The War on Christmas

How the Atheists stole Christmas...

Christmas time is the time of the year when carols are played through stores, tinsel adorns everything, twinkley lights cover trees instead of snow, and people have lots of silly accidents falling off of ladders. Its a time when every church has a nativity scene outside, and inflatable blow up Santas start appearing everywhere. Its a time when family gets together and celebrates the year they have just had, eat good food, and exchange gifts. 

However, around December, we also have people who do not embrace the spirit of this holiday. What is ironic, is that these angry, argumentative people who do nothing but glare at others and complain are the very ones claiming there is a "war on christmas". They become purple in the face because someone says "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". They boycott stores because their winter displays do not specifically say "Christmas Display", and they make poor Starbucks employees call them "Merry Christmas" as a way to "get back at" the store for daring to have an undecorated red holiday cup. 

I can't count the number of people I have heard complaining about how we need to "put the Christ back in Christmas" and how this country is becoming so very "un-christian"... Honestly, it's a little embarrassing to even be near these people when they start ranting about the lack of snowmen and reindeer in stores. And really, when was the last time a snowman was present at the birth of Jesus... Oh yeah, never. Because Jesus was born in the middle east, in the summer, and the only Artiodactyl animal present was a Camel, not a Reindeer... 

The world as a whole, and not just America, has been making a shift away from obsessing about Christmas and trying to be more inclusive by remembering that there are other celebrations around the month of December as well as Christmas. Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, St. Lucia Day, Boxing Day, and Yule celebrations are just some of the many holiday celebrations that occur in December. There's more than 10 different celebrations that take place in December, some of which are based in religions like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Other holidays are more general and non-religious, celebrating the rebirth of the year, the coming to a close of the old one, and the joy of a new time ahead. Most of these holidays center around a gift-giving, family time, and a mysterious person sneaking around giving out coal to naughty children. 

It is a harmless conglomeration of holidays that we all enjoy, and yet somehow the very fact that people are now recognizing more than just Christmas is offensive to some Christians. I love how they say that we are commercializing Christmas for profit and corrupting the spirit of the holiday in one breath, and then complain that people don't have enormous banners across their stores or TV adds that say Merry Christmas in the next. The hypocrisy is real. 

The celebration of Christmas was adapted from the pagan holiday of the winter solstice to begin with. Christians took bits and pieces from other people's and religion's version of the holiday such as gift giving, naughty vs nice, decorated trees, socks filled with little gifts, etc... None of that has anything to do with the birth of Jesus. It all came from other people's holidays and the Christians just appropriated it. Now I have no problem with that, but they can't get upset when others don't feel like following their celebrations. They can't force everyone else to do what they do, and they have no right to try.

I also find it interesting how Santa Clause has somehow become synonymous with what Christians like to call "their" holiday... I mean really, what does Santa, reindeer, snow, gift-giving, and decorated fir trees have to do with Jesus? And how does a move away from only recognizing the holiday with the fat bearded man in red have to do with a war on Christianity? 

I really want to know how on earth any sane person could ever believe there is a "War on Christmas"... Really, all I have to say to those people is: Get over yourselves and grow the fuck up.

Growing up Unconventionally

To be born to Immigrant Parents

To begin, I'll go over my background a little bit. My parents are foreign in that they were not born, nor did they grow up in the US. My father was born in England to Polish parents and grew up jointly in England and Poland, and lived much of his adult life in South Africa. My mother was born in South Africa, grew up there, and lived most of her young adult life there. My older sister was born in South Africa and grew up there until the age of six. My parents moved to the United States in 1995 because they were concerned at the rising rates of violence, particularly against white women, and did not want my sister and I (though I had yet to be born) to become a rape statistic. At the time, 1 in 3 white women were raped in their lifetime in South Africa, and they wanted their children to avoid such a fate. And so they moved to the United States, and I was born that same year.

Now I may have been born and grown up in the USA, but I was not raised as such. My parents did not raise me to be an American. They raised me to be a worldly person and they raised me as they were raised, understandably. When other kids were watching American cartoons like Spongebob Squarepants, Kim Possible, and the Powerpuff Girls, I was watching British programs like The Animals of Farthing Wood or National Geographic animal documentaries. When other parents were playing Elvis Presley music in the house, my parents were playing the Beatles, Queen, and classical orchestral pieces. When other parents were watching old western movies and war movies with John Wayne in them, My parents were watching things that were popular in England and South Africa at the time.

Up until I began kindergarten, I had a very strong South African accent, because that is what I was around. I lost that most of that accent gradually when I started school and was exposed to other American children. However, I was still not exposed to much "American Culture". When I made my first friend, she was English. Her parents were from England, and she and her older sister had been born there. She was in the same boat as me, growing up the child of immigrant parents in a country of - what to us were - foreigners. Since were were 6 or 7, we have been friends, and for a very long time Best Friends until geographic separation disrupted that.

At the end of 4th grade, my parents removed me from school and began homeschooling me because they knew they could do a good, if not better job of it than the school system. We followed the requirements of the homeschooling association and so I did learn many things that American children did, however me mainly focused on what my parents had learned growing up. I learned world history, the Greeks and Romans, the Egyptians, and the French and English. When I learned about the World Wars, I didn't just hear about how heroic America was for joining at the last minute and helping end it.  I learned about how the European Allied Forces struggled for years to keep afloat, to prevent the spread of Hitler's armies. I learned about the contribution of various countries and how the war affected Europe and Europeans who were closest to the conflict zones. I didn't learn endlessly about how brave and selfless America was and how the housewives suffered endlessly because their men were not there to help them. I did learn about it, but the focus was on the grand scheme of things, not just on America's contribution. When we studied geography, I learned about WORLD geography, and did not have to memorize the capital cities of each and every state. My parents didn't think it was as useful to know about the capital of Mississippi, a place I would likely never go, whereas knowing that there were countries out there called Australia, Japan, and Madagascar was probably going to be more helpful in my future. Knowing the difference between Australia and Austria, Sweden and Switzerland, and learning about the various languages, cultures, and people in those areas was important to my future and my world knowledge.

