Americans are complete and utter moral cowards. We're such moral cowards we can't take a mass stand on anything wrong unless it's also something we can criminalize. Anything that bothers us, we either need to outlaw it, or we'll throw our hands up in claimed helplessness: "Can't say anything about it! It's not against the law! It's a free country!" Coward. The fact it is a free country means you are free to say everything about it. But you're too timid and wishy-washy to even state why a thing is wrong! Unless you can say either "Because it's illegal!" or "God said it! Don't blame be blame God!" As if well-cowed submission to authority could possibly stand as a reason that an an action is wrong. It's wrong...because it's illegal? That's why it's wrong? Think that one through, sometime.
Sometimes we'll even go so far as to pass laws criminalizing things no just government organized on principles of liberty can prohibit! Then when the Supreme Court throws it out, we grouse that the Supreme Court is the guilty party on that charge of moral cowardice. Even though everyone involved passing the law knew damn well it was doomed! Incredibly, we'll pass an unconstitutional and doomed law, purely to make a statement. Our constituents will be happy we tried, and mad at the Supremes, and everyone distracted by the vast wasted expenditure worming its way through the courts, and everything happily back to status quo by the end of the episode. Cue laugh track?
How about next time we want to make a statement, we do it by telling people why the fuck a thing is wrong. Can you do that? Can you do it without invoking an authority? Because if you can't, if the only way you can call something wrong is by reference to authority, you have no fucking idea why it's wrong.
Actually in that case, people being "moral cowards" is not really the problem, so much as people being "moral imbeciles."
Americans are fucking cowards and imbeciles. Fuck. Me too, I guess. I'm an American! I share the stigma and I will exult with the rest of us when we finally knock it off, when we one day overcome (and perhaps even pay some long-overdue reparations to ourselves over all the damage this attitude has done to us all!). From prohibition of alcohol all the way up to classifying speech as crime because there is what - hate added into it? Hate itself is legal, idiot. If someone incites a riot, if someone uses their free speech to perpetrate a con job, a fraud, if someone uses their speech to rile a bunch of people in a room up to go out and grab and kill a guy, if their speech goes to betray state secrets - these are crimes already. It's not "freedom of speech" that makes the idea of a hate crime idiotic and untenable. It's the fact that hate is legal. Me telling you how I judge human beings I don't even know - me telling you what a fucking idiot I am and how little my opinion should count to you because of the way I judge on bias - that's legal. Quit pussing around passing laws that are only put on the books to make a statement when you know damn well they're going to get struck down the first chance we get to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and wasted time working it all the way up through to the highest courts. I hate that.
(Perfectly legal!)
Anyway. All of that's just a side note. What I mean to emphasize, re: my whole problem with Miley Cyrus Doing The Unthinkable In A Bikini, is just that my objection is nothing to do with any violation of any right of privacy. Like we said, your right to privacy doesn't exist in public - even an idiot or a libertarian can see that. What I'm talking about here has simply to do with rising up in indignation. And when something is just wrong, with saying what's wrong. Saying why it's wrong. Exercising your right to free speech, which when you see something horrible going on - especially, going on all around you - includes a right to excoriate and revile. A right to lay out in no uncertain terms what is so wrong with what's going on, whether it is legal or not. And if I may be so bold, anyone who claims to care about right and wrong is a liar and a dipshit if they cannot state why an act is wrong without reference to authority.
Now that's just wrong.
But mind you, though! If you think I may be insulting you, consider what an ugly, disgusting shoe I've just laid out for you to try on. Does it really fit? Because if you claim to care what's right or wrong, then contemptible actions should provoke rebuke. Yet actions and attitudes can change. We can't strip a person of dignity or have contempt for them forever. My contempt is for actions only, and only where I am able to say exactly why the act is contemptible.
It's a high mark of esteem in humans, or it ought to be, that we're capable of caring so much what is right that we'll tell you where you're wrong - despite the risks. These risks would diminish into an infinitesimal if only each person recognized their ability to condemn the wrong thing without condemning the wrongthingdoer! And where's the harm in that? Outside the context of the criminal justice system, where can it ever do anything but harm to condemn a person? Yet to condemn an act as wrong is valuable in almost every case. At worst it will bring differing ideas of social good into relief, and shed corrective light all around. At best, it will underscore the importance of fighting together against a harmful thing. In every case it gives us opportunity to emphasize the distinction between contempt for an act, and contempt for a human being.
