Free Speech, Censorship and Reality

Fred Phelps is scum. I mean, I (hope) I personally don't know anyone who feels it is morally or socially acceptable to picket the funerals of dead soldiers or murder victims.

He's scum and the church he runs has so little to do with any rational understanding of the teachings of Christ as to make it unrecognizable.

But he's also a great example. Yes, he's a great example of crazy run amok and how it can infect the people around it but he's also a great example of how very, very wrong the far right is about their claims of censorship. Fred Phelps is allowed to go on doing what he does, teaching his children and his grandchildren his hateful ways and showing his ass (metaphorically) to the whole universe.

His idiocy is protected so all those people whining about the Fairness Doctrine and claiming that they're being censored need to shut the fuck up.

I've been thinking on this issue based on something that happened on one of my favorite websites a while ago. Long, really long, crazy long story short; one of the groups on the site had some really crappy mods and they didn't do their jobs at all. All sorts of racist, hateful, violent things were posted and let stand. Eventually the people who own the site decided, in the best interests of the site and the rest of the community, to shut the group down.

I will admit to some amount of private rejoicing. There's only so much misinformation I can take and they were a font of it.

Then some people were banned for continued asshattery and they started screaming that their right to free speech had been violated, essentially they repeated the word "censorship," a lot inaccuratly and to no purpose. I'm not going to go over their side of the story because, for the most part it's bullshit. You can just Goggle the name of the site + censorship and you'll find it.

Here's what irritates me about the claim. THERE IS NO FREEDOM OF SPEECH ON THE INTERNET. None. You don't have it. Neither do I. None of us do. We have the freedom to follow the TOS of whatever website you're on, the freedom to get your own damned server and make your own rules or the freedom to not act like an ass in public.

Let me repeat that as it's important. Don't act like an ass in public. As pretty much everything you post or have ever posted on the internet is avalible to the public. If you say things that are racist, sexist or just plain ignorant try very hard not to waste everyone's time pretending to be surprised when someone points out that what you said was racist, sexist or ignorant.

You don't have freedom of speech on the internet and you don't have the freedom to speak without consequences. And that's what the people I'm talking about, and a host of other people, are looking for.

They want to say whatever they want, no matter how false or stupid or mean-spirited the things they say are and then they want to go on their merry way with no consequences. they want to say racist things but they don't want to be called racists and they don't want to hear that the things they said are racist. They just want to say them. It's so very, very childish. I'm tired of it.

“Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.” Thomas Jefferson

We really need to stop making excuses for bigots and call them on their shit.

The Return of the Political Commentary: Change and the Modern Voter

"How's that change so far?"

"The President has done nothing!"

"Keep the change."

"I'll keep my liberty you can keep the change."

These are things that I hear all too regularly. I'm not talking about valid, rational criticism of the president. I'm talking about people who can't articulate thoughts more complex than can fit on a bumper sticker.

I love when people disagree with my political position. I live for it. It helps me learn. I hate ignorant people and I've found that the ignorance is spreading. The Civil Rights movement started, arguably, shortly after the Civil War and ended...never. Don't kid yourself. We're still working toward equality. The Women's Movement, the Gay Rights movement every attempt to engineer major social change in this nation is the work of decades. Yet all I'm hearing lately is "Why isn't the change happening? Why isn't it happening faster? WHHHHHHAAAAAAAA!!"

OK

Yeah.

You have fun with that. The grown ups are going to have a conversation now 'cause it's hard to concentrate while you're screaming and kicking your feet like that.

In case you hadn't figured it out, I'm tired of people pretending that the president has done nothing at all and that the exact change they envisioned hasn't happened and as such they president is a failure and evil and WHAAAAAAAAA!

Stop it. Your ignorance is taking attention away from the actual issues that still need solving. Your millisecond, MTV, goldfish length attention span and your childish desire for instant gratification without any actual, you know, work is a waste of time, yours and mine.

(The next section is full of irony given the fact that I'm blogging. Yes, I'm aware.)

I spend a lot of time involved in various political/social groups. The key word in that last sentence is "involved." Now, I realize that people have jobs and lives and so on but it can't be denied that the Tea Baggers have jobs and lives too. They also have to desire and will to get up and go do something.

The aides at my Senators and Representatives offices know me by name. Some of them recognize my voice. I call them at least once a week and I've spent a not small amount of time debating them in an effort to get them to advise their bosses properly. I've had more than one conversation with my congressperson for the same reason.

During the election we had the time to get out on the streets and act in an attempt to get what we wanted. Guess what? It worked. Well done. That wasn't the end. It was the beginning. Sadly, what I see most often lately is people who aren't involving themselves any farther than whining about how things aren't going their way and exclaiming that they are not going to vote for Obama next year.

Stop for a moment and think about that. Progressives, who for some inexplicable reason convinced themselves that Obama was a Progressive, when he gave no indication of being one, feel that their best plan for actually getting the change they want is to wait until 2012 and then not vote for the incumbent Democrat.

See what I meant about the screaming and kicking their feet? Grow up people, change doesn't happen because you want it to happen. It happens because you force it to happen and it doesn't happen fast. Get to work or shut the hell up. I'm tired of listening to you. your temper tantrums keep getting in the way of my attempts to make change happen.

This Is Me Doing Something Nice

It is important to remember while reading this post that I do not have chilluns. I do not want chilluns and for the most part I do not like chilluns. Also, I have perfect pitch which means that when I hear a note my brain says A# and if you mean to play a note and instead play three or four or just make some screeching noise that hasn't been heard since the Jurassic period I know it and it makes me want to kill you until you stop.

And yet...

This evening I went to a concert band performance given by our local sixth graders. One of my friends has a child who was performing and due to various factors, largely begging on her part and the rare urge to be nice to someone on mine, I agreed to go. It was excruciating.

When I was a child my concerts included all three grades on middle school and all four in high school so that the more experienced players could ramp up the volume and drown out the tragically bad new players in the lower grades. But oh no, now, due to the continued pussification of America each grade has their own concert and each section has its own song within that concert so we can highlight the progress of the chilluns and aren't they speshul snowflakes and...Oh My Holy Gods please fucking make it stop. Don't play that note again. It does not appear on any sheet of music ever written ever in the history of humans SHUT UP!