Ponies Should Pony Pony

I am a brony.

I've taken a lot of shit for that. Probably will for a long time. I don't care. I love this show. And I never know how to explain that to people. Problem is, the only way to understand it is to watch it, and who's secure enough these days to watch a show about cartoon ponies?

The answer is very few people, which is a shame because My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic may be one of the best shows on television.

You read that right. Before I go further, I'll admit to a few things. Many of the hardcore fans are weirdos and, having been to Bronycon more than once, a lot of them are autistic (nothing wrong with that, but it is what it is). But a lot of fans are also normal, socially well-adjusted mid-twenties males, which isn't surprising. You kind of have to be well-adjusted to admit you watch a show about cartoon ponies when you get right down to it, because you have to be comfortable enough with yourself to not give a damn about what other people think and comfortable enough with yourself to realize people will still like you even when you watch a show like this. It's not surprising so many bronies are male. Neo-masculinity (and probably femininity as well) is all about being comfortable in your own skin and not giving a damn if someone else wants to put you down for it.

Understanding the culture of MLP is important, because it plays directly into why the show itself is so damn good. The culture and the show itself are intertwined in a way that is distinctly and uniquely early 2000s. For the uninitiated, MLP draws from and integrates original content from its own vast fan base to such an extent that an entire episode is devoted to making canon most major fan theories and thanking the fandom. Name me another show like that. Just one. MLP may be about cartoon ponies, but is also the first show to heavily invest in its fans and crowdsource ideas for episodes in a seamless manner, and what is this millennium about if not integration and communication? The Internet, where most MLP media takes shape, is THE technology of the early 21st century, and MLP is the first, and so far only, show to understand that and allow it to shape the direction of its series.

It's a simple concept, but an important one. Most shows attempt to invest the watcher, but what greater investment is there than integrating fan-generated art and narrative into the show itself? MLP: FiM is not just a show; it is a living organism, and a symbiotic one. The show creates content; the fans create content based on that content; the writers incorporate it; the show evolves in a way no other show on television does. It is unique. It is a phenomenon. It is unmatched in most media even 15 years into the millennium. MLP is the present and future.

But people are afraid to like it, because ponies. And that's fucking stupid.

What you have to understand about MLP is that it's not just a show; it's a culture. There is a slang and a mematic form of communication built around it in a way no other show has matched. Sure, you can quote other shows. You can reference them. But there's not a culture built around them in the same way. You're familiar with the premise of other shows, maybe even the episodes. There are (many) novels about, say Star Trek: TNG (another show I love, and as a sidenote, features an actor who does major voice work for and loves MLP: John DeLancie), but are those novels an integral and official part of the canon? No. In MLP, they absolutely are. The show and the fan base are inseparable.

Again, name me another show like that. Just one.

This is the main draw of MLP: FiM, but it is by no means the only one. A show for little girls? Watch this clip:

Yeah. I'm sure tons of little girls get that monologue. It's socially acceptable to watch Spongebob and Adventure Time (and should be, because they're great shows), so get it through your head that this show is on that level. Just because there are pink and purple ponies in it doesn't detract from that fact.

And what if little girls watch this show too? The lessons, about loyalty, friendship, culture, individuality and community balance? What's the harm there? And why can't adults learn that shit too? What's to disagree with in MLP exactly? That friends and relationships are good and important? That people matter? That striving to grow as a person is good? God forbid anyone watch a show with those messages. In a cynical world, MLP is about being happy and loving the people around you. Who in the the hell is such a total asshole that they want to trash that?

Watching an episode of MLP takes 20 minutes. If you're embarrassed, fucking watch it in your own home. No one will know. It's been my experience -and I've found this to be universal in the community- that once you watch one, you watch another. Then another. Then another. Then you're a brony. And you know what? That's ok. That's great. Because this is a good show and there's no other show like it on TV. Yes the main characters are ponies.

So fucking what?

The Stars and Barred

This flag is a hate symbol. It doesn't matter if you argue that it's derived from a Hindu symbol, or that the events of the Holocaust were 70 years ago. This flag stands for something dark, evil, and brutal. Germans, largely, don't claim that it's a part of their heritage. They don't put it on their cars. They don't fly it above their capitols. They are ashamed of that part of their past, as they should be, and swastikas in Germany are generally considered distasteful.

