On the Conservative Media

I do not listen to everything the "Right Wing" news tells me, nor would I ever recommend that others do so. When I was a child, my folks seemed to. Supposedly there were all these Satanic cults everywhere that were after us all. Supposedly Kellog's  brand supported abortion. Supposedly Christian rock was part of the Illuminati...

The conservative and liberal news media are both full of emotional appeals and paint people who vote against them as evil, dangerous people out to take control and take over everybody's life. "Do what we are encouraging you to do here, protect yourself and your freedom!" I am pro-life and believe homosexuality is a sin, but I am also an active environmentalist. I get emails from both "wings," and they're actually both nuts. Absolutely nuts.



I do not agree with, or follow Alex Jones and all the conspiracy theories entirely either, but at times they do make some good points.



I have an old friend who was conceived when her mother was raped. I love this dear friend of mine. She is not "a product of rape." She is a wonderful thing that came from a terrible thing. She is not what happened to her mom; she is an example of the triumph and beauty of life in, and even through, the darkest of circumstances. It definitely does devalue life to make exceptions to an abortion ban for babies like this dear friend of mine. Ditto with handicapped babies. Many conservatives are quite willing to make these unacceptable concessions. Some GOP candidates have also very stupidly stated or implied that if a woman gets pregnant, it means she is lying about being raped. It is possible to get pregnant through sexual assault. It is a very weak, or very uninformed, man/woman who will publicly accuse my friend's mother and others like her of lying, and publicly shame thousands of violent crime victims in that manner. This has turned many informed men and women against those candidates - including me.

I do not believe our founding fathers had a personal relationship with God or founded this country on divinely inspired and scriptural principles. Our founding fathers practiced slavery and genocide, and they twisted the bible to justify it as badly as any "gay Christian" or "Christian" abortion-supporter has ever twisted the bible. If the times we live in do not justify our looking the other way and keeping our mouths shut, and they don't, then our founding fathers are not justified for legal abortion either (abortion was legal btw, research this carefully. Legal abortion is not progressive, but regressive), or slavery, or the covenant breaking and genocide they practiced against the indigenous people of this continent because of the times they lived in either. If "gay Christians" and those who at least excuse abortion are not of God, neither were our founding fathers; all of these justify sin in the name of "freedom and justice for all" and abuse the Bible to do it. Our founding fathers were not divinely inspired saints doing God's will. They violated his commands endlessly, from the get-go. As a Christian, I am profoundly offended at claims associating such abominations with divine inspiration, or sort of-like "sainting" some especially wicked sinners. As an American, I am offended at not being told the straight out truth about my history and heritage. If I am not told about the blemishes in it, I cannot learn from them, nor really understand the situation I have to live in and address today.


 I self-identify as a pro-life feminist. I believe there is such a thing as "Rape Culture," and my studies of other societies, especially matriarchies, indicate that there is a link between our concept of power, our separation of sexuality from family and procreation, plus our devaluing of motherhood, and the prevalent twisting of minds that can cause folks become sexual predators. This situation pre-dates the nineteenth century feminist movement by at least hundreds of years. Problems caused by modern "feminists" are symptoms of internalized misogyny, and will not be solved by maintaining patriarchal values and social systems. When aggression and the ability to use physical force to achieve an end is valued very highly, this lends itself to all kinds of bullying and oppressive behavior, including sexual violence. With the connection of sex to family life and the circle of life, sexual violence  becomes virtually inconceivable all around the world.

I believe abortion is a symptom of misogyny and oppression, as did Susan B. Anthony and all the early American feminists who got our voting rights - and who originally fought to ban abortion in America. Abortion rarely occurs in places where women have resources and rights.  It is more prevalent in places where women have few rights and are oppressed and disrespected. It was legal here in the 19th century, before we could vote or get decent jobs. 19th century American Feminists fought to end it. The 60's feminists did not trust anyone over 30 and would not even listen to those who worked so hard to get them into those universities in the first place. They were uninformed, as is anyone who refers to the second wave, 1960's "feminism" as "the feminist movement." It existed for some 200 years prior, and did a lot of good.

Neither "wing" can genuinely be classified as "Pro-woman." When a Drag "queen" or so-called "female impersonator" goes on stage, they are degrading women along with themselves. What they are "impersonating" is not what we are, and dressing/behaving that way should not change the pronoun used to mention them. Our essence and purpose are not, and never will be, summed up in any fashion show. Their definition of "female"and "feminine" miss the mark as badly as June Cleaver did. Drag represents an oppressive, patriarchal and degrading definition of womanhood, and of the roll of women. Liberals who support drag are supporting an inherently misogynistic movement.

