Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Or she’s part of the reason why.
I’ve drawn a lot of flak on this and why I draw flak on it, has always been a mystery to me. Whether or not any drug should be legal, is a question on which the federal government has no jurisdiction whatsoever. Congress can declare things illegal, but only after it has been granted the authority to declare them illegal. Congress receives the authority it has through the Constitution and amendments to that document, and by no other means. It cannot grant this power to itself, nor can it be conferred upon the legislative branch by the other two.
If there’s a Supreme Court decision that says otherwise, it is quite simply wrong.
Making a drug illegal is a states’-rights issue. It would be better to legislate such a matter at the county level than at the state level. It would be even better to decide it in a township. Best of all, make it a homeowners’-association clause. The idea of one man, pointing at another man across the miles, lakes, fruited planes, degrees of longitude, into some locality he will never visit, and declaring what the other man may not consume, just repels me. It’s not just a constitutional question, it’s a question of sound law enforcement.
People have a right to decide how they’re going to live, and that means the local community has to reign supreme. People in Oregon have a right not to have their votes on such questions watered-down by people in California. People in Davis have a right not to have their votes on such questions watered-down by people in Folsom.
But — and here’s where I take the flak — in my corner, I’m voting no. Don’t legalize.
We do not need more of what this does. We do not need more Carrie Fishers.
They just aren’t that special.
I have made occasional reference to the fact that I grew up in a college town. In truth, I had a little bit closer contact with the spoiled-rotten, tweaker, can’t-think-straight, long-hair maggot-infested Ozzy Osborne wannabe kids than that.
The college campus was at midpoint between home and my middle school. My friends tended to be older, and in junior and senior years I visited them in their dorms. I did volunteer work for & with them. One of the more educational stints involved working as a disc jockey at their radio station. At the time, you could qualify for a Class D radio operator license at age thirteen, and so I did. This involved occasionally sitting in after-hours with the Program Coordinator and other artistes to plan out what we were going to do.
From these and other experiences, what do I know?
A great tragedy that has fallen upon our mature society, is summed up in ignorant comments like this:
I am certainly not ordinary. I think it’s been hard for my daughter. I know it’s not easy for her to have a mother who is bipolar and had a drug problem. My father had a drug problem. That stuff’s tough. It makes you grow up too fast. My daughter has had to be very strong to overcome some of my challenges and she is.
:
It’s hard to freak me out. I’ve had a lot of extreme experiences in my life.
She’s fifty-three and still talking like this. It is never stated outright, but you are supposed to infer that these “extreme experiences” that make it “hard to freak me out” and “[make] you grow up too fast” — there is something glamorous about them. These tragedies in the formative years give the speaker certain bragging rights. In spite of what has been screwed up as a direct result, these things are assets. They are recollected that way, treated that way.
In Fisher’s case, she’s passing it on down to the next generation. Oh look, I handed this bag of crap to my daughter; she shouldn’t have had to deal with it, but look how strong she is as a result.
Well now. There certainly is something to this, I’ll admit. Or rather, there could be. “Hard to freak me out” can be an advantageous quality.
Trouble is, in order to gain a win from that, you have to translate it into Kipling’s “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you”. In other words, low-drama. Failing that, there’s no gain from this.
These people are not low-drama. Not even close. In fact, the net loss is rather profound because this business of “I’m just so jaded” leads, rather directly, to an inability to discern. And their judgment is seduced.
Look no further than the interview I’ve already linked, for a glorious example of this.
Is there anyone you haven’t met that you’ve always wanted to?
Obama.I’m surprised you haven’t met him.
I know. I love him. Hopefully I’ll meet him sometime. I’m just happy he exists.Do you think Tea Party is just people who are pissed that there is an African American president?
Yup, and the fact that they chose to call themselves “teabaggers,” which is slang for a certain act involving b***s. It sort of says a lot. I would say a mouthful. Looks like it’s very upsetting for them, but he’s brilliant. The thing is, he’s half white but that’s still not enough — for them it’s all white or f**k off. I think we don’t deserve him and certainly teabaggers don’t deserve him.
Okay, in an ideological sense I disagree with this and if you are familiar with some of my past comments, it would be redundant for me to explain why.
Fisher got some facts grossly wrong about the Tea Party movement, and even if you lack sympathy with it, they’re probably easy to spot so I won’t point ’em out.
