Stop Crying About Welfare

My generation believes pretty strongly in the legalization, or at least decriminalization of drugs, most notably marijuana. And, much to the disappointment of old people across the country, we also tend to vote democrat (the small percentage of us that actually vote). Despite these stereotypes, I have a number of friends in favor of drug-testing welfare recipients, which in humanitarian terms is a "douche move."

Yes, the same people who will favor legalization with logic like "it's your body, do what you want with it," are in favor of revoking those same rights for people who receive welfare. They'll use reasoning like "I get drug tested to earn my money, so should they," and "if they can afford drugs they don't really need welfare," as they sort themselves into the group that has "earned their rights." Nevermind that many welfare recipients also work but do not earn enough to provide for themselves or their family, or that many are unable to work (note: unable not unwilling). Nevermind that these laws were put in place without a shred of evidence or information to justify their necessity and that since then statistics have shown that welfare recipients actually use drugs at a lower rate than the general population and therefore continuing to drug-test them actually costs the state more than it saves. Nevermind that you have an option of where to work if you don't like the policies at any one particular workplace, and people who are unable to work but still need to eat don't have those same options. And of course, nevermind the fact that for the majority of jobs, recreational drug use is as meaningless as gender or ethnicity when it comes to actually getting the job done. 

Oh, I'm sorry. You don't like your tax money going towards providing welfare for people who might be on drugs? Well I don't like mine going towards funding unnecessary wars, or bailing out companies which maliciously screwed the American people out of their homes for a little extra money which they promptly lost, or that religious institutions are exempt from paying taxes despite the fact that they provide next to nothing to the community and are often breeding pits for hate and social unrest. No one likes paying taxes, and no one likes the idea that their taxes are being used for something they don't agree with. What you can do about it is go to some country where you can use your money to hire armed guards around your property so the poor starving people don't come around asking for handouts. What you can't do is decide who gets to eat. You can't chose who "deserves" it while you stuff your face and do whatever drugs you want. And you can't decide to subjugate an entire class of people simply because of your misconceptions about them.

Censorship

I've posted about censorship before, In fact I've written a much more substantial essay on my dislike of censorship. But I sit here tonight to write this much shorter post because, believe it or not, in this age of information and "reason," censorship is still abundant for the worst reasons imaginable.

At the time I'm typing this, it's 1 AM and Zack and Miri Make a Porno is airing on Comedy Central. While not even close to my favorite movie, (or even my favorite Kevin Smith movie) I decided to sit and watch for a few minutes while I make myself a late night snack. In the 3-5 minutes I watched I couldn't help but think "Why even bother airing this?" not because the movie was pretty bad, (it is) but because half the dialogue is censored, and entire shots are edited or removed. Of course, I wasn't surprised by this, just disturbed by the amount that censorship has integrated itself into our media.

The entire idea behind censorship stems from the idea that the edited content may be inappropriate for some viewers, an idea that's usually conveyed in the form of some shrill bitch yelling something along the lines of "think of the children!" But at 1 AM on a Sunday night (Monday morning?) any children watching Comedy Central should be removed from the care of their parents. Anyone else who might have managed to stumble across this content only to be offended at such crass concepts as cursing and sex can simply change the channel, or better yet, remove themselves entirely from society so they need not be offended ever again.

The disgusting thing about censorship is that it's a sanctioned form of selfishness. It's selfish to think that the rest of the world shares the same values that you do, and that they should therefore be restricted to only those values. It's selfish to think that just because you don't want to hear something, no one should be able to hear it. And having a consensus on what should and should not be censored doesn't make it any better. It's essentially the same as our country deciding that heavy metal music is a bad element in our society and then banning it entirely because some parents are too uninvolved in their children's lives to keep them from listening to it. Another analogy would be the plot from Footloose.

It's a shame that such a large section of our population doesn't understand this concept simply because they agree with what's being censored. You can show hookers who have been dead for years being dissected on the examination table in a primetime law enforcement drama, but God forbid those same viewers have to see breasts, ass, or listen to a swear word. Maybe when the FCC finally realizes that everything is offensive to someone, all those people will understand what assholes they've been for so many years. Until then, let your kids watch all the CSI and NCIS they can get, seeing dead bodies and violence depicted all over the place never messed a kid up, right? The rest of us will be enjoying internet pornography, because they don't give a shit if it offends someone.