I had a very rounded education, but not much interaction with pop culture, american music, american tv cartoons or tv shows popular at the time. My parents listened to NPR on the radio constantly, they watched BBC world news, and so that is what I listened to and watched. I had a thoroughly foreign upbringing. And I am endlessly grateful for that. I know more about the world, and world views and issues than many of my "peers". I understand more about foreign politics and issues that go beyond the borders of the country I live in than even many adults I meet. I understand the consequences that the government that I live with will have upon the world. I can think beyond myself and my country, and for that I am grateful.

And yet I have always been picked on or bullied or teased about where I come from and what I know. When I was younger it was about music and the fact that I didn't know what "Fall Out Boy" was. When I lived in Australia, I was teased about my "American" accent. When I came to college, it was about the TV shows that I didn't know, or the Actors that I had never heard of, like John Wayne.

And I am sick and tired of having people criticize me for my lack of knowledge of all things American and wonderful, when they cannot take it in return. I am always astounded that people don't know about Maggie Smith, or Dame Judy Dench... Of British TV shows like Miss Marple, Midsommer Murders, and Masterpiece Theater... Of movies like Keeping Mum and Death At a Funeral (the original, not the horrible American remake). And yet, if I dare to voice how astounded I am, all I get is... "Well it's not American so why should we know it?"

The world does not begin and end with the blessed USA. There is more out there than the portion of the continent of North America that houses the United States. There is more land, more political arrangements, more music and culture and film and literature, more human beings out there. And yet I am always the odd one out, the less knowledgeable, the less aware simply because my specialties and likes and dislikes and humour is not American.

In the past I have had to deal with this type of ostracism because I do not have the same likes as my peers, and in the past I have ignored it and moved on and been the bigger person for the most part (excluding my obsession with proper pronunciation). But the past is not now and I am not the same little girl that had to deal with people being mean to her.

Why do my tastes have to be wrong. Why does my knowledge have to be irrelevent. Why does what I like have to always take a backseat to those around me. Why does no one ever ask if I could show them what I like and let them decide if they like it too. Why, oh god fucking why am I always the one who is weird when I act surprised that those around me don't know some of the biggest names in foreign film and TV.

And the argument is always that I was born here, in the US, so I should know all this stuff, and love America and it's culture. Because I was BORN here. I wish I hadn't been. I wish my mother had got pregnant a few months earlier so I could have been born in South Africa. Then at least I'd have the excuse that people seem to need, that I WASN'T born here. Maybe then i'd catch a break and people wouldn't hound me for not knowing what they know. Maybe then people would actually be willing to try and understand why I'm so different. Maybe then they'd actually care.

I am sick and tired of it, that just because I had a different upbringing and foreign parents and was raised to have more of an interest in world media than in American media I am strange. It hurts to have people who I think of as friends belittle and disregard me and my upbringing because it wasn't the same as theirs, because it wasn't fucking American. So I just don't give a damn anymore.

The Human Life Element...

The Right to Make your own choices

Original publish date: 10/30/15

  When we reach the age of 18 we are generally considered adults. We can get married, buy property, smoke cigarettes, make our own health decisions, move out of the familial home, etc… While we cannot buy or drink alcohol (which is ridiculous) we are – legally - adults. While it may take many years for some people to reach adult maturity and actually begin acting like a responsible adult person, technically we are once we reach that golden number 18.

  However, we are not all entitled to make our own choices. We should be, provided they do no harm to another person, but we are not allowed in some cases. The case in particular that I mention is women’s healthcare and specifically abortions.

  Now this is always a touchy topic. No one likes to think about abortions. The very topic turns some people into fiery balls of rage and others in weeping heaps. Some people support it and others call it murder. Recently Planned Parenthood, a well-known women’s health organization, came under fire for some highly controversial videos that were apparently “undercover” videos of the company selling baby parts for profit. Since then there have been at least 3 federal investigations which have unsurprisingly showed that the videos about “selling baby parts” are completely fabricated and false.

  This slander of a women’s health organization has far-reaching consequences. People all over the country are demanding that all federal funding should be pulled from these "houses of atrocious murder". Now, the little bit of federal funding that Planned Parenthood receives from the government only goes to preventative measures, such as breast exams to prevent cancer, STD tests, counseling, and even men’s health screening for colon cancer and other health options. Abortion services comprise maybe 5% of what PP actually does, and yet there is a witch-hunt out for the organization blood and trying to shut it down. In recent weeks when it came to light that PP had done absolutely nothing wrong or immoral and that they would not be shut down by the government, there have been terrible arson attempts and other hate groups destroying these facilities.

  It’s not enough that they have dragged the organization’s name through the mud and slandered their reputation, now they are so angry that they didn’t succeed that they are literally trying to burn it down. Why? Because of their religious beliefs. Not because this organization is really doing anything terrible and bad, but because according to certain people’s religious “morals”, these people are evil for aborting fetuses.

