TruGreen Uses Predatory Business Tactics

About a year ago I was replanting my lawn since the last owners used a bastardized mix of every type of grass under the sun and I needed to replant a consistent breed lawn.

None of the local lawn services (of the dozens I contacted) would provide core aeration services for me without requiring that I enter into a recurring contract with them.  Since I wanted only a one-time service, I had no choice but to turn to the corporate conglomerate.

I had my doubts, but I used TruGreen.  They were pricey and the illegal they sent down to do the work did one of the shittiest jobs I have ever seen.  I happened to be home to witness it and he operated that machine so briskly that you might think there were INS agents chasing him.

They called me later trying to push a winter care plan on me.  I declined, but I did succumb to paying for a lime treatment since we had some pine trees in the back that we cut down and I figured the soil had a low pH.

They called me again a few months later trying to push more services on me.  I stated unequivocally that not only do I not want any further services, but in additon that I would not pay for any were they to trespass on my property and dump lime on my lawn without my permission (which, as you can presume by my choice in phrasing that I, and the state, categorize as illegal), nor did I want them to contact me again.  I assured them that I would contact them if I wanted their services.

Lo and behold, last night what, to my horror, do I discover but that TruGreen has taken it upon themselves to lime my lawn without my permission.  Not only that, but they left me an invoice for $67.00.  It will be a cold day in hell before they get their $67.00.

They verbally acknowledged via phone that this was a mistake on their behalf and that my account has been listed as closed since I candidly informed them of my intention to never pay them another dime.

Of course, I am not so trusting.  I am demanding a signed & dated letter, on TruGreen letterhead, nullifying this so-called $67.00 balance with an additional statement that they will not set foot again on my property without my prior written, signed consent under penalty of trespass in the state of Maryland.

Why?  Because if they have gone this far, they will also pretend my phone call last night never happened and 3 months later I’ll be getting a letter from collections.  Due to the credit & scoring system in place in the US, businesses have you by the nuts.  They can claim you owe them money, and somehow, the burden of proof falls on you to prove that you don’t.  This is the most ass-backwards system on the planet.  Unless the company can provide proof that a) you requested services and b) the company provided them and c) you have not yet paid them, they have no leg to stand on (in court).  But credit unions aren’t courts of law.  The creditor’s word is enough unless you have documentation that proves otherwise.

I wouldn’t go so far as to accuse TruGreen of intentional extortion if I knew that my case were isolated.  What annoys me so much is they pulled this exact same scam on my parents about 10 years ago.  With my parents they were far less willing to agree that they were in error since a) they had not yet been sued and b) my parents’ treatment cost over $1000 and mine was for $67.  It took threats of litigation and a letter to the Better Business Burueau to get them to back down.

But whether it’s $67 or $1000, Ukranian men don’t back down when they’ve been wronged.

Don’t ever use TruGreen.

Evolution At It’s Finest

“I think that we Prius owners need a dating/whatever program, to hook us up with other Prius owners,” says one poster on Priuschat.com.

He admits it’s half a joke, but says it “stems from my inability to look at people with gas-burning cars as attractive.”

What do you think your hybrid runs on, asshole?  Sunshine and farts?  Just because your hybrid burns about 25% less gasoline (in ideal conditions) than mine, it still burns gasoline.  Not only that, but you know who doesn’t burn any gasoline?  People who walk, bike, take public transportation, or drive significantly less often and less far than you do.

I suppose the only people Mr. Prius finds attractive are those with their heads permanently stuck up their asses.

I hate the eco movement.  They’re self righteous, pompous, more irritating than hippies, but worst of all have based their entire stance on theories that will take centuries to prove because the climate is a fickle mistress whose sheer enormity and omnipresence make it an impossible target for legitimate experimentation – not to mention that even if we could perform such experiments, the timeframes we are looking at span many hundreds of human generations, not 50 years like some of Al Gore’s followers are claming.

By the way, most eco-movement types are strongly against prayer in schools and intelligent design even though there is as much evidence for both as there is for any of their climate beliefs.

As I’ve said before it all boils down to what you are emotionally inclined to believe.  You might as well take the brain out of the picture because people don’t use them when formulating positions.

I believe that Prius owners buy them for two reasons: to save money and to feel superior over non-Prius owners, both of which are categorically selfish motives.  I am vindicated in this belief every single time I interact with someone who owns a Prius.  They have yet to disappoint.  On second thought…

Burying the Hatchet

I really need to apologize to Tim Weaver.  Regardless of who is right (the judgment of which hinges exclusively on your political ideology, I would wager), Tim is trying to make a career as a writer and I am egging him on, flaming him, and baiting him into posting immature comments that can be traced back to him since I am assuming Tim Weaver is his real name.  For Tim’s sake, I hope it’s not.

Fortunately, I am not a professional writer, have no intention to be, do not intend on ever running for political office (something I’m sure by now is out of the question based on my pointed apolitical incendiery commentary), but most importantly, my real name and identity is nowhere firmly attached to this blog.  Maybe if you tried hard enough you could figure it out, but why bother?

I think what drew me to his blog to begin with is the fact that I spend more time reading views I disagree with than views I do agree with.  Why do I want to read what I already think and believe?  It’s refreshing once and a while, but by and large, I care much more about what the other side thinks because if I don’t shit test my own beliefs, do I even have beliefs?

Anyway, I think this is pretty interesting.  A few posts ago, Tim posted his political compass.  Not surprisingly, we are nearly diametric opposites:

Economic Left/Right: 5.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 2.56

 

Since the compass itself isn’t telling, I’m going to reveal my answers to every question on the test, with some brief explanations:

 

If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.
Disagree

There wasn’t a “neither” option here – I believe the interests of corporations do serve humanity since corporations are comprised of humans.  Ultimately a human makes every decision that drives the behavior of a company, and as evil as CEOs are portrayed to be, having actually worked in the corporate world, the people at the top are dumber than they are wicked.

 

I’d always support my country, whether it was right or wrong.
Agree

Except for extreme cases (e.g., Hitler).  No government is perfect, so I’ll take some bad with the good, which at least for my country is vastly tilted on the good side.

 

No one chooses his or her country of birth, so it’s foolish to be proud of it.
Strongly Disagree

You might as well not be proud of anything then.  You don’t get to choose anything about yourself.

 

Our race has many superior qualities, compared with other races.
Agree

Blacks can sing and are amazing athletes.  Asians are good at math.  White people?  Well… we can hold our liquor.  I don’t know.  People frequently make a leap in assuming if you think there are racial differences then you believe in segregation or some kind of different rights system.  That isn’t the case.  I do believe in intrinsic genetic differences.  In as much as our race has superior qualities, it also has plenty of inferior ones as well.

 

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Agree

We wouldn’t have beaten Hitler without Russia’s help.  They were our friend as long as we had a common enemy.

