The World Is A Shitty Place

The BBQ Pit
1

You know, it’s all starting to get to me. The politics, the divisiveness, the ideologies, the rhetoric, the slant, the spin, the mudslinging, the “proof”, the “counterproof”, the evidence, the duplicity, the willful blindness, the immaturity, the absence of any sort of coherence in any position in which I might believe and take solace.

It’s not that this sort of thing isn’t always around, but the war seems to have brought it all to a fevered pitch. I don’t post a lot, but I’m constantly lurking, and I’ve come to view the SDMB as a microcosm of the Internet. And the sheer volume of silliness and assholery in the last week, as people flog their side loud and long, is just getting to be too much. A chemicals plant has been found, and Joe Cool posts a gloating, crowing thread that basically amounts to “See you assholes? We were right all along, and you babyfucking anti-war protestors are stupid and useless.” And what does Diogenes respond with? “Bush is a murderer because a helicopter crashed in inclement weather.”

How am I supposed to take any of this seriously except as a sign that humanity is a sickly schizophrenic beast incapable of any rational thought or direction? I’m scared that we’re gambling on World War III, and everyone is too busy sucker punching their opponents to care.

Who else is just kind of fed up with it all?

2

hansel, I guess that I bicker with the best of them. That is my nature.

But you seem to be looking for peace within and that is something that you can control. If the shitty things that are happening now are getting to you, then don’t rent them space in your head. Spend time in beautiful places. Notice little things like the scent of candles when you blow them out, a path you haven’t followed before, the taste of strong hot coffee in early morning.

You may want to shut out the news for a while; there is no crime in that. Fill your spare time with music and good books. Make room within yourself to let go of some of the worst of it.

I wish you moments of perfect peace.

3

They World can be a shitty place.

But if you’re thinking of leaving it, please don’t.

Talk it over with us, here, on the SDMB.

Before you do something rash.

4

You might note that the people who are most attached to polar positions are the most likely a) to post provocatively in the first place and b) to respond to provocative posts in the second place. The reflective, open minded analyses are out there; they’re just much more rare than the anti/pro polemics, but they’re all that more valuable because of it.

5

Hey Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor, hansel wasn’t threatening to do himself in, just observing that the world is full of flawed people, nor, Zoe, did he say that he found the news in itself depressing, but that “current affairs” seem to be bringing the worst out in everyone, even “us” dopers.

hansel, FWIW, I agree, I’ve been fed up with it for 20 years. You get used to it, sort of.

6

xenophon41 - I’d tend to agree that there are so level-headed, open-minded heads out there: I just think they are depressingly outnumbered. Even if the percentage of reactionary dumbshits is equivalent to the level-headed, the balance is made up by sheeple who are far more interested in flash than substance.

Count my vote in with hansel.

This whole thing has brought out the worst in everyone, and has done nothing so much as reinforce my worst impressions of the lifeforms I’m forced to share the planet with.

Humans are a pretty pathetic bunch, for all that we aspire to greatness.

7

MLC got the closest to what I’m feeling right now: there are all these massive events going on that we, individually, have no power to change or even marginally affect. And how does the (seeming) vast majority of people deal with that? Bickering, fighting, desperately trying to rub their opponent’s noses in the thinnest shred of evidence or spin for their side. The number of people who are saying “hold off, wait a minute, see what happens before starting your tirade” is small.

On Friday, the director of HR at my workplace stopped by my office to have a good giggle about the news footage from Chicago he saw, of a shrill anti-war protestor getting punched out by a burly construction worker. Ha fucking ha.

Don’t worry, Bosda. Yes, I’m depressed by all this, but not the sort that would lead me to do anything rash. I’ve been trying to follow Zoe’s advice and just go away from it all for a while until I’ve got my bearings again, but I underestimated how addicted I am to the constant stream of sludge the Internet provides.

8

Permission to pile on, sir?

I’ve been wanting to start an OP like this for a few weeks. Although I would have included something like “Those assholes that want to drag us back into the Dark Ages.” In which would be included Al-Qaida, (some) Creationists, and used car salesmen.

9

You omitted headwaiters.

10

Hansel, I swear, you read my mind. I didn’t plan on writing anything this long, but after the first two paragraphs I went off on this completely cathartic tangent (resulting in this mess).

