6 Simple Truths That Will Actually Make You a Better Person

For the most part, I love Cracked.com.  It's a funny, pseudo-informative timewaster that makes my lunch break at work awesome and therefore the rest of my day more awesome.  But occasionally, they post an article by some self-important doucheking who thinks he's discovered the secret of the universe that just makes me wonder how someone can have their head that far up their own ass and not suffocate.

Recently, I rediscovered one of these self-indulgent tubesocks by one David Wong (a repeat offender of a doucheking) called 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person.  Presumably because "6 Pieces of Terrible Misguided Philosophy That Will Make Assholes Like David Wong Think You're a Better Person" and "I Missed the Entire Point of That Movie I Keep Praising" were too long.

The whole steaming pile of Ayn Rand-inspired nonsense reads like the manifesto of a Reformed Nice Guy who decided that rather than complain about the assholes who get all the hot women and good jobs, he'll just become the asshole he thinks pretty girls date and rich men hire.  That's only "self-improvement" if being a rich sociopath with no real friends and a trophy wife is your ultimate goal in life (and really, what else do you expect from a pasty white dude who pretends to be Chinese-American on the internet?).

If that's not your goal, then every point he makes in that article is shitty advice that's going to leave you even more friendless and miserable with a bunch of meaningless "successes" that will not give you even a stitch of satisfaction in your life.

Instead, here is some actual advice on how to be a better person in the truest sense of the term:

1. Human Nature Is Selfish, But You Can Be Better Than That

We have all heard at some point the adage that "kindness is its own reward."  When we're kids, teenagers, and self-righteous Nice Guys, we tend to interpret that statement as "kindness is its own reward because people will reward you when you're kind."  This mentality is what separates children from adults, and Nice Guys from the women they want to fuck.

Because it misses the entire point.  "Kindness is its own reward" doesn't mean that you will be rewarded for being nice.  At least not by other people.  The true reward for kindness is the feeling you get when something you've done has made another person happy.

There was a doctor in my city who died a few years ago, but while he was alive, every Christmas he transformed the front lawn of his house into a literal winter wonderland of animatronics, fake snow (because Florida), and literally thousands of Christmas lights.  He spent what had to be thousands of dollars and man-hours putting it together.  It was a real treat as a kid to drive past it and try to figure out what he added every year.

He did this for no other reason than to create something beautiful for the neighborhood.  He never expected a thank you.  He never charged admission to make back the cost of putting on the display.  The most he did was stand out there and watch the reactions of people.  The only money he ever asked for was donations from the passersby to the American Heart Association.

On the flip side, in Wong's article, he mentions the "speech that changed his life" as coming from Alec Baldwin's character in Glengarry Glen Ross.  A speech that he keeps referring to throughout the piece by repeating that one line from it: "If you want to work here, close."

Like "kindness is its own reward," Wong also misses the entire point of the film, and why the play won the Pulitzer and Tony Awards.  Glengarry Glen Ross was written in 1984, at the height of the Reaganomics-driven corporate cutthroat economy.  Mamet, when he wrote it, intended it to expose the inherent cruelty of such a system on the people it employs.  Much the same way Wall Street did.

Like Gordon Gekko, Alec Baldwin's character is not the guy you're supposed to emulate or even like.  His infamous speech that "motivators" like Wong keep quoting was meant to showcase the sociopathic nature of corporate philosophy, and the actions of the real estate agents -- everything from lying to bribery -- was meant to illustrate exactly what kind of shit happens when money, success, and power become more important than basic human decency.  And that desperate people can be driven to do terrible things when their livelihoods are at stake, and those in power see them only as "assets," no different from the fax machine or a box of paper clips.

When you use people as tools, when you only do good things for them with the expectation that they will reward you with the very same deeds later, you are not "improving" yourself in any sense.  Because, like Williamson in the play, the people you're using will figure out how much of an asshole you are, and they will not want to work there.

People don't want to merely "close."  That is, work and take home a paycheck.  They want to do what they love doing already and get paid for it.  One of the biggest reasons customers stop dealing with a company is "perceived indifference."  That is, the customer's perception that the company sees them only as a source of revenue and doesn't care about their needs.  The same largely holds true for employees.  The biggest reason employees leave a company is much the same; they feel their employer doesn't care about their needs as a worker, and sees them only as a warm body in the cubicle.

This doesn't just apply to the workplace, either.  If you wouldn't want to be friends with a guy who sees you as nothing but a source of beer money and bad jokes, then don't be the guy who is friends with other people solely for their beer money and bad jokes.

If you want to be a better person, the truth is surprisingly simple: treat kindness as its own reward.  Make other people happy whenever you can.

Why?  Because.

2. You Can't Fake Empathy, So Don't Try

It's butt o'clock in the morning.  You have to be awake in two hours to get ready for work.  Your cellphone blares to life.  The display says the name of one of your good-but-not-really-close friends.  This friend never calls you at this hour, so you know it's gotta be important.  But you're also half asleep and you really want to finish those last two hours before your alarm goes off doing literally anything but comforting someone else.

But you pick up the phone anyway, because friend.

Stop.  For godsakes, stop.

Do not pick up the phone.  Do not answer that call.  You will be doing nobody any favors.  Not your friend.  Not yourself.

The reason is because what you're about to do is the same thing every customer service agent is trained to do: use fake empathy.  Your friend could have called customer care for their cellphone company and gotten the same quality of emotional support you're about to provide.

You cannot fake empathy.  Customers can usually tell when you don't really give a shit about their problems.  Friends, no matter how not-close, are even better at picking that up.  Do not answer the phone for anybody before dawn unless you really care what they're about to say.

In the same vein, never ask your friends "how are you?" or "how was your day?" if you're not prepared to hear something other than a reflexive "I'm fine, thanks."  It will make shit awkward in a hurry when it becomes clear that you don't actually care about their answer; you just suck at social interaction and are parroting what you see everyone else do.

Only offer to be a shoulder to cry on if you like getting snot on your shirt collar.  Doing otherwise does nothing but undermine people's trust in you (because they know you're bullshitting), and make the person who asked you for help in the first place feel guilty for doing so.

Stop pretending to care.  Only say you care and you want to listen if you actually do.  Be honest about yourself and your feelings.

3. Assholes Are Made, Not Born

In Wong's article, he called Blake's speech in Glengarry Glen Ross the "greatest scene in the history of movies."  As evidence of this, he cites that Baldwin was nominated for an Oscar for that role, and it's the only scene he's in.  This is patently false, by the way; Al Pacino was actually nominated for the award from that film.  But this is Cracked.  Not exactly known for journalistic integrity, and nobody ever said a New York Times bestselling author had to be factually accurate (just look at Dan Brown).

But let's indulge David Wong's delusion for a moment and pretend he's right.  By similar logic, Anthony Hopkins was only on screen for 16 minutes in The Silence of the Lambs and he actually won Best Actor for it.  That doesn't mean Hannibal Lecter belongs on a motivational poster.  This is why when choosing fictional role models, you need to show a little more discretion than who won an Academy Award (and, you know, not make shit up).

If I had to pick that one scene in media that changed my life, it would without a doubt be the scene in Les Misérables when the Bishop of Digne tells the police that he gave Valjean the silverware (which Valjean stole from him) to spare him a trip back to prison, and throws in two very expensive candlesticks because why the fuck not:

I'm only using the 2012 movie version because the internet wasn't a thing yet when I saw the musical back in 1991.  Like Alec Baldwin's character, the Bishop is in exactly one scene.  Like Alec Baldwin's character, he motivates Valjean to become the hero of the story.  Unlike Alec Baldwin's character, he does it through compassion, kindness, and mercy rather than verbal abuse.

Here is a man of the Church who gave some stranger off the street a warm bed to sleep in and food and wine, and his hospitality gets repaid by the stranger then robbing his ass blind.  He could have easily sought -- and would have been well within his right -- to teach Valjean a lesson and turn him in and get his silver back.  After all, "thou shalt not steal" is totally one of the Commandments, right?  But he doesn't.  The Bishop instead lies to the police (also against the Commandment about not bearing false witness), and then makes good on it by actually giving him the silver and candlesticks.  And the only thing the Bishop asks in return is for Valjean to use the money to turn his life around.

To little ten-year-old me sitting in that theatre watching, that was the most powerful thing I had ever seen in fiction, before or since.

Because what the Bishop knew is that people are not born assholes.  They are made into assholes by the fucked up shit they have to learn in order to survive.  And by not learning good and healthy ways of dealing with the world.

Having grown up in 19th century France, Valjean would have learned early that when you're broke, sometimes stealing is a necessity.  That's what he went to jail for in the first place: stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving child.  All the law had taught him was that no good deed goes unpunished, which was why he kept trying to escape and why years kept getting added onto his sentence.  Then when he was finally paroled, his status as an ex-con made him such a social outcast that the Bishop was literally the first person in the film to not treat him like a goddamned leper.  So it was small wonder that his first instinct was to take advantage and grab what he could.

But again, the Bishop realized this.  Which was why he did what he did, figuring that a little compassion and empathy would go a lot farther than another turn on the chain gang.

And guess what?  He was right.

Because just as assholes are made, so can they be unmade.

And no, this doesn't only happen in fiction.  In October of 2013, a similar thing happened to a real person.  Policewoman gets called to a grocery store because of a woman shoplifting.  After questioning, the woman reveals she was shoplifting because she had no food for her children.  Because the amount is so little -- under $300 -- the cop can choose whether to arrest her or not.  Rather than have her taken into custody, the cop instead buys her a week's worth of food and helps her get it back to her house, and only elects to issue her a court summons and a misdemeanor charge (which won't hinder her getting employment).  And the only thing she asks is for the woman to help someone else out.

And then there's this one from 2008.  Kid tries to rob you at knifepoint?  Give him your wallet.  Then offer your coat.  Then offer to get him dinner and talk to him.  Find out that he's really not a bad kid; he just never learned how to be a good one.  You get your wallet back.  Ask for nothing but his knife in return so that he can't hurt someone else with it.  He gives it to you, and you hand him $20.  While you may not ever see him again so you don't know if he took it to heart like Valjean, you've certainly done more to set him on the right path than prison ever would have.

