Tag Archive: “culture”, page 2

A Woman in the White House

Posted in society by Adam

10 September 2016

What will it mean to have a woman as president?

As we have struggled with partisanship over the past eight years, one wonders how much is due to racism. Or maybe not exactly racism in the strongest sense of the word, but just the uncertainty of making a change that most sensible people know makes no difference: having a black man do a job formerly held only by white men.

The argument goes that most white Americans probably haven’t had supervisors, teachers, preachers, or other authority figures that were black men, so they worried about it a lot. Like if they went on a blind date with a black woman. They see a certain amount of cultural differences, and they know how fraught with peril culture clashes can be. It’s easy to feel uncomfortable in a room of people who are different than you.

Hell, they probably worried about Obama sagging his pants. Worried about the national anthem being changed to a rap song. Worried about filing their taxes in Ebonics. All those insane thoughts they couldn’t tamp down.

And we face basically the same problem of cultural-ignorance now that a woman may take office. Are we all going to have to watch RomComs for the next four to eight years? If we have a smudge on our face, will the police pull us over and wipe it off with a spit-wetted Kleenex?

Hell no, we need Trump, they think. He’ll let us scratch our crotches when we itch, while Clinton will require us to wear clean underwear when we go out.

But this election isn’t about forcing us all to put our napkins in our laps and tuck in our shirts and sit up straight. It’s about an eminently qualified candidate who wants to address the problems our nation faces. She hasn’t done the best job explaining it, but in all honesty if you read the policies proposed by both sides, Hillary Clinton has more right to claim the slogan “Make America Great Again” than Donald Trump does (caveat: it should really be something like “Make America Greater Still”).

She actually wants to deal with climate change, not just use it as a minced oath for those crazy people in white coats doing that science crap. She wants to fix immigration in a way that recognizes the economic realities of labor as they stand. To improve the lot of all workers through practical solutions, like paid family leave.

While Trump wants to cut taxes for the rich, Clinton actually wants to get down under the sink and actually replumb our revenue streams to fit the way money flows in modern America. She wants to take those streams and devote them to betterment of health coverage and education access.

The main criticism against Hillary Clinton is the notion she is corrupted by power, but for all of the attacks, the woman is still standing, which says more about the attacks than it does about her. Sure, it’s tough to stay up and keep fighting, but it’s unrealistic to believe that if the Republicans had ever found a real, honest-to-God scandal to hit her with she would still be around.

We’ve seen countless political figures felled by scandal. Either Clinton is very lucky, possesses Moriarty-level cunning, or the alleged scandals are wildly overblown. Of those three, Occam’s Razor slices and dices the first two, leaving the conclusion that if there is real corruption there, it hasn’t been shown. Hillary Clinton remains viable and respectable.

So get sloppy while you can, America. Come January 2017, you’ll be forced to wear bow ties and straw hats. Your shirts will be pastels, starched and itchy. You will wear either a handkerchief in your breast pocket or a flower in your lapel. And you will be forced to hum or whistle as you walk down the street, a spring in your step, smile on your face, twinkle in your eye. You will say sir and ma’am, please and thank you, wash your hands before every meal, say grace, wash behind your ears, and pass the dutchie on the left-hand side.

The Conservative Counter-Culture

Posted in society by Adam

9 May 2015

Recognizing the existence of the conservative counter-culture, why does it exist?

Jade Helm 15 is a military training operation set to kick off later this year. But to the conservative counter-culture it is a threat to national security.

Back in the 1960s there was a counter-culture on the left of the political spectrum. These days, though, it seems the most diverging culture in the United States is found on the right. Every time a Democrat is in the White House, gun sales go up. Even healthy eating and pro-fitness programs are under suspicion. And, as time ticks down on Obama’s last term, it seems the counter-culture is beating the drum louder and faster than ever. If Obama is going to act to install whatever NWO Illuminati scheme he has planned, he’ll have to get to it pretty soon.

But why is there a counter-culture at all? The Republicans control both the House and Senate, plus a majority of state legislatures, and a majority of state governorships. You would think that, in the face of such overwhelming party dominance, the conservatives would feel pretty happy right now.