I decided to get all this stuff off my chest here and now, since you can’t actually talk about anything current-event related without some cockmonger innterrupting you and braying about why whatever dipshit uninformed opinion he holds is the ONE AND ONLY RIGHT ONE, and I (apparently) couldn’t tell my head from my ass on a sunny day, with both hands, a map, and a guided fucking tour. :rolleyes: I’m gonna preface this rant by saying, “No, I don’t really care what you think.” If you agree, great. If not, hey, it’s a free country. I just want to say this all before I have an aneurysm from holding it all in.

I’m not even sure I can put my emotions into a single coherent stream of thought anymore. Don’t get me wrong. I see both sides, I really do. I think there’s perfectly good reasons both for AND against it.

However…

I’m sick of the “You’re either for us or against us” bullshit. Last time I checked, this was still America, and I had the right to feel any fucking way I feel about something. Just because I disagree with one of your opinions doesn’t make me wrong. If I disagreed with ALL your opinions, it STILL wouldn’t make me wrong, BECAUSE IT’S A MOTHERFUCKING OPINION! We all remember the cliche about opinions and assholes. Well, everyone’s is starting to stink. I wouldn’t be nearly as tired of smellin em, except that everywhere I go, people feel the need to show em to me (their opinions, not their assholes).

I’m tired of America-bashing. It’s trite, trendy, and generally spouted by people who, for the most part, haven’t got the faintest fucking clue as to what they’re talking about. If you live in America and are bashing it, don’t let the fucking door hit you in the ass on the way out. You have every right to criticize our leadership if you disagree with them, and have every right to a lwaful demonstration, as well as the right to vote them out. IN MY OPINION, if there’s NOTHING you like about this country, think it’s a bunch of facist/commie/whatever political slur is popular this week bastards, and would rather badmouth it than help try and make it better, then be my guest. Get the fuck out, and see how the game is played in the rest of the world. If you ask really nicely, I just MIGHT let you back into the country when you realize that as much as we sometimes suck, there’s still alot of good here. On that same note, if you’re not from America than stfu. I am not the entirety of my government, and I don’t personally make the decisions, ok? I’m not a pig, I’m not a baby-fucking warhawk, nor am I a vegetarian-hippie-peacenik. I’m not a commie, or a facist and in point of fact, I can’t stand my government’s current administration either. Just because I think Chirac is an asshat, doesn’t mean I think all French are cheese-eating surrender monkeys. I at least try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Instead of being the rude arrogant asshole you’re accusing me of being, why don’t you try and do the same?
I’m almost tired of French-bashing. Although the cynical bastard in me makes me laugh at the jokes, if you made jokes about Texans, I’d laugh too. And I live in Texas, so there. However, what I said in the above paragraph still stands, and just because I think Chirac needs a plexi-glass plate put into his chest so he can see where he’s going with his head that far up his ass, I try not to make the ignorant assumption that I have the right to prejudge someone based on something as trivial as the fucking country he came from.

I’m sick of being accused of being unamerican or unpatriotic just because I have some fucking doubts about the wisdom of sacrificing our international respect and standing in the community, not to mention our troops as well of those foreign troops strong/brave/stupid enough to throw their lot in with us, to remove some sad little egomaniac with delusions of grandeur, that unfortunately got to sit at the big table for a while and couldn’t keep from pissing in the soup tureen.

I’m tired of watching the endless stream of biased sensationalized crap spewed by the news networks, the 24 hour networks being the worst. I fully expect to see a blurb on CNN called “Survivor: The Gulf War” and have them admit that this is nothing more than a particularly morbid reality show to them. Fucking ratings whores. I’m disgusted by the way the reporters latch onto every new tidbit, like baby lions pulling apart the bloody half-alive mangled lump of flesh that was skipping along the Serengeti just a second ago, singing the fucking “Circle of Life”. Do me a favor, ok? If you’re gonna be so fucking insensitive as to ask the poor families of the POWs to be on your network, for Christ fucking sake, can you at LEAST have the common decency to NOT ask them stupid inane questions solely designed to solicit an emotional response in their time of uncertainty and pain/loss/grief? They interviewed one of the POW’s sisters, and the reporter asked if she’d seen the photos/video. Sister says she had seen the photos. Reporter asks “How did he look to you? Did he appear ok? Did he look ok?” I broke out into impromptu applause when the sister responded with "How do you THINK he looked? How would YOU look?"in a tone dripping with incredulousness shock at the sheer stupidity of the question. I laughed as the reporter quickly, uncomfortably, tried to change the topic and didn’t ask the sister anymore questions.
I’m tired of being afraid, wondering if what I’m watching on TV isn’t the beginning of the end, a pre-Apocolyptic Pandora’s Box, if you will. The beginning of the shitstorm that will finally bomb us back into living in the trees, which in all likelyhood, we never should have left in the first fucking place, the simple-minded chimps we really are.
I’m horrified by the overwhelming amount of stupidity I find myself bombarded by on a daily basis. Give an asshole an internet connection, and I’ll show you an asshole that’ll post anyfuckingthing that pops into whatever he/she/it is trying to pass off as a brain, just to hear themselves post (and mind you, I don’t exclude myself from this category)

I’m overwhelmed, I’m incredulous, I’m tired, I’m sick, and above all, I’m pissed off. Pissed off at the human race in general, for being so mindless. For being a big fucking herd of sheep, following blindly whereever the one with the biggest carrot leads them. I’m fucking pissed off at the entire world for parroting bad catchphrases and cliches while waving their cocks around in the air, and masquerading it as international policy/opinion.

I want to collectively bitchslap the entire world and make them ALL wake the hell up and realize that if we don’t smarten the fuck up real quick, there’s a damn good chance that NONE of the bullshit we’re all so up in arms about won’t be worth 2 pieces of gorilla turd in a top hat in 50 years, because none of us will be around to worry about it. Cockroaches and Twinkies, here we come. They’ll be the things left to witness our racial demise, until the next virus that passes for intelligent life on this planet evolves into the poisonous trash heap we’ll have left behind.

The really funny part? I’m an optimist.

11

I’m fed up with the words ‘weapons of mass destruction’

12

I suppose you probably don’t want me to say that things have never been better; however, that fact is essentially true. Even in the current state of divisiveness there are coherent positions to take on both sides.

Consider the recent debate that C-Span aired about the impending war in Iraq. (It was aired before last Wednesday.) From the pro-side came two amazingly coherent and convincing cases why the war a necessity from both the practical and moral point of view. From the con-side came two more-or-less equally convincing cases. (Unfortunately the link I gave doesn’t reflect this. Indeed, if it weren’t for the photos, I’d wonder if the page’s author actually attended the debate at all. Hitchens put forth the best case for this war I’ve heard; his opening speech was, as always, brilliant.) Does this mean that no coherent moral stance can obtain? Not in my opinion. It is simply a case of two mutually exclusive moral actions: On the one hand history has shown that the cult-of-personality totalitarian state inevitably seeks conflict and it is better to choose when we’re going to fight than it is to let the neo-Stalin wanna be choose the time, all the while leaving 24 million people imprisoned under a dictator; on the other hand containment worked with the Soviets, that working within the international order is a very important path for the US to take, and the fact that those opposing the war are mature democracies implies that we might very well be missing some important considerations. It’s simply a case of “which Good do you value more?” I wish C-Span offered a video of the debate online…:frowning:

James Burke remarked that in the age of television, telephone, and technology, the world actually hasn’t become smaller–it’s become alot larger. It used to be that a person’s world extended over a very small area, both physically and mentally. That’s all changed. Now you get news and opinions and information from all over at an alarming rate, fed to you by a sales driven media who needs to emphasise the sensational for profit’s sake. Head to the library and check out “Wisconsin Death Trip”. It is a pretty effective way to bring back a little perspective that is so easy to loose nowadays.

Finally, may I note that at least now the divisiveness is over something important! Maybe that’s why it’s bothering you–now it’s about something that really matters. Was the previous decade less subject to “the politics, the divisiveness, the ideologies, the rhetoric, the slant, the spin, the mudslinging, the ‘proof’, the ‘counterproof’, the evidence, the duplicity, the willful blindness, the immaturity, the absence of any sort of coherence in any position in which [you] might believe and take solace”? I would argue that it isn’t. It’s just that for the previous decade it has been about presidental blowjobs and an election between two not that different parties that was too close for the for the signal to be heard over the noise. Maybe that’s why the bullshit didn’t bother you as much before–who cares if some idiot is spouting invective & logical fallacies if what he’s talking about ain’t worth shit. Now it matters. While it is more frusterating to see addled thought affecting something important, it could help make your coherent thought more rewarding, no?

Well, that’s all I can say about that. Best wishes.

13

On a personal note, two close friends are separating after ten years and two children together.

I think I’ll go for the hat trick tomorrow and get myself fired.

I agree, js_africanus, that it matters more now, and that makes the instransigence of each side all the more galling. I also agree that each side has a coherent case to make, which virtually begs for a real meeting ground to be staked out. But with the rise in importance, so goes too the deathgrip on thoughtless partisanship, and the apparent hopelessness of the public discourse.