Today is a big day and a day I never thought I'd see. Two of the biggest retailers in America are refusing to sell items which probably make them a large amount of money because they are symbols of hate. That's what the Confederate flag is.

I'm going to get this out of the way now: I'm calling the above flag the Confederate flag. I know it's not the national flag of the Confederate States of America. Everyone who knows me knows that I know that. I'm calling it that anyway for simplicity. Please don't try to engage me in debate about it.

There's something we also need to get out of the way right now: the Confederacy was wrong. It just was. Please don't try to tell me that its members were fighting for state's rights, or resisting some kind of Northern aggression. Do not try to tell me the war was about tariffs or federal power or a way of life or Southern Pride. The Confederacy existed primarily to propagate and expand American slavery. If you disagree with that, that is your right, but you are objectively wrong. This is not just my opinion. I have made it a significant part of my life to study slavery. I know more about it than  the majority of people in this country do or ever will. I know what I'm talking about. I have two degrees to prove it. The CSA was founded on slavery. It just was.

Here's something else that needs to be said: slavery was bad. There are still some people who will attempt to downplay or even argue against that. Again, they are objectivity wrong. Slavery was cruel and brutal in most cases. Slaves did not like being enslaved, nor were they better off under slavery than being free either in America or their home nations in Africa. Even a lucky slave who might have had a kind master (and this was not the norm) was still a slave. Slavery is, in essence, the stealing of another's life, and it is wrong. And slaveholders were wrong.

These are the facts. If you disagree, you shouldn't even be reading this, because you either need to go educate yourself on this or are simply stubbornly dedicated to being wrong.

All of that is why this is a big day for America.

As a country, we've hadn't really reached the point where major retailers would be willing to stop selling Confederate paraphernalia before today, because it's just so darn profitable. It's profitable because there is still a very large segment of the country, by no means limited to the South, that thinks the Confederate flag stands for anything other than slavery and racism. Some people have claimed that it's "become" a symbol of the South, rather than a symbol of slavery, but that's not a great argument, because what you're basically doing is defining the South by the rebellion it waged so it could keep oppressing blacks. That's not so great if you're trying to claim that your region of the country is awesome and that you should be proud of it. That's why Germans don't proudly fly the Nazi flag as a symbol of Germany and German heritage - they don't exactly want Germany to be defined by the Holocaust, nor should they.

Some people claim that the Confederate flag stands for states' rights, small government, or independence. That doesn't really work either, though, because, as I've noted, the Confederacy wasn't really fighting for those things. It was fighting for one right in particular, which was the right to own other people, and taking away someone else's rights isn't really a right, much less something you should be literally willing to die for.

When you get right down to it, the Confederate flag is just a really shameful reminder that half of our country entered a life and death struggle to oppress black people.

I'm not saying the Confederate flag should be ignored. I'm not saying it should be swept under the rug. We need to talk about it. We need to acknowledge that it exists. We need to accept that America's greatest shame was slavery and work through everything that means for us today as a country.

What I am saying is that no one should be proudly waving the Stars and Bars.

I'm all for free speech and I would never support a law to ban the Confederate Flag. But just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. If you are going around displaying the Confederate flag as a symbol of pride you either do not know what it symbolizes or you do and you don't care.

There's something else too, that many Americans aren't considering. There's a lot of talk about what that flag means to Southerners, and what its absence would mean to them, but in that context, "Southerners" implicitly means "white Southerners." That flag already gives me the creeps. I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like if I was descended from slaves. Hell, even if I wasn't, the use of that flag by racists throughout American history might make me feel really really uncomfortable upon seeing it if I was a black American, whether my ancestors were slaves or not.

I say "might" because I don't want to fall into the trap of thinking that all blacks (or whites, Asians, Hispanics etc.) must have the same opinion on literally anything. Still, one has to imagine that arguments that claim that that flag is ok can't be shared by a rather large proportion of Southerners, black or white.

And that's a good thing.

No one should be comfortable waving the Confederate flag around outside of a historical context, much like no one should be comfortable using the word nigger outside of a historical context. It's just not ok. And finally, after hundreds of years, we, as a country, are getting around to admitting that.