 

Military action that defies international law is sometimes justified.
Strongly Agree

I don’t have any interest in “international law.”  The very idea is stupid.  Law is enforced with force, and we currently possess the force.  If we feel it is in our nation’s interest, we should do it.  Again, this is a giant gray area.  I do believe that there are such a thing as war crimes, but again, whoever is the victor defines the crimes.  The whole thing is kind of silly.

 

There is now a worrying fusion of information and entertainment.
Agree

It’s hard to get news that isn’t tailored to be entertaining.  I don’t think that this is bad, except that a lot of good information is skipped because it isn’t entertaining, and a lot of facts are twisted to make the story better.  This is dangerous, but it’s probably inevitable.

 

People are ultimately divided more by class than by nationality.
Agree

Money talks, bullshit walks.  People at the top have more in common with people at the bottom, and that crosses all boundaries.  Nationality is just arbitrary lines drawn on a map.  Class has to be earned somehow, and the people who earn it usually share a lot of common traits.

 

Controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment.
Strongly Agree

What good is a job if your money is devaluing faster than you can earn it?

Because corporations cannot be trusted to voluntarily protect the environment, they require regulation.
Agree

I think we overregulate, but it’s better to err on the side of caution.  I think the “environment” is overblown, but we’ve also seen what happens when corporations can do whatever is cheapest.  We shouldn’t go down that road again.

“from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is a fundamentally good idea.
Strongly Disagree

This statement is total crap.  What defines need?  How much is “from”?  There is no way to translate an idea like that into anything that is in any way remotely fair.

It’s a sad reflection on our society that something as basic as drinking water is now a bottled, branded consumer product.
Strongly Disagree

If you morons stop buying it, it will stop being a product.  Buying spring water is for yuppie idiots.  Half the time, they buy it because they want the convneint to-go bottle.

Land shouldn’t be a commodity to be bought and sold.
Strongly Disagree

Nonsense.  Land is the most valuable commodity on the planet earth (except time) because it is the only thing that is known with certainty to be finite.  I want the ability to choose however much or little land I have direct control over.  If it isn’t bought and sold on the market then it means it is given and taken with force (or a government, arguably the same thing).

It is regrettable that many personal fortunes are made by people who simply manipulate money and contribute nothing to their society.
Strongly Disagree

It’s kind of lame, but there’s nothing wrong with it.  “Manipulating money” means they are doing something – investing in a company that uses the money to increase production, loaning the money to other people so they can buy something at a cost way beyond what is feasible to save for, etc.  In general, their actions are a positive factor on the economy even if the work is deemed “easy” by some people.  Read a little about Warren Buffet’s work habits.  Nothing he did was simple or easy.

Protectionism is sometimes necessary in trade.
Agree.

Transnational free markets are kind of retarded – the relative worth of goods is not the same across all boundaries.  Plus, too much free trade encourages more exploitation than the reverse.

The only social responsibility of a company should be to deliver a profit to its shareholders.
Strongly Agree

It is the government’s job to define what is legal.  It is a company’s responsibility to do everything that is within the bounds of the law to make as much money as possible.  It’s called fiduciary responsibility and it’s one of the major driving forces of the economy.  Otherwise, we wouldn’t invest in companies if we suspected they were going to fritter money away on causes we may or may not agree with.  In companies with billions of extant shares, this would be catastrophic.

The rich are too highly taxed.
Strongly Agree

The top 25% earners pay 84% of the taxes.  Punishing success is no way to run a country.

Those with the ability to pay should have the right to higher standards of medical care .
Strongly Agree

Medicine is not a right, it’s a privilege.  If I can pay the best doctor in the world to spend his highly valuable time on me, I deserve his time.  If a doctor can’t charge more for his services if his reputation and skills merit such a charge, why would he bother spending his time earning that reputation and skill?  Money talks, bullshit walks.

Governments should penalise businesses that mislead the public.
Strongly Agree

See above.  Businesses must operate lawfully.  That, in my opinion, includes honest advertising.

A genuine free market requires restrictions on the ability of predator multinationals to create monopolies.
Disagree

This is kind of stupid, because free markets mean no regulations.  A genuine free market is one with no barriers of any kind.

The freer the market, the freer the people.
Agree

Freedom to trade goods and currency is central to the concept of freedom.

Abortion, when the woman’s life is not threatened, should always be illegal.
Agree

I don’t see a strong reason why adoption isn’t a valuable alternative.  In today’s cultural climate, there is no shame attached to unwed pregnancy.  Even if there is, the shame is deserved (or else it wouldn’t be shameful, right?)  I can’t say for sure whether an unborn baby is alive or dead but I’d rather not be wrong.  I lean toward alive.

All authority should be questioned.
Agree

I believe everything should be questioned.  The reason this didn’t get a strongly is because most people can ask the questions but most people are too dumb to arrive at answers.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
Agree

This is a caricature of the issue, but I believe the punishment should be equal to the crime (if not exactly the same).  Murder should merit death.

Taxpayers should not be expected to prop up any theatres or museums that cannot survive on a commercial basis.
Agree

I think that there are some people who go to museums and some who don’t.  Those who do should pay to enjoy them so those who don’t care at all about museums and won’t miss them if they were gone don’t have to.

Schools should not make classroom attendance compulsory.
Strongly Disagree

As if kids could be trusted.  I went to college.  Please.

All people have their rights, but it is better for all of us that different sorts of people should keep to their own kind.
Agree

I think you’ll find that this happens naturally anyway.  I think people are happier when they surround themselves with people like them.  They shouldn’t be forced to, though.

Good parents sometimes have to spank their children.
Strongly Agree

I was beaten occasionally as a child and if there was one thing that got me in line when I was acting up it was fear of spankings.

It’s natural for children to keep some secrets from their parents.
Agree

Everyone, even children, has some privacy.

Possessing marijuana for personal use should not be a criminal offence.
Disagree

This one is entirely emotional.  I smoked plenty of weed when I was younger, and I cannot come up with a legitimate reason that it should be any more or less legal than alchohol or tobacco.  But I knew a lot of people – young people – who took to weed.  I knew others who took to cigs.  Others who took to booze.  The kids who took to weed ended up wasting their lives.  Some of them still sit around in their bedrooms in their parents’ houses into their 20’s smoking weed all day.  I think it has a high chance of ruining lives, but again, like I said, I can’t come up with a compelling rational argument.

The prime function of schooling should be to equip the future generation to find jobs.
Agree

If you aren’t going to use your education, then what’s the point of having one?  All the people who talked about education for education’s sake ended up with really shitty jobs after they graduated and were really genuinely unhappy.  When you’re emptying portapotties for a living, you’re not thinking about how good it is to be able to quote Shakespearean sonnets.  You’re thinking, goddamn, I wish I had a better job.

People with serious inheritable disabilities should not be allowed to reproduce.
Strongly Disagree

No eugenics.  If they can manage to reproduce in spite of those disabilities, more power to them.  Should they?  That’s between them, God, and their future children.

