Libertarianism is a load of crap

Lately over the last year or so we've been hearing a lot about Libertarianism in the media, most notably from Ron and Rand Paul, who take a libertarian stance on many social issues. All this idiotic teabagger bullshit started when Ron Paul ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, and thus a lot of the Tea Party people identify themselves as "libertarian." In real life they are merely re-branded conservatives, but that's not what we're talking about here.

According to Wikipedia, the Libertarian party of the United states asserts this to be the core belief of Libertarianism:

"Libertarians support maximum liberty in both personal and economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence. Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties."

Let's take a look exactly at what this all means. We always hear people on the right talking about "smaller government," but what exactly do they mean by this? Well to people like Rand Paul, "Smaller government" means cutting any and all entitlement, social assistance, or welfare programs. That means no Medicare or Medicaid, no food stamps, no unemployment, nothing. Even a program like Social Security, where people pay into a pool over dozens of years and don't take benefits until a certain age, even this is too much government involvement. If the libertarians get in charge you can kiss any kind of help from Uncle Sam goodbye.

The elimination of any and all types of social assistance is however consistent with libertarian philosophy, which is more than most political movements can claim. Libertarian philosophy asserts that people are only responsible for themselves and their immediate family, they completely reject any notion that the individual should contribute to a larger society or should take advantage of the benefits of such a society. This is why you see the followers of Rand Paul talk so much about "States Rights"and the 10th amendment. In fact recently there's been a growing movement of "Tenthers" splintering off from the Teabagger people who are attempting to use the 10th amendment to do things like reverse the health care bill. This is great provided you are a reasonably healthy individual capable of finding work and taking care of yourself - but In real life there are millions of people out there who are not, for one reason or another, often times though no fault of their own.

The problems that our nation faces seem more and more stem from the exact policies which the conservative forces in our government have enacted over the last 30 year - deregulating banking, removing environmental restrictions, cutting taxes on the wealthy, and so on. Stripping away the social safety net and removing worker protections is the exact opposite of what needs to be done in order to preserve our middle class and general American prosperity.

Libertarianism is also an inadequate and ineffectual philosophy when dealing with modern nation states. We live in an era where for good or ill nation states tend to cooperate economically and militarily, where capital is not restricted by international borders, where people born half a world a way have the ability to travel and settle long distances, Where the resource rich areas of the globe are also some of the most backward and war torn, usually as a result of extracting said resources for Western consumption, where small groups of determined individuals are capable of causing mass destruction unlike any other time in history. It is increasingly apparent that it is in our best interest to work towards stability in some of the more vital areas of the world. When people in South America have jobs, people in Africa are fed, when Pakistan has a stable government, or Nuclear weapons are restricted from North Korea we benefit as well. The Libertarian isolationist world view of an America with closed borders, no international aid, and zero involvement in world affairs except to drop bombs on people who directly threaten us is a recipe for disaster. America cannot economically, politically, socially, and militarily afford an isolationist policy. Globalization is here to stay, for good or ill, there is no going back.

The Libertarian tirade against "government control" ignores the inherent flaw with a profit-driven model. An entity which puts profits over the well being of people should not be allowed to control such vital sectors of society without stringent oversight. Over the past decade due to such policies we've seen companies such as Enron and Worldcom fold and take the retirements savings of their workers with them, we've seen banks and investment firms build up and pop bubble after bubble - Tech stocks, oil, wheat futures, - finally accumulating in the collapse of the housing market which nearly took our entire economy with it. All of this occurred because of a LACK of regulation, not TOO MUCH OF IT.

Those countries which are most successful in regards to keeping their people healthy, educated, safe, and employed use a mixture of socialized industries along with capital entrepreneurship. In general, those sectors of the economy which benefit the citizen directly tend to be socialized - health care, medicine, law enforcement, fire, military, Utilities such as water, electricity, etc. The exact mixture to get the maximum benefit yet retain the greatest amount of liberty I think has yet to be determined. Maybe we don't need 100% socialized medicine. Maybe it's good to let certain industries take risks without restrictions. But the fact remains we are all part of a larger society, and in order to keep that society working we are obligated to contribute. The Libertarian ideal of "I'm not sharing" may work great on a neighborhood level, but when taken into a national context is highly immature and practically unworkable.

