Evidently there was some kind of concern over the title of my blog.
Cool.
I would like to take a second to re-state my mission here.
I'm a white person. I grew up in an upper-class white community (Carmel, California). White people have their demons , but there once was a time when those demons were quietly fought and defeated. Today those white-people demons are instead indulged to the point of having their own reality shows. Gone are the days of quiet endurance, if you don't like it you quit. Shame is an obsolete concept, if you run your multi-million dollar company into the ground you don't stick a gun in your mouth, instead you ask for a government bail-out and then retire on your golden parachute. If your kids are monsters because you've neglected them by over-scheduling their lives with lessons and tutors, no problem, give them medication to make them shut up. It's all about what you can get, not how you get it. If someone else gets hurt by your actions its their fault.
I have a problem with this.
There was a time when manners counted, when character was respected more than than a number in a bank account, and when financial modesty expected. Those things should still count today, yet for many reasons they do not.
This blog does not address racial issues or other races. Not that I don't care, I am just not qualified to discuss issues that face the African-Americans, Hispanic, Asian, and other folks who make America a cool place to live. I'm not qualified because I'm white, and I have zero background to discuss other people's problems. However, I can and will continue to point out the decline of white American society as I see it.
Thank you for stopping by.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
The New White Go Out To Dinner
I stopped going out for dinner a long time ago. I dated a waitress and I also worked in a couple of restaurants, it totally sucked. Still, in my younger days my friends and I would go out and eat at nice restaurants. The last time I went out was down in Camarillo, CA, at a jumping place that issued beepers to waiting diners (I'd never seen that before and I thought it was clever). We got in and seated. We ordered our food (which was great), and we paid our tab with nice tip. No biggie. Since returning to school I have met a few young people who work in some on the finest restaurants on the Monterey Peninsula, and they tell me horror stories about the people who now patronize these places.
These are very expensive restaurants which weeds out all but the whitest and wealthiest folks.
Allow me to set this up. When I was a child I was taught basic etiquette for the dinner table, no elbows, chew your food, speak in a low-tone, don't talk with food in your mouth and the mysteries of the salad-fork. Then around the age of six we went out to a nice restaurant, and it was a huge deal for me. We had to put on our church suits, comb our hair and wear dress shoes. Before we entered we got a final brief from grandma and our mother, the short version was that if we goofed of or got stupid we would get the spanking to end all spankings. We understood and behaved ourselves. I don't remember much except that the place was really nice and the food was good. I also made a mental note not to put myself in a situation where I would eat at such places; just because I was not comfortable , and this has not changed for me as I have grown older. Still, it was good practice as I would be invited out to nice restaurant by the wealthy parents of my good friends, and I found that my good manners went a long way with them. They were often surprised and they would make a point of telling my mother this when they'd drop me off at the end of whatever event had taken us out. The final event of my early life involved catering at fine private dinner parties (this is fun, if you get a chance to do this it's a great way to make extra cash). I learned to be invisible and courteous. I got to watch sophisticated people in a semi-formal setting, and I learned that all of those manners paid off in many ways.
Flash-forward to 2009. At some of the finest restaurants you can have you meal ruined by some jackass on his cell phone, or conversations about regularity. Don't take my word for it, here's a piece from the SF Chronicle:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/09/DDFT16SDJ3.DTL&hw=bad+manners+in+restaurants&sn=001&sc=1000
For my small fan club, read the article AND the reader comments, many defending their actions. Then read this little advice piece from their restaurant critic on diner who hog tables:
news:www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/mbauer/category?blogid=26&cat=1394
These restaurants are small, maybe 11 or 12 tables and these people make themselves at home.
And again, read the responses:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/mbauer/legacycomments?blogid=26&entry_id=20558
Look at the lead off response, I will quote it for you:
These are very expensive restaurants which weeds out all but the whitest and wealthiest folks.
Allow me to set this up. When I was a child I was taught basic etiquette for the dinner table, no elbows, chew your food, speak in a low-tone, don't talk with food in your mouth and the mysteries of the salad-fork. Then around the age of six we went out to a nice restaurant, and it was a huge deal for me. We had to put on our church suits, comb our hair and wear dress shoes. Before we entered we got a final brief from grandma and our mother, the short version was that if we goofed of or got stupid we would get the spanking to end all spankings. We understood and behaved ourselves. I don't remember much except that the place was really nice and the food was good. I also made a mental note not to put myself in a situation where I would eat at such places; just because I was not comfortable , and this has not changed for me as I have grown older. Still, it was good practice as I would be invited out to nice restaurant by the wealthy parents of my good friends, and I found that my good manners went a long way with them. They were often surprised and they would make a point of telling my mother this when they'd drop me off at the end of whatever event had taken us out. The final event of my early life involved catering at fine private dinner parties (this is fun, if you get a chance to do this it's a great way to make extra cash). I learned to be invisible and courteous. I got to watch sophisticated people in a semi-formal setting, and I learned that all of those manners paid off in many ways.
Flash-forward to 2009. At some of the finest restaurants you can have you meal ruined by some jackass on his cell phone, or conversations about regularity. Don't take my word for it, here's a piece from the SF Chronicle:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/09/DDFT16SDJ3.DTL&hw=bad+manners+in+restaurants&sn=001&sc=1000
For my small fan club, read the article AND the reader comments, many defending their actions. Then read this little advice piece from their restaurant critic on diner who hog tables:
news:www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/mbauer/category?blogid=26&cat=1394
These restaurants are small, maybe 11 or 12 tables and these people make themselves at home.
