Tag: culture

When Progressives Turn to Hate, Racism, Bullying,Tyranny, and Violence

Posted on by D. L. Keur

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Do you wonder at your fellow humans where those supposedly fighting for human rights, freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and against intolerance, racism, bullying, and violence exhibit intolerance and racism, promote the curtailing of human rights, doing it by employing violence and bullying to force their will upon those others they perceive as prohibiting these things?

Upon mentioning that irony to an activist the other day, I was met with froth-mouthed screaming and thinly veiled promises of assault upon my person.

Exactly my point.

Fighting human rights violations, intolerance, and racism seems to now mean singling out a target demographic and subjugating, even eradicating, them by force.

Ending bullying now means mobs of people bullying others to the point that they flee in fear for their welfare and even their lives.

Freedom of speech and thought now means only thinking and speaking as approved by mob decision.

Ending violence now means angry masses of people using anything at hand as a weapon to beat down those they claim as violent.

And, of course, these folks all claim themselves to be educated and intelligent, while those they declaim and disdain are labeled ignorant dolts.

Interesting, ironic, and, yes, frightening–a world torn apart by violence employed in the name of nonviolence, humanity, equality, freedom, and fairness.

It’s insane and it’s ugly, destined to become even more ugly, and I sincerely doubt, bearing human history in mind, that it will end well. The millennial crisis has gained momentum, and that momentum is founded on a complete refusal to accept less than total annihilation, by force, if necessary, of any perceived opposition, even if those perceptions of the opposition are inaccurate to reality and fly in the face of the very principles upon which the movement is founded.

And, yes, Progressives, I’m a Bernie supporter and Move-On member who’s saying this. Until and unless Progressives walk the walk and act the act, they are nothing but hypocrites and fakes, a petulant, hate-riven, hate-driven mob no better and, sometimes, worse, than those they claim as persecutor.

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A Rape Culture? Humans ARE Specialists.

Posted on by D. L. Keur

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I’m so tired of “new” feminists and their male proponents. I’m tired of the attempts to culturally castrate men…and other women, for that matter. I’m tired of people mouthing the words ‘rape culture’, when, honestly, they have their heads up their varied anatomical holes about rape.

I was raped–sexually, in fact. I didn’t talk about it for years…decades. I rarely speak of it, now.  Why? I was traumatized. Brutally. Because the rape was brutal, done by a bunch of jocks–yes, gang-raped by those privileged boys, black, brown, and white, whose ‘bad boy’ behavior and aggression society–almost ALL human societies–encourages and celebrates.

Do we live in a ‘rape culture’? Really? You bet we do. And it ain’t just the men.  It ain’t just them who have a penis and testicles. Women rape, too. And I’m NOT limiting this to sexual violation, folks. Rape is an act of domination, of overpowering and subjugating others. And it isn’t limited to males dominating, overpowering, and subjugating women or even men dominating, overpowering, and subjugating other humans, regardless of gender. Women are just as guilty of raping those around them, both women, especially women, as well as men. They may not commit a sexual violation to do it (though some do that, too, and, yes, even to men) but they do, in fact, practice forms just as or even more onerous…because they are HUMAN.

Humans are specialists in domination–dominionism. They are specialists in subjugating others–hierarchy. They are specialists in overpowering anyone and anything they can–oppression. It’s the nature of humans to do so. It’s how primitive humans survived hostile environments to become what they think is the top of the food chain–by subjugating, overpowering, and dominating.  To change that, you’re going to have to change YOU and the entire species. Genetic tampering would do it. Attempting to dominate, subjugate, and overpower your perceived victimizer is only perpetuating more rape, that is you raping–subjugating, overpowering, and dominating–those you blame as YOUR rapists.

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The Problem with Conservatives/Libertarians/TPers and Liberals/Progressives

Posted on by D. L. Keur

I’m an outlier. I believe in compassionate treatment for those who demonstrate a sense of responsibility for self and to others, but tend toward skepticism in aiding and abetting those who repeatedly demonstrate a complete lack thereof. And that’s why I just can’t and won’t embrace either of the attitudes exhibited by the Conservatives/Libertarians/TPers or the Liberals/Progressives.

As I see it, Conservatives/Libertarians/TPers measure worth of an individual by outward appearances, blithely ignoring factors that may contribute to an individual’s failure to achieve despite their hard work and best efforts, namely luck and opportunity (which is tied to luck).

Likewise, the Liberals/Progressives are equally remiss because they turn a blind eye to the fact that there are people who do NOT want to put forth any effort whatsoever to become responsible members of society. Liberals/Progressives seem to think that everyone, if given a chance, will, sooner or later, come around and give up their choice of addictive behavior, whether that’s violence against others, indolence, or feeding some personal craving.

Both camps ignore reality, the Right condemning anyone as indolent who can’t make it, despite best efforts, the Left embracing everyone (except those who don’t embrace their ideological platform) as inherently and potentially model citizens if just given enough incentive and opportunity.

Can we have some balanced approach that acknowledges reality?

