sitakali

Years ago, I stopped referring to myself as a liberal. This was because I started to see what the term really meant—not according to conservatives—but according to radicals, and according to me. I won’t go into detail about all of the qualities that liberals have that I don’t, because that’s not what this post is about. This post is about a specific liberal quality that drives me absolutely up the wall.

Do not play the blame game. As a recent post articulated on the liberal site that I belong to, Care2:

…We want to fix something that we perceive as terribly wrong. When this happens we look immediately to find someone to blame. But in doing so, we sidestep taking responsibility.

Really? As I stay up-to-date with the current events of this world, I see people in power, politicians and corporate executives, fucking over people and communities. I do not see it because I am attempting to put blame on someone besides myself. I see their actions first, and realise that those actions have an effect. And that effect is bigger than the effect my actions would have, simply because I am not as powerful an individual as a politician, and my community isn’t as powerful as an entire government or corporation.

This isn’t the first time I have heard this type bullshit from liberals. Liberals are not as individualistic as conservatives, but they still have some very individualistic beliefs. The view about blame is very similar to another view that I despise, which is far more “spiritual” in nature: You must fix yourself before you can help anybody else in the world. As if the two aren’t connected. As if helping others doesn’t also help fix you as well.

Everybody, especially everybody who has been born into privilege, does have a certain amount of responsibility. But a lot of our responsibilities lie in the fact that we allow a corrupt system to continue. That is not the same as making a system even more corrupt.

If activists are trying to stop an organisation from polluting the air, it is because they are blaming that corporation for polluting the air. Should the activists instead leave that organisation alone and allow it to continue polluting, all because they don’t want to place any blame on anybody but themselves?

Basically, my point is that it is possible to blame more than one person or group of people for a problem. But it is a good idea to put things into perspective, and understand who is most responsible for causing what problem. In other words, in order to find a solution to anything, it is important to understand cause and effect. If you refuse to blame anyone for causing the problems of this world, regardless of whether or not they actually did, you are ignoring a crucial step towards remedying those problems.

I sent the following in a mass email to all my friends, including my Facebook friends:

Dear friends,

As you all know, I do not send out personally written mass-emails often. In
fact, I can`t remember the last time I did. But this is about life or death,
literally.

The Copenhagan climate talks are our chance to get the world to really act
on climate change. Every scientific report out there is worse: Glaciers are
melting faster than previously thought; the positive feedback loop is worse
than predicted; the ocean is acidifying; droughts and floods are getting
worse (see sources below).

Please sign the petition that *11 million people* have already signed to get
our world leaders to create real change to combat climate change:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_copenhagen_now/97.php?cl_tta_sign=8e0fe5a3dd7dd368db4824cb34355246

I don`t care if you think capitalism or communism or anarchism is the best
system–right now we`re at a point of desperation where simply getting
countries to make a single effort to combat climate change is a struggle in
itself. This is like Hitler taking over the world–but worse. Because there
will be no survivors, no matter how crazy your ideology. If you want to know
the likely scenarios if we don`t succeed at Copenhagen, go here:
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-impacts-interactive.html

Rich countries like the United States are refusing to take essential steps
to protect the entirety of humanity, simply because they don`t feel it`s
“fair” for them to take responsibility. That is literally like a
hissy-fit-throwing toddler being in charge of the whole world. This is no
longer about what`s “fair” or who does more work…it is about preventing
global catastrophe.

I`m angry. I am so furious I want to wage all-out war on anybody stopping
essential progress.

Please join me in signing the following petition: It already has 11 million
signatures – let`s make it the *largest petition in human history!*
http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_copenhagen_now/97.php?cl_tta_sign=8e0fe5a3dd7dd368db4824cb34355246

Here are some resources:

Glaciers melting faster: 2009:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE55L1UP20090622
2007:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070216-glaciers-melting.html

Ocean acidification: 2009:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33257&Cr=emission&Cr1=
2006: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/060221_acidfrm.htm
2008: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080521105251.htm

Tropical diseases: 2003:
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/impacts/early-warning-signs-of-global-9.html
2007:
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/2/16/nation/16898359&sec=nation
1995: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/310/6986/1027/a

Famine: 1998: http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/subjindx/122env2.htm
2005: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200505/s1378213.htm
2008:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/10/081001-peru-potato-climate.html

