Sometimes really good stuff comes when your patience is tried… this comment that I just wrote I think deserves to be elevated to a blog post all on its own.
Remember, if you don’t like what I write, you do not have to read it. Not reading this blog will not break my heart or hurt my feelings. You may want to think twice before trolling me.
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My point wasn’t necessarily about the political argument surrounding welfare as much as it was about how we all need each other, socially, to do those things that must be done to make life better for us all. States that want to secede do not understand the larger context of their actions. Secession involves necessarily a new series of trade agreements between bordering states. If Texas, for example requires fresh drinking water from the Great Lakes Compact region, they will have to trade something they have and the Compact will have to determine what we are willing to sell our fresh water for, as an example. Plus for the states that abandon the Union, they’ll have to take on all those services that the Feds have taken care of, so, hard winters, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes will require even more exchange of goods and services to compensate for assistance. No man is an island, and no state is an island either. If Texas were to leave the Union, as they are fond of posturing that they will do, then their interdependencies with other states will be much more complicated. They may have a lot of oil, or in some other states as you say, natural gas or coal resources, but without access to shipping it would be a challenge for these states to get the drilling equipment as well, so they can make good on their resources.
I don’t engage with people who go out of their way to whine about socialized care programs because their arguments are always incredibly myopic and almost always come from a sense of unbearable greed, obnoxious heartlessness, and a general lack of human empathy to people who aren’t as fortunate as others. I get it a lot from my conservative family members, especially when they say blanket phrases like “If they’d just get a job, they wouldn’t need welfare!” Well, yes, that’s obvious – but where are the jobs? Sometimes you can’t find employment despite every effort; For conservatives these poor people are just parasites and nary a single thought is spent on whether or not lives are lost just because of economic misfortune. There is no pride in taking welfare and people are ashamed of doing so, but have no other choice. Conservatives never really go out of their way to find people who use these services so they are told by their media outlets and by each other what these people are like, they use various logical fallacies to magnify one instance of someone taking advantage of the system and then use that to denigrate the entire framework. There may be people who take advantage of the system, but for someone with a functioning sense of empathy, it’s far better for ten people to misuse the system than for one person to starve to death through no fault of their own.
We will never see eye to eye on this. It is my conclusion that there are two different camps, and they are drawn on the political continuum between liberalism and conservatism. There is no middle ground, it is effectively a DMZ loaded with dead bodies and land mines. I do not seek to change your mind. I do not offer arguments to you to alter how you see the world. I simply try to live my life according to my ethics and morals and how I think the world should work, just like you. Because I offer no argument, there really is no room for a reply from this statement that I write. Consider it a billboard for this blog, you can rail at a billboard until you grow hoarse, but it will do no good. You will not change my mind.
Some would argue that this is unfair, that I am not giving my blog readers a place to express themselves and by effectively shutting down an argument and asserting that mine is the last word is the height of arrogance. You would be the definition of right. Nowhere on this blog do I state that I will behave in any particular way, so, as my partner is fond of saying, learn to cope.
"Because I offer no argument, there really is no room for a reply from this statement that I write. Consider it a billboard for this blog, you can rail at a billboard until you grow hoarse, but it will do no good. You will not change my mind."
please don't take this as an opening salvo attempt. i'm just trying to gain clarification. you said in the first part of my copy and pasted quote that you offer no argument. you don't try to change other's minds. i think this is a bit disingenuous and maybe sel-deceptive. won't argue with you about it, just wanted to maybe suggest some reflective self evaluation on what you've said.
the next is the apparant contempt, if i'm misinterpretting this please accept my apologies, for the comments or opinions of those who may disagree with you or desire to present a different perspective. i guess you are free to feel this way, but why leave the comments open then? you seem like someone who is of strong opinion and i assume strong intelligence and ability to openly discuss and defend your positions, i also assume you are at least as loving, honest, tolerant, and polite as the best people on the planet. where does the insecurity and anger for those you disagree with come from? if you really don't care to consider other people's honestly thought out and held perspectives that may challenge your own, thus closing your mind to anything positions other than your own, why even have open comments? why even blog if you aren't interested in respectful exchange?
just for your consideration, or not.
-mike
I leave the comment feature on because it never gets used. You never know if a worthwhile comment comes in and dumping spam is a single click so, whatever.
As for contempt, boatloads for conservatives. I brook absolutely zero tolerance for conservatives as I have yet to meet one I feel comfortable even being around. They lack humanity and they make a mockery of Christianity, something many of them like to trot out when convenient to justify their bigotry and hatred. I battle with feelings of anger and hatred a lot, mostly for Microsoft and such, because they are a source of personal suffering for me, and much along those lines as it is for conservatives. It feels quite like suffering, and if not actual suffering, it's terribly unpleasant. After years of being mocked and called a commie or a "filthy marxist" it tends to wear down on a person. On every social site I have been on I have done my best to make it very clear that if you are a conservative, just stay clear of me.
As for arguing with conservatives, I no longer do that either. It's been my experience that nobody really wants to be flexible in their politics and we just go at loggerheads until one of us gets brained enough to stop fighting. Like rams that butt heads until the loser passes out and falls off the mountain. I do personally understand and even support some conservative ideas and being self-starting and responsible is attractive, but the entire world is more complicated than that, and there are people who are in dire need and to simply call them "parasites" is an inhuman expression.
Comments from WordPress aren't really used at all, as most of that activity has shifted to Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus. If my blog was a richer resource for comments I would be more open and flexible, especially for people who demonstrated a willingness to be open instead of knee-jerk reactionary. It also helps to not have commenters call me "butt munch" with their conservative responses to my blog posts.
As I have said before to conservatives in general, don't go away angry, just go away. If people honestly want to discuss what I share on my blog and don't devolve into name calling and trotting out their strawmen and well, anything listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies.