JW Kennedy (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} dr_phlog) wrote,@ 2009-02-11 13:54:00 |
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Conservative Gibberish
Working at the State Capitol I've heard some really funny Republican one-liners. Trouble is, they weren't meant as jokes.
Number 1, a real zinger: Global warming is fake, because man doesn't have the power to affect his own environment to such a degree. "How egotistical to think we could," the conservative knucklehead said to me, as if his pious mock-humility proved something.
How irresponsible to claim that we can't, especially when all you have to do is step outside the building and look around to see the evidence of man's impact on his environment. I don't think those skyscrapers, that pavement, those cars, and that diesel stink in the air just GREW there naturally. To those who claim humanity has no lasting impact, I would like to point out a few of the more famous "modern" extinctions which humans were totally responsible for: the great auk. The dodo. The passenger pigeon. Gone, and never coming back, and it's our fault. I ask you this: Do you use the toilet, or do you shit on the floor of your apartment? Because if it was me, and I believed man had no power to destroy his own environment, I would crap on the floor. I would save a bundle on my water bill, and I would know for sure that rotting pile of human waste in the corner was NOT making my apartment a dangerous and unhealthy place to live. The point of this analogy is that the earth, though large, is a sealed system ... and billions of people (more than there have ever been) are finding newer and better ways to crap in the living room every day. Tell me with a straight face that this won't have some kind of effect.
The next three are about guns.
Number 2: A group of lobbyists sporting large buttons with the slogan "Guns save lives."
Really? I guess that explains why there's a gun in my first-aid kit. That explains why EMTs carry sidearms. That explains why, when someone starts choking in a restaurant, the first thing you yell is "Quick! Does anybody have a gun?" No? Well, perhaps the logic is something more along the lines of "Fight fire with fire" which can actually be true: When fighting a forest fire, crews will start a controlled burn going in the opposite direction to prevent the fire from spreading. You can use a gun to intimidate or kill a dangerous person before he has a chance to do the same, on a larger scale. You can fight fire with fire. You can still burn your house down. Guns only save lives by facilitating a pre-emptive strike, in other words "kill 'em before they kill you." Guns save lives. Fires prevent burning. Yeah right. Only if you believe in "kill or be killed." Then you're among the ranks of Those Who Probably Should Be Stopped.
Number 3: A gun is a tool.
Indeed. I suppose there are rivet guns, nail guns, and staple guns ... but these are a far cry from a handgun, the only purpose of which is to throw bits of metal at high velocity, thereby tearing holes in soft things. (Like human bodies.) A gun's purpose is to injure or kill. You can't tighten a bolt with it. You can't open a package with it. You can't perform surgery with it. You can't change your brake pads with it. I suppose you could use the gun to threaten someone and make him do these things for you, but that's the only sense in which a gun is a tool. If there's nobody around to point it at, what good is it? If you were stranded in the wilderness, which would you rather have: a gun or a knife? I'd take the knife, because I can use it to carve wood, skin animals, make snares, build shelter, etc etc. With a gun I might be able to shoot some critter, but then how would I skin it & dress it & prepare it for my dinner? In the absence of human society, a gun becomes a nearly useless implement. About the only thing you can do with it is use it as a hammer, but there's another device which does that job much better: it's called a hammer. Which, incidentally, can also be used as a weapon.
Number 4: The same intellectual who thought man had no power over his environment also produced this gem of logic, supposedly to refute the bleeding-heart liberals' pleas for gun control: "Knives are dangerous; why don't we pass laws to restrict knives?"
This strikes me as rather glib, perhaps rhetorical because - on the face of it, this makes little sense. If we outlawed everything that was dangerous, we wouldn't be allowed to get out of bed. But the question deserves an answer. The lack of knife-control laws could have something to do with the fact that a knife won't accidentally fire and take off Junior's head. You just don't hear very many stories about tragic knife accidents. You don't hear much about gangstas waving knives around. Curt Cobain didn't kill himself with a knife. Dick Cheney didn't accidentally stab his hunting buddy in the face with a knife. A blade requires a bit more intentionality to use: if you want to injure somebody with a knife, you have to wield it and slash and come at the person. There's more to it than just point-and-squeeze. You have to really mean it. That's a big part of why when people snap, they tend to go on SHOOTING rampages rather than stabbing rampages. Knives are just not deadly enough, and they require too much effort. And even the most dull-witted and negligent parents, for some reason, seem to have the sense to keep knives away from children, when they don't have the same sense about guns. A knife is understood better even by simpler minds, since there's a direct cognitive linkage of the object with the danger (sharp=will cut you) that isn't there with guns (blunt, heavy, shiny=toy?)