As I said, these jaded-druggie-rock-n-roll kids suffer a weakness in discernment. This is my critique about those final paragraphs in the interview. By now, it’s hardly news to anyone that Barack Obama is a rather ordinary politician. Agree with His policies if you like, but you haven’t heard any talk about “He’s Sort Of God” lately and there are a lot of reasons for that. He’s an excellent speaker, a kind of mediocre politician, a poor executive and — well, how I rank him against the other presidents is not germane to my point.
I’m sure Fisher would rank Him differently from the way I would, and I cannot fault her just for this. Life would be boring if we all agreed on everything. I do fault her for being in love with someone she’s never met.
You’re seeing a manifestation of what all those lectures from your parents, maybe from your high school health class, from your gym teacher, were about. Carrie Fisher cannot think straight. She is damaged goods.
She is a walking incarnation of the reason I would vote to keep drugs illegal. These people have “been through a lot”; they think they’re special because of this, and they’re wrong. They’re rather humdrum. Their ranks are swollen and they are common. I can write their little “been through a whole lot” speeches, for them, with blistering accuracy, entire phrases at a time. Because that’s how they talk, in cliches.
Each one speaks as if he or she is the first to go through this, when it isn’t true. This is the great tragedy. This is why they think they’re special when they aren’t really special.
And this discolors the lens through which they view all others. They seem to show great reliability in seeing extraordinary things as ordinary things, and — more often than that, perhaps — ordinary things as extraordinary things.
They do the greatest damage when they see healthy things as unhealthy things and vice-versa.
Their solutions to problems are the exact opposite of what common sense would offer. I don’t know if this can be completely explained by what follows, but I’m settled on the idea that this is, at least partly, because they perceive the components of the problem as more-or-less the opposite of what they really are.
There is a huge underwater spigot of oil that is contaminating the gulf. Their solution is to put a “boot in the neck” of the oil company that caused it, and — while that company is still in charge of cleaning up the mess — extorting billions of dollars out of them to put under the control of lawyers. And let’s see…what else. Pass cap and trade, ban all offshore oil drilling for some indeterminate period of time, impose some new taxes on the other oil companies that aren’t culpable in this — as well as on the customers purchasing their products — and use the proceeds to fund research into “alternative fuels.”
See what these plans all have in common? This coveted resource which is oil, and all products that are derived from it, which includes energy — is to be made more scarce. So these people want to run everything. And they’ve lost touch with reality to such a great extent that they cannot even maintain a working comprehension of the basic laws of supply and demand.
Also, the non-productive are treated as if they are productive. And, again, vice-versa. Yes, lawyers make big heaping truckloads of moolah. It’s never failed to amaze me how, when it’s time to toss up the evil-awful-greedy-rich-people on the giant display screen for the two-minute-hate, it’s always supposed to be some kind of a “hedge fund manager,” maybe a CEO who started his company by building a real thing that helped real people…and not a lawyer.
Little bit of a side-trail here: Isn’t it rather breathtaking the free ride lawyers get? It’s gotten to the point that there are two things in this whole freakin’ country: Things that work the way lawyers say they should work, and things that will work that way someday soon as they get around to it. But for all our various problems we’re supposed to blame all these other rich people.
Back to the subject at hand about these residual druggies, who may or may not still partake, but have divorced themselves from clear-minded straight thinking…
They will object most vociferously to the criticism that sticks the best: They are malleable. It is easy to sell them things if you just push the right buttons. These people are so jaded, their gears are so stripped, they’ve grown up so fast and it’s so hard to freak them out…that it becomes quite a simple matter to tell ’em what to think, and they don’t even know it. They can be told who to hate, and they’ll follow right along.
They lie to themselves, so what they say to others cannot be trusted. They all seem to have it in common that they are, ostensibly, in search of a life they can live out in peace, free of interference from others. This is absolutely, positively, not what they want. They want everyone living, of whom they will ever gain a working knowledge, to be tethered to a yoke and then they want to have control over that yoke; or someone they “love” to have control over that yoke.
They want the commoners to be controlled, and they want a special, non-universal, exclusive, elite class to do the controlling. They’re in favor of democracy, of course — but only if & when the correct side wins. Otherwise, someone must have tampered with the ballot boxes. They’re fair-weather friends to democracy.
They want laws that help “everyone,” laws that “everyone” likes especially if there is some part of the “everyone” that actually is hurt by the laws, and hate them. They like the laws even better, then. They want laws that cause injury to some of us, and then they want to make sure everyone who disagrees cannot have any voice in the process.
