Having it Both Ways

According to the Washington Post, yesterday an armed intruder (IDed as Floyd Lee Corkins II) entered the Washington D.C. headquarters of the Family Research Council and attacked the security guard there, who did his job admirably in preventing the intruder from advancing any further into the building. Said security guard was shot, but is currently in stable condition, so hopefully this will be one of those rare shooting incidents where no one ends up dead.

While it is still far too early to ascribe definite motivations to the shooting, from the CBS report on the situation, Floyd Corkins II had been volunteering at an LGBT community center in the months leading up to the shooting and had made a "negative reference about the work of the Family Research Council" in the moments before opening fire.

I won't mince words here: his choice of action was simply unacceptable. Multiple different LGBT organizations released a similar statement:

We were saddened to hear news of the shooting this morning at the offices of the Family Research Council. Our hearts go out to the shooting victim, his family, and his co-workers.

The motivation and circumstances behind today’s tragedy are still unknown, but regardless of what emerges as the reason for this shooting, we utterly reject and condemn such violence. We wish for a swift and complete recovery for the victim of this terrible incident.

So of course, we began the process of healing and recovery from this terrible tragedy, and thanked our respective deities that it wasn't any worse than it was. Heaven knows I've been accused of "politicizing" tragedies so many times - and I've been doing my best to hold my tongue in the wake of the last, oh, four or five shooting incidents in all of a month. Surely no one would think of trying to make this about...

Of course not.

Brian Brown, the president of NOM, pointed to a recent blog post by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), one of the largest gay-rights groups in the country. The post, “Paul Ryan Speaking at Hate Group’s Annual Conference,” called attention to the vice presidential candidate’s scheduled appearance at the FRC’s national summit next month.

“Today’s attack is the clearest sign we’ve seen that labeling pro-marriage groups as ‘hateful’ must end,” Brown said in a statement issued following the shooting.

“For too long national gay rights groups have intentionally marginalized and ostracized pro-marriage groups and individuals by labeling them as ‘hateful’ and ‘bigoted.’”

To the Family Research Council's credit, they have not said anything of this nature, and I'm honestly grateful for that. The National Organization for Marriage could stand to learn from that example.

EDIT, 2315 hours: I want it logged for the record that I gave them the benefit of the doubt, right up until, well...

One day after a Virginia man is alleged to have shot a security guard at the D.C. headquarters of the anti-gay Family Research Council, the organization's president, Tony Perkins, held a press conference to blame the shooting on the Southern Poverty Law Center -- the group that in 2010 named FRC a "hate group" based on the SPLC's documentation of FRC's efforts to "knowingly spread false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people" -- declaring that the watchdog group had given the shooter a "license" to shoot.

So now I speak to the National Organization for Marriage and anyone who might be inclined to make similar statements, apparently now including the FRC itself. I ask you - do words actually have meaning, or not? Because if they do, if calling someone hateful or wrong contributes to subsequent violence against them, then you need to stop and think. Ask yourselves why nine out of ten LGBT students report harassment of some type at school. Ask yourselves what your words are doing to them. Ask yourselves, every time one of them commits suicide, what your actual marginalization and ostracization of those children is accomplishing!

If our words have that kind of effect, that might cause this attack... well, go back and read that statement above. We've answered, as best we can, for the blood on our hands. Now it's your turn to answer for yours. Until you can do that, calling you out as hateful and bigoted will be nothing less than accurate.

Romney/Ryan

By now, I expect you've heard the news that Paul Ryan is Romney's vice president pick. This is not an entirely unexpected development in the campaign, honestly. Ryan is really the closest thing to a policy wonk the Republicans have, especially on the economic side; as the architect of the last two budgets the GOP's put forward, I feel like this pick represents the Romney campaign's desire to centralize economic issues right up until Election Day.

Of course, the fact that I call Ryan the closest thing to a policy wonk that the right wing has should be a greatly depressing sentence for anyone that actually wants the GOP to have any influence over policy at all for the next twenty years. I won't hold my breath though.

Why do I say that? In a word, Ryan's policy proposals are ridiculous. The fact that his ideas are representative of intellectual thought and serious policy proposals on the right wing actively scares me. The budgets that he's put forward would be actively disastrous for everyone other than the top hundredth of one percent of Americans by wealth, cutting pretty much anything and everything from Pell grants to Medicare. And because it's not enough to gut the social safety net (that he's already benefited from, no less!), he's proposed cutting taxes on the wealthy while increasing them on the lower class.