Symbols may be what people make them, but in some cases, they've represented something so horrific that it becomes impossible to use them without invoking that thing. The Confederate flag was carried by men who were fighting to preserve the very worst America ever had to offer, for an institution that brutalized men and women, tore their families apart, tortured them mentally and physically, and killed them by the thousands. That these men and women were able to survive, let alone thrive, under such a system, that they were able to resist in any way and make lives for themselves is not only impressive, it is heroic. Those are the men and women we should be respecting and looking to as examples of American heroes, not those who carried the Stars and Bars and certainly not those who founded the country it represented.

The Confederate flag is a symbol of a dark past whose legacy we have not yet come to terms with fully. We have not yet reached total equality, and it may be hundreds of years yet until we do, if we do. That is the legacy of the Stars and Bars. That is the direct result of the efforts of those who carried it. We can't fix that overnight, but we can help to try to fix it by refusing to carry that flag ourselves.

Historical Values

They say opinions can't be wrong. Too bad that opinion is wrong.

Society, or at least our society, focuses heavily on specialization. I chose to specialize in a few things, and one of them was history. I spent six years studying slavery and race in America, and after those six years, I'm here to tell you something: slavery was bad.

You'd think I wouldn't need to specify that, but I do, actually, because I was reminded tonight that some people are still on the fence about that.

Let me lay this on the line: the Confederacy was bad.

Yep. If you disagree, that's your opinion. Your wrong opinion.

See, the thing about history is that it's a legitimate field of study. I know, I know. You know exactly where General Dickface McGee of the 27th South Carolina was on April 28, 1864. You like to dress up in gray and fire a repro Enfield. You watch Modern Marvels. You're "a bit of a history buff." Guess what? I don't care, because that's not as important as why General McGee was there and what he was fighting for (and if you think it was "state's rights," I'd like to exercise my state's right to allow its citizens to call you a moron). If you can't articulate correctly why McGee was fighting, you aren't a historian, no matter how bad you want to be.

Why do I bring this up? Because there are people, a lot of people, who think they can have an opinion on this stuff without having to take the effort to study it. And that's not great.

Thing is, as a country, we're very hands off about STEM. We don't like to question that stuff. Math is math, science is science, and only the very few, and the very crazy, pretend that global warming isn't a thing or that evolution is bullshit. We rightly point out that experts have studied that stuff and come to a certain consensus and we bow to that consensus because we trust those who have put in the work to come to it.

So why do we not do the same for history?

Why can Joe Blow say the Confederacy was fighting for a glorious cause and have so many people believe it? Why can Pickup McDualie say that the founders had no flaws and should be worshiped and have everyone call him a patriot? Why are those ludicrous opinions any better than the opinion that evolution is bullshit because monkeys still exist?

Wrong is wrong.

If you want to understand the importance of history, consider how long you'd make it in life without a memory and then consider that our country's memory is our history. You should really really listen to the people whose historical memory is more studied than yours.

So yeah, my historical "opinion" is actually more valid than yours. Too bad for you.

Dick thing to say? Probably. But most of the country loves it when Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Bill Nye slam anti-vaxers or creationists. The analogue to those people in my field is neoconfederates, Nazi apologists, great-men theorists. They're arguing against overwhelming evidence, and you need not listen to them. Ever.

A pretty chill dude once said that a house divided against itself cannot stand. (I think he was quoting the Bible or whatever; I'm not a facts guy; I'm a theory guy.) Our country is divided, in a sense, in that we allow opponents of the consensuses of STEM to be ridiculed, but we respect, as opinion, those who disagree with the consensuses of the humanities. And that's a shame.

A country with a large number of people who believe that the Confederacy had no racial motives may, for example, call blacks thugs when they riot against an unjust police system which has its roots in that Confederacy. A country that doesn't recall that its founders had flaws may be unwilling to question its own rectitude. Bad history causes problems. Good history is important; ergo, the opinions of historians are also important. Respect and defer to them.

This is a great country. You can believe that without believing that it's perfect or always was perfect. We are, like everything, flawed. Historians are generally of that opinion, and it is the right opinion.

But what do I know? I just spent six years buried in documents you don't know exist. I spent six years studying concepts most people aren't aware have been posited. I'm just a historian, not God, guns, and the American way.*

What do I know?





*To be fair, guns are pretty awesome.

Black and White Issues

I can't believe I have to write this post again.

No, you know what? I can. I can believe it because I see racism all the time, most often from people who don't know any better. Sometimes it's well meaning. Sometimes it's ignorant. But it exists, and the more you study it the more you notice it in places you didn't before. It's everywhere, but usually it's quiet and subtle.

