My rant against sour, self-righteous killjoys.

[Berry Cool]

So, we are all pretty much agreed that fundies are annoying when they try to ruin Halloween by saying it's a pagan holiday for worshiping the devil, and therefore they will not celebrate it.

Well, DU has plenty of the equivalent, only these people are there to tell us...

...we shouldn't celebrate Thanksgiving because it commemorates Native American oppression

...we shouldn't celebrate Christmas because Jesus wasn't really born on December 25, it's all about commercialism and greed, and besides the Christians stole the whole holiday from the pagans

...we shouldn't celebrate July 4 because not everyone in our country feels free and equal

...we shouldn't watch the Super Bowl because sports and games are stupid and irrelevant and are just one step away from warfare

...we should boycott the Olympics because it's all about commercialism, cheating to win, corrupt officiating, athletes trying to get big endorsement bucks, onerous bills for host cities to pay off, and the abuse of the locals/natives whose needs/desires are not taken into consideration

...we shouldn't watch TV cable news because it is all slanted, and the shows that are not on Fox are just as slanted to the left as Fox is to the right, they all tell lies

...we really just shouldn't watch TV at all, because it's only for stupid people. Especially certain shows, including American Idol, 24 and any other show you like that someone else thinks is stupid.

Oh, but we are stiff-lipped prudes if we dare to question the wisdom of recreational drug use and anything-goes sex. Because THOSE forms of having fun are GOOD.

...There, I think that about covers it.

I feel better now. For what it's worth.

[RevCheesehead]

1. You sound like you need a hug.

Too many Pharisees out there. :hug:

[Berry Cool]

2. Thanks. I'm just in a mood. And I actually don't think I'm alone.

The "I'm not watching the Super Bowl because I think football is stupid/I haven't owned a TV in 20 years" crowd reached critical mass yesterday afternoon and people began fighting back.

You know they're just tuning up for their assault on the Olympics. And this is after having waged their annual War on Christmas. Which I don't speak of in a Billo way but actually it's more like a war on religion, unless it's paganism or the FSM or something. Because you know, religion is responsible for all the evil in the world. Oh, and did you know evangelism isn't just annoying, it's an attempt to rob people of their FREE WILL?? And the War on Religion was followed by the War on Television, which as we know here in the Clubhouse, intelligent people never watch.

:hug: Ah, it's just a PITA. The game was good last night and the Saints did geaux! And I actually liked most of the commercials!

[RevCheesehead]

3. How come the people who never watch TV

are the first ones to brag about it on the computer? Isn't it just replacing one vice with another?

If all they have is computers, sex and drugs, pity them. They are miserable and don't know why... and they're just trying to drag you into their misery.

[CBHagman]

4. Oh, you're certainly not alone.

I put someone on IGNORE the other day because I was this close to calling him/her a supercilious @#$#!!. I almost never put anyone on ignore, and when I do I follow it up eventually with an ignore amnesty where I restore everyone to normal status.

Anyway, as the Cowardly Lion said to Dorothy, don't leave, because we all love you.

[WolverineDG]

5. Not to mention the ones who shout out about women having a choice

but trying to silence a woman who DID make a choice because it wasn't the PC choice. I saw that in the FLDS case---all the whining & hand-wringing about the women making their own choices, yet when the women DID make the choice to stand & fight for their way of life, they were lambasted, mocked, & derided as "brain-washed" & "feeble-minded" by those who've never met a member of the FLDS (I don't need to remind you how I was treated when I brought up this hypocrisy).

The KOEB & Texas forums are the only sane places here.

dg

[CC]

6. The photography group is

pretty sane and a great place to relax. Can't just look at lots of great pictures and chill.

I tend to just skip by the sour, self-righteous killjoys and ignore them without actually using the ignore button. They seems to always be a few no matter where you go.

[Berry Cool]

7. Yeah, that's a problem.

The same thing happens if you try AT ALL to defend the Duggars for their reproductive choices, amidst all the snickering repetitive "A vagina is not a clown car" jokes. Sure, people have a right to speak their mind on what these people do, especially because they chose to make their family's life into a reality show. But really, what some DU'ers don't seem to realize is that you can't support a woman's freedom NOT to reproduce without also supporting her freedom TO reproduce if that is her choice--even if it's a choice she makes because of a religion you disagree with. It's her body, her choice. Hopefully she won't destroy her body doing it, but really, if she does, she doesn't seem to care. Again, HER CHOICE.

