I’m going to have to agree with a lot of what Chex said in Vol. 2. Yes, politicians are mostly all cunts, no matter what their ideological leanings are. They are for the most part in ‘the game’ for the advancement of their own agenda, and of course to lend support to those people who are willing to support them. Some politicians may be more unashamedly obvious about this blatant friend backscratching (thinking of Bush’s support for incompetent fools like Rumsfeld, Gonzales, ‘Brownie), but for the most part ALL politicians just have to get really good at sucking dick and pleasing a bunch of people in order to fulfill their OWN personal agenda.
Adressing, Chex’s genuine beef with Al Gore that seemed to seethe from every word in the post’s second half, I have to say I’m less willing to agree with you. I’m not as willing to share your unbridled hatred for Al Gore, just because of all the people I see today who ‘fux’ with politics, he seems to be the most apolitical, probably because he’s not really so much in the game right now. I also doubt that he’s gonna jump back into the game in order to run for president in 2008, so I don’t think all this environmental stuff is a political points garnering scheme. Al Gore’s concern in this movie seems to be genuine, and although certain parts of it have been exposed as alarmist, most of the evidence used and arguments made in it are sound, if a bit cheesy at times. The fact that Gore’s house is a ridiculous plantation mansion that consumes exorbitant amounts of energy is just a reminder that he’s from an old gentried southern family, and a bitch ass politician, who naturally loves to talk a lot and point out the faults of others before truly giving himself a thorough self examination. Al Gore may be a bitch for doing this, undoubtedly, but the truly important issue to address is the message he’s espousing.
One thing that does alarm me about the ‘green phenomenon’ that Al Gore has created is how it’s being picked up by Hollywood celebrities, which pretty much automatically makes it lose credibility and seriousness. For some reason our society seems to think that what its celebrities think is important, hence GQ doing it’s main expose last month on how Leo is like, totally into this Green thing. I’m sure they failed to mention that despite having a hybrid and buying carbon taxes, he consumes more shit than 99.9% of the people on earth, therefore making him indirectly responsible for more pollution than almost anybody in the world. I think that people getting into being green because it’s ‘trendy’ are idiots. They are diluting the seriousness of the movement by making it into a pop cultural phenomenon, where it’s so simple to good for the environment, as opposed to treating it like the dire global problem that it is.

China is just a plain awful polluter, but it only FINALLY soon about to beat US as the world’s top polluter….

with 5x the US population.

Mathematically, every American is producing 5x the pollution that each Chinese produces.

Let Finland, New Zealand, Czech Republic, and those eco-friendly countries attack China and India all they want.
Americans need to shut the collective fat mouth for a second on this and first practice what we preach.

Also, think you hate Republicans? Screw Democratic politicians.

Al Gore has a huge fucking house that consumes 20x the energy of the average Nashville resident while it’s only four times bigger. Energy costs for maintaining his poolhouse alone costs $544 a month. The sources of this information I suspect has strong right-leanings but the data is still mostly there and Gore really has no way to defend himself.

Over spring break I also saw Jon Stewart make a complete fool out of John Kerry, who is promoting his new environment book “This Moment in Time.” A complete copy of “Truth.” Jon Stewart kept pestering Kerry about the obvious: Moment is exactly the same as Truth and called him out on writing it because of political motivations, and Kerry is just trying to conveniently tap into the huge popularity that Gore garnered from Truth. Kerry couldn’t really come up with a good response. Why? Because THAT’s the inconvenient truth and Jon Stewart is brilliant enough to pin him down on it with his astute, sharp questioning. Too bad Stewart is one of the handful on TV who can challenge political cunts and outsmart and expose them.

Kerry…What a New England aristocrat politician cunt.

College students who now suddenly love Gore…idiots biting the bait. If you guys have any evidence that Gore is real, please let me know but unless I see a lot of it, I’m going to keep thinking it’s a political advisor telling him that environment is a hot topic now and he can appeal to young people with this. I’ll save my judgment for the day Gore dies. If by that time he still has not run for president again, then I’ll take back everything I said and believe that he truly did it for good, and not for political gain.

Politicans left or right…all cunts. (I now probably pull for Nader if anyone; I don’t see him as either side)

Our country…mostly frustratingly hopeless.

