If I ponder an imponderable, it can’t be really imponderable, can it? That’s just the sort of thing that keeps me, and people like me, awake for hours each and every night, and gives us the sense that life is long and filled with riches, when it’s actually a bleak and desolate wasteland, fraught with misery and pain, and not quick enough.
Speaking of Tim Eyman, what is his problem? He referred to the protections granted by the Gay Rights Bill as “special privileges” when they’re just the same privileges of non-discrimination we all expect. Does he have someone specifically in mind he would like to be able to refuse to rent to? Couldn’t he find a better excuse? Who let Eyman own property? Can’t we discriminate against twits?
I realize that neither the Gay Rights Bill nor Eyman’s initiative opposing it have any bearing on gay marriage, but I can’t get that issue out of my mind every night I’m trying to sleep either, so I am going to set forth my latest political theory on the topic anyway.
Here it is: Let the gays decide it themselves. By democracy!
Is that radical, or what? I’m saying, maybe they want to, maybe they don’t. Let’s make them vote on it among themselves, and leave the rest of us out of it. Sort of like when we let the Saudis democratically prohibit women from breathing and driving at the same time, and we let them be our allies anyway. Let’s introduce democracy to gays! Then if we don’t like what they decide, we can say something Rumsfeldian about it, like “democracy isn’t always a pretty sight, you know,” or “the road to democracy is sometimes bumpy, you know,” or “you sometimes don’t know you know, you know, don’t you know.” “Could I repeat the question? Of course I could. But it wouldn’t be constructive.”
Who knows? Maybe the gays would vote marriage down. After all, it defies all their gay traditions. Why do you think they’re called gay, anyway? Gay, as opposed to miserable. Why ruin that?
But what I’ve really been pondering at all hours of the day is, how is it that a nation that has the cajones to claim to be exporting freedom and democracy throughout the world can’t figure out which part of that package is the cart and which is the horse? Why are Americans so stupid when it comes to freedom and democracy, when we ought to be the world’s experts on the subject, since we tell the world every day that we are, and since we kill who knows how many innocent civilians in the course of teaching the world about freedom and democracy, all the time.
Here’s the deal, as worked out by none other than the guys like Madison and Jefferson, the people who brought freedom and democracy to Anglo-American landowners: Freedom first, democracy second.
First you decide who you are. Are you all the people? Then all the people have to be free. Are you just the white people? Then just the white people have to be free. Are you just the heterosexual people? Then decide what fraction of a human a gay person is.
If you can’t bring yourself to say, in writing, that a gay man is only three fifths human, and not worthy of a vote, and so take responsibility now and for all history for being that big of an ass, then you need to sit yourself down and grant him all the same civil rights everyone else gets.
Then you can have democracy.
You can’t call this or any other system a true democracy as long as you systematically limit the freedom of any of the people that make it up.
Civil rights are a moral absolute. No one has the right to deny others their civil rights, not even by means of the ballot box. Eyman’s initiative isn’t only wrong, it doesn’t deserve to exist.
Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 8, 2006
Wednesday, February 1, 2006
Hamas: Congratulations, Suckers!
The good news of the week: Since Hamas won the Palestinian elections in a landslide, no one expects the United States to continue donating $70 million in direct annual aid to the Palestinian Authority. The money saved will be able to go instead to pay for much needed social projects within this country, such as our urgent national need to know which shelter bed which particular homeless person is sleeping in every night, including his or her name, social security number, date of birth, and the names and addresses of all of his or her relatives.
Then, with the money that’s leftover, we’ll be able to buy two or three Tomahawk missiles to shoot at Pakistan, a lame nuclear power that would never have the nerve to shoot us back, until the onset of World War III.
In fact all the hand wringing over the Hamas win has been plain silly. People just need to relax, count their silver linings, smell the roses, and drink their milk, or whatever.
OK, so they’ve been terrorists. So what? Well, then, this win must have come as quite a shock to them, right? It sure invalidates all their past methods, to find out that all they had to do was just persuade people to vote for them. Ha! Democracy won, terrorism lost! We showed you, Hamas! Your terrorist ways look pretty stupid now, don’t they? Losers!