And again, read the responses:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/mbauer/legacycomments?blogid=26&entry_id=20558
Look at the lead off response, I will quote it for you:
I disagree with your basic premise, and therefore all of your conclusions. I'm 180 degrees out with you on this. I go and eat and enjoy and stay because I want to be there, I want to eat their food, enjoy the atmosphere, and not grab a bite and run.I rent their table to eat their food. They create the atmosphere and food to attract my money and if I'm "someone" add to their appeal to others.I will take my time. It's my time. It's mine to use as I enjoy.It's also somewhat of a competition. If several of us want to enjoy the same situation, we compete. If I get there first, have time and money, you lose. Sorry, but this is about ME and my time and money.If I want to eat and run, I do. If I want to eat and stay I will.UNLESS the restaurant makes their moves to move me... then it's different.So it's not about YOU. It's about me because I got there first. You don't like that. I understand. Sorry. You lost.
"It's not about you. It's about me because I got there first. You don't like that. I understand. Sorry. You lost". Wow, hey guess what? It's not a competition, just because you spend a lot of money on dinner does not give you any special privileges. In fact, the whole idea of fine dining is to display your better self to the public, not be a giant bowel movement. There is zero difference between this clown and the homeless guy in the corner booth at MacDonald's. I take that back, many MacDonald's toss out homeless people after their meal is finished. That single post underlines everything that is wrong with the new-white & wealthy of the United States. The complete lack of shame or humility. The idea that he has won some kind of victory by keeping other diners from "His" table. You can see the roots of all that is wrong in this one post. He pops up a few more times in the comments defending himself.
It is yet another sad state of affairs.
Friday, February 27, 2009
How White People Ruined Baseball
I used to love baseball.
The problem is that the people who run Major League Baseball do not. They love the money but they do not care about how they make that money. They also don't care about the long term health of their players, the men that the fans pay that money to watch play the game. As with other aspects of the modern white American culture, cheating isn't really cheating until you get caught.
When I was a kid, we would watch Willie Mays play with the San Francisco Giants on Saturday afternoon TV games. Guys like Johny Bench and Rollie Fingers were my heroes because they were good players who had a great sense of humor. The Oakland A's became my team in 1972, mostly because on black & white TV their uniforms looked like the uniform of my little league team. That was the first year that they won the World Series, and for the next few years they would win two more. During my teenage years I had lost interest in all sports, but when I was around 22 I got a job at a pro-sports apparel shop. We sold everything from t-shirts to game jerseys and caps. During the day we would put on the radio and tune into whatever game happened to be on at the time. So many a long summer afternoon I would get lost in the game play of the Giants or the A's, the voices of Lon Simmons and Bill King bantering, rattling off statistics and painting a picture of the on-field action. Soon I was once again hooked by baseball, and I would often watch games on TV at home. I even got to watch the A's play the Red Sox one day. Mark McGwire and Dave Henderson both hit home runs and Jose Canseco stole a base on his march to steal 40 bases and hit 40 home runs in a single season. During this time I would begin to hear about steroids and how certain members of the A's were "Juiced" up with them. At the time the NFL was taking steroids seriously and had begun to test for them in it's player ranks. Major League Baseball was a different story, the union somehow had successfully fought testing for steroids and the league office never really pressed the issue. I Like to think the best of people so I didn't take the allegations too seriously. Physical training had evolved over the years and pro athletes now worked out year round.
I began to lose my love for baseball after the second player's strike in the 1990s. If you love the game then you play, if it's about money then I won't waste my time with you. By the time that Jose Canseco wrote his book, and other professional players went public about their own steroid use I was far enough removed from the game that it didn't hit me that hard. As time has passed I have thought about it, and today I'm angry about steroid use in baseball. When the A's were on a 'Roid-fueled roll, I use to watch the incredible game play thinking how lucky I was to able to watch a great team take the field. I thought I could count myself amongst the fans of the 1941 NY Yankees ,and other great teams who shook the baseball world. As it turns out, everything I saw on the field was a lie. Those monster home runs, blinding base-stealing speeds and who knows what else were all chemically enhanced. The fans who saw "Murderer's Row" take the field back in the day can say that their heroes were the real thing, while mine will all have an asterisk next to their names in the record books. I have been robbed. Robbed by the owners, managers, players and the commissioner of baseball. Kansas City sportswriter, Jason Whitlock, wrote a series of articles about steroid use as it related to Barry Bonds but he points out the many underlying reasons for steroid use as well as illustrates beautifully how MLB turned a blind eye to the use of performance enhancing drugs.
Read his work here:
http://http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/9212720/Furor-over-A-Rod,-Bonds-is-all-about-Babe
http://http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/9215280/Go-straight-to-the-top-with-steroid-outrage
As in the house market/mortgage crisis, MLB knew that there was a problem. They made a decision not to do anything about it because it was good for business. The great home run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, and later Barry Bond's chase to break McGwire's record and then Hank Arron's home run record was great for baseball. Stadium were being filled and TV ratings were climbing. Why ruin a good thing, right? As in the financial sector, Major League Baseball turned it's back on basic ethics, and put on sick puppet show instead of a sporting event. The fact that both MLB and the player's union both gleefully ignored the long term health impacts these DRUGS will have on their players was never once considered. The fact that the union was complicit in the cover-up of steroid use is unforgivable, as it stands against everything that a unions is supposed to stand for. I wonder what the union's stance would have been had MLB demanded that all players use steroids? I would say that the union's part in this is shameful but that would mean that those who run the union have ethics or morals. I highly doubt this today. Then the Commissioner, where was he? Managers knew, agents knew, trainers knew, and every player knew about steroid abuse so how could the Commissioner not know?
From here on out, Major League Baseball will be a joke to most of it's fans. When ever a player has a career season the fans will always wonder what he was taking. The fans have been the worst part of this sickness. As long as their team was winning they did not give a damn. They would call into radio talk shows and insist that players have to do what they have to do, which is a uniquely white way to justify cheating and corruption. It is sad that this has infected the other ethnic groups that make up our great land, it's sad because there is nobody to turn to. There is nobody who is clean. Steroids are dog shit, and the white owners of MLB teams want me to believe that it is chocolate, as they track it into my home, and soil my carpet with it.