Drought: 2003:
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/impacts/early-warning-signs-of-global-4.html
2007: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/magazine/21water-t.html
2005: http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2005/drought_research.shtml
2006: http://www.naturalnews.com/020649.html

Flooding, extreme weather: General information:
http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/fcons/fcons1.asp
http://challengeeurope.britishcouncil.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=104
http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagid=1405
2009 – Floods:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/08/palin-global-warming-flood/
2007 – Floods: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/08/30/2019828.htm
2007 – Floods:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3301670/Floods-show-global-warming-is-here.html
2005 – Hurricanes:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0804_050804_hurricanewarming.html
Hurricanes:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Global-Warming-Dictates-Hurricane-Peaks-119110.shtml

The following is an excerpt from The Barefoot Bum:

Anarchism is a curious topic. Its linguistic roots mean literally “no rule”. But by these roots no self-described anarchist can impose a definition of anarchism…

Taken to the logical extreme of its roots in a non-vacuous sense, anarchism would entail absolutely no coercion whatsoever…

Locking your front door or physically hanging onto your wallet is coercive: you are using physical force to prevent a person from doing what he wants to do.

(Bold emphasis mine)

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

1. “No rule” means “no imposition/coercion.” The Barefoot Bum concludes that “no rule” means “no imposition.” This step in his argument is already false. “No rule” means exactly that—no rulers. Generally, most anarchists are more specific in saying that anarchism means “no government” or “no state.” Most, including me, will stop at that.

No government doesn’t even mean no governance; governance is the act of administering policy and decisions. If an anarchist society were divided up into syndicates (as it probably would be, since this is the most practical application of anarchism), each syndicate might elect a representative who would then speak to the representatives of other syndicates. The leadership could be rotational, the decision-making could be through consensus, but whoever carries out a decision, even if it is agreed upon by all, is practicing governance.

2. “No coercion” means you cannot lock your doors or keep your wallet/shirt. As I have already demonstrated that the “no imposition/coersion” assumption is false, I don’t really need to go on, but I will anyway. Even if “no rule” did mean “no coercion,” it wouldn’t necessarily be logical to push the argument even further down the slippery slope to “no locked doors/ no personal belongings.”

The Barefoot Bum uses the argument that someone (George) cannot hang on to his own shirt*, because if someone else (Sue) wants the shirt, George would have to use physical force to keep Sue from taking it. But by that same logic, Sue would be using physical force to take George’s shirt, if he doesn’t want her to. By The Barefoot Bum’s own arguments, both parties are using coercion, simply depending on what either person wants. These wants cancel each other out, once again rendering The Barefoot Bum’s argument moot.

In the real world, including the anarchist world, the desires of the person who wears the shirt are more important than the desires of the person who wants to take the shirt (assuming everyone has enough clothing, which they would in a libertarian socialist society). Anarchism does not prohibit possession (not to be confused with private property), nor should it, even if there were no form of governance in that society. Forcing somebody to do something they don’t want to do, which would have an adverse affect on them physiologically/psychologically, is very different from e.g. forcing a toddler to share his toy. Yet both are technically forms of coercion. One form of coercion (the form The Barefoot Bum was talking about) cancels itself out easily using simple logic. The other doesn’t.

What I hate about these slippery-slope arguments is that they are so abstract and philosophical, they have no bearing on the real world except that they distract people from it, and convince people with poor reasoning skills that the argument made is actually valid. As I explained to The Barefoot Bum, a similar argument could be made about socialism:

Socialism is about equality. Therefore, it’s about 100% equality. Therefore, nobody can have or do anything that anybody else can’t have or do. If anybody is in a wheelchair, everybody has to be in a wheelchair. If anybody is blind, all have to cover their eyes. And if there are any women in a socialist society, all men have to make themselves bleed for five days out of the month.

I have seen that argument made seriously by right-Libertarians, and I can tell you, it’s a poor argument. Simply the fact that it’s made by right-Libertarians should point to that obvious fact.

Here’s another one:

Monarchy means “rule of one.” Therefore, only one person can rule. Therefore, if anybody but the monarch has any influence whatsoever on a policy, that policy must be scrapped. If the monarch chooses to change a policy based on his/her popularity or what the populace thinks about him/her in general, that policy cannot be changed. But then it has to be changed, because it was indirectly influenced by the populace.

etc.

