Bad Comedy: Conservatives and Small Government, Part 2

In my earlier blog, "Bad Comedy:  Conservatives and Small Government", I restricted my thoughts on conservatives and big government to the corporate conservatives, the rich and powerful among us for whom greedily grabbing up as much cash as possible from as many sources of possible is a reason to exist.

But now let me turn to the other type of conservative who, even though they aren't overly-entitled and all about business, would like to severely limit the government's ability to protect the common people just as badly as the corporates.  I'm talking about the social conservatives.

It's weird, but the truth is that the social conservatives are mostly blind to the hijinks that their corporate colleagues are up to.  It's a case of the left hand having no idea what the right hand is up to.  The social conservatives assume, for some bizarre reason, that the billionaire wing of the conservative cause is filled with fellow social conservatives who just happen to be rich.  Not true, but there's no telling them that.  You see, the social conservatives are too busy concentrating on their own idea of government to worry about what the billionaire's are up to.

The social conservatives idea of government has a name.  That name is "theocracy."

What the social conservatives want is a government so "small" that it can sneak into your house through a keyhole, then float into your living room, your bedroom, your bathroom, your hospital room, your library, or wherever free thought and freedom of action might be hiding and kill it.  The social conservatives want the government to grab you by the scruff of your neck and lay down the law to you.  They want the government to tell each and every single one of you how to live your life.

And no, we're not talking about telling you to put on a seat belt while driving, or to not drink until you're 21 or how you have to install wheelchair ramps at your business.  This is nothing so harmless or benign as the so-called "nanny state."

No, this is closer to the "ayatollah state."

This is the big stuff.

These conservatives want to force you to follow their particular brand of religion, their particular brand of patriotism, their particular political ideals, and their particular concept of conformity.  They want to tell you which books you can and cannot read.  They want to tell you which movies and television shows you can watch.  They want to tell you which music you can listen to.  They want to tell you who you can and cannot have sex with (and in some cases, they want to tell you what actions and techniques you're allowed to use while having sex, not to mention whether or not you are allowed to use birth control).

Naturally, doing this sort of dogmatic control over society requires a very big government.

Theocratic America would, effectively, be a police state.  And this is fitting, seeing how much social conservatives absolutely love a huge military, plus lots of police officers, sheriff's deputies, marshals, border guards, FBI agents, and even Texas Rangers.  They think that its never a bad idea to have a posse waiting just off-stage, ready to chase down a n'er-do-well at a moment's notice.  After all, you never know when some of those godless non-conformists might get uppity.  Which is why most social conservatives support the Patriot Act, which allows spying on American citizens without a warrant, and holding suspects for months without charge (and if they are "terror suspects", holding suspects indefinitely not only without charge, but without aid of counsel, either).  These civil rights violations are all perfectly legitimate in the minds of social conservatives.

Similarly, social conservatives are really huge when it comes to the idea of punishment.  They are almost hoping you do something that breaks the code of conformity so they can call down the full force of law on you and force you back into the tiny little mold they have prepared for you.  These conservatives want the government to poke and pry and intervene in the most private aspects of your life, and then lower the boom if they find anything that even hints at you not following their rules.

They believe that their morality should be the state morality.  They believe that they -- and only they -- should have the power to determine whether it is legal or illegal for you to enter the country, stay in the country, get a job, vote, build a church (if you follow the same religion as they do, okay; if you don't, forget it), wear a head scarf, smoke pot, learn about science (especially evolution), make the art you're inspired to create, allow your brain-dead family member to die with peace and dignity, allow yourself to die with peace and dignity in the face of a painful and terminal illness, have an abortion, or get married.

And if you do anything they deem illegal, you're dragged to the courthouse where a judge sits in front of a huge representation of the Ten Commandments will oversee your case.  If you're a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Sikh, a Shinto, an aboriginal or tribal, an agnostic, or worst of all an atheist, you shouldn't hold your breath when it comes to getting a fair and impartial trial in this theocratic police state.

That is the wet dream of the social conservatives.  And it would be impossible without big government.  The wars waged by social conservatives on immigration, women' rights in general and specific, abortion, science, civil rights for minorities, the LGBT community, the atheist community, artists, actors, writers, musicians, video game manufacturers, and anyone else they don't like are the most visible symptoms of what kind of big government the social conservatives want to impose.

They want big government to put big restrictions on all of these, and they want those restrictions written into law.  Preferably, they want them written into the US Constitution and forever after enforced by the great big theocratic police state.

Let me tell you a story that reveals, in my opinion, a perfect insight into the true agenda of the social conservatives.  It is a stunning portrayal of the social conservative's notions of "small government" in action.  This is the story of Michael Schiavo and his wife, Terri.

Terri Schiavo collapsed with a heart attack on February 25th, 1990, while she was in her Saint Petersberg, Florida, home.  She was not discovered immediately, and unfortunately suffered massive brain damage due to lack of oxygen to her brain.  She spent two and a half months in a coma, and was then diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state.  The doctors did everything they could to rehabilitate Mrs. Schiavo, but were unable to change her condition.

