According to Wikipedia:
Now I have to tell you that this guy has absolutely nothing, NOTHING to do with whether or not, or to what extent you might be a hypocrite, because, much to my astonishment, Hippocrates did NOT invent hypocrisy! If I could only spell, I might have figured it out sooner.
But, undaunted by the gods of spelling and even syntax, I have devised a survey to see if you too might be a hypocrite like me or some other type of two-faced individual. Just what is a hypocrite? Inquiring minds want to know. According to Dictionary.com:
hyp·o·crite [is]
–noun
1.
a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess, especially a person whose actions belie stated beliefs.
2.
a person who feigns some desirable or publicly approved attitude, especially one whose private life, opinions, or statements belie his or her public statements
Although either definition should make my point without going further, I have to go further because, I am bored and lots of people still wallow in the erroneous belief that they don’t wallow in hypocrisy. Perhaps we should start general and work our way down to more specific modes of slander.
Love v. Hate
You might be a hypocrite if you claim to love humanity, but your blood boils, every time you think of any person, or group who disagrees with your point of view. Some might write a sonnet or an ode or yet another sequel to Sleepless in Seattle about this timeless contradiction. To me, it is really quite straight-forward, as I am probably the world’s worst practicing love-hater and can speak plainly from personal experience.
I know that I should always work to find areas of common ground with folks espousing opposing points of view and then simply agree to disagree about the rest, but I spend my time instead being way too angry at those ignorant bastardos! I preach love for humanity, but I find myself hating humans and think and write about people I really and truly hate all the time. I have convinced myself that they hate me too, which makes the whole process so much easier to rationalize.
Some people are binge-haters who spend an intense but brief time hating everyone, while some are serial haters who hate the particular person or group en-vogue and then move on to the next one. I prefer a binge/serial combo, which allows me to hate everyone all of the time, but I devote more energy to one group or another, as the 24-hour-news cycle dictates.
Where might you fit in? If you love humanity and get all warm and fuzzy for that one hour a week while you are in church or temple, or mosque, or somewhere else ostensibly holy and at peace with the world, but you spend the rest of the week as a mean-spirited hateful wretch, you still might a hypocrite.
Altruism v. Let Em Eat Cake.
You might be a hypocrite, if you keep saying that you want to want to help people who are less fortunate than you are, but you happily spend 40+ hours a week at a job which involves ripping people off. Someone who works as an executive or an actuary at an insurance company is a prime example. Insurance companies are supposed to help you if your car gets stolen, or your house burns down, or you get sick, or your spouse dies, right? But the main goal of insurance companies is to make money by not helping you. CEOs and their trusty actuaries spend their days figuring out how to not compensate people for their losses under the above circumstances. And again, one hour of caring and sharing per week, doesn’t make them any less hypocritical, it just provides the psychological smoke and mirrors so that they can sleep nights. If you spend more time saying no to people in need than yes, you might have a hypocrisy issue which requires attention.
Liberals v. In Name only
Let’s get another definition from Dictionary.com.:
lib·er·al
–adjective
1.
favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs.
2.
( often initial capital letter
3.
of, pertaining to, based on, or advocating liberalism.
4.
favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, especially as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties.
5.
favoring or permitting freedom of action, especially with respect to matters of personal belief or expression: a liberal policy toward dissident artists and writers.
6.
of or pertaining to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies and monarchies.
7.
free from prejudice or bigotry; tolerant: a liberal attitude toward foreigners.
8.
open-minded or tolerant, especially free of or not bound by traditional or conventional ideas, values, etc.
9.
characterized by generosity and willingness to give in large amounts: a liberal donor.
10.
given freely or abundantly; generous: a liberal donation.
11.
not strict or rigorous; free; not literal: a liberal interpretation of a rule.
Ok, now that we have a definition, how many of you readers out there call yourselves liberal? And of those, how many actually walk-the-liberal-walk and how many drive instead?
Abortion v. State-Sanctioned Murder
Ask a liberal how she can support abortion on demand for any reason, but oppose the death penalty under any circumstances. “Oh, but abortion is nuanced,” she says. “It is not a viable life. It’s just a fetus. It’s about a woman’s right to choose and the imposition of the will of men upon women etc., while state-sanctioned killing someone for killing someone is simply barbaric.” To the liberal who might be a hypocrite, the grief and visceral rage that a family member of a murder victim might feel, must be discounted to pursue the greater good of societal evolution. “Euthanasia is so humane, state sanctioned executions are always wrong and abortions are none of your Goddamned business!”
Now before you women-folk start frothing at the mouth, I am not taking a position here. Most of you who read my stuff already know how I feel about and deal with this particular contradiction, but it is a contradiction and if you are not willing to acknowledge and come to terms with the contradiction, you might be a liberal hypocrite.
