Tim Thomas. Oh, Tim Thomas. If only you had just kept your mouth shut and played hockey. Then when you stopped playing, you could espouse all your bigoted views. Instead of doing it while you were still playing and there was a black president in office. Unless, of course, you actually are done playing. In which case, thanks for the Stanley Cup.
When he refused to go to the White House after winning the Stanley Cup, I first applauded him for being an individual. But I didn't realize what kind of "individual" he was. Then he supported Chick-Fil-A, like many asshole conservatives will do, saying marriage shouldn't be allowed to gay people and they can all go fuck themselves. And I put two and two together and realized he didn't go to the White House because he's a racist. Because he's a Republican.
Let me tell you about the Republicans. Obviously, not every person is the same, but the representatives of a party tend to hold similar views. They tend to be homophobic, racist, sexist, classist, and every other type of bigot you can think of. However, it's not as easy being a bigot in today's world. There's too many "smear campaigns" going on to call people out on their bullshit. You can't just run around shouting "I syure hates them black peeplz" or saying the n-word, or saying black people should go back to Africa. You have to be more subtle about it. But anyone who denies racism's existence and saying that race doesn't matter is fooling only themselves.
These days, politicians use "dog whistles", words that actually mean something else, such as "Mexican" meaning "the n-word" and "state's rights" referring to desire for slavery. People actually espouse racism all the time but it is more difficult to detect and is a form of "racism lite". For example, when talking about "welfare queens", people are actually talking about single black mothers. The idea is they are all this way because they are lazy, stupid, and careless. The idea that they are not given the same economic opportunities as white males is a foreign concept to racist whites.
Gays are also treated with utter disdain by the right wing, who claim they are an abomination. Every time someone argues for gay marriage, the gay bashing right wing will claim this does not represent a traditional (read: white Fundamentalist) version of marriage. Reason with them all you will that gays are human beings and deserve these rights; they do not care. They will claim that their (bigoted) opinion is perfectly valid and no one better ever question it. They will keep saying things like "oh, it's just a word, it doesn't mean anything. Just call it civil union and it'll be okay." not realizing what self-absorbed pricks they sound like.
The Grand Old Party has a rich history of marginalizing women. For a long time, women couldn't vote. It is well-known that women don't receive equal pay for equal work in the same job. Conservative values are very paternalistic and place women in a position where they must always be protected like the delicate flowers they are, and never allowed to make decisions for themselves.
The funny thing is, whenever these bigots are called out for being bigots, they will deny it and claim that the "godless liberals" are smearing them. Even so, they don't get called out enough. It is not just pundits and everyday joes who make these statements; conservative politicians do so as well.
Now I'm not saying the Democrats are so great either. They claim to be representatives of the real people, and not just the minority of rich people, but they frequently pander to the other party. They take a lot of crap from the neocons and don't call them out for their crap. Of course, when they do, no one supports them.
However, at least the Democrats are sometimes progressive. Whenever someone is getting in the way of human rights, it is a goddamned conservative. Slavery? Perpetuated by conservatives. Jim Crow? Formed by conservatives. Racial profiling? Supported by conservatives. Preventing women and blacks to vote? Conservatives. Gays in the military? Not if conservatives have anything to say about it. Need I mention gay marriage again? No, but I will do it again, because it proves my point.
In addition, conservatives want less government, less taxes, and less regulation on businesses. In other words they want corporations to do whatever the fuck they want for the sake of profit. Pollution, laying off jobs, shipping jobs overseas, paying wages as low as legally possible, etc. All for the almighty dollar.
Now, hold on, say the conservatives, human rights aren't everything! (In other words, we suck at human rights and/or don't give a shit about them, but anyway...) The conservatives, in addition to a social branch, also have a fiscal branch. Fiscal conservatives essentially consist of what I described in the last paragraph, but also basically claim they are brilliant businesspeople. The free market will save us all. How is the market free, exactly? And how is an unregulated market helpful to anyone except capitalists who make money at everyone else's expense.
I'm not really a fan of bipartisanship at all, to be perfectly honest. Having two major political parties that marginalize all the other parties may make them easier to recognize for the simpletons who need see the world in black in white, but it makes it a hell of a lot harder to have reasonable debates about anything. It doesn't matter what anyone besides the Republican'ts and the Democraps think anyway - they are not going to get elected. Individual thought doesn't matter at all in today's world - in fact, it is detrimental to survival. You must conform and pander to your party's base. You must suck the ass of the corporations, for they shall provide your campaign funds.You must preach your Christian views to the unthinking good old boys and claim that no matter how much life sucks, the afterlife will be better. After all, God wrote the book, not a person...right? It wasn't devised to control peoples' minds. At all.
Let's talk about the words Democrat and Republican.
Democrat: from democracy, meaning a government of the people, by the people; being one who supports the idea of a government of the people, by the people.
Republican: from republic, meaning a governing body consisting of elected representatives of the people.
The problem is, representatives don't seek the best interest of the people. They live for their own interests and push for legislation that helps their interests. Most of them are white, Christian, and rich and come from money. They do not care about the plight of the poor, or racism, or sexism.
The United States is a manchild bully that does not want to change its ways, no matter how overwhelming the evidence for a need for such change. High crime, bigotry, poor education, high unemployment. Being behind the rest of the developed world in many categories. But this isn't a problem because "God will save this country" because after all, this is "God's country." (not Israel or anything) Also, those other countries are "wimpy socialists" and "capitalism is God's gift" and all this other nonsense. People don't even hear themselves when they talk about this kind of stuff. But we need the military and all our for-profit prisons so badly! Without them, how would we ever survive? This country has one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the world, and half of the people in prison are in there for minor drug-related crimes, such as possession or use. And by the way, most of them are black.
Ever since 9/11, we have been an Islamophobic nation. But really, people are just afraid and hateful of people who look like they're south Asian (i.e., "brown people"), such as people from India, or Pakistan, or whatever. Moral panics are taken advantage of by people who want to make your life miserable. Now we have all this extra "security" at airports, which really consists of grope jobs, and no terrorist has ever been captured. But it's okay to violate all the Constitutional rights and shred those amendments like right to not be detained without reason on suspicion of being a "terrurists". Like Yoda once said, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. This is the basis of the Regressive Party.
Even with all this overwhelming evidence, Republicans continue to deny being pure evil. Americans deny that their government system needs reform. They deny that corporations need regulation. They deny that this country is slipping away. All to spite people in this country with actual problems. It's like a powerful corporation that receives government welfare, laying people off, and making its profits paying them next to nothing and doing no quality checks, complaining that someone below the poverty line, with no power, is some leech on society. Yeah, okay. There's a joke for you. I wonder how you people sleep at night. (On huge piles of money, haha) No, seriously. I hope you choke on your caviar.
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