posted by Sam Richards

I’ve been discussing freedom and determinism in a serious way for about twenty years and I’ve delivered yesterday’s class one hundred times if I’ve done it once. And Tuesday…for some strange reason I was in the zone in a way that I’ve never been with that particular class. I’d like to think that I stirred some things up in people with regards to how they…you…see the world of causality. I know that I rocked my own world in those 75 minutes and I suppose that that is all that really matters.

So why don’t you watch the video below just to jog your thinking and then kick out some thoughts. Perhaps now is a good time to consider reading the ideas of some other people and respond to them and not directly to the class. I’m quite curious about how you manage other people’s interpretations of the ideas.

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posted by Sam Richards

Here’s an interesting event — an elected official referring to welfare recipients as animals. That would be “animals” and not, you know, “the human animal.” This is one of those rather unfortunate things that people sometimes think but can never, ever say in public. In fact, frankly speaking, I’d guess that lots of people have referred to poor people who may or may not be on welfare as “animals.” “They’re just like animals!” or “They act like animals.” or “Put ‘em all in a cage like the animals that they are.” The difference is that people on welfare are, in fact, human beings who happen to be represented by politicians. Oh yes, and do I need to say that most poor people on welfare are children? What decisions did THEY make to merit calling them “animals”?

And do I also need to say that everyone collects welfare subsidies of some sort, and that the vast majority of subsidies go to the very wealthy? I do, of course, because like most people, you probably don’t think of welfare subsidies that are given away to anybody but the poor.

Let me help you here. Think Obama’s “welfare queens” who live lavish lifestyles as they come begging to the distributors of public tax dollars. Actually, I just mispoke here because they don’t come begging; they send their puppets from “K Street” (that would be lobbyists, for those not familiar with inside the beltway jargon). Why don’t you take a moment and think about how many negative thoughts you’ve had about poor welfare recipients as compared to those you’ve formulated about rich ones…if you’ve ever actually had any of the latter.

So while some guy sipping a shot of JD and pounding down Miller Lites at the corner bar might call food stamp collectors “animals,” elected officials ought to keep their thoughts to themselves…or they might show their hand and reveal whose side they’re actually on.

“Sanford’s lieutenant governor, Andre Bauer, likens government assistance to feeding stray animals”

By Michael Sheridan
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER  — Tuesday, January 26th 2010

A South Carolina politician is making very a public apology – and this time it’s not Governor Mark Sanford.  After likening welfare recepients to stray animals, Andre Bauer, the embattled Republican’s lieutenant governor, is hastily back-pedalling from remarks his rivals have called “immoral.”

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals,” he said during a Town Hall meeting on Thursday.

“You know why? Because they breed! You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply.  They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that.”

Bauer hopes to ascend to the state’s highest seat in November’s election, where he would succeed the sex-scandal scarred Mark Sanford, who’s affair with an Argentine mistress made him the butt of late-night talk.

The 40-year-old was quickly targeted by Democratic rivals for the remarks.  “I am disgusted by these comments,” said state Sen. Vincent Sheheen. “His comments were immoral and out of line.”  South Carolina schools Superintendent Jim Rex labeled them “reprehensible.”

No stranger to firing off intemperate remarks, Bauer has offered something of an apology.  “Do I wish I’d used a different metaphor? Of course,” he said. “I didn’t intend to offend anyone.”

Despite his choice of words, Bauer noted he feels welfare recipients should be required to submit to drug tests and attend parent-teacher conferences if they have kids in school.

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posted by Sam Richards

It’s unfortunate that this story is written only with examples of liberals not being able to convince conservatives because the latter are not thinking straight. There are an equal number of examples of conservatives not being able to get through to the “misguided liberals” because such purportedly progressive thinkers can’t get outside their locked mental cages of short-sighted intellect.

