and pediatrics are all mandated coverage.  Before the ACA, these were "Cadillac" services.  Stuff you had to pay through the nose for with a blood sacrifice and half your soul.  Now, they must be built into every policy.

What this means for you is that the ACA is forcing insurance companies to actually cover you instead of taking your premium and laughing at you when you need treatment.  Especially for pre-existing conditions.

What this also means, of course, is that the $80-a-month-for-nothing policy will have to become a $250+-a-month-for-real-care policy.  And that is where the other pesky detail that Fox wishes would go away comes in: the federal subsidy program for the middle class.

See, based on your yearly income and the state you live in, you may qualify for a subsidy toward your insurance premium.  Meaning that the federal government foots part of the bill so that you can buy the insurance you need.

In many of these "horror stories" touted by the right, the "victim" didn't even go to Healthcare.gov to shop for a new policy or apply for a subsidy; they simply took whatever their current insurance carrier offered them (you would think the ideologues who worship Ayn Rand's fossilized feces would realize that the "free market" can't work if people don't shop around for the best deal they can get, but since when has the team at Fox let logic get in the away of bashing a black guy?).

For an idea of how this works outside of Republican Tea Party Fantasy Island, I went to Healthcare.gov myself for a look around.  First thing I will say is that I'm probably making less money than a lot of people reading this.  Before taxes, I bring in about $16,000/year, and I live in Florida (a state that refused to expand Medicaid, but that's another rant entirely).  Silver plans (which are the minimum I would need) for me would run about $230-$290 a month regular price.  But because of my income, I qualify for subsidies that bring that cost down to $50-$65 depending on the policy.

This means I'm getting comprehensive coverage for less than what I was paying for the plan I had before that was so shitty it's illegal now.

Blaming the ACA for increased premiums and canceled policies is a bit like blaming Watergate on the security guard.  The problem is that we've grown so used to a broken healthcare system run by professional crooks that when someone finally tries to fix it, it's easier to get mad at them for having to rip apart the wall than to get mad at the roaches they're trying to exterminate.

And right-wing blowhards are all too ready to take advantage of that complacency if it pleases and lines the pockets of their corporate masters (many of whom are insurance companies, to the surprise of absolutely no one).

See, unless you are independently wealthy and can afford to pay out of pocket, someone else is going to have to pay for any medical care you receive.  And if you can afford out of pocket costs, you are paying for a bunch of other people's care whether you want to or not.  So the Ayn Rand argument is kind of moot because if you can pay, you're already shouldering the cost of those who can't.  That's why saline IV bags that cost the hospital $1 end up being $90+ when the patient gets the bill. Under the ACA, requiring that everyone who can afford insurance buy some or pay a fee makes that system a little more efficient and less costly by spreading the burden of risk to as many people as possible who can afford to pay it (which, if you didn't know, is how insurance works).  The ACA isn't perfect by any means.  But it's a start.  It's something that can be tweaked and improved, and in some states it's already gotten people talking about a move to single-payer.  Something that, I might add, the rest of the world already has.

When it comes to healthcare, we're one of the most backward nations in the world, for one very simple reason: in places that are not the United States, being able to see a doctor and not come away broke is considered a basic human right. Here, it's as much a privilege as caviar and edible gold flakes.  When some of the poorest nations on earth have excellent universal healthcare, it becomes apparent that America's problem is not that we can't provide everyone in the country with the health services they need, it's that we won't.

Because the only thing America is truly exceptional at is pure, unfettered greed.

Misogyny is the Root of All Evil: Why Feminists Are the Best Friends Men Can Have

Yes, you read that right.  Feminists are just as much men's allies as we are women's.  For one very simple reason: misogyny and sexism harm everyone, including men.  It seems like a strange concept, that hate can harm the oppressor right along with the oppressed.  But in the case of the sexes, that's exactly what happens because people aren't stereotypes.

Just like women don't all want to stand barefoot in your kitchen making sandwiches all day, men don't all want to do what their gender role tells them, either.  Not all men want to be emotionally distant workaholics who rarely see their spouse and/or children.  Not all men want to play football with their sons and ignore their daughters (except to police their love-lives).  Not all men like feeling pressured to ditch dinner plans with their wives to go bar-hopping with their friends.  Not all men want wives, either, just as not all women want husbands.  Some men want husbands.  Some women want wives.  Some want neither.

Not every man is the self-absorbed chauvinistic asshole society tells him he should be.

And the reason feminists are your friends is because feminists are the first people to tell you "fuck that noise."

See, feminism isn't anti-men; feminism is anti-patriarchy. And yes, there is a difference.

Men are individuals.  Men are people with agency.  Patriarchy is the system that robs every human being on earth, man, woman, and everyone in between, of the agency they should have and dictates to them what they're supposed to act like based entirely on what gender they're perceived to be.  Patriarchy is the force that is reducing your character, your intelligence, and your ability to make your own decisions to a single fucking chromosome and telling you to accept it by giving that chromosome a trainload of societal advantages.

Patriarchy is not just the rule of the world by men.  Because even if men were in charge but ruled everything and everyone with respect and dignity, we wouldn't have a problem.  Patriarchy is instead the rule of men based solely on the fear and hatred of women.  Patriarchy is the division of society into strong and weak, worthy and unworthy, people and not-people, based entirely on which of two convenient little gender tickyboxes they happen to fall into.

It's the system that feminists want to get rid of, because we know that it's what holds us back as people.

Feminists don't just want women to become doctors and lawyers and construction workers and firefighters if they wish, without the fear of harassment over it.  Feminists want men to become hairdressers and librarians and secretaries and stay-at-home dads if they wish, because those jobs are not inferior just because they're traditionally associated with women.

We don't just want women to be able to walk down the street in stiletto heels and a crop top without getting catcalled and harassed because we want to feel pretty and confident in peace and safety.  We also want men to be able to walk down the street in pink tutus with glitter in their hair because if doing so makes them feel awesome, they should be able to do so in peace and safety as well.  Because pink tutus and glitter are not shameful for men to wear.

We don't just want women to be taken seriously even when we're emotional.  We want men to be able to show emotion openly and talk about things that bother them.  Because emotions are a human thing and their expression should not be a source of shame or derision for anybody.

We don't just want women to stop being blamed for the sexual violence done to them.  We want men who are raped and abused to also be able to talk about their experiences and seek help without feeling judged and ashamed or that they "let it happen" somehow.  Because nobody ever "lets" rape happen to them no matter how strong they are.  Because rape can and does happen to anybody, and no victim should ever feel like they can't tell their story.

More than anyone, feminists believe in the inherent humanity of men.  We believe men are not born monsters.  We believe that men are in full control of themselves, every moment of every day.  We believe that the men who act like assholes choose to do so, because they have been raised in a toxic social climate of patriarchy that tells them such behavior is acceptable and even righteous.  And we believe that every man on earth has the moral capacity and empathy for others to reject patriarchy and choose not to act in such a manner.

But if you still need to know what's in it for you as a man who is a feminist?  Here are some starters:

If you want women to be held accountable for their actions just as men are, then challenge the notion that women are natural caregivers and incapable of certain behaviors just because they're women.

If you want men to be able to openly like "unmanly" things without getting ridiculed or persecuted, then challenge the notion that everything associated with women is inferior and shameful.