In 1998, Michael Schiavo, her husband, petitioned the Sixth Circuit Court of Florida to remove Terri's feeding tube persuant to Florida law, allowing the body of his wife to pass away rather than linger as it was.  He was opposed by Terri Schiavo's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, who argued that Mrs. Schiavo was actually conscious and responsive (despite doctors' statements to the contrary).  The court determined that Terri Schiavo had left instructions saying that she would not want to continue living under such circumstances, and her feeding tube was removed on April 24, 2001.

But then in swooped the conservatives, led by professional shit-stirrer Randal Terry.

Terry's hand-picked "experts" argued that Mrs. Schiavo's case might not be so helpless.  They insisted that they had a right to butt into this most painful and intimate family decision on behalf of Mrs. Schiavo's parents.  They talked about how Michael Schiavo had "betrayed" Terri by moving on with his life, and thus had no right to make such decisions (despite the fact that, under the law, he was the only person empowered to make such decisions).

The conservative-controlled Florida legislature quickly passed the so-called "Terri's Law," that allowed then-Governor Jeb Bush (younger brother of then-President George W. Bush) to intervene directly in the case.  He ordered Mrs. Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted and sent state troopers to remove Terri Schiavo from her husband's guardianship.

A judge quickly struck down "Terri's Law" as unconstitutional.  The conservatives appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, where once again it was struck down.  Conservatives around the United States were absolutely outraged.  Not at this blatant case of big government interfering in the private life of a family, but by "activist judges" who wouldn't let the conservatives butt in.

(These activist judges were, by the way, just following the law.)

The affair went up the conservative chain of command, all the way to the Republican-controlled Congress and then-President George W. Bush.  Both Michael Schiavo and his wife, the persistently vegetative Terri Schiavo, were subpoenaed to testify before Congress!  Republican congressmen and senators had a grandstand-a-palooza, demanding the ability -- no, not the ability, the right -- to take control of the case out of the hands of the State of Florida and into their own.

So much for states rights, which is usually a standard fallback position for social conservatives when they can't get their way nationally, all the way back to when they refused to give up their ownership of slaves.  Congress passed a bill usurping Florida's jurisdiction, and George W. Bush flew back from vacation just to sign it.  So this was twice in this single case that social conservatives changed or created brand new laws giving them unprecedented power in order to pursue their need to impose their own sense of morality and justice on other people.

It was at this juncture that a private yet amazingly explosive memo was leaked to the press in which the leadership of the Republican party suggested that the Schiavo case offered "a great political issue" and that the Republican party could use it to "stick it to" the Florida Democrats.  Suddenly sympathy for those on the side of keeping the brain-dead Mrs. Schiavo alive seemed to fall off.  After "Terri's Law" was struck down and the US Supreme Court quite intelligently refused to get involved in the whole mess (unlike when they decided unilaterally who won the 2000 presidential election), again Jeb Bush ordered Florida state troopers to take Mrs. Schiavo from her husband's custody with the intention of spiriting her out of state.

No one has ever actually revealed where they were planning on kidnapping her to, but personally I suspect that she would have surfaced somewhere in Texas, a state where the Bush family has a metric fuck-ton of political power.

The Florida Supreme Court instructed the state police to stand down and ordered Governor Bush to shut up or be held in contempt.  Bush reluctantly, and with much gnashing of teeth, complied, though there was enormous pressure from conservatives in the state and elsewhere on him to just defy the law already and damn the consequences.

Shortly thereafter, Terri Schiavo was mercifully allowed to die, and the whole sordid affair came to a conclusion.

An autopsy later revealed that Terri Schiavo's brain was way too damaged and atrophied for any possible consciousness to have ever existed.  She really had been in a vegetative state all along.  The whole hullaballoo had been unnecessary and cruel.  And not only had the conservatives been shown to be wrong -- again -- they revealed precisely the lengths they would go to in order to stick their faces into other people's very personal, very private affairs.  They pulled every nasty trick in the book, hurriedly writing and passing new law and plucking the highest strings of government, from the president to the Supreme Court, in order to impose their very small version of morality upon a single innocent family.

This example should flash a warning to anyone who believes that social conservatives really want a "small government."  Because it is clear that their compulsion to govern the most private and personal aspects of our lives shows up in their beliefs concerning abortion, gay and lesbian rights, religious freedoms, science and art, and many other facets of our lives.  And the irony is that apparently social conservatives can't see how contradictory their own belief system is.

Recall that these same people are the ones who chirp the loudest about freedom and the rights of the individual and self-determination when it comes to their own affairs.  When its them, they want Big Government to keep its damned hands off.  But that goes out the window when they find out someone else isn't conforming to their narrow-minded views regarding proper behavior.  When that happens, they want Big Government to step in and shut that shit down.

Hypocrisy writ large.  Its sort of crazy, when you think of it.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

There is a persistent myth going around in the United States.

This myth states that conservatives are the "better guardians" of the US economy.  Everyone knows that its the "Tax and Spend Liberals" who generate recessions and debt, after all.  Everybody knows this.  This so-called "fact" is so well known that even most liberals don't question it.

