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A look back at Columbine and a journalistic story of the events that transpired before, during and after.
Columbine is a subject that illicits a huge response. Its a confused mess of a subject to be honest. Few members of the public know the true story, fewer still know the whole story and only 4 or 5 will ever know everything. And 2 of those are dead. I've had a huge interest in Columbine for a very long time. I realize that makes me sound like a nut but its just, to me, a very interesting topic that has captured me.
I've watched the documentaries and played the RPG thing and all of that. They never answered vital questions on the subject. Micheal Moore's money grabbing attention spree of a documentary just made it harder for me to understand. I even looked over the notebooks and journals released by the authorities but to no avail.
This book explained everything. It opened my eyes to alot of the issues that have since spawned from that day and answered alot of my questions. It has got some confusing, conflicting reviews but from what I know of the tragedy, this is the best book to learn everything there is to know about it. From the killers, to the town, to the people, it explains it all.
Quit Being Dicks
For the past couple million years, there's been some animosity toward "outsiders". I think its always been there as long as animals has congregated in groups. Being suspicious of newcomers is just something creatures do. It keeps predators away and you never know when that new guy is going to turn out to be a no good double crossing Lion.
So my usual response of "WHhhhhhhhyyyy" doesn't really work too well when applied to the topics of immigration and xenophobia. I understand why people are scared of horrible invaders from outside coming and stealing all the jobs, women, government benefits and whatever else the tabloids accuse them of. But that doesn't make the argument any less bananas.
Standing against immigration is probably the dumbest thing you can do as a human being. This is really one of the topics that shakes my core as a humanist. To imagine enough of my fellow human beings are ignorant or evil enough to stand in the way of their own countries progress for some pathetic tribalism? It tests me. I'm getting ahead of myself here, Let me compose myself and we can begin.
Immigration is a touchy subject. There are many factors at play. Some of these factors are imagined and feed to you by mass media, some are real and need to be addressed. On top of all that, there's racial aspects to consider, jobs, the list goes on. I'm not an expert, but I like to pretend to be one on the internet, which is good enough.
Just for a start, lets begin with Jobs. This is a huge concern I hear a lot when I'm in America. That waves of Mexicans are flooding the country and stealing all the jobs for themselves, then sending the money they earn into Mexico, thus DESTROYING THE ENTIRE FOUNDATION OF HUMANITY. This to me poses some interesting questions. First of all being, who's jobs are being lost to this vile plague, exactly? Its not the middle or upper classes that's for damn sure. I can't see many illegal aliens entering the country with collage degrees and a full work resume. I honestly can not envision a situation where skilled jobs go to an untrained guy who just crossed the border.
Logically this leaves lower class jobs. Drivers, basic unskilled work, that sort of thing. Ok I can see this being an issue because our hypothetical Mexican might work for much less than our hypothetical American. However the blame here is misplaced, rather than blaming the penniless Mexican who needs a job to support his family, why not blame the richass guys hiring him? Presuming our Hypothetical American lost his job directly because a Mexican would do it for cheaper, that seems like the bosses fault, rather than the Mexicans. He'd do the same if an American would do it cheaper I'm sure.
Maybe the concern is that there are limited jobs and by having too many outsiders, you strain the job market by introducing too much completion and so on. This isn't a good thing? I mean competition encourages growth, why not just be the better candidate? I mean hell the Hypothetical Mexican is already starting on a handicap, given his hypothetical ethnicity.
I get that life isn't always so black and white. Maybe the American has a family to feed and needs his shitty factory workers job to live. Maybe he loses it cause some Mexican guy will do it for dirt. That's shit, its horrible and can destroy lives but as I've said. Its not the fault of the Mexican. Hes just some guy looking to earn some cash same as the Hypothetical American. Its the guys that run the factory, their bosses that are to blame.
The world is currently in a very weird place when it comes to immigration. Its almost at the point where you're just screaming at people you think MIGHT not be from around here. Oh wait. With media fueled anger against so called "terrorists" and invaders and interlopers, every single country on earth is on edge, keeping an eye out for vaguely "not from round 'ere" types, ever vigilant lest they deflower our fair lands and crumble our infrastructure.
Lets compare the two main powerhouses of the world right now. The US and Europe. The fear in the US (and everywhere else really) is that if you allow other people into your country, all the jobs go, culture becomes dissipated and all kinds of other utterly mental arguments. As if by simply allowing people to work and live where they want to, you undermine the very tenements of the economy (These people obviously don't understand economics very well). This is all well and good if it wasn't for the fact that Europe has had open borders in regards to work for the past 10 years and is currently the most culturally diverse continent on earth with some of the highest standards of living in the world. To clear that up, The EU allows anyone from any EU country to work in any other EU country, provided they have a valid passport. Reports that Paris is consumed in the fires of anarchy are, as yet, unfounded.