If you want men who are victims of abuse and rape given the support they need, then challenge the idea that men are strong and therefore can't be abused or raped.

If you want men to not be seen as sex-crazed monsters incapable of controlling themselves, then stand up and challenge the rape culture that patriarchy has fostered over millennia.

If you want equality, then help us fight the patriarchal system that tells us all that we are and all we can be is limited by what gender we're perceived as.  Help us fight the system that tells us one gender is deserving of respect and dignity and the other is not.

If you want equality?  Be a feminist.

We Can't Call Ourselves a Democracy Anymore

Or at least we can't until every last member of Congress who is on the Koch brothers' and Heritage Foundation's payroll has been sent home packing.  That's what the last few years of escalated pointless infighting should be teaching every single person in the country who is eligible to vote.

The word itself comes from the Greek δημοκρατία, meaning "rule of the people."  This busted-ass system is as far removed from that as it can get at the moment without throwing up its hands and asking England to come back and take over.  You cannot call yourself a "rule of the people" when your government is doing the exact opposite of what the people want because it's following the money rather than the voters.

The problem we have is that due to the deep pockets of millionaires who hate government making pesky laws that tell them there are only so many ways they can abuse people for a quick buck, the system has been rigged since the Gerrymanderpocalypse of 2010 to elect people to government who hate governing.

The irony, of course, is that this is all coming from a group that claims to love the U.S. and wishes to rescue it from the hands of filthy progressives.  The irony is that they "love" the U.S. like a NASCAR fan loves his battered wife.

See, the Tea Party's whole crusade against taxes because they love America is the stupidest damned thing since NASCAR itself.  Federal income tax was implemented by Abraham Lincoln, a Republican president from a much different time when the party platforms were flipped; the Republican Party was originally founded by anti-slavery activists, and the insistence on small government was in regard to stopping the plantation system that left small, independent farmers with shitty land because rich slaveowners bought up all the good stuff.  The original Republican slogan was "free labor, free land, free men."

Republicans originally wanted small government not because they believed government is inherently bad, but because the government at the time was both large and corrupt as hell.  And that small government would start with the abolition of slavery, or so they thought.  Even then they were the party of business, but for different reasons.  The original goal of the party was to keep what it viewed as government's sticky fingers out of private business.  Because that's where corruption starts.

They were the party of business, yes.  But small business.  Republicans of Lincoln's time up until the 1930s were about protecting the mom-and-pop family-owned ventures from being run out of town by huge corporations they could never compete with.  They felt everyone had the right to success, and that right would be best preserved by making business fair.

Remember Theodore "Trust-Buster" Roosevelt?  The guy who fought to break up shit like price-fixing and gentleman's agreements between large businesses that were squeezing out little-guy competition?  He's the Patron Saint of the old school Republican party.

So what happened that changed the party ideals?  Two things: The Crash of 1929/Great Depression and World War II.

The 1929 stock market crashes that precipitated the Great Depression could best be described as "too much of a good thing."  By the Roaring Twenties, government had abandoned agriculture for big-city business, such that rural populations were giving farming the finger and moving to the city where they hoped to find work.  Credit and investment had just become a thing, and people were partying like a kid on their 21st birthday with them.  Republican economic policies only saw the short-term benefit (read: shitloads of money), and not the long-term risks.

Once the crash happened and Ted Roosevelt's cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, became president and started enacting common sense stuff that works (Medicare, Social Security, etc.), that was the beginning of today's Republican party, trying to reclaim the completely unsustainable prosperity of the 1920s.

Really, the Republican Party of today, and the Tea Party in particular, are more like the NASCAR fan who is trying to make his battered wife starve herself back into her wedding dress so he can re-live the glory days when Dale Earnhardt was still alive and diet soda didn't exist.

To that end, the GOP's answer isn't so much "smaller government" as "no government."  See, "government doesn't work" is a self-fulfilling prophecy; progressives have proven for nearly a century that government totally fucking works when you have people running the country who want to make it work.  When you hire people who hate their job, of course service is going to suck.  A trip to Wal-Mart is enough to prove that.

We tried the GOP's way of doing government twice in the last thirty years.  Once in the 1980s, and again in the 2000s.  Both times failed spectacularly, and both times it took a Democrat who cared about the country as a whole instead of just his campaign donors to get shit done.

What we need to do now to fix this country and get it back to a sustainable state is, ironically, to do what any business would:

Get rid of the people who don't want to do their fucking job.

You Don't Get to Blame the Bank When the Robber Shoots the Hostage

Or rather, why capitulation isn't compromise, and why Republicans need to go back to both high school English and high school civics to learn what those words mean and how they apply to the governing process.

See, the reason that the bank being robbed is not responsible for the hostages getting shot if they don't hand over the money is because the law does not want to encourage bank robberies by making them easier to accomplish and get away with.  And that analogy applies to the current shutdown crisis, too.  The Republican-controlled House took government functionality hostage, and demanded the Senate hand over ACA defunding measures.  The Senate refused.  Republicans shot the hostage, and now they and Rupert Murdoch's minions over at Fox Noise and CNN are trying to blame the Senate (because 2014 is not that far away and laying off -- yes, that's what "furlough" really means in practice -- 800,000 people is kind of a dick move and they know it).

The current problem with compromise is that those in charge of the House don't actually want to.  Or at least they don't want to compromise in the way the word is supposed to work.  In House Tea Party Republican Fantasyland, "compromise" means "give us what we want, full stop."  And this is plainly obvious when you do the math.  A simple majority in the House right now is 218 votes.  There are 201 Democrats, and about 20 Republicans who have publicly indicated that they would vote in favor of a continuing resolution that leaves the ACA alone.  Boehner refuses to bring it to a vote not because the votes to pass aren't there, but because they are and he's under the delusion that he needs the Tea Party's support in order to keep his leadership role (not even bothering with a joke here, it's easy enough that you can make up your own).

This becomes either doubly hilarious or doubly sad when as far as the American public is concerned, they have zero fucks to give about the Tea Party.  Sad because this demented tantrum is costing millions of people badly needed assistance and paychecks and hurting an already struggling economy, and hilarious because it's like watching Mean Girls, in reverse, with a cast of men who are more than old enough to know better.

Compromise, in the real world, involves concessions that both sides can live with in order to resolve a conflict.  When one side refuses to make any concessions and demands concessions they know will fuck over not just the other side, but a shitload of other people (many of whom will die without healthcare coverage they can afford), that's not compromise.  That's terrorism.  Just not the kind that uses trucks full of fertilizer.  If House Republicans had the Senate chamber and every major city in the country wired to explode if they didn't get their way, we'd be calling it terrorism.  Using the same tactic without the explosives doesn't make it different.

The irony, of course, is that this is the part where those of us on the left can quote the only intelligent thing that ever came out of Bush 43's mouth.

We will not negotiate with terrorists.

A Tale of Two Authors: Why It's Okay To Be Proud of Your Work

When Theodore Geisel wrote the manuscript for his first book in 1937, it was rejected by publishers at least 27 times.  And Geisel himself got so frustrated with his lack of success that after Rejection Letter #27, he was on his way to chuck it into an incinerator and just forget the whole being a writer thing.  On the way to the incinerator on Madison Ave., he ran into his friend Mike McClintock, who had just landed a job as a children's book editor for Vanguard Press.  McClintock convinced Geisel not to burn the manuscript, and instead told him he would personally take a chance and publish it.

