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Sunday, November 28, 2010

America's New Epidemic: Fear!


America once had the distinction of being the "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave". I'm not sure how accurate that label actually fit America back in those days (I'm only 27 years old), but it sure as hell doesn't seem to fit America today. Most Americans are scared shitless of every little thing the news, their church, friends, or parents tells them to be afraid of. They're afraid of terrorists, Muslims, child molesters, drugs, drug users, drinking from plastic bottles, trans fats, greenhouse gasses, global warming, global cooling, too much salt, high-fructose corn syrup, genetically modified foods, rich people, poor people, racists, pit bulls, vaccinations, gay people, guns, lead paint, Hispanics, Blacks, atheists, swine flu, the year 2012, and a million other things (please feel free to add more in the comment section bellow). I'm not saying that some of these things aren't real and don't actually pose some threat, but the odds of you getting hurt, or killed by any of these people, or things are zero, or at least not enough for your average person to waste a minute of their time worrying about it.

I'll admit, I have my own fears, and some of them are just as irrational. I don't like spiders, scorpions, or centipedes (the video below shows how much I'm afraid of centipedes). Snakes don't really bug me that bad, as long as I know they aren't venomous. I fell out of a window as a kid and I think that's why I'm afraid of heights. Since I can't swim, I have always had a fear of being in a car crash where I end up in some body of water and drown. To be honest, these are some pretty common fears. Being that I'm a clumsy guy and I can't swim, being afraid of heights and being around bodies of water aren't really that irrational.



Now being afraid isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's what helps living organisms to survive, but your way of reacting to it can be a bad thing. If you let it get to you, you can ruin your life with worry, or react in a way that's much more harmful to you and others. The difference in my fear of things and a lot of Americans' fear of things is I don't ask the government to protect me.

There's a lot of talk about the new TSA body scanners and embarrassing pat-downs at airports lately. This country has been in constant fear of terrorism since 9-11 and it's been afraid of many other things even before that. The government feeds on fear and our fear is what has made our government grow to the horrendous size it is today. Some would say it got that way out of greed, laziness, or just people who have a different view of how government should be run. While some of that does contribute, I think at the main roots of big government is fear. People are afraid they have no way to protect themselves, and the politicians love to win votes by telling people how they plan to make them feel safe. You cannot have a free country when the citizens are afraid of everything to the point they want to trade their freedoms for some "feeling" of security. I think people who do advocate such an exchange should be labeled as nothing less than cowards. In fact, I think all liberty loving people should start using the term "coward" to describe any statist who wants government to protect them.

I have been in many discussions with people over this TSA travesty and the ones who support the TSA often suggest that people who don't want to go through this screening should just drive their car, take a train, or a bus to where they want to go. Why should the people who don't want this be the ones who have to take an alternate route? They aren't afraid of terrorists killing them, or at least not to the point they think these new things will stop one. Metal detectors and bomb sniffing dogs, while their effectiveness against terrorist could be weighed by the cost it takes in operating them vs. the odds of a terrorist actually trying to blow up a plane, people don't care that much since it doesn't intrude too much into their lives. The new measures show them naked, or require that they be treated like guilty criminals and touched by a complete stranger until they are found not guilty. This is crossing the line for many people. It's costing tax payers more money for these measures, so even if you aren't flying you'll still have to pay for them.

If you're worried about terrorist blowing up your plane, why don't YOU take a car, train, or bus? You'd be saving us time and money on this fear based boondoggle that terrorists will just find some way around. I don't make you pay some government agency to kill all the spiders around my house, so why should I pay so you can fly at ease in an airplane that could still crash, or get blown up? If you are afraid of terrorist, then don't fly. I wouldn't take a train, or bus since they've hit those targets in the past also. Your best bet would be taking a car, or just staying at home hunkered in a closet. Of course, that doesn't always protect you from terrorists either...



