These Are My Pet Peeves

My pet peeves include:

•  False dichotomies: The idea, for example, that everyone can be broken into one of two categories, liberal or conservative, and placed somewhere on the big stick of socio-political allegiances.
•  False equivalencies: Usually an extension of the first idea. The most common and perplexing example being something like, "Fox News is no worse than Rachel Maddow."
•  False assumptions and groupings: In my circles, it most often sounds like, "All conservatives/tea------rs/Republicans say/believe/think the same about /minorities." Experience proves, again and again, that this isn't true - even if it's true in that person's experience.
•  Other forms of Broderism: Such as using a rare example to show that "the other side" is likewise guilty

Of course, the reality is that I need to get over the peeved part of that, as well as the pet part. There isn't enough time or energy in the universe and there are other, more grave injustices to struggle against. Otoh, though, I realize that ours is not a fight of flesh and blood, but of powers, principalities, and psycho-socio captivity as well. The battle of freedom is not to be waged, as I constantly note here and on Facebook, on just one level - just as we cannot rely solely on private charity or on governmental action to fight poverty. And I also realize that not everybody thinks deeply about what divides and unites us (did I just hint that I think deeply? Do I? You'll never know...) So I want to at least have something to point to next time someone picks on my nerves over the intertubes.

And this is the message:

We're all a lot more complex than that. We truly are. Maybe we should ask more questions and surround ourselves with more people we can disagree with intelligently, capably, and agreeably.*

As you can tell, I'm mad as a hatter!

Now on to the reasons I wrote that qualifying intro. The current crop of specific pet peeves.

I'm tired of the Occupy Movement being confused for partisan politics. As in, I'm tired of it being confused as an arm of the Democratic Party by jealous-sounding conservatives. Likewise, I'm tired of the Democratic Party trying to co-opt the movement. I'm tired of their lame Occupy the Vote campaign. The DP is part of the two party system that has been corrupted and corrupts completely through its oligarchal/corporatocracy factions. They are not listening to the American people and will not listen to us until they loosen the bonds of the Military/Prison/Educational Industrial Complexes as well as Big Oil/Coal/Pharma/Banks. And they will not do that as long as the DNC is complicit in taking their donations, nqa. Chase Bank wants to make sure its investment pays off and Boeing and Caterpillar want to make sure that they stay in good business. The OWS is about the process of consensus-building democracy. As in, everybody gets involved, every person has a voice. Human people, that is.

I'm tired of baseless allegations being leveled at every forward-thinking person or organization. Worse, I'm tired of Americans buying into the discreditations as if those should stop the message. And while we're speaking of the message, I'm thoroughly unimpressed with white paleo-conservatives ability to take a five second clip of one of Dr. King's many fine speeches to try to prove their ignorant, backwards, and regressive point. If minorities WERE to be chosen based on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, then jails would be empty of them and universities would be full of them! Besides, the same thugs who try to praise King now, removed by amnesia as they are, were defaming him for sleeping with white women and for being a Marxist when it suited their purposes. Another pretty blatant lie that suits the paleoconservatives is to plant allegations of rape on progressive and subversive leaders. All allegations should, of course, be taken seriously. But these same dittoheaded d---hebags only care about the accusation when it's tossed at men behind the Black Panthers, WikiLeaks, or now Occupy Wall Street. Men who were very likely set up by the powers they are trying to challenge. These Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, Michael Savages, and J Edgar Hoovers don't care about women protection when it's the military or military contractors being accused of sexual assault or rape and then locking up the victim for days on end in a janitor's closet...

I'm tired of being told by my good friends that voting for a third party is not just throwing my vote away and giving it to the GOP. That's foolish and worse, bad math. Of course, I'm also tired of those who say that voting for ANYONE is preferable to voting for Obama. Seriously?? There is a distinction between the two evils. I will not waste my time campaigning for the Dems, but I sure won't stand idly by if someone compares Obama to any neo-con. Seriously, I love my country too much to hand it over to another John McCain or George W Bush (fortunately, I live in a state where Obama's vote is all but guaranteed).

I'm tired of cynicism, often from my closer friends, my irl friends. This is the affliction of knowing something must change, that something needs to change, of maybe even agreeing about a course of action but then... Phfeweeeewww... Their sickness lets out all of the air. They are generally smart enough to know that nothing worth changing will changith ease and overnight. They understand that the future isn't full of non-allergenic puppies and rainbow-riding unicorns. But they lack long-term prophetic vision.

And without vision, the people perish.

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*Like much else in my blog nowadays, this is as much directed at myself as at anybody else, if not more so.

We have choice...

Among other dirty, low-down, deceitful tricks and messages that the Clinton campaign has brought us recently, here's one of the lowest:

``He would not have been my pastor,'' Clinton said at a press conference while campaigning in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. ``We have a choice when it comes to our pastors and the churches we attend.''