Problem is, its false.  Not true.  A lie.  A bunch of hot air.  A load of bullshit, in other words.

If you take a close look at the usual conservative strategies when it comes to economic policy in this country, you find out pretty quickly that there are two problems with this myth that make it almost impossible for it to be true.


Those two problems are:

1. Conservatives are greedy.
2. Conservatives are amoral.

Thus, putting conservatives in charge of the economy is like going into business with the Mafia.  If you're part of the Mafia, you're probably going to come out with your pockets stuffed with cash, sitting pretty on top of the world.  If you're not a part of the Mafia, sooner or later you're going to get shanked and left to rot in some alley.

Now, for the sake of fairness I should say that when I talk about conservatives and how they mess up the economy I am not talking about social conservatives.  Social conservatives are the ones who want to restrict a woman's rights regarding birth control, and want to make sure that homosexuals are punished for the crime of existing, and who want to make sure that English is the only language spoken in this country.  Things like that.  I'm not talking about those conservatives right now.

I'm talking about the "professional" conservatives.  The corporate conservatives who represent the real wealth and power of the Republican party.  When it comes to the economy, the social conservatives are passengers just along for the ride.  And its a really bumpy, bumpy ride.

The most important thing to remember about corporate conservatives is this:  they want all governmental economic policy aimed at aiding the richest people in America become even richer.  They want the government to basically be at the beck and call of the corporations so that they can line their pockets with ever-increasing amounts of money.  Now, compare this to liberal economic policy, which is aimed at helping Joe Middle-Class thrive.

That last paragraph is American economics in a nutshell, by the way.

The conservative ideal of coddling the rich is called "supply-side economics."  Its also known as "trickle-down economics" (and, humorously, was once called "Voodoo economics" by then presidential candidate George H. Bush back in 1980 when he was running against Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination).  The core of this philosophy is low, low, low taxes for the rich and the corporations, and utter deregulation of commerce and the markets.

Historically, this policy generates cycles of boom and bust.  Its an "economic bubble" generator that produces no lasting stability and no lasting prosperity.  It gave us the Gilded Age and the economic panic of the 1890s.  It gave us the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression.  And most recently, it produced the Reagan-Bush and Clinton-Bush serial bubbles, the Savings and Loan disaster, the 2008 Bank Bailout, and then of course the Great Recession that the American economy is still very much mired in.

"Trickle down" works great if you start off at the top, but not so great if you're in the middle or, heaven help you, at the bottom.  The famous "trickle down" flood that Ronald Reagan promised would "float all boats" never seens to quite materialize, even as the people at the top of the economic pile, and the corporations they run and own, record record profits.

The liberal economic philosophy based on supporting the Middle Class is called "demand-side economics."  Its also known as Keynesian economics, after its creator and chief promoter, John Maynard Keynes.  Keynes work was adopted by Franklin Roosevent, and his policies created a relative calm in the American economy that lasted for nearly fifty years.  That calm created the largest expansion of the Middle Class in the history of the world.

Remember that "Golden Age" that Republicans are so nostalgic about, when a Middle Class family with only the father working could afford a decent house, a new car every few years, braces and piano lessons for little Susie, and everyone's covered by adequate health insurance and a decent pension was all but guaranteed?  When many companies cared enough about their employees that they paid them a living wage and considered them family and not just replaceable cogs in the machine?  When unions were strong, taxes on the rich and the corporations, not to mention regulation of business practices, were much tighter than today, and yet everyone was thriving economically?

Yeah, all that was created by the liberal economic policies of John Maynard Keynes.

The moral of this story is that the corporate conservative emphasis on making sure that the rich and powerful are taken care of first is compeletely backward if what you want to do is create a strong economy.  It doesn't matter how much "supply" you have, if there's no "demand" for it, you aren't going to sell it and your economy is going to fail spectacularly.  It takes demand to fuel an economy, and it takes a strong Middle Class to create demand.

Bottom line:  when the Middle Class is thriving , so is everyone else!

Think about it for just a moment, please.

• If you are poor, but the Middle Class is doing well, there's a good chance if you work hard and cover your bases that you'll find yourself suddenly a member of the Middle Class.  Economic improvement.
• If you're Middle Class and doing well, there's every chance that you'll suddenly find yourself climbing into the upper ranges of the Middle Class, or who knows, maybe into the Upper Class.
• And if you're already Upper Class, when the people who work for you are doing well, they're spending more on the companies you've invested in, which means you get richer too!

This was the situation enjoyed in America right after World War II:  the economy was humming along like a well-oiled machine, there was butt-loads of upward mobility to be had, and pretty much everyone was doing better than they had been before the War.

On the other hand, when the Middle Class is getting constantly hammered, like they have been since the 1980s, the only mobility is downward.  Middle Class people get laid off and become poor people, and poor people are so poor that they're stuck there with no chance of improving their condition at all.

Of course, no matter what, the rich do just fine, but then they're rich.  They would be prospering even if every non-rich person in America was reduced to economic serfdom.  As the saying goes, its easy to get to home plate when you start out on third base.  But when the only people thriving are the folks who are already thriving, and none of them are willing to share with the less fortunate, you're courting disaster.  Thus, the booms, busts, panics, crashes, depressions, recessions, and bail outs.

