A Response to Possibly the Most Frustrating Essay I've Ever Read

I commonly read things that I disagree with. I frequently read things that anger me with their poorly thought out arguments and hypocrisy. I sometimes get blamed for the problems that I have to deal with as a trans* person. But never have I read an essay that managed to seemingly exist solely to be the perfect mixture of smugness, "false consciousness" argument, lack of historical or anthropological understanding, uninformed ideas on the method and nature of religion, and victim blaming that this essay seems to exhibit. I am going to assume it is an argument in good faith, but if I were a more cynical person (I know, right?) I would chalk it up to being simply a computer generated, personally tailored collection of things that anger me in an essay.

There is a response from someone else at my school here, but I think i want to run through my own issues with this essay, because that is my Wealth given right/privilege as a person with internet access. I've discussed this somewhat with Anna, so I am also going to credit em with some of the formulations of the thoughts that come out in this response. This is probably going to be what might charitably called "Too Long," so I'll make subject headings, like a "real academic"

Lack of Religious Studies Knowledge/Deconstruction

I find that most of the people writing articles like this seem to think that they are either 'above' reading actual religious studies methodology/scholarship, or they think that it is "the Man" trying to keep them down. I'm just going to say that, unless you are going to pay attention to the last hundred or so years of people discussing what 'religion' means, and whether that is a tenable term for a conversation, then I feel like maybe you should re-examine what you are doing.

But, I will discuss how her definition of religion (or lack thereof, with merely an implication) is a problematic, racist, and imperialistic artifice later. What I really want to address are some of the ridiculous, and provably false things that the author has written.

Anyone who ever writes something like "all religions [x]" or "all atheists [y]" is not only in danger, but willfully setting themselves up to being proven wrong by actual facts. For a person who scoffs at people for thinking that they are absolutely right, she seems to have either not gained any sort of evidence to make her claims worth listening to, or has forgotten all of it in favor of making grandiose statements that are not only false but embarrassing. When you make statements with "all" in them, you are on the track to failure; your faith in your cause has blinded you to nuance. Let alone one that reifies a concept like religion into one mass (which is philosophically unjustifiable anyhow). Although the author assures us that she is very postmodern, apparently this does not apply to her understanding of religion. I had a teacher (Robert Minor) who began his book “When Religion Becomes and Addiction” with the Chapter Title “Religion doesn’t do anything,” which is true. Religion is not a thing, it has no essence, so to treat it like it does is a fallacy. The fact that she uncritically accepts the concept of religion as an essence, and takes the traditional view of what it is undermines her completely objective, rational self identification (which is already a specious concept in and of itself).

So when she says that religions are fundamentally in tension or contradiction with queerness, she first of all misunderstands how queerness functions in other societies, but also how 'faith' does, and how they interact with each other. In fact, saying that "queerness is always counter-intuitive" shows that she has not seemingly read very many books of how queer people function in different religious contexts. Did she know that some religions mandate queer relations? Even in America! I mean, say what you will about how incredibly cissexist some of them are, but I think the entire lesbian women’s/Goddess spirituality movement shows that queerness and religion can be the same thing. I mean, even the Ayatollah of Iran is alright with binary identified trans people. Hot Damn, it's almost like if you make statements like that, you are just asking for people to point out the ways that you are wrong.

That's not even to mention trans* or gender divergence in religious practice. I mean, she even really kind of admits this, but then just is like "WELP, NOT SCIENCE." I mean, do I have to point her to the multiple Indigenous traditions, some Dogon peoples, and the multiple cross dressing saints of the Christian tradition? Believe it or not, what we consider queer was (and is) not always considered 'counter-intuitive' in other cultures. Not only that, but it has not been damaging in ever society at every time. Making statements like that is just begging to look like you are uninformed .

Imperialism and and Western "Everywhere"

Despite her (promised but never delivered, perhaps invisible?) postmodernism, she reminds us for what seems like an uncomfortable amount of space that she is in fact, not being racist or imperialistic. I wish I could magically say I wasn't being racist, and then it be so! Moreover, the truth is that everyone who might make the argument that her essay is racist, are in fact racist themselves. That is a pretty wonderful logical trick that she has going on there, but it's based on a somewhat faulty premise already: she seems to be speaking only to white people.