  This is where it comes down to opinion. Is abortion good or bad? Are you really murdering a baby? Is it a real human yet or still just a fetus? Is it alive? These are the questions that cause so much division on this topic. To some people the minute the egg is fertilized it is a baby already, to others it isn’t truly alive until it can breathe and live on it’s own outside the mother’s body. For many, it is somewhere in-between. However, there is enough controversy about these many opinions to cause real conflict between people based on belief that are often derived from their religion, or lack there-of.

  But does this give one group of people the right to make the decision for everyone else? There are many reasons to terminate a pregnancy and it’s no one’s damn business except those directly involved. I do not understand why fat old white men think that they have some right to force women to listen and follow their decisions. Terminating a pregnancy is a very personal decision involving emotions, economics, future ambitions, age, health, etc… It is something very personal and is a hard choice for most people to make. They think about it pretty carefully before doing something drastic like that. However, religious-based organizations lobby government officials to tack on all sorts of other requirements before you can make your own choices. You might have to have multiple counseling sessions, or an ultrasound, or an internal scope… It is not only an invasion of privacy, but it is a highly invasive process that some people are forced to endure and go through. It’s nobody’s business what you do with your body or what your reasons are. It’s nobody’s business if you don’t want kids. No one should be able to force you to give birth and go through the very difficult experience of pregnancy. It’s nobody’s damn business. And yet it is…

  There are so many reasons a person might consider terminating a pregnancy… They may be too young to properly look after it, they may not be financially secure enough to provide a decent life for the child, they may be doing drugs and the fetus might be severely deformed and disfigured. They may have gotten pregnant via rape and don’t want that reminder, or they may be in an abusive relationship and be terrified of having a child grow up in that situation, or feel as though they would be forever trapped because they couldn’t leave their child and their abusive partner would forever hold them hostage. They may simply not be emotionally ready for that. They could have hereditary diseases that have been passed on and do not want to inflict that on a new person in the world. They may already have had too many children already and it’s no longer safe for them to attempt another pregnancy (for some, this could happen with a 6^th baby or a 2^nd). There is a myriad of reasons why a woman might not want to carry a child to full term, even if she could then “give it up for adoption”. And that is her choice, and only hers. No one else has any right to get involved in that choice. No one else has any right to judge her for her decision.

  “Why doesn’t she just put it up for adoption?” is a frequent question heard about women who have abortions. “There might be someone out there that would love that child as is, no matter what is wrong with it”… Yes, that may be so, but do you know how many children are in the foster care system in the US alone? 397,122 children in the US are living without a permanent family (http://ccainstitute.org). Nearly 400,000 children do not have parents already. And a lot of these children will not get adopted for many years, will be bounced around the system from one home to the next. And don’t even get me started on the horrors of the foster cares system with over-crowded “homes” and gross neglect or even mistreatment. Even if a child does find a loving home and family, they may suffer emotional damage and have abandonment issues that will affect the rest of their life. They may end up hating their “real” parents for giving them up, even if it was the right thing to do. So when you ask, “why don’t they just put the child up for adoption”, that may not actually be a good decision, or even the right one. It is such a nuanced issue. It’s not a simple “do I murder this fetus, or don’t’ I”. It’s not an easy thing for anyone to decide, but in the end it is her choice and not yours. And no one has any right to a say except the person who has to make that choice.

  Now on to the heckling. Apart from all the various regulations and governmental controls that are put in place to traumatize, scare, and intimidate people seeking an abortion, there are also the hecklers that stand outside these facilities. There are people who hold up signs telling people they are going to hell, or calling them murderers or saying that they should commit suicide first. There are people screaming and chanting horrible vicious things at these women who are already making a pretty difficult decision. Nobody wants to have an abortion. Nobody wants to go through that experience and probably be plagued by some kind of guilt or upset for the rest of their lives, wondering what-if’s and the like. While some people know and realize that it was the right decision for them and that they are glad they went through with it, I don’t think anybody really wants to go through that experience. So the religious right is often very critical of people having abortions and make it an even more hellish experience than it already is.

  Then on top of that there is the shaming afterwards. Often, women will tell almost no one about her abortion because of the stigma attached to it and the hateful looks and comments that she’ll get in response. It may even be hard for her to tell a future spouse or family members. This leaves a lack of support for a very trying and troubling experience when support and compassion is what she really needs. It is always important to be surrounded by people who love and support you, to have a support group to help deal with the trials of life. If that is taken away because of a personal choice and the stigma surrounding it, then that leads to depression, self-hate and possibly suicide.  Some people would say that “she deserves it” because of her choice, but shouldn’t we have compassion for people? 

  Isn’t that what all religion is about, having compassion and being there for other people? Isn’t this supposed “God” the final judge of everyone, so why do people feel the need to judge and shame others? Especially when it’s none of their damn business… As it says somewhere in the bible, “Let he who is without sin throw the first stone”… Why can’t people just listen to that one line more often? Everyone makes choices, everyone has beliefs and opinions, but it is no one’s right to judge another person without knowing everything about them, why they made their choice, how they feel about it, etc… No one is perfect, that’s just how life is, and yet people constantly bite and gossip and try to hurt each other for their imperfections and decisions.

  To wrap up this whole spiel that’s kind of gone off topic now, if you are a sane and responsible human being then you should be allowed to make your own informed health choices. That should be something private between you and your doctor, not something for the local gossip committee to spread about and whisper. It is not something for politicians to get involved in. If they want a small government then they have to be consistent and keep their noses out of it.

