Begging To Differ

I don't usually do stream-of-consciousness crap on my blog. Mainly because I think it's a particularly lame and pretentious cross-section of society who engage in it. But I can't seem to sleep tonight and boring myself to death might actually help me with my insomnia. So here goes.

A certain comment on my sister nisa's blog got me thinking about the ways in which people define themselves and how that's changed over time. Let's take me for example (and I am quite a specimen if I do say so myself). An uber-liberal. Not quite the Nazi of liberals (because I don't believe in forcing my views on other people) but fanatically left-wing to a fault. If I may be so bold as to borrow the phraseology of your average cookie-cutter 'conservative' I and other people like myself might be best described as baby-killers, fag-lovers, mollycoddlers of criminals and junkies, which translates into pro choice, pro gay rights, anti-capital-punishment believers in the freedom to smoke weed. (The last one is pretty much the same but the rest have a certain zing in right-wing-speak you must agree.)

Although I believe the whole black-and-white-ism of the existence of a clear line separating the political left and the right is a false dichotomy, the truth is that people seem to be increasingly liable to espouse ideas which they don't believe just to belong to either camp. There are folks taking part in setting fire to abortion clinics just because they're afraid that by not doing so they allow their entire moral universe to crumble. And it's not always as militant as the example that I chose. The point is that an either/or mentality is beginning to take hold of society.

On the less arsonist side, liberals had the distinction of being 'cool' around the 60s to the 80s because they were a minority acting against a conservative establishment. But now liberals are the establishment because everyone and their grandmother believes in justice, freedom and equality (not to mention the Frankenstein's monster which is political correctness). It's the religious "fundamentalists" and haters in general with their naysaying and constraints who are the persecuted minority now. So they are 'cool'-er by default.

It may be that the mistake liberals made was to try to stifle the right-wingers' voices completely. I guess no point of view should be totally ignored. If someone thinks you're hacking away at the ties that bind people in a community just by getting a tattoo, it's important to stop and ask them why they think so instead of talking down to them from your secularist, individualist, free-thinking pedestal. And I plead guilty to making that mistake several times.

The part about liberals having the bigger army is true about the world at large but where I come from (home sweet home), confused conservative right-wingers are still in control so let's bring on the orgies and smoking crack in public because we've got a status quo to overturn if we want to catch up with the rest of the world.

If nobody wants to hear me go on about stuff like this again please send me some Ambien or even horse-tranquilizer. I really need to sleep.