If white people were the only people who were pointing out that the arguments that she was making were culturally imperialist, she might be onto something. The truth though, is that there have been plenty of queer  and trans* women of color who have brought this up. First. Apparently the author either thinks that the arguments that these women of color (also, the invisible trans* men of color [surprise, trans men are invisible!]) make are so far below her that she does not have to deign to answer to them, or that she doesn't have either the argument or the courage to disagree with them. Instead she speaks about people of color to the other white people in her intended audience. Great. Nothing wrong or paternalistic about that.

Anyhow, like I said a little earlier, how she conceptualizes religion is basically imperialistic. Why, you might ask? Well, the very use of the word religion to generalize onto all societies outside of the western is in itself not justifiable in any rational way. She uses what amounts to Sigmund Freud's usage in his seminal Future of An Illusion, where the important part of religion is the dogma (or faith). Of course, this in and of itself is an imperialist concept, and talking about religion as if it has an essence is a function of imperialism. The simple fact of the matter is that privileging beliefs over actions in understanding religion is a very Christian/Western way of doing that, which makes things like ritual invisible. I mean, the fact that the author wants to act like “religion” or “faith” are concepts that you can take and place on other cultures is basically itself not only a fallacy but an imperialist one: only cultures that come from the Greco-Roman tradition actually have the word ‘religion’ in them, or ‘faith’.

What the author seems to be saying is that she can take Western concepts, place them in contexts where they don’t fit, and then judge these other societies by her concept of what faith is. Wow, that doesn’t sound like cultural imperialism at all. Of course, the author then tells us that telling her something is culturally imperialistic is in and of itself culturally imperialistic (I think I see a pattern here). This is an embarrassing tactic which basically shows that she either 1) has no ability to distinguish between societies and people 2)has no argument, and is still speaking to white people only 3) thinks that people who say “you’re intolerant of intolerant people” is a great argument, or 4) all those three. I am going to go with number four.

However, to show how not imperialistic she is, she brings up Buddhism, because WHY NOT? Of course, she doesn’t really have any sort of argument for Buddhism being against trans* people, so she uses what seems to be a vaguely Nietzschean argument that it isn’t life affirming. Not only does she seem to be grasping in this situation, but she also fundamentally misunderstands Buddhism (which she apparently thinks is all one belief system). Of course, she decides that since she has addressed a single non-Abrahamic religion, that obviously her feelings can be extrapolated onto all of history in all societies, including the future. Of course, if she were to address religions that have no concept of anything happening after death, her argument falls apart, but obviously it was painful enough to address not white cultures even for a short paragraph, and she moves on.

Historical Lack of Awareness

Not only is everywhere the West according to the author, but also history never happened! This is understandable, because looking at history reveals that her arguments are specious at best; at the very least, we see that there is a great more deal of nuance going on than a person who says that all (western conceptualizations of) queers are counter-intuitive and religion is always terrible would care to admit.

The most interesting thing going on is that in any sort of realistic sense you could make the argument that much of the oppression of trans* people stems not from religious ideas, but from those of science. the Enlightenment need of categorization that were diametrically opposed led to the binary gender system that exists today, which is where a lot of the problems for trans* people exist. The medicalization of gender, and advent of psychoanlaysis and psychology have generally stood as the vanguard of status quo oppression, and to this day recognize trans* people as mentally ill. That seems much more reactionary than many religious groups that exist today (or historically), but I imagine that the author is probably not going to rush to claim that psychology is a moral intrinsic evil.

We can still see this today, and it is not pastors who hold the keys to the access of hormones, surgeries and other things like that. In fact, I have been more frequently attacked for my gender on the basis of science than of faith (perhaps that is from the circles I run in). What I mean to say is that trying to say “SCIENCE GOOD RELIGION BAD” is a position that not only insults those religious groups and people that are trans* affirming, but also ignoring those secularists that aren’t.

Serious Logical flaws And Oppression Reductionism

Of course, it is not only the lack of thinking that anything outside of the modern West has ever existed that makes this essay wrong. There are also ridiculously flawed arguments within it that, even granting that the author is not imperialistic, make this a sad work that insults our intelligence.

First, there is the simple fact that this is basically working as an oppression reductionism. This is similar (although not identical) to when people say that there really isn’t racism, but just prejudice towards poor people. What the author seems to be saying is that trans* oppression is relaly just a function of religious oppression (which is only a tenable position if you ignore vast amounts of reality), and therefore we should worry more about getting rid of the oppression of religion than trying to solve its symptoms (ie. cissexism). Of course, this could only be a tenable position if the only oppression of trans* people came from religious sources; this is in my experience not true. I have had too many people say that there are scientifically only two genders, and they are chromosomal, to even grant that as a realistic analysis of the problem of trans* oppression. It is transphobic in the same way that saying racial oppression is only class based is racist.

