Tag Archives: bullshit

The “Love It or Leave It” Mentality

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It’s found on t-shirts, bumper stickers, and billboards across The U.S. You’ll see it alongside flags and images of shrieking bald eagles. Love It or Leave It. It is a rally cry for many who are fed up with a nation of complainers and critics whose words speak louder than their inert actions. It has become an embraced ideology for many who love what the United States of America means to them and their family. Unfortunately, it is a myopic steamroller that quashes any hope for equality, reform, and open debate.

I am going to do my best to avoid stereotyping the users of the phrase or falling prey to logical fallacies that attack the speaker instead of the message. My qualm is with the phrase itself, what it inherently means, and the damage it can cause. I don’t believe people who say "Love it or leave it" are any less intelligent or malevolent than any other random group adhering to an ideology. I do believe their intentions are good and they want America to be a great place. My argument is that most of them have not deconstructed the message they are sending and analyzed its potential repercussions. To many "Love it or leave it" may be synonymous with "Don’t shit where you eat" or "If it aint broke, don’t fix it" or "Blood is thicker than water" or simply "Stop your bitching." Yet, it is not synonymous with those phrases. When it is broken down, what "Love it or leave it" truly means is "Don’t question authority and don’t criticize that which is sacred." These are the same tenets many monotheistic religions espouse—do not question that which is sacrosanct. These are not the tenets of Democracy.

"Love it or leave it" implies that to love something, one must accept all of its faults without judgement. This, in itself, is not necessarily bad advice, although it often is. There are ample examples throughout history where a similar ideology to "Love it or leave it" has been used with disastrous results. The sexual abuse of young boys by Catholic priests continued for innumerable years because the Church was unwilling to look at itself critically. Love it or leave it. Children have been violently abused by parents because a spouse was unwilling to accept his/her family unit was flawed. Love it or leave it. 

Let’s imagine a world where everyone abided by the concept of "Love it or leave it." We would have no labor unions, no women voters, no attempts at equality among races, no minimum wage, and no United States of America. If the founding fathers had embraced "Love it or leave it," there would have been no American Revolution. We would still be under British Rule. In actuality, we would probably all be members of a Mesopotamian (or even older) society because no one would have taken a stand to create new and different societies. A world that lives by "Love it or leave it" is a world without dissent, it is a world of lemmings blindly following each other over a cliff to their untimely demises.

Democracy is the antithesis of "Love it or leave it." Its goal is to include the views and needs of all citizens in hopes of making life better for all of them. The first step in improving something is to look at it critically, to unearth its faults. The second step is to review those critiques and enact change. I think the prevalence of the "Love It or Leave It" mentality is because most of us are too eager to take part in step one, but too complacent to take the second step. We all get sick of listening to someone complain about something who never tries to improve his/her condition. I think what the "Love it or leave it" proponents really want to say is "Stop bitching and try to fix it already" and that’s what I wish they’d start saying instead.

The Cobalt Returns

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My fiery-red auto-machine is back in my possession. She looks brand new—cleaner and shinier than she has been in a long time. Two weeks ago, I was involved in a relatively tame auto accident. A woman was crossing two lanes of traffic to try to get into my empty lane (empty other than me). I hit my brakes, but it was impossible to avoid an accident as I was a car length or less away when she entered my lane. She scraped across my entire driver’s side and pressed my car against the curb scraping my hubcaps down into tiny smooth saucers. No one was injured and thus the police refused to show up to file a report (to serve and protect? That’s still the slogan, right? Shall we change it to Ticket and Harass?). Everything seemed in order until I learned from her insurance that she was lying to them—claiming I pulled into her lane, hit her, and then ran myself into the curb. There were many witnesses to the accident, but no one stopped. Thus, the only available witness is Erika, my passenger, a non-biased party. Since then, I have taken numerous photos of the skid-marks, attempted to find witnesses at the nearby school, drawn a map for my insurance, and plead my case based on the photographic evidence of the car. I am awaiting the insurance’s decision of whether to go to arbitration. If they do not, my adjuster will have to endure a long rant from me and the bitch that caused all of this will see me in small claim’s court. On the upside, my car is back on the road.

Advice from future me to past me: When in an accident, always tell the police you are injured. When they arrive at the scene, tell them you are feeling better, “it must have been from the shock. Will you write a report now, please?””

U-Stall—-so very clever-hahahaha—–death come soon to me

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It’s been a week of parties, puppet shows, and more. Brooks has begun his move to the Hollywood Hills. We loaded up a U-Haul with some of his stuff today. Big surprise it wouldn’t start. We finally got it going after an hour and his stuff is now in its new home. The funny (read shitty) thing is last year when we were all moving to Burbank, the U-Haul broke down on us in the middle of Hollywood and it took 3 hours for them to get us back in action. I sincerely do not plan to use U-Haul anymore. They are crap. Jennifer and I are moving to a sweet pad in Glendale at the end of the month. I’m thinking Ryder, Budget, or someone else is the way to go.  

The 100th Mr Fourchinnigan comic-strip is coming very soon. Keep the lids peeled.