My encounter with a Teabagger.

Today while at lunch I had a short encounter with some people who were petitioning to repeal the heath care bill. Below is pretty much how the encounter went.

I went into a Ralph's to get some batteries, but the long line at checkout made me think twice about it. As I was leaving, I was approached by an older woman holding a clipboard. She looked to be in her late 50s or early 60s. I could tell however she was from out of town by the way she was dressed, as I was in a somewhat affluent area and she looked like she should slinging beers in some hick-ass biker bar in the middle of the desert somewhere. If I had to guess I would say she's from a more working class area of Ventrua or Oxnard. Most people don't really know that the outlying cities and suburbs around Los Angeles are as full of rednecks as any Southern State.

There was a younger man with her, who dressed in similar manner to how I would have ten years ago if I were jock douchebag. He was scruffy and had a large snake tattoo that covered the underside of his forearm from the elbow to his hand. It was one of those cheap tattoos, the kind you get in prison. He was around that age where one finally decides to (or is forced to) stop fucking around and get a real job, but does not yet have a clue as to how to actually go about that. He looked like he could be this lady's son. By the way they were dressed and how they carried themselves I would say they were one generation away from trailer trash. Ventura county has a lot of that also.

She approached and asked me politely if I were a registered voter. She had a slight southern accent, the kind that people get when they grow up in some shitkicker town in the middle of nowhere and that never really goes away even though they moved to the big city twenty years ago. As I walked towards my car the lady kept with me. She asked if I would like to sign a petition to repeal the health care bill. This is when the encounter got interesting.

Old Lady: "Would you like to sign a petition to repeal Obamacare?"

Me: "Well, you see, my grandmother has muscular dystrophy - "

Old Lady: "Ohhh! I'm sorry!" (touches my arm)"If you sign here we can give her some information-"

Me: "Yeah well she's never had insurance -"

Old Lady: (flipping pages on her clipboard) "Well this will make is so she doesn't have to get insurance she doesn't want."

Me: "No I mean her entire life, no one would sell her insurance. She never had coverage until she got Medicare."

Old Lady: "I see."

Me: "So this law will stop that kind of denial of coverage, so that's why I support it. Sorry."

Old Lady: "Well see the problem is you're forced to buy insurance you don't want! You don't get to choose your doctor!"

Me: "What? Since when?"

She flipped open the clipboard to a page that had some talking points conveniently highlighted in yellow.

Old Lady: "Obamacare will force people to buy insurance they don't want! I mean, I'm 62, I need a job! I can't afford to pay $400 a month for insurance!"

"You have a job, bitch." I thought to myself, unless she's doing this shit for free. Keep in mind, she's 62 so she'll qualify for medicare in three years anyway. In the meantime she wants to pass a law that prevents the rest of us from getting coverage, just so she can save a few bucks in the short term. Thanks a fucking lot lady.

Me: "Well they make allowances for that."

Old Lady: "No they don't, if you don't pay it you get fined!"

Me: "No in the bill, they have assistance for people with lower incomes."

Old Lady: "But you don't get to choose your own doctor!"

Me: "That has nothing to do with it, it doesn't force you into a specific plan, it sets up an exchange."

Old Lady: "What?"

Me: "It sets up an exchange, so you can choose which plan one you want, it doesn't force you to buy anything."

Old Lady: "But if you don't buy it you get fined."

Me: "The fine comes out of your taxes, correct?"

A glazed look came over her face. It was pretty obvious at this point that this old lady really didn't know what was in the health care bill, didn't know about the exchange or how it worked, and didn't even really know what the "fine" was all about, how much it was, or if it came out of your taxes or what. I like to call this the "Ignorance horizon," that is the point at which, when talking to conservatives in real life, they become incapable of carrying on the conversation because they do not have any memorized talking points to respond with. This happens much more quickly in real life than say on the internet, where they can simply go back to Freedomwerks or Glennbeck.com or whatever backwards-ass idiotic misleading propaganda site they get their bullshit from and look up how to respond. In a real life conversation there ain't no internet, and most people when they cross the Ignorance Horizon will either clam up, change the subject, or start making up stupid bullshit in order to save face.