The most important thing for children to learn is to accept discipline.
Strongly Agree

Without discipline you lack the will to accomplish anything.  If you can discipline yourself, you can achieve whatever you want.

There are no savage and civilised peoples; there are only different cultures.
Strongly Disagree

I am not a moral relativist.  I believe in certain inaliable moral truths.  Cultures that do not play by those morals are uncivilized.  I have no qualms about making that judgment.  To each his own has a place in things like ice cream flavers and breasts vs. asses, not whether honor killings are morally OK.

Those who are able to work, and refuse the opportunity, should not expect society’s support.
Strongly Agree

This one is obvious.  How can you not strongly agree with this?  If you don’t, what happens when everyone refuses the opportunity?  We’ll see how long that lasts.

When you are troubled, it’s better not to think about it, but to keep busy with more cheerful things.
Agree

I don’t see what this has to do with poltiics or authority, but it’s a handy way of being happier in general.

First-generation immigrants can never be fully integrated within their new country.
Agree

I’ve dealt with a large number of first gen immigrants in my social and professional life.  They can try, but they’ll never quite get there.  That’s fine, though.  I wouldn’t be able to, nor would I want, to integrate into another country’s culture were I to relocate.

What’s good for the most successful corporations is always, ultimately, good for all of us.
Agree

Almost always.  Successful companies employ lots of people and put food on a lot of tables.  As long as they achieve their success lawfully, more power to them.

No broadcasting institution, however independent its content, should receive public funding.
Strongly Agree

PBS has been a waste of money since it started.  The jury’s in on this one.  Besides, there’s no such thing.  The kind of people who would strongly disagree to this statement are the ones who staff public broadcasting services and they are probably leftist when you consider that I am rightist, ipso facto, if the staff is leftist, the broadcasting is leftist.  There is no such thing as independent content.

Our civil liberties are being excessively curbed in the name of counter-terrorism.
Agree

The Patriot Act was a step too far.

A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system.
Strongly Disagree

Free poltiics is worth the wait.

Although the electronic age makes official surveillance easier, only wrongdoers need to be worried.
Disagree

Everyone needs to be worried.  Electornic surveillance is far too easy to abuse.  What happens when the wrongdoer is the surveiller?

The death penalty should be an option for the most serious crimes.
Strongly Agree

I have interacted with the family of the Megan of Megan’s Law socially.  The man who did that to her deserves to die.  Anyone who listens to what that man did to her, or the pain in the voices of her parents, and still thinks that Timmendequas should be spared, is the one who lacks sympathy, not me.

In a civilised society, one must always have people above to be obeyed and people below to be commanded.
Strongly Agree

That’s how civilization works.  The strong always rule the weak.  While I may wish this weren’t true, I live on Earth, and on Earth, that’s how it goes.  I don’t take it as my sacred sworn duty to correct the ills of nature.  Fighting nature on a large scale is a losing battle.  The best you can do is be true to your own beliefs and your own nature.  The second you start trying to apply your own to other people, you’ll see how futile it is.  Gee, why am I writing this again?

Abstract art that doesn’t represent anything shouldn’t be considered art at all.
Strongly Agree

Jackson Pollock is a freaking sham.  Abstract art is BS.

In criminal justice, punishment should be more important than rehabilitation.
Agree

I don’t forgive and I don’t forget.

It is a waste of time to try to rehabilitate some criminals.
Strongly Agree

Most pedophiles will never be rehabilitated.

The businessperson and the manufacturer are more important than the writer and the artist.
Strongly Agree

Money talks, bullshit walks.

Mothers may have careers, but their first duty is to be homemakers.
Agree

Somebody’s gotta raise the kids.  Women have always done it.  Women enjoy it.  Men don’t do it.  Men hate it.  What’s so hard about that?

Multinational companies are unethically exploiting the plant genetic resources of developing countries.
Disagree

What’s unethical about it?  Exploit is such a loaded word.

Making peace with the establishment is an important aspect of maturity.
Strongly Agree

Sitting around and crying about how the world isn’t exactly like you want it to be is stupid.  I didn’t make the rules.  You didn’t make the rules.  But we both live by them, so we might as well do what we can to play by them as best we can.

Astrology accurately explains many things.
Strongly Disagree

Come on, seriously?

You cannot be moral without being religious.
Disagree

I don’t think you can’t be, but I think you have a better chance of being moral if you are religious.

Charity is better than social security as a means of helping the genuinely disadvantaged.
Strongly Agree

Social security is just forced charity, and I don’t like to be forced to do anything.

Some people are naturally unlucky.
Agree

Life isn’t fair.

It is important that my child’s school instills religious values.
Disagree

Shouldn’t the schools leave something for the parents to teach?

Sex outside marriage is usually immoral.
Disagree

It’s not immoral, it’s just risky.

A same sex couple in a stable, loving relationship, should not be excluded from the possibility of child adoption.
Strongly Disagree

They should be excluded.  If nature intended two men to raise children, they would be doing so without the aid of a civilization to give them one through adoption.

Pornography, depicting consenting adults, should be legal for the adult population.
Strongly Agree

It’s one of the least harmful vices out there.

What goes on in a private bedroom between consenting adults is no business of the state.

Strongly Agree

It’s one of the least harmful vices out there.  Behind closed doors is a very powerful concept.

No one can feel naturally homosexual.
Strongly Disagree

I’m certain that homosexuals do in fact feel naturally homosexual or else they wouldn’t give up all of what they must give up to be homosexual.  Feeling is one thing.  Doing is a totally separate issue.

These days openness about sex has gone too far.

Strongly Agree

Beind closed doors is a very powerful concept. 

 

Why Gays Get Special Treatment

I was reading another brilliant editorial by my hero, Dr. Mike Adams.  Mike and I would get along.  We believe the same things and have a tendency to argue things exactly the same way.

I recently had a debate with another blogger about a range of topics but gay marriage came up.  I tried to use the same technique that Adams uses in his editorials, and as usual, the technique failed, even though from a purely objective stance, the logic of the argument is foolproof.

This particular editorial covers the unfair termination of a relationship counselor because her religions beliefs concerning homosexuality rendered her incapable of establishing a proper doctor-patient relationship with a lesbian.  Adams used what could technically be described as a “slippery slope” approach in which he suggests that next, counselors who disapprove of binge eating will be summarily fired when they refuse to treat a patient who beligerently declares that they love to eat, are genetically predisposed to binge eat, and have a constitutionally protected right to binge eat.

Defenders of the gay marriage/gay rights crusade immediately cry foul to this line of reasoning, claiming that it’s comparing apples to oranges (“slippery slope”) and this somehow invalidates the argument.