I try to respect the other side of political debate, but when the other side evinces a complete lack of rational thought, what am I supposed to conclude?
Working at the State Capitol I've heard some really funny Republican one-liners. Trouble is, they weren't meant as jokes.
Number 1, a real zinger: Global warming is fake, because man doesn't have the power to affect his own environment to such a degree. "How egotistical to think we could," the conservative knucklehead said to me, as if his pious mock-humility proved something.
How irresponsible to claim that we can't, especially when all you have to do is step outside the building and look around to see the evidence of man's impact on his environment. I don't think those skyscrapers, that pavement, those cars, and that diesel stink in the air just GREW there naturally. To those who claim humanity has no lasting impact, I would like to point out a few of the more famous "modern" extinctions which humans were totally responsible for: the great auk. The dodo. The passenger pigeon. Gone, and never coming back, and it's our fault. I ask you this: Do you use the toilet, or do you shit on the floor of your apartment? Because if it was me, and I believed man had no power to destroy his own environment, I would crap on the floor. I would save a bundle on my water bill, and I would know for sure that rotting pile of human waste in the corner was NOT making my apartment a dangerous and unhealthy place to live. The point of this analogy is that the earth, though large, is a sealed system ... and billions of people (more than there have ever been) are finding newer and better ways to crap in the living room every day. Tell me with a straight face that this won't have some kind of effect.
The next three are about guns.
Number 2: A group of lobbyists sporting large buttons with the slogan "Guns save lives."
Really? I guess that explains why there's a gun in my first-aid kit. That explains why EMTs carry sidearms. That explains why, when someone starts choking in a restaurant, the first thing you yell is "Quick! Does anybody have a gun?" No? Well, perhaps the logic is something more along the lines of "Fight fire with fire" which can actually be true: When fighting a forest fire, crews will start a controlled burn going in the opposite direction to prevent the fire from spreading. You can use a gun to intimidate or kill a dangerous person before he has a chance to do the same, on a larger scale. You can fight fire with fire. You can still burn your house down. Guns only save lives by facilitating a pre-emptive strike, in other words "kill 'em before they kill you." Guns save lives. Fires prevent burning. Yeah right. Only if you believe in "kill or be killed." Then you're among the ranks of Those Who Probably Should Be Stopped.
Number 3: A gun is a tool.
Indeed. I suppose there are rivet guns, nail guns, and staple guns ... but these are a far cry from a handgun, the only purpose of which is to throw bits of metal at high velocity, thereby tearing holes in soft things. (Like human bodies.) A gun's purpose is to injure or kill. You can't tighten a bolt with it. You can't open a package with it. You can't perform surgery with it. You can't change your brake pads with it. I suppose you could use the gun to threaten someone and make him do these things for you, but that's the only sense in which a gun is a tool. If there's nobody around to point it at, what good is it? If you were stranded in the wilderness, which would you rather have: a gun or a knife? I'd take the knife, because I can use it to carve wood, skin animals, make snares, build shelter, etc etc. With a gun I might be able to shoot some critter, but then how would I skin it & dress it & prepare it for my dinner? In the absence of human society, a gun becomes a nearly useless implement. About the only thing you can do with it is use it as a hammer, but there's another device which does that job much better: it's called a hammer. Which, incidentally, can also be used as a weapon.
Number 4: The same intellectual who thought man had no power over his environment also produced this gem of logic, supposedly to refute the bleeding-heart liberals' pleas for gun control: "Knives are dangerous; why don't we pass laws to restrict knives?"
This strikes me as rather glib, perhaps rhetorical because - on the face of it, this makes little sense. If we outlawed everything that was dangerous, we wouldn't be allowed to get out of bed. But the question deserves an answer. The lack of knife-control laws could have something to do with the fact that a knife won't accidentally fire and take off Junior's head. You just don't hear very many stories about tragic knife accidents. You don't hear much about gangstas waving knives around. Curt Cobain didn't kill himself with a knife. Dick Cheney didn't accidentally stab his hunting buddy in the face with a knife. A blade requires a bit more intentionality to use: if you want to injure somebody with a knife, you have to wield it and slash and come at the person. There's more to it than just point-and-squeeze. You have to really mean it. That's a big part of why when people snap, they tend to go on SHOOTING rampages rather than stabbing rampages. Knives are just not deadly enough, and they require too much effort. And even the most dull-witted and negligent parents, for some reason, seem to have the sense to keep knives away from children, when they don't have the same sense about guns. A knife is understood better even by simpler minds, since there's a direct cognitive linkage of the object with the danger (sharp=will cut you) that isn't there with guns (blunt, heavy, shiny=toy?)
I try to respect the other side of political debate, but when the other side evinces a complete lack of rational thought, what am I supposed to conclude?