The conservative media/"wing" sometimes also degrades women in its own way. Some conservatives are indeed patriarchal. Saying that a man should make more money than his wife or that men have a biological instinct that makes them feel threatened or devalued if their wives make more than them. What kind of teammate pouts if someone else on his team scores more points than he does? "The whole team is going to the championship, and I did not score the winning plays. I don't want to play anymore, or I want that teammate to stop scoring so much." That's not a good attitude. If a man's emotions are devastated because his kids have better access to higher education, his family has more insurance, the house is getting paid off faster, etc., because his wife got a raise and now makes more money than he does, than he needs to check his ego at the door! The whole family benefits, and it should not matter who made the score, everybody is going to the playoffs of life, so everybody should be happy. Some conservatives still support or tolerate pig-headed and patriarchal attitudes though; if such foolish men actually divorce their wives or otherwise leave their family in a mess, the woman with the raise/promotion and the people who fought for her opportunities get at least partial blame in the conservative world sometimes. THAT does not sit well with me at all.

I also note that when Republicans want to go to war with everybody, then war is noble and necessary and brave and etc. When liberals do it, it is evil and senseless bloodshed. Liberal media does the same thing in reverse. Torture even becomes ok "if the party we usually vote for backs it up," and if not... "That just shows you how the other party is, doesn't it? They torture people.... "
I do not subscribe to any conservative news letters or "like" any of their pages. Ditto with liberal ones. I follow a lot of issues, but completely ignore anything that groups issues together in "wings" or major parties. I do"like" pages of a couple of third parties that do not even like each other though, keeping an eye out for better alternatives...

I guess what I am saying is I distrust conservative media as much as liberal media and vice versa, and strongly recommend that others do the same. I try to check facts carefully, as if all news I hear comes from pathological liars, because essentially it does.

I have no idea if this image was made by a "liberal" or a conservative, or a neither like me. I do not own the rights to it, if any are owned. I certainly appreciate the message though.


Godspeed.

~Mother Star

Lessons From the Hunger Games - Part 5

If somebody put real Hunger Games on tv or a webcast, would you watch it? Would you feed the monster and help it grow?

Suzanne Collins put, in my opinion, an allegory to our time in a book and on a screen. Ironically, it may only be lost in the mix of media messages for most people.I offer some thoughts on how the world of The Hunger Games is really parallel to our own. There are a lot of questions here to ask yourself, I am not really looking for people to give me their answers, some of these are quite personal. Just answer them to your God and yourself.

I have said how the world of The Hunger Games resembles our world in how media redirects our attention from serious issues onto non-issues, hoe many of the effects are harmful, and how we need to genuinely stand up to the system and attack the problems at the root. In The Hunger Games the people of Panem need to recognize that the violence they and their countrymen, their children, are subjected to is senseless. 

That is often true in our lives today. Every day in America, young people die in gang violence. Every day in America and around the world, people consume media glamorizing this real-life bloodbath and get the same things out of it that Panem got from watching the Hunger Games: sense of identity, and excitement. Like The Hunger Games' characters, real people relish the "action," while refusing to face the hideous reality affecting people in our cities or at least our states. We focus on non-issues, like how this media puts minorities in the limelight, how they "represent" their socioeconomic class or their "race." Likewise, The Hunger Games' media personalities went on about how Peeta and Katniss raised their hands together "I am proud I come from District 12," putting a little band-aid on the compound fracture of District 12's problems. Some of those problems were right in front of them, in the form of two young people who were not really there by choice. The celebrity commentators made lots of emotional appeals that shifted focus and ignored the real issues. They went on and on about superficial things like clothes and mannerisms. They made very significant mountains out of some psychological molehills in order to justify celebrating such extreme tragedy - tragedy that can be equaled, if not exceeded, by the realities in some of our own communities.

The Lesson: Like the Capitol of Panem in The Hunger Games, middle-class Americans and Europeans get most of the resources the rest of the world breaks their back to produce, and enjoys the services of those who must slave at three jobs to make ends meet. There are numerous inequalities built into the system we have in our real world, too. Violence will not solve the problem. Being amused by a problem does not solve it, either. There are things that can be done, things that must be done. Step one is calling reality exactly what it is. Media that presents these problems in a way that does not inspire people to take serious action is probably not "calling attention" to it effectively.