The problem is that the people who run Major League Baseball do not. They love the money but they do not care about how they make that money. They also don't care about the long term health of their players, the men that the fans pay that money to watch play the game. As with other aspects of the modern white American culture, cheating isn't really cheating until you get caught.
When I was a kid, we would watch Willie Mays play with the San Francisco Giants on Saturday afternoon TV games. Guys like Johny Bench and Rollie Fingers were my heroes because they were good players who had a great sense of humor. The Oakland A's became my team in 1972, mostly because on black & white TV their uniforms looked like the uniform of my little league team. That was the first year that they won the World Series, and for the next few years they would win two more. During my teenage years I had lost interest in all sports, but when I was around 22 I got a job at a pro-sports apparel shop. We sold everything from t-shirts to game jerseys and caps. During the day we would put on the radio and tune into whatever game happened to be on at the time. So many a long summer afternoon I would get lost in the game play of the Giants or the A's, the voices of Lon Simmons and Bill King bantering, rattling off statistics and painting a picture of the on-field action. Soon I was once again hooked by baseball, and I would often watch games on TV at home. I even got to watch the A's play the Red Sox one day. Mark McGwire and Dave Henderson both hit home runs and Jose Canseco stole a base on his march to steal 40 bases and hit 40 home runs in a single season. During this time I would begin to hear about steroids and how certain members of the A's were "Juiced" up with them. At the time the NFL was taking steroids seriously and had begun to test for them in it's player ranks. Major League Baseball was a different story, the union somehow had successfully fought testing for steroids and the league office never really pressed the issue. I Like to think the best of people so I didn't take the allegations too seriously. Physical training had evolved over the years and pro athletes now worked out year round.
I began to lose my love for baseball after the second player's strike in the 1990s. If you love the game then you play, if it's about money then I won't waste my time with you. By the time that Jose Canseco wrote his book, and other professional players went public about their own steroid use I was far enough removed from the game that it didn't hit me that hard. As time has passed I have thought about it, and today I'm angry about steroid use in baseball. When the A's were on a 'Roid-fueled roll, I use to watch the incredible game play thinking how lucky I was to able to watch a great team take the field. I thought I could count myself amongst the fans of the 1941 NY Yankees ,and other great teams who shook the baseball world. As it turns out, everything I saw on the field was a lie. Those monster home runs, blinding base-stealing speeds and who knows what else were all chemically enhanced. The fans who saw "Murderer's Row" take the field back in the day can say that their heroes were the real thing, while mine will all have an asterisk next to their names in the record books. I have been robbed. Robbed by the owners, managers, players and the commissioner of baseball. Kansas City sportswriter, Jason Whitlock, wrote a series of articles about steroid use as it related to Barry Bonds but he points out the many underlying reasons for steroid use as well as illustrates beautifully how MLB turned a blind eye to the use of performance enhancing drugs.
Read his work here:
http://http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/9212720/Furor-over-A-Rod,-Bonds-is-all-about-Babe
http://http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/9215280/Go-straight-to-the-top-with-steroid-outrage
As in the house market/mortgage crisis, MLB knew that there was a problem. They made a decision not to do anything about it because it was good for business. The great home run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, and later Barry Bond's chase to break McGwire's record and then Hank Arron's home run record was great for baseball. Stadium were being filled and TV ratings were climbing. Why ruin a good thing, right? As in the financial sector, Major League Baseball turned it's back on basic ethics, and put on sick puppet show instead of a sporting event. The fact that both MLB and the player's union both gleefully ignored the long term health impacts these DRUGS will have on their players was never once considered. The fact that the union was complicit in the cover-up of steroid use is unforgivable, as it stands against everything that a unions is supposed to stand for. I wonder what the union's stance would have been had MLB demanded that all players use steroids? I would say that the union's part in this is shameful but that would mean that those who run the union have ethics or morals. I highly doubt this today. Then the Commissioner, where was he? Managers knew, agents knew, trainers knew, and every player knew about steroid abuse so how could the Commissioner not know?
From here on out, Major League Baseball will be a joke to most of it's fans. When ever a player has a career season the fans will always wonder what he was taking. The fans have been the worst part of this sickness. As long as their team was winning they did not give a damn. They would call into radio talk shows and insist that players have to do what they have to do, which is a uniquely white way to justify cheating and corruption. It is sad that this has infected the other ethnic groups that make up our great land, it's sad because there is nobody to turn to. There is nobody who is clean. Steroids are dog shit, and the white owners of MLB teams want me to believe that it is chocolate, as they track it into my home, and soil my carpet with it.
Friday, January 30, 2009
White People And Fences
I recently drove through my childhood neighborhood on the outskirts of Carmel, California. Mission Fields was built in 1947-48 in the housing boom after WWI and was tract housing that was a mix of five or six floor-plans in a subdivision of maybe 70 homes. The homes were small but sensible, usually with 3 bedrooms and 1&1/2 baths. They all had a good sized back yards which were perfect for little kids and big dogs. It was a great place to grow up. When we sold the house in 1988 we got $165,000 for it and we felt bad for the price because it needed a new roof and new plumbing. Today the house, because of it's location, is worth $889,000.
If the home were located in Muncie, Indiana it would sell for $35,000, San Antonio, TX, $250,000, and in Minneapolis, MN, the home would sell for around $169,000 based on January, 2009 surveys.
The idea that a county tax assessor or a home appraiser with half a brain would list my old house for more than $300,000 is a sick joke. Since we left our home in 1988, the Carmel River has left it's banks twice to flood our old house up to about 14 inches inside of the house. It sits in a flood plain for God's sake, how can it be valued so high when you'd have to replace the floor and walls every 7 to 10 years? It's just another sign of how out of control the banks and mortgage companies and the state are as far as housing prices go.
