Terrorism, Debates, and Facebook in Talk Radio

Sometimes news about tragedies make me feel like a huge asshole. When I stopped following the story Friday night, a dozen people had died in Paris. I guess I lost interest because shootings happen in America all the time. (every two weeks on average) But the next morning when I found out more than 100 people had been killed, I was like damn, now I’m impressed.

Sure, in the US we have way more than 128 who die in countless unrelated incidents, but I can’t think of a single US shooting that has been so successful. It seems like the largest death toll of a US shooting in recent memory are the Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook shootings, which number at about 30 dead each, more or less.

Of course, when 200 people die in Beirut barely nobody cares, but when it’s France, well, that’s where white people live! Shit! Now is the time to change your Facebook icon. Take that, terrorism!! And in retrospect, name drop Beirut in your status so you don’t look like a hypocrite and a racist.

Chomsky is the guy who knows about terrorism and if the events of Paris have at all moved you I urge you to look up his lectures about terrorism on Youtube. What Chomsky does is describe the double-standard in condemning jihadist terrorist actions while also overlooking the responsibility for the violence committed by western culture. People my age are might be aware that Bush and Obama administrations have faced virtually no consequences for massive collateral damage, torture and imprisonment of innocent people without trial, but might not realize countless examples of US operations that fit the dictionary definition of terrorism in the Middle East, Cuba, Chile, Africa, South and Central America, so much that the US qualifies as the largest terrorist organization on earth of the 20th century and 21st century so far.

“Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.” - Noam Chomsky

We don’t plan the formation of groups like ISIS, but jihadists are the natural consequence of our destructive policies because we have actually hurt them and, naturally, they want to hit us back. When we do it, it’s foreign interventions, invasions, covert operations, but when they launch a rocket back at us it’s terrorism. How convenient!

The conservatives might be more easily generalized as racists and whatever-phobic but even liberals like Maher who I usually agree with are quick to point out that any random non-violent Muslim may have, idealistically, too much in common with “radical Muslims”. Maher, a famous atheist who could perhaps also could be described as anti-theist, a man who should have no real reason to prefer one religion over the other, describes Christianity as a religion that has outgrown its destructive adolescent Crusades phase. He ignores that modern Christians benefit from more privilege and are not provoked by the same conditions of violence and poverty. And so then, modern non-violent Christians who idealistically support terrorism committed by the US and Israel (non-religious people may not be aware of how Israel draws popular support from the fundamentalist belief in biblical prophecy) do not have too much in common with shootings and bombings committed by white Christian fascists such as Breivik? How severely do we condemn the other religion for violence with so little reflection of our own culture!

I watched the democratic debates Sunday night. Kind of like how the insanity of Limbaugh is more entertaining (actually, Glenn Beck used to be my favorite radio host, does anyone remember him from radio and not TV?) than Ed Shultz’s perfectly reasonable blandness, the republicans, with their clown car of candidates, I thought would be more interesting. So while I meant to I never got around to listening to the first democrat debate.

Anyway, the 2nd debate was far more interesting than I feared. I am a longtime supporter of Bernie who said all the same things I liked and he’s been saying for a long time. O’Malley, on the other hand, I knew nothing about, and I think he did really well. I think they both did better than Hillary, who had some good responses on foreign policy but with her experience as Secretary she should have been even better. She missed an opportunity to actually flaunt some of her greatest accomplishments as Secretary of State of which she has many. If I were Clinton, I would have used a story like, her actions in Libya is an example of her responding to a crisis which averted an even greater crisis.

Her primary fuck up was abusing 9-11 to support an entirely unrelated point, which was too reminiscent of the Bush administrating abusing 9-11 to justify every awful thing they ever did. This undermined her efforts to make up for the major mistake of voting for the Iraq war. Between her Bush-like 9-11 propaganda and both Sanders and O’Malley ganging up on her over campaign funding, I think she left the debate having done nothing to fix the perception of her lacking integrity as a Washington insider.

I don’t know if she made the right call being so soft on Sanders. In the 90s she was a huge proponent of single-payer, so familiar with how our post cold war culture creates a hostile environment for ever finding support for usch a thing. She should have known Sanders is vulnerable for his socialism but chose not to take that road. I remember her fighting a bit dirtier against Obama, which is why I didn’t like her in 2008. Maybe she is aware of how fighting over the nomination hurt her chances last time.

Since O’Malley was so unexpectedly brilliant, using very detailed arguments implementing progressive reforms as governor, and probably the prettiest smiliest speaker, I would actually declare him the winner of the debate.

But Sanders will be the winner of the nomination and election hopefully.

Okay, in more frivolous news, some typical anti-technology bullshit…

Study Finds Quitting Facebook Makes You Happier and Less Stressed

The explanation is, rarely is bad news about ourselves volunteered on Facebook, so we are comparing the experience of our lives unfavorably to very skewed self-reports of Facebook posts. Because people report feeling less depressed after they stop browsing Facebook for a few weeks, we now wonder if Facebook isn’t a cause of depression, presumably because we are jealous of things like someone else’s cute photograph of their lunch that looks tastier than our own lunch. The conclusion I draw from this revelation is that people are babies who lack wisdom and critical thinking. It follows we can observe health benefits when immature emotionally incontinent people shelter themselves from the self-reflection caused by comparing ones own life to overly rose colored Facebook posts.

I see multiple problems here: Depressed Facebookers are childish because they are too miserable with jealousy to be happy for others who seem happier than themselves. They are too naive to realize the nature of people to tell biased stories that make their own lives seem better than they actually are. And they, quite narcissistic, think that Facebook is a problem when it is their response to Facebook that is the actual problem.

Blaming technology for social isolation is a poor understanding of technology shows a poor understanding of ourselves…

Last updated November 16, 2015