That manuscript was And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street!  And yes, the man who nearly burned his own work because he was that sick of rejection was none other than Dr. Seuss, who would go on to write the books that defined childhood for generations of children worldwide.

When Stephen King wrote his fourth unpublished novel in 1973, he was so disgusted with his own work that he threw all but the first three pages in the trash.  At the time, he was teaching English at Hampden Academy, and was so broke he'd disconnected his phone service.  His wife, Tabitha, would've been more than justified in telling him to work on resumés instead of horror novels.

But she didn't.

Tabitha King instead dug the manuscript out of the trash and convinced her husband to finish it and submit it to a publisher.  Because he had no phone, Doubleday had to contact him by telegram to say that the novel, Carrie, had been selected for publication with a $2,500 advance (1n 1974 $USD; accounting for inflation, that would be an $11,850 advance today).  King would go on from there to write a body of work that redefined horror and mystery as genres, and taught us exactly how a book can scare the daylights out of us.

There's more than just a theme here of not giving up.  The tale of these two authors is the tale of every artist who thinks they can't art.  Musicians, dancers, writers, fine artists...  Because as artists, we're told by society from the day we're capable of reasoning that we can't feel proud of our work unless other people like it, and sometimes not even then.  We must reject compliments with a blush and a handwave because otherwise, we're proud and therefore sinful.

For every "believe in yourself" story, we're told not to praise our own work, to accept it when what we produce is awful, and to not let praise go to our heads.  While "don't toot your own horn" isn't necessarily bad advice -- arrogance is not becoming on anybody -- the problem is that we aren't taught to listen when other people toot it, either.  We're given conflicting messages and no way to resolve them.  No balance point.  No clear boundary between "sin" and "confidence."  And so we grow up into our own harshest, most terrible critics because we're taught to believe that confidence is a sin.

That was the lesson that these two men learned, and had it not been for two extraordinary people -- a longtime friend with connections and a nose for risk, and a supportive wife who believed in her husband -- we would be missing out on some brilliant work, and the world would be a much sadder place.

Whenever you feel as an artist that you can't art and you'd be better off throwing all your work on a bonfire and salting the earth, remember these two guys, and the hundreds of other men and women just like them who thought they couldn't art, and ended up transforming the world because someone else thought otherwise.

It's okay to look at your work and think "damn, I'm good."  Listen to the people who believe in you.  Listen to the people who tell you that your work is worthwhile.  It's okay to agree with them.  Because like Mike McClintock and Tabitha King, they're more often right than wrong.

The Real Reason the ACA Scares the Shit Out of Republicans

As if it couldn't be more obvious, Republicans at both the state and federal levels have been trying their damnedest to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, either through denying funding, stupidly challenging parts of it, or trying in vain to repeal it for the 40th time.  They are terrified of this law, nevermind that they came up with it first (specifically, their 2012 presidential candidate enacted the exact same program in Massachusetts).

The question on everyone's mind, of course, is why.

Oh, they're all too happy to tell you.  They're positively gleeful to tell you it's a job-killer, it's socialist, it's putting too many regulations on the free market, it will cost too much, it's unconstitutional even after the Supreme Court has said otherwise, and any other reason they can pull out of a bottle of scotch and dried election night tears.

I could pick through each and every reason listed and why they're all ridiculous nonsense, but that horse has had its rotting flesh flogged off for a couple years already.  No, the purpose of this rant is to cut through the bullshit and tell you the true reason the GOP is evacuating its bowels over Obamacare.

That reason is because it will work.

Yes, they're terrified of it working.  And the reason they're terrified of it working is because it was implemented by a black Democratic president.

There's a very simple formula at work, here.  When you give people rights they know they should have and protect the rights they already do have, you get votes.  The GOP is afraid because they know that when it works -- not if, when -- and when people start feeling the benefits of being able to get healthcare they didn't have access to before, they will be Democratic voters for life.

Because see, that's just how we roll on the left.

Conservative voters (read: scared old white people) vote out of fear.  Fear of change, fear of losing their privilege, fear of their ideas becoming obsolete.  When you vote out of fear, you vote to restrict and restrain that which makes you afraid (read: people who are not old, scared and white).  And thus, as a conservative, you vote to take away rights.  You vote to restrict and restrain the poor, women, the LGBT community, immigrants, and people of other races.

Progressive voters (read: everyone else) vote out of hope.  Hope to make things better, for our lives to improve.  We vote to give rights to people instead of taking them away, because when people have rights, their lives suck less.

Republicans hate the ACA not for the law itself, but for which side it's benefiting.  Which is why they rail so hard against Obama for it, but dodged the question when Romney's plan was mentioned.  They're not seeing 30 million Americans having access to healthcare; they're seeing 30 million votes going to Democrats, and they just can't let that happen after the beating they took last year.

This isn't new, of course.  Anybody who paid attention under the Clinton Administration should be getting an odd sense of déjà vu.  For those who weren't old enough to remember or be interested in politics, check out this infamous memo from 1993, courtesy of Republican strategist William Kristol.

To put it another way, I'm sure anyone who is reading this and is from the U.S. has seen Revenge of the Nerds.  Or at least clips of it.  If you haven't, let me remedy that because it's kind of important:

 

 Sound familiar?

The message from the Alpha Betas is pretty clear: how dare you be popular, how dare you work, how dare you give credit for working to people we don't like.

Republicans fear Obamacare for the same reason they feared the 19th Amendment, Executive Order 9981, the New Deal and the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Acts, the Auto Industry Bailout of 2009, the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, and countless other Little Guy victories.  They know there are a lot more nerds than there are beautiful people.  There are a lot more who have been stepped on, left out, picked on, and put down.

They know there are way more of us than there are of them, and they're afraid that if we're given too many rights, too much equality, we're going to realize it.

The Most Important Reason Why You Should Never Date a Nice Guy(TM)

For clarification before I begin, when I use Nice With a Capital "N", I'm not talking about actual guys who are nice.  Nice Guys with capitalization necessary are men who put on a pretense of being nice because they think doing so will get them what they want (usually sexual favors/relationships, but not always).  Rather than genuine goodwill, their niceness is pure turd polish.  And while this phenomenon does happen with girls, too, it doesn't seem nearly as common in women as it is in men.  And I'll get into why I think that is later.

We ladyfolk have heard all the usual reasons Nice Guys make terrible boyfriends.  They're entitled jerks, they're manipulative, they don't actually care about you as a person, etc.  But I think there's one more reason that isn't talked about nearly as much as it should be.  Not because people are afraid to call out the behavior for what it is, but that many out there don't understand what's so fucked up about it.

Nice Guys and Nice Girls are domestic abusers looking for a victim.

Or more to the point, they have the dangerous potential to become domestic abusers, because they have the mentality of one already.  Specifically, they have the mentality of an emotional abuser.  One who uses guilt and feelings of attachment in their victim in order to get what they want.