I'm sorry, here I am talking about how Americans are too scared of everything and I'm probably spreading more fear. It's just that somehow, we think that the only way a terrorist can kill people is if he, or she gets a bomb on an airplane. It's not as if they couldn't just walk into any other crowded area, or get on some other kind of public transportation, and blow up a bomb. They couldn't just go on a shooting rampage in a church, school, or hospital. You're more likely to die in a plane crash from just mechanical problem, pilot error, or probably even geese flying into the engines than from terrorists blowing it up. I honestly don't think anyone could take over a huge plane like they did on 9-11 and fly it into a building. They locked the cockpit doors and they got guns on there now. Even if they did manage to try to take over, the passengers would fight back like on Flight 93. The plane might go down, but it would be very hard for them to successfully pilot one into a building. If you want to be safer, maybe we should spend more money checking out the planes for mechanical problem, instead of checking out passengers.

The truth is, if a terrorist wants to kill you, there is no way the government is going to protect you. The shoe bomber and underwear bomber were thwarted by passengers, not the TSA. While the TSA could stop some terrorists, it's not going to catch them by fondling the bodies of old women and little children. You're also not going to be saving lives by exposing frequent fliers to x-rays. When you're life is on the line, you stand a better chance of surviving if you just rely on protecting yourself instead of relying on someone else to protect you.

Remember Hurricane Katrina? Who could forget? Some could have got out of that area, but just thought that the government would protect them. Their reliance on government to protect them cost some people their lives. If they knew they would be on their own like they were, then maybe they would have got the hell outta Dodge, err New Orleans. What if we just allowed people to carry guns on board airplanes before 9-11? Do you think the terrorists would have still been able to run those planes into the buildings and killed thousands? Instead of box cutters, they might have taken it over with guns, but other passengers might have had guns, fought back, and prevented one of the worst tragedies of our time.

You just have to accept that someday, something is going to kill you. If I crash into water, there's no way the government is going to protect me. Hopefully I can find someway out of the wrecked car and find something that floats, or maybe someone else will come to my rescue. Maybe I might die. The odds are, it'll probably be your own actions that will lead to your own death, or your own survival. Weigh the risks for what they really are, be smart, and live your life the best way you can. You sometimes have to take risks in life. In a way, risks are what make life enjoyable. If we all lived in a world where we were 100% safe from every little thing, it would be so dull that I'd welcome someone to kill me.

The only Americans that actually have a validated fear of being killed by a terrorist are the soldiers and contractors we've sent over to the Middle East. If you really want to protect Americans from terrorist, bring these people home. If you really want to end the war on terror, get this government to stop pissing off terrorists. If you smoke cigarettes, have already had a series of heart attacks, or speed to work every day without wearing a seat belt, terrorism shouldn't be anywhere on your list of things to worry about. Prioritize your fears. What's the most likely thing that's going to kill you? If you're going to worry, worry about that; not something that's never going to happen to you. Shit happens, so get on with your life and stop worrying about it.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

U.S. Troops: The Real Illegal Immigrants

I'm about to say something that a lot of people are not going to like. In fact, some people might be offended by it. I personally don't see anything wrong with illegal immigrants. I don't see them as a "lesser people". The whole point I'm writing this isn't to compare American soldiers to people some would consider less than human who deserve no rights. I'm writing this to show the blatant hypocrisy of those who oppose illegal immigration, while supporting the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

So how exactly are the troops and illegal immigrants alike? Well, they both cross borders, but really, let's first take a look at the opposing arguments against illegal immigrants. Americans list a whole number of arguments for keeping them out of the country: they don't speak the language, they are a drain on the welfare system and the tax payer, they take jobs that Americans need/want, they're destroying our American culture, and they bring violence into this country. With all of that said now, let's take those arguments, assume we're civilians in Afghanistan, and apply those to the U.S. soldiers occupying our country.