Of course, the crowning jewel here is the fact that this budget is somehow supposed to also reduce the deficit all at the same time. How? That's an excellent question. No one knows. How he can manage to make all these claims when he himself has to realize how mendacious they are is what truly scares me. Any competent economist (and those four don't count as competent, not anymore) can tell that there is literally no way to reconcile all of these competing claims. And yet Paul Ryan is hailed as an intellectual genius, the rising star of the right wing policy wonks.

Anyone who reads my blog regularly could probably have realized before now that I was never going to vote for Romney in November anyway, so in that sense my disapproval means very little. However, prior to today, I would have shied away from voting for Romney because I had no idea which Romney I was going to get; would it have been the hard right wing Romney of the Republican primary race or the more moderate Governor Romney of Massachusetts?

Now, things have changed. Now, I know exactly what I'm going to get out of a Romney/Ryan ticket. I know full well what kind of economic policy we're going to get out of that White House. It is an economic policy that runs counter to any rational consideration of the needs of the United States or of the needs of the vast majority of American citizens. That it can be hailed as a policy masterpiece, by anyone, scares me a great deal.

Just Words

Every time someone says that something is "just words", I wince. It's the same kind of wince that usually ends up being my reaction to whatever words are being referred to, really. It's a now reflexive "is that really what you wanted to say" kind of reaction to words that are insensitive, potentially triggering, or dismissive.

I'm aware that words can be cheap sometimes, that making promises or identifying problems is easy while fulfilling those promises or fixing those problems is a lot harder. Even so, I still can't really agree that there's any such thing as "just" words.

Words have a lot of power. While they're not equivalent to actions, they are the precursor to actions; it is difficult to fix a problem without first identifying it, after all. And while words are formed from thoughts, they form the framework with which we are even capable of defining a thought, and have their own influence on the way people think as a result. Words can help and support others, or deal them a great deal of real and significant harm. Every word we use is probably going to have some kind of impact.

And the power that any given word has will change relative to the people involved. Every person has their own context for a word. Sure, most people share a lot of the same context for a lot of words. But words like racial slurs, for example, have a very different impact on members of a minority class than they will on people who don't share that history of oppression.

I may not be a linguist or a psychologist, but I'm reasonably certain that nothing I've laid out here is all that controversial. But then, what about that phrase "they're just words"?

It is most often used as a dismissive phrase, one that rebukes others to not let those words in question affect them. Effectively, it denies that words usually have an impact, especially words that usually can seriously hurt someone. On top of that, it asserts that it's possible to choose whether or not a given word can affect you, usually without considering how much greater any given word's impact might be on someone other than the speaker.

Worst yet, it is an abdication of responsibility; the longer version of the phrase is "it's not my responsibility to think about the words I'm using, it's your responsibility not to let those words affect you." Or, more bluntly, "it's not my responsibility to avoid hurting you, it's your responsibility to avoid being hurt." In that sense, it is a phrase that is all but fundamentally hostile to civil discourse or the concept of responsibility for one's actions words.

It is a phrase I despise, and one that causes me to wince when I see it used. It is a phrase that I believe should not ever be used.

Denial of the Right to Freedom of Speech

Okay... this is absolutely ridiculous. From Memebase, an absolutely bullshit response to the controversy surrounding Chick-fil-A. And look at that, over a thousand upvotes!

This is not a free speech issue. Nor has it ever been. Nor has any other similar incident (and there have been many more of this kind) ever been a free speech issue. Not if those three words are to have any meaning at all. Their rights to free speech are not being threatened in any way, shape, or form. Unless, that is, the government is about to come in and arrest people for what they're saying or, in this case, doing, namely donating to anti-gay rights groups? I don't have any connections with the FBI, but I'm pretty sure that's not being considered.

And on top of that, let me clarify something here. This is the message I'm getting, from that meme and from every other time someone's said "but what about freedom of speech" when I or anyone else has the sheer temerity to express our disagreement with the things other people say. It goes something like this: Because the owner of Chick-fil-A has the right to express his opposition to gay rights by donating to the Family Research Council, I don't have the right to say that I disapprove of his position and won't be eating at the places he owns in the future?

Because one person has the right to freedom of speech, I have to refrain from exercising my right to freedom of speech?

This is bullshit. It has been bullshit every single time it has been voiced, and will continue to be so. The next time someone says "I don't agree with Chick-fil-A's political stance, so I'm going to boycott them, and I think you should as well" just remember that. And not just for this incident - the next time someone says "I disagree with what so-and-so said, so I'm going to not support their work in the future, and I think you should as well", this will apply just as much. Keep that in mind, because I have had more than enough of this line of argument. It's long past time for it to disappear.