The reason they do so is because of how very obviously stupid it makes the entire thing.  Why does a lesbian’s unwillingness to date a man trump a counselor’s unwillingness to counsel a lesbian?  Why is one belief system better than the other?  Your answer to that question is your rationale for invalidating the substitution of “fat” and “overeating” for “lesbian” and “has sex with women” as “not the same thing.”

You could argue that people who let gay rights get special treatment while ignoring all other rights, such as fat rights, are just too smart for all of those backwards, anti-progressive bible thumpers such as Dr. Adams and recognize a slippery slope for what it is and don’t fall into that trap.  However, I think you’ll find that virtually every gay rights activist not only doesn’t understand what you mean when you say “slippery slope” but will also both allow and apply “slippery slope” reasoning to any other argument in which doing so would favor their position.

The truth, I have concluded, is this: people put sex and love on a pedestal, above all other things.  They will abandon truth, reason, logic, the good of society, God, and anyone else who might interfere with their choice in who they want to screw.  Gay rights activists can’t imagine the horror of homosexuals being deprived of sex and love, and thus are willing to ignore everything in order to support it.

This is why I frequently bring up bestiality and pedophilia instead of overeating and drug use when attempting to argue this point, but even though those arguments attempt to hurdle beyond the barrier to logic and reasoning erected by sex, gay rights supporters will come up with nonsense like age of consent, a rule which is as arbitrary as any other age limit such as drinking, gambling, or voting.

But it doesn’t work.  Gay rights supporters are so much more interested in the freedom to screw who and how they want that they refuse to even entertain the idea that some people might be as appalled at the idea of a gay relationship as they are of cannibalism or human sacrifice.  They immediately chalk that up to a “bigoted” belief while in the same breath claiming to be open minded, without even considering the legitimacy of those feelings.

This, of course, necessarily requires a libertarian worldview.  In order for a gay rights supporter to categorically support the gay’s individual freedom to marry other gays while categorically opposing the majority of society’s opposition to gay marriage, they have to fall back on the “it doesn’t directly affect you so therefore it must be OK” argument.  They must then start sliding down the slippery slope of believing that doing drugs like heroin and cocaine is okay because it doesn’t directly harm them – in other words, take an absolute libertarian stance on personal freedom.

Except they don’t do that.  I’ve heard people tell me that yes, gays should get married because their doing so does not negatively harm me, but they should not be allowed to chase the dragon on their gay honeymoon.  When I suggest that doing so does not harm me (or them), if they are smarter than the average dufus gay rights activist (which doesn’t take much), they might say, “but it harms them!  And self harm should be illegal!”

Really?  And you know this how?  Do you have a crystal ball?  Why is your belief that heroin harms a gay married couple more valid than the majority belief that gay marriage itself harms gays (and everyone else?)  Because you read some “studies” that say heroin is bad?

My problem with gay rights activists is that they cherry pick which social conventions to be libertarian on and then act baffled, or offended, or down right hostile that the rest of the country doesn’t cherry pick the same conventions.  In fact, they act so surprised that they are in the habit of firing their subordinates who disagree.  Their libertarian attitude toward gay marriage doesn’t extend to the examples that Dr. Adams discusses concerning something like drug use so they cry “slippery slope!  apples and oranges!”

The truth is, it isn’t a slippery slope or apples and oranges, it’s just good, irrefutable reasoning, the belief in which is suspeneded by gay rights activists so they can maintain a worldview that was established by an emotional attachment to the issue, not a rational evaluation of what is probably best for society.

But then again, that’s how it almost always works for everyone, but liberals in particular.  Welfare?  Who in their right mind could rationally conclude that giving vast numbers of Americans something for nothing would improve their lot in life?  Anyone who voted in 1968 and is also alive now should remember how totally wrong they were then.  Do we really have to wait 40 years for another entire segment of the American culture to be subjected to another failed social experiment?

Sometimes I wish progressives would learn from the mistakes of the past.

But then I remember that if they did, they would be conservatives.

Ted Kennedy? Are you serious?

Among Obama’s answer to the “three wisest people” he would consult if elected, Obama actually named Ted Kennedy.  Ted Kennedy?  Seriously?

Your grandmother is one thing.  Even Michelle Heinz-Kerry-Obama is another.  But Ted Kennedy?

Does this mean that when you drive one of your staffers off a bridge, you’ll call Ted Kennedy for advice before calling the police?  Am I to surmise you’ll be on the phone with Teddy for 9 or 10 hours, too?  Long enough for all the air left in the submerged car to run out?

I am shocked that the public is so willing to forget Chappaquidick.  I am not exaggerating when I admit that I give every Masshole I meet a 60%ish chance of being an asshole since there’s a 60%ish chance said Masshole voted for a murdering drunken hottentot.

Even if you can somehow twist your worldview into such contortions that Chappaquidick is okay by you, Ted Kennedy has one of the least impressive senate careers of all time.  Aside from the fact that he miraculously continues to be elected term after term, what has he done?

He opposed abortion before he decided that it was okay after Roe v. Wade, he sponsored No Child Left Behind when both parties at the time opposed it and everyone now agrees it sucks, and is consistently ranked as one of, if not the most far left senator in congress.

Not to mention the fact that everybody knows his political career exists only because he is related to John and Robert, and they were both shot.  I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to suggest that the voters are just electing a stand-in for JF or RF, and it somehow scratches a sentimental itch of some kind to keep him around well, well past his meager prime.

On top of that, the fact that anyone in his family ever achieved anything was a result of bootlegging.  The entire Kennedy family is a bunch of crooks, frauds, and failures.

I don’t like to judge guilt by association.  I am willing to look past the whole Reverend Wright nonsense because it’s pretty clear that man was looking for whatever spotlight he could get even if it meant screwing Obama over.  I think the senator deflected that one fairly well, although it could fairly be described as too little too late.

But to stand up and annouce that you not only find Ted Kennedy’s advice worth anything let alone categorizing it as wisdom, but also declaring that you would seek his counsel of elected?

My only solace here is the fact that Teddy is on his way out and will probably live long enough only to see John McCain be elected.  Maybe Teddy will contact Obama from the beyond?

This is the reason Obama is tied in the polls in a race that is his to lose.  His supporters apparently pretend that experience doesn’t matter or else they couldn’t stand behind a first-term senator with no significant legislature authored, co-sponsored, or passed, but it’s mistakes like these that have been and will continue to cost him.

Obama’s naivete is frightening.

Living With Your Parents = Epic Fail

Think about social networking sites.  How many of you are “friends” with people whose continuing life or sudden death would impact your life in no other way than to change the number of “friends” you have on FaceBook, MySpace, etc?

I am FaceBook “friends” with a number of people from highschool, some of whom were little better than acquaintances.  I accept their friend request only because I am curious about what they’re up to – and that, mostly because I want to see how I’m measuring up to the rest of my graduating class.  My online friends and I got the same education, almost all went to college, our families all have comparable levels of income, etc.  So I figure it’s a pretty even bar from which to compare.