The first opposition is not being able to speak the language. Now, there are some illegal immigrants who speak English and there are obviously some soldiers in these countries that speak the local languages, but most are just strangers in a strange land. There are big problems when people don't learn how to speak the local language. If someone tries to ask me a question in Spanish, they're going to have a big problem because I don't speak it. If a soldier in Afghanistan asks in English to a civilian where the enemy is, he's probably going to get nothing more than a puzzled look. The problem is much worse there because when people can't communicate in war, there's a big chance that people could die. If someone can't communicate in America, sometimes it might be life threatening, but more often, it's just going to lead to someone not getting the information about something they're buying, or some other trivial thing. If someone does come to America, they're probably going to stay a while and it would benefit them to learn English. If a soldier goes to Afghanistan for just a few years, there's no reason they should learn the language, besides maybe a few phrases.

While I don't like the idea of people living off of government welfare, just because you were born an American doesn't make that a better situation in my opinion. If you want to be against welfare, fine, but I don't think punishing one group who takes advantage of it is fair, or is the right way to go about doing it. If you are against government welfare, then don't discriminate against people and pick and choose who is allowed to get it. If you really want to talk about a drain on the tax payer, let's talk about military spending. Now, I don't have much faith in accurate figures of how much things in the government cost, but according to Wikipedia, the military budget for the U.S. in 2010 is around $685.1 billion. Even if it were hundreds of billions less than that, which I doubt, if anything it's likely a conservative estimate, it would still be a lot. Also, when you figure all money spent to care for physical and mental wounds these soldiers are going to have after they come back from war, that's going to cost us even more. I'm not saying we should cut funds to current troops, vets, or troops who need medical help, but we don't need to expand our military and fund new weapons for enemies that just aren't there. We don't need to put us in a situation where we have a bunch of wounded troops, or war widows that need caring for. Under the Cold War, defense spending like this to protect us from an invasion might have made some sense, but we are currently fighting goat farmers. I don't think spending billions on air craft carriers, or stealth fighters is really needed...unless the Taliban get some spider goats. Just kidding...I hope.

Some supporters of illegal immigrants say they do jobs that Americans won't do and those who oppose them will say they take jobs away that lower class Americans will be willing to do. I personally believe in the free market and if the job pays well enough, or you get a person willing to do a job that needs to be done, it'll get done by someone. Government shouldn't be making decisions over what ethnic group, or nationality is best capable, or only able to do whichever job. The argument the war supporters make for us still being in Iraq, Afghanistan, and even Korea, Germany, Japan, and all of these other countries is because the people there don't have the capability, or the resources to defend themselves. They are basically saying that we need to be in Afghanistan because the Afghanistan people are not willing, or able to defend themselves. To me, anyone has the capability to defend themselves. Those people got plenty of guns and explosives that they're using against our troops. It doesn't seem like they're having a huge problem with the will to defend themselves, or the resources. The way I see it, if they want to defend themselves, that's their job and we shouldn't take that from them. If they want our help, then fine, have them pay for our soldiers and if our soldiers want to help them out, let them. I don't think we need to pay to defend them and force our soldiers to defend them when it's their own country. If you want to buy a burglar alarm for your house and put a pit bull in your back yard, that's your choice, but I shouldn't have to pay to install that alarm and be the one required to feed that dog every morning. If you think someone coming over here taking a roofing job, or a job picking fruit is bad, how would we like it if all of the police in this country was replaced by Spanish speaking illegal immigrants? That's pretty much what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.



Now, you don't hear much of the cultural destroying argument anymore, since it does sound racist, but I think it drives a lot of these fears people have against illegal immigration. Personally, I think culture changes all the time on it's own and there's nothing really bad that I can think about the Hispanic culture that I wouldn't mind mixing into our own. It's not like they're ripping hearts out of people's chests on the top of pyramids...anymore. I think the main fear is that we'll lose the English language, which doesn't really matter to me. Languages change too over time too. If you go back a hundred years in America, people used words that you wouldn't know about and you use words they wouldn't know about. In these wars, I think the main cultural fear is over religion. They're Muslim and we're mostly Christian. These people have a strict Muslim culture and one that barely knows much about the modern world. They're now being exposed to not only new technology and ideas, but to new religions. Forget Spanish speaking illegal immigrants taking over our police. Imagine if all of a sudden, Muslims were put in control of our entire country!