Independence Day

Independence Day, the Fourth of July, the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and a day on which the United States generally comes together to celebrate one of the most significant milestones in the formation of this country with patriotic displays. Particularly the fireworks. All joking aside, though, on this particular Independence Day, the 236th of its kind, I'd like to take a moment to think about what that patriotism actually is.

I've said more than once that I consider myself to be a patriot. And I have no problem saying that to others as part of my introduction, perhaps even part of how I define myself. I am proud to be a citizen of the United States, and I want to see the United States and its people thrive. I believe that there are concepts that are fundamentally part of the United States and its worldview: ideals like those of liberty, justice, freedom and equality for all. These are words and ideas - love for one's country and love for its ideals - that are part of how I understand patriotism and are more often than not part of the discussion on days like today.

I would be remiss, however, to rest on those words, just as I would be unwise to trumpet my perhaps unwarranted pride. The word "patriotism", like any other label in the English language, means all sorts of things to all sorts of people, and I would be greatly mistaken to assume that it is a positive label for anyone that might read this. It is a word that celebrates adherence to a country that has made its fair share of mistakes - and that could be said whether the country in question is the United States or not!

Most dangerously, it is a word that even for me calls up the words "my country, right or wrong." It can be a shield behind which all manner of chaos and destruction hides, all in the name of those ideals I mentioned above. As I call myself a patriot - a standard-bearer for the United States, its pride and its ideals - I too must acknowledge the mistakes we have made and continue to make in the name of that pride. It is those words, though, which offer me an answer as well - allow me to finish the quote. Courtesy of Carl Schurz, a Union Army general in the Civil War and later U.S. Senator, from on the floor of the Senate in 1872: "My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right."

To those in the United States and those outside it; to all who celebrate this day whether they be U.S. citizens or not; to the people who look up to the standard set by our ideals and the people who criticize the ways in which we fail to live up to them... happy Independence Day. As we look back and celebrate the anniversary of that step on the road to the founding of our nation, allow me to renew my own vow of patriotism to my country.

There are many things the United States gets right, and I will take pride in what we have accomplished. To me, this is part of being a patriot, and so today I celebrate my home country and its Independence Day. Importantly, though, it is not the only part. It is also my duty as a patriot to take the mistakes that the United States has made and make them right again. Accordingly, I will take this day and remind myself that I cannot rest on that pride alone, not until the day comes that my ideals are reality, not until the United States and its people truly enjoy the things we have been promised: our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; our ideal of freedom and justice for all.

Status Report, Going Forward

Okay, so I lied. As it turns out, I didn't manage to get any blogging done about my most recent vacation. I seem to be pretty good at failing to realize my own limitations when it comes to blogging. It's a little late for spring cleaning, but I might as well get around to the blogging version of that now.

Part of that was the Internet situation where I went. I'll confirm that now, for the people who don't know me well enough to have already guessed: yes, I went to Japan. I have since returned from Japan, sadly enough. For the moment, I'm not going into great detail about that trip. There will be at least one post, and more likely several, in the near future in which I'll look back in more detail. The hotel didn't have wireless Internet, and I was sharing a room with my brother for most of the trip, in which I let him monopolize the single available wired Internet connection. It's not much of an excuse, but...

Well, I also came down with a cold. Tokyo's 2 for 3 on me being sick while being in that city, so yeah. At least, I say it was just a cold, but it was bad enough that I didn't feel like doing anything that wasn't lying down and sleeping for a while. It probably would have gone better if I hadn't ran out of cold medicine halfway through the ordeal. I really should have just gone and bought more.

Anyway, enough about my personal tribulations over the last two weeks. As long as I'm posting one of the few things I've felt deserved a "notifications" tag, and as long as I'm talking about why I haven't been posting all that much over the last few days weeks (practically), I might as well take a moment and say what I expect to happen here on my blog going forward.

If nothing else, "tomorrow" (he said, posting just before midnight) is a day of particular significance for people in the United States of America, and I'll probably have something to say about that. Other than that, my primary motivations seem to be losing some of their interest as of late. Looking at my tags and the number of posts each one has, while I do post some things about anime or gaming, the majority of posts express my personal opinions (which is what I seem to use the "personal" tag for, although perhaps a rethinking of that is in order) regarding either politics or feminist/progressive issues.