So the lesson here?  Use your discretion, of course, but do nice shit for people whenever you can.  Because if assholes learned how to be assholes by watching assholes, they can also learn how to be good people by watching good people.  Be the good person for them to watch.

4. Love Is Not a Checklist

Ever wonder why movie stars spend such ridiculous sums of money on clothes?  Like if they make more cash than your annual salary in the minute it takes you to use the bathroom in the morning, why are they going to blow it all on obscenely expensive clothes?  I mean, they're spending $5,000 on a dress when they could literally get 250 dresses at Target for the same price.

The reason they spend that kind of money on clothes is because yo, when was the last time you went clothes-shopping at Target? How long did it take you to find an outfit that didn't cling to everything you wanted to hide about yourself?

The reason they spend that kind of money on clothes is the same reason tailoring is a specialized art that takes years to learn while the clothes on the rack at Target and K-Mart are made by machines.  Mass-produced clothes may fit, but they won't fit well.  If you want clothes specifically to make your very unique body look as good as possible?  You need someone to design them for you and no one else.

Dating advice is like the dress rack at Wal-Mart: it tries to fit everybody at once by treating them all the same, and in the process just makes everybody look and feel terrible.  And the sizes always lie.

Further on in the article, Wong tries to tie his Alec Baldwin nonsense to dating.  While he does raise one good point -- if "nice" is the only way you can describe yourself, that's why you're single -- he misses the boat entirely with this little piece of fool's gold:

"So, what, you're saying that I should pick up a book on how to get girls?"

Only if step one in the book is "Start making yourself into the type of person girls want to be around."

Because that's the step that gets skipped -- it's always "How can I get a job?" and not "How can I become the type of person employers want?"  It's "How can I get pretty girls to like me?" instead of "How can I become the type of person that pretty girls like?"

Yeah, let me put this to rest right now.  The reason all the dating advice you have ever heard and ever will hear on How To Get the Girl/Guy is bullshit is because it's all making one fatal assumption: that there is a universal "type" that pretty girls/hot guys want.

There is good news and bad news here, so I'll go with the bad news first: there is absolutely nothing you can do to make yourself attractive to the person you like.  You can be the funniest, sweetest, most interesting person they have ever met.  But if there is no spark there, there will be no relationship.  And that spark is completely up to chance.  You can't create it out of nowhere.  It's either there or it isn't.

The most you can do is eliminate things about yourself which are pretty universally unattractive.  Nobody wants to date someone who doesn't bathe and can't hold a conversation without groping them.  But "giving up your favorite hobbies" will not make you a catch.  The sexist assumption that pretty girls don't have "guy hobbies" and hot guys don't have "girl hobbies" is a rant for another day.  And even if it did, there is no partner on earth worth giving up everything that makes you happy.  In fact?  Asking you to give up your hobbies and favorite activities is an indicator of domestic abuse.

The good news is that your chances of finding a mate increase exponentially when you figure out what exactly you want in one.  Because then you can start going to places where you're more likely to meet that person. You want someone who plays video games?  Awesome.  Keep hanging out at GameStop or your local indie shop.  If you're a straight male, take extra care to not be a sexist douchecanoe to the women you're trying to talk to.  Strike up conversation and talk about video games.  You want someone you can watch the Lord of the Rings extended editions with or marathon Attack on Titan?  You should know or be able to figure out exactly where to look for them.

Of course, common interests are just the start.  To truly figure out what you want in a mate, you need some alone time to figure out who you are first, and what you need.  And no, you don't even have to stop playing Call of Duty to do that.  We all have emotional baggage regardless of gender, and when you're single is the perfect time to start sorting that shit out.  Because as previously mentioned, unless you've lived in a real-life mock-up of Pleasantville all your life, you've probably had to learn some messed up lessons of your own to make it through your life so far, and retraining yourself to deal with the world in a healthy manner will go a long way to making you a happier, more desirable person.

There is no secret to being attractive, and that is the secret that nobody wants to tell you because they don't want to admit it themselves.  But if there is one proactive thing you can do, it's this: stop looking.

You may have heard it before, but probably never heard why.  The reason why is that when you're looking for a mate, your brain automatically starts playing a game of Bang or Pass with everyone of your preferred gender(s), and it uses a really shitty sorting algorithm of first impressions and current mood.  When you're pissed off about shit, your brain will be the pettiest little pet and pick out every single flaw it sees in the person.  Purely because you're annoyed at something completely unrelated.  Likewise, when you're stoked about the new comic book movie coming out next week, your brain will overstate everyone's desirability and see a potential dinner-and-said-comic-book-movie lurking at every corner.  Purely because you're excited about something unrelated.

Basically, you start to view people through the filter of "potential mate," and you will end up getting tunnel vision in the same way you shop for clothes and exclude everything that isn't in your size.

And like the dress rack at Wal-Mart, you may be missing something that would be perfect for you just because the number wasn't what usually fit you, or walking away with something that makes you look and feel terrible because it was the best of your narrowed choices, but not what you really wanted.