“Aid should be conditional on environmentalism and we should give preferential treatment in terms of trade to greener countries.”

This may work well for developing countries like say, South Africa, or Latin American countries without oil or large populations, but there is no way this is going to work with China. The main reason that China is industrializing and polluting at the such unprecedentedly high levels is to satiate the West’s demand for SHIT. Americans in particular, but also Europeans and the more developed nations in general are too accustomed to their lifestyle of consuming easily and in vast quantities. The Chinese, on the other hand, are beginning to get a taste of this society, and are willing to do anything to become a part of it as quickly as possible. I’ll admit that they are doing this in extremely irresponsible ways; for example not giving a shit about worker’s rights despite proclaiming to be Communists, or having 28 of the 30 most polluted cities in the world. These blame for these indesgressions cannot be laid at the foot of the West. However, as long as the developed nations are uncontrollably addiced to Chinese manufacturing and labor, there is no way that anybody in the world can truly become serious about tackling the major issues of the day, in particular global warming and growing money gap between rich and poor. We can talk shit about being “green” and maybe even try to do something about it, but the truth is that as long as we are married to the unsustainable consumeristic economy of the present, we will not be able to prevent the forces we have so frightfully been discussing on this mailing list for the last few months from running their course.
I don’t see a way to implement the radical reforms needed to reverse the momentum of the global interconnected society we have created without abandoning it. So really everyone is to blame for buying into the notion that producing and consuming in ever increasing quantities is what makes living worthwhile.

Bush’s nicknames for his clique.

I personally like the pair of names “Ali” and “Frazier” for the junior and senior senator from California, respectively. I’m guessing “Ali” came to his brilliant mind first when he realized the clever wordplay made possible by Barbara Boxer’s last name, and then Frazier just kinda followed, because unless its an inside joke, Feinstein has nothing to do with “Frazier.”

When he came up with that one I’m sure he chuckled. Dude is ingenious.

I also really liked the nickname of “corndog” for Republican Senator from Texas John Cornyn, who, if you click on the link, once said regarding gay marriage:

“It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right. Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife.” [From a transcript of a speech to the American Heritage Foundation provided by Cornyn's office to the Washington Post]

We all knew that a complete cowboy buffoon was running our country, but I think these nicknames lend a great human interest angle to the story…you know, so we see once again that he’s just one of the “normal down-to-earth people”.

This is probably going to draw a lot of criticism, actually, but comments are really welcome.
To follow up on Choad’s post which was a really interesting breakdown of the aftereffects of the Va Tech terror, I was just thinking about comparing it to some other disturbing things going on.

There are a lot of grief groups going on all over the country. There are quite a few at my school, and I’m sure they’re in full bloom in Madison, Urbana, New York City, San Bernardino, etc. etc. I’m starting to wonder what the hell the point is. I feel just as awful as anyone else about someone taking a gun blazing to SCHOOL and shooting kids trapped in a classroom– its awful and terrifying, but what do grief groups in Palo Alto, California accomplish? My friend said to me: “I think people try to find a reason to be sad and be a part of something”, and I actually agree. People want to show they’re concerned and grieving, but isn’t that doable in your own room?

Well, if you want something to grieve over, try what I think Lox wrote about in an email: The day Cho slaughtered a lot of his classmates, someone STRAPPED BOMBS to their OWN BODY, purposefully targeted and walked into the densest area of people, and BLEW HIMSELF UP along with everyone else, spraying blood, torn bits of flesh and bone, internal organs, arms, hands, skin, brain matter, etc. over a huge, public area. I think it was nearly 200 that died in Baghdad that day in multiple bombings. How mindbogglingly bizarre and twisted is that? And even more disgusting than taking a gun to school and shooting?

Check out McClatchey’s Iraq correspondents’ site that describes a bombing site with blood and guts all over the walls of a building. I can’t find the post but it’s still a cool blog to check out.

I haven’t experienced a school shooting or a suicide bombing, so I can’t say which one is more traumatic. But, the numbers say that nearly 200 died in one day in Baghdad and thirty some died in Blacksburg. Should we have had 7x the grief groups for Iraqi victims that day? No one even gives a damn about how many regular people die in Iraq these days. We’re numb to it. Virginia Tech is a huge fucking deal because a school shootings happen once every five years and they’re American and we might know some of the victims, but thirty EASILY die a day in Iraqi violence.

