The Jessaverse | Change and Exchange

Since people are still reading this page, I would like to refer you to insolectual.com, my new domain. I appreciate your comments and interest here, but this site, at least located here, is currently defunct. I will keep it up for the purposes of maintaining an archive.
-JC.

Change and Exchange has moved!

http://www.insolectual.com is its new address. I’ll be transferring all my old stuff here.

http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1231684&page=1

I was shown this article fairly recently, and I must say that I was quite shocked. Not necessarily because there are racist singers around (I’ve been researching and analysing extremists for a few years now, and one of my main hobbies is tracking extremist movements and groups in America), but because Lynx and Lamb Gaede (is their mother grooming them for future Nazi porn-stardom with those names?) are only thirteen years old. Granted, most thirteen-year-olds I’ve known are competent and intelligent enough to at least have their own beliefs. However, in the case of Lynx and Lamb, their mother, April, has been home-schooling them consistently (until now), teaching them her racist beliefs and historical myths that have been disproved by mainstream historians. These girls have basically been groomed to be extremists. I believe in the right to free speech, but I do not believe in the right to brainwash one’s children with whatever beliefs that a parent has. Each individual has the right to learn what they wish on his own. In fact, situations like these are what makes me question the benefits of home-schooling.

I’m hoping that these girls will hit their rebellious streak in a few years and realise that hate is wrong. Maybe they’ll be so rebellious that they’ll each date black guys to teach their pushy mother a thing or two. Of course, that’s a futile hope. Most people who have been brainwashed need several years to deprogramme themselves.

Finding the right politicians to vote for next year has become increasingly difficult this year, especially when the zeitgeist of the early 2000s seems to be one of higher-profile politicians trying to pander to the extreme ends of the left- and right-wing spectrum rather than to the centre, as Bill Clinton and other politicians have tried to do back in 1994. On the Republican side, socially-liberal but economic conservatives are jettisoned in favour of the ‘family-values’ crowd, and for the Democrats, little to no attention is paid to centrists or populists. I’ve mentioned my politics before, and it’s rather difficult to find candidates for any position that seem to resonate with me. The Democrats are too protectionist for me economically, and the Republican party line seems to emphasise ‘traditional family values’ that seem to just malign social minorities and promote social regressivism. There isn’t a strong party that supports -mostly- free economics (with some regulation to protect work abuses and ‘bootstrap’ social programmes) and social liberalism right now.

In addition, the 2006 and 2008 elections will be pretty interesting to follow, as both the Republicans and Democrats are currently having a lot of issues with their party leadership and visions. In the case of the Republicans, people are pretty pissed off at them right now for their mishandling of Hurricane Katrina, the Valerie Plame affair and the current Tom DeLay brouhaha. In the case of the Democrats, they are in a morass of confusion and haven’t chosen a consistent ideology, choosing instead to use the Republicans as a punching-bag. It will be interesting to see if some ‘renegade’ politicians decide that they’re fed up with business-as-usual and the centre gets more attention after the current emphasis on extremism.

Sorry I haven’t updated in ages…I will resume posting on this blog…and I’ve got something for ya!

Thanks to NY asshole attorney-general Elliot Spitzer, Yahoo is now requiring you to be 18 to use their chat-rooms. What a bunch of bullshit designed to pander to overprotective parents. You don’t have to worry about a goddamned chat room to worry about fucking paedophiles. Most people who molest kids ALREADY KNOW THEM IN PERSON, you fucking IDIOTS! Most of the chat-room flirting is just stupid flirting and youth expressing their sexuality…but of course these stupid parents and politicians get so freaked out that their kids have SEXUALITIES! Guess what, they DO! Get your heads out of the fucking clouds and realise that! You know who’s REALLY abusing kids and molesting them? Relatives. There are always random losers, but the majority of child-abuse and molestation cases are by PARENTS and other FAMILY MEMBERS. So get the fuck over the bloody chat rooms and worry about the kids being sent to ‘rehabilitation’ programmes that rob them of their spirits, or the kids that are really being abused instead of going up in arms about stupid shit like this.

Anyway, why are you discriminating against the youth instead of the paedophiles who target them? I think it’s because if you’re not yet 18, you’re not given a proper chance to participate in the government. However, that is still wrong to mistreat youth that way. The people who should be punished for mucking around in the Yahoo chatrooms are the fucking paedos, not the teenagers whom they prey on.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m an enthusiastic supporter of home education if done properly. However, the current home-schooling movement has been hijacked by Christian fundamentalists who wish to brainwash their children with intolerance and bigotry. It’s one thing to take your child out of school to allow them to learn on their own, but it’s another to take your child from one form of brainwashing to another. A lot of parents see their home-schooled children as ‘property’ to protect from the ‘evil influences’ of the ‘world’, not free agents who are capable of learning on their own. This sort of home-schooling is just as inimical to youth rights as standard public schooling is. It’s the same ‘fill the child with bullshit’ mentality, even though it’s just a different type of bullshit. I’ve seen some of these fundamentalist Christian home-schooling curricula and programmes, especially since my younger sister in fifth grade is home-schooled and is being taught a lot of this stuff. The worldview espoused is obviously fundamentalist-Christian, one of the Bible courses outright insults atheists, and they are taught that Christianity is the only acceptable religion. Hyper-patriotism is taught by some programmes as well. Whatever happened to allowing people to discover religion for themselves? Some of the lessons are patronising. There is a strong support for Noah Webster, who was one of the first people to completely ravage the English language. He was a disagreeable preacher who created a censored dictionary that contained nothing that wasn’t Christian, and he took part in chopping up British words arbitrarily, obscuring their etymology or taking away their mostly French-derived beauty. Students are spoonfed conservative politics and are taught to obey anyone who has imposed their authority upon them unless they are not Christians. I have no problems with Christianity or home-schooling, by the way. I simply have a problem with brainwashing.

