Taken out of conversation/debate
I'll do this one from my soapbox tonight, thank you.
There are two things that need to disappear from conversation and debate. One is a word, and the other is a jumble of ideas. They are casually thrown out into the world because they do evoke strong, shocking images and they are immediately identified as such. They are too serious and too heavy to be thrown around so casually and it needs to stop.
First, the Jumble of Ideas:
Nazi Germany, Hitler, and fascism.
Leaders being compared to Hitler just for the sake of relating that person to such a monster. When Obama was campaigning, he would talk with his hands (like most public speakers), and someone on Fox News (HUGE surprise) compared his physical mannerisms to Hitler. There's a book out called "Liberal Fascism," which tries to tie liberal ideas to fascist ideas. It's this kind of rhetoric that gets us nowhere in our public discourse.
Every president since JFK has been compared to Hitler at some point or another, and both liberals and conservatives are guilty of this. There has been no president (not since Andrew Jackson, anyway) that has attempted genocide and mass carnage the way Hitler did.
During every campaign run, there has been some huge crowd that gets excited for their candidate, and some one some where has compared the crowd mentality to the crowds in "Triumph of the Will" all saying "Seig Hiel!" There's nothing to be gained from comparing these two things, because they are completely different no matter what similarities you find. If that crowd goes out and starts rounding up groups of people and then killing them because the candidate at the rally told them to, then fine. You can compare them then. Until then, knock it off.
PETA had an ad campaign that placed pictures side-by-side of chickens in mass amounts of metal cages next to pictures of Jews in concentration camps. They were basically likening the treatment of cows and chickens to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany. You can tell me that eating meat is wrong and whatever else you want, but you can't make me believe that humans and animals deserve all the same treatment and that they feel every thing we feel. Better yet, I'd love to see the reaction of an actual Holocaust survivor to that ad campaign. I can tell you what they won't do. They won't look at the pictures of the chicken cages and go, "You know what this reminds me of?-- Auschwitz . That's exactly what it was like."
And a word:
Rape.
The needless comparison of rape to some situation where someone felt like their space was being invaded or like they get screwed over on something. This happens way more than some people might think.
Occasionally, I will hear someone talk about having someone get up in their space and weird them out. And they might say something like "I feel like they raped me." I'm not lying, I've heard this shit. And the only thing I can ever say to them is, "No you didn't feel like that. If you're comparing it to that, then it's never happened to you. So maybe you should choose your allusions more appropriately."
There's a song called "George Lucas Raped My Childhood," basically about how George Lucas ruined Star Wars and Indiana Jones.
I can tell you one thing. If you ask a woman who has been through that traumatic experience what it was like, she's not going to say, "Well, you know how George Lucas made the Star Wars prequel trilogy and it wasn't nearly as good as the originals?--It was just like that."
There, again, is a word that needs to be fully dropped from casual speech and reserved for appropriate occasions.
Good night.
There are two things that need to disappear from conversation and debate. One is a word, and the other is a jumble of ideas. They are casually thrown out into the world because they do evoke strong, shocking images and they are immediately identified as such. They are too serious and too heavy to be thrown around so casually and it needs to stop.
First, the Jumble of Ideas:
Nazi Germany, Hitler, and fascism.
Leaders being compared to Hitler just for the sake of relating that person to such a monster. When Obama was campaigning, he would talk with his hands (like most public speakers), and someone on Fox News (HUGE surprise) compared his physical mannerisms to Hitler. There's a book out called "Liberal Fascism," which tries to tie liberal ideas to fascist ideas. It's this kind of rhetoric that gets us nowhere in our public discourse.
Every president since JFK has been compared to Hitler at some point or another, and both liberals and conservatives are guilty of this. There has been no president (not since Andrew Jackson, anyway) that has attempted genocide and mass carnage the way Hitler did.
During every campaign run, there has been some huge crowd that gets excited for their candidate, and some one some where has compared the crowd mentality to the crowds in "Triumph of the Will" all saying "Seig Hiel!" There's nothing to be gained from comparing these two things, because they are completely different no matter what similarities you find. If that crowd goes out and starts rounding up groups of people and then killing them because the candidate at the rally told them to, then fine. You can compare them then. Until then, knock it off.
PETA had an ad campaign that placed pictures side-by-side of chickens in mass amounts of metal cages next to pictures of Jews in concentration camps. They were basically likening the treatment of cows and chickens to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany. You can tell me that eating meat is wrong and whatever else you want, but you can't make me believe that humans and animals deserve all the same treatment and that they feel every thing we feel. Better yet, I'd love to see the reaction of an actual Holocaust survivor to that ad campaign. I can tell you what they won't do. They won't look at the pictures of the chicken cages and go, "You know what this reminds me of?-- Auschwitz . That's exactly what it was like."
And a word:
Rape.
The needless comparison of rape to some situation where someone felt like their space was being invaded or like they get screwed over on something. This happens way more than some people might think.
Occasionally, I will hear someone talk about having someone get up in their space and weird them out. And they might say something like "I feel like they raped me." I'm not lying, I've heard this shit. And the only thing I can ever say to them is, "No you didn't feel like that. If you're comparing it to that, then it's never happened to you. So maybe you should choose your allusions more appropriately."
There's a song called "George Lucas Raped My Childhood," basically about how George Lucas ruined Star Wars and Indiana Jones.
I can tell you one thing. If you ask a woman who has been through that traumatic experience what it was like, she's not going to say, "Well, you know how George Lucas made the Star Wars prequel trilogy and it wasn't nearly as good as the originals?--It was just like that."
There, again, is a word that needs to be fully dropped from casual speech and reserved for appropriate occasions.
Good night.