 

 

“A Great, Raging Bloodbath”

Posted on by D. L. Keur

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“…A great, raging bloodbath….”–that’s what a reader gloated about in a review they publicly posted. Those were the first words of their review.

I blinked, a crinkle furrowing my brow. My brain did a cross between a ? and an !, not so much in surprise at the fact of it, (I know graphically depicted sex and gore sell very well, thanks.), but because it was a gloat–an adamant one. And not just by one reader. Many readers of the same book and the same series of books expressed those exact sentiments…just not quite as concisely.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to that one review that brought me pause.

The reader/reviewer only gave the book four out of five stars. Why? Because of “unbelievable scenes” and “too convenient” plot answers. Plus, the reader admitted that the end was a “cheat.” In other words, the story was poorly written, but that didn’t matter much–one star subtracted–because of the visceral satisfaction the writing delivered to that reader.

Reading other reviews of this highly popular book, both the positive and the negative, I found similar sentiments among those ranking the book three stars and above. The positive reviews outweighed the negative by far, and all of the positive ones had one common thread: the one element that drove readers’ ecstasy was what that one reviewer succinctly summed up as one “great, raging bloodbath” of a book.

Checking the rest of the novels in the series, I discovered that, yes, that one element drove all the books in that series to crest the best sellers lists, and the reasons given were that the books all satisfied readers’ tastes for pain and misery vividly and viscerally portrayed, fulfilling their fascination with the depraved, their obsession, even craving, to witness hate mercilessly enacted in the worst kind of viciousness and violence, all very graphically rendered.

The genre was Science Fiction, a genre I like to read a lot, but now find myself either avoiding or, at least, exercising extreme caution and care when choosing a next novel for reading.  …Because the genre is filled, first, with Sword & Sorcery dressed up like SF, and, second, because it is now laden with what I call ‘gruel’–gore and cruelty–and, of course, right with it, perverse sexual depredation.

These are not the kind of books I read. They are not the kind of books I write, either. But what makes my brow furrow isn’t that my preferred reading, that my own writing and published novels, can’t draw that same level of popularity among readers. (I’m not writing for those kind of readers.) No. What bothers me is what this signifies about where the prime time tastes of the culture of which I am a part has taken itself. I wonder about my fellow humans and my fellow citizens, a large majority of whom embrace this kind of ‘entertainment’ as preferred.

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Jobs: Many Articles, One Inevitable Conclusion

Posted on by D. L. Keur

There are and have been a lot of articles about the state of jobs in the U.S.  Reading them, I find only one or two that actually address the real problem: over-population.  That’s because it’s a tabboo subject; it’s unpopular to suggest that people must stop having so many babies.  When I was in high school, then college, though, it kept striking me that population growth along with technological innovation would, in time, prove to be disastrous for our nation and the world. And, unfortunately, that time has come.  I used to argue that in Economics class; I still argue that with colleagues, though, lately, their voices are fewer and weaker because, 1) their jobs have been outsourced overseas, and, 2) computers and automation have taken over their tasks. Even jobs requiring a high degree of mental acumen and skill are being phased out from a “permanent” position to that of a “permanent temporary”, subcontracted status. Mostly gone are the lucrative, lifetime jobs where you could look forward to retirement after, say, thirty years of satisfying, steady employment with the same firm, working your way up the company hierarchy.

DOING MORE FOR LESS
Technological innovation and computer automation are, of course, wonderful. One person can do so much more today than they could even ten years ago…by themselves, without an army of help. So, pound for pound and dollar for dollar, they and the company they work for make more money, right? Maybe, depending on the circumstances and the business. Mostly, it depends on how the business is run and how much competition vies for the same market…because competition for income is more intense with the increasing number of desperate available bodies willing to do it for less.

REPLACING THOSE EXPENSIVE HUMAN WORKERS
Of course, robotics allow companies to get rid of expensive workers who, being human, are, well, human. Emotions, illness, familial responsibilities, and the need for reasonably safe, comfortable working conditions all add a toll to hiring live bodies as opposed to high-tech mechanicals. Robots are expensive, though. Still, when measuring one robot’s productivity against that of a live worker, robots make a lot of sense.  It takes 4.2 human workers to do the same amount of work as one robot if those humans can and will work at the same speed and with the same efficiency as said robot.  And, of course, you need the tech to maintain and fix the robot…or a contract with the company who makes it.  Still, the robot is still cheaper, especially since a robot can be used as a depreciation expense.  So, considering all the variables, buying a robot (or several) is definitely much more appealing than employing human beings.  And robots don’t need health care or retirement benefits, a huge plus in savings.

BURGEONING POPULATION
Then, of course, there’s the sheer volume of people who need or want work. That makes workers very cheap and becoming cheaper still as population increases.

SHORT TERM SOLUTION? I don’t think there is one that’s politically appealing to either of our political parties, nor one that is practical without closing the borders and isolationism, plus some stringent new commerce laws…such as: to sell in the U.S., you must create the product in a U.S.-based factory that employs U.S. citizens, else pay a huge tariff for the privilege of selling to Americans.

LONG TERM SOLUTION? Pretty easy to figure out: reduce the human population by reducing the number of babies born.