Perhaps this is why I hate philosophy, in the “I have a degree in Philosophy” sense. Don’t get me wrong, my closest friends in college were philosophy majors. But a lot of it is plain intellectual masturbation (sorry, guys).

One (especially a philosopher) can take any idea or even political philosophy and render it useless if one has enough wanking time. I’m personally surprised that The Barefoot Bum didn’t just say something to the tune of:

Anarchism literally means ‘no rule.’ But what does ‘rule’ mean? And what does ‘no’ mean? Isn’t ‘no’ the ultimate negative statement? Should any system based on such a negative exist? Could it? And what does ‘it’ mean? I don’t know. Who am ‘I?’ What am ‘I?’ Who am I to claim to know what ‘I’ am…perhaps somebody else know more what it is like to be ‘me’ than ‘I’ do…?

…And so forth. I used to have these existential debates inside my head when I was eight.

* I chose to use a shirt instead of a wallet in the example so as not to bring money into the equation.

That’s what we tell our precious children. For, it is more important to us that they grow a tough skin than that we become aware of who is being bullying and abusive. And if you can catch a bully at a young age, you are much more likely to prevent them from becoming worse and worse.

But the wounds go deeper. This isn’t just about children in school. Many siblings may remember their older siblings being cruel and sadistic towards them, then telling them not to “tattle,” so their parents never know what’s wrong. What’s worse, some parents punish the younger sibling if they do “tattle,” instead of the older one for being a brat.

Yet even deeper. Truly abusive children and adults alike use this logic because it permeates our society, and any child can be forced to obey it. I am very close to many people who were abused and told not to “tell.” One was molested by their twelve-year-old babysitter, then told not to be a tattle tale. Another by their teacher. Yet another was sexually abused by their grandparents. But it’s a secret. “Our little secret.”

This is a culture of silence. Silence infests our ghettos and Third World countries; silence imprisons the weak and the helpless; silence saturates every crevice, every corner of our society. If you are attacked on a street in broad daylight, chances are nobody will come to your aid. We are the innocent bystanders. Feeling sick yet? If you’re not, perhaps you’re not paying attention.

As a child, I was ridiculed in school. I was treated horribly from age 6 to 13. I had several physical threats during that time. Yet I was never hit or attacked. Why? Because my mother taught me to tell. “If someone is hurting you, either your feelings or your body, tell someone.” I was trained that if one adult wouldn’t listen, to keep telling until somebody did. This helped perpetuate the ridicule to an extent, but really it was my insecure attitude more than anything else. And nobody touched me.

This video was sent to the police, and the bully was arrested. All the more reason to “tattle.”

Language can be used for control through fear, inspiration, anger, and pain. You can hurt somebody with words, even if you’re not looking at them. You can do it through the internet. Most people, however, believe that if you are hurt by somebody’s written verbal abuse, you should DEAL WITH IT. I put that in capitals, because that’s how they’ve said it to me. I’m not talking about someone saying, “you’re an asshole.” That’s just silly. I’m talking about persistent, cruel, sadistic attacks.

Many are unaware of the psychological damage that verbal/written abuse can cause. They should learn a little about sociology, anthropology, and the fact that above all else, humans are social beings. Language is our foundation, and it affects us as profoundly as anything else. It can be used to begin movements, start revolutions, and strike fear into people.

People these days are obsessed with conspiracy theories. From the global warming “hoax” and 9/11, to UFOs, the New World Order and the “socialist agenda,” loud people on the internet love to get their panties in a knot about whether or not some ginormous cover-up is happening. It’s as if a conspiracy is the most terrifying and disturbing thing that anyone can imagine.

Well, I’ve got news for you. The real world is seriously fucked up, and massive conspiracies are (at least mostly) not to blame. Who needs secrecy when our entire global socio-economic system is set up to benefit those in power already? What I am appalled by is how blatantly obvious some governments and organisations are about all the horrific shit they’re up to. Murdering over one hundred thousand people in Iraq wasn’t a cover-up. It was just labeled “war,” and was therefore justified in our sick, twisted minds.

