Moshi Moshi from Sidney,
Seems like politics isn't cutting the mustard around here, so I've been working on a little thought experiment:
Imagine that you suddenly discovered that you were a robot. That you were like that little kid in AI (Artificial Intelligence) that wasn't immediately aware that he was a robot, but instead thought he was a real boy. (His "mom" basically programmed him to love her and he did.)
The question is, if the technology existed such that you couldn't tell the difference between a human and a robot - or, that your memories/thoughts could somehow be transferred to a computer - and you never realized that you weren't human, but you KNEW you were definitely "you", could you possibly imagine that you didn't possess a soul?
Let's say I just now walked up and pressed a button on a remote control that opened a cavity in your chest where you could see all the little robot gears and wires. Would you come to the conclusion that a soul doesn't care whether you were flesh and blood or not. That YOUR soul was just as real as anybody else's?
NOTE: For the sake of this argument, you have to assume that absolutely nothing about your mind would be any different than it is now. If you think about it, it's a fact that you really have no way to know how anybody else feels/thinks, anyway, so you really have nothing to compare it against. We all presume that we all think and feel similarly. So, really, you actually MIGHT be a robot after all...
But I digress...
If you didn't come to the conclusion that you would somehow have a soul anyway, would you ever be able to come to grips with it? How would you reconcile that this existence was all that there was, for you, anyway. Would you become hopelessly depressed, or would you realize that nothing you did really mattered, so go out on some kind of wild hedonistic rampage? Would you stop caring about all the things you currently care about, and try to eke out as much pleasure as humanly (or robotically) possible? Or, worse, would you become some kind of crazed homocidal maniac, frenetic rapist, or vigilante killer? What difference would it make, you wouldn't have to worry about going to hell or being embarassed in heaven, after all...
Or, do you think that you (being you) would somehow come to the conclusion that YOU were somehow special. That all the other robots were actual robots, but you were some kind of spritual miracle. That god would eventually explain it as some kind of REALLY serious test of faith.
What would YOU do if you woke up to discover that you were a reject from an Isaac Asimov novel?
While you're at it, buy my damn house, you robot bastard!
Friday, July 13, 2007
Monday, July 9, 2007
Illegal Immigration - part deux.
(I don't normally respond to the comments, but I couldn't resist.)
I read Fred's response to my last blog entry (thanks Fred!) and wanted to rebut (look it up). I think he probably speaks for the majority of you. I realize it takes a good deal of courage to post your opinions, and I don't want to put anybody off the idear of commenting in the future. That said...
First, do most Americans REALLY make a distinction between legal and illegal Mexicans? When you see a Mexican walking down the street, do you withhold judgement until you see his/her green card? Also, besides Mexicans, are there any other kind of illegal immigrants that Americans give a shit about? I don't remember hearing anybody bitching about Canadians sneaking into the country (spoiler alert - Canadians are generally white). I don't know how many there are, but they're just as illegal.
Second, do you think that the coyotes would stop trafficking drugs if there was a significant drop in illegal immigration? I'm pretty sure they would traffic just as much if not more since there'd be more room in el truck-o.
Finally, if being an illegal alien is so horrible, why not just make all of them legal? Seriously. Give them all amnesty and instant citizenship. That way, they would have to be paid minimum wage and would then start paying income taxes (whether they liked it or not). Also, if there was blanket amnesty, and all they had to do was go to the Social Security office and get a card, it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than having 11 million people get either deported or process the normal amount of paperwork.
Think about it - there are 400 million Americans and only 11 million illegal aliens. That's about 40 to 1 - hardly enough to even notice. To put it in perspective, if you invited 200 people to your party, and an extra 5 showed up uninvited, would you be significantly impacted? Would you run out of beer and hot dogs before everyone else got their fair share?
I do have a question for anyone reading these comments: What is involved in becoming a legal immigrant? People say all the time that they should just go through the process, but how much trouble are we talking about? How much time/effort/money does it take?
How much time/effort/money did you go through to become a citizen? Or, did you just happen to pop out of your mother's American vagina? If so, lucky you!
Ask yourself this, if every Mexican you met was legal, would it honestly change your opinion of Mexicans? Don't bother answering - I'm pretty sure I know already.