So, what you have to do is ask yourself a simple question:  which economic policy works out best for you and your family?  If you're a so-called "one percenter," then obviously trickle-down works much, much better for you.  But if you're in the vast population of people who aren't in the one percent, why the hell would you ever consider voting for people who want to continue keeping you in the poor house?  Seriously, are you insane?

But wait!  There's more!

It turns out that corporate conservatives are lying to you about more than just the effects of trickle-down economics.  Corporate conservatives spend a lot of their time telling you how evil the government is, and how government spending is a sin and how it must be stopped when they're asking you for your vote.  But have you ever noticed that when they're in power, they don't actually do anything about it?

Oh sure, they promise to cut government spending, but once in office they actually do the exact opposite.  They lied to you to gain your trust and to get elected, but they never once had any intention of cutting government spending.  All those platitudes about "shrinking big government" were just that:  platitudes.  Conservatives simply love deficit spending and big government.  The bigger the better, in fact, because it allows them to manipulate things for their own benefit all around the world.

A look at the facts prove that conservatives are the worst money managers and the most profligate spenders of all.  The comparison between conservative spending and liberal spending isn't even close.  Conservatives accuse liberals of being "tax and spenders," but the truth is, conservatives are "charge and spenders," which is much, much worse.  They put everyone on the national credit card without any clue as to how things will be paid for.

"Tax and spend" is a caricature of liberals, just another way conservatives lie, but at least taxing and spending provides some means to pay for what is being spent.  If a conservative ran your personal economy in the same way they manage the national economy, you'd be up to your ears in overwhelming debt within hours of you handing your checkbook to them.

Corporate conservatives continually bleat about this myth of a "small government," as if in the modern world there could even really be such a thing.  Its all a big web of lies.  Conservatives are liars.  They say one thing, and do the exact opposite.

You know which two presidents were the biggest promoters of the idea of small government in the history of the United States?  If you guessed Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, give yourself a cookie.  Now, can you guess which two presidents were the two biggest expanders of the federal government in the history of the United States?  If you once-again guessed Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, you get another cookie.

Even worse than putting everything on credit is the truth about what all that money was spent on.  Rather than spending it on our crumbling national infrastructure, or on health care, or on education, or maybe on cleaning up the environment, it was mostly given away to the rich and the corporations.  And when it wasn't handed out to people who were already sitting on huge stacks of cash, it was being spent on useless and meaningless military adventurism.  We the People... got almost nothing from Conservative largess.

Tax cuts for the rich and a policy of allowing corporations to wriggle out of their fair share of the tax burden are the primary reasons why our government operates under an astronomical amount of debt.  Ronald Reagan went hog-wild on military spending as part of a plan to "kill" the already-dying Soviet Union by way of the arms race.  But that was just a warm-up to George W. Bush's squandering of $3 trillion, most of which ended up in the pockets of his friends and his father's friends.  That $3 trillion includes at least $19 billion that simply vanished.  Oops!  Its gone!  The money vanished and we don't know where it is!  Sorry about that, heh heh heh...

Can you imagine the Republican reaction if someone in the Obama administration managed to just misplace $19 billion?

And then there's the tens of billions that we know -- that we can absolutely fucking prove -- were slid across the metaphorical table and into the pockets of Haliburton, KBR, and Blackwater.  All of which corporations were owned and operated, it must be noted, by friends and family members of both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

That's the conservative economic management style.  "Grab as much cash as you can for you and your friends and fuck everyone else."  And they're not even going to buy you dinner first.

Most corporate conservatives know damn well that trickle-down economics just doesn't work.  They know its a lie.  Worse, they know its effectively theft.  But they like getting rich and have no moral center at all, so they stick to propaganda about cutting spending, lowering taxes, shrinking the government, and protecting the so-called "job creators."  The irony is, they are also not doing anything illegal.  They're rigged the system so that it only benefits them, which as I noted isn't illegal.  Its just utterly corrupt and immoral.  Of course, like the horde of bloody-minded pirates they are, they don't care about morals either.

Each time a new election comes around, the conservatives trot out the same old bullshit.  The Republican Lie Machine is currently (as I write this) trying to pin everything bad that's going on with the economy on Barack Obama.  They promise to cut government spending and usher in "small government", ignoring the fact that government spending is the lowest its been since Lyndon Johnson was in office.  We've heard this bullshit before:  Reagan, George H. Bush, George W. Bush... even John McCain and Mitt Romney.  Every single conservative running for office uses this same playbook.  "Let's get government out of the way, and everyone will prosper."

DO NOT FOR ONE MOMENT BELIEVE A WORD OF IT!

Once in power, they won't keep their word, and if they ever actually tried, the crushing weight of economic debt would be borne by the Middle Class and the poor, while the ultra-rich and the corporations -- who caused and then greatly benefited from that same debt -- would continue sucking up all the available wealth they could, and would do so with a smile on their face.