5. "Kill 'Em With Kindness" Really Does Work

You remember hearing this advice in dealing with bullies, right?  And you remember as a kid thinking it was such utter bullshit because the only thing your bully understood was a good kick in the glove box?  Yeah, me too.  But while this is really awful advice when you're a kid, when you're an adult, things are different.  And applying the honey is far more effective than reaching for the meat cleaver.

Except for the truly sociopathic among us, most people will feel at least some sense of shame when someone they've been a real shit to responds with courtesy and respect.  This is something everyone who has ever worked customer service figures out quickly enough.  You let them rage at you, you apologize for the mistake, you explain the situation, and you tell them very clearly how you're going to fix it.  And you apologize again and you thank them for bringing the matter to your attention.  I cannot tell you how many times I've had a complete stranger go from cursing me out to sheepishly apologizing for doing so.

Why?  Because people are socialized to respond to emotions the way homeopathy tries to treat whooping cough.  Anger is met with anger.  Sadness is met with sadness.  Joy is met with joy.  Except emotions aren't caused by bacteria, so homeopathic principles work pretty well on it.  Basically, the easiest way to de-escalate a situation is to calm your own tits first.

I feel the need to make this point because the original article is so cartoonishly over-the-top buttmad that there are people out there annoyed at this cynical notion that you have to have some kind of use in the world in order to be considered worthy of the oxygen you're taking in.  This is evident in the very first comparison Wong makes: the world is somebody whose loved one is dying of a gunshot wound, and you are the unfortunate person wandering around with a screwdriver.

It's ridiculous because there is only one circumstance in the world that is that dire, and that is "somebody actually bleeding to death from a gunshot wound."  People may need things, but for the most part, nobody is going to die if you personally can't perform trauma surgery.  Needs can be prioritized.  So it does everybody a world of good to realize that even if you are wandering around an accident scene with naught but a screwdriver, that doesn't make you completely useless and unworthy of being cared about.  All it means is that you lack the skillset or the tools to help this specific person (that's what we have 9-1-1 for).  Eventually that screwdriver will be useful.  Just not right now.

And that's really the entire problem with the worldview in Wong's article.  Besides this absolutely cruel, borderline eugenics idea that you are only as worthy as you are useful -- don't even get me started on how this comes from a place of able-bodied and able-minded privilege -- it also fights self improvement because...

6. The World Is Only As Terrible Or Wonderful a Place As You Make It

This is the Holy Grail of all self-help advice.  Right here.  Because it says everything you will ever need to remember for the rest of your life.  How you see the world affects literally everything you do in it.  The mountain spring from which all unmotivated apathy flows is the cynicism that the world is a shitty place, so it's not worth being a good person.  It's the basis for every Crapsack World and Bad Future in every story ever.  You play the game or die in the gutter because life is cheap and no one gives a shit.

First, if you haven't seen the final episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion, you really need to.  Go watch it.  Now. There will be a quiz later.

See, the assumption that the world is a shitty place and that all people are selfish and use you for however you benefit them by default is Wong's first mistake, and it's what leads to all the others.  If you believe that nobody cares about you as a person and only about what you can do for them, then it's natural that you will feel unmotivated if you don't think you have anything to offer.

David Wong's solution is to come up with literally anything to offer the world in exchange for a job and a girlfriend.  But the reality is that if everyone is that much of an asshole, then what exactly is the point of meeting their needs when they don't care about you?

That should be the first crack in the mirror.  Your first clue that maybe Wong's advice isn't really about self-improvement at all, and more about airing his own insecurities by tearing down other people (kinda like Asuka).

Because if the world is full of such terrible, uncaring people, then how exactly is "improvement" even defined?  By being that one turd in the bowl that refuses to flush?

Yeah, I realize that episode of Evangelion is a mindscrew on acid.  But once you're done cleaning your brain off the wall, the most important point it makes is this: when you only see people as useful skillsets and erase all other value that they have, you make the world that much shittier a place for yourself and others.

Because skillsets are not forever.  You can lose them.  They can become obsolete.  And if your entire identity and self-worth is based upon That Thing You Do -- which is what Wong's article advocates -- then your identity will crumble the minute That Thing You Do is no longer relevant or you stop being able/willing to do it.

Because see, you don't hate yourself because "you don't do anything."  You hate yourself because you see people as inherently selfish and horrible and "people" includes "you."  If you start with changing your thinking in that regard, everything else falls into place, for one very simple reason: your view of the world is really your view of yourself projected onto everyone else.

You are not truly capable of being a good person if you don't think people can be good in the first place.  You hate yourself because you assume everyone else does because you don't do anything useful.  In reality, it's the reverse: you think people who don't do anything useful are worthless, so you assume others do as well because you can only see the world from the one vantage point you choose.

The biggest motivator you will ever have is changing your vantage point.  Seeing things from another angle.  Flipping the chessboard.

The ultimate secret to being a better person is believing that the world is worth improving because there are good people in it.  As long as you believe that, there is no force on earth that can stop you from being the best you can possibly be.

If you want to work here?  Don't close the sale.

Open the fucking door.