Now go out there and quit being a racist bastard. While you're at it, buy my house, dammit!
I read Fred's response to my last blog entry (thanks Fred!) and wanted to rebut (look it up). I think he probably speaks for the majority of you. I realize it takes a good deal of courage to post your opinions, and I don't want to put anybody off the idear of commenting in the future. That said...
First, do most Americans REALLY make a distinction between legal and illegal Mexicans? When you see a Mexican walking down the street, do you withhold judgement until you see his/her green card? Also, besides Mexicans, are there any other kind of illegal immigrants that Americans give a shit about? I don't remember hearing anybody bitching about Canadians sneaking into the country (spoiler alert - Canadians are generally white). I don't know how many there are, but they're just as illegal.
Second, do you think that the coyotes would stop trafficking drugs if there was a significant drop in illegal immigration? I'm pretty sure they would traffic just as much if not more since there'd be more room in el truck-o.
Finally, if being an illegal alien is so horrible, why not just make all of them legal? Seriously. Give them all amnesty and instant citizenship. That way, they would have to be paid minimum wage and would then start paying income taxes (whether they liked it or not). Also, if there was blanket amnesty, and all they had to do was go to the Social Security office and get a card, it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than having 11 million people get either deported or process the normal amount of paperwork.
Think about it - there are 400 million Americans and only 11 million illegal aliens. That's about 40 to 1 - hardly enough to even notice. To put it in perspective, if you invited 200 people to your party, and an extra 5 showed up uninvited, would you be significantly impacted? Would you run out of beer and hot dogs before everyone else got their fair share?
I do have a question for anyone reading these comments: What is involved in becoming a legal immigrant? People say all the time that they should just go through the process, but how much trouble are we talking about? How much time/effort/money does it take?
How much time/effort/money did you go through to become a citizen? Or, did you just happen to pop out of your mother's American vagina? If so, lucky you!
Ask yourself this, if every Mexican you met was legal, would it honestly change your opinion of Mexicans? Don't bother answering - I'm pretty sure I know already.
Now go out there and quit being a racist bastard. While you're at it, buy my house, dammit!
Monday, July 2, 2007
Immigration: Now it's ready for prime time.
!A, E, I, O, U, El Burro save mas que tu!
My wife sent me yet another illigal immigration diatribe e-mail today. This is about the 10th such message that I've gotten in the last 6 months or so. Apparently, people like sending these things to me because I am of Mexican descent. Usually, these things come from her German (read Nazi) relatives who can't think of anything worse in the world than poor old Jorge out there picking lettuce.
So I read the letter with less than an open mind because that's just the way I roll.
Spoiler alert - it didn't change my mind. The letter sounded exactly like the last 9 or so. Basically, it said, "Life was so grand back in the good old days when the immigrants knew their place and were really hard-working wonderful people who contributed so much to the prosperity of early America. They didn't ask for any special treatment, they just wanted to work 16 hour days for slave labor wages, and squeeze out a couple dozen 'legal' citizens. They certainly didn't expect society to show them any compassion or understanding - they knew better. And they were right!"
My favorite part of this is the fact that people actually harken back to a time when intolerance ruled the day. We should be a lot more intolerant because heaven forbid we might go out of our way for a bunch of sub-humans who won't even bother learning the language. It certainly takes a lot of effort to translate English into Spanish. If only we had some kind of "thinking machine" to do it for us. Alas, a pipe dream, to be sure.
My wife read the e-mail and said, "Well, yeah, they're trying to change the National Anthem!". (This is a woman married to a Mexican, by the way, with Mexican kids and other Mexican relatives.)
I pointed out that nobody was actually trying to change the National Anthem, but that some people wanted a Spanish version of it. This, to me, actually says that these people want to be in some way associated with America. I don't think I've heard anybody suggest that Mexicans are trying to supplant the American Anthem with the Mexican Anthem. That, to me, would be something worth mentioning.
But back to the point of the original letter. Basically, everybody loved the original immigrants and they loved being here (after tearfully kissing their families good-bye in their native countries, of course). It was all very Rockwellian.