Go grieve over that.

There’s this game called Assassins that’s popular in certain circles at my school. I’ve never played myself, but it sounds pretty fun. The game involves “weapons,” “stalking,” “killing,” “dying,” and an elaborate real-life circular linked-list that shrinks until only the winner remains. Games can take weeks and often benefit from the stalker’s best friend, Facebook.

My friend runs campusassassins.com, which administers games. He and his website are in USA Today today, which is pretty exciting. But the focus of the article reduces that excitement.

Students urged to stop playing ‘Assassin’ game.

April 25, 2007 USA Today

Students are being urged not to play Assassins so that they won’t be mistaken for someone like Cho. I suppose this is a legitimate stance to take. It sure would suck if a kid with a watergun was mistaken for a kid with a gun.

But taking a step back, I ask myself “why does a fun and harmless game suffer because of the recent massacre?” Well it’s probably because the game involves “weapons,” “stalking,” “killing,” and “dying,” which are being mistaken as weapons, stalking, killing, and dying. The latter are unfortunate parts of our reality, but the former are strictly all fun and games.

Mistaking “killing” for killing reveals to me that our thinking about this issue is flawed. Telling Assassins to stop deals only with our aural experience of the bloodshed. “I don’t like to hear about violent or “violent” or whatever stuff, so please don’t do it.” Instead, the right place to look is to the oral experience of the bloodshed. Who is uttering those words and why did they pick the ones they did?

It’s understandable that the aural perspective would be mistaken for the oral one, similar as they do sound. But one is superficial and the other is substantial, and we all need to fixate on the substantial.

The New York Times is talking about bees today. Across the continent hives are being deserted, their inhabitants vanishing, and we don’t know why.

This is troubling. Why? Bees play a much larger role in our society than just honey producers. Flowering plants are pollinated by insects, and in Western agriculture, that insect is typically the honey bee. Just one species of bee pollinates on the order of $10 billion of crops in the US alone, and that is the species currently in rapid decline.

In the past, the collapse of a single bee species would be relatively inconsequential. Before the spread of European style agriculture, North American crops were pollinated by a diverse variety of thousands of different bee species. These native species have been largely pushed aside in favor of the domesticated honeybees, which are typically more efficient than their smaller native counterparts. The pursuit of higher yields in the short term has lead to a far less robust system than the one that had evolved gradually with native agriculture. Now we are seeing the consequences of our rapid erasure of biodiversity.

The bee situation may not destroy our society, but it is a manifestation of the larger environmental crisis, and it points out how ill-prepared we are to deal with it. When the costs of climate change are calculated, complex reactions such as the collapse of pollinators due to lack of biodiversity are not often taken into account, and therefore we cannot rely on the standard economic projections of the world economy. Human society is built upon agriculture, which must be part of a stable ecosystem. The ways in which we disrupt these systems through deforestation, pollution, land exploitation, and introduction of invasive species are legion and highly unpredictable. Rapid changes in climate and habitat alterations are bound to introduce countless more similar problems, and at the present, we have no clue how to deal with them.

While I have no suggestions at present, I do wish to raise awareness. Technological progress is advancing ever more rapidly, and with it grows our ability to influence the environment and climate of the earth. However, our inputs into this system produce unpredictable effects. As our hand in the environment grows stronger, the more likely our blind grasps will halt the intricate machinery of the earth.

For further information on the Bee crisis:
http://www.nrdc.org/OnEarth/06sum/bees1.asp

More posts on the similar topics to come.

-jmw

So, news of the Cho rampage engulfed America over the past week, and the media has saturated print, airwaves, and internet bandwidth with coverage dissecting the issue from every angle.

I’d really like someone to share their thoughts on two issues unfailingly labored over every time we have a school shooting — gun control and violent video games.
But for now, here is Ms. Arianna Huffington (who I can’t say I like or dislike) breaking down Tom Delay, former House Majority Leader’s comments that if we had MORE GUNS, this kind of stuff wouldn’t happen.

