Friday, December 30, 2011

11 Things to Hate About 2011

People love whipping up lists of this or that at the end of the year because it doesn't take much time or effort. So with that in mind, the good people and gnomes of VectorPress present the following reasons why you shouldn't miss 2011 and probably shouldn't have much hope for 2012 either...

High Profile Death Porn
We killed a dictator! Hooray! And by "we" I of course mean "those other people who actually live over in that country, Loobibia or whatever," or earlier, "Those guys the Navy sends to shoot people their drones can't find," or just, "cancer." But little inconvenient things like facts sure didn't stop people from patting themselves on the back. After all, we're the Good Guys so whenever the Bad Guys buy it, it's clearly because of something we did, right? So let's celebrate and post wacky macros, 'cause death sure is neat!


Happy times!

Donald Trump
If #OWS wants to really drive their point home, they need to start explicitly identifying the 1% as Donald Trump. What has this blowhard ever done to create a job? Near as I can tell, his whole shtick is destroying jobs to the raucous applause of willing serfs across the country. He outdid himself in the bullshit department this year with a fake bid for the presidency and by attempting to be the final nail in the embarrassing birther conspiracy. Watching the President of the United States curb-stomp this comb-overed doofus wasn't even worth it since the wackjobs have just kept going.

Government Shutdown Bluffs
What's really despicable is that's plural. Not once but seemingly a dozen times in a single year this country has been threatened with the services we all pay good money for being cancelled to satisfy the minarchist fantasies of a bunch of pig-ignorant provincials. Neither party has or had any intention of going through with it but we all had to sit through this pantomime every few months just because a few bloodless oligarchs in the GOP hoped to net a few more votes from trailer-park refuse that should've been removed by natural selection generations ago.

Ron Paul...
He's back and dumber than ever! Paul is again riding on the myth of his love of liberty and peace because white middle-class twenty-somethings can't be bothered to put down the joint and Xbox controller long enough to Google his support of a constitutional amendment banning abortion and the great taxmoney hole that is "missile defense." The one redeeming factor of this wretched bitch is that if he were elected, the establishment Republicans in Congress would stonewall him just as strongly as they've done to Obama, ensuring a good four years of inertia and stagnation.
 


"I suck!"

...and the Rest of the GOP Primaries
What's a circus without elephants? Romney has had the nomination in the bag since July because the rest of the field is just fucking terrible but every week we all have to hear about who the latest frontrunner is. Tellingly, they're never compared to the rest of the pack but only to Romney. Worst of all, the Republican party's hilarious collapse into nothing but a glorified reality show has been dragging on so long it's hardly funny anymore.

All the Stupid, Cutesy "Top 11" Lists
I am aware of the hypocrisy. And I don't care, these are horrible.

Coverage of DSK
Future anthropologists will probably make a drinking game out of the contemporary American justice system. Before Dominique Strauss-Khan had set foot in a courtroom, everyone had already determined exactly what happened - he raped the helpless proletariat black woman because all those IMF guys just love rape so much. Or because he was French. That was the US response at least, the rest of the world taking a more nuanced stance because they're adults and recognize his guilt or innocence is a matter for the courts. Americans, being just really fat adolescents, had a much easier time of determining him to be pure evil by healthily disregarding his actual record with the IMF - the closest to a progressive that institution has ever known - and the rather dodgy story of his accuser. And when said dodginess lead to the prosecution dropping the charges, it was time to break out the tinfoil hats! Because things don't just happen in this country, everything must fit a pre-defined narrative.

The Great Twilight v. Harry Potter Meme Smack-Down
If you know any women between the ages of 18 and 30, you've been subject to this on both Facebook and Google+. That's likely due to the infantlizing effect American culture has on women, feeding them the lie that it's okay to like books intended for children. Keeps 'em shallow and silly so they don't take any of that old women's liberation rhetoric seriously, start reading real books and getting ideas... But that's a rant for another time. 2011 was the year all the nerd chicks decided to go to war against the sparkly vampires on behalf of the shockingly sodomy-free English boarding school for D&D dropouts. A sadder cripple fight the world has never seen, the wand-wavers discovering no one particularly cared to defend a book series that at least tacitly admitted it was just as much of an escapist fantasy.


Balzac is shocked at your puerile excuse for reading material!

People Who Hate Facebook
I was going to title this section "Google+" but everyone who blathers on about how great it is falls squarely into this category. I use Zuckerberg's hookup site too and I honestly have no clue why people are always getting so bent out of shape about it. You don't want people hearing about your drinking, drug use, or sexual experimentation with a koala then don't post it on the fucking internet! Christ, do you people want some sort of iDarwin Award? Would that drive things home?

The Response to Occupy Wall Street...
Thirty years of Reaganomics has now successfully molded America into a land of jackals who walk upright. When people walked out into public and spoke the simple truth about this country - that the rich rule and anyone not making a seven figure salary is just so much chattel - the propaganda floodgates opened! Since September every stooge from David Brooks to those plastic suckpuppets on Fox have blathered on about how these are just a bunch of no good commie-hippies who don't want to work and just smoke bowls all day. And significant numbers of Americans buy that line because it's easier to hate and blame your neighbour than try and take on the rotten morons at the top.


...and Occupy Wall Street
Have you been by the Occupy DC camp? They really are a bunch of no good commie-hippies! #OWS's biggest hindrance since it began is that it's populated by Americans and Americans just don't have the balls for a real fight. It started out promising but has devolved in the past two months into just another partisan sideshow 'cause everyone was too busy feeling good about themselves for their "leaderless movement," their fancy fucking "happening" that they let the other side continue setting the terms of the debate. Squatting in a city park is all well and good for getting the dialogue going - which remains #OWS's greatest and only victory - but unless you're ready to start hammering out the specifics of your grievances, of pushing for genuine policy changes, and opening yourself to all the criticisms and compromises that sort of necessary realpolitik entails than you really are just throwing a tantrum! A bunch of college students marching on DC didn't stop the Vietnam war, it was the Vietnamese kicking American ass. You wanna end the class war? You better find some way to start kicking banker ass because screaming at the injustice of it all is just giving them a misery stiffy.


Bonus Baker's Dozen of Hate!

Geeks Rule Hollywood
Comic book adaptations, three hour toy commercials, and the fucking Hunger Games next year... Cinema is dead.

SOPA
Not the Stop Online Piracy Act itself but how this simple, doomed bill has lead thousands to defend the indefensible. The false sense of community you get from posting comments on the Huffington Post isn't worth the continued existence of the elaborate fetish support systems and grotesque cartoon pornography that constitute the majority of the internet. I am in full support of ending the torrent era if it also means an end to this -


And the bastard is drawn Japanime style. Your free speech is not worth such atrocities.

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