I am shocked at how many of my former friends still live in their parents’ basements.  Shocked.

I have only one analysis of anyone who does not move out of their parents’ house at the earliest possible opportunity: epic fail.

By and large, these are people who majored in something ridiculous like English or Political Science or the 1990’s favorite “Communications” and as a result cannot get a job that pays enough even to finance a meager home of their own.

Some of them, though, have masters degrees in engineering.  One of them even has the same degree that I do, from the same school as a coworker of mine who holds the same position in our company, except that he has a masters in it also.  He still lives at home!

What a failure!  His girlfriend lives in Manhattan, by the way.  $10 says that doesn’t last.

There is no such thing as a good reason to live with your parents.  I don’t care if you’re 18, 28, or 60.  Here is the short list of reasons why this is a retarded pracitce for men:

• Total and abject emasculation.  If a man lives with his parents, other men immediately fail to take him seriously in any way.  If he can’t even function as an independent adult, he obviously has a large variety of other major problems and therefore, his opinions on any matter are instantly and unequivocally void and disqualified for any real consideration.
• Total and abject emasculation.  If a man lives with his parents, it means that his parents still have authority over him (or, his parents are beta chumps who let him have the run of their house, which leads me to believe in like father, like son, which is equally damning).
• Stunted adult growth.  There is no substitute for living in the real world without the safety net of always having a roof over your head.  After living on your own to a living standard that would be considered acceptable for an adult man, the cloud of possibility that delinquency on your mortgage or rent payments will leave you literally living in your car, or worse.  In most cases, we know that we could always stay with family in that event rather than sleep in a car, but after living on my own, I would sooner cut off my own balls with a dull spoon then come crawling back to my mommy and daddy to cover my ass after a total, abject, epic fail such as that.
• Guaranteed beta status.  You can’t be an alpha male when you aren’t even king of your own castle.  No matter how smooth and suave your are with the ladies, they, including your own girlfriend if you somehow manage to have one, will always cringe when they say, “yeah, he still lives with his parents.”  It’s as embarassing for them as it should be for you, and it’s a major minus in the attractiveness column.  If all you’re looking for is pumping and dumping you can get away with it, but LTRs?  Forget it – especially if she has her own place.
• High likelihood of becoming “tolerant”.  Men who live with their parents try to cover for their own epic failures by becoming accepting of others and adopting a pussified worldview of relatives and understanding.  This allows these men to tout their own abject failures without categorizing them as failures.  In order to maintain self consistency, it necessarily requires them to look at the failures of all those around them and forgive them as he hopes other men will forgive his.  Sorry chump, it doesn’t work that way, and it just makes you look like an even bigger pussy.
• Your life becomes a parade of excuses.  One after the other.  I’ll get to them to those next, but first…

Here are the reasons you shouldn’t live with your parents as a girl:

• Men are not attracted to girls who live under their fathers’ roofs.  Trying to date, or worse, pump-and-dump a girl who lives with her parents, especially her father, is like storming an impregnable fortress on your mighty steed, throwing the damsel wench over your shoulder like a conquering viking, and dragging her out over the drawbridge so you can have you way with her.  The obstacles of dealing with a woman who lives at home are many.  They include things like requiring parental approval from day 1, constantly interacting with them every time you are attempting to take their daugher somewhere so you can shag her relentlessly, never being able to fuck her at her place, never being able to get a quickie on the front porch, but most of all, regressing to highschool-style dating into your 20’s.  Screw that.

Here is a list of the excuses that dipshits who live with their parents routinely make (and firmly believe).  Sorry dipshits, we adults do not believe any of them.

• I’m saving money for my own place.  Right.  I already have my own place.  I didn’t have to live with my parents to get one.  Why do you?  People are “saving money for their own place” sometimes into their 30’s.  Here’s a newsflash for you: saving an extra $20,000 for a bigger down payment on a house that you can only live in 5 or 10 years down the road is not worth the 5 or 10 years of living with your parents in a basement.  Time is your most precious commodity.  It is better to live in a run-down, rat-infested $400/mo apartment and buy the house at 28 than it is to live in an upscale white suburb for 0$/mo and buy the house at 26.  Living in your car is preferable.  You know why?  Because it proves you have a pair.  Grow one and move out.
• It’s too expensive for someone my age where I live.  Then move.  That excuse is bullshit anyway.  When I was fresh out of college I was able to live comfortably in one of the priciest real estate markets in the nation without breaking a sweat.  There is always an affordable place.  Ever hear of subsidized housing?  If you have a college degree, unless you’re a total douchebag, you can easily get a job that will afford you basic housing.  This excuse is so easy to tear down because it is not based in reality and easily refuted with 10 seconds worth of google fact searching.
• All my friends live around here.  Make new friends.  Find a place near your parents.  Find a place 40 miles away and drive more.
• I want to be near my parents because I <3 them.  Find a place near your parents.  Find a place 40 miles away and drive more.
• I like being pampered as if I’m an irresponsible immature little child well into my adulthood.  Okay, this is usually phrased, “My mom cooks and cleans for me, you can’t beat that kind of service!”  Adult males interpret this phrase as, “I can’t take care of myself because I never grew up.  I fail at life.”
• My parents want me to live with them.  Usually uttered by girls.  So what?  You’re 22.  Make your own decisions.  Live your own life.  I did what my parents wanted without question until the last tuition check cleared.  Every request after that was accomodated because they still haven’t squandered all of my inheritance and one day I might want it.  Just kidding, I like my parents and they are reasonable people.  We get along.
• I’m just here until I find a job/place.  That works for about 2 months.  Beyond that, one begins to question why it is you still haven’t found said job or said place.  Is it because you’re full of shit?
• I’m writing a novel.  Give me a fucking break.  Seriously?  Are you seriously going to tell me that’s why you’re living with your parents?  Because you’re trying to become a novelist?  Pipe fucking dream.  Get over it.  You know how many people try to write novels and fail each year?  Thousands, becuase it’s a bullshit do-nothing “career” that usually boils down to a cover for laziness or for not wanting to work for a telemarketing company because you majored in something dumb like English.  In order to be a successful novelist you need to have some life experiences so your ideas can mean something, and you aren’t likely to get that playing Wii with your highschool friends in your mom’s basement at 24.  The “writing a novel” excuse is such a stupid sham.  For 99% of the people who say they do this, they end up never even writing the novel, much less getting it published, much less making a dime on it.  They finally wake up 10 years later and realize, “shit, I wasted my time.”  Too late, retard.  Enjoy that telemarketing job and settling on fatties from eHarmony.

There is exactly one situation in which it is okay to live with your parents, and even this situation is highly undesirable, but understandable and perfectly excusable:

• Your elderly parents are disabled and/or terminally ill and can no longer take care of themselves.  They took care of you; you should return the favor.  Sucks, but that’s life.