Update 11/28/15

  Today I felt that recent events warranted an update to this post. The recent event in particular that prompted this feeling was the gun shooting at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, CO where 3 people were killed (including a police officer) and 9 were left injured. Now we've been seeing a lot of violence and hate crimes in this country of late. First there were school shootings, then police aggression toward african americans, then hate crimes against latinos and suspected "illegal immigrants", arson and viral "videos" painting Planned Parenthood as a company that sells live babies to be butchered, and currently the mistrust and fear mongering associated with the intake of Syrian refugees, some of which are muslims - and therefore to the uneducated and republicans, who are often one and the same, terrorists. This latest attack on the Colorado Planned Parenthood though really takes the cake. We see two things squished into one; a mass shooting event and a hate crime against a center that provides abortions, among many other things.

  Now there's a lot of people out there, trolling reddit, writing their own blogs, making youtube videos, and some of then seem to be almost proud of this latest loss of life. They seem to think that shooting up people in a PP office is a good thing. Some of them are saying that it's going to bring the risks of abortions into the light and stop people from going to PP facilities to get abortions. Some claim that the shooter was crazy. And then theres a few who say things like this:

  I really don't know quite what to say about this... I'm disgusted, disappointed, horrified. While many people don't agree on gun control, or abortion issues, they do generally agree that mass shootings are at the very least sad. Sometimes they can even say that it's a tragedy and something that should never have happened. But somehow, the combination of gun rights nuts and pro-lifers leads to a horrifically ironic situation where pro-lifers are celebrating a mass shooting where 3 people died. They are not only not sad, they are happy, calling the shooter a "brave hero" and THANKING him for KILLING people...

  These nut-jobs who do not see the horror in this latest shooting seem to believe this myth that the republican party ships so hard that Planned Parenthood only ever provides abortions and does nothing else. The truth is that the people that were shot and died, and those that remain hospitalized, may very well have never even gone there for an abortion. They may have been pro-life themselves, but not rich enough to go to a fancy clinic for a breast cancer screening. Or they could have been young adults getting an STD screening, or just a young woman getting on the pill to prevent a pregnancy that could end in an abortion. The people injured and killed in this latest attack against humanity and morality and women's rights were just like anyone else. They were living, breathing people, and for christian, gun-toting, pro-life idiots to congratulate a shooter on killing innocent people just makes me lose what little hope I had for religious people to do the right thing, for humanity and decency to rule out over their "morals".

I'll end my tirade here, but I just want to say one thing. To any christian, or republican, or pro-lifer, or gun-supporter who gets offended by my lumping them with the crazies... This is what the world sees. This is what regular people see all the time. This is what your group and your ideals seem to promote. It may not be everyone, it may be just a few who give you a bad name, but as long as you promote your hatred to anything that you deem "immoral" such as abortions, and as long as you call it murder and incite people to hate anyone that deviates from your beliefs, I hold you all in contempt. You may not be responsible for other people's actions, but the message that you put out into the world has consequences, it hurts people, and I am tired of it. 

The "Rights" of the people...

  So earlier this month I was talking about the ideas of governmental tyranny and how people seem to think that is the reason they need their guns. Now I want to talk about this idea of "the rights of the people" in all of it's many ways, shapes, and forms...

The Rights of The People

  This is something that I both find very annoying and very important. There are a few major groups of "rights" that I want to go over right now: Bearing arms, staying alive, free speech, making our own choices. 

  Lets go over the Bill of Rights quickly. These are the first 10 amendments added on to the Constitution in 1791:

1.   “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the 

     free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the 

     people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”

     Pretty much freedom to worship whatever you want, or not to worship as you choose

• The right to assemble
• Freedom of speech and press
• Freedom to protest peacefully 

2.   The right to a regulated militia, i.e. the right to bear arms

3.   Government cannot force you to house an army

4.   The police cannot search or seize your property without a warrant

5.   The right to keep from saying things that might land you in jail

6.   The right to a quick trial with a jury of peers

7.   If being sued or suing someone, you can opt for a trial by jury rather than judge

8.   No excessive bail or cruel & unusual punishments

9.   There are certain rights, not specifically written down, that all people are entitled to and 

      cannot be taken away by the government

10. Any power not given to the federal government is given to the people and the states

The Right to "Bear Arms"

  It is a sad fact that the right to own and use any gun you want is a thing in this country. There are very few regulations, and even less oversight. Now the gun-toting louts that run around screaming how the liberals are trying to "take away their rights" are completely ignoring the loss of life because they are so afraid that their "rights' are being infringed upon. As mentioned in a previous post, the government has at no point EVER said they are going to start taking away guns. What they have said, which seems to fly right over the heads of the screaming rabble is that they want gun "CONTROL". That doesn't mean taking them away, that means oversight and better management. They want background checks before you can buy a gun. They want gun shows to have background checks as well. They don't want a deranged person with a agenda to kill people to inherit his great grandfather's 17 guns, his father's 12 guns, and then go on a killing spree.

  Is it so terribly out of the realm of possibilities to just have a little bit more responsibility in the gun industry? They (and I mean the government) and we (the people) are asking for 3 major things here:

1.   Background checks & management

2.   Fewer people dying

3.   Proper gun safety

Now what do I think that we actually need in gun reform?

1.   Background checks for EVERYBODY who wants to buy a gun

2.   Mandatory gun safety training with every weapon you purchase to be signed off on by an 

      official, including understanding of proper storage safety and when to use a gun on 

      a person.

3.   Regular gun license renewals every 1-5 years that include:

• Checking serial number against license to ensure legal ownership
• Gun check for proper gun parts and firing safety
• Safety training renewal for all licensed weapons
• Proper storage safety training renewal
• Run-through of when it is appropriate to use a gun on another person

4.   And then finally your license for each weapon should be renewed

  This method of periodically checking that gun owners are using their weapons responsibly and safely has been successfully used in other countries. It's not just a pipe-dream that liberals wish for. It is a real possibility. While it would make owning a gun a little more difficult, complicated and irritating, it would probably save lives. 