Same thing with the Quiverful movement in general--I disagree with their religion and their philosophy that women have to be baby machines to serve their God. But if they freely CHOOSE to live their lives that way, then let them. If they feel trapped and they want out, let them leave. In any case, I don't feel threatened by the number of children they have or raise with the idea of having them and their beliefs take over the country. It simply won't happen, because it's never true that all children raised in a restrictive religion stay within that religion. If they feel oppressed, they leave, and they become the world's biggest advocates against it. So it's a self-correcting societal thing.

DU'ers who want to prevent Quiverfuls from doing what they do are no less repressive than the Chinese government, which tells couples they can have only ONE child. It's reproductive control, either way.

FLDS, same thing. I disagree with how these women choose to live. But it is their choice. If and when situations are found in which it is truly not their choice--underage girls forced to marry old men, etc.--let the law step in. But I do not feel it is my place to tell grown women how to live, nor is it my place to assume they are "brainwashed" just because they don't. Also, these people don't attack the Amish the way they attack the FLDS (unless they are accusing the Amish of running puppy mills). Why not? Why is it that if you are Amish or Mennonite, people will leave you alone, but it's not OK to be FLDS because then you have a weird religion that oppresses women and you dress funny?

I would wager a lot of married women out there who consider themselves "liberated" are making a lot of automatic, unconsidered life decisions themselves, that I would wonder whether they've ever really considered. Such as, how many are assuming that child rearing is still primarily their job? They may say they share it, but they automatically assume the responsibility for making sure their kids get cared for in a way their husbands don't. I don't see how what is ingrained in a woman because of the unspoken expectations of her society is any less "brainwashing" than what a woman believes because of her religion.

It's just that at DU, religion is always the enemy. There are so many people here, obviously, who had bad or poisonous experiences with religion. I feel really sorry for them, but at the same time they don't realize how insulting they are to some of their fellow DU'ers when they use religion as the whipping boy for all that is wrong with the world, say all believers are stupid and/or mentally ill, and the other statements they normally fling around.

Most of them don't even grasp that their efforts to "disprove" religious beliefs make no more sense than stuff like Christian efforts to "prove" that there really was a Noah's Ark or a Jesus or whatever. The whole point of faith is that it's FAITH. It doesn't have to conform to empirical laws of science and reason. You can't call it false just because it fails to meet your scientific tests for truth. You can CHOOSE to side with reason and science and not to believe in anything for which there is no concrete scientific evidence, and that's fine--but that doesn't mean you can tell other people they're idiots because they have FAITH in something that is by definition impossible to prove. It's as stupid as a believer saying evolution can't possibly be for real despite the preponderance of evidence for it.

Agh. Anyway, enough from me. I've crabbed enough to last a year.

[WolverineDG]

8. because the only choices you're allowed to have

are the ones approved by the PC Police. :eyes:

And these same people wonder why liberals are viewed as elitist & condescending. :eyes:

dg

[RavensChick]

9. You had to get it out of your system.

Believe me, I understand because there's so much bullshit out there with these so-called Americans trying to shove beliefs down our throats that we know of but it doesn't fit our lives.

No one tells me what I should and should not watch on TV, or say to someone I have a respectful disagreement with on a particular issue, or even where to go. We have been given 2 things by the Creator: life and free will. It's up to us to discern what's right and what's wrong. My problem with the know-it-all group out here is that since we have an African-American President that everything's going to hell in a handbasket. I say, hold up! No one is practicing patience. Obama can't turn things around in one day, okay? He's human like the rest of us, but for all the tea-baggers out there is one more progressive waking up to the reality that it's gonna take time to get the country back on track.

Am I happy about the way things are going right now? No, but I understand. Believe me. I get it.

So what if people are different? So what if you say something and I don't agree in principle but I respect your opinion? That's what makes the society we're in the way it is, and until things change for the better, it's gonna be the same old same old; no more, no less.

That is all.


:hug: