David’s Evil-er Than Most Blog

In response to the title, not really, methinks. Well, not openly, not like in Huckberry Finn, in which the characters drop the n-bomb every 5 sentences, sometimes more. But is that really rascist? I mean, it’s how they talked. No one took offense to it, they just accepted it as a name. Over time though, it got to be one of the only “untouchable” spoken words in modern society. And this does lead back to how America isn’t really rasicts. For unlike H.F., everything and anything not meaning equality is considered rascist. There are no title’s for groups of people that one can say without be jumped by the race police. Time have changed since the time of the glory of the Mississippi, and society has gotten so rascist, that no one is rascist anymore, for fear of being rascist. Confusing, yes, but I couldn think of no other way to say it.

Well, after reading quite a bit of Twains book, I am glad to say that the modern world is more accepting of satire in modern society. Back in Twains day, he had to quell his satirical wit, and make the connections so vague that it would be hidden long enough that lots people buy the book before they realize all the double meanings (much like the way the king and the duke swindle the town into telling other people about their terrible Shakespear show) Nowadays, things like the Colbert Report openly mock major organizations, and take very little heat about it. In fact, actors like Colbert are revered as sseeing the truth behind a countries ways. In Twains time, this would have been seen as wrong an immortal to place the blame on ones countrymen. Which is why I’m glad we progresses beyond that time, since most of my humor is satiriccal, and I would most likely be in jail.

In this class dicusion, we talked a lot about the sectarian violence and the idea of going after dipolmatic connections with Iraq’s neighbors and the Iraqi people themselves. Before this, I had always suspected that the US being in Iraq was the main focus of the entire region. I mean, you never hear od any other reasons as to why the people might be fighing so; it’s always the group united against the US. Sure, some goups might dislike each other, like the Shites and the Sunni’s, but I never thought that this was THE main conflict in the area. I had figured that the war over the Israeli land had ended sometime in the 80’s. Why has no one told me otherwise?

Anyway, I agree with the plan that the paper presents. But isn’t it somewhat obvious? I mean, has the president previously trying to alienate Iraq’s neighbors? Were we trying to get them to not help us? I suppose the paper is only referring to how we need to increae our diplomacy. The same goes for trying to win over the Iraqi people. Surely the US hasn’t been trying to come across as invaders, so iI can only assume likewise. But I do think we are obligated to do SOMETHING to help the Iraqi’s in their current situation, instead of just abandoning them where they stand now (very bloody conflicts all around). We took away Saddamn, which was good in that it brougyt down a ruthless leader, but bad in that it took the lid off of the boiling faction troubles in the nation. We have to do somethibg, else it will be just like we’re running away from our troubles.

http://www.units.muohio.edu/psybersite/workplace/modernweb.shtml

i found this article to co-incide with what I think about when I hear tell about rascism. The subtle meanings, the hidden messages. However, I don’t really think it has become as servere as the author of this article says. People don’t TRY to be rascist (except in extreme cases), and much of it is just subconcious, left over from when it was common nature to say the n-bomb every 3 sentences. All the other races the article speaks about, I agree with the generalizations it presents, but once again disagree that people are conciously perpetuating these ideas.

Ah, satire. One of my favorite forms of social observation (although I rarely do it, for fear of sound pretencious). It lets people make fun of something, and it’s a fairly unassailible point: one could say that it’s offensive, but the writer could argue that a)the person should lighten up a bit, or b) they the writer weren’t directly mocking anything or anyone.

Satire also serves as to provide a change from the norm. In todays world, with it’s extremely “PC” take on every subject, there’s Borat, to let people know just what other people are like behind all the masks of “acceptance”. With news shows constantly try to compete for the most gravitas, Colbert and Stewart switch it around, mock those shows by extrapolating their most extreme elements of fear and control. I’m a particularly big fan of those shows, because they’re not afraid to poke fun at themselves. If things like “the War Prayer” were reprinted today, then people would be shown the error of their ways, and that the war is not only one thing, but a double edged sword.

Actually, not much of this reading struck me as particularly starnge. I had already read the writing of Frederick Douglass (the 2 times I had to do a biography in catholic school…don’t ask), so this wasn’t any new material to me. I knew that slaves were mistreated, and were given poor provisions. What I did learn though, was that the songs sung by the slaves was one of sadness. I never would have guessed that. I mean come on. They had words like “o yea!” How is that sad? Huh…Must have needed to be a slave to understand. I always thought it was them singing of home back in africa. But maybe the mood of the song was to trick the slave drivers from getting the true meaning of the song (much like the rebel’s in the movie “Catch A fire”) Oh well.