Hate

I read an article on cnn.com about the rise of hate groups in recent months. They have a new target in President Obama and blame him and immigrants for the current financial crisis. I don't understand this mentality; there are plenty of valid and logical reasons for hating people, why pick something arbitrary like the color of their skin? I hate people for a wide variety of reasons: they are stupid, they drive slow in the left lane, they are entertained by reality television, etc. But skin color? C'mon, why hate Obama because he's black when you can hate him because he's a typical pandering, two-faced politician? Why hate John McCain because he's white when you can hate him for being a sniveling, pandering, Dr. Evil-doing-the Macarena jerk? (Hey, they've got pandering in common! Bi-partisanship!)

In all seriousness, what I never really understood is why these groups resort to the level of 'hate'. There are valid reasons for disagreeing with others, but why is hate necessary? I disagreed with quite a bit of the policies of G.W. Bush, but I don't hate the man. I don't think he was a very good President, but if I ever had the honor of meeting him, I would treat it as an honor and would shake his hand. It seems to me that hate groups are incapable of disagreeing with someone while treating them as valid human beings at the same time.

Maybe it's part of their marketing scheme. Hate groups attract followers based on the rhetoric of hate the stirs up those that share these strong feelings. In spite of what some members say (like David Duke in the CNN.com article), violence seems to be at the heart of hate groups' actions. A burning cross is an implied threat. Some of the followers (perhaps a majority?) are enticed by the violence. It would be easy to view these followers as simple-minded and primitive folk that just want to smash the thing they (rightly or wrongly) view as causing their problems, but such a view would be inaccurate. Some of these people are rational and very intelligent, but somehow find the violence alluring. Since hate begets violence, hate becomes the rallying cry of these groups.

Or maybe I'm giving these groups too much credit. Maybe the answer is as simple as the fact that people like feeling important and special. Hate groups tell their constituents that it is their destiny to rule (or whatever) and that these other groups (blacks, jews, hispanics, gays, etc.) are usurping that destiny. It becomes easier to hate when you think that someone is taking something that belongs to you.

The scariest man I ever met was a worker at a factory that I worked at for a summer. He was a really nice guy that I spent quite a bit of time chatting with over the course of a few weeks. He seemed completely normal and highly intelligent. Then one day during the course of our assignment for the day, he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, revealing the word "White" on the back of one arm and "Pride" on the back of the other. I wasn't shocked by the sentiment, I was shocked that this person could believe in that sentiment.

Caught

It's a two-fer-tuesday of Stealing Jeff Kay's Topics:

1. Jeff asked yesterday if anyone had ever been caught "doing it". Well, here's my little story: when I was in High School I dated a girl for about a year and a half (one of the worst girlfriends I ever had, but she agreed to have sex with me, so I stayed around for about a year and five months too long). At the time my bedroom was in my parents basement, so we were able to have our fun in relative privacy. But there were some nights when Mom and Dad were up and around that we needed to get away and do our thing elsewhere. One of those nights we ended up in the backseat of my car (a piece of shit two door Olds, if I recall correctly) at a small park. We were in the preliminary stages, but well on our way towards the main event when a cop showed up and shined his light in the backseat. It was a little embarrassing, but the worst part was when he made me get out and then he asked my girlfriend if she was their "of her own free will." He then left us alone, but the mood was broken.*

*Yes, I am aware that this story is similar to Jeff's only not nearly as good, but what do you want me to do about it - it is the truth.

2. Today Jeff asked about television watching habits. I must admit that I watch far more t.v. that I wish that I did. I would rather be reading a book, writing something or playing music, but most days I'm just too tired to do anything but slouch on the couch and watch t.v. I know far too many channel numbers by heart to list them like Jeff did, but here are my regulars:

ESPN
ESPN2
HBO's various channels
TBS - for Seinfeld re-runs
Fox - for the Simpsons
ABC - for Lost
MLB Network
Discovery - for Cash Cab
Sports PPV - for the MLB Extra Innings Package
Fox SportsMidwest - for St. Louis Blues hockey

And that's pretty much it, off the top of my head.

Tired and Happy

The last two days I constructed furniture, spent way too much time testing myself at this website: www.sporcle.com, got my wife thinking that spending $800 on a guitar isn't so bad compared to the $6,000 it would cost to get the one I really want and I turned into an uber stat-nerd in designing a metric to value players specifically for my fantasy baseball league's parameters.

Tonight I go to get my taxes done (hopefully to get a refund). Somehow, I'm still in a good mood for once.

Names

Once upon a time I was in a rock band. Coming up with a name for the band proved to be much more difficult than writing the songs that eventually became our first album. There were disagreements, arguments and hurt feelings over the band name. In retrospect, it was silly for many reasons, but primarily because of this: there is no such thing as a good band name. Band names are generally pretty stupid and only end up sounding cool because of the band and the music that is associated with it.

My wife has a somewhat unusual name. She is the only person I have ever met with her name. Her name comes from a classic novel that was made into a movie years ago. Her mother liked the book (or movie, I don't know which, actually) and decided to use the name for her daughter. I think it is kinda cool, but my wife hates the name. No one ever pronounces or spells it right and she wishes that her mother had picked something more common.

In three months I will be the father of a little girl. My wife and I have been discussing a name for this child for, well, a long time. To this point there have been no arguments or hurt feelings over the name, but there have been disagreements. Unlike band names, I believe that there is such a thing as a good name for a person. There are names that just roll off the tongue and sound cool no matter what (like Brown Walker, for example) and then there are names that give other impressions. I won't go into to much detail on that fact because inevitably one of the two other people that read this blog will have a close relative that they really love that has the name that I disparage here and then I'd feel bad about it. But I'm sure you know what I mean.

So what's the point? I don't know. We have a name that we have tentatively agreed on, but the discussion still rages on. When the band decided on its name the discussion ended up lasting about two minutes. A name was proposed that no one could (or had the energy to) come up with a strong argument against and so it became the name, even though I would guess that none of us thought it was a great name at the time. As it turned out, I ended up really liking the name, but more because it represents the band and that period of time. But maybe that's how all names are decided upon: the default of argument fatigue.