The truth is that the people who still live with their parents into their 20’s and beyond are usually doing so because they have epicly failed in some manner.  The standard epic fail is lack of gainful employment coupled by standards that preclude the failure’s willingness to live in sub-upper-middle-class environs.  This lack of gainful employment can be attributed to a variety of personality defects, the most common is laziness.  The second most common was the choice to major in something fucking stupid and then be unabe to get a job that is glamorous enough for you.

The bottom line is that if you live with your parents post-graduation, you are an epic failure.

I can picture the stock responses from basement dwelling alsorans along these lines: “you’re close minded” or “you are stereotyping” or “you don’t know my situation” or any number of dumb excuses that don’t address a single one of these points because these points are unadressable.  Their truth is known to everyone including you but admitting it to yourself or *gasp* openly would knock you one rung even lower than you already are for living with your parents in your 20’s, and that should inspire suicide in any man with testicles.  Aynway, enjoy your vapid existence, troglodyte.

Georgia

I am amazed that morons are trying to blame the Russia-Georgia conflict on Bush.  That’s about as inane as blaming Bosnia on Clinton.  What’s next, blaming Eisenhower for World War 2?  After all, Eisenhower is a German name…

Yes, it is true that the United States has encouraged former Soviet nations to buddy up with the west.  Why wouldn’t we?  The more nations belong to NATO, or the EU, means the fewer that belong to the ghost of the Warsaw pact.  This has been generally considered “good” for the United States since 1948.  Does the continuation of a policy held by every previous United States president since that time, and the vast majority of other political leaders, make them responsible for a foreign country’s behavior?  Absolutely not!

This is analagous to you informing me that you are about to rob a bank, and my reply is: “sure, go ahead.  great idea, chief.”  Then you get arrested and sent to jail, and then testify in court that you’re innocent and it is instead me who is guilty because I refused to drive your getaway car.

Give me a freaking break.  Are leftists really this devoid of reasoning skills?

I am not acquainted with the politics of South Ossetia, and neither is anyone else who waxes idiotic on their blogs about it – I could only parrot back shit I’ve read on Wikipedia and heard in the news – and my fake, postured authority on the subject would be entirely charlatanic since we all know that I had no idea such a place existed prior to August the 6th, and neither did you.  So I’m going to refrain in even considering who started it, who is just in defending or attacking, whether Ossetia should belong to one or the other… who cares?

The only matter that is even relevant to discuss is what the US should do about it.

The answer is: exactly what George Bush and John McCain are doing.  Say publicly that Russia should withdraw, but knowing fully well that there is nothing they’ll ever do about it.  In other words, be politicians.

If you want to compare this to our action when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the simplest explanation for why the US did get involved then and not now is simple.  America only exerts force to protect its interests.  South Ossetia does not interest us.  Kuwait (and its oil, and its location on the gulf coast), does.

Why is this so hard for liberals to understand?  You probably only do things for you, or people who you care about.  You look out for your own interests, so why shouldn’t we as a nation do the same?  In 2003 all I heard was “blood for oil”.  Yeah?  What’s your point?  I like oil.  If that’s the motivation, great.  I use about 10 gallons of refined petroleum per week to get to my job which finances my lifestyle.  If the only way I can continue to do this means deposing a dictator we should have deposed a decade ago, that’s fine with me.  “But what about alternatives!!!!111  instead of war we should have grown corn lol or invested in solar!”  That’s great.  You know what you can personally do about that?  Stop buying oil.  If everyone stops buying oil, the oil companies will grow corn instead and everyone will look so pretty in their hemp friendship necklaces as they drive around in their ethanol powered New New Beetle with flower holder.  But wait… you like to drive.  Dang!

Anyway, forget about blood for oil.  Anyone who is writing blog entries about Georgia and about what Obama would do if only he were president now and how stupid G Dub is and how all of this is his and Bush Sr.’s fault is forgetting the most obvious fact in all of this.  A fact easily forgotten by dipshits born in the 1980’s who were barely verbal when the Berlin wall came down (thanks, Reagan!)

Russia has nuclear weapons.  They are permanent members of the security council and have the right to veto the discussion of any issue in the UN because they have nuclear weapons.  The reason they have this authority is because they can make any decision they want without the risk of consequences.

We won’t do a goddamn thing about South Ossetia for the same reason that we haven’t, and will never, do a goddamned thing about Tibet even though every single American president in 40 years has said something along the lines of, “I support the freedom of the Tibetans.”

And why?   Because China has nuclear weapons.

Christ, I feel like there are some people who are so anxious to paint the Republican leadership as inept that they totally turn off their brains and babble incoherently about a “solution” to the “Georgia crisis” as if there is one.

I’ve even heard people (including some nationally syndicated columnists) compare our “appeasement” of the invasion of Georgia to Chamberlain’s appeasment of Hitler when he invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939.

Are you f’ing serious?

What can we possibly do?

Nothing.  We have played this game with Russia for 50 years.  Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Afghanistan, now… we back Russia’s enemies without ever engaging Russia directly.  So we backed Georgia with weapons and they decided to bite Russia’s ankles.  Stupid.  Of course we weren’t going to defend them.

If you think the US has been the only one to learn from the lessons of the Cold War, you’re a fool.  Russia has learned too.  Why bother engaging in proxy wars when you can just start occuping your former Soviet states directly with no threat of consequence?  Russia knows the US isn’t about to launch ICBMs over some piss-ant country like South Ossetia, or even Georgia.

Russia probably figures, you know what, fuck the US.  If they think they can take over Iraq and put military bases all over the place (essentially colonize it), then we sure as shit can take over what used to be ours and nobody will do a damn thing.

And they’re right.

So… in conclusion: if you think the US should do anything about Georgia other than limply condemn the invasion as “fundamentally wrong”, you should do three things: a) get your head out of your ass, b) unregister yourself from voting, and c) build a bomb shelter.  Idiots.

People Only Care About Themselves

… and you witness it every single day and probably don’t even think about it.

Next time you’re in your car, pay attention to the way other people drive.  As a 100ish mile per day commuter, I spend a lot of time witnessing the behavior of people when they are free to exist in their little isolated bubbles devoid of social consequences.

When you’re in a car you are much more likely to be out for your own interests without ever considering other people because standard social cues are removed from the picture.  If we were all outside our cars, such as on foot, in the same scenarios as standard traffic, we would be much more likely to be courteous because we have instinctual reactions to gestures such as an angry expression, an annoyed sigh, a middle finger, etc.  But the car puts a comfortable separation between us and our superegos, and the result is true human nature: abject selfishness.

Watch for the following behaviors when driving and you will see what I mean:

1.  Going 10mph under the speed limit except whenever it is legal to pass, at which point, asshole accelerates to 10mph over the speed limit.  Immediately resumes -10mph when passing is no longer possible. (100%  of drivers minus me do this)

2.  Purposely putting as little space as possible between himself and the car in front of him in multi-lane scenarios, especially when said lane will soon become a turnoff lane.  This prevents anyone in the other lanes from making their turns without slowing traffic down as they brake in their lane waiting for an opening.