Thanks for once again adding to the noise and confusion of race tainted by doubts, race-baiting, xenophobia, allegations of disloyalty, fear-mongering...

Is Barack a Muslim?
"Not as far as I know."

On "remembering" being under threat of sniper fire a decade ago in Bosnia (and her claims of experience):
"I may have misspoke."

On the fact that her campaign has gained no traction since early February:
"You know, the people of Ohio spoke. And the road to the presidency goes through Ohio."

On the fact that she has an outside (10%'s the buzz-word) chance of securing the nomination:
"And also remember that pledged delegates in most states are not pledged. You know, there is no requirement that anybody vote for anybody. They're just like superdelegates."
[Which is what this whole smear-campaign is about, anyway. Make Obama look so bad that the delegates will have no choice but to switch allegiances to Clinton.]

Former President Bill Clinton putting down the Obama campaign for a charge that, really, his wife's campaign is accusing Obama of:
"This is what this should be about, two people (McCain and Clinton) who love America. Not all this other stuff that gets in the way of it."
[And then he says the same thing today about getting back to the "real" issues. Which, btw, Obama has been doing but has largely been ignored for, since it's really just not sexy enough.]

A top, top aide (hound-dog Jimmy Carville) on New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's timely endorsement of Obama:
"He's a Judas."

Let's hold up there.

A Judas is one who betrays who he loves, one who betrays her cause. I'm sorry, but looking at the fact that the Democratic Party is internally bleeding right now and what looked liked a freight train to the White House is now looking like a streetcar named Desperate, I think I know who the traitors are. If John McCain is leading in the popular opinion polls (by two points in a head-to-head match-up against either Dem candidate) and he hasn't even started flinging the mud yet, if Rove's job as-is is phenomenally too-easy, I think we all know who's been stabbing who in the back.

I choose not to listen to your garbage anymore, political machine. Please, let Barack Obama be Barack Obama. Take the high-road for a turn. We do have a choice. I think that America is ready to be treated as adults. Please stop treating us as children. Call out to our better selves. We just may listen, this time.

Edit:
Thank you, Bill Burton, for this:

After originally refusing to play politics with this issue, it’s disappointing to see Hillary Clinton’s campaign sink to this low in a transparent effort to distract attention away from the story she made up about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia. The truth is, Barack Obama has already spoken out against his pastor’s offensive comments and addressed the issue of race in America with a deeply personal and uncommonly honest speech. The American people deserve better than tired political games that do nothing to solve the larger challenges facing this country.

Letter to the Editor

Re: Strollers send some into a rolling rage:

Having seen what my pregnant wife went through riding the CTA [Chicago Transit Authority] to and from work, the antagonistic (and bullish) tone of the replies in Tuesday's article doesn't surprise me - only frustrates. After all, if the only passengers who give up their seats for someone in their third trimester tend to be little old ladies, why wouldn't Rush Hour [sic, oops!] patrons be so exasperated at the site of mothers and children using up precious space? After all, it has to be phenomenally easy for a singular parent to wheel their infant in through a jammed bus, find available seating, unstrap their child from the restraints, place them in the CTA's infant restraint seats (while praying the bus ride itself won't give the child whiplash), and folding down and disposing of the stroller.

But what I also sense is a case of classism. Many of the parents who ride on the bus or train with their infants are riding the bus not to get downtown to their relatively high-paying jobs, or to get to Wrigleyville to scope out the scene or whatnot, but to effectively get around. They use the CTA and not a car with adequate child-restraint seats because they cannot afford to own a car. For them, the CTA is a lifeline, inconvenience or not.

Jason Dye
32
Logan Square

So, it's March and all...

Where's the Madness?

I know it's out there. I just haven't been paying attention.

I know that Duke's likely not to get a berth this year.

That's fairly insane...

But is that it? Is there anything really loco / chemically imbalanced / lunatic going on out there? Is there a chance that some off-the-wall school (not an Xavier. Say a Chicago State or a Bible school with under 1,000 students) gets into the Final Four? Is there an outside chance that a school that doesn't have money for full athletic scholarships will get seed money for these athlete-scholars?

Is there a chance that a school will get recognized not for ridiculing relatively-obscure cultures (meaning, anyone not of their own - read, pasty-White - culture - i.e., urban and Tribal-American), but for lifting every one of its athletes to a 3.0 GPA and a four-year goal plan for graduation?

Yeah, yeah, save the self-righteous rants for Sports Illustrated (which will still rank in millions while it defies the NCAA - while the rest of us bemoan the current system in our living rooms while succumbing to the Dick Vitale-inspired Fever on our large-screens). But, y'know, a man's gotta gripe about something.

And the lack of feasible drinking water for 1.1 billion people just doesn't seem within grasp for my little mind right now.

Hmmmm....