If the home were located in Muncie, Indiana it would sell for $35,000, San Antonio, TX, $250,000, and in Minneapolis, MN, the home would sell for around $169,000 based on January, 2009 surveys.
The idea that a county tax assessor or a home appraiser with half a brain would list my old house for more than $300,000 is a sick joke. Since we left our home in 1988, the Carmel River has left it's banks twice to flood our old house up to about 14 inches inside of the house. It sits in a flood plain for God's sake, how can it be valued so high when you'd have to replace the floor and walls every 7 to 10 years? It's just another sign of how out of control the banks and mortgage companies and the state are as far as housing prices go.
The Downside of Sky High Prices
The problem when you have people spending that kind of money for tract housing is that you have people who don't really belong in the neighborhood. They will never be happy in those kinds of homes for what they've paid for them. So the first thing many of them do is add a second story, which is ridiculous because the updated home looks tacky. The next thing that they do is add a fence around the front yard. These fences have been added in about one third of the homes that face Rio Road and they have destroyed the character of the neighborhood. When I was a kid, a few of the homes had tall hedges that separated the home on one or both sides of the home. Usually a fence denoted a home where the wife has emotional issues. Most of old Mission Fields only saw fences in the back areas and most of those were white picket fences. Part of the charm of Mission Fields was that it was a neighborhood full of neighbors. Today it is marred by ugly fences that stand out like an ugly pox.
Driving up into Carmel, along Junipreo I found that the fence problem was even more profound in the million dollar homes that populate this region. I understand that the root of the word "Exclusive" is "Exclude", and this is what walls and fences do. It is sad that a town that once was home to great and talented people is now polluted by people who's only status is money. It is pollution. It is as unwelcome as a broken sewer pipe. I don't know when the breakdown occurred but it is total, there simply are too few wealthy people who have class or good taste in America today.
Monday, November 24, 2008
The Disconnect of Science and The New White in America
I was born in 1964, four years into the Space Race. Science was everywhere in American life and a cornerstone of the public & private school. We watched in awe as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the Moon and Jacques Cousteau took us into the deep ocean each week on TV. Chemistry sets were popular items at toy stores and Mr Wizard shared the world of Science with young minds on Saturday morning.
Then something happened in the 1970s that has begun to poison America and it has been spurred on by white people.
"Back to Nature" happened. Failed Hippies decided that technology was evil and began to back away from science and began to embrace wives's tales and folk medicine. At first it was only a small number of drug-addled losers who headed off into the woods, not the real woods like you'd find in Alaska, but the safe woods of Colorado and Vermont. From those sad few has sprung forth a billion dollar industry of books, produce and dietary supplements that should be considered monuments to quackery, yet they are not and otherwise intelligent people (most White) have embraced well markets fairy tales and magic potions. Alternative medicine, alternative fuel and all kinds of blame-your-parents self-help books (DVDs and Cd's) can be commonly found in the homes of people who should know better. As I covered briefly in the last entry, the new White has backed away from religion but it seems that it has only backed away from traditional religion because in 2008 it seems that the New White of America has a pretty ridged demi-religion based on faux-science.
Alternative medicine has it's roots in 19th Century snake-oil salesmen who traveled the land selling miracle elixirs that cured everything from gout to back-pain. It was usually grain alcohol and sundry other useless additives. The swindling salesmen were usually hunted down and hung as people died from their miracle cure. Somehow snake-oil has made a comeback in the form of Alternative Medicine and the supplement industry. Once again snake-oil salesmen canvas the country, this time via paid commercial television info-mercials, making the exact same claims for health breakthroughs that "Conventional Science" has yet to achieve. They can cure baldness, impotence, aging, obesity and even cancer. How this is allowed and why these people are not all in prison defies what used to be known as logic. My all-time favorite alternative medical treatment is the Colonic. Essentially you shove a hose up your ass and pump warm water into your rectum. One bullshit Internet site says that it removes accumulated waste from the colon, prevents constipation and improves overall health. The problem is that none of that is true. Why? Because today they (real Doctors) can shove a camera up your ass and see what is up there and guess what they do not find? Accumulated waste. Your intestines and colon are very efficient at moving waste through your body, if anything gets stuck in there you'd know very fast because you get sick and then you die in a matter of days. So if you know some idiot who gets a colonic on a regular basis it's not doing him any good and he/she may just like having stuff pumped into his/her asshole. Then there is the whole "Environmental Sensitivity" bullshit issue where people are "Allergic" to modern chemicals and have to live in special homes and apartments. These people need mental help, not an immunologist and worse, some of these places are built with taxpayer money. Why this concept isn't given it's proper due, which is to be laughed off of the planet, is beyond me as well. It's Hypochondria plain and simple. Yet main-stream media treats the subject with great sensitivity yet on the very same broadcast the anchor people (usually white) will read a story about the Virgin Mary appearing in a tree while rolling their eyes. Would they roll their eyes if the Virgin Mary spoke and said that they need to live in chemical-free housing and get enemas every Thursday? Might as well, if you're gonna be stupid then be completely stupid.
Not all of those anti-technology idiots fled into the woods, one became a US Senator and eventually became Vice President of the United States. He even co-won the Nobel Prize for his activism in raising consciousness about global warming, the bench mark of the New White's overall stupidity. Al Gore is a religious fanatic and he has twisted his apocalyptic vision into a very profitable business using the emerging science of climatology (which really began in WWII) to weave a twisted tale of woe where - stop me if you've heard this before - man, in his arrogance has made the Earth foul with evil (technology) and hence God, I mean the Earth has begun to cause the seas to rise and soon mankind will be erased by a great flood and a host of other biblical plagues. Well, he's left the Bible out of it but it's pretty much the flood story of the boom of Genesis and the Egypt part of Exodus thrown in for affect. If you've ever read the Unabomber Manifesto and then Gore's "Earth in the Balance" you cannot tell the two appart because both are written by mad men. Gore just looks better on TV but he's a nutcase. Climate change is very real but the facts are obscured by bullshit as big industry scrambles to cash in on the emerging "Green" technology market. Who's the biggest producer of windmill generators? Shell Oil. Yet people are passing laws giving tax payer monies to windmill generator companies because it's "Green". So in the 2008 we elect a President who will stop giving tax breaks to oil companies but then well just give them taxpayer money because they build windmills. That is logic only the New White can fathom.
