Wilted Rose
This is going to seem a little bit like it coming out of nowhere, like out of left field or something, but this thread sort of reminds me of a conversation that everyone who knows my father had to have with him last October. In October of 2015, the Kansas City Royals (American Baseball) won the World Series (Baseball championship among the parts of the world that matter, namely the US and Canada). I just happen to be from that exact same city. And really, the entire place got really into it. There was a homecoming parade that basically shutdown downtown. I had to work that day, a few miles south of the event. The foot traffic was enough to make me fifteen minutes late despite planning for it. In a midwestern US city, that type of thing is unusual. Surreal even. If you see pictures of it on the internet, it looks a whole lot like an ant colony in a sidewalk crack.
The reason I bring that up is to set up the conversation everyone had to have with my father shortly after. He is the type of guy who secretly thinks he is the only person in the world doing enough work. Everyone else is too lazy or something. He also absolutely hates professional sports. There have been plenty of "My tax dollar" rants about that in the past, and about how frivolous people are being, drinking and just watching people play a game and all that. So when that parade happened, and when he heard a few co workers complain they couldn't get the time off to go there, he sorta popped. I got a variation of the rant a few days later. The gist was something to the effect that people were childish for being interested, that blocking traffic was denying hardworking people proper access to the roads, that there are better things to do, whatevs whatevs. And he was legit pissed off about it.
How dare anybody do something in public that he had no interest in?
And the sort of "Dude, who the fuck cares?" reaction I had to that is basically the same one I have to the complaint about public homosexual events. Like, your argument seems to be marketing one in essence. A sort of "I think the way you sell your candy-bar is shit because the ad campaign doesn't appeal to me" thing. But that isn't really the point. You'd have to get solid evidence that gay parades don't appeal or effect anybody at all to show them as absolutely useless, and even then, that would be more of a marketing gaffe than anything else. But as this stands, the argument seems to be "Gay parades are bad because I personally am not convinced by them."
And the thing is, I suspect we both share basically the same view on Homosexuality itself. I am not personally gay, I don't know very many gay people, it isn't a part of my life beyond it coming up in political discussions. But the difference I suppose is that, if I were to see a Gay Pride parade, the only effect it would have on me (assuming there isn't something funny to point out) would be to make me think "Looks like Main St is plugged with gays, better take Grand so I can get to where I am going." I mean, shit, we had one of the more brawling Trump Rally's earlier in the spring, with people yelling about the wall and getting in fights with counter protesters and all that fun stuff. I don't particularly like Trump, but when I saw his rally, my reaction wasn't one of disgust, it was one of route-recalculation. It's a public place, and I'm only a tiny fraction of the population. As you said yourself, "Nobody really cares about what you think."
I also feel like you are using the free speech argument backwards a bit here. The vibe I get from your argument is that vehemently disliking homophobes is an abuse of freedom of speech? But wouldn't a person who is gay, or even just really pro-gay, naturally be inclined to dislike people who dislike them? And wouldn't, by the standards of free speech, a person who openly hates group A be open to the rebuke of group A? If you don't like the gays, the gays have every right not to like you. There is a sort of equal and opposite reaction thing that, really, both sides get confused by. If a person is openly homophobic, they should expect an equal and opposite reaction. If I spit on my neighbors cat, I've earned him spitting on mine. We don't seem to have a problem with homophobes being, like, lynched or anything, so I don't think that particular detail is out of control. If the biggest threat is people saying stupid shit on tumblr, I think we're doing okay in the free speech department. And really, except for the people everywhere who seem to think free speech means saying silly shit without being called out on it, I think the western world's free speech situation is doing quite well right now
Democracy is a simpler thing to respond to: I do not think there is such a thing (outside of sci-fi novels and high school essays) as a society that can produce an ideal form of government. The photo on the box for democracy might be the old stiff-lipped citizen society of Athens as we want to remember it, but open the box and yes, it is true, you get a populist mess that veers with the wind. The photo on the box for Republicanism might be the stoic citizen-farmer-soldier Roman, but open it and you get corruption and more populism. But at the same time, look on the box for Monarchy you see the enlightened monarch, open it and you get George III, or Charles II of Spain, or Nicholas II. The box for Communism might be progression to a socialist utopia, but inside that box is Stalinist sycophantic bureaucracy, or whatever the fuck was up with Pol Pot. Fascism had the platonic, meritocratic dream-world, but the reality... i mean, holy shit. Humanity is just a messy species. It's what we do. Democracy as we practice it seems to keep society relatively balanced at least. For better or worse, we don't veer off in the Quixotic directions that modern anti-democracy seems to inevitably take. It seems like you're stuck with limited choices; corruption, or Caligula.