And then there are the times everyone can see it and what's been boiling under the surface of American society literally since the day it was founded comes the surface. And it's ugly. And people don't like it.

I'm seeing a lot of social media in reaction to what's happening right now in Baltimore, most of it from middle class white kids who have never been given more than a speeding ticket, and certainly don't wonder if they're going to die every time a police officer talks to them. Violence, they say, isn't the answer.

What is the answer?

Violence may not be the answer, but it's an answer, and it's an answer to a problem most middle-class white Americans will never think about. Kids gun each other down every day in Baltimore, and no one says anything. The crime rates and poverty rates are disproportionately high in the black community, and no one asks why - until someone burns down a pharmacy. And then people talk about it. Not positively, but they talk.

Violence isn't effective? Seems like it might be if the only time you ever consider what life might be like in inner-city Baltimore is when part of it is destroyed.

Maybe the answer would have been to tell the cops who let Grey die in the back of a van that violence isn't the answer. The people I talk to ask me that I give the police the benefit of the doubt. They say that we don't have all the answers. They say that we weren't on the scene and don't know what it was like. They don't extend the same courtesy to the citizens of Baltimore.

Do I agree with the destruction of private property in Baltimore? No. Do I get it? Yeah, I do. The argument I see the most on Facebook is that the black citizens of Baltimore should be following the law and acting peacefully. That's because the law, to many middle class whites, means not running a stop sign or refraining from shoplifting, whereas in some places in this country the law is a protection racket for the people that murder kids. The law let Freddie Grey die. If the law is under no obligation to act peacefully, why should its victims be?

In all these self-righteous posts about doing the proper and legal thing, I see the uncomfortable shadow of paternalism. "Those people are destroying their own neighborhood; they won't accomplish anything that way." In these statements lie the sinister implication that whites, particularly middle class whites, know how to run a country best and are more capable of accomplishing political objectives, whereas poor blacks don't and aren't. Most often these arguments are accompanied by Martin Luther King quotes, because, to a lot of people in this country with a high school education in race, MLK must be the spokesperson for all black people. Let's not talk about Nat Turner. Let's not mention Denmark Vasey or Gabriel. And don't even think about Malcolm X.

Incidentally, here's a quote from Reverend King: "It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard."

Now why am I not seeing that one in circulation?

Here's a little something I picked up in my six years studying race in this country: black history is horrifically violent, and most of the time, that violence was white on black. A lot of black violence was in response to white violence that was institutional, systematic, and widespread. Accounts of personal brutality against blacks would nauseate your average middle class mallgoer. Watch a video of a lynching sometime. Martin Luther King and peaceful marches are not black history. They are a part of black history. A very very small, if admittedly important, part.

None of this is to say that burning down a CVS is right, because it's not. However, it is to say that there is more going on here than people see or want to see. This is not about Freddie Grey. This is about the long history of police brutality, particularly against poor blacks, that exists in the country, and the refusal to acknowledge it or to hold the police accountable. Context is important.

I don't like Obama. I hate Obama. I think Obama is a horrible human being with a sinister agenda. I think he's petulant, egotistic, and hides behind his popularity like a shield while he plots to do whatever it takes to protect his legacy - and nothing else. But tonight, for the first time, he said something I agree with: "If our society really wanted to solve the problem, we could; it's just that it would require everybody saying, 'this is important; this is significant.' And, that we don't just pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns, and we don't just pay attention when a young man gets shot or has his spine snapped, but we're paying attention all the time because we consider those kids our kids."

I hate Obama. But it takes genuine guts for an American president to say those things. And they're true.

If you don't want to see riots, hold your government and your law enforcement accountable. Don't pretend the problem doesn't exist until a group of people who deal with it every day make you see it in the only way left to them. It's not hard. It doesn't take thinking about it every day day in and day out - it only takes being aware of it. It takes thinking about it for five seconds before you post that pious little status about how you think people whose experiences are nothing like your should act. That's all.

If all we ever do when someone dies at the hands of those who are sworn to uphold the law in this country is blame the reaction to it, the riots won't stop. Riots, as King said, are "the language of the unheard." Perhaps when we learn to listen, that language will no longer be needed.