When a Nice Guy responds to romantic rejection with the classic line -- "Look at everything I've done for you, how could you do this to me!" -- what he's doing is shifting the responsibility for his emotions onto the person he's pining for.  It's not his fault that he's hurt, it's hers for telling him no.  She's the bad guy, here, because she'd have to be in order to reject someone as nice as him.

That, dear readers, is the hallmark of emotional abuse.

The vilification of the victim,  and the absolution of the abuser is what makes the sick system work.  Someone who already has the capability to make another person feel responsible for their moods and emotions has one foot on the abuse train, and the other isn't far behind.

All abusers have a degree of narcissism -- that is, an inflated sense of self-worth and importance and a lack of empathy for other people -- but it's not anywhere near as blatant and apparent as it is with the emotional abuser.  He doesn't use the fear of violent reprimand to control his victim, but guilt and feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy.  And he does this primarily by shifting blame and making his partner feel responsible for all of the problems in the relationship, and therefore unwilling to leave because doing so becomes a perceived admission of failure.

The crux of the Nice Guy mentality is exactly this kind of blame displacement.  That he's already learned to do this to someone he's not even in a relationship with speaks volumes to his potential for further abuse should this behavior go unchallenged.  And the reason this behavior tends to go unchallenged is because of the three types of abuse, emotional is the most poorly understood and the least visible.  The scars it leaves are just as devastating as any physical or sexual trauma, but they're only recognized by therapists who have been trained to look for them, and by people who have been the victim of it themselves.  And of the three, it's also the only kind that is perfectly legal.

Nice Guys are more common than Nice Girls for a couple of reasons.  One is that women generally don't receive societal conditioning that tells them they are entitled to any man they want by virtue of being a woman.  In order to feel entitled to a man, society dictates that certain criteria must be met first.  A woman must be stunningly beautiful (read: slender and buxom, with flawless skin and eternal youth), classy and well-mannered (read: keeps her opinions to herself), and able to walk the invisible line dividing the Madonna-Whore Complex with the precision of a highwire performer if she is to be seen as having "the luxury of being picky" (that being picky when it comes to romantic partners is seen as a luxury at all is another rant entirely).

Men, on the contrary, can only lose the luxury of pickiness if they meet certain criteria (and that criteria is being exceptionally unattractive, though Ugly Guy, Hot Wife is a very common wish fulfillment trope for a reason, so sometimes not even then).  Otherwise, society conditions men that they deserve the woman they want just by virtue of being male.

Men (especially American men) are also conditioned not to be negatively emotional unless it's anger and aggression.  Sadness is unmanly.  Hurt is unmanly.  Guilt is unmanly.  I don't just mean expressing these emotions, but just feeling them.  The Nice Guy seeks to shift the blame for his hurt and sadness at being rejected onto the person who rejected him in order to feel "manly" again.  His feelings of hurt and sadness don't count against him if they aren't really his fault.  If he can make someone else take responsibility for them, he can get his Man Card back.

While women don't display this kind of manipulative behavior as blatantly or as often, Nice Girls are out there, and they are just as abusive.  The difference is the pathology of emotionally abusive women is rooted not in a sense of entitlement being challenged, but in...well...feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness.

Women are conditioned to the exact opposite of entitlement, as previously mentioned.  We are pressured to be perfect in every way.  We are pressured to be beautiful, quiet, chaste, and resilient and if we aren't all of these things to a superhuman degree, we are told we will never attract a mate and if we can't attract a mate, we are worthless.  When a woman is trying to weasel into the life of a man she wants, it's because his rejection of her is effectively telling her "you're undateable and therefore useless" whereas a woman's rejection of a man is merely challenging his perceived authority over her.  Note that this does not make it okay for women to be abusers; it's not okay for anyone to emotionally abuse another person.  This is merely explaining the difference in motives.

When a woman shifts the blame for her moods onto someone else, she's not doing it to reclaim her Woman Card because feelings of sadness and hurt are considered "feminine."  Women cry.  Women emote.  Women react.  Women sit around the kitchen table with cheesecake and ice cream and console each other.  For women who shift blame to other people for their emotions, the chief difference can be found in the emotion they're shifting blame for.  While male abusers shift blame for sadness and hurt, women shift blame for anger.  Because while sadness and hurt are considered feminine, women displaying anger (and therefore aggression) is unladylike.  When female abusers blame-shift, they are often looking for absolution of wrongdoing.  "I didn't get angry, you made me angry by Doing Thing X/Not Doing Thing Y."

So now that I have a Fashionable Headgear Army all bent out of shape because I'm calling the Nice Guys with whom they identify and sympathize potential abusers and steering all the women away from them, what I mean by the title of this post is not that Nice Guys should be avoided forever; they should be avoided only while they are still Nice Guys and still have that blame-shifting mindset.  Because while it's entirely possible for Nice Guys to reform and grow up and realize how fucked and awful their behaviors and motives are, while they are still Nice Guys and unwilling to own their emotions and moods and seeking to shift that burden to their partner, they should not be given the chance to reel in a victim.

Behold, the Power of Shoes

Women love shoes.

It's a stereotype as old as Sears Roebuck itself, often the subject of jokes that are funny for about five minutes until you realize that invoking stereotypes for the sake of humor and not doing anything more is shorthand for "I'm not actually funny, I'm just an asshole."  And recently, it's become a thorn in the sides of radfems seeking to abolish anything viewed as traditionally "feminine" (a rant for another day, I assure you, because fighting sexism with misogyny is like stabbing yourself and expecting your opponent to keel over dead).

Before I start on this, I want to go on record that I am not a shoe-woman.  I own exactly three pair: one pair of flip-flops (because Florida), one pair of plain black slip-ons, and a pair of black steel-toed men's work boots.  All three pair put together set me back less than $60, and I only replace them when they are quite literally falling apart.  No doubt there are many women out there who are much the same.  Like any stereotype out there, there are going to be people who buck the trend, real or perceived.

The reason I'm defending the women out there who do love shoes, however, is because I'm sick of being told there is only one right way to be a feminist, and I'm doubly sick of interests associated with women getting shat upon because nobody ever grew up past "girls have cooties!"  I'm tired of women and anything associated with women being Acceptable Targets.

First, shoes carry different meanings for men and women.  For men, they're an item of fashion and/or utility and little else.  You wear them because they fit a need, and don't really think much of it.

With regard to women, shoes are a symbol of independence.  Especially for older women who grew up in the 1950s, the era that the phrase "barefoot and pregnant" as the pinnacle of female virtue gained popularity.  Shoes mean she can leave the house whenever she damned well pleases.  Shoes mean agency and the ability to do things for herself without having to wait for her husband to get home.

As a fashion accessory, it's no wonder that women who love shoes are going to buy a lot of them, and are going to be choosy about their styles and colors.  Shoes are a symbol of individual rebellion.  Naturally they're going to reflect the woman who is wearing them.  The woman who is telling the world that she does what she wants and if you don't like it, you can kindly fuck off because she doesn't have to answer to you.

Women who love shoes view them the same way that men who love vehicles view their cars.  But while jokes about guys and cars are affectionate and good-natured, the jokes about women and shoes are derisive and full of contempt.  And it's more than just a hideous double standard of 'girly' interests being worthless.