Why "Mary Sue" is Not Literary Criticism

So, we have a character.

She is considered the greatest spy in the department.  Has whatever gadget she needs to get out of the death trap of the day.  Causes millions of dollars worth of collateral damage but never has to pay any of it back or worry about losing her job as a result.  Manages to bed every attractive member of the opposite sex she comes across, and even gets a few of them to defect after falling in love with her.  Can handle any firearm with instant expertise, and can operate any vehicle she happens to find herself in well enough to avoid getting her butt shot off.  Oh yes, and she's still considered the world's greatest secret agent despite not being able to go five minutes without being identified (and subsequently setting off a chase and explosions).  Has fiercely loyal companions no matter how much of an egotist she is.  Has a trail of men willing to die for her despite knowing they're little more than a notch in her headboard.

Sound like the worst Mary Sue ever written?  Who the hell could sell a story that bad?  Who the hell could read something that bad without going all MST3K on it?

...Guess what, guys?

I just described James Bond.  Only, you know, if he was female.

This is why "Mary Sue" is at best a useless critical catchphrase, and at worst a symptom of the misogyny inherent in our culture.

There is no denying that there are badly-written wish fulfillment characters out there, and one trip through the first two pages of Fanfiction.net in virtually any category will turn up pleny of them.  But here's the thing: if you are legit criticizing the writing, a badly-written wish fulfillment character being female and fan-created should not make the writing so much worse so as to deserve its own gendered insult.  Especially when we have just as many cheesy wish fulfillment characters in published fiction who are lauded and loved while doing everything the Mary Sue is demonized for.  They just happen to be male.

When you throw around the term Mary Sue as a pejorative, what you're effectively saying is that women's wish fulfillment is inferior solely because it comes from women.  Especially when male characters who are obviously the same kind of wish fulfillment power fantasy -- Superman, Conan the Barbarian, James T. Kirk, Tommy Vercetti, Simon Templar, and yes, James Bond, just to name a few -- are given not just a free pass, but national and/or worldwide acclaim for being such flawless badasses.

This begs the question of why the vast majority of bad original fanfiction characters are female, while the vast majority of just-as-bad published characters happen to be male.  And there's a very simple answer, there.

The fiction market, from books to video games, is driven primarily by men.  Most writers in the industry are male, and they cater to male audiences.  They are men writing stuff for other men.  And not even all men at that.  They write for a specific subset of men: straight, white, insecure, and with disposable income.

And thus, they either ignore the interests of women and girls wholesale, or superficially pay lipservice to them.  So as women, we go on and do what we do best: tell them 'screw you' and we write the stuff we want to see.  That's really what fanfiction is.  It's women filling in the blanks of published media for other women.

This is why men have no need for fanfiction at best, and find it silly, stupid, weird, and even threatening at worst.  Because women exercising agency and doing things entirely for ourselves and making our wants public without caring what men think has always been the subject of ridicule.  But that's another rant entirely.

So with most fanfic writers being girls, it's only natural that most characters created by those fanfic writers are also going to be girls.  Girls who get to do all the cool shit they see boys do in media.  Girls who get to be flawless badasses and steal the show the way the boys do.  Girls, like the boys they watch, whom everyone wants to do or be, and the only people who hate them are just jealous.

And they're doing it for free.

So if you want to keep feeding the patriarchal system and dismissing women's wish fulfillment fantasies as Mary Sue drivel?  Fine.  Just remember that your fantasies are just as shallow, just as stupid, just as ridiculous, and just as badly written.

But unlike Mary Sue? You're paying money for them.

Common Core Is a Better Way of Teaching Math Because It Actually IS Math

This is a post for math nerds, and for those who wanted to be math nerds, but sucked at it.  But it's especially a post for those who discovered as adults that they weren't nearly as bad at math as they thought.

Let's pretend for a minute that you're at a store and you only have cash.  You have to buy stuff for dinner, and it has to be under $20 because that's all you've got, so you start keeping a running total.  You don't have a pencil, pen, or paper, and you also left your phone on the kitchen table at home so you don't have a calculator.  The items you choose are $6.99, $5.99, $1.25, and $3.99.  You've always sucked at math, but you somehow manage to add up the prices of the items you want in your head and not wind up mortified at the register or out your proper change.

So how do you do it?  Lay out the numbers in your head and carry from column to column?  Hell no.  That takes too long and it's too hard to keep it all straight without writing it down even if you are a visual learner.  No, instead, you reflexively start counting them.

You round up the first two items to $7 and $6, respectively, so you get $13 so far.  You round up the $3.99 item to $4 and add it, so that gives you $17.  You add the $1.25 item to get $18.25.  Then you count back $0.03 because of the rounding to get $18.22.

Now, to know that the cashier isn't shortchanging you, you figure out how much you're supposed to get back.  You work with the cents first.  From $0.22, it takes $0.08 to get to $0.30, and then $0.70 to get to the next whole dollar, which is $19.  $20 less $19 is $1, so you should get $1.78 back in change.

This is what common core math is.  It's the way we learn to do math as adults after we figure out the way we learned it as kids is bullshit.

