Accepted Prejudice

If the film industry made dozens of movies about the evils of Jewish doctors, showing them killing patients so they may harvest their organs, this would rightly be viewed as prejudicial. The same standard would apply if these movies were about police officers, or gypsies, or even lawyers. Prejudice, bigotry, and ignorance are vices that are looked down upon by the culture at large.

Yet when the standards of enlightenment and understanding are dismissed when regarding another group, hardly anybody raises a fuss. This group is the businessmen, victims of some of the most ridiculous prejudice society and the media has to offer.

They are compared to Nazis (Jodie foster in the Inside Man). They are turned into ridicules villains in kid’s cartoons (Captain Planet). Special legislation is created that treats them as guilty until proven innocent (Sarbanes-Oxley.) Even school children are lectured today, in textbooks and by teachers, on the evils wrought by businessmen: including child labor and slavery.

It seems that those dastardly businessmen are always pooping up to cause trouble. They will even nuke L.A. in order to start a war for oil profits (second season of 24; same theme presented in Syriana). They can always be found destroying the environment and/or exploited innocent peoples (Hoot, 1970’s King Kong, The Constant Gardener, Blood Diamond,); And, of course, hurting the little guy (RENT, Dick and Jane).

When businessmen are not evil, they are pathetic, often neglecting there families and their happiness for the sake of profit.

In the last fifty years of film making, there are only a few examples of “good” businessmen. Villains are more likely to be businessmen then any other profession (including drug dealers and terrorists). And even those “good” businessmen are good for some other virtues, like being charitable.

If these were just a few isolated events, it could be seen as practically meaningless, but the overwhelming amount of negativity toward businessmen can not be seen as a fluke.

What is so frustrating is that unlike some clichés, this has almost no bases in reality. Businessmen have an incredibly low rate of crime. Slavery was an institution that existed long before businessmen, and child labor no longer exists because of the wealth that production (the result of businessmen) created. Even Enron and WorldCom are incidents involving a relatively small number of people, yet people use this event to represent all businessmen. It is impossible to refute all of the charges here, sufficed to say, that all have been either grossly exaggerated or fabricated.

Even if these were true, would that justify the raw hatred in question? Let’s say that ninety-percent of all Japanese people were criminals, would that justify a person in treating all Japanese individuals as criminals? Of coarse not, that violates the very foundation of individuality and rationality. But like all bigotry, it can not be rationally justified.

In many cases, the pestilent hatred of businessmen probably has more to do with what businessmen represent then the businessmen themselves. Many attacks at businessmen (like in the movie Syriana, or Michael Moore’s documentary Roger and me) seem to be attacking more the ideals of free markets and capitalism, rather then the individual “villains.”

In other cases, the prejudice itself seems to have taken on a life of its own. People are so used to thinking that the businessman benefits when somebody else hurts that it seems like a natural thing for a businessman to be a villain. Statements like, “ The rich are getting richer, the middle class is paying the price”, have been so saturated into American culture that it is viewed as true, regardless of fact.

Envy and resentment are players in this game. A certain portion of the population will always resent what they do not posses, and not just material position, intelligence and work-ethic are a part of this. Some have bad experiences in their early careers and jobs, they feel humiliated by a an overbearing boss, or even the job itself; feeling like this can lead some to hate an entire population or people, to reject everything they thought made them feel that way.

In the end, it does no good to try to understand ignorance or this kind of prejudice; these concepts should be rejected, hands down. The fact that a group of people are exclusively treated this way is ridicules; and in the long run, bad ideas are rejected, and prejudice of this sort thrown away as the product of little minds.

Why Al Gore?

Al Gore is testifying about the effects of man-caused Global Warming this week;in my mind, one huge question stands out: Why is Al Gore testifying at all?

He is not a scientist; he might be knowledgeable, but he has absolutely no qualifications to be talking professionally about climate change. When congress heard testimony about Dolly (the cloned sheep) they brought in the scientist who invented the technology; why now, in what is regarded as “the most important scientific issue in the century” are we hearing testimony from a politician?