Unfortunately, that is not the only flaw worth speaking to. Of course, the main thrust of the argument basically says that trans* people participate in their own oppression because by saying God exists, you legitimate the position of people who are not trans* affirming. The fact that this argument is something that the author finds logical seriously undermines the idea that religious people are defined by their lack of rationality, and that atheists are always the most ardent followers of Reason (capitalized for reification purposes)

First of all, this argument reasonably leads to the only moral action being complete monastic withdrawal (which is ironic), or suicide. If ascribing to ideas legitimates the worst elements of that idea, then there is basically no way that one can not be constantly legitimating the worst horrors of the human race. That is basically akin to saying that if you think that using the scientific method can be used to better people’s lives, then you are legitimating the underlying ideologies of eugenics, scientific racism, ablebodied supremacy, anti-queer and gender binarist thinking, all of it. They all think/thought the same thing about science too. In fact, believing in an ethic at all supports the underlying idea of ethics, and therefore you are supporting every other single person who has ‘ethics’ no matter how horrific they are. This argument can be taken to such ridiculously absurd conclusions that it is worthless in any form. Are you an anarchist? Well, if you believe that the material world exists, it turns out you are supporting Stalin/Franco/every other authoritarian in the world since you legitimate the idea of an existent material reality that under-girds their authoritarian philosophy. And so on.

False Consciousness/Victim Blaming

But why oh why would trans* people be in religious practice if it obviously always hurts them in every place in every time (including the future)? Obviously there is nothing good that they can gain out of it, and we shouldn’t actually... I don’t know, listen to these actual trans* people. So what the author decides to do is use the particularly annoying tool of false consciousness. Basically saying, “I know you why you do that better than you do,” which is extremely condescending, and really has no response. If the person is legitimately no longer listening to the people that they are actually describing, it feels to me like she is basically doing the same thing Western anthropologists did in other cultures for years: act like they were the objective arbiters of everything as opposed to the people who were actually living it. It’s basically a very convenient way to say that in reality, if religious trans* people weren’t so goddamn stupid/naive/brainwashed, then they would agree with the author. I’m not saying that this is particular to her argument: you come across false consciousness attacks with an unfortunate frequency, really. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating.

So why could trans* people possibly be religious, since it validates the vague notions of the reified concept of religion? Well, the answer for the author is that trans* people who are religious are like battered spouses (the author implies a gendering of this, an abused woman. I’m unsure whether this is because when she says ‘trans people’ she only means ‘trans women’, as has been characteristic of her essay, or what). This is honestly insulting and condescending as hell, not only to trans* religious people, but also to abuse survivors/victims/whatever they identify as.

This metaphor is not only completely unsuitable, but also leads to a really unfortunate implication, when you take her argument into account. Not only does her “trans* religious people validate religion, which is always evil” sound basically like lesbian separatism (which has always been kind to trans* people,), insofar as one could say “being in a non abusive heterosexual relationship validates the heterosexuality of abusive relationships,” but it also ends up making what amounts to a victim blaming argument.

What I mean is that trans* religious people are “doing it to themselves” in this metaphor. She compares religious trans* people to abused people, yet also says that they perpetuate their own abuse and the abuse of others; the abuse is their fault, and that they are complicit. And what is her advice? “Just get out of the relationship,” basically, which I’m sure has never been said to a person in an abusive relationship. I hope I am not the only person who sees that argument/metaphor combination as completely messed up. Comparing people you disagree with to abuse victims takes away their agency almost as much as calling them barnyard animals (sheeple), but telling them that they are basically their own abusers is just the exact same victim blaming attitude that perpetuates sexism in our larger culture.


Conclusion

I don’t really have a conclusion, other than to say that I’m writing this conclusion long after I wrote the original piece. My friend asked me why I felt compelled to write it if I wasn’t personally hurt by it, which led me to ask myself what about this hurt me?

Part of it is that it really angers me when people talk about religion like they know what they are talking about, when in fact they are completely incorrect. The conservativism that was present in this essay angered me in the same way that other conservativism does: I felt like it is a step backward in trying to achieve respect and liberation for all people. I also feel upset that my identity is being used in order to attack other people’s cultures, along with my own. I’m not deluded enough to think that anything I said will change someone’s mind if they already believe that religion is/was/will always be evil: that is, in itself, a faith claim and moral judgment that is improvable. But don’t act like you are being a jerk on my behalf, please.