True to form, the old lady decided to change the subject.

Old Lady: "Well, whether you support this or not, you're a registered voter, correct?"

Me: "Yeah."

Old Lady: "Are you registered for an absentee ballot?"

Me: "What?"

Old Lady: "It's so they send the ballot and information to your house."

Every election I hear of different stories of various dirty tricks pulled by either party in order to knock people off the voting rolls. For instance, in 2008 it was found that a bunch of college kids who thought they were signing a petition to legalize weed were in fact being registered Republican without their knowledge, and as a consequence when the election rolled around they were unable to vote in the primaries. Although I had no reason to suspect any dubious motives on the behalf of this highly motivated (but dreadfully uninformed) petitioner, there is always a chance she was merely a unwitting tool in a grander scheme. I decided not to chance it.

Me: "Nah I just go down and vote."

Old Lady: "Well if you sign up here we can send this information to your house and you can discuss it with your grandmother-"

Me: "Why would she want to vote against the health care law? She's never had coverage in her life."

Old Lady: "Well they'll send the ballot to your house. You have to do it through the mail."

Me: "No thank you."

I can tell she was disappointed, I bet she probably was paid depending on how many people she registered. Well I hope she makes her quota or whatever for her sake. The thing is, this is the kind of person that the health care bill will unequivocally help. As an unemployed person she would get essentially free health care, as anyone who makes less than 133% of the federal poverty line can be enrolled in an expanded Medicare program. There are subsidies for people who make up to four times the federal poverty line (about $44,000 a year, which includes me) so that no one has to spend more than 10% of their income on insurance premiums. The fine this lady is so afraid of comes to $695 a person (or maxes out at $2085 per family) so that even if you do not decide to buy insurance it still costs less than the price of the insurance itself. To top it all off all this shit isn't even going to happen for another four years.

So why, exactly, do people want to repeal this law, even before it comes into effect? What the fuck are people so afraid of? I can tell you what the conservatives are afraid of: That when this law does come into effect and people do start buying insurance and they can't get denied or kicked off when they get sick, they're afraid people will like it.

I simply do not understand how exactly anyone thinks it's a good idea to pay a bill to a company for years and years, and then when the time comes that you actually need to utilize the service you've been paying for, they suddenly turn around and drop you like a bad habit. How exactly is that "fair?" How is that "the best system in the world?" Why exactly would anyone want to go back to that? The story there with my grandmother is true shit - she hasn't been able to walk for fifty years. And the entire time she's had this disease she had never ever had health insurance. Not becasue they could not afford it, but because NO ONE WOULD SELL IT TO HER. My grandfather refused to buy it for the rest of the family if they wouldn't cover my grandmother, so he told them all to go fuck themselves, and for decades they all did without. She never got coverage until she turned 65, and suddenly was eligible for medicare. A good example of Uncle Sam stepping in when the private sector was unwilling.

And seriously, if it's good enough for her, then why not for the rest of us? Why should I even bother paying a private company to provide something the government can and already does provide for millions of people? Why do I not have the choice, if I want to, to enroll in a government plan and just have the price of the premiums come out of my taxes? Seems like it would make things a hell of a lot easier if the cost of all this shit just came out of my taxes automatically instead of me just having to pay a bill every month wouldn't you say? I already pay for medicare, do I not?

That I think is the final reason why I support "Obamacare," because after a few years of it people may be ready to take the next step, into a European style single payer system - you know, like how every single other industrialized nation on the face of the Earth has. Even fucking Mexico has better coverage than we do. Isn't it time we, as a country, finally took responsibility for the well being of our people? I know the conservatives won't like that, because conservatives never take responsibility for anything.

Seriously people, what the fuck.

I Hate Itunes

God damn, I hate Itunes.

I hate it I hate it I hate it.

I hate it so much, I am going to write a poem about it.