What they really want is slavery. This is why they go through this business of ostracizing the dissenters, slandering them, gutterballing them. And now, if you have some beef with the unprecedented Obama deficits and you’re worried that your kids & grandkids won’t be able to keep any of their paychecks, you oughtta be joining the Ku Klux Klan. Nice one, Carrie.
My bottom line?
We just don’t need any more people acting this way. We don’t need more people thinking this way. We have more than enough already. Case closed.
Update 6/20/10: Cross-posted at Right Wing News.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Very entertaining post. Excellent points on the vacuity of stars and immorality of lawyers.
BUT with drugs the real issues are:
(1) unconscionable/unenforceable contracts,
(2) consistency in public safety standards, and
(3) undeniable consent.
We agree that government has only a few legitimate roles–protect the borders, keep the peace, enforce contracts… Because it claims a monopoly on violence, government is thereby obligated to prevent or punish crimes and to enforce contracts.
(1) Now most people today hold you can’t sell yourself into slavery. But that’s what happpens with drug addiction. So we have to ask, are you able to enter such a relationship with a drug dealer? If comparable terms were drafted on any other subject, courts today would hold that that contract was unconscionable and unenforceable.
(2) Meanwhile, at the other end of the pharmacopeia, FDA, USP and a few other hacks decide what the public can have, arising from medical necessity. Most people today hold the government has an interest in the safety, efficacy and fair labeling of products. And because of bureaucratic butt-covering, millions suffer and thousands die while the hacks “decide” on approvals. How can it be “compassionate” to give clean needles to addicts but deny life-saving medicine to cancer patients? Our standards here are not just out of balance, but in outright contradiction.
(3) That brings us to the idea of undeniable consent. If a cancer patient wants the still-waiting-for-approval drug, we must all agree that society will accept his undeniable consent and release, his agreement that he can’t ever blame anyone if it fails to work or even kills him. And that consent must be “John-Edwards-proof.”
Likewise, if society needs vaccinations to prevent fatal outbreaks, then the vaccine makers get just exactly that same socially-embraced release from liability.
Finally, if we want to de-criminalize (not legalize!) drugs, we must strip the addict of all recourse and all call on social resources including welfare and free medical care. We must also treat drugs as an exacerbating, not mitigating factor should addicts still commit crimes. For non-criminal addicts, it becomes simply a sanitation issue, cleaning up when they eventually die in the streets.
Conclusion: If you do not accept that last paragraph, then you cannot support de-criminalizing drugs.
- Robert Arvanitis | 06/19/2010 @ 12:58If there is one thing that you and I completely agree on, it is the belting out of phrases like “I am certainly not ordinary” by people who are horrendously ordinary, and realizing that they expect us to hear it and look at them like they are some kind of spectacular creature because of it. It’s an extension of an impulse to receive handouts. Claiming an unearned, higher status because of a bunch of stuff that “happened to me.”
I am starting to hear people say things like “plus, he’s pro pot, so you know he’s got something going right!” It’s another narrative that is gaining steam, and means that when decision time comes for legalization votes, they are going to be made by people who are ‘feeling’ something about it instead of thinking something about it.
Just sort of rambling here.
- Andy | 06/19/2010 @ 16:06Disagree on that last statement.
This tangent of yours is, in actuality, vitally important. Thinking your way through a problem versus feeling your way around it, is a primary causative factor in the Architects versus Medicators split. Just go through the twenty differences I outlined there one at a time, and you’ll see it makes sense with each one. “Architects are not concerned about whether someone else possesses more wealth than they do.” Yeah, if you think your way through problems…why give a fuck? You’ve got enough lucre to pay your own bills, or else you don’t. Either way, the other fellow’s billfold is completely irrelevant; but if you’re accustomed to feeling your way around problems, naturally it makes you feel bad when someone else has something you don’t have, especially if you perceive that you’re working harder. Seeing the universe as a collection of interconnected parts — if you think in terms of “if I do this, then that will happen,” this is simply step one. You have to see parts that function autonomously but have cause-and-effect relationships with one another. Feeling your way around…you’re painted into the corner of seeing the universe as one massive object that radiates a singular vibe, because it is beyond our capacity to “feel” more than one thing at a time. The other eighteen are all like this. We’re separated in this fundamental way.
And the more controversial part of this theory is that we’re going to remain dysfunctional for however long these two halves of humanity are forced to interact with each other. They/we are not capable of doing it. Even with simple transactions, it is prohibitively expensive in terms of time and energy to try to bridge this divide.