Liberal Democrats for Santorum: Really?

I have been seeing more and more people bring up the idea that Democrats/"progressives" (scare quotes intentional) should vote for Rick Santorum, which I find positively infuriating. From what I can see, as an organized force it began at Daily Kos, and now I have started to hear people talk about it that I actually know in real life.

I mean, I guess I should qualify that at the beginning, I found the concept of a Santorum campaign pretty entertaining. The sheer ridiculousness of his political positions was enough to promise some sort of entertainment. But I've felt myself backing away from that kind of thought. Sure, Republican candidate Santorum might be an interesting thought experiment. But do I really want to go there? I came to the conclusion that it really doesn't make any sense, and all the arguments that I kept hearing for Democrats supporting/voting for Rick Santorum were not only somewhat incorrect, but they came from a place a great privilege.

The crux of the argument is that if Rick Santorum was elected in the primaries, he would have no way of ever beating Barack Obama: therefore there is no problem with supporting Santorum. I don't find this argument convincing at all, and I think it shows a lack of political awareness that is pretty profound. After all, I would say that no matter who the people running are, you are generally going to get 40-45% of people voting simply along party lines. Even more if you consider that racism affects this election. And then, you have the simple fact that no one on the earth knows the future. Conceivably any damn thing could happen between now and November: Iran-Israel war, Eurozone meltdown, et cetera. All of these could put Barack Obama in a much worse position to win any sort of election: then you would have a President Santorum. So, the entire idea is based on a relatively flawed strategy.

I also think that propping Santorum up is kind of a shitty thing to do to a host of minorities. The more time that Santorum is able to talk about how we should get rid of contraception, the more that becomes a legitimate view in the public square. Let alone his stances on abortion, which are already kind of mainstream in lots of places. Let alone the fact that this is basically a way of raising up a person who has made a job off of hate speech against queer people 'for the lulz' (the founding idea was called Operation Hilarity, after all). Everyone wrings their hands about queer kids having self esteem issues, but then we are supposed to say that it's alright to pour toxic misinformation and hatred out into the public consciousness even more because we want a politician to win by a bit more? To me, that seems like being a terrible ally to women, ethnic minorities, and queer people. And you are moving the Overton Window in the opposite direction of what you want.

Moreover, most of the arguments for this have a lot of privilege coming from those who argue for it. Most of the people that I've heard argue for this are in most ways unaffected by what would happen if Santorum became President: that is, they are people living in relatively liberal areas, are white, well off, cis* and frequently are male. There are obviously exceptions, but this has been my experience. So it seems like they are kind of bargaining with someone else's livelihood, and that is what I would call "a dick move." Then they tell the people who are a bit leery of electing someone who would have a much worse impact on them, that they are being overemotional, or any other number of misogynist/homophobic words. Politics is war, right? Never mind that that hypermasculine concept of politics is part of the reason we are in this problem right now.

You know what? They think that Santorum couldn't possibly win because the people I've seen only hang out in liberal echo chambers. Either online, or in the Bay Area. The thing is, I know a lot of people back in Kansas who would agree with a lot of what Santorum is saying I mean, I have no doubt that he would win there: he would win in a lot of places. So don't tell me how ridiculous his candidacy is, because I've lived places that Kris Kobach won election.

In the same vein, I hear a lot of people respond to the claim that giving Santorum a stage to say all his terrible things is necessary because his ideas need to be put to people upfront so that they can reject them. I don't know what hypothetical fantasy world these people live in, but I think I might fill out some immigration paperwork. Oh wait, I know, it's called living in the Bay Area and being a well off, white, cis, able-bodied person. Only if you live in the Pacific coast and never stop in between cities would you think that people are not confronted with being queer, or being a woman, at all times. If we should really put up the face of these ideas, we should all just write "Fred Phelps" in for the ballot, then people would really have to face up to bigotry. Well, that is if people weren't already aware of the fact that lots of Republican politicians are generally bigoted.

You know what? There's a reason that Santorum is where he is now. It's not because he hid his secret hatred of queer people. It's the fact that his stuff gets put out there, and he wins, because lots of people agree with him. There are just a lot of bigoted people in the world, and it all can't be like the rich white gay paradise that is San Francisco or Berkeley. If you think that anti-queer people bigotry is something that doesn't come up in midwestern states, or that people there would all of a sudden say "or wait, Rick Santorum doesn't like gay people? That's terrible!" you live in bubble that ignores the fact that in most places, lots of people agree with him.