Sadly, history is not an American's strongest subject - of course, neither is math, science, geography, etc. But that's the subject of an upcoming blog, so I won't go into detail here. My point is, I hear people say shit like, "Well, back in those days, blah blah blah..." when they have literally NO CLUE what the hell they're talking about. They "know" things because they heard somebody say it somewhere (they probably didn't read it anywhere).
You realize, of course, that when I say "they" in this blog, I'm really substituting it for "you". I would use "you" exclusively, but by saying "they", it gives you the chance to say, "Well, at least he's not talking about me". But don't kid yourself, I am. :-D
Before I go any further, I want to get this in before I forget. I love the way that white people compliment Mexicans. I have heard it only one way: "They're so industrious". (Actually, it's "They're real hard-workers - boy, those Mexicans work real hard." Industrious is just my word...)
This is exactly the same compliment that a black person is given when white folks say, "He's so well-spoken." It's allllmost a compliment if it weren't insulting.
Take Barak Obama for instance. The man is really bright and has a lot of really progressive idears about the future of the country. Now, go out and ask a white person about Barak Obama and he'll say, "That bastard! When we get him, he's gonna pay!!" You'll have to point out that Barak Obama is actually a half-black politician and not the leader of a terrorist group, at which point he'll say, "Oh, that guy. Yeah, he speaks real good." Which is equivalent, of course, to "He's so well-spoken".
My co-worker, David, has a great joke that really defines an average white American's mindset: "What do you call a black airline pilot?" The answer? "Captain". What the hell were you thinking? David is also the guy who checks everything I say for accuracy - kind of a walking, spell-checker. He's no doubt reading this blog right now and making comments in a little three-ring binder.
Ok, back to those dirty Mexicans and their evil ways.
From what I'm gathering, Mexican women will crawl over the border at 8.9999 months pregnant so as to drop a kid onto American soil. The kid (one of dozens, naturally) will become an automatic citizen. The hope is that the kid will, eventually, join a gang and begin raping and pillaging his nearest white neighbors, selling drugs to children, all the while engaging in numerous drive-by shootings. This must be where they get the industrious label.
Mexican men, on the other hand, only want to come to America so as to devalue the dollar by taking all those cushy, well-paying manual-labor jobs, and not paying any taxes! I can't count how many of my friends were forced into a white collar job becuase some damn Mexican stole his dream job of picking lettuce for $25 a day. Those jobs, I don't have to remind you, are in short supply after all.
To be serious for a minute, who's really to blame? Is it the desperate illegal trying to sneak into the country to try and force a better life for himself or his family, or is it the rich white fuck who's willing to hire the illegal in a short-sighted bid to save a couple of bucks? If there was no way to make a buck over here without becoming legal, would anybody bother trying to sneak in?
The solution to a lot of the social problems concerning illegal aliens has nothing to do with the illegals themselves. As I pointed out earlier, it's the kids who grow up in a world that views them with equal parts scorn, disdain and distrust. Their parents are illegal and would get deported if discovered. They're bombarded with images of the good life as lived by a good portion of the American population knowing that they don't have any real chance of ever realizing it for themselves. By the time they're teenagers, they've got a pretty good idear what's in store for them for the rest of their lives. It shouldn't be surprising that these kids feel disenfranchised because, well, they are disenfranchised.
(Hint: disenfranchised = trapped, powerless.)
The solution is pretty simple: Since they are technically citizens, treat them as such. Offer them the basics: health care, food, safety, education. These things are currently being offered, but only at the expense of self-respect. For instance, you can get food, but only if you apply for and use blaringly loud food stamps that announce to anyone around that you are poor and therefore inferior. You can get health care, but only for those maladies that are specifically listed and only by providers who have agreed to the government subsidy to bother seeing you in the first place. You can get housing, in a sense. If you ever lived in the ghetto (hah!) or the projects (hah!!), then you'll understand. Otherwise, you'll figure that that's really all they deserve anyway. Finally, you can get an education, if you can survive the journey to and from a school that couldn't give a shit less about you or your problems.
I'll concede that most adults are fucked-up, but every kid has potential. Even black and Mexican kids. You can either quash it, or foster it. Granted, it costs some of your hard earned tax dollars, but in the end, there will be fewer people to rape, murder, or rob you in the future, so consider it an advance.