Then you throw in the whole self-help industry. While the New White poo-poo Scientology they shell out big bucks for books and seminars that all pretty much tell them the same thing that Scientology would tell them: Your problems are somebody else's fault.
Usually your parents. Heaven forbid that you accept responsability for your own actions, that just won't do because that would mean that you've been in full control all along and you might just be an asshole. No, Mom & Dad fucked me up and my getting VD at 15 and losing my job at 34 because I came to work drunk was THEIR FAULT. At least Scientology hangs the blame on aliens which is slightly more ehtical because there's not the ugliness and akward Thanksgivings that you get with the self-help gurus. I had issues with my father and step father. I had good counceling from a certified psychological expert and I was able to move on with my life. That's how it is supposed to be, I was hurt, I was healed and I'm okay. The professional victim has been discussed at large in the media and rightly so and I don't want to re-hash it here. My issue is that just because your parents sucked is no excuse for whatever stupid actions you take. Unless your parents by you booze/drugs/hookers and then force you to use them then the fault lies with you.
The AA knows this. Their 12-Step program is still the single most effective way to beat addiction and change behavior but it cannot be adapted by Schools, Colleges or the Government. Why? Because the 11th & 12th steps involve praying or meditating to make a contact with God. Uh oh! The arguement against seems logical, that you are simply surrendering one crutch (booze) for a new one(God) yet there is no other treatment (drug) free that can tout the same success that AA can. I'm not pro-religion, I'm just pointing out what works best and that while the New White has turned it's back on solid science to embrace a religion of the oppressed and abused that has it's own dogma of special (re: suppressed) science, the New White thumbs its collective nose at any mention of God.
Much like a bunch of pathetic vampires.
It it hard to believe that we put men on the Moon and have mapped the human genome.
Then something happened in the 1970s that has begun to poison America and it has been spurred on by white people.
"Back to Nature" happened. Failed Hippies decided that technology was evil and began to back away from science and began to embrace wives's tales and folk medicine. At first it was only a small number of drug-addled losers who headed off into the woods, not the real woods like you'd find in Alaska, but the safe woods of Colorado and Vermont. From those sad few has sprung forth a billion dollar industry of books, produce and dietary supplements that should be considered monuments to quackery, yet they are not and otherwise intelligent people (most White) have embraced well markets fairy tales and magic potions. Alternative medicine, alternative fuel and all kinds of blame-your-parents self-help books (DVDs and Cd's) can be commonly found in the homes of people who should know better. As I covered briefly in the last entry, the new White has backed away from religion but it seems that it has only backed away from traditional religion because in 2008 it seems that the New White of America has a pretty ridged demi-religion based on faux-science.
Alternative medicine has it's roots in 19th Century snake-oil salesmen who traveled the land selling miracle elixirs that cured everything from gout to back-pain. It was usually grain alcohol and sundry other useless additives. The swindling salesmen were usually hunted down and hung as people died from their miracle cure. Somehow snake-oil has made a comeback in the form of Alternative Medicine and the supplement industry. Once again snake-oil salesmen canvas the country, this time via paid commercial television info-mercials, making the exact same claims for health breakthroughs that "Conventional Science" has yet to achieve. They can cure baldness, impotence, aging, obesity and even cancer. How this is allowed and why these people are not all in prison defies what used to be known as logic. My all-time favorite alternative medical treatment is the Colonic. Essentially you shove a hose up your ass and pump warm water into your rectum. One bullshit Internet site says that it removes accumulated waste from the colon, prevents constipation and improves overall health. The problem is that none of that is true. Why? Because today they (real Doctors) can shove a camera up your ass and see what is up there and guess what they do not find? Accumulated waste. Your intestines and colon are very efficient at moving waste through your body, if anything gets stuck in there you'd know very fast because you get sick and then you die in a matter of days. So if you know some idiot who gets a colonic on a regular basis it's not doing him any good and he/she may just like having stuff pumped into his/her asshole. Then there is the whole "Environmental Sensitivity" bullshit issue where people are "Allergic" to modern chemicals and have to live in special homes and apartments. These people need mental help, not an immunologist and worse, some of these places are built with taxpayer money. Why this concept isn't given it's proper due, which is to be laughed off of the planet, is beyond me as well. It's Hypochondria plain and simple. Yet main-stream media treats the subject with great sensitivity yet on the very same broadcast the anchor people (usually white) will read a story about the Virgin Mary appearing in a tree while rolling their eyes. Would they roll their eyes if the Virgin Mary spoke and said that they need to live in chemical-free housing and get enemas every Thursday? Might as well, if you're gonna be stupid then be completely stupid.
Not all of those anti-technology idiots fled into the woods, one became a US Senator and eventually became Vice President of the United States. He even co-won the Nobel Prize for his activism in raising consciousness about global warming, the bench mark of the New White's overall stupidity. Al Gore is a religious fanatic and he has twisted his apocalyptic vision into a very profitable business using the emerging science of climatology (which really began in WWII) to weave a twisted tale of woe where - stop me if you've heard this before - man, in his arrogance has made the Earth foul with evil (technology) and hence God, I mean the Earth has begun to cause the seas to rise and soon mankind will be erased by a great flood and a host of other biblical plagues. Well, he's left the Bible out of it but it's pretty much the flood story of the boom of Genesis and the Egypt part of Exodus thrown in for affect. If you've ever read the Unabomber Manifesto and then Gore's "Earth in the Balance" you cannot tell the two appart because both are written by mad men. Gore just looks better on TV but he's a nutcase. Climate change is very real but the facts are obscured by bullshit as big industry scrambles to cash in on the emerging "Green" technology market. Who's the biggest producer of windmill generators? Shell Oil. Yet people are passing laws giving tax payer monies to windmill generator companies because it's "Green". So in the 2008 we elect a President who will stop giving tax breaks to oil companies but then well just give them taxpayer money because they build windmills. That is logic only the New White can fathom.
