Ugh, Humans, (v2)

Cartoon of me, a chubby white
woman with brown and grey
hair, wearing blue and grey.
The caption reads "UGH,

Honestly, what IS the matter with people?

Mind you, I'm not watching the Olympics this year. There are many reasons for this, ranging from wanting to watch LeVar Burton guest-host Jeopardy all the way to absolute disgust at the International Olympic Committee

Which is too bad, as I enjoy many aspects of Japanese culture and I'd love to see more of Tokyo's interpretations of things. But I digress.

Let's just tot up the most recent asshattery, shall we? (I'm writing this on 29 July, mind you; these things usually take a day or two to get approved for publication. So if I miss something that happened on the 30th, well... sorry about that.

• At least four female athletes are not allowed to compete "because their testosterone levels are too high." I got news for you; at 52, my testosterone levels are "too high" as well... guess what. Females are not all the same. I know it's shocking. But it's real life, folks.
• One athlete in the US was not allowed to compete because of cannabis in her system. Of course, the fact that the cannabis was in her system due to coping with the death of a parent, in a state where medical and recreational marijuana use is perfectly legal... that's beside the point. Evidently, so is the fact that white male athletes are not held to the same standard.
• Simone Biles is being disparaged - not by her teammates or coaches or medical teams, you know, the people whose opinions might actually matter - for having the temerity to protect her mental and physical health over providing entertainment to the masses of entitled (and from what I have seen, mostly white, male) Americans and Brits. Who of course frame it as "letting her team down" even though the team in question disagrees.
• Naomi Osaka was treated so unfairly she went to a different country's team.
• White male commentators have been heard referring to the male competitors as men, and the female competitors as girls.
• A Greek commentator stated that he didn't see how the South Korean Ping-Pong players could see the ball, "because their eyes are so narrow." At least he was fired.
• The Ladies Beach Handball (Volleyball) team from Norway was fined because they didn't wear bikini bottoms. The men's teams wear shorts.

And that's just the Olympics.

That doesn't even include a handful of actual federal and local lawmakers (or hopefuls) in the US trying to claim that their free speech is violated by mask mandates. And lying about things like critical race theory (it really is just teaching the whole of history, not only the prettied up bits) or sex ed in the schools (no, teh gayz are not trying to teach your kindergartners about anal sex) or antifa (somehow they have managed to twist it into antifascists being the actual fascists), and denying climate change (to the point that they see nothing wrong in amateurs using commercial-grade explosives in the hottest, driest summer on record), and they're still claiming that Covid-19 is a hoax, (even as they're dying because they won't vax or mask).

And their asshattery in general.

I have a friend who feels that cognitive dissonance is addictive for some people, like they never moved past their adolescent rebellion stage. I guess that would explain a lot, and just because cognitive dissonance hurts me doesn't mean other people don't love it.

Ugh. Humans.

Humans are So... Human

Cartoon of me, a chubby white
woman with brown and grey
hair, wearing blue and grey.
The caption reads "UGH,"

And I do not grok them.

I mean, I can - and have done - rant all day long about the illogic and the ridiculous selfishness and so forth. These things have really been brought to the forefront in the past few years. And I can say all I want to that I don't understand why people are this way... why they won't wear a mask or get vaccinated, or won't believe that Biden actually won the 2020 presidential election, or believe that critical race theory is somehow fascist. Or believe that climate change is a hoax for... some unspecified nefarious purpose. Or think that gay people are trying to indoctrinate your kids via sex ed in the schools.

But whenever I have asked why to these sorts of views, I get a couple of very unsatisfactory answers. Usually, racism and the patriarchy are at the top of the list.

Okay, sure, but those are very simplistic and pat answers, regardless of their basic accuracy.

Occasionally I get an answer of fear or xenophobia, which is probably more fully accurate, as these answers describe the why a little better. People are afraid of what they don't understand; they don't understand epidemiology, or people who don't look like them, or women in positions of power, or climatology, or actual consent... and therefore they react poorly.

The fact that most of the loudest people I hear talking about their God-given right to do whatever they want - from refusing masks and vaccines to blowing things up during the hottest and driest summer on record - also claim to believe in the socialist and neighbor-loving lessons taught by a brown-skinned, middle-eastern, Jewish guy, well... back to humans being human, I guess. That's a level of hypocrisy I can't even wrap my head around.

