Dave Sim's blogandmail #185 (March 15th, 2007)

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Fourteen Impossible Things to Believe Before Breakfast That Make You a Good Feminist

1. A mother who works a full-time job and delegates to strangers the raising of her children eight hours a day, five days a week does just as good a job as a mother who hand-rears her children full time.

2. It makes great sense for the government to pay 10 to 15,000 dollars a year to fund a daycare space for a child so its mother - who pays perhaps 2,000 dollars in taxes - can be a contributing member of society.

3. A woman's doctor has more of a valid claim to participate in the decision to abort a fetus than does the father of that fetus.

4. So long as a woman makes a decision after consulting with her doctor, she is incapable of making an unethical choice.

5. A car with two steering wheels, two gas pedals and two brakes drives more efficiently than a car with one steering wheel, one gas pedal and one brake which is why marriage should always be an equal partnership.

6. It is absolutely necessary for women to be allowed to join or participate fully in any gathering place for men, just as it is absolutely necessary that there be women only environments from which men are excluded.

7. Because it involves taking jobs away from men and giving them to women, affirmative action makes for a fairer and more just society.

8. It is important to have lower physical standards for women firepersons and women policepersons so that, one day, half of all firepersons and policepersons will be women, thus more effectively protecting the safety of the public.

9. Affirmative action at colleges and universities needs to be maintained now that more women than men are being enrolled, in order to keep from giving men an unfair advantage academically.

10. Having ensured that there is no environment for men where women don't belong (see no.6) it is important to have zero tolerance of any expression or action which any woman might regard as sexist to ensure greater freedom for everyone.

11. Only in a society which maintains a level of 95% of alimony and child support being paid by men to women can men and women be considered as equals.

12. An airline stewardess who earned $20,000 a year at the time that she married a baseball player earning $6 million a year is entitled, in the event of a divorce, to $3 million for each year of the marriage and probably more.

13. A man's opinions on how to rear and/or raise a child are invalid because he is not the child's mother. However, his financial obligation is greater because no woman gets pregnant by herself.

14. Disagreeing with any of these statements makes you anti-woman and/or a misogynist.

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…AND AROUND THE WORLD!!!

Also, as you said on the blogandmail #143 (February 1, 2007)


"The problem, of course, is refuting the counter-revolutionary charge of mindless jingoism. And it seems to me the way to do that is to say, "Well just for the sake of argument let's say that Barbra Streisand and Michael Moore are right. It's really that bad. The United States in toto is this entirely loathsome and irredeemable mess and the central source and catalyst for everything that's wrong in the world. What do they suggest instead?" And it seems to me that their suggestion is always really good parties with lots of interesting people and witty conversation and composting and trying to live the way the Indians did before Europeans came to this continent. And the implicit point (to me, anyway) is that they misunderstand what the question is in the first place. What do they suggest should be done on a global scale? And the answer is the same: All countries and all governments should be having really good parties with lots of interesting people and witty conversation and composting and trying to live the way the Indians did before the Europeans came to this continent."


This is an astute comment, and there is really no arguing it.


That doesn't keep the academics and the champagne socialists from arguing it, though. Again, there are very few actual workers who are socialists or who are interested in actually running things or who understand that the things that they want to do are not "do-able". The sort of people who are still trying to get the Kyoto Accord implemented even though in Canada's case it would cost us a good 35% of our economy at all levels (35% of all cars OFF the road for starters) to accomplish. A socialist or anarchist government just means that the amount of money government siphons from workers and from employers goes up to pay for a "managed economy", large increases in welfare payments, curbs on industry, nationalized daycare, nationalized industries. Instead of the employer having to shell out $900 to the government and the employee so the employee can take home $400, the employer has to pay, say, $1100 so the employee can take home $350 ("There will of course be short-term temporary income fluctuations, comrade, until we are able to fully implement our program. We all have to do our part for the People's Republic of Ontario").


Still, my own political views are becoming polarized as a Yin Yang between far right conservatism and far left anarchy as I cling to the ideas I perceive as truth, placing me so far as I can tell, somewhere outside the whole political spectrum. Though, as I try to better understand all of this, ultimately I am thinking that it is less about left and right wing politics and more about morality. I view our current political structure as a one-party system masquerading as a two-party system. This makes me think that the issues are less about left and right wing politics and more about what is the greatest benefit to society? What is morally right? What is the will of God? I can't shake the notion that current world politics are in place to make the rich richer and to create a control system to suppress the rest of the world population. The conflict in human society, as I see it, really comes down to class war.


Left-right politics is the lower chessboard. The real game is happening on a chessboard much higher.


Oh, and before I go any further, let me clarify right now, for the record, that I despise Liberal thinking and their netherworld of gray areas.