Even a contemptible act is no cause to treat someone as less than human.
Sometimes we'll even go so far as to pass laws criminalizing things no just government organized on principles of liberty can prohibit! Then when the Supreme Court throws it out, we grouse that the Supreme Court is the guilty party on that charge of moral cowardice. Even though everyone involved passing the law knew damn well it was doomed! Incredibly, we'll pass an unconstitutional and doomed law, purely to make a statement. Our constituents will be happy we tried, and mad at the Supremes, and everyone distracted by the vast wasted expenditure worming its way through the courts, and everything happily back to status quo by the end of the episode. Cue laugh track?
How about next time we want to make a statement, we do it by telling people why the fuck a thing is wrong. Can you do that? Can you do it without invoking an authority? Because if you can't, if the only way you can call something wrong is by reference to authority, you have no fucking idea why it's wrong.
Actually in that case, people being "moral cowards" is not really the problem, so much as people being "moral imbeciles."
Americans are fucking cowards and imbeciles. Fuck. Me too, I guess. I'm an American! I share the stigma and I will exult with the rest of us when we finally knock it off, when we one day overcome (and perhaps even pay some long-overdue reparations to ourselves over all the damage this attitude has done to us all!). From prohibition of alcohol all the way up to classifying speech as crime because there is what - hate added into it? Hate itself is legal, idiot. If someone incites a riot, if someone uses their free speech to perpetrate a con job, a fraud, if someone uses their speech to rile a bunch of people in a room up to go out and grab and kill a guy, if their speech goes to betray state secrets - these are crimes already. It's not "freedom of speech" that makes the idea of a hate crime idiotic and untenable. It's the fact that hate is legal. Me telling you how I judge human beings I don't even know - me telling you what a fucking idiot I am and how little my opinion should count to you because of the way I judge on bias - that's legal. Quit pussing around passing laws that are only put on the books to make a statement when you know damn well they're going to get struck down the first chance we get to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and wasted time working it all the way up through to the highest courts. I hate that.
(Perfectly legal!)
Anyway. All of that's just a side note. What I mean to emphasize, re: my whole problem with Miley Cyrus Doing The Unthinkable In A Bikini, is just that my objection is nothing to do with any violation of any right of privacy. Like we said, your right to privacy doesn't exist in public - even an idiot or a libertarian can see that. What I'm talking about here has simply to do with rising up in indignation. And when something is just wrong, with saying what's wrong. Saying why it's wrong. Exercising your right to free speech, which when you see something horrible going on - especially, going on all around you - includes a right to excoriate and revile. A right to lay out in no uncertain terms what is so wrong with what's going on, whether it is legal or not. And if I may be so bold, anyone who claims to care about right and wrong is a liar and a dipshit if they cannot state why an act is wrong without reference to authority.
Now that's just wrong.
But mind you, though! If you think I may be insulting you, consider what an ugly, disgusting shoe I've just laid out for you to try on. Does it really fit? Because if you claim to care what's right or wrong, then contemptible actions should provoke rebuke. Yet actions and attitudes can change. We can't strip a person of dignity or have contempt for them forever. My contempt is for actions only, and only where I am able to say exactly why the act is contemptible.
It's a high mark of esteem in humans, or it ought to be, that we're capable of caring so much what is right that we'll tell you where you're wrong - despite the risks. These risks would diminish into an infinitesimal if only each person recognized their ability to condemn the wrong thing without condemning the wrongthingdoer! And where's the harm in that? Outside the context of the criminal justice system, where can it ever do anything but harm to condemn a person? Yet to condemn an act as wrong is valuable in almost every case. At worst it will bring differing ideas of social good into relief, and shed corrective light all around. At best, it will underscore the importance of fighting together against a harmful thing. In every case it gives us opportunity to emphasize the distinction between contempt for an act, and contempt for a human being.