Then you throw in the whole self-help industry. While the New White poo-poo Scientology they shell out big bucks for books and seminars that all pretty much tell them the same thing that Scientology would tell them: Your problems are somebody else's fault.
Usually your parents. Heaven forbid that you accept responsability for your own actions, that just won't do because that would mean that you've been in full control all along and you might just be an asshole. No, Mom & Dad fucked me up and my getting VD at 15 and losing my job at 34 because I came to work drunk was THEIR FAULT. At least Scientology hangs the blame on aliens which is slightly more ehtical because there's not the ugliness and akward Thanksgivings that you get with the self-help gurus. I had issues with my father and step father. I had good counceling from a certified psychological expert and I was able to move on with my life. That's how it is supposed to be, I was hurt, I was healed and I'm okay. The professional victim has been discussed at large in the media and rightly so and I don't want to re-hash it here. My issue is that just because your parents sucked is no excuse for whatever stupid actions you take. Unless your parents by you booze/drugs/hookers and then force you to use them then the fault lies with you.
The AA knows this. Their 12-Step program is still the single most effective way to beat addiction and change behavior but it cannot be adapted by Schools, Colleges or the Government. Why? Because the 11th & 12th steps involve praying or meditating to make a contact with God. Uh oh! The arguement against seems logical, that you are simply surrendering one crutch (booze) for a new one(God) yet there is no other treatment (drug) free that can tout the same success that AA can. I'm not pro-religion, I'm just pointing out what works best and that while the New White has turned it's back on solid science to embrace a religion of the oppressed and abused that has it's own dogma of special (re: suppressed) science, the New White thumbs its collective nose at any mention of God.
Much like a bunch of pathetic vampires.
It it hard to believe that we put men on the Moon and have mapped the human genome.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
The Disconnect Between White People And Religion
There has been a dramatic fundamental shift in how White Americans deal with religion since the 1970s and it is not good. The other day my buddy, Mike, was working in Carmel and was having a discussion with a client when he reference the Bible. He says that it was if he had pulled out a gun because his client, an otherwise smart,educated and wealthy man completely became unglued. It was like showing a Vampire a Cross. This is an all too common reaction that is exclusive to White people and it is both sad and more than a little silly. I do understand why there is a issue with religion in today's American society but it does not justify the near hysteria demonstrated by White people no matter which side of the debate they are on.
A Quick & Sloppy History
America's first large group of immigrants were Puritans, who settled in New England to escape religious persecution in England. They soon got around to persecuting non-Puritans which seems to have established a trend in America as new immigrant populations arrive that have different religious beliefs. America was huge and this allowed sub-sects of Anglican churches to spring up and thrive between 1690 and 1899. Shakers, Quakers, Methodists, Baptists, Brethren and those crazy people who dance with poisonous snakes all became part of the American religious landscape. To deal with this the Congress during the Constitutional Convention made a point of mandating a separation of church & state by forbidding making of law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. In some states at that time you couldn't run for office if you didn't belong to the right church. This has worked pretty well until the 1980s. In the old days, religion and church was something that White people did for a variety of reasons. Church was a good social gathering, a good place to catch up on the week's activities and chat with friends. Church was good for businessmen who could network and drum up work for the next week. Church was also a good place to go and for an hour get a dose of the Bible either in soothing Episcopal tones or in fire & brimstone sermons. The other six days of the week most White people went about their days business as usual but some (many) would try to incorporate what they were reminded about in church into their activities. The majority of White people kept their religion to themselves and minded their own business. In the 1920s it would actually be the Catholic Churches in Chicago and New York that began to force government to do their bidding as motion pictures became more popular. Movies brought "Dangerous ideas and questionable moral behavior" into their neighborhoods and were considered a threat to the minds of young Catholic children. Their cause was soon taken up by the Southern Baptists and smaller Evangelical churches and soon the movie industry was forced to adopt a strict code that made movies suck until the 1960s. Outside to the theaters things were civil until the turmoil of the 1960s. Young people replaced LSD and pot for Jesus and the Bible. Anything went and often did. Then in 1973 the landmark Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion began the snowball that has become the Conservative, Right-Wing Christian (CRWC) movement of today. Up until 1973 the government had allowed itself to give judgement in favor of religious groups [ not that this was all bad. John Bron was a religious fanatic and later the Republican Party was formed by anti-Slavery Christians who plunged the United States into a civil war to decide that question once and for all]
The CRWC movement was a reaction to the liberal intelligentsia who had been actively trying to push out traditional morals (as the CRWC saw them) and instituting a non-moral society with concepts like relativism. Roe v Wade was the straw that broke the camel's back and would ignite a movement that would eventually put two Presidents into the White House. The problem was that the CRWC sold their souls to the Republican Party (GOP) in order to gain power. The GOP in the late 70s was crippled by Nixon and Watergate and saw the CRWC (and their money) as a way back into power so they opened their doors wide and thus created the single most unholy alliance since the Third Reich and the Vatican. All a GOP candidate had to do was be against abortion and maybe be against gay marriage and they got the votes. Nobody cared that many were actually crooks. Plus, the Republican Party was against social spending which meant that believers in Jesus were electing politicians into power who were fucking the poor. Worse, the cuts in social programs under the Republicans lead to MORE abortions as financial options of singe women dwindled under their leadership. Non-fundamentalists and non-Christians became disgusted by this alliance of the GOP and CRWC so soon there became a large rift as White people no longer minded their business and gleefully stuck there noses into other people's lives to question/mock their motives. This went both ways which has gotten us to where we are today.