Also, until recently, the majority of white America has had no problem spending billions of dollars financing the war in Irag for the last 5 years. I can guarantee you that taking care of 11 million illegal aliens is 1) cheaper and 2) yields much greater dividends.
On a side note, it amazes me that a lot of the people who consider Mexicans as second-class human beings are supposedly Christians. Aren't these the fuckers that are supposed to care about people? Didn't Jesus say something to the effect of how you care for the least among you, so do you care for me? I'm paraphrasing, obviously. But the point is, society really is only as strong as its weakest members.
Finally (yes, I'm nearly finished), a little history lesson. Once upon a time, there was a group of immigrants who were roundly despised. There were signs on business that basically said, if you belong this particular group, don't bother coming in. They were blamed for every ill in society to include crime and the stealing of jobs from real Americans. Their children were routinely denied basic comforts and were often forced to work alongside their parents for 12 - 16 hours a day, again, for slave-labor wages. Sound familiar?
The group? The Irish. Look it up - you can probably read it somewhere...
!Compra mi casa!
My wife sent me yet another illigal immigration diatribe e-mail today. This is about the 10th such message that I've gotten in the last 6 months or so. Apparently, people like sending these things to me because I am of Mexican descent. Usually, these things come from her German (read Nazi) relatives who can't think of anything worse in the world than poor old Jorge out there picking lettuce.
So I read the letter with less than an open mind because that's just the way I roll.
Spoiler alert - it didn't change my mind. The letter sounded exactly like the last 9 or so. Basically, it said, "Life was so grand back in the good old days when the immigrants knew their place and were really hard-working wonderful people who contributed so much to the prosperity of early America. They didn't ask for any special treatment, they just wanted to work 16 hour days for slave labor wages, and squeeze out a couple dozen 'legal' citizens. They certainly didn't expect society to show them any compassion or understanding - they knew better. And they were right!"
My favorite part of this is the fact that people actually harken back to a time when intolerance ruled the day. We should be a lot more intolerant because heaven forbid we might go out of our way for a bunch of sub-humans who won't even bother learning the language. It certainly takes a lot of effort to translate English into Spanish. If only we had some kind of "thinking machine" to do it for us. Alas, a pipe dream, to be sure.
My wife read the e-mail and said, "Well, yeah, they're trying to change the National Anthem!". (This is a woman married to a Mexican, by the way, with Mexican kids and other Mexican relatives.)
I pointed out that nobody was actually trying to change the National Anthem, but that some people wanted a Spanish version of it. This, to me, actually says that these people want to be in some way associated with America. I don't think I've heard anybody suggest that Mexicans are trying to supplant the American Anthem with the Mexican Anthem. That, to me, would be something worth mentioning.
But back to the point of the original letter. Basically, everybody loved the original immigrants and they loved being here (after tearfully kissing their families good-bye in their native countries, of course). It was all very Rockwellian.
Sadly, history is not an American's strongest subject - of course, neither is math, science, geography, etc. But that's the subject of an upcoming blog, so I won't go into detail here. My point is, I hear people say shit like, "Well, back in those days, blah blah blah..." when they have literally NO CLUE what the hell they're talking about. They "know" things because they heard somebody say it somewhere (they probably didn't read it anywhere).
You realize, of course, that when I say "they" in this blog, I'm really substituting it for "you". I would use "you" exclusively, but by saying "they", it gives you the chance to say, "Well, at least he's not talking about me". But don't kid yourself, I am. :-D
Before I go any further, I want to get this in before I forget. I love the way that white people compliment Mexicans. I have heard it only one way: "They're so industrious". (Actually, it's "They're real hard-workers - boy, those Mexicans work real hard." Industrious is just my word...)
This is exactly the same compliment that a black person is given when white folks say, "He's so well-spoken." It's allllmost a compliment if it weren't insulting.
Take Barak Obama for instance. The man is really bright and has a lot of really progressive idears about the future of the country. Now, go out and ask a white person about Barak Obama and he'll say, "That bastard! When we get him, he's gonna pay!!" You'll have to point out that Barak Obama is actually a half-black politician and not the leader of a terrorist group, at which point he'll say, "Oh, that guy. Yeah, he speaks real good." Which is equivalent, of course, to "He's so well-spoken".