3.  Conversely, ignoring the fact that he will soon need to be in one lane in order to make his turn so he can speed past all of the people who are waiting in line to make their turns, and then slam on his brakes and then turn his turn signal on right in front of the turn, and hold up traffic in the fast lane until one of the dutiful, respectful citizens in the turn lane capitulates and lets asshole in, not because the asshole is demonstrating sheer driving dominance but because dutiful, respectful driver respects the rights of the cars this asshole is blocking in his lane while trying to make his turn.

4.  Driving erratically at varying speeds, sometimes above the limit, sometimes below, because cell phone conversation is more important than road.

5.  Tailgating hard because 10mph over the speed limit is not enough.  She is in such a hurry!

6.  Arriving at a stop sign across the street from you 30 seconds after you arrived and making his turn first anyway.  (99% of SUVs do this).

7.  Tailgating hard in low speed zones prone to speed traps.

8.  Not turning off high beams when entering blind corners, or in general.

9.  At a turn where civil engineers went through extra effort to construct a merge lane, sitting like a retard at the yield sign because she needs to be in the left lane and is afraid to merge rapidly (99% of female drivers do this).

10.  Parking on corners, making it impossible for anyone making a turn to see if anything is coming.  Bonus points if car is a full size Suburban or a Ford F-250.  Why should you have to walk an extra 10 feet to get to your house?

11.  Weaving like a mad man in heavy traffic so you can get 3 car lengths ahead.  On trips lasting 40-50 miles, I always catch up to every weaver at either the exit lane or the traffic light immediately after the exit ramp, but that doesn’t stop them from endangering everyone’s lives to not save any time at all.

12.  Bicycling on a major 50mph route (that is coincidentally the fastest way to DC from all points west) at the peak of rush hour in Lance Armstrong spandex.  8am is the perfect time to go on a leisurely bike ride.  It gets too hot otherwise!  Who needs bicyle lanes, dirty polluting cars should share the road (as they swerve into oncoming traffic lanes to avoid dipshit on bike and risk their lives for someone else’s habit).

13.  Driving in general during rush hour on a commuter road when you are over 60 years of age and still think it might be Sunday or don’t know where you’re going so as such are constantly going 10-15mph under the limit while you search for land marks.  Pick another time of the day to go on a pleasure drive please.

All of these behaviors are patently selfish and I witness the vast majority of the population do all, or a combination, of these every single day.

If people drive so selfishly when no one is watching, why then do they feel the need to vote away all of our money in the form of taxes to help immaterial people who impact their lives even less than the people they share the road with while they commute?  This has always baffled me, and leads me to believe that anyone who can get in a car and act like the biggest sociopathic selfish asshole imaginable behind the wheel and then sit and discuss issues with me like global warming and say things like we should help the needy has several important neurological connections missing.

Even if they themselves drive like saints, don’t they see how everyone else does?  And you want to help them?  Screw that.  They are selfish bastards.  Aside from the ability to claim the moral high ground, what good does it possibly do?  The more help I give them, the more likely they will be to buy a car and cut me off, and possibly kill me if I happen to catch them after a rowdy Redskins tailgate or a fiesty Cinco de Mayo.

People are jerks.  They dont’ deserve help, and the ones who claim they want to help have just as little regard for them as I do or they wouldn’t drive like total pricks when they think they can get away with it because nobody is “watching.”

Vote for the person who will give you the best deal.  If everyone votes for the people who give themselves the best deal, then the majority wins.  Do not vote for someone who gives other people the best deal just so you can feel good about yourself.  It is actually more selfish for you to vote on behalf on the downtrodden, and here’s why. 

Let’s suppose you and I are comparable in income and lifestyle.  I decide to vote the “greedy evil republican” because he will reduce my personal taxes and therefore make me happiest.  Although I may have certain outlooks on issues like Iran, oil, etc., these are all abstract ideas and are fun to talk about, but really impact my life a very small amount.   I don’t try to extrapolate that a bullet fired in Baghdad is going to make it rain at my Earth Day picnic.  The most concrete impact that any decision made in Washington has on my life is how much money I have, so I vote mostly on that.  I am looking out for me, and by extension, everyone who has a comparable lifestyle and income as I do.

You decide to vote for “change we can believe in” which means more of your money will go to helping other people.  You feel good about your compassion as you recklessly change lanes in your SUV that you bought (“before it was a problem”) and cut off everyone you possibly can so your kids don’t wait a second longer at Kiddie Gym than they have to.  You are voting in the interests of other people instead of yourself, and by extension, you are voting against everyone whose lifestyles and income are comparable with yours.

Why did you vote in the interests of other people?  Because it makes you feel good about yourself.  You believe it’s “what’s right.”  The only problem with this is that you are putting your own sense of compassion and ideals ahead of everyone else whose tax money you are robbing with your vote.  It isn’t just the few extra tax dollars you can afford, it’s the few extra tax dollars that everyone in your tax bracket can – or maybe can’t – afford.

What you’re doing is creating an imbalance in what’s best for everyone.  When you vote against your own interests so you can feel good, you are creating an unrealistic picture of what’s best for America because you’re stacking the deck in favor of the people you feel bad for.  Aside from the fact that such a posture is wildly elitist, it is anti-democratic.  But wait, you’re part of the democratic party, so I must be wrong, right?

But the good news is that I have a solution for you.  It’s an amazing, new, cutting edge idea that will be sure to make me rich because no one has thought of it before.  It’s called donating to charity.  Incredible!  This way, you can feel good about yourself for helping not just the needy, but a specific group that you may have specific empathy for above others.  You can rest easy knowing that your extra tax money is not going to bullets fired at Iraqi citizens, and at the same time, you aren’t screwing everyone around you with your concept of a fair, affordable tax rate.  You aren’t skewing the numbers of what’s best for the most number of people as you look down upon the masses as the savior of the downtrodden.  You’re getting the best of both worlds.

But then you probably realize that your piss-in-the-ocean tax-free charitable donation isn’t enough to make any real progress so you conclude that “only when we work together can we make a difference.”  Read: “only when everyone contributes to my cause can I feel like I actually accomplished anything, even though all I ever accomplished was giving money.”

Once you start opening your eyes to these realities, it becomes very hard to maintain a liberal, ideological view of the world.  But then again, naivete, and ignorance, is bliss.

The “Unfit Parent” argument

Just to be clear before I begin: I am not opposed to abortions when the baby’s or the mother’s life is at risk, or in the case of severe deformity per se.  I would like to think if my wife were pregnant with a baby that, for example, was going to be born without legs, we would be strong enough to handle that, but I am not sure.  I certainly hope I don’t find out, and I certainly withold judgment against those who do and choose abortion.