  Is putting up with an annoying process worth it if it will save innocent people's lives by making sure that the wrong people don't get their hands on dangerous weapons? Isn't it worth it? Or is having a fun and easy hobby really more important than people? 

  Do you really think it okay for your hobby to cost so much in blood? If you had to meet those families that have lost people to gun violence, would you really be willing to look them in the face and tell them that you valued your easy fun over their children, parents, siblings? 

  My question to all gun owners... How can you live with yourselves when you vote against life-saving legislation? Especially when that legislation is really only asking for background checks, because so far that is all that has been proposed? Truly, how in all good conscience can you vote against that legislation when its not going to impact responsible gun owners or result in any changes to your weapons cupboard?

The Right to "Be Alive"

  

  You would think that this one would be a no-brainer. You would think that this is a "basic human right". But to listen to some of the candidates running for office, it is your own fault if you get shot by a gun, because you obviously didn't try hard enough to stay alive. You didn't fight back enough. You should have definitely taken the time to galvanize the room with a great speech about how everyone should rush the attacker. Thank-you Ben Carson. Before you, I was quite sure that a gunman would shoot me down if I even talked or twitched. But now I know that I can have a democratic discussion with the room, take a vote, and then have everyone move away from the desks so they don't get in the way, and then we can rush the guy pointing a gun at us and overpower him with minimal loss of life.

  The urge to stay alive is an animal instinct that every creature in the world is born with. We fight to live the best life we possibly can, we fight for resources, space, money, our children, our future and theirs, etc... Staying alive is the ultimate goal, and if we can make that cushy enough, even better. When I was little all I thought about when I considered the future was how many cats I would have and what colours they would be. As I grew up I realized I wanted a little more from life. I wanted a nice cottage in the woods away from other people where I would have peace and quiet. When I came to college I thought about what my future career would be. I've always been a little odd when in classrooms and sat in the seat with an optimal way out of the room in case of a fire... rare, I grant you that, but possible. Now, I sit in the seat with optimal access to the doorway, but also with a hidey-hole that I can dive into in case a shooter enters the building.

  I find this concerning. That while I am supposed to be listening to a lecture and absorbing all this information that will be on a test later in the term, I am actually planning what I would do if someone tries to kill me. I jump about a mile when I hear a book drop in the hallway or a shriek outside the window. What if that thump was actually a body hitting the floor? What if that scream outside is someone who just watched their friend die in front of them? What used to be a nice distraction from the monotony of learning puts me on high alert. And why? Because I fear for my life, and the lives of those around me. I fear for my safety. I analyze the room security and plan escape routes because I anticipate, almost expect that I will need that knowledge in the near future. I anticipate that there is a pretty good chance that I am going to die.

  I have a right to stay alive. I have a right to go to school without wondering if I’ll be able to go home at night. People have a right to send their kids to elementary school without waiting by the phone for a call that their toddler was shot through the head. That is a basic human right; to be alive and have a family. And yet it is completely disregarded because of fear the government is going to become tyrannical or take your guns. Your right to a weapon overshadows my right to live and breathe. That is not okay. It is not just, it is not right, and it is pure selfishness.

  How dare those people claim to care about human life? How dare they say, "I'll be praying for them" to the families of the dead? How dare they look me in the face and say that my claim to life is less important than their weapons? How dare they.

The Right to "Freedom of Speech"

  This country gives people the wonderful ability to say whatever the hell they want, and not be arrested for it. You can call the president a terrorist, you can say terrible things about your neighbor, you can even threaten to blow up congress if they pass gay marriage. And NOTHING will happen to you (unless you actually demonstrate that you are capable of domestic terrorism). For the most part, you go on with your day as normal. In many non-democratic countries, insulting the government and its leader is a bit of a no-no, as is threatening to blow them up. In fact, that can get you arrested in some places. But here, that is a no-can-do. It's a delightful way of releasing our inner frustration and feeling like we are big and bad, that we can say such horrible things and threaten such crazy stuff and no one can do a thing about it. 

  So you would think that because you can do those things, when people have something constructive to say they would be allowed to say it. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Not everyone is allowed to openly declare their opinions, especially if that opinion is unpopular with the "majority" of this country’s occupants (i.e. conservatives & christians). 

  I always find it interesting how the minute you contradict a person on their political or religious zealotry, they start telling you off for trying to restrict their "freedom of speech", but then they turn right around and try to silence you for your opinions, beliefs, or ideas. I sometimes get the feeling that the "freedom of speech" amendment is only applicable if you are a God-fearing Christian (and by this I mean you think that Jesus was the Son of God, died for your sins, etc... I don't care about what little sect you are or your specific church's take on one tiny specific sentence in the bible. If you believe Jesus was the son of your god, then you are a damn Christian) or a Conservative Republican in this country. I will later do a section on Christian entitlement and their feelings of oppression and their tale of woe and persecution in the US. But for now, I wanted to touch on the idea that only Christians and Republicans are really "allowed" their freedom of speech rights. 

  They all say they are willing to teach you about their beliefs, and you listen because you are trying so very hard to understand where they are coming from. You are trying very hard not to hate or despise them for believing things that you think are immoral. You want to beat your brain into acceptance that they can be good people when they believe such horrible things hidden under the umbrella term of "family values". You listen and you learn and you care and you try to understand.

