Saturday, October 7, 2017

Entry 395: Bad Weekend for Humans

Last weekend was a bad one for humans.  The disaster in Puerto Rico was awful enough without the fucking moron (TM: Rex Tillerson) "running" our country deciding an island full of beleaguered, desperate brown Americans would be the next foil in his ongoing culture wars.  He's a disgrace.  He's been a disgrace since day one, but that doesn't make it any less true now.

Then to pile catastrophe on top of catastrophe, a deranged man killed 50 people (and injured scores more) with an assault rifle in Las Vegas.  This, naturally, opened up the floodgates for the spate of "thoughts and prayers" from (mostly Republican) politicians who then will do absolutely nothing about it.  I just don't get this.  I just don't get gun culture.  I understand having a gun if you want to hunt or shoot skeet or if you legitimately want to protect yourself (although I think it's drastically overstated how effective they are for self-defense).  But this notion of equating a war-ready arsenal of assault rifles with "freedom" is beyond me -- as is the idea that pretty much anybody should be able to buy pretty much any gun and pretty much any ammo with pretty much no safety training or experience.

A lot of Americans see eye-to-eye with me, which is good, but a lot of Americans don't, which is the problem.  Proponents of gun control love to blame the NRA for gun violence -- which is fine by me, I loathe the NRA -- but the truth of the matter, as I see it, is that's it's not really the NRA itself, it's the millions of people who love guns.  They make the NRA, not vice-versa.  I've seen a lot of tweets going around by liberals claiming congress is "owned" by the NRA, but actually they give only nominal amounts of money to candidates.  They don't have to spend a lot.  In fact, I would say your typical Republican candidate needs the NRA more than the NRA needs the typical Republican candidate.  It's the people, the voters, my fellow Americans.  They love guns, and there is seemingly no amount of death that can ever convince that guns are possibly, maybe part of the problem with gun violence.

I don't like what Bill O'Reilly said about mass shootings being the "price of freedom."  But I think it's something with which a lot of people agree.  In fact, I think that if God came down from heaven and offered hardcore gun lovers a deal -- all gun violence would somehow be ended instantly, but in return they would have to relinquish all their guns -- I don't they take it.  They would rather have guns than peace.  They might not ever admit it, even to themselves, which is why they make a lot of terrible rationalizations about owning guns that involve hammers and cars and Chicago and Switzerland and force monopolies.  I don't think we're going to be able to change the laws until we change the culture; although, circularly, I think changing the laws would go a long way toward changing the culture.

The good news is that now that outed serial sexual harasser Harvey Weinstein has pledged to take on the NRA, everything should be all good in, what, a few months?  Jeez, what an awful story and an awful man.  The only thing I really knew about him came from Adam Carolla, who basically called him a crook, saying he would cook the books on movies he produced to avoid paying the movie makers their just royalties (I think he produced Carolla's movie The Hammer), so I had a negative image of him already.  I had no idea he was so involved in Democratic politics (although it sounds as if the actual amount he donated has been exaggerated), and I couldn't care less.  Listen, if you didn't know before this there is sexism/misogyny on the left, you are the world's biggest naif.  It's much more about power than politics.  Many powerful dudes abuse their power and treat people, particularly women, even more particularly young, vulnerable women, like shit.  They get away with it for so long because speaking out against it, even if you are totally in the right, sucks.  It's often easier to just move along, especially if you get a settlement offer.

Weinstein has tried to pull the "it was a different time" garbage to explain away his actions.  (As somebody on Twitter wrote: "You have to understand, it was a different time.  The science on whether women were people was still up in the air.")  This is clearly a very weak attempt at rationalization -- he is much better off with the mea culpa, "I have a problem and am working hard to fix it," route -- but he probably isn't wrong when he says that this is part of the culture.  This is actually a big reason why I've been very reluctant, despite some very good opportunities, to give it a go in Silicon Valley.  The bro-y lifestyle just doesn't sound appealing, and the sexism I've heard so much about is a part of this.  It's not the entire thing -- it might not even the biggest thing (the hours, the instability, the expenses of raising a family in the Bay Area, etc. also come into play) -- but it is a thing I take into consideration.

Alright, I think I've said enough for now.  Until next time...

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