The Douchebag Bible (31 page)

I distrust overly nice people and view them as phonies.

I don’t fear spiders or ketchup. Hell, I’d eat spider in

Ketchup is someone offered it up as an exotic dish. I don’t take

any meds, though I arguably ought to.

Most of the fears that make her seem pathetic to me are

fears that I share. The traits I hate most are ones I share most.

Is my sending angry letters to a girl I broke up with 5-

years-ago any less horribly obsessive than her writing my name

across her tits and sending them to me without any provocation?

Is my raging at people who believe in even the least dogmatic of

deities any different than her raging at people for eating eggs?

Girls.

They reflect us with an emotional rawness that we could

never muster. They show us our every insecurity, magnified by an

order of magnitude. They are us better than we are ourselves.

That’s why we hate them. That’s why we love them.

That’s why Muslims put drapes over them. That’s why we

subtly encourage them to wear as little as possible.

Girls.

Damned elusive beasts of our hearts.30

30 If you’re a girl who just so happens to not be a lesbian, this chapter doesn’t really

speak to you, does it? It speaks about you, and it speaks about you as though you’re

not here. That has to be someone disconcerting. I apologize for that. You can have

free sex with me as a consolation if you present this book to me with this footnote

hi-lighted.

Similarly, if you’re a gay guy who couldn’t give a fuck less about girls and their

mysteries, I apologize for writing an utterly inaccessible chapter. You can have free

gay sex with me as a consolation if you present this book to me with this footnote

hi-lighted.

Free and Dumb

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of

religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the

freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people

peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a

redress of grievances.

Today I saw a story on the news about a 15-year-old girl arrested

for child pornography because she took nude pictures
of herself31
.

In other words, the government of this country has boldly

declared, yet again, that we belong to them. Our bodies are not

our own to do with what we please—they are fodder for Uncle

Sam’s meat grinder.

We call this a free country, but everything about this

country is designed to stifle freedom. Now, many conservative

rednecks like the ones I live around will tell you, “Yeah, well you

try protesting in the streets in China and then you’ll be grateful

for the freedom you got here.”

That’s right. According to every redneck I’ve ever gotten

into an argument with, America is a free country because we’re

more free than countries like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

That’s like saying that McDonalds serves healthy food because it’s

not as bad for you as getting shot in the face. I like to ask these

rednecks (who are by no means inherently stupid people, by the

31 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,434645,00.html

way) if they’ve ever tried to protest here in America. Most say that

they haven’t. I ask them why. They say because they don’t think it

would change things.

Which leads me to the question that not one of them can

answer sufficiently: If protesting can’t change things, then why

does the right to protest matter?

Of course, in America we have such a thing as Free Speech

Zones,32 which are specific places set up where protestors are

allowed to demonstrate against any given thing. What’s the point

of a right to protest if you can’t protest where those whose actions

you are protesting can see and hear you? And does not the first

Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America

that every government official is sworn to uphold state that all of

America is a “Free Speech Zone”?

Anyone who has ever filed a Demonstration Permit—
the

very concept of which makes me sick
—and seen it rejected can

tell you all about your right to protest. Ask the people who

protested the WTO in Seattle (it doesn’t matter here if you agree

with their paranoid fear of multinational conglomerates or not)

how they feel about the state of their right to protest. Getting

sprayed with hoses, shot with rubber bullets and tear-gassed by

police in full battle regalia tends to diminish one’s ideas about any

sort of right to protest in America.

Exactly what freedoms do you think you have, America?

The freedom to timidly voice a complaint with the way things are

32 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zones

going? The freedom to pay less in taxes than most European

countries, perhaps? Take my hand for a moment (it’s okay, I use

sanitizer) and follow me down this road.

Poll after poll has shown the Americans of all political

stripes overwhelmingly favor some form of Universal

Healthcare33, yet to watch the news you would imagine that the

country was fiercely divided on this issue (and if you watch Fox

News you’d get the impression that only hardcore socialists would

even suggest such a thing). Does the government say, “Wow, look

at those polls! We better get on this problem right away!”?

No.

Instead our representatives (HA!) say, “Wow, the private

insurance industry sure is giving us a lot of money. I guess we can

tell 70 to 80% of people that it’s just not feasible and that they’re

unpatriotic for wanting it.”

Here’s just how stupid and controllable the electorate is:

just today I overheard a redneck saying that the Democrats

removed the word God from a WWII memorial. It was an excerpt

from Roosevelt’s speech following the attack on Pearl Harbor,

and it was removed by the Godless Democrats who want to write

God out of history. This set my bullshit detector off immediately

and I did some research. I found that, yes, God was mentioned in

Roosevelt’s speech. However, the excerpt found on the memorial

in question NEVER included anything about God. The

aforementioned redneck was complaining that God was nowhere

33 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/01/opinion/polls/main2528357.shtml