Denigrating women for liking shoes is denigrating them for putting their agency and independence on display.  For expressing their individual desires and wants and going out to get them.  For reminding everyone that they are not to be kept locked up in the house all day.  It's denigrating women for not wanting to be controlled.

Think about that the next time you make or hear a hateful joke about women and shoes.  Would you effectively tell that woman you think she's stupid because she wants to leave the house and be her own person and you find that just hilarious?

If you would think twice, maybe that joke is better left unmade.

Privacy Is Dead, Get Used to It

Because I'm the type who calls shit when I smell it, regardless of whether it came from the anus of an elephant or a donkey.  Fake outrage is fake outrage is fake outrage, and it sounds silly no matter who's getting frothy about it.  In this case, it's privacy.  Or the illusion thereof.

Ever since some guy named Edward Snowden showed us what's been common knowledge to anyone paying attention for almost 20 years now, many on the left have gotten a lit stick of dynamite shoved up their collective asses about privacy.  The reason I call this fake outrage is because privacy as we know it has been hanged in the village square since approximately 1995, when the internet and cellphones started becoming affordable and accessible to people who aren't the Koch brothers.  It's especially dead now when cellphones and VOIP service have been pushing the landline into extinction since at least 2011.

See, when you make a call on a cell phone, your message is not confined to one very tiny physical space that you need some know-how to hack into (a practice called "phreaking").  With a cellphone, especially in the smartphone age, there are a shitload of apps out there that do all the work for you and allow you to listen in on live calls without the other person's knowledge.  And this is not just limited to intentional spying.  "Spying" of the accidental type (called "crosstalk") can also happen due to signal interference, especially in large cities.  Which is why if you're doing telephone banking on your cell, enter the numbers on the keypad if you can instead of speaking them.  And also why many banks and other services no longer have the IVR speak your entered information back to you.

And we haven't even gotten to the internet yet.  This is just your phone.

With the internet, you're even more exposed because you're already going through a couple of middlemen to communicate at all.  The first is your ISP, of course.  The second is the server supporting whatever website or e-mail you use.

See, the internet is little more than a shitload of computers all over the world talking to each other.  Every website you visit is another computer.  Your e-mail address is another computer (two, actually; one for incoming mail and one for outgoing).  A computer that someone else owns and has full access to.  Sending an e-mail is not like sending a letter; when you send a letter, there is exactly one copy of your message that gets physically delivered to the recipient.  When you send an e-mail, your message is copied to your e-mail provider's outgoing mail server, then sent to the incoming mail server for your recipient, which he or she then downloads the message from or views the server copy depending on the provider.

These servers (basically gigantic monstrosity computers) are maintained by a team of people who, by agreeing to the terms of service, you give permission to access anything on them, anytime.  This is why it's never ever recommended to send important shit like credit card information or passwords through e-mail; there are way too many people who could potentially get their hands on it.

Even on social media sites that allow filters, such as Facebook and Livejournal, anything you post online is already in someone else's hands by virtue of how the internet works.  That post gets copied to another server.

But let's pretend you're one of those technophobes who has no computer or cellphone or tablet or whatever, and you're reading this because one of your friends printed it for you.  Your worry is those evil gub'mint cameras at busy intersections that are watching you, not unlike those two creepy statues at the entrance to Cirith Ungol.  Your outrage isn't fake because how dare The Man invade your privacy like that, right?  You're just walking down the street!

Well...yeah.  You're walking down the street, in public.  If you think you have an expectation of privacy at a busy intersection, your outrage is actually more fake than anyone worried about their phone calls or e-mails getting snooped on.  Because you are literally within view of hundreds of people, and there's a good chance half of those people are carrying a high-definition zoom camera with a constant internet connection in their hand.

That camera on the traffic light or street lamp?  The guy behind it doing the watching doesn't give a shit about you.  He's not going to notice you unless you're doing something that camera was meant to catch (speeding, running a red light, driving like a coked-up ostrich, etc.).

That's really the part that makes this outrage so baseless and sad.  Not only can private citizens snoop your calls and e-mails and surreptitiously snap your picture far more effectively than the federal government and with far more malicious intent (see: creepshots, Scientology), but nobody in the government cares about your day-to-day activities unless they are illegal.  Yes, I realize that people want their privacy and they don't like the long arm of the government getting all up in their Kool-Aid.  But let's be realistic here: you've likely been spied on by private companies working on federal contracts for the last 15-20 years.  What terrible injustices have happened in your life in that time that you can directly and verifiably attribute to government surveillance?

The problem is that people like feeling significant.  Being snooped on is flattering in a stupid, twisted way because it means they're important enough to pay attention to.  And they have a real problem with someone taking the wind out of their sails and being told that no, really, the Feds don't care how long you talked about the Game of Thrones finale with your friends last week.  Or where you went for lunch on Tuesday.  Sure, they can listen to your calls, watch you at an intersection, read your e-mails.  And they're going to be bored out of their collective skulls because you aren't doing anything that warrants a second glance.  Sure, it may be a violation of the 4th amendment, but 1) this isn't going away, and 2) it's petty and insignificant compared to shit like TSA digitally removing your clothes and groping you at the airport.  You don't have to like it, no.  But there's something to be said for picking your battles wisely rather than succumbing to knee-jerk reactionary bullshit.

Privacy as we've always known it is dead.  Whether you're buying coffee, banking, taking the bus, talking to your friends online or on the phone, texting your significant other, or even just walking down 5th Ave., you are likely being recorded in some fashion.  And if you hadn't even noticed it until Edward Snowden pointed it out, it's not likely to make any difference whatsoever in the rest of your time on the planet, either.

Why?  Because your life is not a Will Smith movie.  Except maybe for that part at the end of Men In Black II where we're the mold in some alien's locker room.

Nobody Dates a Jerk On Purpose: An Open Letter to the Self-Proclaimed Nice Guy(TM)

Dear Mr. Nice Guy,

I appreciate your feigned concern over the welfare of women whom you perceive to have ill-gotten taste in men because they 'only date assholes.'  There are just a few problems that I would like to point out that may help you realize why you're always the guy who finishes last, because let's not kid ourselves any longer.

Problem the First is that nobody looks for assholes to date.  No woman is deliberately looking to get treated like shit.  We just happen to end up dating assholes because many assholes have perfected the art of keeping their true nature a secret, and because women are conditioned from the time we develop cognitive reasoning to accept that our entire worth as people revolves around whether we make a decent mate.  In practical terms, this means that if a woman is single for too long, there's an implication that there's something wrong with her to make her undateable and therefore worthless.  Ergo, many women will seem to tolerate shitty behavior in their mates because they don't want to be viewed as unable to keep a man interested.  You can thank men and all the years of forcibly marrying your daughter off right after puberty for that one.

Problem the Second is that what you're seeing as assholishness, she's seeing as confidence, and to her that's attractive.  See, not everyone she dates is going to be a genuine asshole.  They just seem that way because none of those guys are you and you happen to have an artificially inflated opinion of yourself to compensate for your insecurities.  A guy who is rough around the edges but still confident enough to be upfront about his intentions instead of trying to weasel his way into her life is going to get more respect just for being honest.