However, the “unfit parent” argument as a platform for pro-choice really gets under my skin.  It’s so … wrong.

First, it boggles my mind that an adult human could say something like, “I think abortions should be given out freely to parents who would be unfit to raise the children” and not immediately think, “but what about adoption?”

I would gladly pay whatever the cost in taxes to fund federal orphanages for the children who were given up for adoption instead of abortion.

Surprisingly, I find women are much more likely to dismiss the adoption argument off-hand without giving any legitimate rationale for preferring the death of their unborn babies over giving them over to people who want nothing more than a baby.  I should rephrase.  This isn’t surprising, it’s just saddening.  I understand the female rationale behind this choice.

The woman has to face all of the pregnancy issues.  Stretch marks.  A ruined vagina.  The shame and agony of being an unwed pregnant girl.  The shame of giving up a baby for adoption.  Oh, the horrible things people will think of you.  You must be an unfit mother so you have no choice but to give up the baby.  Not only that, but a sizable portion of women who choose adoption during pregnancy change their mind as soon as the baby is delivered.  This is understandable.  Women are flooded with an unbelievable amount of oxytocin during child birth – something like a million times more than they normally have – which is the mechanism behind “mother love.”  Many women can’t go through this experience and then give away the baby they love more than life itself, and most women know this.

Have it sucked out of you at 8 weeks, however, and no one knows.  Not your mother, not your father, not the baby’s father, not any of your friends.  No stretch marks.  No stretch vagina.  No shame.

It’s the path of least resistance.  It’s taking the easy way out.  And now, insert all of the parroted rationalizations for why abortion is okay made mainstream by pro-choicers everywhere.  The standard ones are things like, “oh, it’s only 8 weeks old, it has no brain, it’s not a human life,” or, “the embryo is attached to my body and it can’t live without me, therefore it is part of my body, and therefore I can cut it off the same way I can cut off a mole on my upper lip, which is also living human cells that can’t live on their own.”

Blah blah.  Just intellectual rationalizations made to comfort you.  You feel guilty for being careless enough, or unlucky enough, to get pregnant before you’re ready to raise the baby.  You feel even guiltier that you are going to kill it.  You need the crutches of pro-choice doctrine to make you feel OK with your decision.

My suggestion hurts you.  When I suggest that you could give life to the baby and give one of the greatest gifts a human can give to two other people if only you give the baby up for adoption, you know it’s true.  I don’t have to convince you.  But it does make it harder for you to go through with killing your baby.  So, your solution is to do everything you can to silence me, to block it out, to come up with a hundred (false) reasons why killing the baby is better than putting it up for adoption.  A common tactic is to become a millitant pro-choicer who gets in the face of anyone who tries to “take away rights over your own body.”  Boring and lame.

The Internet Breeds Narcissism & Conceit

I am afraid that the internet breeds two dangerous traits in people.

The first is narcissism.  I believe social networking sites like MySpace and Face Book are the major culprits here.  I bet everyone who reads this has at least one “friend” on one of those sites who seems to constantly post trite & meaningless photos excruciatingly chosen out of a pool of thousands to portray them in the best possible light – both figuratively and literally.  How many times have you been out at a restaraunt when a group of bubbly idiots comes in (they are usually teenagers, but I have seen plenty of 20-somethings guilty of this also) and no sooner do they sit down do they start snapping what my girlfriend and I have called the “myspace photo lol” ad infinitum.

They do this for one reason: to prove to all their online stalkers how much fun and exciting their lives are.  “Look at us, we went out and had zany hijinx!”  The implication as you look at these photos is, “I went out and a had good time, but you are sitting on your fat ass stalking me and trying to live vicariously though my awesome pictures that were totally worth the battery life of my digicam.   Aren’t I so f’ing special?”

After long enough people start to believe this shit themselves.  I mean, look at Tila Tequila.  She managed to elevate herself from a dime-a-dozen cheap asian nude model on a 2 bit internet porn site into a pop culture… icon?  I’m sure she’s made millions of dollars for posting softcore porn on her MySpace page.  Did Tila have self esteem issues before MySpace came along?  Maybe, who knows.  But I know one thing for certain: she doesn’t have any self esteem issues now.

FaceBook and MySpace encourage people to stretch the truth of their boring and routine existences to appear as cool as possible.  The danger here is that a lot of  young people start to believe their own social networking site lies and live as if their profile and MySpace LOL pictures are an accurate portrayal of their actual lives.

Practical advice: don’t associate with people who have excessively cool online personas and a lot of picutres taken with large groups of interchangeable friends at shitty chain restuarants in mediocre suburban towns.  These people have an unrealistically elevated perception of themselves and the meaning of life.

The second negative trait that the internet breeds is equally common and more ubiquitous, and that is conceit.  I could be accused of succumbing to this conditioning, but at least I am aware of it.  What I mean by “the internet breeds conceit” is the confrontation-free confrontations that can occur on the internet – any time you can post a message about anything, you can flame the hell out of someone without any of the instinctual situational stimuli that prevent the kind of internet flaming from ever occuring in a verbal interaction between two people in the same room.  If internet flaming happened in real life, everyone would be bandaged and bruised all the time because people would get hurt.

The result of this kind of passive, easy-to-deliver opining is conceit, because there are never consequences to flaming.  If someone gives me shit about my true and accurate Messianic musings on this blog, they can hit the “post comment” button, browse away from the page, never bother coming back, and feel as though they corrected my incorrect view point.  In real life, that kind of interaction is absurd.  When you’re in the same room with someone and you’re having a conversation, there has to be some kind of resolution when you disagree.  Sometimes that resolution is that one of you gets up and walks away, but that leaves a very real, emotional, lasting imprint on your head, and at the very least, makes you realize that the person you were just interacting with has vested emotions in their position and if you respect that person at all you might be willing to give rise to the idea that while you still believe your beliefs are right, other beliefs can legitimately be held by people you know and interact with on a daily basis.

Not so on the inernet.  Every time I write a blog post, every time I comment on one, I am right in my own head and therefore I simply disregard any other written opinion by anonymous people I don’t know and haven’t evaluated on any other metric aside from their screen name.  I leave 100% of my online encounters with the belief that I am always totally right.

This is a real problem.

I believe the result will be that the internet generation that is growing up now in this kind of environment will be highly polar on the issues I like to talk about on this blog.  People will not respect each other’s opinions because they’ve spent a lifetime in a social medium in which there is no good reason ever to respect anyone else’s opinions and where people like me can spout theirs all day without ever legitimately being challenged.

I plan on keeping a very keen eye on both of these behaviors in my future children.  The internet is a very dangerous environment in which children will be raised.  Aside from all the R-, X-, and MA-rated content that we will be unable to protected our young children from, it might develop these personality characteristics in them also.  The only solution is strong parenting.  No, not ban the internet.  Just explain it like I’ve explained it, and explain why the internet is so freaking fake.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get the point across.