The American Fever-Dream

(I originally posted including several quotes which I later discovered I had already used in one of my earliest entries, all the way back in March 2010; I have deleted the redundancies.)

The lesson of America is not that many become one, it is that one contains many. We must not become a collectivist regime where individuals accept their status as interchangeable parts of the societal mechine. That might be part of why communism was our enemy back in the day; aside entirely from what Soviet Russia actually was, what it appeared to be was essentially the Borg. America needs to have unity, but not conformity; we must strive to stand out from the group and be different from each other, because no other nation in history has ever valued diversity as specifically as ourselves. We need to be not a melting pot, but a chunky soup in which the ingredients retain their distinct flavors while being enhanced by a broth which absorbs only the parts of them which they most easily shed.

The government of the USA is a compromise between having a single tyrant who rules by
whim, and the impossible task of involving all our millions in democracy. We select a bit over 500 career politicians to more or less enact the will of the people, and they set about making things work for the benefit of themselves and their constituents, in that order. We actually prize them for their ability to be two-faced, because it enables them to make impossible promises to both sides of a divisive issue and then hope that people will forget about those claims before they're called to account for them. I for one do not think this is an appropriate way of doing things.

In promoting equality, we must be careful that we do not grant the intentionally stupid rights equal to the brilliant, nor the corrupt equal rights to the charitable, nor the incompetent equal rights to the skilled. Equality should exist only among those who are actually equals; we must have effective, unbiased measures of each person's worth as a human being, and ensure that everyone is equal within the parameters thereof, that no one is unfairly discriminated against OR unfairly discriminated in favor of. Those who choose to live at a lower level of proficiency are entitled to a bit more than basic survival, but not to a pat on the back. Our programs should enable them to be comfortable and safe, but ensure that incentives are there to reward them if they choose to strive for more.

The excessively dull and unimaginative are asking about now, "Well fine, but who's going to pay for it?" And aside from how incredibly boring they're being, they do have something of a point. But the first step in coming up with an answer is to figure out exactly how much money we have - and those who already have more than they deserve will do everything in their power to keep us from proving that fact. For the moment I have no resolution for this impasse. The fact that a huge amount of our money is tied up in the military industry and the criminal underground, that our wealth is literally being fired out of cannons and splattered as ash across half the Middle East, clearly proves that we're doing something wrong. But how exactly do you go about forcing compliance on those able to kill you? It's a thorny question that I am for the moment choosing to gloss over in favor of less depressing aspects of the plan.

I believe in America, but not simply because it's where I live. Mindless patriotism is the greatest ally of tyranny. If you truly love your country, you won't stand idly by while your duly-elected representatives appoint themselves dictators. Remember, the nation's leaders are not the nation; they are human beings, just as flawed and corruptible as anyone else, and they are not as trustworthy as the ideals to which they pay lip service.

I am a proud believer in the underlying ideals of the American Way; free speech is an absolute right which must be preserved against any and all attempts to constrain it. Every other nation is ruled by a government which seeks to preserve order; why can't we be the one nation whose leaders openly endorse chaos? Free expression is what is healthy; everyone speaks their mind, and if you get your feelings hurt, you withdraw for a time and process the effect, leading to greater psychological health in the long run. If you are never exposed to verbal assault, you never learn to defend yourself against it, leaving you with a frail neurotic psyche which cannot handle the contentious nature of real life.

In short: I'm proud of what America stands for, even if America itself no longer stands for it.

Free Speech From the Dumb

I am proud to be an American, but not like most people who would say that. In most cases, people who identify with their country, or their state or their football team or their religion or any other group affiliation, are just tribalizing and being clannish, promoting their sheeplike love of groupthink as a way to avoid having to address their own problems in life. Not me, though. I don't love this country just because I happened to be born here. I love it for what it stands for: freedom. It is the first country in the 7000-year history of civilization to boldly proclaim that individual freedom is its highest value, and I hold it to that standard.

As far as I'm concerned, freedom is more important than safety, peace, security, stability, or any of the other things people try to trade it away for. Granted, those things are sorts of freedom in themselves - "freedom from", rather than "freedom to", as Roosevelt put it. But when in doubt, I firmly believe we should always favor freedom to act over preventing action to protect other freedoms, unless the difference is vast. Freedom to express one's selfish anger or malice or psychosis by killing someone obviously does not have the right to eclipse their freedom to not be killed. But logically, this suggests that they have a right not to be punched in the face, or poked in the arm, or shown a gut-churning image, or be called a dirty name - these are all decreasingly reasonable, though probably still within an acceptible range of freedom-from rights. I, for one, draw the line however at complaining you were offended just by hearing someone speak a dirty word, when they weren't talking to you, or seeing it displayed when it's not being directed at anyone - and the infuriation of prohibiting such free speech is all the worse when it's not even actual profanity, but something that might be construed as offensive by an exceptionally ignorant or lily-livered person. I believe that such a case has far exceeded any reasonable claim of supporting overall freedom - this is one person's preferences being arbitrarily considered superior to another with no justification for why one wins over the other. And in such cases, I say let every other country go with traditional pretentions, but this is Fucking America and freedom-to should win here.

The incident that has set me off, though only by being the last straw: someone at my work, I don't know who and this is just as well for both our sakes, decided that my Minnesota Renaissance Festival "Wenches Want Me" shirt is offensive. This person clearly doesn't know what a wench is; they probably just assumed it meant "witch" or "bitch" because it looks sort of similar. So that ignoramus gets to tell me what I can and cannot wear, and they whined to the company and rank was pulled on me. Intolerable! This is oppression, it's rule by stupidity, and it's anti-American. I'm sick and tired of conservatives and other weak-willed sorts trying to turn this nation into a carbon copy of every other society on Earth. We radicals, we believers in true freedom of expression, we need one place on this planet where we can say whatever the fuck we want. And this country promises to be that place, so I am vehemently opposed to anyone who tries to make that promise a lie. Let those people move to some sleepy backwater nation on the other side of the world, or even to goddamn Canada; none of those other nations claim to stand for freedom, if their citizens want to be oppressed in the name of social order so be it. This should be a nation of individual expression unconstrained by the meddling of self-righteous others.

And I stand by that, even having expressed prejudices against others' free expression myself. By this very standard, I have the right to say I don't think other people should do things I don't like. But I don't have the right to enforce my prejudices on them, not even if my beliefs are the majority. That's Not What Freedom Is, Bitch.