Current mood:	complacent
Entry tags:	philosophy, politics

What is "Respect?"
It's not uncommon for me to hear from others "You need to be more respectful," and usually I can't see where I've been disrespectful and it's dawned on me why that is. People don't know what the fuck "respect" is. So what exactly is respect? Well the best way to explain it is with the ugly baby analogy, that being if a friend of your's has an ugly baby you don't go "Damn, that's one fuckin' ugly baby," instead you bite your tongue, nod, and smile when your friend's speaking baby talk repeating how "kewwwwwt" the kid is with the occassional "yeah" thrown in for good measure. That's respect because it's something they can't control and saying their kid's ugly serves no other purpose but to hurt their feelings. This isn't how most people think of or use respect though. In reality most people use respect as a form of control, especially when you say something about their behavior which they take offense to. If someone's being a hypocrite and you say as much that's not disrespect, that's called criticism. If someone's lying and you say as much, that's not disrespect, again it's criticism.

Too often people use respect as a means to shield themselves from criticism. Look at Bush and his cronies, whenever there's some negative report against them they come out swinging claiming how disrespectful and tasteless the report is. This same behavior can be found in the left too, Democratic Underground has become infamous for banning anyone who doesn't agree with them completely and justifying it as banning "disrespectful members" or "trolls." Same too for a number of other liberal forums as well as conservative forums (I've been banned from Sean Hannity's forums for simply disagreeing). So why do people do this? It's to continually justify beliefs and behavior which those who disagree with them would conflict with continually. It's about power and living in a fantasy world where you're always right and you have your little squad who comes in and backs you up whenever some n00b with a difference of opinion puts you in your place. If you can't beat the n00b down, well you can just ban him.

The funny thing is that when you get these people in a corner who start demanding respect (rather your loyalty not to criticize them) they are the first to start throwing around childish name calling, or, my favorite, they start claiming that you're immature. Again they say these things because they know most people will clam up because god forbid they look immature and disrespectful, that would be a travesty, especially if they're an egotistical morally elitist liberal. People like me on the other hand don't give a fuck. Yeah ok according to you I'm disrespectul and immature, great, that still doesn't mean you're not a hypocrite, a liar, and an idiot to boot. But hey guess what, instead of getting pissed off at someone's criticism of you why don't you, you know, stop being a hypocrite, a liar, and an idiot? Instead of living in your fantasy world why don't you join the rest of us in reality and pull your head from your ass?

They won't though, not unless they're violently shaken out of it. They're like crack addicts, they're addicted to the fantasy world that they live in, that fantasy for most people is that they are morally superior to others. Show them their white pale lips or the tracks in their arms though and they go into a fit of denial, just like an addict. You need to wake up people, the fantasy land you live in of being in control and superior is destroying your lives, either through your inability to effectively fight those in the higher echelons of society who abuse this addiction or through your farcical idea that you are one of the higher echelons when you're not. You are no better than me, I am no better than you, and at the end of the fucking day we all end up in the same fucking place, six feet under. Deal with it and get over your bullshit notions of "respect."