2989 Not depressed. Disgusted. All is Futile!

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

"At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity,
human malice and those great motivators and justifiers
of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal
on behalf of religious or political ideas."
-- Aldous Huxley --

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I spent a little time this afternoon reading through posts in this journal from 2008. Don't remember why I went there, but I was amazed that back then, I had well-thought-out opinions on lots of things, and I wrote about them.

Even before there were blogs, or even computers, I always used to write about my thoughts. Writing things down helped me to organize my opinions, explore them fully, test them. It worked better than talking about them with others, because if the other person disagreed, I'd back down, lose the thread, start to doubt myself, give up before my thoughts were fully formed.

I don't know what's been going on for the past year. I don't seem to be thinking about things. Don't seem to have all that many opinions.

Part of it might be that I'm not listening to talk radio as much. Not reading magazines. Not visiting political and news blogs so much. When things do drift past, I think, "Oh, I need to think about that a bit", and then my mind sort of wanders off.

I've got a whole stack of things saved in bookmarks or Bloglines that I wanted to comment on, but when I go back and look at them later, I decide they're not so important to me any more.

Maybe I just don't want to get angry. I don't think it's depression, because I still enjoy things, and still want to go out to fun things. Maybe I'm just tired of the stupidity of the masses out there. I don't want to think about it any more. I don't want to think about or deal with the idiots who, for example, now seem to think that it was Obama who gave the gazillion dollars to bail out the banks. And so on.

It's not depression. It's disgust.

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Sort of the same topic, and an example.

On NPR in the car today, a woman from Woodstock, NY, was talking about throwing a prom/benefit in Woodstock later this month for Constance McMillen. She's the girl who wanted to wear a tuxedo and take her girlfriend to her high school prom, but the principal/school board canceled the prom rather than allow it.

Some parents of other students organized a private prom, to which she was not invited, since it was her fault the school prom had been canceled.

The girl, with the assistance of the ACLU, is suing the school district administration for subjecting her to humiliation.

Now, here's the kicker. Since the story was picked up by the media, she's been interviewed on several national TV news and talk shows, she will be the Grand Marshall of the NYC gay pride parade, they're throwing this big-name benefit/party/prom for her in Woodstock, and they're making a movie of the situation and the making of the benefit, which movie they expect to go international.

My thoughts in the car were, "Doesn't all the positive attention she's getting kind of negate the 'lingering effects' of the humiliation? If she were truly humiliated, wouldn't she be more shy about it? What effect will all this have on her lawsuit? If the lawsuit is to make a point about prejudice toward gays, is she hurting rather than helping that cause by jeopardizing her case?"

When I got home and looked up details on the internet, I got disgusted. I don't want to think about it any more. Especially after I found out about Juin Baize, a cross-dressing student in Constance's school who suffered even worse harassment than Constance. Constance didn't get to go to the prom. Boohoo. How sad. Juin got suspended, expelled, and eventually his family was hounded out of town. So, uh, why is Constance getting all the attention, and Juin gets none?

I don't even want to think about it any more.

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By the way, why is it that we know all about the oil in the gulf, but we know nothing about the horrific flooding all over Europe? Many towns and villages under water.

Just an example of how we are shaped by what the media chooses to tell us, or not tell us.
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