Secondly, until now Hamas has been able to look all sparkly and shiny as the party out of power. When you’re out of power you can promise anything. But now they have to govern. The fact is suicide bombers are all drama queens who are too important to pick up the garbage or maintain the sewage. Reality is bound to set in, and any party that could manage to do the boring dirty work to stay in power would start to look like your granny in her underwear. Or they won’t be able to hack it, in which case they’re out in the next election. It’s all good, either way.
As President George Bush has noted, the election showed that the Palestinian people were dissatisfied with the status quo. Just like people everywhere, they want better educations, and no children left behind, and an expensive privatized medical system that favors the already favored. They want to land men and women on Mars, prevent women from having abortions, and have prayer in their classrooms. They want tax cuts for the rich, in order to encourage economic growth and development in the private sector, so the public sector can shrivel up, die, and go to hell. But they’re not Americans, so they don’t get what they want.
No, just kidding. They do too get what they want, they’re a democracy, and that’s what democracies are for! It’s just that, after that -- after they get what they want -- we get what we want. Because we’re bigger than they are, see? So we can take what they want away from them.
Already, Hamas is getting Americans mad at them, and prone to want to get rid of them, by calling for the introduction of sharia law among the Palestinian people. This is unacceptable to Americans because it involves a dress code. Americans will not stand for a dress code, anywhere, especially on Fridays.
Of course, the $70 million we’re saving per year by not giving the Palestinians aid is less than a hundredth what it will take to invade them and make them free from themselves and their own stupidity again, but we are a resourceful people, and we know how to use credit.
Of course, the Saudis might take exception to anything we do to Hamas, call in all our debts with them, thus triggering the onset of World War III. But looking at it on the bright side, it’s better to get that over with and move on, right?
So cheer up everyone: your glass is half-full!
Then, with the money that’s leftover, we’ll be able to buy two or three Tomahawk missiles to shoot at Pakistan, a lame nuclear power that would never have the nerve to shoot us back, until the onset of World War III.
In fact all the hand wringing over the Hamas win has been plain silly. People just need to relax, count their silver linings, smell the roses, and drink their milk, or whatever.
OK, so they’ve been terrorists. So what? Well, then, this win must have come as quite a shock to them, right? It sure invalidates all their past methods, to find out that all they had to do was just persuade people to vote for them. Ha! Democracy won, terrorism lost! We showed you, Hamas! Your terrorist ways look pretty stupid now, don’t they? Losers!
Secondly, until now Hamas has been able to look all sparkly and shiny as the party out of power. When you’re out of power you can promise anything. But now they have to govern. The fact is suicide bombers are all drama queens who are too important to pick up the garbage or maintain the sewage. Reality is bound to set in, and any party that could manage to do the boring dirty work to stay in power would start to look like your granny in her underwear. Or they won’t be able to hack it, in which case they’re out in the next election. It’s all good, either way.
As President George Bush has noted, the election showed that the Palestinian people were dissatisfied with the status quo. Just like people everywhere, they want better educations, and no children left behind, and an expensive privatized medical system that favors the already favored. They want to land men and women on Mars, prevent women from having abortions, and have prayer in their classrooms. They want tax cuts for the rich, in order to encourage economic growth and development in the private sector, so the public sector can shrivel up, die, and go to hell. But they’re not Americans, so they don’t get what they want.
No, just kidding. They do too get what they want, they’re a democracy, and that’s what democracies are for! It’s just that, after that -- after they get what they want -- we get what we want. Because we’re bigger than they are, see? So we can take what they want away from them.
Already, Hamas is getting Americans mad at them, and prone to want to get rid of them, by calling for the introduction of sharia law among the Palestinian people. This is unacceptable to Americans because it involves a dress code. Americans will not stand for a dress code, anywhere, especially on Fridays.
Of course, the $70 million we’re saving per year by not giving the Palestinians aid is less than a hundredth what it will take to invade them and make them free from themselves and their own stupidity again, but we are a resourceful people, and we know how to use credit.
Of course, the Saudis might take exception to anything we do to Hamas, call in all our debts with them, thus triggering the onset of World War III. But looking at it on the bright side, it’s better to get that over with and move on, right?
So cheer up everyone: your glass is half-full!
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
This Is Sheer Torture
“Homelessness is bad. War hurts people. Starvation is wrong. Poverty sucks. Pollution ruins the Earth.” These are just some of the messages that we here at Adventures in Irony detest bringing you week after week. It isn’t that we don’t agree with these messages, it’s just that we get tired of repeating ourselves.