Recently at church, a pamphlet was disseminated inside the church programme that advocated supporting a censorship programme called ‘Cable Choice’. Apparently, the geniuses at my church want to suppress the free speech of those who don’t agree with them. Under the Cable Choice system, it is possible to pay for/subsidise only the channels that YOU personally agree with. In theory, this sounds like a good idea, but not if it is being promoted by religious extremists who only want THEIR ideas expressed on the television. Here’s a newsflash for these people” NOT EVERYONE AGREES WITH YOU! Even some CHRISTIANS don’t think the programmes and channels that you don’t like are filth. These people are so bent on suppressing the freedom of speech of other groups. Honestly, I don’t give a damn if Christian channels exist. Guess what…I DON’T HAVE TO WATCH THEM! I can just change the channel, and so can they! Don’t like MTV, Cinemax, or R-rated movies? Then don’t watch them, you putrescent imbeciles! Don’t be a fucking killjoy for all those who do! You wouldn’t see me picketing extremist Christian organisations just because they exist. That’s just fucking stupid and against the principles of freedom of speech. When will they get it through their thick skulls that freedom of speech applies to even people who disagree with them?

Write the FCC, telling them that Cable Choice, the proposed programme, is going to be used as a sounding-board for extremists.
Kevin Martin – KJMWEB@fcc.gov
FCC – 445 12th St. SW
Washington, DC 20554

Why don’t you also give the church your opinion, too?
Morning Star Community Church of Abilene
221 Oak Street, Abilene, TX 79602
destiny@morningstarabilene.com

On American television (and presumably British television as well), there is a programme called ‘Brat Camp’, which details the lives of several ‘unruly’ teenagers abducted from their home and taken to a behaviour-modification school since their parents are at their wits’ ends. The idea that these parents treat their children as property and have people abduct them into the night to be treated with abuse and ridicule at a behaviour-modification centre that is more like a gulag than a school is patently disgusting. What ever happened to individual rights?

I believe that the ideas promulgated by the adultist media and by autocratic parents are detrimental to youth self-determination. Youth are perfectly cognisant enough to make their own decisions as regards their own behaviour, and it is insulting to their intelligence and sense of self to force such barbarism upon them.

The reasons for sending the teenagers to the camps are also ridiculous. One was molested and was never the same again. Another had drug problems. Some others simply thought for themselves and wanted to live their own lives, rather than the ones their parents had mapped out for them. Here’s a news flash for the parents who want to live their lives vicariously through their children: They’re individuals! Don’t expect them to be like you. It’s perfectly fine for you to help and give them advice, but it is NOT fine to force them into your mould. And for the parents who throw their children into these programmes because they are on drugs: They don’t need to be tortured in order to get them off drugs! That’s what rehab is for! I think that these programmes don’t give any ‘real world’ training (as hard as it is to live these days, most Americans do not have to wander in the wilderness in order to be taught proper behaviour and humility) and they are demoralising and humiliating. And about behaviour changing if someone has been molested? Of course it’s going to change. Sexual abuse scars you for life. You’ll never see sex and sexuality the same way ever again, and you’ll fear that someone is going to harm you if you get too close.

If you want your children to learn from their mistakes, let them learn from trial and error, and then they will realise that they need to turn their lives around. Don’t make their lives worse than they already are.

I realised something…it seems when some sort of attack or breach of security happens in a western or westernised country like Great Britain or Japan, the mass media take the opportunity to publicise the event and remind the public of how terrible terrorism is. However, in the developing world, such things also occur, and the media only mention such events in passing, or in a blurb, or in an article at the back of the newspaper. Journalists spend so much time analysing how terror breeds in ‘civilised’ countries, but they pay little or no attention to what might be the catalyst for terror in developing countries unless someone from one of those countries attacks someone in Western Europe, Japan, China, the Koreas, or North America. For example, when the first set of attacks occurred in London, the mass media were all over it. News reports, magazines, and newspapers had London all over their leading articles and newscasts. In contrast, the recent attacks in Egypt received none of this publicity, even though more people died in the initial attack. It’s really saddening how the media are so biased. I think both events deserve equal publicity.

After I heard about the terrorist attacks on London yesterday, I started analysing the reasons behind the terrorist attacks — most terrorists or ‘freedom fighters’ seem to have some sort of purpose behind bombing buildings; they don’t do it nolens-volens. I personally think the root behind terrorism is intolerance and a lack of co-operation and cultural exchange. Fundamentalist Muslims feel very strongly that Western civilisation is evil because it is against what Allah mandated in the Koran, and they are also taught not to accept others’ beliefs. To retaliate against the inevitable tide of globalisation and ‘westernisation’, the fundamentalist Islamists issue fatwas, bomb buildings, and declare Western states like the US to be the ‘Great Satan’. If there were more acceptance of social reform in Islamic countries, I think that people would be more accepting of different ideas and would allow cultural exchange. I think that since their culture is a bit more stagnant than the ever-changing Western world, they are less accepting of change, and resist it whenever it materialises. I’m not prejudiced against Middle Eastern culture; in fact, the Middle East used to be the cultural centre of the world, and Islam once did support a thriving scientific and intellectual culture. Nowadays, the cultural centres of the world have shifted westward, but the Middle East hasn’t wanted to move along with them. Fundamentalists now are in charge of many of those countries, and they support cultural stagnation, an unfortunate result of extreme social conservatism.

The resistance to change, along with other factors, is one of the catalysts for this variety of terrorism.