"The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it."
I'm afraid I will have to agree with our dear friend, Miss Eliza Bennet. I have had a habit as of late to watch documentaries online through Netflix. Food Inc. and Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story are two recent ones. Both of which make the point that corporate CEOs have basically taken over the government. In the realm of fiction, I watched Idiocracy with Darren. I don't even know what to say about that one, it's quite scary how prophetic it could be.
Sometimes it makes me wish that America's economy would just collapse already, like it's been threatening to do. Yeah things would be bad, but then maybe we'd really be free -- without a bureaucracy dangling the keys to the mythical American Dream.
What's that? Not a good idea you say?
Oh, okay then.
I'll just go dig myself into a deeper educational debt hole and wait it out.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
13 January 2010
18 September 2009
Politics Test
I'm a Socialist!! Hahahahaa!! I'm so not surprised.
| You are a Social Moderate (56% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (8% permissive) You are best described as a:
Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test |
04 April 2009
what sanctity?
So Iowa...a decision to fire up the conservatives and joyfully light up the liberals.
I, like so many Americans and Christians, have thought much on this topic (at least I hope they've really thought). There's a couple things that I've noticed about this conflict. It's centered around two things: legal rights and labels. Poll after poll will show that the liberals will fight for gay marriage rights, the moderates are willing to grant civil unions, and the conservatives don't want either option.
First, legal rights. Personally, I feel like gay marriage in America should be legal in every state if all it comes down to is legal rights. Hospital visits, tax breaks, etc. Honestly, why would you deny someone hospital visits if they were in a committed relationship with someone for years and years? And what about all the foreigners who are willing to pay good money to marry Americans so they can get their papers and have our legal rights? Same difference. It's all just bureaucracy and working the system.
Then, there's the labels. If it's all about legal rights, then what does it matter if it's called a "civil union" or a "marriage?" That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. "Marriage" and "civil union" are simply just terms, signifiers really, if we want to deconstruct things, that indicate something else. If a marriage looks the same as a civil union on paper, then what is the real difference? What has our culture or our nature done to prove the sanctity of marriage over a civil union? There's the "oops! I'm pregnant!" marriage, there's the "OMG I LUV U SO MUCH" marriage that ends in divorce before they ever turn thirty, and of course, my favorite, is the "I'vefallenoutoflovewithyoueventhoughwe'vebeenmarriedfor25 years" shenanigan. If the divorce rate really is 50% and we (and by "we," I mean heterosexuals) really do treat marriage so flippantly (including the Christian community), then why do we fight to keep others from having something we don't appreciate, yet give lots of lip service too?
A wedding should be about coming together as a community, to celebrate life, to celebrate relationships. A marriage should be about commitment. The Christian liturgy for weddings says "til death do us part" for a reason. If you can't commit, don't get married. Marriage, real marriage, should be sanctified by the church, not the government. Not the legal system. If someone were to have the ceremony, say the vows, commit to one another, shouldn't that be enough? Why does the legal part make it official? Isn't God bigger than the Man? And, what did they do before the paperwork? Write their name in blood on a piece of wood? No, the community affirmed an agreement between two families and two people (I am not defending a system of arranged marriage or the buying and selling of daughters in that statement).
Getting married, to me, means coming before God and your community to declare a lifelong commitment of partnership and mean it. Being married means spending one's entire life living that out: commitment in selfless love. You could say that the "legal" thing is the part of coming before the community, but if I were to ask someone who their community is, they would answer with: my friends, my family, my colleagues, my church, not the State of California. Why do they say "By the power vested in me, by the State of California, I now pronounce you..." Shouldn't the people, not the state, and most especially God pronounce us to be in community with one another?
But as for religious beliefs. Here's what I say: take care of your widows and orphans. Take care of your single parents. Take care of those who are homeless. Take care of those who have nothing. Do that, and THEN you can argue with me on whether or not homosexuality is a sin. And I can think of a host of reasons why it's probably not.
If America is simply sitting on their arses, yelling at the politicians because they are worried about the sanctity of marriage, but they aren't doing anything to help the poor, then I think they are full of shit.
I, like so many Americans and Christians, have thought much on this topic (at least I hope they've really thought). There's a couple things that I've noticed about this conflict. It's centered around two things: legal rights and labels. Poll after poll will show that the liberals will fight for gay marriage rights, the moderates are willing to grant civil unions, and the conservatives don't want either option.
First, legal rights. Personally, I feel like gay marriage in America should be legal in every state if all it comes down to is legal rights. Hospital visits, tax breaks, etc. Honestly, why would you deny someone hospital visits if they were in a committed relationship with someone for years and years? And what about all the foreigners who are willing to pay good money to marry Americans so they can get their papers and have our legal rights? Same difference. It's all just bureaucracy and working the system.