Some info on what's really driving there unpleasant realities: I grew up in a minority neighborhood, a black neighborhood, though I am white. People finished school there without learning how to read. Teachers did not really teach them and did not really grade their work. I was homeschooled and learned to read "The Cat Sat on a Mat" the first day. One of my childhood friends who was a year older than me, Latoya, did not believe that I could read. I read her a story from my reader. She asked to borrow it, went into my house and asked my mom to teach her to read. There were, and I think are, laws on the books that might have gotten my mom in a lot of trouble if she had done so, so she refused. I have no idea if, or how well, Latoya ever learned because we moved away.
I had heat in my house during winter, usually. During middle school, some of my friends wore their heavy winter coats to some of the their classes at school because the heat did not work on the second floor. The teacher had a small heater under her desk that helped keep her warm but the students shivered while they tried to learn. THAT will bring your grades down very quickly! It went on like that for years.
Many students in poor and/or minority dominant schools, receive even decades-old, outdated textbooks that are basically destroyed. When I was in college, I attended a meeting with local organizations, high school students, and members of the local NAACP chapter. The problems in my old neighborhood are common across the nation, and are getting worse. There was no heat in Eisenhower High School (in Decatur, IL) at that time. I do not know if the heat was ever fixed, but I do know they now have to strip down and surrender their coats, sweaters, and jackets when they arrive at school so that they cannot hide drugs or weapons in them. They get their coats back at the end of the day. There were flat screen TVs (a luxury at the time) on the walls in every hallway but they were never turned on or used for education. The books they used remained tattered and outdated. The building has been renovated,and is almost made of windows now. If the pattern I have heard of in other cities persists here, they still will not have new books and the higher heat bills will be an excuse for even less effective education. A friend in social work found out at a conference the same thing was happening in our state's capitol.
In all of these communities, drugs and gangs are a serious problem. A SERIOUS problem. I said, a serious PROBLEM, not a serious charade or show. The forces driving these problem are largely in the majority's control. People can and should hold school boards accountable. People can and must and demand transparency about whether books in poorer school districts are up to date, whether the buildings have climate control, and etc. Few, if any, ever do. People in power are not inclined to pay attention to letters written in Ebonics or street slang, and that is how a lot of people, from my old neighborhood at least, would write. People with good enough education to be taken seriously need to write the letters and they don't. Often they have no idea what is going on, and rely on an entertainment oriented news media to tell them.
People showed up at the local community college needing remedials for material that should have been taught them in Kindergarten; this includes both math and English. I heard an English tutor say he was helping someone with a paper that said, "Ain't nobody gonna PMD" which, he was told meant "put me down." The student actually planned to hand that in to a (remedial) English teacher in their freshman year of college. Seriously. Imagine trying to get a job as a secretary with math and language skills like that. Imagine trying to write a resume with that education level. Forget it. 
The kids know that they do not have decent books and adequate facilities that other schools do have, and they deduce that no one believes in them. People of every race and class need to stand up and fight for them, and make education truly equal and right. Unlike people in The Hunger Games it will not cost you floggings, executions and war to make the needed changes. It only costs the time to write a strong letter to your local elected officials. It will probably save you a lot in taxes later too, honestly.

Many middle class whites from the U.S. and Europe plug in every day, getting their adrenaline fix off of glamorization of real people's real problems. Media commentators glorify how those "artists" are so rebellious and courageous, and how the violence and misogyny and references to drugs are understandable because of where they come from. "They are black people in the media representing their community. Don't expect them to act responsibly." Thus, "gangsta" media puts minorities in the limelight much like black-face did in the 1930's. Do the middle class knuckleheads who carry on about how those "artists" are "telling it like it is" ever do anything to change "how it is"? No. If ghettos ceased to exist, if people of every race and class got the same opportunities, if organized crime disappeared tomorrow, where would they get their entertainment? Who would smuggle in their drugs? Who would they pretend to be a part of, rather than facing their own "boring," relatively privileged lives? Do those who allegedly "call attention to" these issues explain why minority-dominant schools score so poorly and their students do not get jobs? Do they tell what specifically can be done about it? No. They exploit these problems, and the broken emotions of their genuinely poor-minority fans, for personal wealth. That is not admirable.

The Lesson: What is going on in your city, your country, and your world that you need to stop getting entertained by and start standing up to? Are you willing to raise the three-fingered sign, like Katniss and District 11 did, and start the revolution? If you had to bring the news to one of those boys' mothers that her son has become a statistic, or had to watch her get the news like District 11 watched Katniss weep over Rue, I bet you would be ready to stop enjoying and consuming, and start acting and resolving. Immediately.

Godspeed.
~ M.S.