dev_chieftain (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dev_chieftain) wrote2012-05-14 12:11 pm
dev_chieftain) wrote2012-05-14 12:11 pm
And politics
I just want to scream sometimes over the stupid shit going on politically in the US.
The Republicans want to keep Student Loans interest rates at 3.4 percent, but to do it they want to make cuts to healthcare. (Not that they haven't ripped that up everywhere else as much as they can, almost out of spite, as far as I can tell.) The Democrats want to do the same thing, but THEY want to pull the money to pay for the lower loan percentage from huge corporations, so of course NEITHER SIDE SUCCEEDS and the people who're going to pay for it are the people trying to go to college.
Add to that that the AZ legislature just cut state funding for Planned Parenthood last week, and Jan Brewer signed through that awful legislation trying to further limit access to contraceptives, and I just feel so powerless I wish screaming would HELP. I want to hit something. A wall, if I wasn't worried the walls here at work are so thin they might break. What the hell can you do in this situation?
There's a fundamentalist movement screaming through this country for absolutely no good reason and I don't know why it's so successful, but it is, and for reasons that I just can't understand as a person who considers organized religious belief to be kind of nonsensical, it's attacking the values that the USA is supposed to actually be about. I feel like someone is intentionally going around trying to rip human decency, equality, and vast amounts of important information from us, and they're winning so far.
Women shouldn't have to depend on the kindness of their doctor and pharmacist to get their birth control pills and have the right to an ordinary life. I seriously feel like these things should just be available commercially without needing a prescription. Why the hell do I need a prescription to have birth control pills? Am I somehow not trustworthy enough to know whether I want to have babies or not, even though I'm assumed to know whether I need cream to soothe my muscle pain, mild painkillers or a medication to help me with fever symptoms.
I shouldn't have to feel like I'm asking for something illegal every time I go pick up my birth control prescription every month. But with these legislations, I sure as hell feel like it, and that's WRONG.
The Republicans have pretty much admitted that they're only passing this ludicrous crap legislation because they know they can right now without having to fight for it, so they're furthering their personal agendas at the expense of the people. What the hell kind of government is built around bullying people who don't agree with your personal views? Not a democracy, not a republic.
I also just sort of wish that all religions would be forced to disband simultaneously. I think religion has value culturally, I think that religious texts and histories are interesting, but I also think that permitting religions to serve as secondary governments is dangerous and unfair to whatever unfortunates happen to not be part of the religion that ends up wielding the power.
The only reason I don't usually feel so strongly that the world would be better off without religion is that I think people who are religious must find some comfort in believing whatever spiritualistic stuff their particular faith subscribes to (souls go to X when you die; rebirth cycles; spirits linger and become the ancestral spirits we worship, etc), but here's the thing: If it's as easy as that, doesn't that sound pretty convenient? Do religious people really never think about the condition of mortality, about the utter certainty that eventually they'll die, and whether they're right or wrong, they won't be around anymore?
I think that they do. I think that people don't like looking mortality in the face; I think that most people will come up with a glib answer (religious or otherwise) to help them deal with that feeling. So, knowing that the answer is glib, how spiteful and thoroughly heartless do you have to be to intentionally go around denying other people the right to live the ONLY LIFE WE KNOW WE GET FOR SURE as happily and under their own power as possible? What kind of sick animal do you have to be to choose to deny another person the right to live their life the way that they want to live it?
I may come back to edit this to be a little less vitriolic later, but right now I'm just so thoroughly frustrated I can't express this otherwise. I seriously do wish that all religions would be forcibly disbanded, because I think that that is what's wrong with the world. Religious division prevents people from helping each other as much and as effectively as we could if we'd just get over that and all work together to better the world.
TL;DR: I don't like religion. I like history about religious texts and find them interesting, but I don't like religion.
The Republicans want to keep Student Loans interest rates at 3.4 percent, but to do it they want to make cuts to healthcare. (Not that they haven't ripped that up everywhere else as much as they can, almost out of spite, as far as I can tell.) The Democrats want to do the same thing, but THEY want to pull the money to pay for the lower loan percentage from huge corporations, so of course NEITHER SIDE SUCCEEDS and the people who're going to pay for it are the people trying to go to college.
Add to that that the AZ legislature just cut state funding for Planned Parenthood last week, and Jan Brewer signed through that awful legislation trying to further limit access to contraceptives, and I just feel so powerless I wish screaming would HELP. I want to hit something. A wall, if I wasn't worried the walls here at work are so thin they might break. What the hell can you do in this situation?
There's a fundamentalist movement screaming through this country for absolutely no good reason and I don't know why it's so successful, but it is, and for reasons that I just can't understand as a person who considers organized religious belief to be kind of nonsensical, it's attacking the values that the USA is supposed to actually be about. I feel like someone is intentionally going around trying to rip human decency, equality, and vast amounts of important information from us, and they're winning so far.
Women shouldn't have to depend on the kindness of their doctor and pharmacist to get their birth control pills and have the right to an ordinary life. I seriously feel like these things should just be available commercially without needing a prescription. Why the hell do I need a prescription to have birth control pills? Am I somehow not trustworthy enough to know whether I want to have babies or not, even though I'm assumed to know whether I need cream to soothe my muscle pain, mild painkillers or a medication to help me with fever symptoms.
I shouldn't have to feel like I'm asking for something illegal every time I go pick up my birth control prescription every month. But with these legislations, I sure as hell feel like it, and that's WRONG.
The Republicans have pretty much admitted that they're only passing this ludicrous crap legislation because they know they can right now without having to fight for it, so they're furthering their personal agendas at the expense of the people. What the hell kind of government is built around bullying people who don't agree with your personal views? Not a democracy, not a republic.
I also just sort of wish that all religions would be forced to disband simultaneously. I think religion has value culturally, I think that religious texts and histories are interesting, but I also think that permitting religions to serve as secondary governments is dangerous and unfair to whatever unfortunates happen to not be part of the religion that ends up wielding the power.
The only reason I don't usually feel so strongly that the world would be better off without religion is that I think people who are religious must find some comfort in believing whatever spiritualistic stuff their particular faith subscribes to (souls go to X when you die; rebirth cycles; spirits linger and become the ancestral spirits we worship, etc), but here's the thing: If it's as easy as that, doesn't that sound pretty convenient? Do religious people really never think about the condition of mortality, about the utter certainty that eventually they'll die, and whether they're right or wrong, they won't be around anymore?
I think that they do. I think that people don't like looking mortality in the face; I think that most people will come up with a glib answer (religious or otherwise) to help them deal with that feeling. So, knowing that the answer is glib, how spiteful and thoroughly heartless do you have to be to intentionally go around denying other people the right to live the ONLY LIFE WE KNOW WE GET FOR SURE as happily and under their own power as possible? What kind of sick animal do you have to be to choose to deny another person the right to live their life the way that they want to live it?
I may come back to edit this to be a little less vitriolic later, but right now I'm just so thoroughly frustrated I can't express this otherwise. I seriously do wish that all religions would be forcibly disbanded, because I think that that is what's wrong with the world. Religious division prevents people from helping each other as much and as effectively as we could if we'd just get over that and all work together to better the world.
TL;DR: I don't like religion. I like history about religious texts and find them interesting, but I don't like religion.