Survivors

Lately I've been playing a lot of Left 4 Dead. It's a pretty good game, like everything Valve puts out. For those who aren't particularly serious gamers, Left 4 Dead is a zombie survival co-op put out by Valve, arguably the best software company on the planet. I could write an entire post of what makes this game so great: its simplicity, its emphasis on cooperation while retaining the individuality of its protagonists, its endless replayability. However, I'd like to focus more on its storyline which, in classic Valve fashion, is deep, but told largely through the player's experience, rather than explicitly through narrative. (Again, I could write an entire post on why this is a far better method of storytelling, but that's for another day.) Left 4 Dead focuses on the story of four survivors of the zombie apocalypse, who, although carriers, are immune from the virus destroying the world around them.

Surprise politics! I'm using the game's narrative as an analog for the way I feel in a world where Hillary Clinton evokes hope from anyone. See, my favorite character in Left 4 Dead (L4D) is Louis, an IT guy who spends his lunch breaks on the shooting range. (Gee, I wonder why I'm drawn to this character.) The reason I like Louis, besides his background, is that he's always positive even though his world is shit. There's speculation out there that he's this positive exactly because his world is shit and he's trying to help himself cope.

That's how I feel in a world where anyone would vote for Hillary Clinton. Or anyone else.

I come off as one negative motherfucker, but that's only because I think my sarcastic and cynical snipes are funny. In reality, I'm a very positive person and I think good always wins out. But I also think that's despite the fact that the vast majority of Americans are idiots. Sometimes I feel like Louis: a survivor immune to the virus of democracy who nevertheless retains a positive outlook for the future of this country.

But before I can go into why I'm an optimist despite myself, let's look at why democracy is a cancerous, shitty virus. The way democracy works, if you haven't heard, is that the majority gets to decide what to do. Nice, right? Except, as we've established, the majority can do some pretty dumb stuff. Keep in mind that America has always been a republic or democracy of some kind (pick your favorite, because historically you can argue either). And keep in mind that this republican democracy is essentially founded on racism, slavery, and a touch of genocide because it was kind of ok with the majority. Have things gotten better? Sure. But we still have problems - major problems - and we voted the people who caused them into office.

Democracy is the reason I don't vote. I play Left 4 Dead because I know the game is winnable. Democracy isn't. Vote for the Democrats and I lose my guns, my money, and my liberties. Vote for the Republicans and I vote for endless war, plus I could never look my gay friends in the face ever again without feeling guilty. It's a game you can't win, and I don't like losing, so I don't play. And yet, because I choose not to play, I'm subject to the verbal attacks of a million zombies claiming that if I don't vote I can't complain about oppression, and what's more, should do the honorable thing and deport myself.

Speaking of zombies, let's get back to Hillary Clinton. I never thought I would see the day where people would be happy that openly ambitious, smug, horrible human being would get to partially control anything in their lives.

Let's clear this up right now before we proceed further: voting for Hillary because she's a woman is as sexist as voting for Obama because he's black is racist. Period, end of story.

Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about the 2016 election, because apparently it's time. What in hell makes you think this will be any different? We voted for Bush and we got an endless horror of a war. We voted for Obama and we got more of the same, plus massive executive overreach, domestic spying, and drone strikes on innocent civilians. There's your hope and change. And now someone comes along and promises you the moon again and you believe her? Why?

Really. Give me one good reason why you think it'll turn out different this time.

The zombies in L4D are stupid. You know what you can do to them? You can throw a bomb with a flashing light on it towards them and they'll run towards it until it explodes and they die. You can put fire between you and them to kill them because they'll just keep running at you even though they'll burn to death. You can throw a substance that attracts them to you and gun them down while they crown around it. And they never learn. They're more American than George Washington eating an apple pie while riding a bald eagle.

They're also dangerous, because as stupid as they are, there are a lot of them.

That's why I feel like a survivor.

But here's the nice thing: survivors always win. The zombies don't actually matter in Left 4 Dead because they're mindless, interchangeable NPCs. The mindless NPCs around me who want to vote my rights away because they think it'll be better this time around can't actually hurt me. I'm immune. I don't buy in, I don't vote, I don't play their game. I can be oppressed. I can't be made to do it to myself. The only power politicians like Hillary have is the power to make you believe in them.

Don't.

Logic

I'm glad Leonard Nimoy died today.