Consider, for just a moment, the absolute mean-spirited hate that drove the most recent (as I write this) Republican-created government shut-down.  Conservatives had absolutely no problem whatsoever with throwing millions of people out of work, cutting off Social Security benefits, shutting down desperately needed government survives, torpedoing the financial markets, and even risking defaulting on our national debt in a childish attempt to force the liberals to give them what they wanted.

Prosecutors call this sort of thing "extortion," and its usually considered a felony.

The conservatives who did this were thumbing their noses in contempt at the very concept of democracy.  They didn't like the fact that the other side of the political aisle won the election, so they threw a temper tantrum.  Problem is, this sort of action is nothing short of economic terrorism.  Never once have the liberals ever come close to doing this to their own nation!  Yet conservatives seem to be embracing such immoral and dangerous acts as a part of their standard economic strategy.  When you don't win, or if a law is passed that you don't like, just throw a temper tantrum and threaten to flush the country's economy down the toilet unless you're given your way.

Al-Queda couldn't have dreamed of a better ally than Congressional conservatives.

On Utilitarianism, the Greater Good, Moral Choices, and Whistle Blowers

In modern America, the prevailing ethical philosophy has always seemed to be utilitarianism, where our decisions are based on the best possible outcome for the most possible people.  Or at least, its supposed to be.  And I also supposed that this is probably the best guiding principle for a truly democratic society.  But I think there are limitations to that philosophy.

I have been thinking about this because I recently read an article about the use of torture on terror suspects and the fact that they (the government, that is) have discovered that some of the "terror suspects" that they've tortured (and let's not use any euphamisms like "agressive interrogation techniques"; let's call a spade a spade here:  it was torture) were innocent people caught up in a wide net and assumed guilty because they were so caught.

Under the utilitarianism philosophy, torturing a few innocent people is acceptable if it results in saving the lives of many more innocent people.  "The greater good" and all that.  If torturing terror suspects gets us information that prevents further attacks, then the cost (that we're intentionally injuring people who have done nothing wrong and do not deserve to be tortured at all... assuming that there are people who do deserve to be tortured) is acceptable.

The problem, as I see it, is that I think we as a society have fallen to the trap of believing that just because torturing people meets the basic standards of our utilitarianist framework, the decision to accept that we will torture people was the right one to make.  We have forgotten that there are some things that are wrong, regardless of the benefits.  Regardless of how many lives a particular action saves, committing that action absolutely, and without question, the wrong thing to do.

We have to be willing to take a stand.  We have to be willing to say, "No, this is wrong by definition and we will have no part in it regardless of any other considerations."  We must draw a line in the sand and say, "this far and no further."

I do recognize that such moral purity is subject to just as much abuse as any other philosophical position. But overall, I prefer to live in a world where someone is willing to stand up and say, "This is wrong!" and mean it.  Especially when we have somehow managed to convince ourselves that it is somehow acceptable to torture people, rationalizing it away with the morally dubious notion that it is justified as being for "the greater good."

I don’t like "slippery slope" arguments, but if we accept torture as an unpleasant necessity,  what else will we accept?  Will we accept the intentional death, the sacrifice if you will, of an innocent child?

This is a horrible choice, but the truth is, we've already seen that under some circumstances, our society has in the past said "Yes" to this very question.  In some cases, the sacrifice of a child, who has no idea why it is being sacrificed and who has committed no wrong we can name, has been judged an acceptable price to pay for the greater good.

So what about two children?

Or how about ten?

Or a hundred?

How about a thousand?  You willing to murder a thousand innocent children if it means the rest of our society is untroubled?  If it serves the "greater good"?

More?

Tell me, people, where do we draw the line?  Where do we stop?

No.  We as a society need to uphold basic standards.  We need to be willing to take a stand on principle against those people who would continue such blatant wrongs and point out that they have lost their way.

As for those people already doing this, you don't have to agree with them, but I think you must respect them.  Because we need such people in our society.  We need to hear them.  Personally, I'd hate to live in a world where such dissent is suppressed so that we can all pretend that everything is hunky dory, while behind the scenes our collective soul is eroded piece by piece due to our choosing "the greater good" over basic morality.

The Friend Zone, the Appliance Zone, and the Reality of Relationships

Last night I encountered it again.  A bunch of people were going on about the "friend zone."

"The friend zone is just another piece of male bullshit from guys who are nice to girls because they want to have sex, and when they don't get it are disappointed."  This continued on with the quote "A woman is not a machine you can keep putting coins into until sex drops out of it."  Another person said, "The entire concept of the friend zone is about self-centeredness.  The guy is so self-centered he thinks he's owed sex for being courteous."

Well... that's certainly one demented way to look at it, I suppose.

Of course, its also an insulting and painfully sexist way of looking at it.  These women are once again assuming that all men, especially the "nice" ones, are only out to get sex.  That nice men are only "nice" because they want to fuck someone.  That the guys who use the phrase "friend zone" are just disappointed because instead of getting some pussy, they're getting a "consolation prize" in the form of a woman's friendship.