Environment v. Lite
Speaking of walking and driving, a liberal might be a hypocrite, if he can walk, or take the bus, but drives instead; can recycle and compost, but tosses it in the trash instead; can dig up those dandelions, but uses Roundup instead, and can’t seem to wait for dusk to run the gas-powered lawn mower over 1,500 square Ft. of Kentucky Blue in the semi-arid (becoming more arid all the time) Colorado climate.
I lean towards hypocrisy in this area as well. I am getting better, but in so doing I am also getting a better understanding of what heroine users go though to break the chains of their addiction. Taking that first walk to the post office was the worst! I felt so unprotected out in the open air and I immediately discovered that the outdoors contained actual people with whom I felt compelled to at least acknowledge and some car-drivers really were jerks when I tried to cross the street and my knees got all shaky and I broke out in a cold sweat when I got home. It was Hell, but I made it and am thinking seriously of doing it again.
Living Equality v. Du Jour Political Correctness
You also might be a liberal hypocrite if you get your panties in a bunch if someone tells a gay-joke or a Jewish-princess-joke, but still think it is okay to make fat-jokes and/or geriatric-jokes. Here, I count myself as both an occasional offender and one of the offended. I must acknowledge that I am sometimes a walking, talking, albeit minor example of political incorrectness, but I am also beginning to get really pissed off, every time I hear some 20-something confess that she refused a second date with a guy because he was…EEWW!...YUK!...GAG!…BARF!...almost 40! And just what in the hell did Kirstie Alley do (in addition to being fat) to deserve the rash of trash she is getting from all over this country? But, when I suggested that LGBT should switch their acronym to GBLT and serve sandwiches at rallies, I was roundly trounced by the fat/old jokers. Go figure.
Hunger v. Gucci
With people going homeless and hungry in this country and all over this world, how can any self-respecting liberal have a closet full of $2,000 suits and $600 shoes? I’ll just leave it at that and let you figure it out.
Liberal v. Cultivated Ignorance
Why do liberals, especially young liberals, think that the government is obligated to use their secret magic power to make it all better… RIGHT NOW! , but they never make the slightest effort to learn about politics, the art of the possible, which is the only means available by which we can make anything better at all.?
I have said in the past that opinions are like… well…belly buttons. Everybody has one. You can back up an opinion with stats, but we all know that stats can be manipulated. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and, but if more people would opinionate less at each other and communicate more with each other, they might find some common ground upon which they already share. Opinions thereafter might be tweakable, or at least not matter as much in the grand design and something might actually get done.
But President Obama has not completed every single thing that he campaigned about and some liberals were expecting immediate gratification. It doesn’t matter that he has a country to run and has managed more crises on his watch, in the last two plus years, than the last five Presidents combined, and has to contend with the Tea/GOP, who, these days, are more and more resembling a bunch of insane, self-destructive, rabble-rousing, Anarchists than just the usual ignorant, self-centered, self-aggrandizing sanctimonious, reactionaries.
So disappointed and angry are the young might-be hypocritical liberals, because Obama won’t (not can’t, but refuses to) press a button, like on their I-stuff, and feed the poor, and tax the wealthy, and get white-guy-politicians (and Michelle Bachman) out of other people’s bedrooms, and dismantle the 50 year old Military-Industrial Complex and undo the last 30 years of corporate hegemony. I mean, you had TWO…WHOLE…YEARS…DUDE! “We have been betrayed!” they say, as they sip their Starbucks. “And now, only Ron Paul has the true answers.” OMFG. Please quickly refer to the definitions of liberalism above and then move on…hypocrite!
War v. Peace
Would somebody puhleeze explain to me why Democratic Presidents have started/escalated almost every war since Lincoln (who would be considered a liberal by today’s standards)? Is there some special hormone that only Presidents get, that makes them want to prove their especially manly, manhood by ordering young men and women to fight and die in the process of killing other young men and women, for some really good reason? And, if we elected a woman as President, would she too feel the heretofore uber-manly urge and be compelled to start a war?
Conservatives v. In name only
Another definition from Dictionary.com:
con·serv·a·tive
–adjective
1.
disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.
2.
cautiously moderate or purposefully low: a conservative estimate.
3.
traditional in style or manner; avoiding novelty or showiness: conservative suit.
4.
5.
( initial capital letter
6.
having the power or tendency to conserve; preservative.
7.
Mathematics . (of a vector or vector function) having curl equal to zero; irrotational; lamellar.
–noun
8.
a person who is conservative in principles, actions, habits, etc.
9.
a supporter of conservative political policies.
10.
( initial capital letter Great Britain
11.
a preservative.
Okay, so conservatives want to preserve the way things are. Don’t like change. Got it.