Oh don't get me wrong. I'm a huge Star Trek fan. I've seen every single episode of every single show. It took me two months of my life. Not two months as in it took me from January to March. I mean if you wanted to watch all the iterations of Star Trek straight through with no sleep, no food, no interruptions of any kind, it would take you two months. That's how many there are. That's how much I've watched. So when I say I'm glad Leonard Nimoy died today, I don't mean I'm glad he died. I'm just glad he died today.

The character Nimoy played is my personal favorite from the Original Series, and probably a lot of people's favorite. I like Spock because he's logical. Nimoy dying on this particular day did logic a great service: it got people to focus on something other than arguing about what color something objectively was.

If some future historian is reading this, let me explain: my countrymen, my people, my civilization were so astoundingly, so amazingly, so unbelievably stupid that, as a collective, they spent the better part of February 27, 2015 arguing about what color a dress was. Yes. They did. I'm sorry. I hate them too. Please don't give up on history just because of this fact.

Let's leave the future historian for a bit. Presumably, he needs some time to claw his eyes and/or Internet-brain interface out of his skull anyway. Now I'm talking to you, present reader. What in holy hell were you thinking? Let's recap what's going on in this particular time period. We have a religious-political extremist group taking over a large portion of the world where, not incidentally, we get a large portion of our most widely used energy source. Net neutrality was just passed, and people still aren't sure what that even means, both literally and for the future. We're in the middle of a decade plus long war that won't end and the leader of our country is ok with drones not only killing people abroad but also with spying on us at home. And you spent your day arguing over what color a dress was?

Fucking really?

Let's get one thing straight: that dress can only be the color it is. That's how light works. Case closed. Let's get something else straight, and I want to be very very clear here: WHO THE FUCK CARES?

Seriously. Who cares? Who. Fucking. Cares?

You know what your problem is? Your problem is that you're willing to argue about what color a fucking dress is because you're too afraid to discuss real problems. You think it's boring or rude to talk about the fact that a sitting president is an accessory to murder but you think it's ok to make a hashtag about a fucking dress?

Oh, right, sorry, future historian. Hashtags are, like, these things people used to use to denote interest in something on the Internet. They usually went away after a week because people from 2015 can't focus on anything even slightly important for more then a week and - oh he's tearing out the brain thing again... Ok...

Back to the present, then. I said Leonard Nimoy's death was a timely victory for logic, and here's why: it got people to quit arguing about something with only one objective outcome. Something is either a certain color or it's not. The same people who are unwilling to argue about something that actually can be argued, like the war, the economy, or net neutrality, are totally ok with arguing about something that literally cannot be argued against. That's fucking stupid. I don't care if it's a joke. It's not funny. Something is either a certain color or it's not. I mean come the fuck on.

Yeah, it's cool our brains work a certain way. Yeah, it's cool how they interpret color. Hey, guess what? Maybe instead of blowing up Facebook and Twitter, you can go read a fucking book to learn about this stuff like the rest of us who maybe took a basic psychology course because we were interested in psychology, not because we wanted to argue about the color of a dress on the Internet.

This is not what the Internet was designed for. It was designed for the viewing of pornography. But after people finished with that (so to speak), it was designed to spread information. I can't tell you how much I've learned over the Internet. About computers, guns, cars, personal finance, cooking, beer, literally anything there's a subreddit for. And sure, I like to laugh at dogs doing funny things as much as the next guy, but we, as a society, have taken it to an extreme when we use it to argue over nothing the way we've been doing.

In fact, let's get back to basics. Go watch some porn. It's better than the mental version of jacking off we as a society have been doing all day.

For all the profanity and crudeness of this post, I think it's a fitting eulogy to a man who portrayed a character as logical as Spock. Because society could use a little logic. I'm going to go watch Amok Time now, in all its cheesy glory, and I'm going to drink rum out of my Starfleet glassware. Here's to you, Leonard.