Speaking of which, there is one final argument that makes no fucking sense that I feel obliged to type endlessly about. The so called Culture Clash that "proves" people should just stay where they are. This may seem like a pretty solid argument. Just last month we had literally tens of insane Americans storming a clothing warehouse to try and stop a community center being built because Glenn Beck told them to. Before that we had literally ten fundamentalist Muslims going apeshit over some danish political cartoons. You may notice something funny here, In the first case, a bunch of fat old white dudes are going nuts over a harmless thing that has a religion attached to it. In the second, a bunch of old fat brown dudes are going nuts over a harmless thing that has a religion attached to it. No one really took the mosque people seriously, no one acted as if that was the entire of America's stance on the subject. Hell even the president came out to say "Quit being dicks guys." Its exactly the same with the Islamic protests.
The message here is that there is no "clash of culture". It doesn't prove that humans should stay with their own tribes. The only proof on show here is that there are idiots, fundamentalists and nutjobs from everywhere. There are Middle eastern nutjobs, there's American nutjobs, there's European nutjobs, Asian nutjobs and when we find them, probably a whole lot of alien nutjobs too. Given any number of people, you're gonna find a couple nutters. That's just how life goes.
The only difference between this;
And This;
is the color of their skin. I guess only one of them are capitalizing on the victims of a tragedy to further a political campaign but lets not get into that.
Lastly I want to talk about integration. Its a large part of whatpeople idiotic self-centered morons without a single intelligent thought think about when they worry about immigrants. Will they integrate into our society? The short answer is yes, given education and encouragement. The evidence is, yet again, all over the place. You only need to look at Universities all over the world to see different cultures and peoples working together and forming their own cultures. The real issue is education. People complain that phone lines and menus and signs are in Urdu as well as English in England (mostly the aforementioned nutjobs) and then in the same breath complain that "they" don't try to learn English. It sounds like madness but how in gods name are you supposed to integrate into a culture and society if the society and culture is impenetrable? Efforts such as phone lines being in English, free English classes and further education programs for immigrants allows them to integrate properly, to share their culture and become more than residents, it allows them to become citizens. You want all the menus and phone lines in English only? All you do is segregate and create isolated groups. This is basic social dynamics. I'm literally getting angry just writing that cause it's hardly fucking rocket science that if you put 50 people in a room, tell 48 of them to only speak french and 2 to speak Russian, The 2 speaking Russian will, 9/10, segregate and isolate themselves.
Really, honestly, all this is moot. The kind of people this is aimed at don't care about rational problems, they don't care about real issues that arise from immigration (of which there are a few). They just want "Them" away from their precious tribe. I know the message of this article is Hate Breeds Hate. But Fuck them. They stand in the way of progress, actively dragging humanity down by their shear hatred and bigotry. Its our duty, not as Americans, or as Europeans or whatever, but as human beings, to kick them in their stupid faces and drag them into the future.
I really hope I've been clear in this article. Its really a simple message and numbers agree with me. Countries work better when they open their borders. the evidence is everywhere, in history with the development of the united states, in Europe now, everywhere. You just have to ignore the nutjobs and put some thought into it. Of course, if all I did was ignore the nutjobs, I'd never write anything.
So my usual response of "WHhhhhhhhyyyy" doesn't really work too well when applied to the topics of immigration and xenophobia. I understand why people are scared of horrible invaders from outside coming and stealing all the jobs, women, government benefits and whatever else the tabloids accuse them of. But that doesn't make the argument any less bananas.
Standing against immigration is probably the dumbest thing you can do as a human being. This is really one of the topics that shakes my core as a humanist. To imagine enough of my fellow human beings are ignorant or evil enough to stand in the way of their own countries progress for some pathetic tribalism? It tests me. I'm getting ahead of myself here, Let me compose myself and we can begin.
Immigration is a touchy subject. There are many factors at play. Some of these factors are imagined and feed to you by mass media, some are real and need to be addressed. On top of all that, there's racial aspects to consider, jobs, the list goes on. I'm not an expert, but I like to pretend to be one on the internet, which is good enough.
Just for a start, lets begin with Jobs. This is a huge concern I hear a lot when I'm in America. That waves of Mexicans are flooding the country and stealing all the jobs for themselves, then sending the money they earn into Mexico, thus DESTROYING THE ENTIRE FOUNDATION OF HUMANITY. This to me poses some interesting questions. First of all being, who's jobs are being lost to this vile plague, exactly? Its not the middle or upper classes that's for damn sure. I can't see many illegal aliens entering the country with collage degrees and a full work resume. I honestly can not envision a situation where skilled jobs go to an untrained guy who just crossed the border.
