So,
in a world where
people have
real problems that
aren't being publically criticized for having a somewhat unpopular opinion regarding the familial structures of marginalized people because of something you think your religion might be about,
some kind of people thought this would be an excellent reason to raise money for the people with the somewhat unpopular opinion who were maybe criticized about it for a little while. And O! How the many responded. It's like a lottery for lunkheads.
Homeless, hungry, cancerous? Fuck them. There's a couple of Real Christians (TM) getting mildly criticized and possibly picketed by liberals. Who could lose like, some kind of business. Hundreds of dollars, probably. We don't even know. So let's make them millionaires.
I feel like these contributors don't even care if the Memories folks make good pizza.
3 comments:
Bigotry and tribal hatred are not only one of the defining principles of America's particularly virulent strain of nationalism, they are also often quite profitable...
Hi Vixen, I hope you had a happy Easter.
The last time I looked, the fund was up to 8 or 9 hundred thousand.
I hope you will forgive me for pointing out that it is a bit presumptuous to assume that people disposed to be generous would not also be generous in other venues. Especially if we suspect that many of the contributors are Christians, as churches are some of the most prodigious distributors of funds and services to the needy. I suspect a lot of the contributors regularly give money to good causes.
My view is that people were responding to a small, out-of-the-way group of good-natured people in a decent business suddenly attacked by a large force of bullies. And frankly, people become weary of bullies.
I live in a town about the size of the one Memories Pizza is in. I can promise you most of the people in this town, like mine, scarcely have a clue about the dynamics of big social forces clashing in the wider world. Most of them probably do not keep up with the news, and current events rarely encroach upon their daily lives. I tried to engage one guy on some political matters once, and he said to me, “I live so far out in the country, it don't even matter.” He rarely saw other people, let alone some tentacle from a big social movement.
Today people who have real lives don't spend a lot of time dipping into the issues of concern in the post-modern culture. If you are running a business, raising children, being active in your church, you might catch a little news on the radio, and then probably turn it back to CW.
So what do I think of all this?
I think we have a confluence of a lot of social-political movements all bumping heads and creating cognitive dissonance. You have the whole Hands Up Don't Shoot movement, the basis of which has been discredited by a black Attorney General under the authority of a black president. You have the whole gay rights movement pushily trying to gain more traction, often in places where people scarcely know what a gay person is. You have the feminist movement dealing with such important issues as whether one should clap or use jazz hands to express support. Or whether the government should supply birth control when birth control is cheap and available everywhere. And on and on it goes.
What I have noticed is that these movements are all screaming at us. Even Fox News. Everyone wants the attention of the beleaguered, over-taxed American people who are trying to manage a life in a world where the rules are bounced around like ping-ping balls. Everyone is screaming hot air at the American people who can't do anything about any of it. These movements all want the American people somehow to rise to a challenge as we did in World War II and accept this challenge as the guiding principle of their lives. And then these movements start bullying these ordinary people by getting in their faces, screaming, shutting down their businesses, etc.
Frankly, this is what people outside of the movements see, and thes movements are beginning to make more enemies than friends. The backlash is predictable and inevitable. My black friends who are devout Christians express great anger that the gay movement is trying to piggyback on the civil rights movement. Most of these black Christians don't even believe there is a legitimate basis for gay to be married.
In short, my view is that if these movements wanted to scream at politicians, that would be legitimate. But simply bullying various selected members of the American public who are powerless to change factors in their own lives, let alone a half dozen competing social movements all of whom think their movement alone should be getting oxygen, are simply turning neutral parties against them, and in doing this the left is beginning to be seen as a mean, bullying, unreasonable force rather than a passionate champion of rights as they once were seen. I think you've seen some evidence of this in the large amount of money spontaneously and unsolicited pouring into the coffers of Memories Pizza.
It's important to remember that this wasn't a spontaneous, unsolicited outpouring of generosity, but a calculated funding campaign orchestrated by Glenn Beck's "Blaze" media organization.
This is a two-fer, not only does it seem to be a show of force on the part of the talibangelicals, it also pushes the "you too may become a millionaire, so support low taxes for the rich" narrative.
Being a cynic, I wonder how much of the cash the "Blaze" organizers are going to pocket.
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