The last argument people make against illegal immigrants is probably the easiest for this country to fix and the most obviously hypocritical for those who also support these wars. They claim that illegal immigrants are a violent threat to Americans. Now I'm not saying that there are no violent illegal immigrants whatsoever. However, the reason you have violence associated with these people is overwhelmingly because of the war on drugs. If you ended the war on drugs, you end the majority of this violence. As far as troops being violent...well, they're troops. We don't train these people to go over to other countries to offer peace and love. They're over there for one main reason, and that's to kill people we want killed. I don't know the exact number of how many people on both sides of these wars have died, or been wounded and I'm not sure how many people have died because of the war on drugs, or because we have closed boarders. Hundreds of thousands, or millions? To me, one death is one too many. The important thing to know is that these deaths could have been avoided. Starting wars and banning substances are not natural disasters, they're human made disasters...government made disasters to be more exact. We have done both before and saw the damage that doing both have caused, yet we make these same mistakes over and over. There will always be murderers in the world and there will always be people wanting to use drugs, but the violence in the drug war and the violence in Iraq and Afghanistan could end tomorrow if we wanted it to. Not only are our troops dying because of our choice to have these wars, but illegal immigrants are dying because they can't legally cross the border. They're dying so much so that at one point in this year, more illegal immigrants died trying to come to the U.S. than our troops died in Afghanistan.

Now some could see this, call me a hypocrite, and ask, "Well, aren't illegal immigrants like an invading army? Why would you support one and oppose another?" Well, I don't believe that immigrants are taking all these jobs, or are a big violent threat, or are more of drain on our welfare system than any other "legal" American. A lot of these are claims that those opposing illegal immigrants try to use on them. I go further into all of that here. What I'm trying to point out in all of this is the arguments that the people use to oppose illegal immigrants, better matches up against occupying troops than it does against illegal immigrants. Even though, there are some valid similarities, I think it's quite obvious that occupying a nation with an armed army that's bombing and shooting everywhere and costing us billions of dollars and thousands of lives is a lot worse situation than peaceful people coming to a country just to look for jobs.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Prop 19: A New Hope, or The Fed Strikes Back, or Return of the Red Eye?



I love making predictions on stuff, whether it's on what someone is going to do, what a football game score is going to be, etc. It's a fun little test for my knowledge on a subject. It's part educated guess and part luck. I'd like to take this time to make some educated guesses towards Prop 19 passing in California, which would pretty much legalize recreational use of pot. Polls can always be tricky, or really just unreliable, but it seems to me that Prop 19 will likely pass. If it doesn't, well, the rest of this post is a huge waste of time.

The big question is: Will this even work if it's passed? Well, it's kind of like being around the Continental Congress and asking, "If we sign this Declaration of Independence, will we be free?" You might declare your freedom, but the big guys in power (the King George III, or the Federal Government) ain't just going to let you gain your freedom that easily without a fight. The Obama Administration is already warning to "Strike Back" if this thing passes. The Feds know that if this passes, it's going to be a huge domino effect. Their huge con game, based on convincing the public to be scared of pot use, that has gone on for decades, will finally be over.