9/11/2001
The anti-religious White Americans got their broken camel's back on a morning in September of 2001 when 19 religious fanatics hijacked four commercial passenger jets and flew three of them into the World Trade Center in New York and into the Pentagon in Washington D.C. ( the fourth jetliner was flown into the ground in Pennsylvania as passengers staged a revolt). They saw this act as proof that religion was a cesspool for the weak minded and a backwater movement gained traction. This was the Militant Atheist (MA) and they saw their chance to step out into the sunlight and raise their smug voices to point out the insanity of religion in the 21st Century. Atheism had been around for a while. The Communists were big on it and in the 1940s, 50s,60s and 70s it had flourished in college campuses amongst Philosophy students. It was harmless and in many ways liberating because one felt that their personal conduct was based upon their own morals and feelings instead of being dictated by an unseen, all-controlling being. Militant Atheists were few and far between and seen as trouble makers. Madalyn Murray O'Hair
would fall into this category for while she is seen as a champion of the First Amendment the fact is that she was a con-artist who (according to her son) took money from a lot of people. She began a chain of events that has co-formed the foundation of the religious disconnect of the New White American.
The MA are different than traditional atheists just as the CRWC are different than traditional Christians in that they do not conduct themselves as atheists. The MA are so solid in their beliefs that they have turned atheism into...wait for it...a religion. Make no mistake on this, the belief that there is absolutely no God/creator/supreme universal intelligence is as equal a statement of FAITH as the belief in a God (or gods). It is the intellectually honest truth of the matter. That's why the old-school atheists were so quiet, theirs was a philosophical belief and not a statement of fact which in the case of a God is also a statement of faith. So Americans was divided into the CRWC, who elect politicians who are everything BUT Christian and the MA who are conducting a religious war against other religions but don't know that it is a religious war because they've turned Atheism into a de facto religion. In between the two are everyone else. People who have some kind of religious faith but don't go to church , church-going folks who don't drink the Kool-aid and normal non-believers. So as the MA file lawsuits over increasingly stupid things and the CRWC lick their wounds from the 2008 election the majority of White Americans just want to avoid the topic of religion all together and it is starting to make them(us) crazy. Some literally run from the room if religion is brought up and of course everyone is now offended at any perceived slight. So honest discussions of faith are few and far between outside of church and I don't see this as a good thing.
Most people have not bothered to read the Bible or read beyond the Bible into the archives of Biblical Scholarship where one can learn how the Bible was written and who wrote what and why. What comes into focus through Biblical scholarship is that a group of people were trying to make sense of crazy times and bring some kind of order into play to cool everyone off and make them less crazy. They didn't have all the answers and you'll find that today we don't have many more answers than they did. The problem is that you cannot teach Biblical scholarship in a public school and while a good Catholic School will offer these classes you often will not find Biblical scholarship discussion within the church itself. So the faithful are at a loss to the developments in archeology and scholarship that have fleshed out the Bible and the Gospels bringing them into clearer focus. So you have churches that don't want to educate people about what is going on in Biblical scholarship and you have people who think that they know everything about religion yet cannot answer basic questions about the subject even if only to dispute it.
For example, there are many MA and young religious types who call Tom Cruise's church a religion. They don't know the difference between a cult and a religion. This is painfully common even among better educated White folks as well. A cult is easy to get into and hard/impossible to get out of/away from. I walked away from the Episcopal church in 1979 and they've never said boo about it. They've never tried to kidnap me and reprogram me and I do not even receive a harassing newsletter. Church doors are always open and you can walk in and walk out any time you please. That some self-proclaimed Atheists don't know this calls into question their judgement and that other young Christian types the same as true as they somehow see the faith of Cruise as somehow on equal apostolic footing.
Really, you gotta be white to think like this.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Up Scale Grocery Shopping
Living on the Monterey Peninsula I find my grocery shopping options restricted to small independent markets and large “Up Scale” chains. Although deals can be found the food is mostly more expensive than similar items I would buy at markets in lower income areas. So I limit my shopping in these places to goodies that are exclusive to them. However I find shopping in upscale supermarkets a great chance to observe upper-middle class and wealthier white people in one of their new natural habitats. They put in a Trader Joe’s down the street from where I work and I go there at least once a week to buy their pre-packed salads and maybe some cookies. The folks who shop at Trader Joe’s are the poster children of the new white in America.
First off simply entering the Trader Joe’s parking lot is an act of suicide if you are a pedestrian. Although people who shop at Joe’s tend to think of themselves as intelligent and socially aware this does not extend to pedestrians, city buses nor other drivers. This was observed behavior at the other Trader Joe’s over in Pacific Grove, CA, were I stopped going after my third near death experience with either a soccer mom in a over-sized SUV talking on the cell phone or a Mercedes driven by a guy in a suit who is at war with the world. So awful at driving are those who shop at Trader Joe’s that the city of Monterey has been compelled to move the Transit Center four blocks away because it has become too dangerous for the Transit system to risk the lives of their riders as they attempt to cross the street at the funky intersection. You need to understand that with the New White in America it’s only about them and their needs and while they slap Amnesty International and anti-Bush stickers on their vehicles they have no empathy for their fellow drivers or the hapless pedestrian who gets in their way.
Once inside of the market you find the same situation that you’ll find at Borders except at a much accelerated rate. Also, many of these people rarely read because they already know everything. Here you will find people who will cut you off with their shopping carts and block off huge sections with those carts as they attempt to make up their minds. It’s as if they take up station to blockade a location. The next group is mostly middle-aged female and they are what I call “Zombie-Hawks” because they movie as if they are in a trance but they also dart from section to section, their eyes fixed solely on their target. Often there are near collisions as two zombie cross paths and the new White way is visible at these moments because instead of a pleasant apology (“Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going”) the zombies will shoot each other dirty looks. The phrase “Excuse me” is absent at Trader Joe’s as it is at Borders. As I stood in front of the frozen burritos a older women just wedges up beside of me and then swings around and wedges in from the other side never once acknowledging my presence if even only to ask me to move. This has become so common that I’ve surrendered to the vulgarity of the new normal. If a 70 year old woman, who should know better, cannot even bother with basic civility then there is truly no hope.