Then, there's the labels. If it's all about legal rights, then what does it matter if it's called a "civil union" or a "marriage?" That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. "Marriage" and "civil union" are simply just terms, signifiers really, if we want to deconstruct things, that indicate something else. If a marriage looks the same as a civil union on paper, then what is the real difference? What has our culture or our nature done to prove the sanctity of marriage over a civil union? There's the "oops! I'm pregnant!" marriage, there's the "OMG I LUV U SO MUCH" marriage that ends in divorce before they ever turn thirty, and of course, my favorite, is the "I'vefallenoutoflovewithyoueventhoughwe'vebeenmarriedfor25 years" shenanigan. If the divorce rate really is 50% and we (and by "we," I mean heterosexuals) really do treat marriage so flippantly (including the Christian community), then why do we fight to keep others from having something we don't appreciate, yet give lots of lip service too?
A wedding should be about coming together as a community, to celebrate life, to celebrate relationships. A marriage should be about commitment. The Christian liturgy for weddings says "til death do us part" for a reason. If you can't commit, don't get married. Marriage, real marriage, should be sanctified by the church, not the government. Not the legal system. If someone were to have the ceremony, say the vows, commit to one another, shouldn't that be enough? Why does the legal part make it official? Isn't God bigger than the Man? And, what did they do before the paperwork? Write their name in blood on a piece of wood? No, the community affirmed an agreement between two families and two people (I am not defending a system of arranged marriage or the buying and selling of daughters in that statement).
Getting married, to me, means coming before God and your community to declare a lifelong commitment of partnership and mean it. Being married means spending one's entire life living that out: commitment in selfless love. You could say that the "legal" thing is the part of coming before the community, but if I were to ask someone who their community is, they would answer with: my friends, my family, my colleagues, my church, not the State of California. Why do they say "By the power vested in me, by the State of California, I now pronounce you..." Shouldn't the people, not the state, and most especially God pronounce us to be in community with one another?
But as for religious beliefs. Here's what I say: take care of your widows and orphans. Take care of your single parents. Take care of those who are homeless. Take care of those who have nothing. Do that, and THEN you can argue with me on whether or not homosexuality is a sin. And I can think of a host of reasons why it's probably not.
If America is simply sitting on their arses, yelling at the politicians because they are worried about the sanctity of marriage, but they aren't doing anything to help the poor, then I think they are full of shit.
25 March 2009
hmmmm
Now that we have a president in office who is more technologically literate there are interesting things happening, like a blog, YouTube vids, etc. One that has recently captured my attention is this Open For Questions business. My first reaction is that this is a really cool idea! You can ask the President questions and also vote on which questions you want to hear answers about and he'll actually answer them. Wow. Impressive, right?
Except for one thing. You have to create an account (as if I wasn't already signed up for a hundred other things that I didn't really want). Call me paranoid, but I feel like this is one more way that the government is able to keep tabs on us. A username, password, email address, zip code and IP address. Hmmm. Standard for pretty much every site.
I understand that signing up for an account with Open For Questions helps moderate the site and keeps spammers away. That's a very legit reason. And why is it that I feel a little uncertain about signing up with just my zip code and email when a couple handfuls of websites have my home address and PayPal, Amazon, eBay, Kiva and a number of other sites all have my credit card numbers? Do I even need to go into the whole debacle of the ridiculous copyright rules of posting photos on facebook or the fact that almost every college student in America probably lists their cell phone number too?
We, Americans, protect our privacy almost religiously, yet we give our information quite freely to the internet. Compare us to other countries, say the UK, where billions of pounds are spent every year on CCTV, and it doesn't seem quite as odd. The average person in the UK may be caught on camera 300 times a day.
And then we blog. Letting some of the most private thoughts out in the open, hoping that one person will comment and say "I agree with you!" as if that really justifies our existence in the world.
Strange we become when given this medium of global communication.
Except for one thing. You have to create an account (as if I wasn't already signed up for a hundred other things that I didn't really want). Call me paranoid, but I feel like this is one more way that the government is able to keep tabs on us. A username, password, email address, zip code and IP address. Hmmm. Standard for pretty much every site.
I understand that signing up for an account with Open For Questions helps moderate the site and keeps spammers away. That's a very legit reason. And why is it that I feel a little uncertain about signing up with just my zip code and email when a couple handfuls of websites have my home address and PayPal, Amazon, eBay, Kiva and a number of other sites all have my credit card numbers? Do I even need to go into the whole debacle of the ridiculous copyright rules of posting photos on facebook or the fact that almost every college student in America probably lists their cell phone number too?
We, Americans, protect our privacy almost religiously, yet we give our information quite freely to the internet. Compare us to other countries, say the UK, where billions of pounds are spent every year on CCTV, and it doesn't seem quite as odd. The average person in the UK may be caught on camera 300 times a day.
And then we blog. Letting some of the most private thoughts out in the open, hoping that one person will comment and say "I agree with you!" as if that really justifies our existence in the world.
Strange we become when given this medium of global communication.
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