Once again men are reduced to the status of sex-obsessed lackwits whose sole motivation for anything is the uncontrollable urge to have sex with anything possessing a vagina.  If you can't see why this is offensive and sexist, then you're part of the problem.  Just sayin'.


The point of this isn't that this view is sexist.  The point is that this view is just wrong, period.

God forbid a person, whether male or female, occasionally wants something more than friendship.  Friendships are important, but occasionally a person, again whether they be male or female, wants something more than friendship.  Sometimes they want a solid romantic long-term relationship that, I don't know, might lead to marriage, kids, and a lifetime together.  And if the people in question are "disappointed" about anything, its that a person they are interested in has let them know in the worst possible way that such prospects just aren't in the cards.

Consider for a moment the ultimate meaning of "the only reason a man is nice to a woman is that he wants to have sex with her."  I'm fairly nice to my mother.  I take her out to dinner all the time.  Occasionally buy her flowers to brighten up her day.  Take her to the movies because she doesn't get out of the house all that often.  Apparently, its all because I want to have sex with her, right?

Right?


I know this is going to come to a great surprise to those women who believe the bullshit I quoted in the first paragraph, but there are a lot of men out there who are truly nice guys.  They're interested more in being in a loving, supportive caring relationship than they are in just getting into a woman's pants.  Oh sure, if sex becomes available as a part of that relationship, that's fine.  But their first motive, the motive that drives them to be supportive, to cherish the woman he is interested in and treat her as if she was a Queen, isn't, never has been, and never will be sex.  Its all about love, folks.

And no, I'm not saying that the women in question owe the men "romance".  Or sex.  Or anything at all, for that matter.  You're all adults, and you can do whatever the heck you want to do, and if that means telling a man who is interested in you that you simply aren't that's your perogative.  You can date whomever you want, or not, as you please.  You can't help who you like, and if you don't like the guy in question you don't like him.  But keep in mind that goes both ways.  He can't help who he likes, and if he likes you, he likes you.  And it doesn't mean he isn't allowed to be disappointed that you told him he has no chance at all.  He's allowed his emotional reactions just like you're allowed yours.  He wanted more, and you rebuffed him, usually by saying something like "You're such a good friend" and "Why can't I ever find anyone who's as wonderful as you are?"  And let me be honest:  you crouching the rejection in such kind terms only twisted the knife you just stabbed him in the heart with all the more.

By the way, the "friend zone" does exist for women.  Its not just a male-only thing.  Its just that when it happens to women they call it "unrequited love."  Unrequited love is the subject of romance novels, and soap operas, and movies, and other forms of popular entertainment.  No one writes articles entitled "Unrequited Love:  A Sign of Misogyny and Rape Culture," as they do about the "friend zone".  Its the same damned thing, but as with so many other things in regard to men and women and how they interact, the double-standard is pretty fucking strong.

And yeah, it happened to me once.  I met Karen in kindergarten, when we were both six or so.  Over the ensuing decade, we were in nearly ever class together in school.  We hung out on the weekends.  We saw movies together and played board games and went swimming and basically became best friends.  I carried her books for her and helped her when she asked me to and I listened to her when she had problems and needed to talk.  By the time we were 16, I was pretty firmly in love with her.

I'm a classic romantic.  If you're in a relationship with me, you can expect flowers and poetry and dinners I cooked just for you and making sure you're happy to the best of my ability.  For me, its not about the sex, and it never has been.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy sex when there is sex to be enjoyed, but I do not and have never really appreciated sex outside of the context of a committed relationship, because its always felt empty and not as emotionally satisfying.  If given the choice between some hot, heavy, intense one-time sex with a stranger tomorrow, and a long-term loving relationship that lasted for years before the subject of sex ever came up, if it ever actually came up at all, I'd choose the relationship.  Every time.

So anyway, Karen.  I was, as I said, firmly in love with her by the time we were both 16.  But she was more interested in the jocks at school.  That I remember, she dated three of them during our junior high and high school years.  Each one of them was a conceited prick, and their relationships with Karen ended the way a relationship with a conceited prick always ends.  And when she'd show up at my door, crying over having her heart broken, again, I'd console her and make her tea and tell her that she was worth more than they were and that she'd recover and life would move on.

I know this will come as a surprise to the women I quoted in paragraph one, but at no time did the thought "I'll be a nice guy to her and then I'll get to fuck her" enter my mind.  What was in my mind was that my friend, the girl I did have feelings for, was hurting, and it was my job as her friend to make her feel better by letting her know that a breakup with a schmuck was not the end of the world.  And it worked.  After a good cry and a long talk, she was feeling better.  Then she'd go out, find the next schmuck jock, and the cycle would begin all over again.

Except that third time, after the good cry and the long talk, Karen looked right at me and smiled.  She put her hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and said, "Why can't I ever find anyone who's as wonderful as you, Jack?"


Yeah, that hurt.


It hurt something serious.


I have no doubt she meant that question to be a compliment to me.


But it still hurt.


It hurt so bad that it made me reevaluate my relationship with Karen.  And it changed our relationship, too.  We were never as close again as we were before that.  You see, what changed was that I became aware of my purpose in Karen's life.  I wouldn't call it being in "the friend zone", I'd call it being in the "appliance zone."