This is NOT a knock against Trader Joe’s, their staff is friendly and courteous and their store is clean and well stocked. Trader Joe’s is a well-run store from top to bottom from my perspective.
Meanwhile the California supermarket chain, Safeway, has quietly gone upscale as well. I walked into a recently re-modeled Safeway that I had grown up with in Carmel. They’ve added a large deli and a Starbucks but they’re swapped out the old well-lit store for a darker store with “Feature” spotlighting. Isles have been sacrificed for smaller islands where certain items are featured as if they were in an art museum. Since this Safeway is at the mouth of the Carmel Valley, where the average home is $1.2 million the shoppers here put on what can only be described as a fashion show for freaks. Older women dressed like anime cowboys, wearing black legging on bodies that have long since seen better days. Other women are in outfits that are just way too over the top to wear to a supermarket.
This is the same Safeway where actress Doris Day came to shop for dog food at least twice a week back in the 1980s and she always wore blue-jeans and always drove her Jeep. The very same Safeway where Ansel Adams and Edward Weston came to shop back in the day.. Even John Travolta and his wife, Kelly Preston have been regular shoppers to this Safeway from time to time. None of those folks were ever…how should I put this? None of those people were ever assholes.
One thing I notice is that at both Trader Joe’s and that Carmel Safeway is that there is little conversation at the check-out counter between the shoppers and the cashiers. You would think that in a place that where people shop on a weekly or bi-weekly basis that there would be some basic familiar chatter. You would think this because in normal supermarkets this is a standard practice because when you see the same people regularly you begin to smile and wave at the very least and most of the time you will say hello and even learn their names. Not at Trader Joe’s and not at that Carmel Safeway. There is almost no interaction between the customers and the staff. This is probably the saddest aspect of the New White, they just can’t be bothered.
First off simply entering the Trader Joe’s parking lot is an act of suicide if you are a pedestrian. Although people who shop at Joe’s tend to think of themselves as intelligent and socially aware this does not extend to pedestrians, city buses nor other drivers. This was observed behavior at the other Trader Joe’s over in Pacific Grove, CA, were I stopped going after my third near death experience with either a soccer mom in a over-sized SUV talking on the cell phone or a Mercedes driven by a guy in a suit who is at war with the world. So awful at driving are those who shop at Trader Joe’s that the city of Monterey has been compelled to move the Transit Center four blocks away because it has become too dangerous for the Transit system to risk the lives of their riders as they attempt to cross the street at the funky intersection. You need to understand that with the New White in America it’s only about them and their needs and while they slap Amnesty International and anti-Bush stickers on their vehicles they have no empathy for their fellow drivers or the hapless pedestrian who gets in their way.
Once inside of the market you find the same situation that you’ll find at Borders except at a much accelerated rate. Also, many of these people rarely read because they already know everything. Here you will find people who will cut you off with their shopping carts and block off huge sections with those carts as they attempt to make up their minds. It’s as if they take up station to blockade a location. The next group is mostly middle-aged female and they are what I call “Zombie-Hawks” because they movie as if they are in a trance but they also dart from section to section, their eyes fixed solely on their target. Often there are near collisions as two zombie cross paths and the new White way is visible at these moments because instead of a pleasant apology (“Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going”) the zombies will shoot each other dirty looks. The phrase “Excuse me” is absent at Trader Joe’s as it is at Borders. As I stood in front of the frozen burritos a older women just wedges up beside of me and then swings around and wedges in from the other side never once acknowledging my presence if even only to ask me to move. This has become so common that I’ve surrendered to the vulgarity of the new normal. If a 70 year old woman, who should know better, cannot even bother with basic civility then there is truly no hope.
This is NOT a knock against Trader Joe’s, their staff is friendly and courteous and their store is clean and well stocked. Trader Joe’s is a well-run store from top to bottom from my perspective.
Meanwhile the California supermarket chain, Safeway, has quietly gone upscale as well. I walked into a recently re-modeled Safeway that I had grown up with in Carmel. They’ve added a large deli and a Starbucks but they’re swapped out the old well-lit store for a darker store with “Feature” spotlighting. Isles have been sacrificed for smaller islands where certain items are featured as if they were in an art museum. Since this Safeway is at the mouth of the Carmel Valley, where the average home is $1.2 million the shoppers here put on what can only be described as a fashion show for freaks. Older women dressed like anime cowboys, wearing black legging on bodies that have long since seen better days. Other women are in outfits that are just way too over the top to wear to a supermarket.
This is the same Safeway where actress Doris Day came to shop for dog food at least twice a week back in the 1980s and she always wore blue-jeans and always drove her Jeep. The very same Safeway where Ansel Adams and Edward Weston came to shop back in the day.. Even John Travolta and his wife, Kelly Preston have been regular shoppers to this Safeway from time to time. None of those folks were ever…how should I put this? None of those people were ever assholes.
One thing I notice is that at both Trader Joe’s and that Carmel Safeway is that there is little conversation at the check-out counter between the shoppers and the cashiers. You would think that in a place that where people shop on a weekly or bi-weekly basis that there would be some basic familiar chatter. You would think this because in normal supermarkets this is a standard practice because when you see the same people regularly you begin to smile and wave at the very least and most of the time you will say hello and even learn their names. Not at Trader Joe’s and not at that Carmel Safeway. There is almost no interaction between the customers and the staff. This is probably the saddest aspect of the New White, they just can’t be bothered.
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