Today I had one of many very similar conversations I often have with conservatives: what I believe and why. I tried to stay on the surface, because those debates get so heated and unpleasant after a matter of minutes. I don’t like to argue heatedly with people I just met, although I’ve done it many times before.

It all started when I called Sarah Palin a babbling idiot. I often forget that some people actually support her, so had to then continue the discussion. It all went downhill from there. This is the part of political debate that doesn’t take much time or effort: talking about politicians. First of all, no one likes politicians as a group, so that’s a simple discussion. Anyone can dislike any politician for any reason without revealing anything about their political beliefs. Predictably, I do not like Bush, Cheney, McCain, or Palin. I like Biden and both Clintons. I do not like Al Gore. I’m still not sure about Obama.

As my brother pointed out, that’s really not a discussion at all. I could give reasons for all of those without saying anything about what I believe. Anyway, that’s all a bit beside the point. The discussion raised a few very typical points and a few that I rarely think about. I’ll get started with the actual explaining part now.

As I’ve said before, people expect a lot from the government. Don’t remember that? Me neither. At any rate, they have a good reason to expect that because the government is just about the only thing that can do what they want. The government decides how safe your food is, how safe your house is, how safe the roads are, what words you can hear on the radio, what you can do with your money, and hundreds of other little things you don’t even think about. The reality is that government is very much a part of everyone’s life, no matter how apolitical they claim to be.

The political implication of that is taxes. The government takes money to run, and not just a little. People don’t like paying taxes, despite what they expect from the government. I can understand that. I’ve heard several times that as a student who does not live in “the real world,” I cannot properly appreciate giving hard-earned money to bums who refuse to work. I could make a few petty responses to this, like by asking how church donations are used (do they all go to the pastors? as a pastor, isn’t he technically a bum refusing to work?) or looking up how much tax revenue is actually spent on social welfare programs (I don’t care, sorry). Instead, I’m going to address the ideas.

1. I am a student. I am largely supported by my parents. I will be the first to admit that I don’t live in the real world.

2. I have earned money before, and I would still have no problem paying taxes on it. This is probably because I don’t have many expenses. I strongly believe people should not have so many expenses that they can’t pay their taxes. I know that is based in #1 (some people can’t make that much money, for instance), but if you can’t afford to pay taxes or other expenses, there’s a good chance you are being supported by the government. In that case, I get to have an opinion.

3. Not all welfare goes to bums who refuse to work. Despite the widespread conservative believe that people have complete control over their circumstances (they do not), there are really people out there who cannot support themselves. Ideally, they would be supported by their families and not the government. There are a lot of reasons why that wouldn’t work in practice, and that’s why the government has to take care of it. I know there are some people out there who are lazy and collect welfare. It’s frustrating when people abuse the system that way, but I do not believe it’s enough to discredit the entire thing.

Speaking of ideals, I have often said that my beliefs align with a traditional Republican standpoint. For instance, I believe in little government and I am in favor of dismantling several federal programs. I have very rational reasons for believing those things. On the other hand, I do not believe that people’s religious beliefs should determine the law and I strongly oppose relying on the myth of the free market to solve everyone’s problems. Those among other things leave a fairly bad taste in my mouth, and because they are so prevalent, I find that I don’t generally like Republicans.

For instance, when I was discussing politics this afternoon, two different people made jokes about black people not holding jobs for longer than a year (e.g. Obama) and I heard a lovely (made up) story about an economics teacher who failed an entire class who wanted to experiment with socialism. You’ll have to forgive my intolerance for racism and bullshit.

There was also much complaining about how Obama will raise taxes (he has not made any plans to do so yet). That reminded me of one of my big issues with Republican government: deregulation. Under the auspices of reducing the government, Republicans like to severely cut funding for several federal programs. (Think that’s a contradiction? As much as I like little government, many things must be run on as large of a scale as possible. The FDA is a good example. FEMA is not.) So what’s the punchline for deregulation? A government that does NOTHING. I repeat: THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT DO ANYTHING.

Think about this for a second. Pick a federal program and think about what power it has. Think about the funding it gets. Think about how well it works. For instance, the FDA gets very little funding, has very few powers (e.g. most recalls are voluntary for companies), and as a consequence, shit happens a lot. E. coli breaks out, salmonella emerges, and there is very little safety for food. Drugs and supplements come out that can avoid FDA regulation simply by putting disclaimers on the box. That’s a brilliant loophole there.

