Category: Opinion

When I was a kid at summer camp, maybe when I was 11 or so, I was at a pool with not just my camp but other camps as well. It started to rain so a bunch of us stood in the area right outside the bathroom as we waited.

Some kids from another camp started picking on me. They were making fun of my shoes and whatever else. The counselors weren’t around. I was outnumbered and had nowhere to go, so they continued.  I was cornered.

Then one of their friends joined in – a short kid, probably Chinese – and was having a field day making fun of me with his friends there to back him up.

Continue reading “‘Bad’ Words and Context”

I don’t think I’ve ever read a series of opinion articles in my life worse than what stained the pages of The Washington Post after the Charleston shootings. Many of the authors are nothing more than ‘experts’ who majored in Reinforce-My-Biased-Point-Of-View Studies and now make a living either teaching their own nonsense to a new crop of future agitators, or freelance writing trolling.

Continue reading “Charleston Killings and Awful Writing”

I’m not one to voice political opinions too loudly, particularly on divisive topics. It’s not because I don’t have my own beliefs, but because I’m not interested in being judged and perhaps even losing friends based on, say, who I want to be president.

These days, because of the Internet, it’s easier than ever to know how someone else feels about certain political issues or topics in the news. Therefore, it’s easier than ever to judge them on those opinions.

When I hear what I perceive to be illogical and irresponsible opinions voiced by folks I otherwise respect and even like, I’m torn. How could someone so nice defend – or claim to understand – the acts of criminals, or perhaps even encourage irresponsible behavior? How can law-abiding friends of mine have greater problems with those who strive to rein in bad behavior or encourage self-sufficiency (good things, right?), than those who break the law or create problems for themselves? Why must these friends make excuses for, or demands that enable this behavior?

Then I take a step back and see how these friends of mine live their lives. Most often, it’s not consistent with their opinions. While they may even claim to have these views for righteous reasons – and could talk your ear off explaining why – they simply aren’t the people in which they claim to be fighting for. They’re not mooches, they’re not law-breakers, they’re not dregs of society.

The opinions they express or policies in which they fight for might, at the very best, be more forgiving of or helpful to some, but at the very worst (the part that disgusts me) be excusing or enabling of problematic behavior.

But they don’t live it, and that’s far more important.

A couple of quotes/passages I’ve read recently really struck a chord with me.

One way to define the difference between a regular belief and a sacred belief is that people who hold sacred beliefs think it is morally wrong for anyone to question those beliefs. If someone does question those beliefs, theyre not just being stupid or even depraved, theyre actively doing violence. They might as well be kicking a puppy. When people hold sacred beliefs, there is no disagreement without animosity. In this mindset, people who disagreed with my views werent just wrong, they were awful people. I watched what people said closely, scanning for objectionable content. Any infraction reflected badly on your character, and too many might put you on my blacklist.

– Aurora Dagny

What gets someone so worked up that they not only develop a hard-line point of view, but find any objection to be irrational? There are quite a few possibilities. But it’s clear that such hardline stances are likely to be irrational, themselves.

Continue reading “Sacred Beliefs and Our Capacity for Rationalization and Moral Surrender”

I read next to nothing about the murders that Elliot Rodger committed this past week. He’s another in a long line of delusional creeps who takes out his frustrations on the world in the most despicable way possible. In fact, just now, I had to Google his name just so I could write that first sentence. So why am I writing about this guy? There have been plenty of spree killers before him, and the public responses are often similar. I’m writing because I read responses to this particular case, which I feel have taken bad arguments to a whole new level.

Any time a spree killer, such as Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech, goes on a rampage, the arguments are typically about gun control (and mental health). I stay out of those as I’ve yet to see a single obvious solution to this issue. This time, because of Rodger’s ‘manifesto’ and video, the response wasn’t just about gun control (after all, he killed three people with a knife – a major blow to those who simply wanted to use this case to argue for more gun control), but about sexism and misogyny.

Suddenly, certain folks, my Washington Post co-workers included, decided to use THIS incident to stand on a soap box and shout through the megaphone about sexism. These murders are society’s fault because society and movies are sexist!

I often find that keeping things simple is the best response to arguments by divisive ‘activists’ who are looking to re-ignite discussions after isolated, tragic incidents.

This guy (I forgot his name already and don’t care to look it up again) is just another in a long line of narcissistic spree killers. To use him as an example for how sexist this world can be is like using a 1500-pound man as an example for the obesity epidemic. These writers and Tweeters are using the killer’s ramblings as ‘proof’ to show how awful ALL WOMEN have it in this world. I’m not arguing that sexism and misogyny don’t exist, I’m simply stating that using him as a catalyst to complain about it is illogical, especially when real victims of his crimes – those who were killed and injured – have it much worse (not to mention those in mourning).

As for the killer himself, here’s what I know. He was lonely. He felt left out. He felt that he was owed a better life involving being around people (particularly, hot women). He went to parties just to see how things worked out for other people, but for him it never worked. (He was also a psychopath, and you know the rest of the story.)

Lots of people go through this (not the psychopath part). There is no shortage of socially awkward people (not just men – women too) who just can’t catch a break and enjoy life with the right people. That’s just how it is (or – more likely to be) in this day and age. Perhaps it was different decades ago, especially in certain areas, when people didn’t have their noses buried in smartphones and people were actually trying to socialize and find someone to marry before the age of 30. How things came to be, particularly in the U.S., is a much greater discussion.

For the sake of this argument, it is true that single, bitter men who want nothing more than company – or at best a family of their own – MAY blame modern feminism for making these natural goals more difficult (which does not automatically make them misogynists). I’d say the killer felt the same way, only to take it much further with disgusting statements that no civilized person agrees with, and then several extreme steps further to the point where he murdered people over it.

It’s quite clear to me that instead of having this incident be used as another example in the never-ending discussion about gun control and mental health, the killer’s extreme and delusional statements are simply being used as an example for angry people to express their frustration about what they perceive to be obstacles in their own lives. Let’s just hope none of them take that to the next level and go on a shooting spree, too.