Here would be an example: Think about how so-called “liberals” spend so much time questioning the defense-security-war-aggression policies of the United States, policies that lead their government into actions and interventions in other countries that are harmful and sometimes criminal. Here I’m not just talking about “illegal” wars but also the sale and distribution of weapons that kill innocent people (like landmines), subsidizing our farmers so that we can dump cheap rice in places like Haiti (and thereby impoverish Haitian farmers in the process), and so on. Most activists at peace and protest rallies are liberal-minded and most of them never give a thought to the myriad ways in which their day-to-day actions help keep this unjust system in place or how they personally would protest loudly and vigorously if their leaders suddenly decided to rectify some of the unjust policies that they march on Washington, DC to change. When the price of rice doubles, for example, or thousands of family farms go under in the southeastern United States, the protest chants would simply change to call out the U.S. government for not caring about its own people—even though Haitian farmers would be dancing in the streets.

Read the article: “Why Do People Often Vote Against Their Interests?”

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posted by Sam Richards

Believe me when I say that I don’t need another reason for wishing that Pat Robertson’s “savior” would just go ahead and call him home. And so why am I talking about this man who is posing as preacher who is posing as an asylum escapee? (Or is it the other way around?)

Here’s what he said about Haiti:

(CNN) — Pat Robertson, the evangelical Christian and host of the “700 Club,” says a “pact to the devil” brought on the devastating earthquake in Haiti.

Robertson blamed the tragedy on something that “happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it.” The Haitians “were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever,” Robertson said on his broadcast Wednesday. “And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’ “

As lame as it may seem, my excuse for bring this up is that I want to make a point about the dangers of living in world of good and evil, black and white while remaining completely surrounded by others who see things just as we do. Seriously. I’ll admit that when I first read Robertson’s words I wanted to go for the jugular. Thumbs to windpipe. But then so many others have done taken up the cause that I decided that I just needed to make a sociological point.

Here’s Olbermann. Ouch. I don’t have to keep up in the ratings and so I don’t need to be so vicious. But truthfully, I can’t say that I’m offended by Olbermann’s attack on a “man of the cloth.” But those are not my thoughts.

Thinking that the “country of Haiti” made a pact with the Devil two centuries ago is probably a pretty good indication that Robertson is mentally ill. Did they actually sign something with ink and a quill? Was there some sort of referendum in which the entire Haitian population participated or was it just a single Haitian leader? I mean really, was the devil hanging out in the Carribean a couple of hundred years ago searching for an unwitting victim in the form of an entire country?

If you encountered someone on the street who told you that the devil is making a pact with, let’s say, Detroit to bring back the auto industry, you wouldn’t give them the time of day. You’d assume that they had gone off their meds and you’d probably be correct. But here’s a guy with a viewing audience in the millions who is saying a similar thing and nobody seems to be changing the channels. Moreover, Robertson himself is not saying that he was wrong in making such statements. This is largely because he doesn’t have people around him to challenge his thinking. The most dangerous position a person can be in, by the way, is that of embracing a black and white ideology of good and bad, right and wrong and not having people around us who think differently than we do and who can reflect alternative ideas back to us.

That the media put a voice to mentally ill people clearly says something about how the rest of us want to see ourselves as superior others or, in this case, be entertained by our own self-righteous indignation. Be clear that few Christians would agree with Robertson and, in fact, I can’t say that I know of any. But when he refuses to take his meds and makes his outlandish comments, then the rest of can feel better about ourselves and so we keep tuning in. “Well, now that guy really is a nut.” Sure, there are a million or so of us who listen to the guy on a regular basis, but even most of these people likely write off these sorts of nutty ideas as a slip of the tongue.

This all goes to say that Olbermann gives Robertson way too much credibility by responding as though the guy is living with a full deck. Let’s just move on.

As a final caveat, the crazy thing is that when I read Robertson’s comments for the first time I actually thought to myself, “Hey, I don’t remember reading this.” Seriously. I got suckered into the man’s insanity for a brief moment. LOL.

In case anyone is interested, here is Jon Stewart discussing these knuckleheads (and Rachel Maddow).

