Journal the_mad_poster's Journal: I Think The Problem Is Deeper Than That... 3
I think maybe America's problems might run a little bit deeper than wardrobe malfunctions and unintelligent design....
This is a quote by Thomas Sowell which I recently pulled from eglamkowski's journal. I did not read the rest of the journal.
Each day, as I take various pills, I realize that without those pills I might not be alive -- and, if I were, life would not be worth living. Yet those who produce these medications are under constant attack from people who produce nothing.
There are numerous things that annoy me about slashdot, the political climate in this country, and the world in general. This is an excellent illustration of several of them all at once.
Sowell, here, is dismissing charges of profiteering and outrageous pricing practices by sweepingly dismissing those who make the charges as if they're nothing more than unproductive whiners. His statement is quite simple - "I can afford these pills that make my life better, so I don't care about you or what you have to say about it because I'm comfortable and alive whether you are or not".
First annoyance: I hate it when conservatives whine that they're unfairly portrayed as "cold hearted" or "cruel".
Newsflash for you guys. You are. You're black-hearted bastards who, generally, wouldn't give a rat's ass about any other human on Earth outside your own little social shell if it weren't for the faux concern you have when you think it's going to score you points on your punchcard to get into heaven. The fact of the matter is quite simple: most conservative economic views can be boiled down to "if you don't have the money to make things happen, your life isn't worth living, so you should just commence with the dying and decrease the surplus population". This is a perfect illustration of that particularly diseased mindset. I wonder just what Mr. Sowell would think if he were lying in agonizing pain on his death bed because he couldn't afford to be alive and to have a "life worth living"? Would he still defend the drug companies that simply refuse to help him because his life isn't worth anything to their bottom line?
Second annoyance: Thomas Sowell is a successful syndicated columnist, and all he's doing here is applying an arbitrary negative label to a whole group of people who are trying to help suffering and dying people. He's demonizing people who value human life and dignity over corporate profits just because HE can afford his drugs while other people can't.
He will make money off of this selling ads, selling the column. People like kowski will quote him and venerate him for being so bluntly "wise" in the face of those whiny poor people.
Yet, the instant I paint any group of people - say freeps - with a single brush, the same people that are now quoting Sowell will jump down my throat and slash at me for spewing "ad hominems" and "strawman" arguments.
Third annoyance: the insistence of modern society to simply dismiss claims based on the speakers rather than the merits of the claim. What really annoys me here is not so much that Sowell is looking at some willingly unemployed communist who's plainly looking for society to take care of him in the absence of his own will to do so, he's just assuming that all the people who ever complained about drug costs are unproductive losers and then dismissing the arguments based on his own conclusion.
Never mind, of course, that many of the people who complain about drug costs are columnists just like Sowell. Never mind that many of the people who complain about drug costs are doctors and lawyers, two professions in which the average workload is probably twice what that "hard-working" mangod Sowell ever dreamed of. Never mind that many of the people who complain were gainfully employed until their disease - unlike Mr. Sowell's disease, apparently - debilitated them to the point where they couldn't work.
I guess, in the end, I should take solace in the knowledge that I'm ten times better a person than Thomas Sowell could ever hope to be. I don't put much stock in economists, since they're basically failed scientists as far as I'm concerned, but it still irritates the hell out of me when they try to talk about social issues because they invariably end up saying something painfully idiotic.
Whatever the cause for Sowell's apparent belief that money is the sole determining factor of the external value of another human being, I would just like to point out to everyone that this is yet another hard example of where I come away thinking that conservatives are cruel, stupid, and debased creatures of comfort with no objective but to prey on the weak for their own personal gain rather than to try and strengthen them for the good of the pack.
Keep this in mind the next time you think about whining because I portray these people negatively. There are solid reasons I do so, and this is one of them. If you don't want people to think you're an asshole, don't be one. It's that simple.
I like that quote (Score:1)
Good thing I previewed. Otherwise it might have been a while before someone caught the misattribution of the above quote (now my signature) to The_Mad_Poser.
This "conservative" belief (Score:1)
The result is that after Plymouth Rock, their descendants established the American land under this ethic. The piousness with which they presume
reminds me (Score:2)