Even the part of the scientific community that agrees with man-made global warming does not hold Gore in high regards.

If congress was serious about getting to the truth about climate change, they would not be putting on this show. The testimony presented absolutely no science, no research; just a series of bad logical connections and meaningless rhetoric; and like most bad ideas, it had to take itself as a given.

Typical of politicians, but even more disgusting because they corrupted the scientific proccess to do it.

Health Care for Armed Services

Our friends on capital hill have found a new issue to throw around; and already the political gymnastics have begun, as members of both parties try to use this issue to gain political ground (or at least not lose any).

The truth is, armed services health care has been substandard for years, in fact, it was always substandard; and it certainly hasn’t gotten better under the Bush administration (nor would it, in all probability, under any other).

What is being utterly ignored is the real relevance of this case; the utter failure of government agencies to properly run anything. This issues impact on the health care debate has not, to my knowledge, been brought up in the mainstream media.

One of the major problems of the armed services hospital is simple; when detached from a competitive environment, almost anything will decline in quality. Patient satisfaction didn’t matter to this hospital, they will exist regardless; when private hospitals have to compete, quality naturally increases, a hospital like the one in-this-issue would likely not survive in the real world. It sounds like the apathy had a lot more to do with the conditions in the armed services hospital then funding did.

Saying that; I do believe that government should provide care to the armed services and veterans. Giving people incentives to join the military is a major component to national defense.

I hope or politicians manage to solve this problem in the new future. Maybe they can pay more medical bills from private hospitals; or maybe try to attract better doctors and managers with better salaries and benefits; or perhaps have armed services hospitals compete for better funding and privileges; or simply hold these hospitals more responsible.

Whatever the solution, I hope it is found, and this just doesn’t become anther “hot-issue” that ultimately goes nowhere.

The Enemies of Liberty:

Liberty has many specific enemies, what I am listing below are some of the broad causes for the lose of freedom and liberty. Here are some examples:

Fear- whether it be terrorists or environmental disaster, people always seem willing to trade their freedoms for a feeling of safety.

Freedom also comes with responsibility, and a certain kind of uncertainty, many people simply don’t want this.

Ignorance- Thomas Jefferson said, “whomever wishes to be ignorant and free is wishing for something that never can be”. Freedom takes work, it takes understanding, a society without a proper concept of freedom and liberty can’t hope to hold or achieve it.

Power Luster’s- The various motivations of those who seek power are too numerous for this blog to cover. This covers everybody from the petty tyrant in an elementary school classroom to state dictators; some people, for various reasons, wish to control others. Perhaps they feel they can control their world better if they have control of the people around them, or maybe their compensating for a lack of self, or perhaps they want to feel important, or maybe their just narcissistic; whatever the reasons, we should fight these people wherever we find them, and fight for a government that recognizes none of them.

Irrationality- Not the same as ignorance, an irrational person can also be well educated. Simply stated, irrationality is not adhering to the facts of realty, refusing or unable to recognize logic. Irrational people are far more dangerous then the simply ignorant, because they can often defend their ideas, and make them seem valid. The rise of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union where acts of irrationality, not ignorance.

Why do they get so much attention?

In the wake of yet another Ann Coulter controversy, I have to wonder-why do people like her get so much attention? The answer is simple, entertainment and simplicity. It is more fun to see a Michael Moore or an Ann Coulter on stage then somebody reasonable. This need for ugly and easy entertainment is not confined to the political world, just look at how many are captivated by the Anna Nicole story.

Furthermore, the ideas of people like that never reach any level of completeness or logical clarity, they tend to be slogan-bond, and very simplistic; this is why most of what they talk about is what they dislike, if they were forced to defend their own views, the logical fallacies would become apparent.

This raises the question; are good and reasonable ideas always going to be playing second fiddle to ideas with more shock entertainment value? Will society adopt bad political ideas; doom the media to obsessing about lifeless celebrities; and waste more time on silly “controversies” that ultimately achieve nothing but reviling shallow political animosity? Will society do all that just to fulfill its need for entertainment?