- mkfreeberg | 06/19/2010 @ 16:25You DO need an editor, Morgan. In the worst way. There’s undoubtedly something of value herein but it’s obscured by as dense a thicket of words as I’ve run across lately. On the other hand, having skimmed most of this, there may not be anything of value here at all. It’s just another rant. Your opinion, one man’s opinion, with the emphasis on ONE. That your opinion may be shared by folks who frequent these places is somewhat germane, but rest assured there are also those who do NOT share said opinion.
We’ve crossed swords on this point many a time. I’ve stated my case, you continue to flog your dead horse. It’s a matter of personal choice and the freedom to ingest whatever the fuck we want. The gub’mint has NO bid’niz messing with MY bid’niz, so long as I don’t infringe on another person’s rights. You’re quick to judge but you are much less quick to acknowledge the other side just might have a frickin’ point. And you disregard the vast numbers of people who do not, and have not, had “problems” with their drug of choice.
I find your willingness to deny a large group of people their choices in life bizarre, since you’re one who espouses an ostensibly conservative viewpoint, i.e., personal responsibility, limited gub’mint, and all that. It is indeed a strange world we live in.
- bpenni | 06/19/2010 @ 19:55Serious drug users do not grow up faster, they grow old faster–and skip growing up at all.
The problem with legalizing drugs is that we now have the welfare state to go with it. Back in the day when there were no drug laws whatever, there was a drug problem (serious enough to bring prohibition) but no welfare state. If your mother could not handle her opium addiction, that was your deal.
We are left only with poor choices.
- jamzw | 06/19/2010 @ 20:16Wow…so many topics touched-on in one post.
First, I’ll state the obvious. Fisher is another washed-up Hollywood actress whose glory days were nearly thirty years ago. Like her “Star Wars” co-star Mark Hammil, she’s done little of consequence since.
Last year or the year before, she appeared on stage down in Berzerk-ley in a stand-up routine she’d written. It was called “Wishful Drinking.” Needless to say, I didn’t go, since A) I don’t drink and wouldn’t “get” the jokes, and B) it reminded me too much of the “Arthur” (Dudley Moore) character of the 80s, who seemed to think that the very serious disease of alcoholism was nothing but a gold mine of cheap jokes. (As MAD magazine once so eloquently put it.)
Second. I have to correct Ms Fisher…”baggers” or “teabaggers” isn’t a “name they’ve given themselves.” It’s a homosexual slur that has been affixed to the movement by its detractors on the Left and their eager accomplices in the legacy media. The correct term, for the 5,326th time, is “Tea Partier.” Good golly Miss Molly, am I sick of that one.
Drugs. As we all know, Morgan and mine’s home state of Kah-lee-forn-ya has placed an initiative on the November ballot to legalize pot for recreational use. It will be taxed and regulated much like alcohol or tobacco – age restricted, place-restricted, and so forth. I read the proposal and am actually not sure how I’m going to vote on it. A year or two ago I would have said, “Absolutely not!” But after reading some of the arguments advanced by the regulars here, I’ve softened my views. My hope is that if it passes, maybe those cartels growing the stuff up in the mountains will go broke. Then we won’t have to worry about springing a booby trap or being shot at….by foreign nationals who in all likelihood aren’t supposed to be anywhere on US soil…while hunting or hiking on freaking PUBLIC LAND!
I can tell you that even if I do end up voting no after all, I will be neither surprised nor upset if it does pass. At the very least, I have come around to Morgan’s view that drug laws are legitimately a states’ rights issue, as with a plethora of other things that have long since been inappropriately grabbed by the federal government. Very little in the US really and truly is best under a “one size fits all” federal law.
- cylarz | 06/19/2010 @ 23:47I agree completely, Buck. I do need an editor. Especially when there are a great many subjects being addressed in one piece. And a recent event brings to mind other events that took place three decades ago, that have not been discussed openly since…a little bit of muddled-up-ness is gonna happen. And, of course, while the “consortium” blogs do have editors and their effect on the product is visible and beneficial, “just a guy with a blog” blogs typically do not.
I do find it everlastingly fascinating, though, that although I need an editor, it’s only something worth mentioning when I take a position that differs with one of yours. Not to worry though, your side’s gonna win on this thing; and as far as my concerns go, it won’t make that much of a visible difference here in The Golden State. You can’t throw a li’l-tiny-annoying-purse-dog out in the street without hitting someone who talks just like Ms. Fisher, someone who is certainly not ordinary, someone really hard to freak out because they’ve been high on drugs, dragged through a lot of shit and had to grow up really fast yadda yadda yadda.