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posted by Sam Richards

The uproar over Harry Reid’s comments is standard fare for anyone who pays attention to race relations as viewed through the prism we call “political correctness.” A misguided white man uses an unwise phrase (or two…or five…) and suddenly people are calling for his head, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee:

On Saturday it was released that in 2008 Reid made racially charged comments about then Senator Barack Obama. Unfortunately, this is just the latest in a long history of embarrassing and controversial remarks by the senior Senator from Nevada. We hope Reid’s fellow Democrats in the Senate and on the campaign trail will stand up and rightly condemn these racially insensitive remarks by their elected leader. Sign the petition to condemn Reid’s remarks and encourage other Senate Democrats to do the same. ~ NRSC

Amazing. Wow. His comments must have been hard-hitting and over-the-top racist for this group to condemn them and give back-handed support to Barack Obama and other “colored” people. I mean, really, Republicans across the country are well known for taking offense at anyone–and I do mean anyone–who says mean things about black and brown people. I’m not sure if any of us fully realize that.

So here is a summary of the controversy:

The Obama controversy is centered on remarks published in the book “Game Change,” by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. The book cites Reid as saying privately in 2008 that President Obama could succeed as a black candidate partly because of his “light-skinned” appearance and speaking patterns “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” ~ CNN

Insensitive, is what the comments are being called. While I’m not sure what exactly is insensitive about his comments, since I’m not hearing many Democrats condemn the remarks my guess is that this is a moment when politicians can line up and spit on one another from across the great divide.

But I have to ask: how old is this guy? This is like referring to Pink’s new recording as a record album. “Did you hear that Pink has a new record album coming out?” If anyone said that to me I’d immediately assume that he or she has been totally out of the loop of pop culture and technological innovation for oh, let’s say…about 15 years!!! Maybe twenty. I wonder how many times Harry has heard the word “negro” in the past 30-40 years? Frankly, I’ve heard it maybe once or twice — and usually uttered by old fossils like him. Where’s the guy been? Does he watch TV? Go to the cinema? Engage in conversations with black and brown people? Does he have grandchildren? Why hasn’t someone told him that his drawing on old school vocab?

You see, while his comments aren’t insensitive in my humble opinion, they do open a window into his social world–and that sounds as though it is a very white place indeed. But hey, lighten up. He’s an elected official. Why should THAT matter?

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posted by Sam Richards

The problem we’re dealing with in 2009 is that we’re not asking people to THINK. We are feeding them information and few engage in dialogue with people who ask “why” and “how” and “if what you are saying is true, then what about…” Rusty thinking is what happens when we don’t sharpen our understanding of the world by conversing with people who are inclined to say to us “please tell me more about what you think about that.” These are, more often than not, people who have ideas that are different than those we espouse.

Imagine not having taken the opportunity to ride a bicycle for thirty years and suddenly somebody asks you to take an old, rusty bike out for a cruise. How do you imagine that you’d fare? Thirty years without ever being asked to spin those wheels and now you need to perform with all eyes upon you.

So we have this idea that people around us are thinking, that they’re truly using their brains. But have you listened to the conversations going on around you recently? No? Give them a listen now and then. There’s very little back and forth. I’d like to even be able to say that those are just opinions that people are throwing about but it’s hard to even hear the random, shallow, sophomoric ideas as “opinions.”

Okay, so really, the video below was put on the web by people who are critical of Sarah Palin and the people who support her. I’m putting it up, however, because it says nothing about Palin or her supporters and everything about Americans with rusty brains — including the millions of Obama fans who would answer similar questions about him and his policies in the same sort of awkward ways because they, too, drink in “fast food news” without being asked to give their brains a workout and interpret it.

And now…on to the show. And please, don’t laugh at them unless you have answers to the questions that don’t make you sound like a lost soul.

UPDATE: I’ve been reading some of the comments and I have to say I’m not entirely impressed. It’s the standard muckety-much about “my generation” and “people today” rounded out by “but I have to be honest and admit that I don’t know anything about politics.” C’mon people, how does it FEEL to be woefully and utterly ignorant about basic social and political issues? Take ownership, ya’ll. Lay it out there. Don’t grovel in it…but say something about what it means for you.

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