Recently we have been forced to repeat, over and over again, “Torture is cruel and inhumane, and information obtained from torture is unreliable.” Please don’t make us say it again! We’ll tell you anything else you want to hear!
So we were ready to eat our own brains from the inside out when we read some news that offered an end to our agony. An AP-Ipsos poll determined that 61% of Americans along with a majority of people in Britain, France, and South Korea, think it’s OK to torture terrorist suspects under some circumstances. However the British, French, and South Koreans, are hypocrites: even though they’re for torture, they say they don’t want it in their own countries. Whereas the Americans, by a sizeable majority, don’t have a problem with it happening right here in the good old U. S. of A.
We have been protesting torture here unnecessarily. If the majority of Americans want to be able to be tortured just because someone suspects them of being a terrorist, who are we to stand in the way of democracy? And if the rest of the world is for torture but doesn’t want it in their own backyards, and Americans do, then excellent opportunities open up for American enterprise.
We hadn’t been thinking creatively about torture. We need to think outside of the box, about the box. It isn’t simply that, “if torture is outlawed, only outlaws will torture.” It’s that outlawing torture is bad for business, for the economy, and costs us a valuable tax base. If we legalize it, we can regulate it. We can tax it. It can help pay for our prisons, our jails, our schools, and our other centers of indoctrination and discipline.
We can stem the tide of out-sourcing of American jobs overseas. We can make this country a leader in torture throughout the world. Let the British, the French, the South Koreans beat a path to our door. We can’t provide technical assistance over the phone as well or as cheaply as Indians or Malaysians, but we can water-board better than anyone else, and we’re willing to do the dirty jobs that those others think they’re too good for.
Let’s let Americans do what Americans do best: innovate for the sake of progress and financial reward! Why should torturing be limited to the CIA, the military, and Iraqi intelligence officers? We need to license ordinary American businesses to do the business of torturing.
When we have permitted the franchising of torture to creative American corporations, the rest of the world will gladly send us their business. As an international leader in a newly invigorated industry, our businesses will be able to define and dominate the world market. Just as, centuries ago, the word “China” came to mean dishes, just as the word “India” came to mean ink, so the word “America” will come to mean torture.
Torture can reverse our trade deficit, and tax revenues from torturing the suspects of other countries can help us pay off the national debt. At a time when we owe 2 out of every 5 of our United States to Germans, Arabs, and Koreans, we can, ironically, regain full ownership of our own land by letting Germans, Arabs, and Koreans pay us to torture other Germans, Arabs, and Koreans.
Then, twenty or thirty years from now, when those of us who haven’t been tortured are all fat from torture money and our government coffers are over-flowing with torture revenues, then we can ban torture from public places, and 25 feet from their doors and windows.
While still keeping it legal, of course.
Recently we have been forced to repeat, over and over again, “Torture is cruel and inhumane, and information obtained from torture is unreliable.” Please don’t make us say it again! We’ll tell you anything else you want to hear!
So we were ready to eat our own brains from the inside out when we read some news that offered an end to our agony. An AP-Ipsos poll determined that 61% of Americans along with a majority of people in Britain, France, and South Korea, think it’s OK to torture terrorist suspects under some circumstances. However the British, French, and South Koreans, are hypocrites: even though they’re for torture, they say they don’t want it in their own countries. Whereas the Americans, by a sizeable majority, don’t have a problem with it happening right here in the good old U. S. of A.
We have been protesting torture here unnecessarily. If the majority of Americans want to be able to be tortured just because someone suspects them of being a terrorist, who are we to stand in the way of democracy? And if the rest of the world is for torture but doesn’t want it in their own backyards, and Americans do, then excellent opportunities open up for American enterprise.
We hadn’t been thinking creatively about torture. We need to think outside of the box, about the box. It isn’t simply that, “if torture is outlawed, only outlaws will torture.” It’s that outlawing torture is bad for business, for the economy, and costs us a valuable tax base. If we legalize it, we can regulate it. We can tax it. It can help pay for our prisons, our jails, our schools, and our other centers of indoctrination and discipline.
We can stem the tide of out-sourcing of American jobs overseas. We can make this country a leader in torture throughout the world. Let the British, the French, the South Koreans beat a path to our door. We can’t provide technical assistance over the phone as well or as cheaply as Indians or Malaysians, but we can water-board better than anyone else, and we’re willing to do the dirty jobs that those others think they’re too good for.