  But turn that the other way round and you try to explain your beliefs and you hit a solid wall of resistance to any change. You cannot even make a slight hole in their rigid mind where they will see where you are coming from. They may tell themselves they are trying to see your side, but in reality their brains are just saying "you are wrong, you are wrong, you are wrong" with every word that comes out of your mouth. Listening to you and understanding that you have radically different beliefs is uncomfortable to them. And when they are uncomfortable, they stop listening, put in headphones, ignore that there is anything going on around them because they really don't want to accept that there are people like you in the world. 

The ongoing fight to have a voice in my future...

Standing Up To The Institution

So recently I did the risky thing in my college career and stood up for myself to the University. I say risky because apparently it is just "not done" to have an opinion or make a real complaint about something at one's university. 

To be quick and to the point I went to the administrators of one of my universities departments about an experience with a professor teaching a class that had no business ever trying to teach anyone anything. After A YEAR of being shunted around from one person to the next, having my concerns belittled and disregarded, I finally scored a meeting with the Associate Chair of the Department of IB (nameless to avoid any retribution or defamation claims), the department in which this professor was nested. I sat down in a room with the Associate chair (a man) and one of the office workers (a woman) - I promise, those details will become necessary later on - and began to explain why I wanted this meeting in the first place. Upon the table in front of the Associate chair, I placed a stapled pile of documents. On top was a bulleted list of what was to be found within, the main points of 1) my original complaint about the teacher, and 2) my subsequent complaints about the department's handling of my concerns. Now I began to read these out as a brief overview of why we were all there, but then something happened that stopped me dead in my tracks...

The Associate Chair (AC from this moment forward) decided it was a good time to interrupt me before I really got on a roll and actually got to the point of the whole meeting. He talked over me and told me it was "his turn to talk". He told me that he had thought the issue was resolved the previous year when he replied to my email about my concerns about this teacher with a "I'll look into it". He wanted to know why we were even having this conversation in the first place. Now, he had just interrupted me from actually telling him that, so he could have saved himself some trouble by having decent manners and waiting for me to finish my intro, but that would have been far too difficult.

During the next half hour, Mr. AC talked down to me like I was a naughty child. He told me that my original "Teacher Evaluation" that listed in detail the numerous ways in which I found the teacher and class to be inadequate and unacceptable to be "overly aggressive" to the point at which he had been considering reporting me to Student Conduct. He said that my claims and assertions were unfounded and not based on fact and without sources. I was very curious to know how he thought I could add sources to my own experiences... I told him that it was unfortunate that no one had written a peer-reviewed paper based on his departments teaching standards, otherwise I would have been happy to provide a works-cited page along with everything else. He said that I was obviously upset and overemotional and that he wanted to resolve the situation quickly because he had canceled another meeting in order to sit down and talk with me and he felt that he was wasting his time. The woman in the room did absolutely nothing, neither stood up for her fellow female against this bullying behaviour, nor supported him in his arguments. I was very disappointed in her.

This entire experience was rather horrible and the entire time I felt:

• belittled 
• marginalized 
• put down because of my gender (female)
• bullied and pushed around because I am young and a student
• unfairly threatened with student conduct
• upset because I was constantly being interrupted and talked over

Some people in this world, in this country think that we (aka everyone) don't need feminism. They see feminism as an ugly word, they think that it means that feminists see men as inferior, that we want them to be slaves to us women. But really, what we mean when we say we are feminist is that we want to have the same opportunities as men, we want to stand up for ourselves and have people in authority (usually men) take us seriously, not use tactics that make us feel worthless and not have them belittle us. 

It is a hard thing in this world for a young girl to stand up to male authority and tell them what she thinks. It is hard to walk in knowing you are outnumbered, that there is no one at your back to stand up for you, that it's only you against this big scary establishment. But you do it, because you think it's the right thing to do. You hope that you can make a difference for future students. You hope that because you had the lady-balls to stand up for yourself that in the future another girl with a similar issue or a similar complaint might be strong enough to do the same. And then you walk out having been belittled and bullied and threatened and you feel as though your attempt failed miserably. You understand why more people don't speak up for their rights, why more students don't go beyond giving a a bad RateMyProfessors review. You feel as small and insignificant as a bug that big man in the big suit and the big position had just squashed. 

The whole point of college - beyond just getting an education - is to try new things, spread your wings, explore the world from the safety-net that is still not being a "real adult". We are told to challenge convention, to challenge the way things have always been and to fight for what we think is right. And then we have an experience like this. For some it is their first D grade, and they are instantly disillusioned. For me it wasn't my first D or my first failed class. It wasn't my first negative sexual experience or my first boyfriend. It wasn't even the first terrible teacher that taught me nothing and frustrated me for 11 weeks when I could teach the class better. For me, it was using my rights of freedom of speech, it was standing up to the status quo and being shot down so thoroughly that I'm surprised I am actually ready to write this at all after just a week. 

I'm amazed that I am emotionally and mentally ready to even walk past that building again. Two years ago I would have altered my route to class to avoid it, but now even so soon after my disillusionment, I proudly hold my head high and flip off the entire building as I walk past. Yes, maybe this is a teensy bit juvenile, maybe I should be the "better person" and go on with life, but I refuse to allow my negative experience to happen to another student. I refuse to be silenced and marginalized because of my gender and because I say some things that they don't like. Just because I criticize the ability of their staff to teach properly and their department for not taking student's claims seriously. They have now validated everything I just said to them and I will somehow make it count. 