That being said, I am perfectly find with the rest of the world doing their own thing, because I understand that I don't really understand the rest of the world. If continental Europe wants to play with fascism again or something, go for it. I admit my Anglo-Saxoness makes it difficult for me to understand the attraction, but if you want to give everything up to some goofy fuck with a messiah complex and alcoholic-uncle type opinions, knock yourself out. Just don't invade France.
The reason I bring that up is to set up the conversation everyone had to have with my father shortly after. He is the type of guy who secretly thinks he is the only person in the world doing enough work. Everyone else is too lazy or something. He also absolutely hates professional sports. There have been plenty of "My tax dollar" rants about that in the past, and about how frivolous people are being, drinking and just watching people play a game and all that. So when that parade happened, and when he heard a few co workers complain they couldn't get the time off to go there, he sorta popped. I got a variation of the rant a few days later. The gist was something to the effect that people were childish for being interested, that blocking traffic was denying hardworking people proper access to the roads, that there are better things to do, whatevs whatevs. And he was legit pissed off about it.
How dare anybody do something in public that he had no interest in?
And the sort of "Dude, who the fuck cares?" reaction I had to that is basically the same one I have to the complaint about public homosexual events. Like, your argument seems to be marketing one in essence. A sort of "I think the way you sell your candy-bar is shit because the ad campaign doesn't appeal to me" thing. But that isn't really the point. You'd have to get solid evidence that gay parades don't appeal or effect anybody at all to show them as absolutely useless, and even then, that would be more of a marketing gaffe than anything else. But as this stands, the argument seems to be "Gay parades are bad because I personally am not convinced by them."
And the thing is, I suspect we both share basically the same view on Homosexuality itself. I am not personally gay, I don't know very many gay people, it isn't a part of my life beyond it coming up in political discussions. But the difference I suppose is that, if I were to see a Gay Pride parade, the only effect it would have on me (assuming there isn't something funny to point out) would be to make me think "Looks like Main St is plugged with gays, better take Grand so I can get to where I am going." I mean, shit, we had one of the more brawling Trump Rally's earlier in the spring, with people yelling about the wall and getting in fights with counter protesters and all that fun stuff. I don't particularly like Trump, but when I saw his rally, my reaction wasn't one of disgust, it was one of route-recalculation. It's a public place, and I'm only a tiny fraction of the population. As you said yourself, "Nobody really cares about what you think."
I also feel like you are using the free speech argument backwards a bit here. The vibe I get from your argument is that vehemently disliking homophobes is an abuse of freedom of speech? But wouldn't a person who is gay, or even just really pro-gay, naturally be inclined to dislike people who dislike them? And wouldn't, by the standards of free speech, a person who openly hates group A be open to the rebuke of group A? If you don't like the gays, the gays have every right not to like you. There is a sort of equal and opposite reaction thing that, really, both sides get confused by. If a person is openly homophobic, they should expect an equal and opposite reaction. If I spit on my neighbors cat, I've earned him spitting on mine. We don't seem to have a problem with homophobes being, like, lynched or anything, so I don't think that particular detail is out of control. If the biggest threat is people saying stupid shit on tumblr, I think we're doing okay in the free speech department. And really, except for the people everywhere who seem to think free speech means saying silly shit without being called out on it, I think the western world's free speech situation is doing quite well right now
Democracy is a simpler thing to respond to: I do not think there is such a thing (outside of sci-fi novels and high school essays) as a society that can produce an ideal form of government. The photo on the box for democracy might be the old stiff-lipped citizen society of Athens as we want to remember it, but open the box and yes, it is true, you get a populist mess that veers with the wind. The photo on the box for Republicanism might be the stoic citizen-farmer-soldier Roman, but open it and you get corruption and more populism. But at the same time, look on the box for Monarchy you see the enlightened monarch, open it and you get George III, or Charles II of Spain, or Nicholas II. The box for Communism might be progression to a socialist utopia, but inside that box is Stalinist sycophantic bureaucracy, or whatever the fuck was up with Pol Pot. Fascism had the platonic, meritocratic dream-world, but the reality... i mean, holy shit. Humanity is just a messy species. It's what we do. Democracy as we practice it seems to keep society relatively balanced at least. For better or worse, we don't veer off in the Quixotic directions that modern anti-democracy seems to inevitably take. It seems like you're stuck with limited choices; corruption, or Caligula.
That being said, I am perfectly find with the rest of the world doing their own thing, because I understand that I don't really understand the rest of the world. If continental Europe wants to play with fascism again or something, go for it. I admit my Anglo-Saxoness makes it difficult for me to understand the attraction, but if you want to give everything up to some goofy fuck with a messiah complex and alcoholic-uncle type opinions, knock yourself out. Just don't invade France.