Itunes, Itunes,
I fucking hate it
I hate it so much,
I'm going to beat it with a stick

I'm going to kick it in the nuts
and shoot it in the head
then run it over with an ice cream truck,
over and over and over again

It's such an overbloated,
slow-ass piece of shit,
and everyone who works for Apple,
can suck my fucking dick

Why's it take three hours,
To download and install?
Why's it then set it self as the default media player, even when I select "no,"
and hold my computer in it's thrall?

Why is it when I select "Paypal" as payment option,
IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK!
What the fuck Steve Jobs?
Fix your shitty program you JERK!

Fuck Apple and it's shitty DRM format,
and fuck Steve Jobs,
and fuck all the stupid people,
with their stupid fucking Ipods,

The End

Message to Athiests: Stop acting like cranks

In the past on various forums and boards and such, I've spoken out a lot against the freaky fundamentalist people - more than a lot actually. However as I've said in a previous video, that kind of thing doesn't really motivate me very much anymore. Really who gives a shit what someone thinks about the afterlife? Nobody really knows anyway. It begins to matter when they make public policy out of what should be private beliefs, but if people want to do stupid shit in the privacy of their own homes who are you to stop them?

One thing I have noticed though since about that time is there seems to be an increase of people who are declaring themselves as "atheists" or agnostics (myself included.) Like I said in Episode 6 there's a very large debate on-line between theists and non-theists, which is actually a great thing if you think about it. What we have here are not pastors debating philosophers or priests arguing with scientists - what we have are ordinary people using this medium to debate beliefs directly. Really can you name anytime in history when everyone had such access to disseminate their ideas? The fact that it's being done rationally, without violence is also pretty big if you look at history.

But anyway, suffice to say there's a pretty big atheist presence out on teh intertubes. The problem is however is when you start actually listening to these people, you find a rather large amount of them are former believers who have either had some kind of personal crisis, people who have in some way been burned really hard and have now thrown all the faith they used to place in a personal, all-knowing God behind a non-personal, materialistic science. It seems to me there's very, very few atheists out there who came from a neutral standpoint, studied both sides, and then chose the atheist conclusion.

The problem with these people then becomes that they begin to push their new lack-of-faith as hard as they pushed their former faith. It goes to ridiculous lengths. We have people trying to remove "in God we trust" from the money. People sue to remove of nativity scenes and Christmas trees from public spaces. This is all done under the guise of "separating church from state," but in real life there's also a selfish slant to it. For instance, you notice these people never advocate removing religious holidays from federal paid-status.

Having a Christmas tree in a public square or a nativity scene in a public park isn't State endorsing religion. You know what is? Having daily bible study in the fucking White House. Putting the Ten Commandments in front of a court house is. Giving our tax dollars to one religious institution while seizing the assets of another - that's the state endorsing religion.

So my message to Atheists is this - if you really do not believe, then any of the bullshit that believers do which does not negatively affect you or society should not matter. Who gives a shit if people like putting gifts under their pagan holly tree, or if they like hiding the Easter fertility eggs, or if they want to set up a light up manger scene one day out of the year? You know what the message you people give off is? "I'm such a self-hating prick that I'm gonna fuck up your holidays, because I can." That's why morons like Bill O'Rielly can stand up and declare some farcical "War on Christmas" every single year and people believe his stupid shit, because some dried up idealist out there has taken it upon himself to be the atheist avenger and fuck up someone else's holiday. If you do not believe in it, then what is the fucking problem?

My final point to the Atheists is to choose your battles wisely. You're not going to show anyone the error of their primitive ways by insulting their holidays, or by calling them names, or by suing to get their trite, commercialized displays taken down. You do it by encouraging people to learn and discover alternate points of view for themselves. The truth is educated people tend to not be fundamentalists - so you want to get rid of all those reactionary bible thumpers who seem hell bent on starting Armageddon? Advocate for education, fully fund our schools. Stop letting the fucking Republicans cut down public education until it's crawling to corporations for funding. Get people to read fucking books instead of watching TV - you know, so they can actually learn something.

The video I post after this is going to sound like it contradicts it, but it doesn't.

Lies the Right Wing tells you #1: America is an immoral society

Birthers, conspiracy, and Reality.