The problem with the Old Way of learning math -- in particular, the borrow/carry method of addition and subtraction -- is that it's not math at all.  And because of that, all it does is reinforce bad number theory, and teach kids principles that later turn out to be completely wrong.

See, borrow/carry starts off on a bad foot because it uses the "column" theory of numbers.  That is, separating multi-digit numbers into valued columns: ones, tens, hundreds, etc.  When you're a kid, this kind of visual explanation holds water at first because it's easy to remember and it makes big numbers not seem so scary.  But it falls apart like a bad game of Jenga when you start throwing zeros in there.  Because you're taught that there's nothing in that column, and the zero is just a placeholder.  But we don't do that for every column, because Reasons.  And if you're a kid like me, you start thinking that the difference between 13 and 1,300 is a couple of zeros (rather than "1,287").

Borrow/carry continues on an even worse foot because in the course of learning it, you're taught that the reason you have to "borrow" a 1 from the next column over is because you "can't subtract a larger number from a smaller one."  That very principle turns out to be bullshit later when you start learning integers and negative numbers.  And again, if you're a kid like me, at that point you don't know what to think, because you don't know why the stuff you were taught before is complete lies now, and you're afraid to learn anything new because that will turn out to be more lies in a couple of years.  And while you're passing classes, you're only doing so because you're good at memorizing rules, even if you have no clue what the hell you're even doing and wish somebody would teach you something consistent.  You start to hate math, not because you suck at it, but because you can't trust it.

Common core, on the other hand, uses the far more sound set theory of numbers.  There are no columns; each number is its own set.  It's the exact same way we learned to add and subtract single-digit numbers: by counting.  Counting doesn't change or become irrelevant just because the numbers get bigger.  410 is 410, not 4 hundreds, 1 ten, and no ones (but we put a zero there anyway, because Reasons).  Thus, adding to it or subtracting from it is simply a matter of counting forward or backward (in other words, adding to the set or taking away from it).  Common core simply teaches kids to do so in large, easy blocks since they don't have nearly enough fingers.

This goes for multiplication and division, too.  Take, for example, 26 x 54.  This is the old way you would solve that one:

     26
  x 54
   104
 130  
 1404

Guess what?  This is still using the borrowing/carrying number column nonsense.  And it's still a pain in the ass to keep straight in your head without the ability to write it down (especially having to shift the second row over one, which I always forgot to do as a kid because I never learned why I had to until I was an adult).

Now, let's look at the common core method of solving the same problem.

First, let's remember what we're doing.  We're adding 26 to itself 54 times.  So the easiest way to think of it is to first work with 25 instead of 26 (we'll go back to the leftovers at the end).  So now we're adding 25 to itself 54 times.  And to make 54 easier to work with, we break that down into 50 + 4.

So first we start with the easy stuff:

25 x 10 = 250.

Now, since 10 x 5 = 50, we have to take that 250 and multiply it by 5:

200 x 5 = 1000
50 x 5 = 250

And now the 4:

25 x 4 = 100

So now we add all those neat round numbers together:

1000 + 250 + 100 = 1350

Now, back to the leftovers.  We've done 25 x 54.  So 26 x 54 would just be adding another 54 to what we've already got:

1350 + 54 = 1404

Sure, it's a few more steps.  But those steps are logical.  They make sense, and it's clear why what's being done is being done.  That's the biggest problem with the Old Way; even if it works consistently, you can't really explain the logic behind it (you have to borrow because you can't subtract 8 from 7, but apparently you can borrow 1 from 0 and get 9...somehow).  And if you don't know the logic, it's far easier to miss a step or get the order of steps wrong, and far harder to realize when you've screwed up.  And that's especially bad in math, because like all hard sciences, math functions purely on logic.

So if common core is so great, why are so many schools having trouble with it?

Because even the best teaching methods are going to fail miserably if the execution sucks.  And in this case?  Holy shit does it ever suck.  The point of common core is to simplify these lessons, so adding in counterintuitive steps just creates more confusion.  But that's where you need to come up with better lesson plans that use this method, not pitch the baby out with the bathwater because Everything New Is Bad.

Really, the idea behind common core math is that as adults, we have learned better ways of doing math than what we were taught originally.  So why on earth are we still teaching our children these same cumbersome, nonsense methods that we don't even use anymore?  Why not cut out the floundering and just teach them the better way to start with?

It's taken me way longer than it ever should have to figure out that I don't actually suck at math.  I never did.  I sucked at learning math, because it was being taught to me using faulty, kludged logic.  Using bad logic to teach any kind of science is like using water from the toilet bowl to make your coffee; even the most perfect roast in the world is going to taste like shit if shit is what you start with.

The Affordable Care Act Is the Reason I'm Alive

Warning for very frank discussion of suicide and suicidal thoughts and tendencies.

When I walked into my doctor's office last week for a baseline, it was the first time I had been able to see one outside of an urgent care center for the last decade, because I did not have and could not afford proper insurance.  Before enrolling in a Marketplace plan earlier this year, the last time I had insurance that even covered doctor's visits was when I was still on my parents' policy.  Which meant that I could not see a doctor without one of them in the room, and that one was usually my mother.

