Countdown to Extinction

The last week got scary as far as Trump and Cruz are total possibilities to win the candidacy for president. How does this fare with both parties? The Republicans are not liking either and picking sides but many are choosing Trump over Cruz because Cruz is one who will not work with Congress. Added to that, in my personal opinion, he's too religious to fairly represent the people fairly. For someone who holds the Constitution with supposed high regards. Just like those idiots in Oregon's stand-off. Cliven Bundy, the father of the idiots in charge, said how the federal government shouldn't be there and how "sons and other people there [are] trying to protect our rights and liberties and freedoms." These morons oppose the federal government, but they sight the Constitution (a federal document) and their rights via that document to justify their occupation and stand off.

One can go back further to see how these outliers in their party can gain such a strong hold is because of the monopoly put in place (via Coalition for Presidential Debates) to prevent any third party candidate participate in debates so these people with far different ideologies have to run under those names and now those nutbags are fucking them over. What did they expect to happen from the divisiveness they have been allowing to widen in the past several years.

This leads to a society who does not want to be informed but back their ideologies, however ineptly applied, no matter the expense - even if it means being deceitful. People like Trump and Cruz make shit up and apply whatever bullshit to an idealistic, ideological rhetoric and people go for it; doesn't matter when it gets debunked. I thought of this when Marc Maron introed this Monday's WTF with his rant about the Amy Shumer debacle I was unaware of.

I had listened to the episode where he did mention watching her recent special because he doesn't usually watch current ones because he likes to stay fresh and original with his bits. He did mention that she had a joke fairly similar to his and called her to mention that and she had said "parallel thinking" and they can talk about that on his show sometime. And that was that. Apparently, someone edited what he said and posted it somewhere to purposefully misrepresent what he said to push that person's agenda and now there's some mean-spirited, misogynistic backlash as a result. Maron then mentioned how the mention of Michael Moore on his show people were dismissive and said things like no thanks or "pass."

The first part of what Marc said bothers me because there is a difference between adding a bias to something because most people do not know how to objectively or critically analyze their approach towards an issue or how they hear or read something. So most times this biased application is unintentional and can be forgiven. The thing that is different is the purposeful manipulation of information or false representing of those to make a point or push an agenda. If one has to resort to those tactics, then they are assholes or trying to make a thing fit their ideology - which is the reason I do not like ideologies, labels, etc.

I am not perfect but do believe that my opinions and current beliefs are truer in that I believe first of all that they are current beliefs and can evolve with new information presented. But also, I like to research things and can critically read and listen to things and see what is fact from opinion and see where biases are or whose voice is missing from that conversation, etc. I also try to get as much first-hand information as possible.

The second thing with Maron's statement is about being dismiss of people with someone based on the idea of that person based on, usually, second-hand information; which they actually talked about in the interview. This is so frustrating because it is a lazy, uninformed way to approach something or form an opinion on. Second, but maybe firstly, these are usually held by people who have strong beliefs which they use to judge and act upon or just be fucking pieces-of-shits to other people (think Ted Cruz, Trump, and most of their angry, judgmental followers, Fox News pundits and their demographics, and most American church goers). But usually these end up being false, misrepresented, flat out lied about, etc.

One way to find this out, is to look at the main divisive issues out there and see those things on different publications, periodicals, networks, people. Then research them further by first-hand information or other documents or even other countries' reporting on those. One finds how these things are divide-and-conquer tactics from the real issues and how things are manipulated etc. But having candidates like Trump, Cruz (and outlets such as Fox News) and even the current situation with the Planned Parenthood issue where they pushed an ideological issue by lying and misrepresenting something. They even tried to entrap them and it still was totally legal. But it is all for fucking ideologies.

This is important because most people do not remember the follow up or fact checking (unless it supports their side), but more so now, people do not care and they justify or qualify such actions as necessary to save us from this evil that does not exist. Like, "Oh, that's just the New York Times" is the Republican answer to anything they write about them that's negative and people accept that as a valid answer. Even when we talk about our debt as being mostly medical people just start blaming Obama. There's no knowledge or wisdom behind that it's just that's the answer. Not the we have a Republican government in our state which refuses to expand Medicaid, or that insurance companies have a big presence here in our state, or that there is a big hospital/pharmaceutical industry in our city, etc. This is how something goes down a bigger hole which can more precisely explain a situation which easily gets dismissed with no solution by just blaming Obama.