3/2/10
So yesterday I wrote a profanity-free response to a religious issue, which for me, took a lot of motherfucking restraint. And yet again I am not called out for my content, but my delivery. Perhaps a few of you, who number among my favorite people on the planet, have a profound misunderstanding of my responsibilities around here: my duty is to be an asshole, not win hearts.
There was a time when minds could be changed, when differing philosophies could find common ground, and when conservatives didn't view nuance as a mortal threat to their testicles, but that time is long gone. When you've got entire news organizations, gargantuan AM radio listenership, and nearly half of Congress all in lockstep with Crazy©, I'm flummoxed as to why I should show any restraint.
Does that make me as bad as they are? Am I "held to a higher standard"? Should I calmly explain my positions in the hope that minds might sway? I'M SORRY, BUT HOW HAS THAT BEEN WORKING LATELY?
There are two things the last decade has taught us: 1) Nobody is coming to help you, and 2) Bad ideas and bad people spread like cancer, and there's no negotiating with them. Liberals, leftists and progressives have spent decades with their lips quivering over their pottery wheels, their delicate sensibilities offended by the bullies outside their meditation yurt.
In the meantime, they let conservatives start war after war, take away basic civil liberties from gays in the name of Christ, put mentally retarded inmates to death, robbed us of the polar ice cap, and giggled while fomenting a populist rage among slightly-unhinged white people with guns.
Are all conservatives onboard? Do all evangelical Christians follow suit? Of course not, but you wouldn't know it based on their respective ideological movements, and I haven't got the patience to draw shades of gray for a group of people not willing to do the same. They write fire, I will write fire back. They will spread their disease, I will spread mine.
The time for incremental change through subtle means is over, as is the time for enduring shit you don't want to take anymore. If a group of Christians is doing something I don't trust, I'm going to fucking say something about it. If Republicans are trying to take control of my daughter's womb, I'm going to go apeshit. My makeshift raft here is tiny, compared to the pounding slave ships of Coulter, Malkin and Beck, but 'tis mine.
I'm not expecting to change policy, and I'm content to be "part of the problem". Everyone needs a place to vent their furies and frustration, and this one is mine (and yours, should you choose to do so). I will not apologize for the sloppiness and size of my paintings here in my leftist art hut; this massive brush is all I have left in the quiver.
it is only smart to keep your powder dry if the ship isn't sinking. Fire away!! The ship is going down.
I <3 tregen. and I thought your content was wonderful. sorry i didn't post to support you yesterday. Vent away! Personally, I come to this site exactly because I find your venting an exquisite amalgam of vitriol AND articulacy. For which i daily strive. my vents are all the vitriol. I don't know how you do it, but I am watching and learning, watching and learning. Thank you, Ian.
Ian, you are the brave, articulate loudmouth who speaks for many of us who feel timid or "inappropriate" saying what we truly, deeply feel about this mess.
I cringe sometimes *only* because the loony evangelicals have given contemporary Christianity such a foul reputation. The Catholics and other Christians I know here in this ultra-liberal blue state, at least in its capital city which is a big college town, are nothing like the wingnuts. They quietly worship and praise God, and go out to do His work among the poorest, the "least of these," day after month after year, with Love Thy Neighbor as their defining principle. Do I agree with every bit of doctrine? No, and I feel that does not make me a bad Christian but perhaps a better one: a faith unexamined, and all that.
Vent away. It's why we keep coming back. It's cathartic for the majority of your readers. Hear, hear.
It's yo thing, do what you wanna do!