A good editor would ask me what’s the one point I want to make with all the vast verbiage. It is this: The “I’m tough because I had to grow up really fast had a lot of things happen to me” speech gets tedious and tiresome. Much, much quicker than is realized by those who so routinely offer it. Even if you happened to be hearing it for the first time, it’s a rather silly thing for anybody to say, rather like saying “I consume oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide.” We all grow up by experiencing exigencies of life that lie outside the comfort-zone of experiences to which we had previously become acclimated. That is the normal process. Without some method & scale by which magnitudes may be objectively measured — How tough? How fast? — what’s the point of mentioning it? I know Carrie’s type very well, for the reasons mentioned above; I assure you, she does not keep her silence on this when she isn’t being interviewed or when the question is not being asked. Sit down to have dinner with her for an hour, you’ll hear some variant of this five times.
- mkfreeberg | 06/20/2010 @ 08:25More importantly (to one man)
- CaptDMO | 06/20/2010 @ 08:33Who decided Ms. Fisher might have valuable opinions, then, subsequently decide they were worthy of sharing?
Ahem…like MINE of course.
[…] Obama Blames Unemployment on Republicans Memo For File CXVI Carrie Fisher is Why I’d Vote No on Legalizing Drugs Let’s Shift to the Right Brain Best Sentence XCI Mount Schlussel is Erupting Congressman […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 06/20/2010 @ 09:00[…] No, no. And yet, there is plenty of truth hidden in here, dwelling alongside the drug prohibitionism. The hapless Ms. Carrie Fisher is used […]
- Does Banning Drugs Decrease Thoughtless Progressivism? | Little Miss Attila | 06/20/2010 @ 09:15Let me say it flat out:
I don’t care if smoking one joint might instantly turn some folks into rabid crack addicts. The war on drugs is a blunt instrument against our liberty. Most laws against any kind of contraband are; I don’t believe the right protected by the Fourth Amendment can survive against a system of laws that require the government to be able search your “person, house, papers, or effects” to enforce, as all contraband laws do.
Yes, legalizing drugs, even under heavy regulation, will cause severe damage in many cases. That’s just too damn bad. The damage caused by contraband laws do far, far more damage to our liberty, with little positive effect, than the drugs will do to any one person, or even to society at large.
Similar problem with, yes, gun control, another form of contraband law. Any who believes that a general relaxation or even banishment of gun control laws won’t result in increased accidents is living in a dream world. So far, all the jurisdictions relaxing very tough laws or outright prohibitions have fallen back to licensing schemes which require some training, and most of those pursuing such licenses are well aware of the safety issues involved already. A severe relaxation or revocation would allow many of dubious training and temperament to be armed. There will be blood.
And that, too, is — say it with me now — too damned bad. Liberty is too precious to ration for the sake of the unwise.
The Tree of Liberty is not just watered by the blood of patriots and tyrants, but also, and perhaps most importantly, by the blood of fools.
“Think of it as evolution in action.”
- djmoore | 06/20/2010 @ 14:10Oh, and as for Fisher: her thinking has been damaged by progressivism and socialism, not by drugs.
- djmoore | 06/20/2010 @ 14:11See, now if she’d just stay stoned enough, she’d be too freakin’ lazy to vote.
- philmon | 06/21/2010 @ 05:32Similar problem with, yes, gun control, another form of contraband law…
Now, the Constitution recognizes your God-given right to keep and bear arms, and guarantees that this right shall not be infringed. This is generally recognized as a proscription against action by any legislative authority at any level, not just Congress, since it’s easy to see when the intent is to say “Congress shall make no law” the authors went ahead & said “Congress shall make no law” — which in the case of the 2nd amendment, was not done. The sanctification of the gun rights is unequivocal, from the highest level (federal) down to the lowest (local).
With the prostitution and the drugs, I see absolutely no reason why a city or county council shouldn’t have the authority to say “pack it up and take it elsewhere, we’re not having it.” If something like eminent domain is recognized as an “attribute of sovereignty,” then so should these.
Gun laws, since they are specifically addressed in our founding document, are part of a completely different kettle o’ fish.
- mkfreeberg | 06/21/2010 @ 08:42Yup, I’ll go along with states and community rights on the drugs & prostitution thing.
The argument about muddled thinking and drugs, though — of course we’ve been over this before. It presumes that drugs lead to permanent muddled thinking, and that muddled thinking is of result of drugs.
Of course, there are plenty of people who use drugs recreationally that you don’t hear about or know about because they’re too smart to advertise the fact since it’s illegal and the penalties are stiff — whose thinking is just fine. Conversely, there are plenty of good nanny-staters who have never done a drug in their lives who babble on just like Carrie Fisher here.