The Virginia Tech issue is nauseating enough as it is without all the media coverage, so here’s something else that also makes your stomach turn:

Now, entitlement mentality is indeed damaging. It is one of the most corrosive but unfortunately prevalent defensive mechanisms that is observed in the psychology of society’s underclasses. Race is the most glaring example. Some races feel entitled to receive aid and special support and consideration because the current situation is that they lie at the bottom of heap. It is destructive and must be confronted honestly and defeated if possible. This mentality is so damaging because the underpowered rest in their sense of entitlement, passively acknowledging defeat and wait for someone else to give to them while not striving to attain for themselves. If the people in society’s cellar never get up, get out, and get something, no one else could possibly do it for them.

Now let’s examine Hoenig’s psychology for a moment, just to be fair. He feels like unjustices are committed every moment our government does something to the tune of diminishing the income gap, taking care of the underpriviledged, “sacrificing the productive rich to serve the endless needs of the poor.” “It rewards failure, laziness, inactivity, irresponsibility, and stagnation,” he continues. The government should not, for the sake of greater social welfare and justice, surrender and abet this kind of entitlement mentality.
Hoenig says we’ve become great, read: WEALTHY, through rugged individualism, read: SELFISHNESS mindset. As a managing member of a hedge fund I would hope he thinks that way–I’m guessing he’s trying to do his job properly.

Is it unfair that there exist social pressures which push rich, successful people like him to be charitable? Maybe. But he shouldn’t feel pressured to be charitable and to give a little back. It shouldn’t be something forced by the government, vocal liberals. I would like to think our society today can still produce people with Hoenig-sized checkbooks who would happily be
charitable without feeling forced. You make several hundred million a year and feel FORCED to be charitable?? I understand feeling pressure to do something you don’t want to do is an uncomfortable situation to be in, but I cannot pity someone who thinks giving to charity by the rich is simply wrong. For a man who rakes in tens if not hundreds of millions of
dollars a year to think that he is being cheated because government aid programs are “sacrificing” the productive rich reveals an unbelievable depth of moral depravity. Let’s put his child–who I can only imagine is happily playing in his multi-million dollar home being watched by three babysitters who make sure he doesn’t fall into their Olympic sized pool,
God forbid–into the American inner city and let’s see if he “succeeds” and becomes “great” (read: wealthy). If he doesn’t, it’ll be surely because of failure, laziness, depravity, stagnation, and irresponsibility.

As naive and generalizing as it may sound, I truly think the “rich and successful” think a certain way, and I think I know it better than most. I am a Stanford student, surrounded by many sons and daughters of this class, supposedly the best and brightest in the world. My parents don’t belong to that class, and certainly I don’t think for a single second that I got here only because I was hard working, responsible, active. I got here mostly because of my parents’ educating and the family I grew up in, and partially because I kind of worked in high school to meet the necessary entrance requirements. Most Stanford students think they deserve to be here because of their hard work: THEY made it–bullshit. Even if they did work hard, the work ethic was most likely instilled by their parents. They grew up in a family that valued education and delayed gratification. In fact, the acceptance letter from Stanford says: “We Applaud You” in big letters. Those words would be correct if it was addressed to every admit’s parents, not the student. Is this a microcosm of the “I’m hot shit” mentality of the successful and rich–hell yea it is. So many think they are so amazing because they have made everything on their own. But that is impossible. The day you were born you were given something. No one made everything on their own. The day all of you were born you inherited your parents’ genes–and none of your parents are stupid. I have put in my share of work, but I can’t legitimately claim any of whatever success I experience as the fruit of only my own labor. There are plenty of humble, genuine people who enjoy their success and wealth, and I applaud them, but they’re rare enough.

With that said, Hoenig’s article didn’t share any profound wisdom, his stab
at trying to counter “righteousness” only cut open his well-manicured facade (he looks like a cunt) to reveal shallow and shockingly repulsive ignorance writ large. You are the victim here, Hoenig? Are you fucking serious? If all people who rake in tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year are disgusted by the progress we have made in public policy, then I am thorougly disgusted and disillusioned by what our society has become. To me, Hoenig, and anyone who empathizes with his undeniable greed, are detestable people who deserve no place in a society trying to better itself.

-checkmate