This was unfortunate, as my mother has always believed, and still largely does, that certain fields of medicine are strictly quack.  Lies and bollocks, meant to fleece patients out of their money by treating medical conditions that don't really exist.  She believes this about one certain field in particular: mental health.  To my mother and millions of people who think like her, deficient mental health is nothing more than a moral failing, and the only help a mental patient needs is a swift kick somewhere sensitive.

The first time I ever considered suicide, I was seven years old.  The first time I attempted it, I was eight.  I figured out the hard way that a telephone cord makes an awful ligature.

I do not remember much from when I was that young, except for how I felt like an instigator of terrible things, even if I had no idea how or why I caused them.  I felt guilty and responsible for everything around me.

I also remember being too ashamed to say anything about these feelings to a doctor with my mother in the room.  Because I did not need reminding that I was a moral failure.

But when I walked into my new general physician's office last week, my mother was not with me.  I could talk about anything I wanted.  I originally was not going to mention the constant guilt and worthlessness and hopelessness, and how every time I talked about "the future" I got this sick feeling inside because I did not think I had one.  I was originally not going to talk about how I was shopping around at funeral homes to get the best deal on prepaid disposal services so that my family would not have to worry about cleaning up a body when I killed myself later this year.  I was originally not going to say that my birthday a month ago was the last one I was ever planning to see.  I was originally going to keep that moral failing to myself.

But fortunately for me, I was wearing a t-shirt.  A shirt which exposed my arms, and the scars on them.  Places I had scratched skin off my wrists.  Places I had taken razor blades to them, when merely biting the inside of my mouth until it hurt to eat no longer did the trick.  Most of those scars were old, but not all.  In particular, three prominent gashes from a razor blade that I had given myself just last month.  That I blamed on my cat when anybody asked.

The doctor noticed these.  Started asking questions.  Goodness, that looks painful, how did you get that?  But with that look, that tone, that made it obvious he already knew the answer.  But in order to do anything, he needed to hear that answer from me.

I was originally going to shut up and keep it to myself.  I didn't.

While I did not tell him everything, I told him enough.  For the first time, I did not blame the cat.  I owned up to the scars.  I told him I shouldn't exist.  When he asked why I believed that, I didn't have an answer.  When he asked how long I had felt that way, I told him I couldn't remember ever feeling different.

There was more to that conversation than could ever fit into a blog post without becoming a novel, of course.  But the important part was that for the first time in my life, it was made apparent that my mother was wrong.  I wasn't a moral failure.  I was simply a sick person with messed up brain chemistry, and there were ways to treat that.

I was told, for the first time ever, that I did not have to suffer anymore.

I walked out of that office with a prescription that cost me no more than a $5 copay at the pharmacy.

But I also walked out with something else.  Something free and at the same time priceless.  I walked out of that office with hope.  With the knowledge that it did not have to end with me at the bottom of a gator-infested canal around the corner from where I worked.  Or with me hanging from the old mango tree in my backyard.  With the knowledge that it did not have to end, period.

I would not have had this opportunity without the Affordable Care Act.  Without my own doctor and my own insurance, without the ability to receive treatment without my mother in the room, without the ability to talk about this and not be judged a failure, I would still be planning to die instead of apartment-hunting.

While we still have a long way to go on mental health in this country -- nobody should have to suffer in silence when help is literally sitting three feet away, because they're too ashamed of what they're feeling to speak up -- but making it part of standardized healthcare rather than a Cadillac feature you have to pay for with a blood sacrifice and your firstborn is a huge step in the proper direction.

Thanks, Obama.

Why Both Sides of the Gun Debate Need to Pipe the Fuck Down

We do not have a gun problem.

Yeah, I said it.  This progressive does not think guns are the problem, and has a recurring pipe dream wherein both sides of the gun debate -- both the ammosexuals worshipping Wayne LaPierre as some kind of messianic Rambo instead of the corporate shill he is and the Moms Demand Action reactionaries who can't tell you how the thing they want to ban even works -- sit down and shut up like the children they are and let the adults in the middle do the talking.

"Guns don't kill people" is a stupidly irritating way of phrasing it -- because killing is what guns were originally invented to do; they are not a "misused tool" when you shoot people with them, they are doing exactly what they were built for, so comparing them to cars and screwdrivers and pencils and maxi pads and anything else that was designed for a purpose completely unrelated to killing and wounding is ridiculous -- but the sentiment behind this annoying catchphrase is valid; a gun is an inanimate object.  It can't kill anything without a human operator pulling the trigger.  But it's far easier for people to blame an inanimate object rather than a functionally broken society that encourages violence against one another, because the inanimate object can't talk back to you and tell you you're full of shit.  In the 1950s, it was comic books.  In the 1990s, it was video games.  Today, it's guns.  Tomorrow, it'll be computers.  Or porn.  Yeah, probably porn.

The problem with the NRA side is that "well just arm everybody" is not going to accomplish anything (other than making gun manufacturers rich, which, let's not kid ourselves any longer that that's really the NRA's mission and has been for a long time).  Saying the cure for violence is more guns is like saying the cure for lung cancer is more cigarettes.  Guns are not the sole and direct cause of violence, but throwing more of them at the problem sure as fuck won't help.