Going to School to Be a Glorified Part Time Worker (and a call to action)

When I talk to most people about my plans for when I get out of school, I think that we have very different visions of the landscape that I am looking out into. I'm definitely better off than most people, but I just want to kind of outline what going into higher education is like:

So, let's say I hypothetically get accepted into a Ph.D program. Great! That is pretty difficult, since they are really getting rid of a lot of acceptance into those programs (for reasons we'll see later). I could hypothetically get a full ride scholarship, or maybe just a partial one. If any scholarship is involved though, you can better believe that I will be in some sort of T.A. position. What that means is that I will be a 'teaching assistant' for a class that is taught by a long term professor, usually with a large student class.

I'm pretty conflicted about the idea of T.A.'ing. On one hand, it's a good way of teaching graduate students how to teach, and it gives you a good amount of experience. On the other hand, I think it can get in the way of the learning that Ph.D study requires in a lot of instances, usually by forcing a student to do a whole bunch of work that is not really helpful for learning how to teach. This basically amounts to menial work like grading papers. This allows for teachers to teach giant classes and have T.A.'s do the work that isn't lecturing to a giant class full of students who aren't exactly paying attention; not quality education, but also it allows for the school to hire less teachers.

In any case, I would do that for some years, and then graduate. Yay! At this point, I am either incredibly lucky to have not gained any debt, or I am in debt to a bank. This debt is basically permanent: even bankruptcy can't get rid of student debt. So, at an interest rate of about 6% compounded a year, I will start to look for a job.  There's basically two types of jobs that professors can get. There is a job that is tenured, and there are non-tenured jobs. Now, when most people think about a professorship, they are thinking a tenured professor. But perhaps they shouldn't, and here's why:

There's a pretty big difference between a tenured professor and a non-tenured (also called adjuct or visiting) professor. Tenured professors get paid a decent salary, and also get health benefits, vacation, etc. All the things a reasonable full time job would give. Adjunct professors do not get the same thing: many times they are paid barely above minimum wage for a position that is technically part time, but requires more than 40 hours.

So why would you hire a tenured professor? Well, that's exactly the question that schools have asked themselves, and they've decided that they mostly don't need them anymore. So they'll hire some, just like some poor Americans become honest-to-God rich from 'working hard'. But the majority will be Adjunct, and they can fill in the gaps with T.A.s (see?), sometimes even undergrad students. If you look closely, this is exactly what has happened at jobs like Target/Walmart. As opposed to hiring one person for 40 hours a week and having to pay pesky things like benefits (or a real salary), they will hire two people for 20 hours a week, paying significantly less to get the same amount of work.

Well, not really. The quality goes down, sure. But in America, it's not the quality of the college education you get, it's the bare minimum that you get it. It's a status symbol for putting in a certain amount of money.

So, with the decrease in tenured jobs, I will probably have to settle for a 25k per year adjunct job, with no benefits. The sad thing is that you get people defending this system, because you have to 'pay your dues' to get a tenured position. Or to teach because it's 'what you love'. Well, besides the Stockholm Syndrome/abusive husband logic that goes into that, I would say that this system is rigged to generally allow people who are already well off to get these full time professorships. Only people who have some sort of buffer of money can live that way for the years required to get a good job. And these people with the buffer are generally upper class, white, etc.

Of course, there won't ever be enough tenured jobs for all the adjunct faculty (since they keep getting rid of the tenured jobs), so what does that mean? That means that the people who can't financially afford to hold a sub-living wage will have to drop out of it. It's basically a system that is predicated on crushing intelligent people's dreams, wasting their resources, and continuing the racist, sexist, classist status quo. All in order to tie people up into wage slavery to pay off their exorbitant debt they got in the process.

This isn't even to mention the fact that many people are shoved into college by a society that requires it for any job you won't get scoffed at for having, only to call you entitled if you don't take that same job because it won't pay your student loans.

With that in mind, I'm going to (in the next post) investigate the ethical and political arguments for a Student debt/loan Strike.

An Open Letter to the Kansas City Star

Kansas City Star;

In response to the news story on December 25th, “KC man charged in fatal Christmas Eve shooting,” I found the language of the story to be unprofessional and demeaning to the victim of what is a tragic murder.