My co-worker, David, has a great joke that really defines an average white American's mindset: "What do you call a black airline pilot?" The answer? "Captain". What the hell were you thinking? David is also the guy who checks everything I say for accuracy - kind of a walking, spell-checker. He's no doubt reading this blog right now and making comments in a little three-ring binder.
Ok, back to those dirty Mexicans and their evil ways.
From what I'm gathering, Mexican women will crawl over the border at 8.9999 months pregnant so as to drop a kid onto American soil. The kid (one of dozens, naturally) will become an automatic citizen. The hope is that the kid will, eventually, join a gang and begin raping and pillaging his nearest white neighbors, selling drugs to children, all the while engaging in numerous drive-by shootings. This must be where they get the industrious label.
Mexican men, on the other hand, only want to come to America so as to devalue the dollar by taking all those cushy, well-paying manual-labor jobs, and not paying any taxes! I can't count how many of my friends were forced into a white collar job becuase some damn Mexican stole his dream job of picking lettuce for $25 a day. Those jobs, I don't have to remind you, are in short supply after all.
To be serious for a minute, who's really to blame? Is it the desperate illegal trying to sneak into the country to try and force a better life for himself or his family, or is it the rich white fuck who's willing to hire the illegal in a short-sighted bid to save a couple of bucks? If there was no way to make a buck over here without becoming legal, would anybody bother trying to sneak in?
The solution to a lot of the social problems concerning illegal aliens has nothing to do with the illegals themselves. As I pointed out earlier, it's the kids who grow up in a world that views them with equal parts scorn, disdain and distrust. Their parents are illegal and would get deported if discovered. They're bombarded with images of the good life as lived by a good portion of the American population knowing that they don't have any real chance of ever realizing it for themselves. By the time they're teenagers, they've got a pretty good idear what's in store for them for the rest of their lives. It shouldn't be surprising that these kids feel disenfranchised because, well, they are disenfranchised.
(Hint: disenfranchised = trapped, powerless.)
The solution is pretty simple: Since they are technically citizens, treat them as such. Offer them the basics: health care, food, safety, education. These things are currently being offered, but only at the expense of self-respect. For instance, you can get food, but only if you apply for and use blaringly loud food stamps that announce to anyone around that you are poor and therefore inferior. You can get health care, but only for those maladies that are specifically listed and only by providers who have agreed to the government subsidy to bother seeing you in the first place. You can get housing, in a sense. If you ever lived in the ghetto (hah!) or the projects (hah!!), then you'll understand. Otherwise, you'll figure that that's really all they deserve anyway. Finally, you can get an education, if you can survive the journey to and from a school that couldn't give a shit less about you or your problems.
I'll concede that most adults are fucked-up, but every kid has potential. Even black and Mexican kids. You can either quash it, or foster it. Granted, it costs some of your hard earned tax dollars, but in the end, there will be fewer people to rape, murder, or rob you in the future, so consider it an advance.
Also, until recently, the majority of white America has had no problem spending billions of dollars financing the war in Irag for the last 5 years. I can guarantee you that taking care of 11 million illegal aliens is 1) cheaper and 2) yields much greater dividends.
On a side note, it amazes me that a lot of the people who consider Mexicans as second-class human beings are supposedly Christians. Aren't these the fuckers that are supposed to care about people? Didn't Jesus say something to the effect of how you care for the least among you, so do you care for me? I'm paraphrasing, obviously. But the point is, society really is only as strong as its weakest members.
Finally (yes, I'm nearly finished), a little history lesson. Once upon a time, there was a group of immigrants who were roundly despised. There were signs on business that basically said, if you belong this particular group, don't bother coming in. They were blamed for every ill in society to include crime and the stealing of jobs from real Americans. Their children were routinely denied basic comforts and were often forced to work alongside their parents for 12 - 16 hours a day, again, for slave-labor wages. Sound familiar?
The group? The Irish. Look it up - you can probably read it somewhere...
!Compra mi casa!
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