Once upon a time in America, when there was an election and the guy you voted for lost, you accepted this loss and adopted the winner as your own. The person who won the election represented you, for better or worse. If you didn't like it you wrote letters and got yourselves organized for next time. Sadly in the United States this doesn't seem to happen anymore. Now when the guy you vote for loses you make shit up out of whole cloth and use said lies as excuses to vote against your own self interest.

What I'm referring to specifically is the ongoing Obama birth certificate "conspiracy." You would think most people would've given up on this shit already, but that assumes people who believe such things are like, rational and everything. You know, believing things like EVIDENCE and all.

This whole thing started last year as a way of slandering the Obama campaign under a thinly veiled label of racism. In today's PC climate it's a big no-no to use the N word when describing your political opponent. So since they couldn't make pictures of Obama eating watermelon and fried chicken they chose to focus then on his "foreign" sounding name. Anyone remember during the campaign when all the right wingers started purposely using his middle name whenever they could? It was right around the same time they tried to link him to Bill Ayers. Since they couldn't stir up hate because he was black (at least, not officially,) they went the "closet Muslim terrorist sympathizer" route instead.

Right around this time someone somewhere out in Republican land got the bright idea to dispute Obama's citizenship. You can't get your ass beat in an election if the guy running against you isn't qualified, right? Too bad that particular tactic was shot down rather quickly when Factcheck.org posted Obama's certificate of live birth, which is authentic (even though of course the "birthers" immediately turned around and called it fake, which it isn't.)

By the way a certificate of live birth is the document you get from the state when one requests a birth certificate. Your real birth certificate, i.e. the document with the seal on it and baby foot prints and all that jazz, goes on file in some statehouse somewhere when you're born. Why? Because it's a matter of public record. When you request copies of it the Certificate of live birth is what you get instead, which is a document that certifies that the Birth Certificate exists. You do not get one of these if your Birth Certificate does not exist. Keep in mind though the law about Birth certificates differs depending on what state you're in. For instance, my mother is in possession of her real Birth Certificate, while I myself only have a Certificate of Live Birth. Everyone understand that?

Well, let's ignore this particular piece of evidence for the time being (why not, the birthers certainly do.) We also have newspaper birth announcements from the time which announce President Obama's birth, in Hawaii. These can be found on Snopes.com here. Now how exactly can someone ignore these little bits of evidence? I can see someone claiming the Certificate of live birth is fake, but what about these? Did someone 48 years ago plant these in the local newspapers to one day set up Barrack Obama as the President?

Sounds crazy, right? No one could possibly believe this, right? Not if you listen to the New World Order crowd. These are the people that believe world politics are manipulated by the Illuminati to slowly bring us all into a one world fascist government, and have always maintained that the presidents of all nations are merely puppets, and the real government is run by a cabal of families with ancient bloodlines and controlling interests in financial and corporate power. This far right fringe conspiracy mythology has been gestating for several decades now, and seem to now involve everything from UFOs to Jesus Christ.

Obama conspiracies run from the mundane (for a conspiracy,) such as from Alex Jones, who merely thinks Obama is a "savior" type being set up by the elites in order to usher in the one world government (unless he's the Antichrist,) to the paranoid rediculous - take for instance David Icke, who believes Obama is a reptilian from another dimension (to be fair, David Icke thinks most famous people and world leaders are also lizards in disguise.) Then you have the totally flailing and batshit insane, say like Freeman of the Freeman Perspective who maintains Obama and his whole family are clones of the ancient Pharonic family of Akhenaten here to usher us back into an Egyptian monothestic religion (be careful though, becasue Freeman also predicted 9-11, at least he says he did.) I'm glad to see the lunatic fringe has gleefully worked the Obama birth conspiracy into their greater narrative, it makes for some great late night radio.

Putting the far right tin foil hat people aside (because some people will believe any kind of horseshit,) we're still left with a very hard core group of conservatives that despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary still won't get it through their bony heads that a black man is president. Some of the arguments these people cite is thus:

1) The font on the Certificate of live birth was designed in 1982, far after Obama's birth - this fails to take into account that the document is a print out made with modern office equipment.

