You Know What I Hate?

Politics! 

(Excuse me, I’m going to cuss and rant a bit here.)

Sometimes, I really hate politics in this country.  It’s a fucking circus.   There’s only two fucking parties in the country that anyone ever really takes seriously.  And some people TAKE THEM TOO SERIOUSLY, in my opinion.

Some people stop treating the parties like the slightly changing and shifting ideological platforms they are, even ignoring the diversity that exists WITHIN each party (not to mention the possible diversity outside the two main parties). Instead people treat them like fucking sports teams.  Like, fucking Red vs. Blue over here.

And then people start drawing lines in the sand, dividing every fucking thing into two.   They do this while saying, “you either ARE or you AREN’T.”  Like there’s always only two options to every choice or two possible solutions to every problem. 

And if I don’t completely agree with them on every single hot button issue?  I’m suddenly the idiot, the douchebag, the prick, the overgrown child.

How dare I express a third opinion!
 

And then the terms liberal and conservative turn downright radioactive… don’t wanna to touch that shit.

And then there’s the fucking mud-slinging campaigns. 

Because no one really votes FOR a candidate as much as they vote AGAINST a candidate… at least not these days.  The same could be said about the parties as well.  And the politicians fucking KNOW this.

And sometimes I’m watching the two (sometimes so incredibly hypocritical it burns) sides of these arguments and it all plays out like a tween playground fight gone horribly, horribly wrong. 

Person A will call Person B out for being unable to spell or use proper grammar or whatever when Person A IS DOING THE EXACT SAME THING.

Granted, everyone is at least a little bit of a hypocrite, but when you’re acting in such a fashion AND acting all high and mighty about it?  It’s just embarrassing!

And even if and when I DO agree with you, I will still always have the urge to call you out on shit when you’re being inconsistent and hypocritical.  I don’t CARE if we’re “on the same side.” Because I have standards.  Because I believe in Common Decency.

Just because your so-called opponent is being a level one douchebag idiot DOESN’T mean you have to stoop to their level, too.  It also doesn’t mean you have to tell the person they are a level one douchebag idiot.  Be the bigger person, for once!

I.  HATE.  EXTREMISM.  (EXTREMELY.  xD)

What happened to logic?  What happened to respect?  What happened to practicing what you preach?  What happened to thinking for your own damn selves?!

You know what?  I’m a slightly liberal-leaning moderate, and mostly because I’m socially liberal.  Fiscally?  I’m divided, and I have mixed feelings on pretty much anything to do with this country’s fiscal policy.  I am pro-choice but I still have some reservations about abortion and I take as much offense to people calling a fetus a parasite as I do to people calling the pregnant woman a whore.  I am otherwise pretty live and let live and support the ideal of a minimalistic and efficient government (but with some socialistic programs involved where they’re needed).   I am also a feminist and generally just a peoplist.  And I pretty much always try to be fair.  THIS IS WHO I AM.

More than anything, I support queer rights, because that’s a very big and very personal deal to me.  This is also the #1 reason I never vote for the Republican party in Texas.

Because I’d rather live in a state with a questionable economy than live in a state where I could be arrested and condemned just for being who I am.  Especially when giving me the rights I DESERVE doesn’t remotely infringe on other people’s rights at all.

If I could have it my way, the two major parties would be Democratic Socialist and Libertarian, as those generalized platforms would best represent my own internal political conflicts.  As it is, I don’t affiliate with either existing major party.  BOTH dissatisfy me. There’s groups of people I wouldn’t in a million years want to associate with on BOTH sides. 
 
(And a number of people who are quite alright.)

And you know what?  You’re perfectly welcome to disagree with me.  Granted, I respect people more when they think for themselves without parroting newscasters and the like, but whatever you want… more power to you.  I can live with that.  I can agree to disagree. 

Hell, you can even mock me a little.  I lightly mock others, too.   One of my best friends in the world is incredibly more liberal than I’ll probably ever be and we tease each other all the time. But there’s a big difference between casual mockery and the kinds of bullshit a number of politicrazy people seem to be pulling these days. 

I just want it to stop.  :/

Consolation.

Piano Ranto

You know, biologically speaking, we’re just organisms.  Animals.  Mammals.  Hominids.

…

How many creatures out there have recognizable heads and legs and abdomens, eyes and a mouth and grasping appendages?  Lots.

How many creatures out there gather in groups? Mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, grandparents and grandchildren, brothers and sisters and cousins and allies and friends? Nests, mobs, pods, gaggles, barrels, drums, flocks, swarms, clusters, hives, licks, parliaments, packs, basks, prides, parades, rabbles, legions, congregations, colonies, coalitions, convocations, companies, conspiracies and ubiquities, gangs, troops, herds, tribes, and even amalgamations and obsolescences? Many, many, many.

How many creatures make and use tools?  Build structures? Bleed and rot? Commit murder, incest and rape?  Recognize death?  Lament loneliness?  Enjoy sex?

…

None of these things make us special.  Not a one.  Biologically speaking, we’re just another species, albeit apparently a rather successful one at the moment.  (At the moment.)

…

You know what really makes us special as a species?  You know what our greatest gift and tool is?  It’s not our advanced technology, our governments, our amazing acts of cruelty and kindness towards ourselves, each other, and other species.  It’s not our so-called feats of prowess and athletic ability, nor is it our ability to capture and harness the power of the sun and unleash that power on the surface of the Earth, destroying entire towns and countries in a blink of an eye.   It’s not the way we have sex, give birth, or die.   It’s none of these things.

Do you know what our single greatest tool is, our greatest gift, what most makes us unmistakably, undeniably human?

Storytelling.

To be sapient is to be wise; to be wise is to grasp, over and over again, the magic and significance of experience through storytelling.

Homo sapiens: the People Who Tell Stories.

…

It’s in our music.  Our art.  Our books.  Our lies.  It’s even in the air we breathe.  At the lunch table, in our clothes, on television.  It’s painted on old cave walls, etched across the spans of our grandparents’ eyes, woven through the cadence of an infant’s laugh.  It’s hidden in our conversations, our languages, our equations and functions and identities, our mythologies and religions and superstitions, in our steps down the cracked sidewalk, on the scarred skins of our hands, scrawled earnestly across the contours of a lover’s body, in animal tracks on a sandy parking lot and in flakes of old paint on the porch swing.

Everyone has a story to tell.  Everyone.  It’s what makes us human.  We sing it, write it, read it, paint it, sell it, buy it, drink it, tear it apart, tape it back together, make love to it, depend on it, cry to it, laugh at it, pray to it, cuddle up against it in our sleep as we dream of it.  Each and every one of us, us and our stories, our psyches, our souls.  No one is exempt, and no one should be exempt…

Our stories and the arts: the foundations of our societies, our cultures, our civilizations, our humanity.  Without the arts, we are hardly even human anymore.

(Keep that in mind the next time you hear of a school deciding to drop the liberal arts classes in order to keep the football team running on a bloated budget.  Think of what we’re sacrificing in the short run.  Think of what we’re comprimising in the long run.   That’s all I ask.  Just… THINK about it.)