I'll still do that, although I've kind of missed the chance for punditry on the recent Supreme Court decisions. Not the only thing to talk about, but one of the biggest recent events in political news - and, to some extent, in progressive news as well. However, I did just get back from Japan, and as I said I plan to say a few things about that trip. Plus, I came back with all sorts of fun things which can be translated, discussed, what have you. So I'd kind of like to have a few more things of that nature happening here.

In specific, there's one particular project I can think of that pretty much throws in all of these elements. When talking about PAX East earlier, I used a visual novel called Kanon as an example of a problematic game, although only in passing as something that could use further analysis. Well, thanks mostly to my brother's generosity, I have in my possession a copy of the Japanese light novel following one of the five storylines tied up in the game; essentially the novel version of part of the game itself. What I'd like to do with that is read it and liveblog it, examining the story from a feminist perspective and translating some of the important scenes.

That's my project for the near future - the book has six chapters, and if I get through one a week, call it a month and a half. (It'll probably take longer than that, but given that I already sort of know the story's general outline, I might as well set the bar high.) And as I've already implied, I expect there to be other things along for the ride, whether I keep translating songs, add some games to that backlog, finish some of my fanfiction works, chat about developments in the political sphere... and ideally, somewhere along the line, I find myself some form of gainful employment, now that I've just graduated from college and all.

To what regular readers I have (and I'm pretty sure that's "not too many"), thank you for still checking my blog in light of my frankly pathetic update schedule. For people new to the blog (and the majority of those are courtesy of either Shakesville or the timeline of the entire Penny Arcade debacle), I hope you stick around, and I welcome any (constructive) comments you all have to make.

And to one and all, thank you for taking any time at all out of your day to bother with anything I have to say here. I really do appreciate it, and I'm going to try and do better about putting things up here that are worth your time and attention.

Key West

I spent the majority of the last week on the first of two scheduled vacations this month, essentially my last hurrah before I seriously have to get into that whole "gainful employment" thing that is kind of expected of an adult in modern society. In case the title didn't tip you off, this particular vacation was in Key West, Florida, the southernmost enclave of the mainland United States. Although "mainland" is probably pushing it with Key West; it is an island after all!

We flew to and from Key West, with AirTran. That went better than expected, really, although given prior experiences it would have been difficult for anything to have failed to meet my pathetically low expectations. Security, in particular, was perfectly manageable, although I guess we've reached the point where sending people through those full-body scanners is standard operating procedure? I don't know how I feel about that. On the outbound flight, though, the amount of people waiting in line caused them to divert some people through the metal detectors (including me), and Key West "International" Airport doesn't have the scanners yet.

Oh yes, the Key West airport. That was the single scariest landing I have ever been through; I think the 737 we were flying in is the largest thing they could possibly land on that airport's one runway, and we pretty much bounced our way down the runway when the pilot brought us in. About the only way that landing could have been more uncomfortable is if the plane had actually crashed, I think. Well, thankfully that didn't happen.

Key West itself had an almost small-town atmosphere to it; I guess when your available living space fits into an eight-square-mile island, that's somewhat to be expected. Of course, there were a large number of tourist accommodations; also unsurprising given that the island's main industry these days is tourism. We were staying in a condo that was one of the nicest places I've ever been able to stay in, although all of the DVD players were disconnected for reasons I couldn't quite fathom. Duval Street, the main tourist area, was within five minutes' walk, so there was no lack of access to shopping, bars, or food. And there was a nice swimming pool, and then of course there were the two much larger swimming pools that we call the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean within walking distance of the place.

Needless to say, I got sunburned. Quite severely. After being diligent about putting on sunscreen, no less. I was more than a little ticked off about that, in fact. But, I got to go snorkeling in the ocean for once, which was a nice change considering the only other place I've ever gotten to use the thing was in North Pond up in Maine of all places. On balance, though, I did about as little as possible; swimming pretty much every day, all sorts of good food (including a wonderful Japanese restaurant with sake), and lying around enjoying all of the free time I had.

It had its downsides; particularly, my efforts in participating in Camp NaNoWriMo this fine month of June are effectively shot to hell by now. But I can still try, I guess... if not for scheduled vacation #2. Key West was planned and executed by my grandparents as a kind of family reunion-style vacation before I and my brother had to move on into adult life, you see - fun, certainly, but not what I would have set up if I had chosen it.

Scheduled vacation #2? Is mine. (Well, mostly, anyway... more explanations will probably be forthcoming...) Watch this space - it might take until Sunday, but trust me when I say I won't fail to blog about this.