This
is going up late. There has been a cold making its way through the household,
and it appears to be my turn.
Even
before that, knowing what I wanted to blog about did not feel great, because it
feels so repetitive. I say the same things all the time.
It
is true that this blog is for me. It helps me work out my thoughts, and keep
them organized, and there is a certain amount of discipline involved in posting
daily. All of that has worth to me, and I know I don't really have a wide
audience, so I shouldn't be expecting to change the world anyway. I guess it
just feels self-evident to me that there are changes needed, and that they
don't happen is discouraging. I don't need to have a wide audience; the
information is out there.
Clearly
it must be time to do something lighter, like review comics again, but I do
think I need to spend a few posts on The Act of Killing, and I am still
going to try to make today's point again. I believe yesterday I promised a
grand unified theory of things that annoy me.
There
is a common thread between defending hip hop and hating respectability politics
on Monday, and believing that there is potential in everyone, and that everyone
has something to say on Tuesday, and even writing about how you need to not
lose your feelings of love for people on Sunday. It is so common to make these
divisions. We are gifted people and you are not. These are hard-working people
and these are lazy people. Those are ignorant liberals but we know the truth.
It's such a load of crap.
I
can believe that their are instinctive elements in it, but there is a lot of
conditioning in it too, and somehow the other group always ends up being less
valuable in some way.
I
believe that when some people hold on so tightly to prejudice and privilege,
part of it is knowing that while they are not at the top, they are still above
someone, and that feels like enough. I may not understand that mindset enough
to really argue it. I do want to go back to this quote from Marriage For
Moderns that I used in a different post:
"If
a woman can find adequate self-expression through a career rather than through
marriage, well and good. Many young women, however, overlook the fact that
there are numerous careers that do not furnish any medium or offer any
opportunity for self-expression. Besides they do not realize that only the
minority of women, as the minority of men, have anything particularly
worthwhile to express."
That
attitude infuriates me. I know that when people start talking about limitless
human potential it tends to be in a cult setting. Maybe that's just because so
many people are selling something. That is probably a part of why I don't feel
like I can do any ad-linking on my blog; I don't want to get corrupted.
However,
if there is a tendency for there to be profit motivations behind most messages,
that's worth looking at too. Because maybe black males get a self-esteem boost
for not being black females, and maybe Asian-Americans get a boost from not
being African Americans, and maybe poor white males get to look down on all of
them, but no one is getting the boost that corporations get from having
candidates who will do what they want because they keep getting voted in by
people who are voting against their best interests. No one racial group is
getting the benefits that gun manufactures are getting, or pharmaceutical
companies, or Fox News.
Normally
my argument against these kind of things is just that it's wrong. The hierarchy
that we have in place causes so much pain and suffering, and then hearing
people who are fine with it because they have bought into these divisions is
sickening. That should be enough, but apparently it's not. So, it's probably
worth pointing out that it is also financially stupid. Living standards go
down, health goes down, free time and family time go down, everyone gets
brought down together except for the very top.
Someone
on Twitter had made a point about how the GOP got us to this current state of
polarization, because there are things bearing fruit now that were planted in
the Nixon administration. The next logical question was what the liberal
strategy was, and I don't think there is one. If you care about people, it
feels like that is basic human decency, and it should be self-evident, that
some things are wrong and must be stopped. Well, no, there's no evidence that
it works that way.
And
I know that all of the things that I normally write about self-care, and
gratitude and relationships, are true. I haven't really given up on humanity
yet. You will know when I do because there will be no more band reviews and
songs of the day and travel blogs, because there will be no point. I'm not
there yet. But I am kind of discouraged, and only part of it is the cold.
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