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Today started poorly.
After a woefully insufficient amount of sleep, I dragged my body out of bed, ate something for breakfast (I think it was yogurt) and drove off to face the day. Half an hour later, through the cold and bitter morning air, I trudged groggily across the six blocks from my parking space to school. Then, something blog-worthy happened.
Halfway to my destination I was greeted by two ladies, one offering me a publication. “Would you like to read a bit about discrimination and racism? It’s an awareness piece, something you can read in your free time.” Now, even in my barely conscious state, a red flag went off inside my head. This was suspiciously close to the M.O. of religion panderers. My sluggish mind did its best to make a quick assessment. The messengers? Not in white tops with name-tags, no backpacks, no religious symbols. The media? Booklet covered with the faces of people from varying racial backgrounds and the headline “Prejudice and Discrimination: Why? How Can You Cope?” Again, no religious symbols in sight.
With my suspicions abated and my interest in social justice piqued, I accepted the magazine, muttered a clumsy farewell, and continued my gloomy trek towards campus. It was not until this evening that I found out that I had been duped. I opened up the booklet to find that it was indeed religious propaganda, though it did not fully reveal itself as such until the fourth page. As I read those first four pages and the reality of the situation bore down on me, my initial disappointment was surprisingly short lived. Indeed, it was quickly replaced with mirth as I considered the implications of this ordeal.
Let’s break it down. We had two believers handing out pamphlets designed to keep other believers believing and to help non-believers to start believing. That’s an old story that’s been done billions of times over. What was novel, and the cause of my amusement, was the guile of it all. It used to be that ‘Bringers of The Word’ adorned attention grabbing robes, stood atop platforms, and called out their proclamation with fever. These messengers, on the other hand, wore non-descript, commonplace clothing, did not mention God or any religious affiliation, and quickly walked away once their media was distributed. The booklet itself was similarly shrouded. The cover lent itself to the assumption that the publication’s sole concern was the issue of prejudice. As I mentioned earlier, it took three pages of warming up before the religious slant fully made itself known.
This level of duplicity is reserved for actions we consider amoral, shameful, or just plain wrong. It was like a child who doesn’t lie, but artfully avoids telling the whole truth, then runs away while the adults are left to discover the facts of the matter. It brought me joy to see believers (not to mention their publications) displaying this kind of abashed behaviour. It means that somewhere, deep within their subconscious, the realization of wrongdoing is starting to take hold. Sure, they are very far from consciously being aware of and admitting their erroneous ways of delusion and misanthropy, but the point is that they have at least started down that path.
Sooner or later, they will ask themselves “If what I’m doing is good, then why must I be deceptive about it and why does it make me feel bad?” And suddenly they will understand. They will know that what they are doing can’t be good. They will see that “It says so in the Bible ->Why believe the Bible?->It’s the word of god->How do you know?->It says so in the Bible” is circular and cannot support any belief system. They will recognize that their previous distinctions of ‘saved vs damned’, ‘righteous vs blasphemous’, ‘believers vs heathens’, ‘saints vs infidels’, and ‘chosen vs forsaken’ were all false. They will drop their delusions and the world will enter an era of rationality and prosperity. And when that happens, they will truly be ready and mentally equipped to fight social injustices like discrimination.
I look to US politics with an eye to how they will effect Canada and the policies we institute and the direction we go as a nation. I am heartened to see that Alan Grayson is speaking out for what the people want, as a opposed to what elite consensus is.
The best part is that Grayson takes on the establishment media and wins with the simple facts of the matter. The funny part is all the commentary on the lack of civility… that really blew my irony meter as the Republicans are renown for engaging in uncivil discourse and tactics.
Why is it that a death(s) is required before you are taken seriously? Tasers were introduced to the RCMP in 2001. The number of taser related deaths is cataloged here. As early as 2004, Amnesty International had serious concerns about how the taser was being used by Canada’s law enforcement agencies. Robert Dziekanski was allegedly tasered to death by a squad of RCMP officers at the Vancouver International Airport on October 13th, 2007. His crime, being intoxicated, acting disturbed and unable to understand English; in any case not a warrant for the death penalty.
A recent report obtained by the CBC had a few interesting nuggets of information regarding the use of Tasers.
“RCMP officials relied too heavily on information provided by manufacturers when they developed their own stun gun policies and training programs, an independent review concludes.”
Huh, our police in their lust for zap-a-riffic enforcement tools, seems to have went with the best case scenario and used the always unbiased and accurate industry data. No problems there.
Well actually there have been problems. Enough problems to justify a new policy for how tasers are used on people:
“Note, we have lowered the recommended point of aim from centre of mass to lower centre of mass for front shots,” the company[Taser International] says in the bulletin on its website.”When possible, avoiding chest shots with electronic control devices avoids the controversy about whether ECDs [electronic control devices] do or do not affect the human heart,” said the bulletin said.
I do not think the new recommendations go far enough. Robert Dziekanski was shocked multiple times before and after he was restrained. Stunning people repeatedly when they are restrained or hysterical should not be allowed under any circumstance. Being unable to protect yourself while being assaulted with electricity would be stressful for any individual and would put them an undue risk for injury and death (excited delirium is not an acceptable justification for the multiple tasing of a person). Taser use needs to be more highly regulated to protect the public from the use of excessive force.
