Tag Archives: rhetoric

That’s politics, bitch.

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I despise election season. It’s not just because I live in a battleground state that gets engulfed in campaign ads; those can be ignored. It’s the people that I hate:  all of the condescending douche-nozzles that come out of the woodwork to pretend like their opinions actually matter. Anyone who broaches the subject of politics, especially in a bar, is trying to accomplish one of two things. Either they’re actively trying to pick a fight, or appear socially responsible and well informed, when in reality, they’re just regurgitating someone else’s ideas, passing them off as their own, and then looking around to see how impressed everyone is. I may be cynical, but I don’t think there is a single person alive who will ask someone else their political views because they legitimately want to hear them. More likely, they’re just waiting for their turn to talk, or can’t wait to tell you why your opinion is wrong.

As a result, I typically try to avoid the topic altogether, especially with people older than me.  There’s just no winning when you’re young. We want to seem like active members of society, but we’re too busy chasing our dreams and trying to get laid to truly give a shit. Older people know this. They’re envious of this. So they ask us our opinions just to make us feel stupid and give themselves a false sense of superiority. I urge you, dear reader, do not take the bait. I know your pride will fight you on this, but resist. It’s a trap. They’ll sneer at you for not forming an opinion about the world around us, and then when you finally do, they’ll disregard it and call you naive. “You just don’t understand,” they’ll say.

No shit, we don’t understand. Do you know how difficult it is to develop a well-informed opinion on political policy when most of the information readily available to the public is all rhetorical bullshit? The whole arena has devolved into a culture war, and instead of enlightening the general public by helping them navigate the major points (you know, news), it creates a nationwide shouting match where the loudest voices prevail, regardless of the insanity they’re spewing. Sure, every one claims to have an open mind, and yet they only follow news that reinforces the opinion they already have (I believe that’s called hypocrisy).

Arguing about politics is a lot like arguing about religion: everyone thinks they’re right and no one is willing to compromise.  Here’s a list of phrases you will never here in a political discussion: “That’s a good point.” — “I disagree, though I can see things from your point of view.” — “Thank you for introducing me to such a fresh perspective.”  There can’t be a winner when truth is subjective, and arguments are based on the future outcomes of present actions.

I think that political debates are the only proof we need that humans evolved from monkeys. Intelligent discussion quickly gives way to personal attack, and the whole format devolves into a childish stalemate, where neither side has anything original to say so they both just keep screeching and throwing the same shit at you over and over and over. It’s no wonder all of these white collar criminals get away with the systematic rape of our financial system: they know the majority of the population is too stupid to know when they’re being fucked. I certainly am.

Reduction to Absurdity

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Reduction to absurdity is a basic rhetorical argument and if you read the news or follow any form of political punditry, you’re probably familiar with it: “If we let a man marry another man, what’s to stop a man from marrying a dog, or a lamp shade?”  The irrationality of the assertion is by design, and it’s been a favorite talking point from hard line conservatives, associating same-sex marriage with a concept so ridiculous that it allows them to seem like altruistic defenders of traditional values while still being assholes. While I believe that proponents of this view are wasting everybody’s time on an issue of basic human rights, I don’t think they should abandon the matter altogether. They merely need to retrain their focus on a group deserving of vilification, because there is a much more severe threat to the national social structure. I’m talking, of course, about sex with robots.

Go ahead and laugh, but it’s going to happen, and for no other reason than the inherent laziness of my species: impressing women, and the ceaseless dick-measuring that that entails, are man’s only sources of motivation (for life, in general). Men are shameless, perverted, and impulsive animals, which is why there is no doubt in my mind that one of us will be (or already has been) the first to philander a robot .  To us, women are the world’s most complex puzzle, like a giant labyrinth that reshuffles itself every twenty minutes, giving you just enough time to gain your bearings before turning the world on its head. There’s a steep learning curve in talking to girls, and it’s a skill that requires a fair share of vulnerability and rejection:  two things to which my gender doesn’t take kindly.  Therefore, I can earnestly identify with the desire to avoid such humiliating social circumstances by finding other means of gratification.

I’m not saying girls are an impossible undertaking, or even improbable, as a large part of the male population overcomes such odds on a daily basis. However, the difficulties are sufficient enough to dissuade the more apathetic of our kind from making the effort, and nothing caters to that instinctual disinterest more than technology. One of modern society’s greatest ironies is the fact that there is a small percentage of our population working tirelessly to ensure that the rest of us never have to tire from working. Not that it’s hard to deter people from exercising their will power, but the mental back flips we can accomplish to justify laziness can be quite remarkable, especially when sex is on the brain. There have been dozens of times (mostly in college) in which I was attempting to get laid, and decided to throw in the towel and jerk off from sheer lack of motivation. I can only imagine the activities I would be tempted to abandon if I had the convenience of an anatomically correct model of Emma Watson waiting in my closet: a man could easily justify that as nothing more than an expensive sex toy.

Even so, the dispassionate masses are not the only ones under suspicion here. You may be asking yourself what type of person would be lonely enough to realistically invest in a sex robot. Well, nothing says complete lack of social skills like the ability to create robots. Let’s face it, ever since the movie Weird Science, nerds have been itching to score themselves some artificially intelligent ass, and anyone who has played video games in the past five years can testify to that. As the game graphics have improved, female characters have gotten hotter and hotter, as they’re given increasingly larger breasts complimented by inversely proportioned waistlines. It’s unrealistic to believe that women with boobs that big can perform the level of physical activity necessary to be that thin. Their backs just wouldn’t support it. I remember playing a level in God of War on PS3 in which I had to make love to a goddess while two of her female servants watched, and those servants would (depending on my performance) become incrementally more aroused before eventually hitting the floor to start their own party. Mind you, this whole scene had absolutely nothing to do with the arch of the plot. It was there solely for the sake of animated porn.

This fundamental, and even glorified weakness of our nerd community is evidence that men are susceptible on every level of the social ladder, from the best and brightest all the way down to our inert legions of armchair champions. If we’re not careful, mankind may be headed for a (not so) far off dystopian future in which the men have been willingly confined to underground burrows, each of us with a robotic sex surrogate that the ruling class of women uses to harvest our seed and keep us collectively pacified by our own emotional simplicity. To avoid this future of passive captivity, I desperately urge my species to stay vigilant, follow your heart and make sure your larger head stays in control, otherwise we’re doomed to be imprisoned by our own immoral inclinations. However. If you think I’m overreacting by taking a simple issue and drawing a string of hypothetical social circumstances before reducing it to a single absurd scenario, I completely understand. After all, that’s kind of the point.