I'd thought about our relationship and I came to the realization that, for a decade or so, I'd been a pillar of support for Karen.  Every time she was upset, I was there to help her deal.  When she needed something done and couldn't do it, she'd ask me to do it and I'd do it gladly.  I'd buy her snacks without ever asking for her assistance paying.  I'd bring her ice cream when she was sick, and cookies when she was unhappy.  I'd buy her birthday and Christmas presents and occasionally would surprise her with things I knew she'd like just to see her smile.

And she never once reciprocated.  In ten years, she never once showed up at my house when I was sick with an ice cream cone.  She never once helped me deal with an emotional issue I was going through.  She never once consoled me when I broke up with one of the girls I dated during High School.  She never once offered to carry my books or help paint my bedroom or any of the other services I'd given her over the decade.

My relationship with Karen, it turned out, was all take and no give, with Karen in the role of taker and I in the role of giver.  And the realization that I'd been used by this girl I thought was my friend soured me on her.

As I said, I call it the "Appliance Zone."  The "appliance zone" is when when you are used for favors, or as a source of gifts, or emotional support, or unpaid labor by others for years with little to no return on your courtesy.  Now, don't get me wrong, lending an extra set of hands occasionally when someone needs to move a couch is what friends do.  But being asked for, and having it taken for granted that you will supply, an unending series of "favors" by someone who has never had the slightest thought of reciprocating such behavior, should the situation be reversed, is when you are being used (or even abused) as an appliance.

Friendship -- real friendship -- is not a one way street.

And don't think that Karen was the only person to treat me this way.  I can't tell you how many times I've been there for people, both men and women, who will tell me all their problems.  I listen, I offer advice when they need it.  I help out in all kinds of other ways too.  And then when its my turn to need support I can't find any, especially from the people I'd previously helped.

To give you an idea of how bad it can get, I was once asked to help plan and cater a party for a couple of "friends" who, once the planning was done and the food delivered, cheerfully informed me that I wasn't actually invited to the party I just helped put together and spent nearly twelve hours cooking for.  Folks, I'm a professional chef; when people ask me for my services as a caterer, I charge $60 an hour, and I am worth every penny.  If they'd asked me to cut them a break on my prices for catering, I'd have done it because they were friends.  But the way I see it, they stole from me under the guise of me "being a friend and helping out."

It should be assumed that I am no longer friends with that couple.

I want it made clear, though, that I do not pretend that women do this to men more often than the reverse.  I will say, however, that more women have used me like this than men.  Of course, some of my female friends I've talked to (and I should point out that these female friends have never "appliance zoned" me) say that they've been treated that way more often by men.  It might just be that people of the other gender treat us like this more often, regardless to which gender we happen to belong.

I still help people out when I'm asked.  I'll even help strangers, because that's just who I am.  I don't expect anything in return except being treated decently and being treated with respect.  But it can be damned annoying when my helpfulness gets taken for granted and used.  Being taken for granted creates a resentment in you, and the resentment that builds up is utterly reasonable.  That's not being treated decently, and its not being treated with respect.

Its being treated like an appliance.  Like a toaster.

I find it significant that when you are there for other people, and are getting used by these other people, without ever receiving any form of basic courtesy in return, when you suddenly stand up for yourself and object to being treated like an appliance, all of a sudden you are a bitter villain who apparently has been keeping score and are now expecting a reward.

And that, of course, utterly misses the point.  Its not about keeping score.  Its not about receiving a reward.  Its about being treated respectfully.  And if you don't think that I, or any other human being, deserves to be respected, you can go fuck yourself.

When genuinely nice people, be they men or women, get overlooked time and time and time again for people who are less generous, it sends a really strong message that we, the truly nice people, need to either become less generous towards other people, or else need to accept that we're just not going to find anyone who is worth the effort.


I'm not saying that there aren't some true assholes out there who are just trying to get into your pants, and I'm actually sorry that you might have encountered one of these fuckheads.  But the generalizations about men need to stop.  Just because a handful of men are jackholes does not mean we are all jackholes.  A lot of us are actually decent human beings, and we try to do right by other people.  We do not pull the bullshit you are complaining about.

And the zone, whether you call it the friend zone or the appliance zone, exists.  It isn't bullshit.  Its quite real.  And it sucks major ass.  Both men and women suffer through it even though no one uses those terms when the genders are reversed.  It even happens in same-sex relationships.  It is what happens when one person wants something more with someone else, and the other person doesn't feel the same way.  It isn't a consolation prize.  It is a specific relationship state:  Person A wants more.  Person B doesn't, but wants to remain friends with Person A.

No conspiracies involved.  No ulterior motives.  That's all it is.

Conservatives Hate America, Part 2

Within days of Barack Obama's election to the presidency, Mitch McConnell, who was Senate Minority Leader at the time, declared that the number one priority of the conservatives in the Senate and the House of Representatives was not to create jobs, not to strengthen our ailing economy, not to defend our nation against terror or foreign aggression, and not to serve We the People... to the best of their ability.  No, the number one priority of the conservatives was making Barack Obama a one-term president.