Even a contemptible act is no cause to treat someone as less than human.
Comments
"It's a shame we've lost that fighting instinct. There was such a time when the public in general had stones, metaphorically, and they didn't need the law to feel free casting the first one, the last one, and every one in between. And all perfectly legal: no lynch jobs, no censorship, just the free exercise of speech as used to express condemnation, revulsion, disapproval"
"How about next time we want to make a statement, we do it by telling people why the fuck a thing is wrong."
"What I'm talking about here has simply to do with rising up in indignation. And when something is just wrong, with saying what's wrong. Saying why it's wrong. Exercising your right to free speech, which when you see something horrible going on - especially, going on all around you - includes a right to excoriate and revile. A right to lay out in no uncertain terms what is so wrong with what's going on, whether it is legal or not."
"Outside the context of the criminal justice system, where can it ever do anything but harm to condemn a person? Yet to condemn an act as wrong is valuable in almost every case. At worst it will bring differing ideas of social good into relief, and shed corrective light all around. At best, it will underscore the importance of fighting together against a harmful thing."
This. All this. So very all this.
We allow these elected officials to sell national parks to mining companies, we allow the judiciary to operate unchecked and unrepresentative of pervasive, reasoned expectations. Most of the appalling decisions made by those with the power we could actually get reversed or at least prevent from happening again if we just realised that although the decision-makers have the authority, we have the numbers. I hope the next generation realises the power they could wield if they work together.
I read this today, and it basically highlights the point I’m trying to make:
http://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/read/were-living-in-the-era-of-economic-elite-domination
“According to the research, the meek voice of the public barely registers beneath the booming baritone of the wealthy…”
Only because we’ve let it! I described it to a friend as “complicit fucked-overness” but I’m sure social commentators have coined it better.
“Organizers could beckon millions to publicly call for a new law; they could take to the streets in a vibrant, striking display of democracy in action—and a single dinner with an industry lobbyist would probably command more sway in determining the outcome of the legislation in Congress, even if the outcome was clearly unpopular”
We should be unilaterally calling for the instant resignation of said Congressmen, we should be making our dissatisfaction known frequently and vehemently to parliament, in volume. But we don’t.
“No matter how large the public majorities calling for action on a given issue—whether net neutrality, global warming, gun control—elected officials often don't even bother to respond…”
WE SHOULD MAKE THEM! We should demand answers, every single one of us who is appalled, sickened or disheartened by a decision, or lack thereof, should demand a response. Why would they respond if the ripple we cause barely raises a wave. We should cause a surge every time. The weight of our shared expressed desire for change would turn the tide, I’m sure of it. But we don’t make a unified fuss and I get why we don’t. Because life. Heck, I don’t. I just bitch about it to my old man. But we’ve no one to apportion responsibility to but ourselves when we let things slide.
What's up with, what's going dowwwn
In every city, in every town?
Cramping styles is the plan
They've got us in the palm of every hand
When we pretend that we're dead
When we pretend that we're deeead
They can't hear a word we've said
When we pretend that we're dead
Come on, come on, come on, come on...
Turn the tables with our unity
They're neither moral nor majoriteee
Wake up and smell the coffee
Or just say no to individuality..
That person is the problem.
That person is the one who can't say what's right or wrong except by reference to authority. And that would not be so bad, except their cop-out anti-stance stance is taken as if valid by others. People don't want to be bothered! People are happy to give up their own actual authority to public servants, for no reason but that they are too lazy, too scared to give their own mind and heart any heft.
They think it's a question of if I say right and you say wrong, "who wins?" We both do. We've each taken the leap to say "Yes, I can see what things are. I've given thought to it, and I can not only tell you how I see it I can say why." We can not only see it, we can take it and hold it out to the world, for agreement, for correction: for exchange. We hold it out for good. We listen to what others hold out. Because we know what our own take is based on, we have open minds, and the takes of others can persuade us when they can know and share the reasons for them.
But people don't want that. Cowards. Imbeciles. They want nothing more than to say "What authority?" - and obey.
The will of the people, Mel.