My plan going forward is to go straight to the legal advice, advocates, and representatives that my school supplies to students and seek their counsel on my next steps and what I should avoid in order for Mr. AC not to have any reason to hold something over my head. From there, I will go to student conduct to tell them of this experience and explain exactly what went on, just in case Mr. AC does go ahead and "report" me. I will be ahead of the game on that count and I wish him luck if he tries to go after me. Next, I will be going to my student government ASOSU, whose job it is to help students with problems they are facing and to advocate for their rights. There needs to be some sort of support and outreach to students who want to try to confront big departments in the future. There needs to be some kind of way for students to have an advocate with them to support them and help them with their goals when taking on other AC's. Finally, I want to propose to my universities paper that they should write a column about how departments try to silence student's voices and try to push their concerns to the back burner while walking all over them. 

Sometimes snarky Facebook posts just don't cut it... Governmental Tyranny of course...

Governmental Tyranny

So it has been a while since I have actually used this blog. Still not sure how it is going to go. As for my recipe list, that's gone to hell. I may come back to it, but probably not. I guess the question is, what am I actually going to talk about now? The answer is politics and religion. 

I am an Agnostic-Atheist Democrat in a country filled with christians and republicans. It gets a little trying sometimes, dealing with people I neither agree with or like. On top of having to live around such people, I actually live in the same room with a christian republican, and while I think she's a great person and I love her dearly, a lot of her beliefs and positions frustrate me.

So instead of ruining my relationship with someone I like and would prefer to remain friends with for many years, I'm going to start using this blog as a way to vent my feelings and get my thoughts out there. Sometimes snarky Facebook posts just don't cut it. So here it goes, my new direction...

First topic for discussion, since this has happened so recently is the mass shooting in Oregon this week. Yes, I am diving right into the heavy stuff.

This tragedy really hit hard and i'm not sure why yet. Yes, every mass shooting in recent times is sad and painful and should not have happened, but why this one in particular should cause me such incredible upset and trauma is not clear to me yet. Maybe because I live here in Oregon, so the proximity geographically really brings it home, or maybe because the day after it happened there was  a guy in one of my college classes at OSU that wore a "Keep Calm and Carry a Gun" shirt. I don't know if he was just wildly unknowing about recent happenings, or thought it was a "funny" thing to do, or is so amped up about gun control laws that he felt a burning need to show his support for the NRA and his fear of Governmental Tyranny, but I found that move - of wearing that shirt the day after 10 people died from gun violence - to be absolutely disgusting.

I have great respect for life, animal life over human life personally, but a deep respect for all life. The miracle that it takes for a two cells to join and grow into a multi-celled organism, the pain and energy that it takes for a female creature to grow that creature and then birth it into the world... Those things are amazing acts and should not be taken for granted or forgotten about. Just because I myself am terrified by the idea of performing that deed myself doesn't mean I don't wonder at the process and respect those who manage to pull it off. Life is not something that should ever be wasted or taken for granted. Every time a hunter takes aim at an animal he or she should always understand that they are not just killing a bag of meat and bones, but they should understand that what they plan to kill is a living, breathing organism that has feelings and instincts, history and family, a life in it's entirety. Similarly, before a human goes to war where their job will be shooting at other people, they should understand that they will most definitely be ending another human being's life. Sadly people often put more emphasis on the human life and forget that animal life is just as important.

But regardless of species life is an incredible and wondrous thing.  These mass shootings are ending dozens of lives at a time, hundreds every month, thousands every year. Over time, the more these events occur, we have become desensitized as a culture. We no longer hear about every event unless it has a high death toll, and then that is related to us in numbers, not in names or stories or family members left grieving. If it's just a number we don't identify as much. If it's just a number we can quickly forget about it and move on without truly understanding what has happened. And so the debate now isn't about how to save lives... It isn't about how to prevent this type of event from happening again. Every time people die, we get some spiel about how mental illness is at fault, and we get backstories on the shooter, but the victims go unremembered, unthought of except as numbers on a list. The fact that lives were snuffed out like candles in a breeze is not even considered because a smear campaign has been started by at least one, possibly both political parties. And those lives are forgotten. The mother's pain is forgotten, the friends and family member's grief is forgotten in favor of sniping at each other and all that is left is a blame campaign.

Now it's important to discuss how to prevent lives being lost in the future, that may be an acceptable deviation from remembering the horror of such a waste of life. But listening to fat, old white men complain about how the democrats and liberals in this country are trying to take away their rights THEIR GUNS has become the every-day occurrence. When did remembering dead people involve selfish thoughts about yourself and your political agenda. It's selfish and cruel and disgusting that when other people are grieving you are only thinking about yourself and how your personal life is going to be affected because of those people's deaths. It leads to resentment of the dead, it leads to the selfish belief that you are at the center of the universe. It leads to a lack of empathy or understanding, and it is not okay. It is not okay to wear a shirt promoting guns right after a mass shooting. It is not okay to start talking about a tyrannical government in the face of such a horrific event. It is not okay to think about yourself and your wants. And yet people do, and that makes me angry beyond belief.

And now, for the last few days I have been feeling more and more helpless, more and more in the minority, and so furious and angry with the political parties we have to deal with, with the republican candidates (specifically Jeb Bush) saying "well, stuff happens", with the people around me who either don't know or don't care about this situation. Naturally - because I love to say rude things about the Republican party and I love to voice my very loud and uncensored opinions on Facebook - I posted something about how ridiculous it is that the basic human "right to life" (i.e. the right to walk around day-to-day without fearing for your life) is being superseded by this ridiculous idea that gun control is the worst idea in the world.

Part 1: The crazy idea of gun control and why its the worst thing ever...

