Pet Politics

Today I was reading around the internet and I came across this gem, "Today I was reading and I came across this, "The group, alarmed by a resurgence of the GOP establishment in recent primaries and what activists view as a softened message, drafted demands to be shared with senior lawmakers calling on the party to “recommit” to bedrock principles.  Some of those principles laid out in the new document — strict opposition to illegal immigration, same-sex marriage and abortion"

It is in this article here.  I  like the Washington Post.  They do a pretty good job of getting information across.  And they are my "go to" starting point for learning about American politics.  In all honesty I hate following American politics.  They are so petty and mean and sometimes when I watching them try to deal with things like Bengazi or the Snowden revelations I can't help but think they are way out of their depths.  The sad thing is that ultimately same-sex marriage isn't important.  In terms of nation building, giving Americans the ability to put food on the tables, to come up with a better solution than just putting everyone in jail, to keep our infrastructure well maintained, to head off problems before they happen these are the things congress should be focusing on.  The problem is that they aren't sexy.  They don't grab headlines.  They don't sell.  So instead congress spends its time on idiot distractions like same-sex marriage while our roads fall apart and our education system crumbles around us.  Yes thank you for focusing on the important issues.  

I am fresh off of watching a pile of Ted talks.  I saw the CEO of Google's hopeful vision of the future.  I learned about the art of asking, about the importance of reclaiming yourself from your surroundings in any way you can, to new studies on how to help diagnose autism.  On the one hand we have Google wanting to launch balloons that will help spread the internet to every corner of the earth and on the other we have a young man in Seoul who decides to make the perfect bow as a way to deal with modern urbanized society.  Over 1700 talks on over a hundred subjects all about how we could become better.  It is always a little inspiring to go there.

Then I come back to the portion of out congress who is obsessed on issues that are little more than distractions.  For every minute people spend needlessly dicking around with same-sex marriage is another minute that actual important work isn't getting done.  For every minute we spend haggling over what women can or can't do with their bodies is another minute we aren't spending on dealing with the fact that we still haven't properly reformed our financial sector or that we haven't broken down the to big to fail problem.  By the way it turns out no one knows what "to big to fail" means.  "To big to fail" doesn't indicate that the institution is invincible but rather that if the institution does fail it will cause a cascading effect through out our economy that would be far more devastating than the housing collapse.  Nope none of this is more important than preventing gay people from getting gay married.  

Setting my temper tantrum aside it is funny because Marriage is one of those things that is important to our country and there are some pretty important institutional reasons as to why our government rewards people for getting straight married.  See much of our countries ability to function relies on producing good functioning workers.  We need two types of workers.  We need people to haul garbage, wash dishes (me!), and do various shitwork.  We also need people who can innovate, create, and teach.  Every day highly skilled workers leave the workforce due to retirement and every day new people need to replace them.  But new people can't replace them right away because there is no replacement for experience.

So yeah people have got it into their heads that straight marriages will produce stable healthy new workers into the workforce.  Gay marriages can't do that.  Cause they can't make new things.  Abortion can't do that either cause there is no more baby.  So by upholding traditional marriage values we ensure that there will always be enough people to fill up jobs and pay taxes because our country is really isolated and no one wants to move here.  Yep no one.  It is up to straight married people to replenish our workforce because...

Oh people against gay marriage you're so stupid.  I can respect both sides of the debate about abortion and illeagal immigration is a crazy complex issue mostly because we were really short sighted and didn't build cheap housing for lower income families and made the only way to get to work be a metal machine that just sucks money away at over 30 bucks a week but gay marriage come on.  

Problems are hard.  

This is a logical stopping point but I'd like to continue...in a new post.

Change Comes Slowly

So I've been changing thing around about how I live my life and stuff like that.  I do this from time to time.  Hell most times I don't go more than 6 months without trying to change something.  I've come to learn that big dramatic gestures don't work.  Oh they'll work for a bit but eventually I just go back to the way I was.  Other times I would drastically upset my routine for awhile just to see what would happen.  Usually nothing.   For a time I was satisfied by this but I'm not anymore.  So I tried to change little things and see what comes out of it.  So far I've had the most success with it.  Currently I am of the like mind that I need to take better care of myself.  Not for any specific reason but simply because I am getting older and I am entering into the "use it or lose it" phase of my life.  It is nothing to be afraid of unless you ignore it.

So this means exercise.  This is the thing I want to do the least.  It is also something I've realized that most people have a ludicrously unhealthy relationship with.  Exercise regimens swing wildly between super intense boot camps that try to cram years worth of work into a couple of weeks to fat burning simple workouts that claim to just take minutes a day.  I see so little about just general health and doing things because they are good for you.  Overwhelmingly the message is loose weight!  Look better!  Be better!  Rawr.  I do my best to not let the vulgarities of the capitalistic society that I live in get me down but sometimes it is very difficult.  Our health has been commercialized.  Oh well.

I set out to make three small changes, drink less soda, start waking up earlier, and daily streaches.  So far I've done all three which is kinda astounding to me.  I was expecting maybe one of three, two at best but the fact that I've been doing all three for awhile now is surprising.  Not only that but I've made progress.  I can now bend at the waist and touch my toes for the first time in my life and this blog is the product of waking up earlier.  Waking up earlier is more of a means to an end rather than something that will make me healthier.  For exercise I've settled on Yoga.  It can be done without equipment, it uses the body as resistance, it builds flexibility, which are all the things I want.  For awhile I got it into my head that I would just be doing these things after work but that's simply not happening.  It hasn't happened yet and I don't have faith that it will happen any time in the future near or far.  So I decided to wake up earlier and I decided that instead of just playing video games that I will do productive things with my mornings, for the most part, from now on.  Before I start in on yoga I do have to clean up my house quite a bit.  I kinda need to clean up my house anyway but you know how it is.  Once I do that I can begin in earnest.  Which is nice.  I plan on using my mornings for other things too, writing here for example and....well that's it at the moment.  I figure between writing and cleaning up the house and starting yoga I'll have my work cut out for me.  Not that I'm afraid of this mind you but it is something that needs to be done.  It is the next step towards a better future.