Logically this leaves lower class jobs. Drivers, basic unskilled work, that sort of thing. Ok I can see this being an issue because our hypothetical Mexican might work for much less than our hypothetical American. However the blame here is misplaced, rather than blaming the penniless Mexican who needs a job to support his family, why not blame the richass guys hiring him? Presuming our Hypothetical American lost his job directly because a Mexican would do it for cheaper, that seems like the bosses fault, rather than the Mexicans. He'd do the same if an American would do it cheaper I'm sure.
Maybe the concern is that there are limited jobs and by having too many outsiders, you strain the job market by introducing too much completion and so on. This isn't a good thing? I mean competition encourages growth, why not just be the better candidate? I mean hell the Hypothetical Mexican is already starting on a handicap, given his hypothetical ethnicity.
I get that life isn't always so black and white. Maybe the American has a family to feed and needs his shitty factory workers job to live. Maybe he loses it cause some Mexican guy will do it for dirt. That's shit, its horrible and can destroy lives but as I've said. Its not the fault of the Mexican. Hes just some guy looking to earn some cash same as the Hypothetical American. Its the guys that run the factory, their bosses that are to blame.
The world is currently in a very weird place when it comes to immigration. Its almost at the point where you're just screaming at people you think MIGHT not be from around here. Oh wait. With media fueled anger against so called "terrorists" and invaders and interlopers, every single country on earth is on edge, keeping an eye out for vaguely "not from round 'ere" types, ever vigilant lest they deflower our fair lands and crumble our infrastructure.
Lets compare the two main powerhouses of the world right now. The US and Europe. The fear in the US (and everywhere else really) is that if you allow other people into your country, all the jobs go, culture becomes dissipated and all kinds of other utterly mental arguments. As if by simply allowing people to work and live where they want to, you undermine the very tenements of the economy (These people obviously don't understand economics very well). This is all well and good if it wasn't for the fact that Europe has had open borders in regards to work for the past 10 years and is currently the most culturally diverse continent on earth with some of the highest standards of living in the world. To clear that up, The EU allows anyone from any EU country to work in any other EU country, provided they have a valid passport. Reports that Paris is consumed in the fires of anarchy are, as yet, unfounded.
Speaking of which, there is one final argument that makes no fucking sense that I feel obliged to type endlessly about. The so called Culture Clash that "proves" people should just stay where they are. This may seem like a pretty solid argument. Just last month we had literally tens of insane Americans storming a clothing warehouse to try and stop a community center being built because Glenn Beck told them to. Before that we had literally ten fundamentalist Muslims going apeshit over some danish political cartoons. You may notice something funny here, In the first case, a bunch of fat old white dudes are going nuts over a harmless thing that has a religion attached to it. In the second, a bunch of old fat brown dudes are going nuts over a harmless thing that has a religion attached to it. No one really took the mosque people seriously, no one acted as if that was the entire of America's stance on the subject. Hell even the president came out to say "Quit being dicks guys." Its exactly the same with the Islamic protests.
The message here is that there is no "clash of culture". It doesn't prove that humans should stay with their own tribes. The only proof on show here is that there are idiots, fundamentalists and nutjobs from everywhere. There are Middle eastern nutjobs, there's American nutjobs, there's European nutjobs, Asian nutjobs and when we find them, probably a whole lot of alien nutjobs too. Given any number of people, you're gonna find a couple nutters. That's just how life goes.
The only difference between this;
And This;
is the color of their skin. I guess only one of them are capitalizing on the victims of a tragedy to further a political campaign but lets not get into that.
Lastly I want to talk about integration. Its a large part of what
Really, honestly, all this is moot. The kind of people this is aimed at don't care about rational problems, they don't care about real issues that arise from immigration (of which there are a few). They just want "Them" away from their precious tribe. I know the message of this article is Hate Breeds Hate. But Fuck them. They stand in the way of progress, actively dragging humanity down by their shear hatred and bigotry. Its our duty, not as Americans, or as Europeans or whatever, but as human beings, to kick them in their stupid faces and drag them into the future.
I really hope I've been clear in this article. Its really a simple message and numbers agree with me. Countries work better when they open their borders. the evidence is everywhere, in history with the development of the united states, in Europe now, everywhere. You just have to ignore the nutjobs and put some thought into it. Of course, if all I did was ignore the nutjobs, I'd never write anything.
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