Because that is why the very concept of "gun control" in this country is an illusion.  There are just too fucking many of them.

Policing gun sales, especially with the advent of the internet, is like Bill Murray in Caddyshack with the damned gophers.  For a very recent and horrifying illustration of this, look no further than the Las Vegas shooters from a couple weeks ago.  Jerad Miller was a felon, thus already barred from legally buying a gun.  So what's a militant right-wing bigot to do in order to start the revolution and fight The Man?  Buy his guns on Facebook, of course!

Gun sales are against the TOS, but who reads that shit anyway?

My point is that stricter gun control laws would not have stopped Jerad Miller from killing 3 people, because the existing laws had already covered him; he just found a way around them.  Granted, that has not been the case for a frightening number of mass shooters, many of whom purchased their weapons legally (not included in the linked article: Elliot Rodgers, the UCSB shooter, who also purchased 3 handguns completely legal), so the "well, crazy people don't care about the law anyway so why bother?" argument doesn't hold up, either; James Holmes and Jared Loughner obviously cared to play by the rules long enough to obtain their weapons clean.  And I agree that we shouldn't make it easy for people like them.

But the problem is twofold: 1) we don't enforce the laws we've already got, and 2) we have a far bigger problem of too many people who want to kill other people in the first place.

You want to know what would've actually stopped James Holmes?  If the cops had listened to the psychiatrist who was treating him when she told them he was dangerous a little more than a month before the shooting.  The Columbine shooters?  Parents attentive enough to know what their kids were doing (spoiler: building explosives in the garage).  Adam Lanza?  A better and more informed diagnosis (we can start with not blindly using Asperger's as a catch-all for every awkward kid that walks through the door).  Jared Loughner?  Wade Michael Page (the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooter)?  Better access to mental healthcare (Loughner was an undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic at the time of the shooting), and in Page's case, a crackdown on the white supremacist echo chamber that fed his rage machine.

In virtually every shooting of this kind, you'll find warning signs.  Signs which went ignored.  In Elliot Rodgers' case?  A string of Youtube videos and a 140-page manifesto detailing how he was going to get revenge on society for denying him his hot blonde sorority girlfriend.  In Lanza's case?  A fascination with shootings and killing (particularly his obsession with Columbine).  And in Jerad Miller's case?  That he was at the Bundy Ranch supporting the waving of guns at BLM agents was a pretty big clue something wasn't right (his begging for a gun on Facebook to start the revolution was the giant neon signboard).  Warning signs that, had they been heeded, would've allowed law enforcement and/or the mental health system to intervene before something bad happened.

Problem is, we don't care enough about solving the reasons people kill each other.  Caring about who is "right" and how much control they get over people who are "wrong" is a lot easier and more satisfying precisely because it doesn't do jack shit.

That's why we're obsessed with locking up criminals rather than preventing crime (and because the for-profit prison system creates a demand to fill jails, but that's another rant entirely).

Which brings me to my next point: more gun control isn't a magic pill that's going to reduce violent crime rates, either.  It may make it slightly harder for people to commit crime with guns, but it won't really stop anyone.  Because of the aforementioned problem of having too many guns in circulation to effectively police sales.  And because guns do not cause crime; guns are tools used in crimes.  Expecting gun control to reduce crime is like expecting Prohibition to reduce alcoholism, and we all know how well that worked out.

If you want to effectively reduce crime, you have to attack that shit at the source.  People who point to gun bans and lower crime rates in places like Australia, the United Kingdom, and Japan tend to forget that those countries don't just ban guns.  They also have a much better and better-run social safety net than we do here.  All three have universal healthcare.  Australia has a minimum wage more than twice that of the U.S.  The United Kingdom spends the same percentage of its GDP on the health and welfare of its citizens (pensions, education, healthcare, and welfare) that the U.S. spends of its GDP on everything, ever.  In Japan, not only are public universities far more respected than private ones -- the University of Tokyo is #23 worldwide -- but the cost is dirt cheap compared to the U.S., and the student loan structure doesn't leave students broke for life.

Bottom line is that countries with gun bans and some of the lowest homicide rates on the planet are also looking after their citizens far better than we are.  And when people aren't starving, uneducated/barely educated wage slaves, they tend to have fewer reasons to be violent.

Stopping gun violence isn't about stopping guns; it's about stopping violence, period.  If you can curb that, it won't matter who owns a gun because they'll have fewer reasons to point it at anyone.

You want to stop violence?  Stop poverty.  Stop hatred.

Handing out or taking away a gun will not stop either of those.

If you want to stop poverty and hatred?  Don't hand out guns.  Instead, hand out living wages.  Hand out education.  Hand out healthcare.  Hand out mental healthcare.  Hand out birth control.  Hand out compassion.

Don't take away guns.  Instead, take away fear.  Take away uncertainty.  Take away that which makes people feel threatened and rejected.

If you don't want to do that?  Then shut up and get out of the way so other people can.

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.

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.