Yeah, about halfway through the intro, I figured we were in for it. I have no doubt that many of our overseas friends had a good eye-roll that the Americans (minus Canada) were going to waste another half hour of their time with a fruitless bit of solipsism; I felt more than a tiny bit cheated (as our aforementioned friends might have done) that there was NOTHING that felt fictional about this, let alone science-fictional. It was too real, in that I hear people around me mouth this kind of manure (and many other facets that weren't touched on) all the time.
Ironically, I did hear a lot of common myths expressed that tend to piss me off:
*liberals = non-Christian Bible haters
*"gay" = non-Christian Bible hater
*"we Christians are all one family"
*Separate but Equal is fine, just fine
*"you know how those minority women are... they're all alike..."
For all those who reacted by calling this story "biased", you're wrong; this story was trying so hard to show how NOT biased it was (like the narrator) that all it managed to accomplish was lay out a small percentage of the array of biases that exist in our country. But it didn't pretend to resolve anything, except to show that the narrator has now decided that if Brad can defy convention and marry "one of those minority women", then so can he! How nice... a new "rebellion" trend.
As Sylvan said:
Rather, the story is about stereotypes and showing how these massive, monolithic structures are not worth investing our time into as much as the more direct, complex, every-day lives of the people living within those structures.
That's what it comes down to; and in the context of our current elections, we're about to see what happens when the everyday products of this culture full of stereotypes, with all of our complex backgrounds, biases and prejudices, are given a giant symbolic choice between massive, monolithic structures.
I was glad to hear from Mr. Tweedy again; I felt like I was too snarky in our last exchange, and worried I was unfair to him. That said, I had to disagree with him slightly:
Mr. Tweedy:
I was, however, impressed with the author's willingness to criticize both the ultra-left and the ultra-right and show the intolerance and dogmatism inherent in both sides.
I don't think the author criticized anyone successfully. All of the biases and preconceived notions were laid out, and attitudes from across the spectrum were selected to provoke the widest possible number of people in the audience, regardless of which character was spouting the reader's own views. They did high-light some of the inconsistencies of each position, but criticism of the so-called "left" and "right" were left in the eye of the reader.
Listener captured something I have trouble expressing in an objective way:
...there's a lot going around about Christian persecution, where other religions are being given what is considered preferential treatment by the quashing of "traditional" observances of Christian holidays/culture ("merry christmas/happy holidays" is the most visible in this battle). The types of Christians who grow into Mrs Garrison and Mrs McMasters are the types who would rail against the Christian-"bashing" they see growing in American society.
...Perhaps the reason liberals aren't portrayed as oppressive in the larger world of the media is that the folks who make TV shows are, for the most part, liberals themselves.
Or perhaps it's because liberals (note the small "l"), by definition, don't actually set out to persecute or oppress people. Every time someone tells an oppressor to stop oppressing someone else in this world, the oppressor turns around and says (in a high-pitched, Monty Python, faux-woman voice) "you claim to be against oppression, and yet you oppress me by taking away a basic piece of my personality and culture (namely, getting off on oppressing other people)". The Serbs have successfully used this argument for decades, and christian groups throughout history have done the same thing; look at how the Puritans, who came to the New World ostensibly to escape religious persecution, treated everyone around them. (And compare them to another christian group, the Quakers.)
I've grown very, very weary of the "reverse discrimination" argument - and this is one facet of that. (And please note that I did NOT say that "the other side" by definition DOES set out to try to oppress people. I don't think there is an "other side" in this case; just individuals who don't have a spelled-out philosophy of their own and want to define themselves by those they oppose.)
It kind of speaks to what DigitalVG said:
I'm so sick of hearing this biased whine. The same people who are so quick to scream, "Think of the children!" when they see anything they disagree with will just as quickly forget children are people at all when it comes to their God Given right to treat that tiny wide-eyed and beautiful creature as property. It must be so easy to ignore that if you didn't face abuse for the Glory of God as a child.
I felt that DigitalVG's comment in toto sounded like something I could have said, except for two things: technically, I am not a lesbian. And I disagreed with this statement:
This one isn't making people think. It does nothing, goes nowhere, is not interestingly written, and gives only a single very biased point of view. If anything, it's written to make you not think but to make you think that you are.
Oh, I'm thinking, and I covered the "biased point of view" bit further back; but that's not the angle I am disagreeing with. This was written to make you
feel, not to think. It was meant to provoke this kind of discussion, and ruffle feathers. Some people confuse that with thinking, which explains the success of so very many bathos spewing psuedo-thinkers in the talk radio realm. Hmm... maybe I'm not disagreeing after all.