There’s no cover-up involving world hunger; it is well-documented that empires raped and pillaged the land and the people of the Third World long ago, and forced them to focus on cash cropping (now called “exports-based agriculture”) instead of feeding themselves. The IMF and World Bank proudly boast their monstrous policies as “aiding” poor countries, by offering them loans that they couldn’t possibly pay back on conditions (such as the privatisation of public sectors) that destroy entire economies.

Some of this pride is also passed on to the public. The cries against “socialism,” the hatred of those less fortunate, and the reverence of individualistic greed (disguised as “personal responsibility” and “rational self-interest”) are all endorsed by the masses, most of whom would benefit greatly from socialist, pro-poor policies. We have been taught very well how to hate ourselves.

More terrifying than any conspiracy, more devastating than any government cover-up, is the fact that we are aware of the horrors that those in power create, and we passively perpetuate that status quo.

Perhaps we should focus on promoting public awareness of things that are already technically known.

Just to give you an idea of how much energy my brain uses versus how much time I spend putting my ideas to work, here are the fourteen novels whose entire plots I have in my head, none of which I have come even close to actually finishing.

Please note: If I don’t share details it’s because I don’t feel comfortable sharing them at this time.

Series

The Vampire Series:

Voice of the Ages: The Story of Ereshkigal – The story of the 15,000-year-old mother of all vampires.

The Hunter Sub-Series

Kali – The Hunter’s first life 3,000 BCE
Michael – The Hunter of the 16th century
Nina – The Hunter of the 1960s/70s

Dust to Dust Tetralogy: – the present Hunter


1. Dust to Dust (name flexible) – The Hunter (Vanessa) develops her abilities – This is the book I am focusing on right now.
2. The Tainted Soul
3. Disciples of Satan
4. The Next Generation

The Hunter is a very powerful vampire hunter who is reincarnated every time she dies (sound familiar? Get used to it, there isn’t anything “original” under the sun…). The series incorporates a lot of ancient Indian history and Hindu mythology into its own mythology.

Single novels

Teaching Angel - Chronicles a troubled girl’s last year in high school, and the bond she forms with her teacher.

The Twisted Knife – Two orphaned sisters living on their own discover a family heirloom that awakens witchy powers in them.

Awakening – The journey of a young woman who awakens to her conscience after having murdered three people.

Ghost from a Wishing Well (name flexible) – A teenage girl tries to heal the trauma of having witnessed her best friend’s accidental death, with the help of her other friends.

Immune – A girl obsessed with infectious diseases falls in love with an HIV-positive guy.

Bindi – A modern tale using Hindu mythology.

Just a question for deniers, since the science is already out there – What empirical “proof” would you need to convince you that global warming is getting worse, and is anthropogenic? Would the sky have to burst into flames? Perhaps we find a gigantic cauldron in middle of the US? Or, okay, how about this:

• Severe drought in Africa and Australia?
• Acidification of the oceans due to absorption of CO2?
• Hundreds of millions of climate refugees?
• Extinctions of species due to severe climate variation?
• Increased spread of tropical diseases and insects?

I know, I know, you can counter my evidence with the fact that “Wisconsin is really friggin’ cold right now.” I suggest that all those of you who actually think that is an argument against antrhopogenic climate change leave RIGHT NOW, so that people who actually understand science (at least from a primary-school level) can continue this conversation.

1. “Damn, I missed it. What horribly perverted scientific explanation did they use for the apocalypse?”
2. “So, which national monument’s dramatic, explosive destruction did I miss?”
3. “How many times should the plane have been decimated in the previous scene?”
4. “Have the people in power revealed that they are greedy fucktards yet?”
5. “Did I miss any not-so-subtle attempts at religious symbolism?”
6. “Has the protagonist’s romantic adversary died tragically yet?”
7. “Was the survival mission unnecessarily delayed until the last minute yet?”

And finally…

1. “Has every survivor started cheering and partying yet, despite the fact that over 6 billion people died horribly and violently?”
   

   Noooo!! Not the statue!

I found the Huffington Post through one of my favourite teachers from high school. He posts there occasionally and I enjoy what he has to say. He is thoughtful, articulate (of course—he was my English teacher), and a true progressive. For some strange reason, I assumed that the HuffPost was truly progressive too.

