Originally Fox News ignored the Occupy Wall St. (OWS) movement and the protests, but as they grew, Fox News saw an opportunity to make liberals look like idiots, and they took it. They proceeded to run clip after clip of protesters that they interviewed who were dressed in a way that would make conservatives uncomfortable, or protesters that had strange or misinformed opinions. Keep in mind that this "fair and balanced" "news" channel never ran any clips of the many interviews with nutty teabaggers who didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground. Then again, Fox News and Glenn Beck almost single-handedly started the Tea Party that they claim was a "grass-roots organic movement." I won't get into the details of the many right wing organizations that helped to form and fund the Tea Party, but I will say that Fox News is trying to connect OWS to people like George Soros and the Tides Foundation while at the same time claiming that it is a disorganized movement and you can't get a straight answer when asking protesters why they are there. The stupidity is mind numbing.
Speaking of mind numbing stupidity, when Fox does get a good, coherent answer when they interview protesters on the left, they don't bother to air it. I guess it just doesn't make for good TV. I know that other more liberal channels have done the same with teabaggers and other morons on the right, so I'm not claiming total innocence on the left, but I'm not claiming to be a "fair and balanced" news source either (though I may actually BE more fair and balanced than Fox, which is saying a lot because I'm pretty fucking liberal).
In any case, anyone can see that if there is a protest in which the majority of the participants are young liberals, there are going to be people who have some far-out opinions, there are going to be people who dress and do their hair funny, and there are going to be those who are just plain misinformed or under-informed. Wait, I just described the old, republican, christian participants of the tea party protests too...funny how that works.
I guess the main difference between the two is that one is made up of a bunch of religious, bigoted, asshole sheep, and the other is OWS. One cares about corporate interests because the politicians who they agree with religiously (and thus morally) told them that greed was a good thing, and that voting against their own best interests and in the interests of the untra-rich was the only moral plan of action. They can forget the poor, the hungry, the sick without healthcare. as long as they make a few thousand lousy dollars a year, they can sneer at those less fortunate, right? No. Wrong. Fuck you. Grow a heart, then a brain, then read the bible that you claim to believe in and see that the guy Jesus you worship was a liberal socialist who CARED about the poor, and the sick, and the down-trodden. You hypocritical, twisted right wingers make me sick. To literally forfeit helping those that need it the most in order to make those that are already more than comfortably wealthy to become ridiculously rich makes me ill. If that's what you think America is all about, you're an asshole. And if that ends up being all America is all about, you can fucking have it and your 'freedom' (as if no other country is 'free'). Having no healthcare is a right I could do without. Paying larger fees, fines, and sales taxes in order to give the rich more tax breaks so they 'create' more jobs is just about the hardest thing for me to support, and its hard for me to see ho anyone could support something so against their own best interests. Maybe its greed and a hope that someday they themselves will be rich, but they won't. They will grow old and continue to vote for those that want to take away their medicare and social security, and then they'll blame it on the liberals when they have nothing. These people are fucking stuck in their ways and don't care to change. That's one of the main reasons that Fox News is successful, it is one of the only places that religious, conservative, American idiots can go to hear what they want to hear.
This isn't to say that the Democrats have been much better lately. They are all bought by the same corporations, and its a lose/lose situation, which is one of the things the Occupy Wall Street movement is all about in the first place. If I could attend, I would, but there isn't anything going on in my area, and I couldn't afford to quit my job and truly occupy anything because I'm a bitch to the system due to the fact that I have a family that I need to support and thus bills that have to be paid. Not to mention that I wouldn't be able to drive there because The state revoked my license for a non driving offense (read previous blogs for details)...Yet another way that conservatives have stripped the rights of those Americans with whom they disagree or disapprove. This country is a joke, and conservative voters are the punchline.
The point is this: don't call yourself "fair and balanced" (or even "news" for that matter) if you are going to deliberately push your conservative propaganda every chance you get. I would respect Fox News a lot more if they just admitted that they were a conservative opinion outlet like I admit that I'm a liberally biased son-of-a-bitch.
Until next time,
C0c
Monday, October 17, 2011
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
How I Came To Atheism
Everyone has their story about how they came to their faith or how they lost it, and this is mine.
I was adopted at a very young age by two loving parents who had originally belonged to two different sects of Christianity (my father a Baptist, my mother a Catholic). Eventually my mom nagged my dad enough that he too considered himself a Catholic (funny how that works), and thus I was also labeled as a Catholic. Of course I had to go to church every week and was 'confirmed' by the catholic church (basically a little ceremony where they congratulate you on becoming an adult in the eyes of the church, while ironically in reality you've just been deluded into continuing to believe fairly tales you were told as a child). I would also like to note that my parents were very good parents. They raised me well and I am forever in debt to them. I love them very much, and none of this religion crap will ever change that. Anyway, to continue...
This went on until I was about 16 and started to more thoroughly question the teachings of my religion and religion in general. Don't get me wrong, I questioned a lot of the crap they tried to teach me before I was 16, but it took that long for it to bother me enough to look into it. At 16 I was able to embrace my skepticism and more accurately embrace the idea that what I had been taught to be true was nothing of the sort. It was all confirmed after taking some upper level biology courses and understanding how things came to be rather than the intelligent design shit I had been spoon-fed by people who either knew it wasn't true or were too dumb to know better.
After successfully dumping my irrational belief in the deity of the bible, I studied and learned about a couple of other major religions and saw that they were packed full of the same kind of bullshit (faith without evidence makes you gullible, not "holy" or "spiritual").
At this point (about 17) I guess I was more of an agnostic because although I didn't believe in any kind of religion, I still felt there might be some kind of deity out there. This continued until I was almost 21 when I had actually studied and heard many of the arguments for and against atheism, and decided that it made a hell of a lot more sense than any of the religious BS I had ever heard of, and was a better choice than just claiming we can't possibly ever know, which is obvious and not helpful (I'll cover agnosticism in another blog).
And then a few years later I started using youtube and found lots of people with whom I agreed, and many with whom I didn't. I got better at forming my own arguments and reasons for what I think to be true, and what I think is complete bullshit. The main point of all of this is that a healthy amount skepticism and yearning for information is good, and if anyone else tells you otherwise, they probably have their own interests in mind, not yours. Nobody really benefits from their atheism other than living in reality and not being duped into believing a bronze-aged myth. The only real benefit of converting someone to atheism is that there is one more rational, skeptical person in the world while there is one less irrational, faith-based, prayer-blabbering, solve-nothing-while-thinking-they-are-doing-something dumbasses that think they have the mysteries of the universe all figured out. I'm glad to say that I never got that far with my 'faith,' and learned pretty quickly that it takes a certain kind of person to be religious, and I wasn't that type of person.
I am happy to report that my loss of faith didn't do anything but sharpen my mind. This alerted me that to some people, the idea of a god is extremely important. There seem to be those who can't live without the faith that they were raised into (or have their own personal miracle story), and that you will never convince them otherwise (and that even if you did it would make them miserable). Coming to accept that a long-held belief of yours isn't true is hard to do, no matter what the circumstances, and religion must be the hardest for people to let go of. But having a hard time admitting you're wrong doesn't make you right, now does it?
More to come,
C0c
I was adopted at a very young age by two loving parents who had originally belonged to two different sects of Christianity (my father a Baptist, my mother a Catholic). Eventually my mom nagged my dad enough that he too considered himself a Catholic (funny how that works), and thus I was also labeled as a Catholic. Of course I had to go to church every week and was 'confirmed' by the catholic church (basically a little ceremony where they congratulate you on becoming an adult in the eyes of the church, while ironically in reality you've just been deluded into continuing to believe fairly tales you were told as a child). I would also like to note that my parents were very good parents. They raised me well and I am forever in debt to them. I love them very much, and none of this religion crap will ever change that. Anyway, to continue...
This went on until I was about 16 and started to more thoroughly question the teachings of my religion and religion in general. Don't get me wrong, I questioned a lot of the crap they tried to teach me before I was 16, but it took that long for it to bother me enough to look into it. At 16 I was able to embrace my skepticism and more accurately embrace the idea that what I had been taught to be true was nothing of the sort. It was all confirmed after taking some upper level biology courses and understanding how things came to be rather than the intelligent design shit I had been spoon-fed by people who either knew it wasn't true or were too dumb to know better.
After successfully dumping my irrational belief in the deity of the bible, I studied and learned about a couple of other major religions and saw that they were packed full of the same kind of bullshit (faith without evidence makes you gullible, not "holy" or "spiritual").
At this point (about 17) I guess I was more of an agnostic because although I didn't believe in any kind of religion, I still felt there might be some kind of deity out there. This continued until I was almost 21 when I had actually studied and heard many of the arguments for and against atheism, and decided that it made a hell of a lot more sense than any of the religious BS I had ever heard of, and was a better choice than just claiming we can't possibly ever know, which is obvious and not helpful (I'll cover agnosticism in another blog).
And then a few years later I started using youtube and found lots of people with whom I agreed, and many with whom I didn't. I got better at forming my own arguments and reasons for what I think to be true, and what I think is complete bullshit. The main point of all of this is that a healthy amount skepticism and yearning for information is good, and if anyone else tells you otherwise, they probably have their own interests in mind, not yours. Nobody really benefits from their atheism other than living in reality and not being duped into believing a bronze-aged myth. The only real benefit of converting someone to atheism is that there is one more rational, skeptical person in the world while there is one less irrational, faith-based, prayer-blabbering, solve-nothing-while-thinking-they-are-doing-something dumbasses that think they have the mysteries of the universe all figured out. I'm glad to say that I never got that far with my 'faith,' and learned pretty quickly that it takes a certain kind of person to be religious, and I wasn't that type of person.
I am happy to report that my loss of faith didn't do anything but sharpen my mind. This alerted me that to some people, the idea of a god is extremely important. There seem to be those who can't live without the faith that they were raised into (or have their own personal miracle story), and that you will never convince them otherwise (and that even if you did it would make them miserable). Coming to accept that a long-held belief of yours isn't true is hard to do, no matter what the circumstances, and religion must be the hardest for people to let go of. But having a hard time admitting you're wrong doesn't make you right, now does it?
More to come,
C0c
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