Introspection can be difficult to take seriously on a blog post. I mean, what are the author’s motives? How genuine is the feeling behind the words? I read a lot of brilliant in your face posts over at Shakesville. The stable of writers they have are earnestly committed to identifying, deconstructing and laying the smack down on the patriarchy and its associated evils. I respect that and try to do similar things here at DWR.
Speaking of associated evils, the article on Rape Culture from Shakesville is illuminating and if it does not stir your sense of empathy and humanity then you may have something seriously wrong with your inner workings. Highly recommended reading.
There are so many things fundamentally wrong with our culture: capitalism, patriarchy, religion, Steven Harper… that need a great deal of time and effort to rectify (how is that for an understatement). The obstacles to the progressive evolution of our society are huge. But what is worse, the largest obstacle we all face is complacency.
Complacency. We in North America have it all. Most of us in the Blogosphere do not worry about which has priority; food or rent. We do not worry about being assaulted or murdered or exploited in horrendous ways. We take for granted the security, the comfort, the privilege that comes with living in North America. We pour out our frustrations on the web others view and agree or disagree and we move on. Do our criticisms matter once you switch the power-bar off? Does our discontent transfer to the rest of society? In most cases, due to what I believe is endemic complacency, I believe the answer to the last two questions to be “No”.
Is the Blogosphere a safety valve for mainstream society? It could easily fit that role because for the most part because bloggers ignored, while the elites maintain business as usual. Canadians and Americans seem to be okay with this. Social justice is good to talk about, doing it is a completely different proposition. Inertia and complacency (nurtured by our media) rot the very foundations of our culture, but then who cares “mad men” is on and we need to be up on our soaps (sports works as well in this regard) so we can engage in meandering persiflage as opposed to discussing what is actually happening in our society.
Must it get so bad that the powers that be forbid collecting rainwater after privatizing the water utility as they did in Bolivia? How far will we need to fall before people wake up to the forces shaping society for their benefit?
Will you take action or shrug your shoulders and put your head down and accept the ‘inevitable’?
This is a brilliant video about critical thinking and some of the common pratfalls one can run into when you encounter people who think they are open minded but actually are not.
Let’s stop the anti-vax silliness before it gets started.
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I hear this often enough: “Crime is out of control we need more police on the street… or let’s get tougher on crime… or (insert conservative trope here)”
I wonder how much thinking people who say these sorts of things have actually done about the issues of crime and poverty and how they are interrelated. Whoops! I just used a 5 syllable word that, like it or not, it cuts me off from speaking to people who often hold this opinion, and relegates me to talking past them instead. We do not have a common cultural frame of reference and I am written off as a lefty intellectual egg head socialist (Fear not I am neither smart nor witty enough to qualify to be in the liberal intellectual elite) and largely ignored. Talking past one another is a serious problem for both me and the bumpkins ( My apologies I could not resist) whom I attempt to communicate with.
Crime is a problem. (But then again, criminality is on the decline, we should not let reality intervene… it might force us to reconsider our opinions)
The populist response: We need more police, more prisons, and more courtrooms to punish these malcontents and n’er do wells. Society has gone soft on criminals and we need to ‘toughen up’ on crime to fix things.
Okay, so to toughen up on crime we need to spend more public money on jails and police. Where does the money come from? The pubic purse of course and along with more police and jails/legal infrastructure comes the necessary bureaucratic/managerial superstructure. So really, what they are advocating is more government spending and ‘bigger’ government. Government spending and more government and antithetical to what conservatives and populists claim to believe.
More police and more jails often comes with the rallying cry of cuts to welfare and other methods of social assistance because ‘it makes people lazy’. Check. Never mind the facts of the matter. Only a very small percentage of people who are on social assistance cheat the system, most do not. Social assistance helps people avoid grinding poverty. Poverty is the largest cause of our social ills, crime, violence, drug-use are all tied to impoverished people and conditions. I digress though, as welfare and other forms of wealth distribution are inherently evil and must be abolished. Charity will “fix” the problems of the poor.
My response: Crime overall has been on a decline for decades, it certainly should not be ignored as a social issue, but
needs to be framed within the proper non-fear based context. We do not need more police and jail infrastructure. We need more spending on the front lines of social assistance and welfare that directly combats poverty. Poverty is the enemy we need to combat, not crime directly. People who can exist at a modest level within society are less likely to commit crime. If we went after the root cause of crime (poverty) we could stop so much deviancy before it ever started. Improving community supports and schools have measurable paybacks toward the positive health of society.
Yet, I am the bad one because social programs mean taxes. The free ride conservatives give to industry also mean more taxes to pay for the average person as well. In Alberta, the royalty regime is laughably pathetic, with rates at absurdly low values. I digress as I’ve already talked about energy royalties in a previous post.
If you feel crime is getting out of hand in your neighbourhood first ask what can you do as a community to fix the problem. Conservative commentators are forever decrying the lazy welfare state… fine… then lets see these righteous people organizing community watches and ‘take back the night’ campaigns and tackling issues on the community level. Does this happen? Occasionally, but more often, we hear ‘we need to be tough on crime’ and ‘more police’ refrain as if this will actually fix the problem. Forget getting people involved in their community, that smacks of socialism and is a bold assault on self-interest which of course, is at the very core of conservative belief.
So we get more police and build more jails and taxes go up (or more valuable social spending is cut) and government gets bigger.
Populists rarely see this connection and thus are missing out on the sweet irony that laces much of their dogmatism.
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