I enjoyed reading other writers as well, including celebrities like Alec Baldwin and Scarlett Johansson. I was okay with navigating around Deepak Chopra’s woo-woo crap, as long as the political posts were good. I decided to subscribe to the politics section there.

My first warning sign was when I was surfing the site and came across a post where you could—I kid you not—rate which celebrities had the best boobies. This struck me as the same form of cynicism that led PETA (People for the Exploitation of Tits and Ass) to put naked women in their ad campaigns. I’m sure it increased HuffPost’s male misogynist readership exponentially.

This was in a Huffington Post article

This BS continued. More celebrity gossip (Fergie: I’m Bisexual, Husband Josh Is “Well Endowed”)  and grossly anti-feminist eye candy (Eva Mendes Is Unbuttoned, Braless!) continued to spew forth from the website’s pages. And I continued to my version of ignoring it (quietly stewing and gagging). But then, on the politics page, came this article:

A Marred Holiday for One Arab American Vet

Sounds like the harrowing story of yet another Arab-American getting shit for his ethnicity due to the Fort Hood shootings, right? Well, not quite. This man felt so guilty for what Al Qaeda did on 9/11 that he started helping assist in interrogations. I had trouble feeling sorry for him:

One day Rajai’s team went into a house and was greeted by an old man and his two sons. “The man was so nice. He served us tea and no topic was off limits. We discussed politics and shared family pictures,” Rajai [Hakki] recalls. As they left the house, a commander came and ordered them to go back and arrest the two sons because this was a “target house”. Rajai had no option but to obey orders. He returned and placed bags over the sons’ heads and led them away, as their father looked on in silence.

“That kind of thing was always tough,” Hakki told the Huffington Post.

Really? Tough? Bagging human beings for torture is tough?! So I assume he can handle working at Guantanamo Bay then?

Hakki recently returned from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he’d spent five months working for a contractor as an Arabic translator.

Oh, nice. He’s got quite a resume there. Anyway, that wasn’t the worst part. I scrolled down to look at some of the comments:

Rajai…You have NOTHING to be ashamed of. You are a true, brave American. Just because you come from the Middle East and your family practices Islam, doesn’t make you responsible for any of the deeds carried out by those who have hijacked your religion. You make us all proud.

*****

Maybe we need to take a lesson from the Chinese American Buddhist monks in the Los Angeles area who subscribe to the philosophy that we are ALL ONE people when they describe themselves as Americans.

*****

Rajai-
Stand proud brave American. You are judged for your actions not the actions of others.
Peace and prosperity to you.

Actually, that comment was quite fitting for how I feel. He is judged by his own actions. So I wrote a comment. It was censored and deleted. I assumed it was probably because I put the f-word in there (their policy is against “excessive swearing”), so I tried again:

Wow…that’s some serious moderation there.

What I was saying before was that I’m frankly shocked that this article is not about one of the many regular Arab-American soldiers out there. It’s about a man who participates in “interrogation,” a euphemism for torture.

This man is not responsible for what happened on 9/11—nor should he feel that he is–but he is responsible for his own actions in response to 9/11. I have never seen another article at the Huffington Post that paints an interrogator as a patriot, and never seen so many comments that commend an interrogator for being a “brave American.” If such an article had been posted in the past, the people here would be pissed.

My next comment was in response to another comment, and went like this:

And by the way, I can’t think of any other industrialised country in the world where people actually put that much pride in where they happened to be born. Americans are “all one people?” How about humans? Wow, moving to New Zealand has really opened my eyes to the culture of self-congratulation in the United States.

That one passed moderation. The previous comment didn’t. Why? Because I was offering a dissenting opinion of the actual topic of the article? It appears that arguing with another commenter is fine, as long as I don’t argue with the point of the article.

I have seen the Huffington Post move more and more towards the mainstream, and it’s making me feel ill. I have lost all respect for the site, and I invite others to comment or send them messages regarding their recent move toward the right…and their apparent transformation into a tabloid. And now they’re censoring dissenting views?! Needless to say, I have unsubscribed, and I hope others will too.

Note: I later learned that my second comment was in fact posted; for some reason there was a 20 second delay, which usually does not happen. So no, HuffPost does not censor as much as I thought they did.