=)
Echoing Killian, I come primarily for the rants...not that I don't enjoying hearing about your professional and familial adventures as well, I just prefer the outrage. If people don't like what you have to say, they don't have to read it. How's that for consistantly pro-choice?
you know, i'm so disillusioned and jaded i don't even bother to rant anymore. i just quietly dream about my eventual migration a few blocks away into berkeley.
there, in my imaginary luxury retirement, i'll build a sustainable ecopod, spend my days lazily perusing the awesome library, doing yoga at the incredibly great downtown berkeley ymca, strolling through the organic farmers market, signing half-baked petitions to take down corporate evil-doers, marching in pro-choice/pro-palestinian rights/pro-diversity/pro-vegan hemp tea rallies, writing subversive books and articles for AK Press, making lots of personal self-indulgent art, and using my enormous wealth to fund vast left wing conspiracies and disruptive green technologies.
once there, living off the conventional political grid, i can live out my existence never having to encounter the religious right.
so that's kind of an alternative to ranting, equally as ineffective at producing any real change, but more pleasant and with lower blood pressure.
Ian, you make me feel like it's safe to come out. Don't change a damn thing.I love it when the fucktards screech about how my disagreement interferes with their values-based freedom to call for my eradication of me and my nonwhite, nonchristian, nonmale, nondropout, nonconservative nonRepublican friends and family. I'd love it a lot more if some of the screechers were not United States Senators from thinly populated rural states.
Uhhhh... sorry dude. It's your blog and you can obviously say whatever you want. I should remember that this is your venting space, not your reasoned discourse space, and after all, you're writing for your frends.
Can I at least throw myself on the mercy of the court and say that that was my own emotionally inhibited method of ranting? As a mitigating factor, does it help that I came out as pro-abortion and anti-death penalty, even if for a different reason?
As for hearing more rants from the 'Left' than from the 'Right,' it's probably because I tend to read blogs like yours and not like theirs, and that should probably tell both of us something right there. Plus my in-laws are Massachussetts liberal doctors who've dedicated most of their lives and sacrificed a great deal financially to help poor rural farmers in eastern NC, inner city AIDS patients in San Francisco, etc., who can't pay for their own care.
So within that context, re: your question in the other post, yeah, you can come hang out whenever you want, they'd love you! (I.e., Can we still be friends, dude who I last talked to in like 1996? I'm trying to cue an awkward verbal man hug here, but it sounds like I might have pissed you off past that point.)
Great stuff, Ian. It's scary how those right wing fascists are ruling the day to such a radical degree. Ironically, today I was over at Duke Divinity School (where there are tenfold more progressives than at Duke MBA, Law, or Med schools) and had a conversation about how the right wing's evil propaganda has made Western religion so completely uncool that any references to it have almost entirely disappeared from contemporary art, music, and literature, unless those references are satire or take-downs. Unapologetic religious references like those by Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Messiaen, and Coltrane are unthinkable today.
Bravo. I'm sick of lame push-back from liberals - what might be passed off as concessions to civility and/or reasoned disagreements. Maybe it's just a continued shock and disbelief that the right can be so outrageously dishonest and cynical. Every time you think they've hit bottom, they burrow deeper. But really, at this point, leading liberal politicians/spokespeople/representatives/organizations - etc - need to get over whatever high ground they think they're defending by avoiding the attack and fight for what's left under our feet right now.
It's funny, after reading your post yesterday, I remembered a time back in the late 80's and early 90's when the "crazy christians" and "cuckoo conversatives" were pretty much routinely dismissed as crackpots - even by the right. Ah... the good old days....heh.
The rants are great, but I'm just here hoping you will eventually post The Pink House ;)
Keep up the good work and ignore the haters - they are just a vocal minority. If we don't respond it is only because we are just pissed that we lack the eloquence to say things as well as you!
Bruce, absolutely no worries. Just engaging in heated debate, 'tis all. Mostly just distracting myself from a twinge of hope I feel about the dook game.
"slightly-unhinged white people with guns" is to the second amendment as "slightly-unhinged white people with blogs" is to the first amendment.
Don't think I'm not counting myself in all that. I just thought it was funny to point out, in a "we're all black on the inside" sort of way.
Ian, I was thrilled enough to find my fav Wednesday's Child on fb but really happy to find you have a blog! And I am so using one of these sentences (and crediting you) as a fb status shortly. Not stalker-y only appreciative. No really ...