Mr. Bavley refused to use the correct pronouns for Dee Dee Pearson, and refused to use her chosen name. He continued to use objectifying language that demeans transgender people, referring to Ms. Pearson as “a man posing as a woman” and saying that her murder “became aware” that she “was a man.” This language, and the refusal of Mr. Bavley to acknowledge Ms. Pearson’s name and gender, is extremely offensive to transgender people, and seems to condone the stated purpose of the murder.

It is unprofessional for Mr. Bavley to simply accept the story that the murderer claims, since one could imagine that the murderer might have some sort of bias in recollecting his motives.  It is further unconscionable to in effect condone the reasoning of the murder. Mr. Bavley and the editors of the Star should apologize for both this unprofessionalism and the use of transphobic language in reference to an already heartbreaking death.

For some resources, there is http://www.glaad.org/reference/transgender

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I will write more on this perhaps. This is just what I sent the newspaper.

Honestly, what is wrong with people?

Hey, I talk about rape a bit here, so if you're not into that, then maybe sit this one out, cool?

Many people think that I am too kind to people from history. Well, except for Thomas Jefferson, because seriously. But generally, I take the view that if you look at where people were coming from in history, sometimes it  might help us understand that some people who seem totally backwards today might have even been progressive in their time. I guess I do this out of some sort of ideal of 'fairness'/'mercy', but also some sort of egoism. Because I know that most likely I am doing something unspeakably evil. Either things I'm aware of (like buying shirts at the Gap made of slave labor), or not aware of. So I guess if I'm saying that those people were trying to work with what they have, maybe people will give me and our time the same courtesy.

But when I think about some things that have happened recently, I can already think: No way. People from the future, I give you full ability to judge American society in 2011 to be thoroughly messed up. I guess the specific incidents that I have to mention here are the treatment of the Occupy Oakland camp, versus the Penn State Riots.

Occupy Oakland may not be perfect, and it might even be illegal. But guess what? The law that they are breaking is 'Illegal camping', so unless you are some sort of legalistic authoritarian, I don't see how the legality of the protest trumps the actual substance. It's like a person making a perfectly reasoned argument, and the other pointing out a grammatical mistake; it's irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Let alone that public spaces should be open to people anyways. But let's say that Illegal camping should be some sort of sacrosanct law that we have built our society off of (as opposed to say... free speech). The police used tear gas and riot squads attacking people with batons and rubber bullets. Unless this is how illegal camping is generally solved, which I don't believe is true, I don't get why it's being used here. I mean seriously, what the hell?

I mean, in UC Berkeley, the students were beaten (or nudged, if you believe the Associated Press) with batons because they were committing the violent action of linking their arms. I feel like I have to be in some sort of bizarro world where everyone in power must either be incredibly stupid, or just the worst liars on the entire damn planet. God, you'd think that Red Rover would be priority 1 in our schools if this were the case.

However, you have riots in Penn state. Now, let's just stop there and examine why these riots are happening. If they were part of Occupy, I'm sure the police would have gone all sorts of Kent state on everyone, and the news coverage of it would have been nonstop until the media people died from some combination of starvation and rage-induced strokes. But that's not the case. They were in fact, rioting because Joe Paterno stepped down because he had been protecting a child rapist.

What.

The.

Fuck.

Are we at such a nadir as a society that we are honestly having "Pro Child Rape" riots/rallies? I don't care what anyone says otherwise, rioting because your friend/leader/guy you never even met got in trouble for covering up rape is a 'Pro-Rape" event. This reminded me of the "we killed Osama Bin Laden" group celebrations, but angrier. And at least I could even understand the sentiment behind that, even if it was a bit blood thirsty. But when you're sitting down, thinking about yourself, and you come across the thought "You know, I think I'm more concerned about college football than children being raped", at what point does this not ring some sort of bell? I'm not saying that you have to stop liking football, but at least don't treat it as a "break a few eggs/rape a few kids to make an omelette" situation. I mean, I didn't even know this kind of person existed. Jesus Christ.

Not only that, but they broke things and turned over vans! What? Where was the tear gas then? I mean, do I really have to believe that the police are more sympathetic to raping children than to solving income inequality? Because that is seriously the implication of this differential treatment.

I mean, if you're not embarrassed to live in a country that's priorities seem to be so clear of any actual compassion or inkling of justice, then I don't know what to do for you.