Problem the Third is that if you are befriending or being kind to a woman with the end goal of having sex with her, that makes you just as much of an asshole.  You're just more subtle about it.  The reason it makes you an asshole is because just like the ones you think she's dating, you don't see her as a person, either.  She's a prize.  A reward for not being an overt douchebag.  You are still objectifying and dehumanizing her, but doing so under the guise of friendship and caring.  And frankly that just makes you creepy rather than nice.

See, nobody owes you sex or a relationship in return for pretending to be a decent human being.  As a famous image macro says, women are not machines that you put kindness coins into until sex falls out.  If you're being nice purely because you're expecting a reward, you're still an asshole, full stop.  Women have the right to refuse your advances no matter how nice you're being, because nobody is entitled to another person in any way whatsoever.

It's your duty to handle rejection like someone who isn't an asshole.

Regards,
The Patron of Sarcasm

Wendy Davis Teaches Us What the Filibuster Is

After watching the Republican minority in the U.S. Senate abuse the filibuster to the point of it being meaningless for the last 3 years, what Wendy Davis did 2 nights ago took on an extraordinary context.  Rather than simply invoke the silent filibuster and sit there while jobs don't get created, Texas state Senator Davis stood up and talked.

And talked.

And talked.

For 11 hours.

That's almost half a day without eating or sitting or even exiting the senate chamber to use the bathroom.

No, it's not a record by any means -- the longest filibuster in U.S. history is courtesy of Strom Thurmond, who spent 24 hours and 18 minutes running his mouth in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the Civil Rights Act of 1957 -- but it's nothing to sneeze at.

First, before I get too involved, have a short civics lesson.  The filibuster is a check on majority power in the Senate by allowing the minority to kill a bill by running out the clock so it can't be voted on before the session ends.  Before 2010, this technique was brutal.  You had to talk, and you were not allowed to leave the Senate floor for any reason, and it takes 60 votes to shut you up.  After 2010, the rules changed to allow the "silent filibuster," which required no talking, nor even for the Senator who invoked it to be present for its duration.

The rules in Texas are still the old-school rules.  If you want to kill a bill that badly, you have to fight for it.  The idea being that if a Senator truly cares about not getting this legislation passed, they will endure it.  And fight Davis did, for 11 goddamned hours.  More importantly, she won.  At least for now, until Perry calls his special session and the bullshit parade starts all over again.

My point is that the other night, Wendy Davis showed us what a filibuster is supposed to do and the right way to use it, versus the cowardly shit her Congressional Republican counterparts have been pulling the last three years.  Clogging up the system with nonsense filibusters they don't even have to be present for purely out of spite to the point that routine business stops, because how dare they have to concede final authority to a black guy.

Wendy Davis, while wearing a back brace and pink running shoes, displayed more spine than nearly half of the current U.S. Senate.  Simply by refusing to shut up or sit down until she was forced to.

The problem we have with the filibuster being abused in the national Senate is because it's easier to hold one.  There's been a lot of talk of filibuster reform, and I think besides limiting the number of them per year, the most important change would be to do away with the silent filibuster altogether.  If you want to fight a bill, then fucking fight it and make your colleagues shut you down. If you walk away, you throw in the towel.  Because if killing the bill is that important to you, you won't.  You will stay there for the people who elected you, because you owe them that much.

Senator Davis more than repaid the people in her district.  Let's see just how many U.S. Senators would be far too apathetic to do the same.  Maybe then, Congress can actually get something done for once.

Another One Sees the Light

Alan Chambers, head of the defunct-as-of-four-hours-ago "reparative therapy" organization Exodus International, has effectively said this shit was a bad idea and is closing down the entire operation.

In case you're not familiar with the term, "reparative therapy" is a thoroughly misleading moniker describing the various psychological tortures used to try and "cure" homosexuality.  In the sense that "cure" means "hate yourself until you can't get it up anymore."

Today, Chambers not only announced the dissolution of the organization, but posted an apology to the LBGT community on the organization's website.  And not one of those dickish I'm-not-really-sorry-but-I-don't-want-to-be-seen-as-an-asshole apologies, either.  A genuine "I fucked up royally, I'm sorry, this shit stops now, and while I hope you'll forgive me I don't really expect you to."

It is all too tempting for us Not Straight people and our allies to be gleeful.  I freely admit, I did a fist pump and cackled when I read the headline.  But then I read the apology, and I was no longer laughing and jubilant.

See, Chambers himself is gay.  Chambers is a gay man who subjected himself to this very same "therapy" in an effort to "fix" his attraction to men.   And he finally realized that not only did it not work, but it made him feel like shit.  And then he realized just how many other people his organization had put through this same hell on earth, and had an epiphany.  An awful epiphany that probably made him feel even worse (and rightly so).

This is not something to be gleeful about.  This is not something to be smug and greater-than-ye about.  This is not the time for a petty I-told-you-so no matter how good it would feel to say it.

Because this guy is one of us.

It's easy to feel superior if you've never grown up Not Straight in a very conservative household.  It's easy to say "wow, the dumbfuck finally got it, shame it took so long."  But the reason that's easy is because not growing up with that baggage affords you the privilege of being an outsider.  It affords you a clear head.

For those of us who have grown up as such, it's a different ballgame.  You are conditioned from a very young age to hate not just that one aspect of yourself, but the entire package because of it.  You are made to feel it's a choice even when you know it isn't.  You hate yourself because that's the only way you're accepted by your family, and as a teenager you're fucking terrified of getting disowned.  You will, quite literally, do anything to resolve this conflict.  And the easiest thing at that time is to just stop being Not Straight.  You can't hate yourself if you are not the thing you're raised to hate, after all.

It can and does frequently take people half a lifetime to figure out that the path of least resistance only works for electrons.  Some never do.  And when you do finally realize it with the knowledge that there's a whole shitload of people mad at you, it really does take the courage of a comic book hero to stand up and say "wow, did I ever fuck up.  I'm so, so sorry."

Alan Chambers did just that.  He faced the anger of both his own organization and the LGBT community and said "fuck it, this isn't working, I'm done, and I'm sorry."

If we want more Christians like him, we can't be smug.  We can't sink to our base emotions and point and laugh.  We have to show them this is right, and to do so we have to be the bigger people and say "hey, better late than never."

We don't have to forgive them for the pain they've caused.  But we do have to meet their decision and their change of heart with the support and kindness we want to see in them now.  Not derision and mockery.

Me?  I get him.  I grew up with the same baggage and no matter how much I think I've conquered it, some days I still lug it around like ten-tonne shackles because that kind of programming is exceedingly difficult to even erase, nevermind rewrite.  This is a guy who is a decade my senior and is just now attempting to take those shackles off.

So yes, better late than never, Mr. Chambers.  You're on the right track.  Just keep going.

Why Real Men Hate Rape Culture

Again, massive trigger warning for discussions of rape and rape culture following.

So, we ladyfolk already know why we should hate rape culture and everything it stands for: the victim blame, the suppression of women's sexuality, and the attempt to control our thoughts and actions through the fear of violence if we don't comply.

But you know what?  Men, real men, should hate this idea just as much as we do, if not a little more.

