Boots and Bibles

I Don't Belong Here

"Poseur."

I'm walking down the halls, and I hear the word over and over in my head. I nervously take my seat at my desk. I keep my music turned down as low as possible.

"Poseur."

I smile when everyone else walks by. I greet them with my "voiceover" accent. I rush past as I step through the halls. I hope no one sees the tattoos when I fold my arms.

"Poseur."

I don't follow their magazines. I don't listen to their music. I don't like their clothes, their sports, their haircuts, their suburban living or their armchair patriotism. I don't believe in the political establishments they put so much faith into. And the economics system that they live their lives to support? The more I learn about it, the more I detest it.

It's really simple. In the narrow and over-lit hallways of American finance where I currently eke out a wage, I am a poseur. Meanwhile, in the tattoo shops, the record stores, the hardcore shows, and the history-battered streets of Brooklyn and the Lower East Side, I find a perfect home. Where other baldheaded miscreants attack each other for sport, I feel a sense of scum-class pride. When singing choruses in homage to North London's finest or the vulgar heritage of New York City's streets, my heart feels warm.

Nothing makes me feel cold and alone like dealing with corporate BS.

A Field Guide to Logical Fallacies: Hasty Generalisation

Do you like lumping people together as a group by criteria that do not necessarily define them? Do you like seeing things as "Us vs. Them"? "Black or White"? Do you want to paint broad, bloody strokes in your description of not only enemies, but just about anyone who you're none-too fond of? Well, the Hasty Generalisation fallacy might just be right for you!

Hasty Generalisations can come off as merely Inductive Reasoning* if you know how to slant it right, and therefore becomes exceedingly popular with pundits, journalists, religious leaders, politicians and sectarians of all stripes who need to both whip their constituencies into some kind of partisan froth of fear and hatred, and simultaneously come across as impeccably logical, at least at a glance. True, the ruse will not last on closer inspection, but if you are leading your sheep with the right kinds of words, you needn't worry about "closer inspection", because your arguments alone will be good enough and anyone questioning them will immediately become (wait for it...)

...the Enemy™!

Ahh, yes! But how does the Hasty Generalisation fallacy work? What are some successful examples of this fallacy in action?

Few More Thoughts...

First, read this if you haven't already.

All right, so we know how I'm feeling today, right? Good? Good.

The feelings I'm getting right now from all this front-page coverage of "skinheads" plotting to kill Barack Obama (as well as 100 other people, mind, which I suppose proves the point in the media's eyes that one politician is worth 100 others) take me back to high school; 20 April, 1999 in my junior year, to be precise. Ahh, I remember it well...

I remember the teachers looking scronfully down their noses at anyone dressed in black, or anything odd at all.

I remember me and my friends getting a little extra dose of harassment from the school security guards and SRO officers.

I remember a little while later listening to city council assemblymen proposing plans to open files on students who wore black, or trench coats, or dressed funny, or were just about in any way different (his wording was vague enough to include anyone who didn't "fit in.")

I remember seeing everywhere, "Goths murder high school students in Colorado!", and then standing back, thinking to myself, but hose guys weren't Goths...

Ahh, but did the media give a rat's ass? Did they change the nature of their reporting, or mention anything about Goth history, culture and practises to illustrate that even if connections could be made to true and proper "Goths", that Harris and Klebold were still very much exceptions to the rule? No. Of course not. That would have subdued their sensationalism. That would have made things too complicated to sell newspapers, hock advertisements and generally glue people to the TV screens vis a vis public outrage.

I'd Say "Boots and Braces Don't Make a Racist", But These Idiots Don't Even Have Those

"These men do not represent us."

 
Once again, the media (and the authorities) completely screw it up!

These white-trash, idiotic, roided-out, illiterates are not, by anything but the most liberal stretches of the term, skinheads. These guys are not even boneheads!

Go ahead... Look at the videos! Look at their MySpaces! Read all of the stories on these guys! Look at the pictures! You never hear talk of working class pride! You never hear mention of "Oi!", ska, or even Skrewdriver! There are no Doc Martens, no Alpha flight jackets, no braces (suspenders), no Fred Perrys – the outer trappings of the skinhead movement that boneheads are more or less consistent in aping are all completely missing. There's not even a mention of "Rock Against Communism"! The best we get is knowing that earlier this year one of these guys joined a hate group led by racist skinheads.

Evidently, it was the "authorities" (ATF?) who described these two as getting together via MySpace through shared "skinhead" ideologies. So what are these ideologies, praytell, and how are they specifically skinhead ideologies, as opposed to just any other type of white-supremacist gobbledygook? Is it now just a de facto assumption by press and authorities that any couple of white-trash idiots who keep their hair cropped short and have racialist tendencies are now "skinheads"?

Screw that!

These guys are no more "skinheads" than any bald guy out there. I know people in the military who are complete wankers and keep their hair cropped short. Are they skinheads in the eyes of the media, then? What about black dudes who go chanting "Kill whitey" and keep their heads shaved clean? Are they skinheads now, too?

If you who are reading this don't know already, skinhead is a culture. It's about not backing down. It's about honouring your roots. It's about working for a living, fighting for what you believe in, looking sharp, being strong, and listening to the best music ever made. It's about passion, fearlessness, unity and intensity. Yeah, there are racists in that mix, but there are racists in all types of segments of society! You don't see middle-America being castigated as a whole just because a few people who have mild affiliations with it decide to be idiots! What's more, you don't see white Americans being blamed for things that white Canadians or Englishmen are perpetrating, which is something much closer to the situation we have here – THESE TWO MORONS BEING TOUTED BY THE MEDIA AND THE AUTHORITIES AS "SKINHEADS"  WOULDN'T EVEN QUALIFY FOR THE TERM AT A COMBAT 18 RALLY IN LONDON!

The media and authorities, and even well-meaning authorities, do a discredit to a vibrant, strong, and worthwhile subculture when they slap a label on these guys and say "Look! Here are the skinheads!" At the very least, they could specify that these are neo-Nazi skinheads, as opposed to the SHARPs, Trads, Antifas and others who are sick and tired of being wholesale associated with people like these.

So I'll say it, one last time, just for maximum effect:

BOOTS AND BRACES DON'T MAKE A RACIST.

 

"No one likes us – we don't care!"

"I Got Your Number" by Cock Sparrer

It can't be right what I'm reading here
No one believes in all this stuff no more
Our ideas don't see eye to eye
You get your press with a pocketfull of lies
Telling everyone every word is true
One day soon they're all gonna' see through you

Chorus:
I got your number
You can fool some people some part of the time
I got your number
I ain't ever gonna' tow that particular party line

There'll be some people gonna' back you up
But don't look to me for moral support
Don't you ask no favours of me
I don't believe in charity
Telling everybody you're wonderful
What are you gonna' do when there's no one left to tell it to?

Chorus:

You think you're so special
But you're only foolin'
Tell your lies to anyone but me

Chorus: