White Privilege: I Ain't Buyin' It

The notion of "white privilege" is a relatively new one. And I think it's a mistake. Now, I could trace the history of the idea of "white privilege" but instead I'll go backwards and say what's true.

When a white guy runs around saying "I got everything on my own, nobody helped me, my success if the fruit of my labor alone, blah blah blah" you have permission to smack him. Because of course there are advantages to being white. Heck, there's an advantage that my dad had the GI Bill because of his (brief) service in WWII, the advantage that he never suffered under racial or gender discrimination, and neither have I (because I'm a "white" male).

But that's not the point. The point is that these things aren't privileges. "Not suffering under racial discrimination" is not a privilege, it's a right.

The fact that there are those who are disenfranchised does not make voting a right.

Heck, the fact that someone made you a freakin' Capo in a concentration camp doesn't make you privileged.

I think that using the world "privileged" sets the bar way too low. White men (especially) get to walk around not feeling the burdens of a lot of things that other people might not get to walk around burden-less. But walking around burden-less should be the baseline, not the outlier.

So anyway, there are clearly things what straight, white, men, can do that other people are denied -- many of them subtle yet important, but these things are rights, not privileges. Everyone should have those rights. That's why I ain't buying "white privilege". Here's a kitten.

And He's Dead

Let's do a countdown to when the Republicans start to blame President Obama for bin Laden's death. Because you know that's coming.

And the timeline for all the back-room work before they conducted the assault? Right as the Republicans were conducting their picayune BS about closing down the Federal Government.

So yeah, it's nuts.

And it's not like I'm happy anybody's dead. Usama bin Laden was an ass of the first degree. I'd have preferred that his sorry butt be brought to the Hague to stand trial for crimes against humanity. But you know me, soft-hearted liberal that I am.

Of course, I'm not that sad he's dead either. I kind of have the same feelings about Hitler, Stalin, Pol-Pot, and Mao. Wish they'd all gone to jail*.

Via.

*Yes, I know, but I mean jailed for life, not just jailed to write Mein Kampf.

Did you hear that pop?

That's the sounds of Republican heads' exploding.

Barack Hussein Obama got, and killed, Usama BinLaden?

Hoo boy. The insanity is going to be of the insane variety.

And it's not actually good for the Republican party -- the insane people will pat one another on the backs for how insane they are but it won't get them many votes.

Moreso, I do not jump for joy at anyone getting killed. Not that ass-monkey's victims, but not even him. I am a big fan of due process. I'm not sad that binLaden is dead, I just refuse to celebrate death -- even Hitler, Pol Pot's, Mao's, or Stalin's.
Throwing they bitch asses in jail for the rest of their mortal lives, though, I'm all up in that.

But the sole result of this will be that we'll have to watch the Republicans melt down like a 3-year-old who hasn't had her afternoon nap and nobody can find her binky.

It's going to be a long and noisy couple weeks coming up.

Correspond to Me

God bless 'im, but Barack Obama cannot tell a joke to save his life. On the other hand, George W. Bush, who jokes about not being able to find WMD's couldn't have finished his White House Correspondents Dinner address like BHO did:

That Scheming Obama

Now I'm not a huge conspiracy theorist. I'm not. But the theory I heard that the reason Barack Hussein Obama released his "long form" birth certificate was solely to keep the "birthers" going and to keep Trump as the top GOP candidate is... a good theory.
And if Obama weren't from Chicago maybe I'd dismiss it.
But this is politics, and if making your opponent look terrible by releasing a birth certificate can be done, it will be done.

The Orly Tait's of the world (sp?) will never be mollified, but that's not the point. The point is that the great swath of "independent" voters think those people are nuts. Perhaps... because they're nuts.

The Sum-up of Everything

Roger Ebert on Ayn Rand's political philosophy:

"I’m on board; pull up the lifeline."

+++++
The left in America is doing a lot of whining about Barack Obama. I still feel what John Rogers says about it is true.

[Before the election]

Republicans: Jesus, you're just voting for Hopey McChangey because he's a great speaker and he's promising unicorns and rainbows of change.
Democrats: How condescending. No, I'm voting for Obama based on his stated policy goals and his deliberative nature. We are, after all, the reality-based community.

[After the election] 

Democrats: WHERE THE &#%&@ IS MY GODDAM UNICORN?!!

Ultimately I shouldn't even have a political blog. Why? Because I basically agree with everything John Scalzi says. Here he is on the budget compromise.

Obama’s smart enough to know that what he’s going to get out of Congress with this will look nothing like what he proposes, but I wouldn’t mind too terribly if it was close to it eventually. We’ll see where everything goes from here.

Barack Obama, the Best President Ever

The left in America do a lot of complaining about Barack Obama. This is, to me, the same kind of complaining they did under Bill Clinton. Somehow, to the left, Barack Obama is "exactly the same" as the GOP. Yet somehow to the GOP he's a socialist Marxist.
Obviously, somebody's wrong here. Let's find out who.
Oh look, it turns out neither of them is right.
+++++

Back in the deep, dark, distant past (and by that I mean the early 1990's) I was reading the English translation of a French Trotskyist newspaper. I'm paraphrasing but it said something to the effect of "While we applaud (French President) Mitterand's elimination of the debt to France by the world's 20 poorest countries, we believe he should eliminate the debt of all third-world countries should be eliminated."
Could you fathom anyone on the American left saying that about a Democratic President?
"Although we appreciate the President keeping us out of World War Freakin' III, we believe he should also blah blah blah whatever." Nope. Even moving us off the brink of another arms race and possible nuclear holocaust doesn't get him any points at all.
I mean seriously -- do you really think we'd have been better off with President John McCain and Vice-President Sarah Palin? Or do you forget just how bad the G. W. Bush administration really was?