When society says that it's the (usually female) victim's responsibility to cover herself up, not flirt, not drink or watch her drink, not walk home alone at night, not answer the door if she's alone, not accept a ride from a man, lock her door as soon as she gets home, not listen to music while jogging, or a myriad of other precautions, what society is also saying is that the reason she must do this is because men have all the self-control of Cookie Monster at a bake sale.  Society is saying that men are slaves to their penises.  That they can't help themselves.  That their natural state is "rapist."

Being told that you can't help but rape and are always looking for a target because that's just what you do since you're a man should make you want to break shit.  Because it's painting you as incapable of human cognition, reasoning, and compassion.  As less than human.

If this doesn't piss you off, then there is something very wrong.

But of course, this begs the question: if that's the case, why are so many men either part of rape culture or not nearly as angry as they should be?

I'm not a psychiatrist, obviously.  I'm merely going on my personal experience with men who endorse rape culture, as well as the experiences I've read and heard from other women.  To me, the problem appears to be that rape culture itself is a double-edged sword; while on the one hand it's telling men they're natural rapists, on the other it's also absolving men of responsibility for their actions which hurt other people.  And that absolution is very, very appealing and comforting to a lot of men who are constantly watching the privilege they've grown used to get eroded by feminism.  Now, when bad things happen as a result of their own or their fellow men's actions, they can just turn around say "it's your own fault" instead of listening to the victim.

I see this attitude at work every time someone tells a rape victim (male or female) "well you were drunk/walking alone/not paying attention/leading them on/etc., what did you expect?"

Obviously, we all should be expecting to be raped (unfortunately, statistics are on their side on this one).  Which makes our concern that we were raped easily dismissable.  After all, not the rapist's fault that we didn't take proper precautions (or the ones we did take weren't good enough).

Why real men (and hell, women, we're just as capable of both rape and defending rape as men are) should hate this?  Is because real good, honest people should hate being told they are natural predators.  That they're inherently evil.

If you don't hate being told that?  There's something broken inside.

Politics Is A Lot Like Online Dating

You may sound good on paper as a candidate, but seeing you in person is what's going to make or break your chances.  You may not look like a supermodel, but if you're intelligent, confident, caring, funny, and make it clear you're going places, you'll attract people.  More than you may know what to do with.  Being good-looking but dense as a sack of bricks isn't going to get you further than a one-nighter.  Being good-looking, smart, and an asshole isn't going to get you anywhere period.  You might dupe people in the short-term if you have any sense of charm, but they'll eventually drop your ass once they realize they can do better.  And word will spread, and you will eventually be known as That Guy.

While nobody's quite mastered the first type, right now the GOP are the poster children for that third one.  The Self-Proclaimed Nice Guys® chewing on the brims of their fedoras and chugging a can of Venom while complaining about those stuck-up minority voters constantly friendzoning them at the polls.

As so many of us ladyfolk know, this attitude is repulsive enough coming from a 20-something college kid who expects minor sexual favors as a reward for not being an overt douchecanoe.  When it comes from 60+ year old men who are more than old enough to know better, it falls somewhere between "hilarious" and "fuck this, I'm done."

See, when you make it painfully clear that there are certain groups you want to deny voting rights to simply because they won't vote for you, it's the dating equivalent of putting a "ps - no fat chicks, lol" line in your online profile.  Not only are you not going to get the fat chicks you don't want, but you're going to drive away a lot of the people you do want because you sound like an asshole.

Guess what?  That really doesn't leave too many people in your corner.

This "re-branding" campaign the GOP has launched in a mad scramble for votes after getting summarily whipped black and blue at the polls in 2012 is little more than just fluffing up their online dating profile with better pictures and quietly removing Ted Nugent from their list of favorite artists.  The same asshole is still behind it. And if you schedule a date and meet him in person, in public, you'll see it.  You'll see it in every ridiculous thing he says about rape, in every racist anti-immigration law he wants to pass, in every women's clinic and shelter he wants to close, in every gun he wants to put in the hands of a teacher, in every dollar of social aid he wants to keep out of the hands of the poor, in every public classroom he wants to put a Bible in, in every word of paranoid nonsense he says about climate change and evolution being hoaxes, and in every child he wants to deny sex education to.

It's not the "brand" that needs to change for the GOP.  It's the policies behind the brand.  It's the pining for an America that never existed.  The fear, the paranoia, the frothing insanity and denial of reality, the resistance to change itself.  The stagnation.  The fetid peat bog of stupid that is only serving to preserve this farce of a party for posterity, so we can look back on it in forty years and say "thank God Almighty we dodged that fucking bullet."

Nope, We Really Haven't Come That Far At All

First, trigger warning for discussions of rape and rape culture on this post.

On Sunday, news broke of the verdict in Steubenville, OH for two football players who sexually assaulted a drunk and mostly-unconscious 16-year-old.  And just because that wasn't despicable enough, one of them saw fit to take pictures of her naked and share them with friends, as well as let friends film him assaulting her.

The two defendants have been found guilty, and sentenced to a paltry three years between the two of them.  But that's not what has -- or should have -- everyone with even a basic grasp of human decency incensed.

No, what should make anyone following this case so utterly fucking furious is the media coverage.  CNN in particular, but the sentiment has spread to other stations.

Scott Prouty, the Man Who Saved America

As far as history's concerned, we only remember the big guys.  The ones in the thick of the action, for good or ill.  The wealthy white men making the big decisions.  Yet if you know where to look and who to read, you discover this sprawling world of seemingly insignificant people whom history has completely overlooked, but who were actually responsible for some of the biggest game-changers that have ever gone down.

And so it is today.  Tonight, after finally outing himself, Scott Prouty joins the ranks of Frank Wills, the security guard who discovered the break-in at Watergate which led to Nixon's resignation and the passing of the Freedom of Information Act, and Barton W. Mitchell, the Union scout who found the copy of Special Order 191 and is the reason we're still the United States of America, in this country's army of unsung heroes and heroines to whom we owe so much, but don't really know who to make the check out to.  Little Guys who, like Frodo Baggins, snuck past the Gate because Sauron thought them too small and insignificant to pose much of a threat; Frank Wills was a high school dropout because he had to help support his single mother and made $80 a week then as a guard at Watergate, and Mitchell was a Corporal who was tasked with what was then known as "getting shot at first."  Compared to one of the most cunning tactical minds in American history, and the 37th President of the United States, these two men were the human equivalent of that last bit of boot polish that comes farting out of the bottle.

But unlike Frodo, neither one of these men was on a crusade to defeat the evil overlord when it went down.  Frank Wills did not wake up the afternoon of June 17, 1972 and get ready for work while thinking "you know what, I'm gonna bring down the entire fucking government today."  He was simply wandering the halls like he was shittily paid to do, and just happened to see some duct tape on the doors where duct tape really shouldn't be and did the right thing and called the cops.  Barton W. Mitchell didn't approach D. H. Hill's deserted camp in September 1862 thinking "I'm going to find the secret to winning the entire goddamned war today."  He was simply hoping not to get shot at by any stragglers and looking for useful shit that the Confederates might've left behind (like the cigars that Special Order 191 was wrapped around because why the fuck not?).

Likewise, Scott Prouty did not go to work on May 17, 2012 thinking "I'm going to make double-damn pinky-swear sure that Barack Obama gets re-elected today."