2) There's no embossed seal or signature on the Certificate of live birth. That's because it's on the other side, you morons.

3) Obama is not a natural born citizen because Hawaii law says his mother had to be 21 in order for this to be so. Snopes.com also does a good job of debunking this one

3) Some try to twist around the wording of the 14th amendment itself, to make it sound like it implies a person is a natural born citizen only if both his parents are also citizens. Too bad it doesn't say that. The relevant text is right there in section 1:

"Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

BOOYA, you stupid fucks.

4) Another thing I keep hearing from these mouth breathing morons is a flub he made during the campaign where he mentioned he had visited 57 states. Here's the video:



The Birthers insist this means that Obama doesn't know how many states there are. Give me a fucking break. Is this the best you dumbasses can come up with?

5) Obama refuses to put his hand over his heart when taking the pledge of allegiance. And this relates to his citizenship how, exactly?

The sad fact is, there is no talking to the people who believe this bullshit. Know why? Because we've been talking to them for the last decade. These are the same people who impeached a Democratic president for lying about an infidelity but didn't lift a finger to a Republican president for lying about starting a fucking war. These people WANT there to be war in Afghanistan, they WANT us to stay in Iraq for the next 100 years. These people WANT us to have an American gulag where we can throw people without charging them and without trials. These are the people where you can put overwhelming evidence that their own leaders are manipulating them and they'll ignore it. Yet when a Democrat gets in and does something like spend some money fixing our crumbling bridges and trying to give people health care all of the sudden sales of guns and ammo go through the roof.

These people voted for McCain in the hope that he'd die halfway through so Mrs. Sarah-moose-shooting-non-rape-kit-providing-helicopter-wolf-hunting-abstinence-only-oh-look-my-teenage-daughter-is-pregnant-Palin would ascend to the throne and start WWIII with Iran so Jesus would finally come back and outlaw abortion or something. They WANT us all living in a police state and working at Burger King for $2 a week becasue the only fucking thing they seem to care about are fucking guns and baby killing.

What's even worse is now they're taking all the shit that got started in the Bush administration, like say a 700 billion dollar bail out, or the economy, or TORTURE for godsakes, and they turn right around and blame it on Obama. Give me a fucking break - it's only been six months. Have you dumbasses forgotten who ran the country for the last decade?

THERE IS NO TALKING TO THESE PEOPLE. They are incapable of comprehending anything that goes against their fantastical narrative. It's not that they don't care; it's that they're too fucking stupid to know any better. That's right, I'm calling all you conservative shit monkeys out there FUCKING STUPID. All we need do is look at how screwed up the country is to see why. Fuck talking to these people, I'm through talking, I'm through debating, I'm through trying to convince these people. Thing is the Democrats now have a 60 seat majority, so why are they even bothering to "debate" anything? The Republicans sure didn't waste anytime implementing their evil fucking agenda when they had the votes. I say pass the fucking health bill and spend the fucking money and end the fucking wars without their permission or input. You know why? Because FUCK THEM.

In a few years no doubt the Republicans will take back the white house again, then these people will all be back in the uncomfortable position of defending the government.

Unplug yourself

Hello, my name is Mark, and I'm a couch potato.

Or at least, I used to be. I, like millions of other people out there, was in the habit of coming home from a long day's work, turning on the TV and just sitting there for like 27 hours straight watching whatever stupid crap that was on. Even when there was really nothing worth watching whatsoever I would spend countless precious hours just flipping through channels trying to find something, anything to veg out on. Eventually you start watching random bullshit that, given a choice, you would never look twice at. Things like Spanish language soap operas - which is fine, except I don't speak Spanish. Or crap like infomercials, surreal children's educational shows that have a lot of puppets, or conservative news channels.

I have the Internet to thank for breaking my TV habit. A few years ago I finally managed to get a job where I could afford my own (crappy) place, without having to live with roommates or parents. But at the time I had to make a choice: either Cable TV or Internet access. Since my job requires me to work from home on weekends on occasion (and also, you know, I need to be able to play Command & Conquer against real people else I go insane) I chose Internet access. Thus no more TV for me.