Let me be clear first of all. I do not support guns in any way, shape, or form. If I could, I would obliterate every single gun in the world tomorrow. But this isn't about me, and I realize that my personal views are unlikely to become reality any time soon. However, there is a difference between my take-them-all-away wish and the idea of gun control laws. What so many gun-toting trigger-happy people in this country don't seem to understand very well is that it is RIDICULOUSLY EASY to get your hands on a gun. For instance, take the guy from the OR shooting this week... He had 13 guns... THIRTEEN! His parents didn't know he had all of those, his friends didn't know he was on a warpath, and he somehow got his hands on 13 guns. What the democratic party is asking for, what the President of this country is asking for isn't a complete abolishment of guns in this country (mainly because that would never fly). They are asking for stricter regulation on the sale of such weapons, they are asking for some sort of requirements that would prevent a deranged young man from purchasing 13 semi-automatic weapons and shooting up a community college.

Something in this country has to change. Either better gun registration procedures or follow-ups with gun owners... but something. We cannot have yet more people dying because some dudes are afraid the government will take away their fun guns.

Part 2: That very naughty second amendment...

And now we come to the 2nd Amendment that we all know and hate. The purpose of this amendment in the constitution when it was written in 1791 was to limit the government's power and prevent it from subjugating the people and taking over, running rampant without any sort of control. The purpose was to enable the people to assemble an armed militia to defend themselves against the government if it got to uppity and started telling them what to do. But in 1791 the government was a little smaller than it is today, so it would have been easier for the common people to rise up and beat the government back into submission. These days, the government has a rather large army with things like bombs, military-grade assault rifles and trained soldiers.

So I am really curious about how exactly these people - who claim that their right to have guns is protect them from Governmental Tyranny - expect to overthrow or intimidate the government in any way... They may have guns, but do they have the organization to band together into a fighting force? Do they have the training to fight against military soldiers that have seen actual warfare? Are they prepared to kill other humans? And how exactly do they expect to get anywhere near the government they fear in order to force them to adhere to their list of demands? The answer to most of those questions is NO. They don't have any sort of organization in place to join together to rise up and overthrow the government, most of them don't have military training or the ability to fight against actual war veterans, and I doubt that many of them are prepared to actually kill people.  There is also no way in hell that they would ever get close enough to a single politician to get any sort of result. Most politicians like a little something called bodyguards and security...

I'm often amazed by how fearful some people are of the government. Yesterday, I had a very angry sometimes-friend compare the potential outcome of gun laws to Hitler's mass murder of thousands of Jews in gas chambers. Apparently, the reason that the holocaust was possible was because Hitler's government passed gun reform laws restricting civilians from having guns. But if the civilians had been able to form their own militia they could have easily prevented the Nazi party from rising and the holocaust from every happening of course. Critical thinking folks, that's what i've been missing all my life... Now that I have this wisdom imparted on me i'm convinced that having an armed civilian population will solve all our problems... Not.

So again, are they really sure that the 2nd amendment is going to protect them against a tyrannical government? Sad fact is that yes, they do believe that. Which is insanity in itself... But lets go a little deeper into this idea of a tyrannical government.

Part 3: The Tyrannical Government that is out to get us all...

At this current point in time we have a Democratic President and a Republican Congress, which is just about the worst thing possible in my opinion. The president can't get no shit done, and the congress is spitting mad if he somehow manages to get shit done... Before that we had a split congress, a Democratic Senate and a Republican House of Representatives. While that was not ideal, it was at least better than what we have now.

Let us review the legal system. There are a few things that have to be done before the president can take all of our rights away. I'm going to use the children's website of "Kids in the House" and their cutsie video to get the basic steps right.

How a Bill Becomes a Law

1. A Representative or Citizen has an idea and writes it down.
2. The writer of the bill gets a sponsor and seeks support from fellow/other Representatives.
3. The bill is introduced by being sent to a side committee of the House. 
4. It is then either revised and sent back to the house to be voted on or sent to a subcommittee for more expert opinions.
5. When the committee has approved the bill, it is sent or "reported" to the House floor in preparation of being debated.
6. The bill is then debated and lots of people argue about ridiculously teeny-tiny changes, usually to try and one-up the party that introduced it.
7. The bill is now voted on in a variety of ways, and if approved by a majority, it is sent on to the Senate.
8. The bill goes through the same arduous process of committees, debates, and votes.
9. If it was approved in the senate, the bill is then sent on to the president, where he either signs it, doesn't sign it and it goes back to the house and senate for a over-the-head-vote, or it dies. There are a couple other ways that it can become law without the president's say so, but those are too complicated to get into right now.
10. The bill is now either a law or it is dead. 

Now that we've gone back to the basics and understand how the government imposes it's will upon us, I think we can all agree that it's not a simple matter for them to just do whatever the hell they want to us... Its a little more complicated than the president standing up in front of a podium and decreeing that what he says goes. That's a dictatorship, and not a viable governmental option in this country at the moment. 

I'd say the republicans are pretty safe from being forced to obey all the liberal's ideas and the liberals are in danger of having all their social rights dictated to them by an oppressive, racist, misogynistic entity like Donald Trump or any of the other republican candidates. But that's just my opinion...

So back to gun control... I don't think it would be very easy for the government to be so mean and take away all the guns because half of the government wouldn't ever let that happen. That same half also wouldn't let nay change happen in this country at all if it could help it. So again, I would love someone to explain to me how exactly having guns is going to protect us all from a Tyrannical Government Dictatorship? I'm really asking here. I want to know why enough people in this country seem to think that the government is going to become tyrannical and why guns are the fails safe solve to that undesirable end...