Think of other things. Education? NCLB cuts funding for poor performance. Defense? All of our national guard troops are overseas, so that when disasters strike at home, they aren’t there to help. Awesome. FEMA? Bullshit program that hasn’t worked once. The SEC? Look at this recession, caused largely by the deregulation of the lending industry. What about government oversight? It’s a joke. If Congress wants to do anything to the executive branch, they just say “no, thanks” and ignore it. And it works.

Why does deregulation happen? Because it’s cheaper for corporations. Let’s face it, if the FDA were paying attention at all, McDonald’s burgers would have to be made from decent meat and then those $0.89 burgers might go up in price. God forbid. In other words, corporations just buy politicians and deregulate the hell out of anything as a way of cutting costs. It’s cheaper for them to bribe than behave ethically. And I can’t blame them. If I could afford it, I’d buy politicians myself.

Of course, the Republicans are still good at spending money. So I get to decide, how do I want my money spent? On things that might actually improve things at home (even though they help the lazy bums too) or on god knows what else? To sum up, I’d like to see less government spending. But if it has to happen, I’d rather it done by the Democrats.

So how about some solutions? First of all, I believe in public campaign financing. If it were easier for candidates to run campaigns, they wouldn’t have to take so many bribes and they might vote what their constituents believe rather then their true constituents, the corporations. Secondly, I’d like to see some fiscal responsibility. We have driven ourselves so deeply into debt that there is practically no way out. Without balancing the budget, we won’t even make leeway. I’d love to see either party embrace this, but I don’t see it happening. Lastly, I’d like to see some honesty. I know that’s asking a lot, but I can’t help but think that honesty could exist in politics. Maybe that’s my inner optimist, dead and shriveled though it is, wheezing out a few last gasps of hope. Maybe.

(I’d also like to add that we discussed Libertarianism. I, like most reasonable people, have nothing wrong with the Libertarian viewpoint. I think everyone should have the right to do what they want as long as it doesn’t interfere with others. I disagree on what that means, but whatever. The unfortunate truth is that although I’d love to see more Libertarians in office, but I have to deal with reality, and that means picking between the Dems and the GOP. Sorry.)

At long last, I finally watched Firefly. I asked for the DVD set for Christmas based on a bazillion recommendations, and it’s not bad. I also got the movie, Serenity, which I’m saving for tomorrow. Anyway, given the ridiculous amount of hype the show has gotten, I feel the need to rebut. Here I go.

I’m going to start with non-character stuff then move to the characters:

Chinese: At intervals, people in the Firefly ‘verse (hefty slang term there) use Chinese phrases to say socially unacceptable things. I cannot understand why this seemed like a good idea. Oh, I get that there are tons of Chinese people in the world who all speak Chinese and will make Chinese a key language of the FUTURE.

Here are the problems:
1. Americans can’t speak Chinese. Never could, never will. That leads to the second part.
2. Chinese is a difficult language. It’s constantly getting simpler, but eventually will be displaced with English (a difficult language, but still much easier). It won’t exist (recognizably) this far in the future.
3. It doesn’t flow. As much as the actors make an effort to seamlessly integrate the Chinese and English, the nature of the two languages alone makes the switch jarring.
4. It’s fucking Chinese. Nobody understands it; it’s all a huge inside joke with the creators, who probably don’t even speak Chinese themselves.

At best, the Chinese adds flavor, but mostly just distracts. Besides, most of the phrases are innocuous anyway. More slang would have been fine, like the swearing, which mostly worked.

Grammar: Honestly, this was just a dumb idea. Many of the crew speak with “poor grammar” that is pretty contrived. Ninety percent of it is subject/verb agreement; they say things like “cows is” and such. The problem is that Joss Almighty writes lines that are way too clever for people who don’t get verbs. I’ll let it slip with the engineer (too many offenses to count), but with other characters it just fails miserably.

Music: Damn good. The most clever idea was playing western-style background music in the space scenes. It conveys the mood of the show much more effectively than classical (damn you, 2001). I also thought the theme song was pretty awesome.