Yeah, yeah, not all Christians, not all cishet white dudes, not all Republicans, etc. Whatever.

I wish they'd walk the walk they talk so much about.

Why do they think that pregnancy is more important than living, breathing children?

Why do they think that being required - or even asked - to wear a piece of cloth over their faces is somehow more oppressive than being enslaved or imprisoned?

Why do they think that learning actual, complete history is so threatening?

Why do they trust people who are trying to scare them rather than those trying to help them?

Why are they so quick to believe that everyone wants to kill them or convert them into some icky-squicky subculture? Are they that paranoid? Or that self-important? Probably the latter.

Why do they think the people they call fragile and wimpy and other denigrating terms are so dangerous that they need automatic weapons to protect themselves from us snowflakes?

For that matter, why do they think that wearing a mask into a grocery store is an indication of fear but wearing an arsenal into a grocery store isn't?

Yeah, fear, xenophobia, patriarchy, racism.

Whatever it is, it kind of sucks.

Pat Riots

Multicolored fireworks on a black background

Pretty, aren't they?

Yes, I like fireworks as much as the next person... except for the ones that are all noise and no lights, because what IS the point of that? Or of setting off a mortar round in a quiet neighborhood at 8:20 in the morning on the Fourth - simply because you can get away with it?

But there's a disconnect between rights and responsibilities that I think some of the people around me do not grok. I've been thinking about it for several days - months, really, because of masking rules and so forth - but it really crystallized for me as I was looking at the infographic about fireworks safety this year on my state governor's Facebook page.

There's a huge drought going on. We had more than a hundred heat-related deaths in the last week in our state alone, and that doesn't even take into consideration more than twice that many in the state to the south or the 500+ in the province to the north, including an entire small town that burned to the ground. That's just this last week. It's dry out there.

And yet, here we are, with people proclaiming their God-given right to... what? burn it all down in the name of patriotism just for the lulz? You know these folks are not sticking to the "safe and sane" pretties, either; they are the ones making their own or going to the reservation to buy them even though those are always illegal in non-reservation areas of the state.

Even in my own rural, unincorporated neighborhood, the safe and sane ones are illegal too... except between 9AM and 11:59PM on the Fourth itself. Not that the restrictions are stopping anyone.

Well, that's not true. The restrictions are stopping me - I don't plan to light anything this year; we're sticking to pop its. You know, those little bundles of paper and gunpowder you just throw at the ground? The restrictions stop a few of my neighbors, who won't light anything (and don't do the illegal stuff anyway) until the Fourth.

But a lot of them? Yeah, there are mortar rounds going off in the evenings, and those are never legal in my state, let alone before nine in the morning on the Fourth, but here we are.

I find it distressing that the people who proclaim their patriotism the loudest are usually the same people - or at least there is a lot of overlap in that Venn Diagram - who are breaking all the rules and traditions regarding the symbols and heroes of patriotism.

American flags as clothing or other decorative stuff? These violate the flag code. So do those Thin Blue Line flags I keep seeing popping up everywhere. Voting against veterans' benefits is a jerky thing to do; saying you support the troops while continuing to defund them is hypocritical. Decrying immigrants as somehow bad for "your" country is super unpatriotic; everyone here has an immigrant, refugee, or slave in their ancestry... unless their background is 100% indigenous peoples.

Most of us are not.

And then there are the lovely folks who natter on about the 2nd Amendment and their right to bear arms. We could argue about the definition of "well-regulated militia" all day (and have) so I'm not going there this time. But even if the second amendment covers fireworks (I have read that it technically does, since a Supreme Court decision in 2014), local jurisdictions have control. And regardless of how you feel about fireworks as firearms, the second amendment does not give you the right to burn down your state (or country or world) just because you want to blow stuff up for some knee-jerk patriotic "rockets' red glare" fun and games. And to the "patriot" on the aforementioned Facebook page who rambled on for a while about how we need this because we've all been cooped up against "the China virus plot." 🙄 Fireworks were invented in China.

These are seriously dangerous conditions. It doesn't make you more of a patriot to set your neighborhood alight.

I guess "patriot" and "patriarchy" have a common root for a reason. Buncha folks who think they have the right to do what they want regardless of how others are affected.

Note: this post was originally submitted to Vocal, but they have not gotten to it in the approval queue yet.