The fact that they don’t speaks more to their expectations of government, driven by media, than to the realities of government. Stump speeches and conservative media have promised them sweeping changes that are impractical.

For their party’s own inaction on immigration reform, they lack a giant, shiny border wall, while the country lacks a reasonable immigration system based on the actual needs of the country.

For all their compassionate promises to end choice for women, the results have been a long series of ever-more ridiculous measures that have been defeated in the courts. Their pyrrhic victories in passing these laws have been a slow, long erosion of access to healthcare for women.

For all their bitching about taxes, realigning the system so that the rich pay less, many state budgets are feeling the crunch of an impractical revenue burden without the needed revenue stream. Indeed, the fiscal drought in many red states is as self-inflicted as California’s real drought, in many ways.

The party’s own failure to evolve on a host of issues has resulted in distrust and pixelation.

Conservative politicians are scared of their own constituents, of failing to get reelected, so they simply lie and claim that they can do things they know they won’t. And when they don’t, the counter-culture gets mad. Things like the Tea Party blossom.

But such disarray cannot last. Neither can the professional party denial of certain basic principles of modern government, like social programs. No, at some point the GOP national and local has to tell the truth and come back toward the center. Only then will the counter-culture begin to normalize itself.

For what it’s worth, it’s not like the Democrats are capitalizing on this cultural crisis on the right. They aren’t running particularly innovative or experimental local campaigns to try to bring people from the far-right to the center.

And the conservative media, at least to my eye, is very insular. There is no good, clean, independent conservative voice I’m aware of. I guess because media requires access, everyone in the conservative tent has to toe the line, except on the far right outskirts where you stumble into things like Jade Helm 15.

Rubbernecking

Posted in society by Adam

6 September 2014

Rubbernecking on the latest scandal is a great way to learn little and get pissed off at the same time.

To rubberneck or not to rubberneck. Care about the latest pop culture scandal? The latest murders by terrorists? By a state? The political gaff that might end a career? Nude celebrities? How much of rubbernecking is about curiosity? Moral superiority? Schadenfreude? Money for the advertisers? Bragging rights?

Cultural phenomena are participatory. Even those that steer clear of them are participating as the steelnecked eyes-forward crowd. For another, they inevitably color other aspects of life, so in some cases becoming unavoidable.

I still hold to my definition of general news as something that raises a general issue in society (and therefore can be discussed in that context). Subculture news is any news that isn’t applicable to the whole society. Sporting news, business news (where it’s about specific industries and not their impact on society at large), etc.

Most open source news does not pertain to the public, but Heartbleed did. It raised the specter of insecurity due to lack of maintenance of infrastructure. As have countless other scandals, which is to say there is an accumulation of evidence that as a society we need to place greater focus on secure computing.

The problem with these bleed-through stories comes in how they get retargeted. The media knows our buttons, and if they can retarget a story that might provoke social change to one that will simply devolve into a frenzy, they will shamelessly spin away. A story that should drive improved security might sink to the level of schoolmarmery, imaming about immorality. A story about a politician running away from home to join the Wall Street does not obtain scandal, but is framed as local hero makes good.

So even if you rubberneck, what you see is not what happened. What you see is the antibiotic-fed, deboned, technicolor TV dinner version. The camps do not look in on each other, to try to understand or find the process of events developing. They simply rely on stereotypes and facts be damned. They don’t need facts, they buy pesticides to kill facts. Infacticides.

The first step is to make sure you have something to look at. The rules are just like writing fiction. Give them a question, give them a conflict, some sort of tension they want resolved. Is there a bad guy that we can pretend to hunt down and bring to justice? It’s a narrative form.

The second step is to just keep pointing to that first step. If you get closure, great. If not? Well you can still pump the story for awhile yet, until something better comes along. It won’t matter to the readers or viewers or listeners. They love a randomized reinforcement schedule. You’ll have them hooked indefinitely.

So rubberneck with caution, if at all. You don’t want to give them a chance to addict you to their fantasy reality version of the world. Arm yourself with the question, “does this really matter to me?” If you find out that it doesn’t, don’t ask for your money back, just walk away.