Abortion v. State-Sanctioned Murder
Since conservatives have always lived with the contradiction of abortion/bad, death penalty/good, they don’t want to change. I get that. It is okay to legislate the murder of certain people on the outside of Mom, as long as the 13-year-old keeps the fetus (that her dad or uncle put there) safe inside her. Although we can easily note the obvious exercise of internal hypocrisy in their argument, it is no more or less ridiculous than that of the liberal persuasion. And you have to admire their consistency. Since conservatives don’t believe in evolution, it stands to reason that they would not want to put up with an evolving sense of decency. Kind of like Pleasantville, if you don’t think about the whole rape and incest and too many kids to feed already part.
But I worry that, with the inevitable progress of scientific research, the earlier viability of fetuses in-utero may lead to a fetus committing murder and then…oh wait, conservatives don’t believe in family planning or stem cell research either, so maybe America Third World level and this particular potential conundrum will be avoided.
Government v. “Our Freedoms”
“Keep your government hands off of my Medicare!” That was one of the signs held up by a Tea Partier, back when the billionaire, Brothers Koch paid the first installment of the millions it took to single-handedly finance the grass roots Tea Bagger movement, before someone told them what “Tea Bagger” actually meant. You might be a conservative hypocrite if you want good roads, schools, law enforcement, safe drinking water, breathable air, and protection from the unbridled charlatanism of big business that is turning the middle class into a class of indentured servants…but… you want some other unnamed group of people (the middle class?) to foot the bill.
Everyone, but the rich must share in the sacrifice for you conservative might-be hypocrites. Persisting in this belief might make you not only a hypocrite, but delusional, if you are actually part of the middle class, but still root for the rich guys to lay you off and transfer their savings to a tax shelters in the Cayman Islands.
You might be also be a conservative hypocrite if you hail from any minority that came over on a boat to this country in the last two-hundred years or so, but still believe that you have the innate ability to tell which human beings are just a tad too dark to melt effectively into the American pot and think it is a great idea to build an actual wall to keep them out.
If you believe that your Tea/GOP leaders give a spit about your freedoms, you might not be a hypocrite, but you might be deaf, dumb and blind. They are in it for the money and the power and the pages they can diddle and the golf they can play and the tan and the adoration, just like always. But, come to think of it, since conservatives want everything to remain just as crappy as it was before, maybe there is no hypocrisy here at all; just the same old snake oil salesmen and the same old dupes. You are happily giving away your freedoms, so you can watch from the cheap seats, as the big-business-fueled Tea/GOP folks pretend to turn back time.
Balanced Budget v. Taxes
Speaking of turning back time, it would be great if conservatives would agree to take the tax structure WAY back to the 1990’s? If they could remember WAY back that far, the upper 2% of the wealthiest Americans would go back to paying a 35% tax rate, instead of the 11% they are paying now and we would have no budget crisis. Period. Why anyone making $40K/year would be happy with GE paying no taxes and Mobil Oil paying no taxes and Goldman & Sachs paying no taxes? To me, this contradiction appears to be more insidious, and mind-numbingly inane, than just your garden-variety hypocrisy. Or maybe it’s just sour grapes, because I actually pay taxes.
Nobody with a functioning cerebral cortex still believes in the Trickle Down Theory of Economics, but, the way some in the Tea/GOP rant, rave, and pontificate, you’d think that the average sign-carrier in the tri-cornered hat had enough disposable income to be a major stock-holder in one of those companies, instead of living from paycheck to paycheck, like the rest of us.
In the real world, the only Tea/GOP folks who have (or are being given by big business) that kind of money are the politicians. I fully understand and respect the hypocritical bullspit politicians are feeding their base, because the Tea/GOP politicians stand to make a killing. It is the mental health of their cheering section that I am beginning to hold suspect.
The Environment
In this area, I find no hypocrisy in the conservative movement at all. Conservatives don’t believe in climate change, or that chemical fracking pollutes the water table, or that nuclear power is dangerous, or that oil companies don’t really care if they kill all marine/human life as long as they can turn a profit. Conservatives do believe whatever BP Oil, GE, or any other multi-national corporation says is true, as long as the commercials have, flags, puppies, and soothing music. The melting polar ice caps are just nature’s way of altering the location of prime real estate and it makes it easier for Sarah Palin to see the Russians from her back yard. And higher levels of radiation are actually good for you and make you safer, because it helps you see each other better at night!
Sanctity of Marriage v. Gays
Sanctity of Marriage v. Gays
Do I really need to point out the hypocrisy of people who say that they don’t want to allow gays to legally and spiritually commit to each other for life, but think it is okay for them to cheat on their spouses at-will and allow themselves multiple church-marriages for life to as many different death-do-us-partners as they can afford? Do we really want to dignify insanity by continuing to wallow in this hypocritical cesspool?
I don’t. It just makes me mad at people with whom I am supposed to be finding common ground.
J. Brandeis Sperandeo
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