Scott Prouty, like Frank Wills and Barton W. Mitchell before him, was simply doing his menial I-don't-get-paid-nearly-enough-for-this-bullshit job serving alcohol to rich assholes who could afford to blow what the average American makes in a year on one fucking dinner.  He brought his camera purely hoping to get a souvenir photo-op with some famous rich guy, because at a previous event that Prouty worked, another famous rich guy named Bill Clinton made it a point to go to the kitchen and treat the staff like people.  What he got instead was Mitt Romney verbally pulling down his pants and pissing on nearly half the nation.  And he just happened to catch that shit on tape.

It was a case of sheer dumb luck for the entire nation that the man who managed to record those remarks also had the balls to do the right thing and make them public, as he puts it, "so that those who couldn't afford to be there could see what Romney really thought."

By putting a needle in the arm of Romney's campaign through exposing his raw, uncensored schmuckery to everyone who didn't have a year's worth of paychecks to blow in one night, Scott Prouty saved the country by making Obama's re-election a foregone conclusion.  By preventing a real life Gordon Gekko from making a leveraged buyout of the U.S. to whoever would give him the best offer.  Like Frank Wills for exposing a thoroughly corrupted administration, and Barton W. Mitchell for finding the Confederates' complete war plan and getting it to the right people, Prouty is also a national hero.

Someone, make him a drink for once.

Why Nobody Should Care What Mitt Romney Thinks, But We Do Anyway

It's not uncommon for the loser of a presidential election, regardless of party, to have an interview a few months later to reflect on their loss.  And in the last few elections prior to 2012, nobody really bothered to question why we do this.  It's interesting to hear from the also-ran why he didn't get to the finish line, to be sure, but there's also the matter of previous candidates still being in the political arena in some fashion despite not being president: John McCain is unfortunately still a Senator, John Kerry was still a Senator, and Al Gore, while not holding public office, is still a huge activist for not screwing up the planet any more than we already have.

Mitt Romney is nothing.

After his second failed bid for 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Romney has gone back to doing what he does best: diving through mountains of cash like Scrooge motherfucking McDuck.  Only Scrooge made his money with honest hard work -- the character started out as a literal boot-polisher -- instead of being born into money and wresting an even bigger fortune away from actual honest, hardworking people.

And we know why he lost.  He lost because he was a terrible candidate: an out-of-touch, self-righteous, exceedingly arrogant, chauvinistic asshole who ran the biggest clusterfuck of a campaign since George McGovern, and couldn't convince even half the country that he wasn't a total schmuck.

Nobody should give a single constipated shit what he thinks.  He's not involved in politics anymore, and he isn't going to tell us anything we hadn't figured out by November 6, 2012.

So why does anyone care enough to let him tell us his sob story about how much he and his wife pretend to be concerned for anybody but the ironic 47% who voted for him?

The answer is twofold.  First, we need a distraction.  Or more specifically, the GOP needs a distraction.  They need something to point at to get their constituents' minds off how much they can't get their shit together, because they care more about being True Republicans than actual lawmakers.  Second, it's a mad scramble to get back into the bubble before reality turns them into progressives, because Romney was the center and wall of that bubble for a year and a half.

So by rights, nobody in either party should be caring what Romney thinks.  He's a loser who should fade back into irrelevance, and be remembered the same way we remember Michael Dukakis' existence after 1988.  But for a party that is smack in the middle of a midlife crisis that would make a 49ers fan roll his eyes, Romney is grudgingly safe territory.  A reminder of what the party should stand for, and the Dickens-era hellhole that it wants to drag the country back kicking and screaming into.

For the rest of us?  Hearing a smug asshole weep is some sweet, sweet music and a slice of schadenfreude pie.

You Built That, Just Not By Yourself

And in this exercise in screaming into the void that is the internet when nobody's paying attention to you, I'll be tackling the biggest and most perpetuated lie the GOP has continued to sell its base on for decades. The Lie That Was the Lie. The One Lie to Rule Them All: self-reliance.

Why I’m calling it a “lie” and not merely a “myth” is because with myths, those who perpetuate them know they aren’t true and don’t expect anyone else to believe they’re true. They’re good marshmallow-toasting tales to entertain your friends with (and possibly make them afraid to sleep with the lights off ever again). A lie, on the other hand, is something the teller knows is bullshit, and expects the sucker he’s telling it to to believe him anyway. In fact, he’s counting on it. When Republicans talk about self-reliance and getting on that ladder, they’re lying, because they know as well as the Democrats that the end of that ladder isn’t resting on the ground; it’s rather high up, and unless you’re tall enough to start with, you’re going to need help reaching it.

The difference is that the Democrats want to help people reach that ladder no matter how short they are. The Republicans want to keep the short people off it so that their success doesn’t lose any of its specialness.

Self-reliance is a lie because unless you’re a 16^th-17^th-century pioneer (in which case, how the hell are you reading this?), you are relying on others every single day. You may not be able to see them and many of them you will never meet, but you rely on them just the same.

Somebody built your house or apartment. Somebody built the electrical grid that powers your home and laid the pipes that bring you water. Somebody grew and made the food you ate today. Somebody cleaned up the water you drank so it would hydrate you instead of kill you. Somebody printed the money you used to buy that food and water. Somebody built the road and the car or bus or train you used to get to work today. If you have a job, somebody hired you. If you own a business, somebody is keeping you in business by buying whatever goods or services you provide. Somebody is also keeping your business moving by delivering and mailing your parcels and handling your money and giving you a line of credit to buy things you need. Somebody also built the computer or tablet or smartphone that you’re using to read this post.

And chances are, none of those “somebodies” up there was you. There’s an even better chance that you can’t call a single one of them by name. But they’re not invisible pink unicorns; they do exist, even if you have no idea who they are. Because these things got done somehow, and if you didn’t do it, then someone else had to.

No, what the doctrine of self-reliance is is a way to look down on others who aren’t tall enough to reach the end of that ladder, and a means to dismiss them as unimportant.

Because I love pop culture, and I think movies are some of the most biting social commentary we have as well as entertainment, let’s take a look at this quote for a minute from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:

Indiana Jones: It was just the two of us, dad. It was a lonely way to grow up. For you, too. If you had been an ordinary, average father like the other guys' dads, you'd have understood that.
Professor Henry Jones: Actually, I was a wonderful father.
Indiana Jones: When?
Professor Henry Jones: Did I ever tell you to eat up? Go to bed? Wash your ears? Do your homework? No. I respected your privacy and I taught you self-reliance.
Indiana Jones: What you taught me was that I was less important to you than people who had been dead for five hundred years in another country. And I learned it so well that we've hardly spoken for twenty years.

Sure, it’s one of the most famously bitter father-son duos verbally duking out their problems over some whisky while being chased by Nazis. But if you look closer at it, it’s also some insightful commentary on the GOP’s current delusion. Like Henry Jones, Sr., they think neglect is just a way of teaching you how to fend for yourself.

In a twisted way, it is. But it’s not going to teach that lesson any better than throwing someone into the deep end will teach them how to swim; you only learn something if you don’t die trying.

In the end, we all want to get on that ladder. But until that ladder comes down to the ground where everyone has a fair shot at reaching it, there’s only one way to make sure that success is not just limited to tall people: build the short ones something to stand on.