On Target

As a white, heterosexual male, I don't get discriminated against much, and that's kind of nice. Ideally, I would like to live in a world where nobody is. That seems pretty unlikely, though, because, as I am constantly reminded, people aren't logical. I study slavery and race, and I can tell you that without a shadow of a doubt that racism is illogical. First off, race isn't even real. There's no so thing as race from a biological standpoint. Look it up. Yet, as humans, we not only see race, but act differently sometimes based on a person's race. And we shouldn't. Believe it or not, I've actually been discriminated against due to my race. Luckily for me, that's extraordinarily rare because we happen to live in a country were white people are privileged. But while that's kind of convenient for me, it's pretty crappy for a lot of people, and not good for anyone in the long run, so I'd like it to change. However, just because I rarely get discriminated against for my race, gender, or sexuality doesn't mean that I don't get discriminated against, a fact I was very much reminded of today when I was treated differently than your average person simply because I made the decision to own a gun. Disclaimer time: I am NOT equating this experience to the experiences of those who have suffered due to racism etc. That would be silly and offensive. Being judged for what you buy and for what race you are are fundamentally different things. I did, however, use that particular segue for a reason. In case the recent news from Missouri and other areas of the country hasn't made you aware already, sometimes black people get treated like criminals just because they're black. And that's stupid. Certainly some black people commit crimes. So do some white people. We don't think it's ok to go around treating all blacks as criminals, however. Nor should we. So why do we do it to gun owners? The obvious reply would be because being black doesn't make you dangerous or more likely to commit a crime. Well here's an interesting fact for you: neither does being a gun owner! Some people like golf or tennis. You know what I like? I like guns. I like shooting guns. That picture I chose for this post? That was a five-shot 100 yard group I shot last week. Anyone who shoots regularly can tell it's not perfect, but it's not terrible either. And I'm proud of it. And it was fun to do. Here's something else: if you've never shot before, I bet you couldn't do better. I bet you wouldn't even know how to load and fire the rifle I used, let alone understand zeroing, body position, and breath and recoil management. Even if you read about all that stuff on the Internet, that isn't the same as actually taking the shot and you'd find that out pretty quickly. In fact, I do have shooting experience, but take a look at that shot on the right. That happened because I flinched, anticipating the rifle's recoil. Just a tiny little common mistake, a slight muscle twitch at the wrong time, and look how far off the bullet goes. That's what's so great about the sport. It's all about form, technique, precision, and consistency. And math. If you're thinking that none of that sounds super criminal or threatening, and in fact sounds downright nerdy, you're right. And yet you'd be surprised how I get treated by some people when I casually mention my hobby. Today I was told, by someone who was clearly uncomfortable with guns, that I should change my profile picture on Facebook to attract more employers. My profile picture is me at the range. I am wearing protective goggles and hearing protection. I am pointing the gun in a safe direction. I am properly executing a supported shooting stance. To me this photo depicts an able, component person exercising his skill and knowledge in a disciplined way to achieve his desired aim and doing so in a safe, responsible way. 

To someone who doesn't like guns, it's scary. Because, gun.

Of course, I gently mentioned that, yes, I target shoot as a hobby, and I've never even shot an animal. I was told that that may be true, but there had been a lot of shootings in the news lately, and people were uncomfortable with guns. Maybe. There have been a lot of black people rioting in the news lately. You know something? I still don't find black people scary. Because that would be stupid.

I don't mind if someone doesn't like guns, but it's time this ridiculous stigma about them goes away. My hobby is legitimate, popular, legal, and, yes, even safe. I am not a criminal, nor should I be treated like one because I choose to participate in a sport shared by millions of others. That's not fair, nor does it even make sense. Linking a responsible, safe shooter with a criminal gunman is like linking a safe, responsible driver to a drunk driver because they both have cars. It needs to stop.

Incidentally, while I'm happy to make my picture private (frankly, I thought it already was), I'm not going to change it. It says a lot about me as a person, even if people who don't know anything about me or my hobbies aren't capable of seeing it. That rifle was a graduation gift from my parents. It's a beautiful and well-made piece of equipment. Shooting it relaxes me and makes me proud that I can achieve technical proficiency in a sport that demands it. I like that picture.

This is something I can't retreat from because it's personal to me. I can shrug off someone not liking computers, cars, or beer because when they tell me they don't like computers, cars, or beer, they just don't like them and that's ok and hardly offensive. With guns, though, there's often a judgement attached. If there wasn't, I wouldn't even mind. I have lots of friends who are for gun control, and while I disagree with them, they don't treat me personally like a criminal, so it's not an issue. It's not people who don't like guns that bother me, but people who act like I'm a bad person because I have this hobby I like, especially when that hobby is legal and safe. And I believe that all gun owners should be open and proud about their hobby.

Yes, I own a gun. Yes, I shoot my gun. And yes, I absolutely love it. If someone has a problem with that, the problem is theirs.