Just woke up with too much pain and tiredness to get to the gym this morning. As a result, I slept in like a mofo and was a little late to work. Oh well! Hopefully I'll be feeling better tomorrow and I'll be back with the program.
Hmmm things feel like I've been sidled out of work here. Does that not bode well for me? We'll see.
There's too many balls up in the air at the moment. What if you can't catch any of them? You're just stuck there and terrified of the consequences.
Ah yes! I recall that I was going to go on a rant about the anti-war movement. I think if you are truly anti-war, you have to be anti troops as well. I really hate people who say "oh I don't support the war, but I support the troops" because that argument doesn't hold water. The conservatives have done a bang up job of saying questioning anything is a form of treason and unpatriotic. What a load of shit! The American war of independence was caused by people questioning the unfair status quo. That's something I admire. And don't say the system now is fair - try being an elderly disabled muslim African American lesbian woman. You'll see what the definition of unfair is.
The whole idea of the armed forces is to kill. People go in, and they attract a certain type - alphas, a little unhinged, overconfident, mostly poor, uneducated - people who can be easily brainwashed into dehumanising other people, so that they can take pleasure in killing others. Humans aren't designed for that sort of reprogamming and horror. Why do you think so many soldiers come back from duty and start going crazy and killing their partners and themselves? It's not normal to put a gun in someone's hand and say "kill these people who have done nothing personal against you" and then expect them to come back and have a grip on reality! Most armies, especially in the West, have not fought a war on their own soil in a very long time. Therefore, these armies are not 'defence forces' but rather 'aggression forces', and don't talk about pre-emptive strikes, or protecting your own interests on foreign soil, because if you use that argument, it is perfectly valid (and justified under such skewed logic), for enemies to do the same thing to you. Each side thinks they are right, so everyone is screwed.
I don't really care if soldiers die, the way I see it, that's their job. You're paid to kill other combatants, or to die, one or the other. It really grates when I read stories of soldiers letting loose and just killing civilians left right and centre. That's the problem - in order to psyche up these people to kill, they need to understand that the 'other' or the 'unknown' is to be feared and killed.
So it's hypocritical for people to say they don't support wars, yet still support the troops, because the troops enable the wars. Without armies to back governments, or to carry out wars, governments would be less likely to be involved in this sort of behaviour. After all, it's not them who pays the price, it is the soldiers, and they don't really care about them. They may act like they do, but that's just to keep up appearances. If you take away the supply for soldiers, the demand will decrease. Nobody in their right mind will fight a war if they don't think they can adequately defend themselves, or inflict enough damage on the enemy.
I don't agree with picketing soldiers funerals, because that's incredibly messed up and mean. But I certainly think you're an idiot for saying "I don't support the war, but I support the troops". Without the tools to inflict such horror, wars don't happen. Innocent people don't die on a mass scale. The current wars are unjust, and anybody in their right mind wouldn't fight in them (at least from the West), because it serves no purpose for them. So if they are told to fight, they should not. Yet they do, because they will say that they're ordered to. Well guess what? The Nazis tried to pull the same stuff at the Nuremburg trials, and it didn't work for them. When going 'with the flow', doing the wrong thing is still the wrong thing, regardless of how many people support it, or whether nobody speaks up to stop it from happening.
It's alright to support the war, I'm not saying otherwise, I'm just saying at least be consistent and don't be hypocritical with your comments.
Ok, that rant's over, hope it made sense. I just get so worked up about these things because I just look at what happened to Bradley Manning and it's incredibly infuriating. The Government likes to say that the army is all about mateship and courage and what not, but Manning exposed crimes against humanity, and war crimes and various other things, yet the Army is in a massive rush to tear him down, and have the people call him a traitor to the cause. How dare you? If you believe in war that anything goes, then you're a monster.
Next rant - feministas or feminazis. For the uninitiated, it's the term used to describe militant or deafeningly shrieking style feminists who say that basically all ideology at the moment is phallocentric. Don't get me wrong, I support feminism, women are not afforded equal treatment in Western society, let alone anywhere else. What I don't like is the idea that these extremely well educated, middle/upper class white women judge foreign cultures on their attitudes to women. Wages for women in the West are far down compared to men. Yet they still want to say that things here are perfect and that it should be the ideal model. Things are messed up everywhere! I'm also not a fan of writing by authors like Clem Bastow and Clementine Ford, who, despite their impressive pop culture and media writing, tend to view guys as essentially women-hating sexual miscreants in waiting. That's definitely something I take issue with. It's insidious because it's all incredibly very accusatory "if you look at a woman, you are molesting her" and all this other stuff. I mean, come on! Yes, women's issues need to be discussed and drawn to the attention of everyone. But that sort of screeching doesn't go well to alleviating the stereotype of women as over-emotional hysterical creatures. There is a great tumblr gif about an over-reaction to just an innocent interaction, but I don't know where it is anymore. Not all guys are animals, and they shouldn't be guilted into thinking they are when they've done nothing wrong.
There was a story in the news this week about a young man who was assaulted by police while at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Basically he was in handcuffs when he was hit repeatedly in the head and slammed into the ground. I'm not one for police brutality, since I think police think too much of themselves and that the law doesn't apply to them. So of course you're getting every fool and his dog complaining on social media about police brutality (especially since this was filmed on a camera phone and then went viral), without realising crap like this happens everyday, and more often than not to indigenous members of society. So everyone is up in arms about this thing, then today it comes out that the guy in question actually tickled a girl from behind (who was unknown to him). He was obviously drunk, so she would have been afraid and she reported him to the police who came to arrest him. Oh, all of a sudden he doesn't seem so innocent now, does he? If only the hysterical screaming masses who feel disenfranchised by what happened to this guy could battle against the feminazis, I would have a grand day. Pays to listen to the whole story and get your facts before freaking out about things on social media, isn't it? The dude deserved a beating, but perhaps not at the hands of the police. Maybe at the hands of the feminazis?
Those were not good times, so why have they come around again? Damn, this was a great entry! Just over an hour to go until I can get home. Not bad, right? Haha!
That's it, I can't focus any more.
Food for thought. Anarchy inside my mind.
Joaquin out.