Let’s let Americans do what Americans do best: innovate for the sake of progress and financial reward! Why should torturing be limited to the CIA, the military, and Iraqi intelligence officers? We need to license ordinary American businesses to do the business of torturing.
When we have permitted the franchising of torture to creative American corporations, the rest of the world will gladly send us their business. As an international leader in a newly invigorated industry, our businesses will be able to define and dominate the world market. Just as, centuries ago, the word “China” came to mean dishes, just as the word “India” came to mean ink, so the word “America” will come to mean torture.
Torture can reverse our trade deficit, and tax revenues from torturing the suspects of other countries can help us pay off the national debt. At a time when we owe 2 out of every 5 of our United States to Germans, Arabs, and Koreans, we can, ironically, regain full ownership of our own land by letting Germans, Arabs, and Koreans pay us to torture other Germans, Arabs, and Koreans.
Then, twenty or thirty years from now, when those of us who haven’t been tortured are all fat from torture money and our government coffers are over-flowing with torture revenues, then we can ban torture from public places, and 25 feet from their doors and windows.
While still keeping it legal, of course.
Thursday, July 8, 2004
I Loved That Monkey
Let's talk about everything!
Usually, if I would have trouble deciding what to write about, I would blame it on being depressed. Maybe my pet monkey was just assassinated, or maybe I just found out that a certain legally prescribed medication shouldn't be, too late to stop it from turning me into a hairless goat. Or maybe my country was just taken over by yahoos and I started wishing I could move somewhere that had a constitution that the government in power respected.
Downturns like those can ruin your perspective so that you can't see straight enough to write about anything in particular, so you write about everything and hope for the best.
But upturns can have the same effect, I now know. Last week I got such good news that I am now giddy as a schoolgirl. I won't say why, because I'm such a tease, but I will instead distract you all with this: seeing Colin Powell sing as the construction worker in the Village People gave me new life and hope for America. How can you not love a man who can swing a hammer from his belt like that? Am I right, girls?
So here I am, feeling so good I'm ready to say: this IS the best of all possible worlds! Let's count our blessings!
Hooray! Saddam Hussein is being tried by the people we installed in his place, the very same ones we picked out because they hated Saddam the most! How great is that? They're even following our democratic example and making him submit to interrogation without letting him once see a lawyer! Not only that, but they're charging him with invading another country (Kuwait) without provocation! Our newly created allies have learned American democracy perfectly, and are beginning to master American hypocrisy too! I'm sure Saddam will have a wonderful trial, much better than any he could get from an international court. Maybe the Iraqis will even behead Saddam, encouraging more insurgents to behead more of us! Off with everyone's head!
Hooray! It's now OK for the President of the Senate to tell a Senator to go F-himself whenever it makes him "feel better"! Abuse of power and position be damned! It just feels good to tell the leader of the party out of power off for having the audacity to criticize one's precious self and one's superior political opinions. It's especially great to be able to tell some Democrat to go F-himself the same day Republican legislation passes to fine the bejeezus out of anyone else using the same word on TV or radio. Did someone say "hypocrisy"? I should have to call it H, or pay a gigantic fine! But even when we can't say it in print our leaders will still H. It will make them feel better!
Most of all, hooray for the newfound uses of detaining innocent people while calling them terrorists without formally charging them!
Last week the Supreme Court said you can't merely hold people as "enemy combatants" indefinitely. Eventually you have to allow them to legally challenge their detention, or you have to release them. This is called "human rights", something that we have said we were for, at least for the past 228 years or so, when we weren't doing the H-thing.
But the court will let the President detain potentially innocent people for reasonable periods of time, whatever that might be. I was worried about this loophole until I heard that the New York Times was reporting that the US, with Britain, had secretly traded Saudi prisoners held at Gitmo for Brits that had been tortured and held by the Saudis. How heartening.
The released Saudis were surely innocent; our government would never, NEVER, trade real terrorists even for innocent Westerners. That would be letting the terrorists win.
So there is something to be said for locking up innocent people, after all! Think of them as if they were pennies. Have a prisoner, give a prisoner! Need a prisoner, take a prisoner! It just saves trouble, and that's what America is all about!
Oh no. I AM a hairless goat.
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