Living in the Socialist Republic of Canada, this is made crystal clear, in the animation industry where the studios are more interested in government handouts than they are in running an animation studio. As a result, Canadian animators get bottom-of-the-barrel projects where the horribly mismanaged productions companies are looking to get work made on the cheap. The projects lacking a creative vision come to Canada. Then, add to that, inexperienced women in high positions in production management, and you get an unbearable working condition. Yet I digress…


Well, I think the flaw in your reasoning as I see as being the flaw in the reasoning of most people on the extreme left is that you aren't seeing rich people as just being part of the equation. Try looking at it this way – there is a whole section of society that is pulling its hair out and giving itself ulcers and grinding itself up in a self-created spiritual meat-grinder because they are obsessively interested in making money and that's all that they're interested in. Money can't buy happiness. At one level or another, as a God-fearing man, you know the truth in that. Money is the root of all evil. At one level or another, as a God-fearing man, you know the truth in that, as well. So rich people should really be off of your radar screen in the same way that a porn star who is getting laid eight times today is off of your radar screen. To envy a rich person's wealth is just another form of the disease that rich people have: the secret suspicion that money can buy happiness and that money is the root of all goodness. Instead of sitting here debating these issues with you for the last couple of days, I could be doing a lot of high-priced commissions. I could be shopping Cerebus around to animation studios for the highest-priced option I could get. Well, I know better than that. As a spectator to my career and an aspirant in the same field, you know better than that.


I think the Blog & Mail might be helping to sell trade paperbacks, but I also think that if it is it is more in the way that this is The Right Thing To Do and that the increase in sales is one of those trickle-down blessings that results. If you do the right thing, God will provide. Right? That doesn't mean God will give you your own animation studio and a fifty-room mansion in Holmby Hills. And you're right. That's about morality. But all morality is individually chosen. I think that discussing politics and faith in God at considerable length for four or five days out of every three-week period and dumping it on the internet on a Make of That What you Will basis is the right thing for me to do. It will make me happier and will accomplish more good in a general sense and help me sleep better at night than getting a six-figure option deal from Dreamworks is going to do. In your own case, this letter you've written wasn't knocked out in twenty minutes. You could have put in some overtime doing your animation work you have no respect for and have a lot more money to show for it. God knows exactly how much money you need and if you play square with Him and do the things that are right, He'll see that you get every penny exactly when you need it. As it says in the Koran, "God will not wrong you so much as the husk of a date stone." Money is a very small part of each individual's personal equation, as I see it. If you do what's right God will make sure you have enough money in your pocket and bank account. I think this extends to the mill and factory worker. If you do a good job of your job you'll get a better job or another opportunity. If you just keep manufacturing further entitlements for yourself through a union and slack off every chance you get, yeah, you're probably not going to end up very happy in the long term. But that's your fault, not God's or the fault of the economic system we have.


Now, the BIG notable difference where I know our views clash and conflict in politics comes down to the Bush Administration and the War in Iraq. My point of contention is; I think the ultimate intentions of the Bush Administration were disingenuous and dishonourable. The morality behind the Iraq war I strongly disagree with, on the grounds that 9-11 was an inside job to create a false pretext for war. All of the facts and evidence I encounter keeps pointing me back to the same things. And I don't see this as a "Left" vs. "Right" issue, but rather the elite ruling class attempting to control the world's resources. Or, a "Top" vs. "Bottom" issue.


Well, as I just observed, I think money is a very small part of each person's personal equation so I think suggesting that the "elite ruling class" is the "Top" by virtue of being rich and everyone who isn't rich is on the "Bottom" is a misapprehended way of viewing reality. But don't let me interrupt.


9-11 is the catalyst for war that the think tanks have been dreaming up for decades. Their "New Pearl Harbor" as called for the Project For A New American Century (Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century pg. 51). As well many of the events we witnessed in 2001 were spelled out in the 1962 Operation Northwoods documents.


James Bamford summarized Operation Northwoods in his Body of Secrets as follows:


"Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, DC, Miami and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war."


It plays out as a mob protection racket. There is really no other way to describe it. Which brings me to the idea that our politics are being run by international gangsters.


The following is a quote from Michael Ruppert, which best sums up the idea:


"People talk to me about the issue of Republican versus Democrat as if they don't get it. And I say; look, here's the way you get it. It's organized crime. All you do is you call the Republicans the Genoveses and you call the Democrats the Gambinos. The people at the top, they treat it like a crap game, like it's their crap game, like they're making lots of money. Occasionally somebody at the table shoots each other. But the moment anything threatens their crap game, they all unite to protect it. They're both controlled by the same financial economic corporate interests."


Tomorrow: I give my best assessment of the opinion that the Democrats and Republicans are just two mob families at heart.

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