Thank God. I'll never go back. I'll never have cable TV again ever as long as I live. I'm a hundred billion times more productive than I used to be. True back in the day I usually would be doing other things while the TV was on in the background, but now that I don't have that incessant white noise distracting me I'm able to accomplish so much more. Those of you who know me know that I'm an artist. Whereas before I would usually just doodle while being distracted by cartoons and eventually finish something if it turned out good, now that I don't sit there like a zombie for 87 hours a week my artistic output is in overdrive. I produce a fully rendered work every singe day (most of which can be seen here and here :) My apartment isn't a complete fucking disorganized mess, because I'm motivated to do shit like vacuum the floor and wash dishes. Of course, I'm not 100% divorced from the TV - my DVD collection has grown like an out-of-control fungus in the last few years - but now at least I get things done instead of sitting there like a fucking kumquat.

I do spend a lot of time online now. But it's not the same as just sitting there vegging out in front of the idiot box. While online you're at least interacting: You're reading, you're communicating, you're debating, you're researching, you're commenting - your brain is engaged. You are not a zombie while online (unless you like, sit there in front of YouTube all day watching videos of kittens or people falling off skateboards or something....) Spending an hour on Wikipedia verses an hour with Jerry fucking Springer is no comparison. One of them makes you stupid.

One thing I've noticed now that I don't watch a lot of television is that television is all that everyone fucking talks about. I miss out on all the latest gossip about Lost or Smallville or whatever show is on top now. There's really nothing wrong with that - what else you gonna talk about - but it seems really bizarre to me that people spend so much time talking about useless crap that has no bearing on their lives whatsoever.

Then you start noticing that once you don't expose yourself to the television, you start missing the latest distracting newstainement "story" of the week that everyone is supposed to be concerned about. For instance, I had no idea who the stupid fucking Octomom was, nor did I care. I was instead online reading up on the economic collapse and bank bailouts that were happening at the time, you know, the important shit that they try to get you to ignore by hoisting these bullshit media-blitzes at you. It also took me a week to notice that there was some kind of gigantic Pig flu epidemic that everyone was supposed to die from. Oh I knew about the swine flu and it's effect in Mexico thanks to online news sources, I just no idea how much of a big deal the media made it out to be. It really is funny that whenever something really important happens, like say torture memos are unearthed or a bank collapses or the CIA admits to releasing radiation into American cities or something, that there's always some dumb-ass tabloid celebrity story the media chooses to cover instead. It's just uncanny how the timing of these thing always coincide.

There's a reason why they call TV shows "programs." It's because they program YOU. When you watch Television shows (most especially, television news programs) you have to remember that the people who create this programming have their own agendas. Most of the time that agenda is to get you to buy from their sponsors, but that's not always the extent. You are being told how to think, and that stupid idiot machine hypnotizes you into accepting their version of reality.

There's a reason why people out there are so fucking stupid. Why do you think people continuously vote against their own interests? Why can a war get started on fake evidence, and no one does anything about it? Why do people believe things like President Obama is a closet Muslim extremist who also has a radical conservative preacher at the same time and wasn't born in this country yet refuse to do anything about real criminals in government, even when absolute proof of their lies are presented to them? Why do people believe that somehow the government is overstepping it's powers by acting as arbitrator when one of the nation's top auto manufacturers declares bankruptcy, yet at the same time assign no blame to the people who stand to make a boatload of cash as a result? How can people stand by and allow prisoners to be tortured, for American citizens to be held for years without trial, for people to be brutalized for no good reason or for one "right" after another to be taken away without raising a fucking finger to stop it?

But they get real pissed off when Uncle Sam dares to take the TV away so we can all have nationwide free public wifi Internet access.

I hope to God they do the digital switchover soon, and that millions of people are left without television. That is what this nation needs, people to unplug and stop watching the official version of events, and to get free Internet. Maybe then the intelligence quotient of this nation might go up a few points and we'll stop being the laughing stock of the western world.

There's really no end to this rant. Just stop watching fucking TV and your quality of life will improve. That is all.