Reavers: Ugh. Spare me. Thank god they dropped this concept fairly fast, because it sucked majorly. In the pilot, any time reavers are mentioned, people practically shit their pants in fear, and the overbearing music stings don’t help anything. The idea is that this group represents people who strayed to the fringe of the galaxy and “went mad.” They eat people and also rape them. They look like the bad guys from “Ghosts of Mars.”

The problem here is that there is quite literally nothing to fear. People are scared by things that actually have some menace. For instance, the Borg threaten to destroy individuality. In theory, that’s kind of a scary idea. Nothing of the sort appears here, although the crew, who face much more threatening things throughout the show with stoicism and wisecracks, are paralyzed with fear. Please.

Mal: Easily the most funny, badass character on the show. Has several kickass moments of slaying throughout the series. Side note: the morality of the show (dictated by the Captain, mostly) was not too heavy-handed, which I appreciated.

Zoe: A character in need of a better actor. Not only does the first mate never do anything on the show (crowded out by Mal’s badassitude, I suppose), she never stops smiling. I kept waiting for her to start selling me something in several of her scenes, despite the fact that they were usually not too cheery. Her best (read: only good) moments are with other crew members, playing off of the captain or Wash.

Wash: A frustrating part of this show was its ability to feature all of the characters and still not underuse many of them. Wash falls into that category. Wash and Mal are the comic relief characters (Jayne only wishes he were), and the neglect of Wash often makes the show too dramatic. On the other hand, he deflates a couple of moments that should have stayed tense. Perhaps not underused but misused. Still funny, though.

Inara: Smoking hot and a good actress. I don’t have anything bad to say, except that perhaps her dealings with the Captain are a little repetitive. The only time that dynamic worked is in “Heart of Gold,” where another woman comes between them. But yeah, by far the most beautiful person on the ship. More on that in a second.

Jayne: Ugh. This character is overused and overdone. His few good moments do nothing to make him a good character. I had no use for him in the show, except action sequences. They should have just hidden him in the walls the rest of the time.

Kaylee: I’m frustrated by this character because she clearly has a role on the ship, but not on the show. Her saccharine optimism got on my nerves most of the time, and she goes nowhere as the doctor’s love interest. I can’t think of an episode where she does anything important except for fixing the ship. There are a few occasions where she gets mad at the doctor, but they don’t go anywhere. Sigh. The problem is that I really liked Jewel Staite in Wonderfalls, where she was a more venomous character. They should have given her more to work with, I think.

Simon: I found myself really liking the doctor for some reason. I think it’s because he’s just an earnest, well-meaning guy who dresses really well. His episode (“Ariel”) and the payoff in “Trash” (another good episode) are terrific. My only complaint is that he doesn’t do much to start off; the Captain keeps him around based on his potential when it’s not clear if it’s worth the risk, which didn’t make much sense.

River: I could have used more “useful River” and a lot less “autistic River.” She serves a purpose in a few episodes, but most of the time just aggravates everyone (including the viewer). There’s no reason for most of her behavior except to make the brother’s life suck that much more. Even “Objects in Space,” her episode, does little to help her because the whole episode is kind of a big Idiot Plot.

As a side note, nerdy fandom has suggested that Summer Glau is the most attractive thing since breasts. I strongly disagree. I admit I’m not into the whole “stringy hair” thing, but I just don’t see what the appeal is here. Maybe I was blinded by the sucky, aggravating character.

Book: I liked him. Sort of the “et cetera” character, he’s in a lot of scenes but doesn’t do much. I would have liked a Shepherd Book A-plot, but I guess brevity is kind of a flaw with Firefly in general (teehee). His part was best when he interacted with other characters, which didn’t happen nearly enough. He never annoyed me, which is saying something.

Anyway, I watched the series, so stop suggesting it now. In the interest of those like me who’ve had this recommended to them like 50 times (and probably didn’t read this anyway…), you don’t have to see the series. I know most people make it sound like the Third Coming of Christ, but in reality it’s a lot like Star Trek with more character development, and even that only works half of the time. If you can put up with slightly more morality (okay, a lot more), watch Trigun instead. All the badass with just 4 main characters, none of whom get too aggravating (as long as you get past the morality). Cowboy Bebop is another decent show that’s pretty similar, but even that’s a bit overhyped too.

Maybe one day I’ll understand why this show is so popular, but not today. Give me some time. Now please stop using the word “shiny.”