Yay!

Good morning everyone. It’s Friday, and WaMu has collapsed. Biggest bank failure, by far in the history of the US. Remember when a young, idealistic, beady eyed politician from Texas by way of Yale was first taking office eight years ago? People mentioned that he had never run anything (oil companies the Rangers etc.) that hadn’t ended up bankrupt. People were concerned about him executing Texan retards, Isn’t that funny? It all seems so sweet and innocent now, right? I mean, the theoretical, jokey, ‘this guy couldn’t make money with a whorehouse in Alaska” thing has given way to the ugly truth that, in fact, this guy has all but bankrupted one of the biggest economies in the world. Snide remarks about how he’s a retard killer kind of don’t even seem like that big a deal in the face of the two misguided wars, the travesty of Guantanamo Bay, the shameful lack of support that are being shown to our wounded veterans. Man…I WISH he was just killing retards and running the Rangers into the ground.
I guess you’re not supposed to say retards anymore. Well, I don’t know if that was ever acceptable. It’s one of those words, though, that you use when you talk about George Bush, just because you KNOW that’s the word he uses. So, before everyone gets bent out of shape, that was one of those post-ironic meta uses of ‘retard’ not an ignorant rant against Bush and Retards all in one go, okay? What’s it called if you’re against the mentally handicapped? Antarded? Well, it doesn’t pass the spell check muster, so I guess that’s enough for me. Nope, I guess antarded isn’t a word. Oh well.
My friend who’s brother has downs syndrome told me once that they don’t like you to say ‘retarded’ over where his brother goes to school, they call him…oh what was it? It was a euphemism so unbearably softened that it would make George Carlin spin in his grave. Oh! It was ‘consumer’. Good news Corky! You’re no longer retarded! You’re now a consumer! Is that fucked or what, man?
In a strange way, this insistence that we pretend that problems are just differences and differences are just similarities is the same boneheaded idiocy that leads people to call intelligent politicians elitist, dumb politicians ‘everymen’ and ultimately makes the banks fail because instead of having an elite, qualified brilliant strategist as our president, we get the guy that the old man at the bait shop feels is most like him. HEY! Your bait shop better be making millions in gross annual profits if that’s your criteria for who’s gonna run the country, Roy-Bob!
Okay, I’ve gotten ahead of myself. Think about this…they say you can’t call retarded people retarded…it’s demeaning to their what? Intelligence? Okay, I’m not trying to be insensitive, and throughout my life I’ve met plenty of wonderful mentally handicapped people, but hey, guess what? They’re retarded, as in the development of their brains is retarded. It’s not a difference, it’s a defect. That’s why people conduct tests to see if the baby they’re carrying is going to be retarded and become disappointed if the answer is ‘yup.’ That’s why people who are ‘retarded’ or ‘consumers’ or whatever your term is in your prefecture, don’t, you know, drive, run banks, shit like that. It’s not an insult. It’s a fact. I can’t dunk a basketball. Retarded people can’t perform surgery (neither can I, for that matter, and on a side note, I wonder if there are any retarded people who can dunk. I bet there are, and I bet it’s wild.)
People with no legs are called ‘differently abled’ instead of disabled these days. Look, to call that a difference is to kind of ignore how bad it SUCKS to not have legs. It’s not a difference, it’s a problem.
Aside from pretending that problems are just differences, there’s also this tendency to pretend that differences are just similarities. People say dumb shit like this all the time: “Men and women are the same.”
No, they aren’t. One has a penis, one has a vagina. They have different hormonal make ups. One bears children. One grows beards. There’s a reason that male prisons are more violent than women prisons. Men and women ARE NOT THE SAME. It’s so counterproductive to argue anything else. It’s frankly retarded.
To go to an even more uncomfortable spot, I’d argue that people of different ethnic backgrounds are not the same. A black guy is not the same as a white guy. If we’re referring to America here, or the west in general, one grew up with the knowledge of being an ‘other’ from the moment he could formulate ideas about what it means to belong to something and that’s informed their entire existence. And the other one probably never really thought about race in any sort of meaningful way until they got to a point where they were forced to empathize with someone else. As big of a deal as race is in this world, there’s no way that those two people can have anything approaching a similar world view. Even when you replace people into different communities, an Asian kid growing up in a Mexican neighborhood, a white kid living in India, whatever, it’s still a DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE based on AN EMPERICAL and OBSERVABLE DIFFERENCE. To deny that is to deny what makes life exciting and great.
I don’t want everyone to be the same. Fuck, if women were just like men, it would kind of skeeve me out. If all people were the same, where would the good books that really shatter your own idea of self and completely turn you around get their genesis and perspective? People are different. Some are different because of their perspectives, and some are different because they have one arm or downs syndrome. This is why you can’t just have any old man that wants to run the fucking country just do it. Some of them are dumb. Some of them are senile. Some of them believe in a fantasy world of apocalyptic horsemen and spaceships to heaven. Some are smart, smarter than you or me, and those are the ones that you want running shit. Not the ones you’d most like to have a beer with. Keep them around, and actually have a beer with them. Get the smart ones in positions of power, please. I’m sick of the retards.