They have plenty of good reason to be afraid of this passing, besides looking like liars. To be honest, looking like liars is the least thing politicians worry about. Lying and politicians go together like nudity and strippers and it's already expected. The thing they fear the most over this is losing government jobs. Right now we are in a recession with a double digit unemployment rate. That rate going up makes them look worse. If we start dismantling the war on drugs, that's going to mean we can no longer justify as many police officers, prison guards, or even private bail bondsmen. I don't think legalizing pot will make a huge dent in that since you'll still have other illegal drugs they can go after and it doesn't take a reason to have a government employee around for them to keep their job. Still, some of those people are going to be let go and law enforcement unions realize this. Of course if we keep paying taxes to keep these people in jail, that's less money being spent on jobs in the private sector. If people are in jail, they aren't out in public working at a job, making money, spending money, or producing tax dollars. Whenever the states want more regulation, it seems that the Federal Gov. doesn't try that hard to cut it down, but if they want to deregulate and it goes against them, watch your ass! The only exception I can think of is the Arizona illegal immigration thing, but I think that was only because so many people were in an uproar about it.

California is treading water right now. They're going to need much more than just legalizing pot to help them out. They have to start cutting spending and in some cases, destroying government jobs all across the board to stay alive. However, there really hasn't been a better time, or place to legalize pot in this country. Not only are the people more educated now on the stupidity behind this being kept illegal, but because of the bad economy, they can no longer support such stupid legislation. You add the word "tax" to this and it starts to win people over who don't want to smoke it, but want the stuff that tax dollars from it could give them. I don't like the idea of taxing anything since it just means that politicians will think they have more money and justify more spending. Also, taxing beer, cigarettes, TVs, or something that requires a lot of technical equipment to manufacture makes sense for those who want money, but if you can grow your own pot and only smoke a little bit of it a year, you can avoid paying taxes on it. Then again, if it's legalized, it might be much cheaper and easier to buy it and pay a tax, than growing your own, whereas you can make lots of money off of growing it while it's illegal. However, I don't know if you could get the public support to get it legalized without that dirty little "T" word.

Pot is no longer being seen as a scourge of society, but a money maker to help people get back on their feet financially. It's kind of ingrained in our society today that if you see someone who was raised poor, who doesn't really have a good education, talents, or anyway to make lots of money, yet are going around with flashy jewelry and a nice car, you're going to assume they sell drugs, or are doing some other illegal activity. Selling illegal drugs is seen as a quick way to get ahead in this world and Californians see this as their golden ticket. The problem with that belief is that the only reason they're making huge amounts of money off of it is because it's illegal and that drives prices up. If you make it legal, even if you tax it, prices are going to come down and trying to selling it legally isn't going to get you as much money as if you sold it illegally. Unless California can figure out a way to grow lots of pot and sell it to the rest of America where it's still illegal, I just don't think they're going to be making a lot of money off of it.

So here's basically what I think will, or could happen. Prop 19 will pass (hopefully). I've heard polls conducted by live people end up it being more against, but automated polls where when people feel more anonymous have it passing. Since the voting place will be anonymous, I think it will pass. Whatever it ends up being, I think it's going to be close. Now after it passes (if it passes), that's when the Fed is gonna take it to the courts and try to take it out. This is gonna be the freedom of the people vs. the iron fist of the Federal Government. This is when the real fight begins and when supporters really need to kick it in gear and voice their support and hope that it convinces enough people in power that this could cost them future votes to support knocking this down. The politicians trying to knock this down will have to be more afraid of the people wanting freedom than the law enforcement that might lose their jobs to change their minds. If it passes, and if the Federal Government loses their fight against it, I think it will be a huge domino effect after that. You have lots of governments in this country who are in the same shape as California, some might not be as bad, but they're getting there. Once the rest of America can see all the positive effects from legalizing pot, they're going to want do that too. They won't have to worry about angry voters as much and I think you'll have braver politicians that will push to legalize marijuana instead of cowardly leaving it up to voters to decide during elections. If Prop 19 passes, I think California will still be screwed financially, but the crime rate will go down (other drugs will still be illegal of course, so it might not be a dramatic drop), but they will have made some progress towards freedom and will probably help out their economy a bit. Whether this will be another failed attempt at legalization, or the beginning of the end for the drug war will be decided tomorrow by California voters.