Since then, the conservatives have tried to block every move the Obama administration has made.  Every proposal, every policy change, every appointment, every military decision, every funding decision, every enforcement decision made by the president and his staff has been opposed by the conservatives.  No exceptions.  There are no counter-examples.  Everything, no matter how necessary, no matter how inexpensive, no matter how innocuous.  The conservatives are perfectly happy to allow America to sink if it gives them a chance to paint Barack Obama as the bad guy.  They are willing to allow our economy to go down the tubes, and even to damage the security and well-being of the American people, if it means they stop Barack Obama from succeeding at anything whatsoever.

I'm quite convinced that if they could sneak someone into the man's bedroom, they'd try to sabotage the president when he was tying his shoes.

This tactic of blocking and saying no to everything reached its absolute low-point when Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, and Kevin McCarthy took the full faith and credit of the United States of America, not to mention the idea of a democratically elected government, hostage by threatening to not raise the debt limit, thereby forcing the United States to default on its loans and debts that previous Congresses had promised to pay.  Conservative grand-standing earned the United States the very first downgrade in its debt rating since the country was founded 238 years ago.

And with no shame whatsoever, they then blamed Barack Obama for the downgrade.

In 2013, they did it all again by actually shutting down the government unless President Obama defunded the Affordable Care Act.  There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States that allows any branch of government (much less any political party) to shut down the operations of that government in order to prevent another branch from doing its job by enacting a law that was passed by Congress, signed by the president, and verified as legal and constitutional by the Supreme Court.  They had no authority granting them this power.  They just did it.  In my opinion, this crossed the line into "treason" territory.  They were actively working to harm the nation.  Treason.

And believe me, you can bet that if the roles were reversed, if a Republican president had been in office and it had been Democrats who shut everything down, the conservative-controlled media would be howling for blood.

One of the standard conservative tactics is to claim the sky is falling.  They did it with public education, the rights of workers, women's suffrage, Social Security, Medicare, voting rights for minorities, the Americans With Disabilities act, Equal Employment Opportunity, and many other programs.  These things cannot be put into place, they argue, because it will harm the nation and ruin America.  Except, of course, none of those things ruined America.  They never have any facts to back up their nonsense, mind you, but they're going to tell you its bad over and over and over and over until some gullible schmuck starts believing them.   And now the "train wreck" is the Affordable Care Act.

Again and again, conservatives try to impose a rigid ideology on the people of the United States that is based purely on myth and is totally lacking in what intelligent people call "empirical evidence".  This ideology has been repeatedly proven to be nothing more than a total disaster for the country.  Multiple times in American history, so-called "laissez-faire" economic policies (that is, those policies whose central tenets are "just let the market run, it will sort itself out") have torpedoed the American economy.  Conservatives are either too ignorant to change or are actively refusing to learn this lesson.  Either way, they continue to place America at risk with their recklessness and their dedication to a debunked economic theory.

These days they seem to be doubling down on it.  They bellow constantly for less and less regulation of business, less and less oversight, less and less control.  And they do this just a short time after this very thing -- a wildly speculative banking and investment industry -- nearly drove the economy of the entire globe right into the toilet.  These conservatives, who would gleefully bankrupt the entire planet just so they can personally accumulate a few more millions of follars in their personal accounts, are the greatest threat our nation has ever faced since the Civil War almost tore us into two countries.  Abraham Lincoln said, "If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher."  He was speaking the truth.  We're not going to be destroyed by any other nation, and we're certainly not going to be destroyed by terrorists.

No.  Sadly, its going to be people who call themselves Americans who bring this country to its knees from within.  Don't believe me?  Consider this statement made by an anonymous writer in the the newsletter of the Virginia Republican Party, back in 2012.

We shall not have any coarse (sic) but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November.  This Republic cannot survive for four more years underneath this political socialist ideologue.

Right.  Barack Obama, whose personal politics and voting record reveal that his ideals are those of a moderate Republican despite his membership in the Democratic party, on whose watch the economy has mostly recovered and on whose watch the stock market value has doubled, is a socialist ideologue.  The Virginia Republican who wrote this quote is either an utter moron, a deliberate liar, or (most likely) both.  He and those who agree with him are threatening to thwart the democratic system, and thus are skating on the thin ice of treason.

To quote the president, let me be clear.  A real patriot loves America.  He (or she) loves the land, the people, and the ideals on which this nation was founded.  A conservative has absolutely no respect for any of that.  A conservative doesn't give a tinker's damn about protecting America's natural beauty from environmental damage.  A conservative doesn't give a damn about the animals who live on that land.  A conservative hates pretty much all other Americans.  And a conservative absolutely does not believe in the founding principles of this country, including the ideal of democracy itself.

Instead, they bitch and moan about having to pay their fair share of the tax burden, obstruct and endanger the operation of the government, thereby harming the American people, and actively hate (and promote the hating of) America itself.

Patriots?  Not even close.

On the contrary, conservatives are a temper-tantrum away from committing High Treason.