As far as the guns go, free men have the right (and perhaps the duty) to keep and bear arms. The second amendment protects that right. It does not grant it.
I for one don’t like “pre-crime” laws. By those I mean laws that are designed to prevent you from engaging in previously non-criminal behavior because you MIGHT be more able or inclined to commit a crime if you engage in it. Either you commit the crime, or you don’t — and you’re responsible if you do, stoned or not.
First they came for the drinkers, and I was not a drinker, so I said nothing.
Then the drinkers got together and said, “hey, enough of this nonsense!” and they let the drinkers be (but they couldn’t make the drink anymore). Then I started drinking to celebrate my freedom and I found out I liked it.
Then they, having a perfectly “good” government agency which now had nothing to do, came for the pot smokers and the LSD hitters and ‘shroom-water drinkers, and I was none of those, so I was inclined to go along with them — but I remembered that if they can come for them, they can come for me and my scotch.
So I said let them be, and let them rot if that be their lot, but if it be not their lot, let them enjoy themselves as long as they leave me in peace.
And if they do not leave me in peace, let them be prosecuted for that, and not for going one toke over the line.
- philmon | 06/21/2010 @ 10:41Oh, and as for Fisher: her thinking has been damaged by progressivism and socialism, not by drugs.
Near as I can figure, it’s a cause-and-effect subset/superset relationship. Which is to say, not all progressives are stoners. But among the stoners who tack past this point of “I’m cooler than you are because I threw my childhood away on drugs,” I’ve seen a consistent pattern of voting a certain way. It isn’t for Republicans or conservative Libertarians. They are invariably passionate about it, and it seems to be a constant that they’re voting that way because they’re pissed off at somebody.
- mkfreeberg | 06/21/2010 @ 13:02Morgan –
Correlation is not causation. You start with the assumption that Ms. Fisher used to be rational and logically sound until the evil drugs and left wing politics got into her bloodstream. She was conceived by Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. Nature and nurture doomed her before she ever took sustenence or could understand a word.
- wch | 06/21/2010 @ 14:29Correlation is not always causation.
The whole point to the post is that after thirty years, the pattern holds steady and this has got to mean something. If scientific rigor demanded that all statistical trends must be ignored, there would be no scientific process to work. Theories could never be formed, because of the rule that says they must be absolutely proven or else they’re nothing.
Here’s a great way to define where exactly these people are going astray: Ms. Fisher is “certainly not ordinary” because she’s had all these tough experiences…alright, that makes her special, and better than most of us. She isn’t willing to say that, but that’s clearly her meaning. All right then.
In human history, has anybody ever had it tougher than Carrie Fisher? The kids you see on the “sponsor a hungry child” infomercials? The saints who were burned at the stake? The people sacrificed at the temple in Apocalypto? Fisher, I think, would hurry to say yes, absolutely. I know how these people work. She would rush to rattle off a long lest of oppressed, diseased, hungry people to which our awful Western culture needs to be more sensitive…
But this means, according to her scale and her own logic, that these other people are/were stronger tougher & wiser than she’ll ever be. There are no points awarded for second-best, so according to her own skewed logic she’s a big dummy and nobody should listen to her. This is an important phenomenon taking place here. In the years I discussed above, on the cobblestones of WWU which was less than a mile away from me from ages six through twenty-one, this applies to I’d say two-thirds of all the people I met who were of a similar age (and maybe one-third of the people who were older). They pickled their brains, they accumulated a whole bunch of messed-up experiences that made ’em all big & though & interesting & street-wise, and from then on they couldn’t be told a thing.
And then their parents took out second- and third-mortgages to send them to school, and they graduated with some kind of a diploma. And a “major” in womens’ studies or some such. Plus lots of rage, and a cockeyed worldview based on it.
Patterns; trends. For the last thirty years of the twentieth-century, it became a contraband act to notice such things. Well, the trends have always been out there, whether we’ve been ready to notice them or not…and this one has gone on for quite awhile. It is not limited to Ms. Fisher. The drug abuse, it continues to be part of the pattern. How would she be if her dad screwed Elizabeth Taylor but didn’t have anything to do with drugs? I cannot say, I don’t pretend to know, but honestly I don’t think it matters too much.
- mkfreeberg | 06/21/2010 @ 14:44Now that there last comment’s got some gold in it, I don’t care WHO y’are.
- philmon | 06/21/2010 @ 17:51