And, I would have thought that if anyone on this earth would agree with me that people with HIV should not reproduce without the use of said expensive retrovirals, it would have been a LiveJournal Childfree community. Of course, as I usually am with LiveJournal, I was mistaken.

Consider: If I knew I were HIV positive, and had unprotected sex with a woman without disclosing such, I have committed a crime. And every year, people are put in jail for assault with a deadly weapon for doing just that. But, if I am knowingly HIV positive, and attempt to have a child without the administration of retrovirals, and the child is infected, that is acceptable?

I think that, in not finding that acceptable, and contrary to the posts of the community that was having the discussion, I am… not a misogynistic ableist that doesn’t want women with illnesses to have the same rights as everyone else. While I certainly am not as much of a feminist or inclusionist as many people I know, I actually do not think I am a misogynist or ableist, believe it or not.

The crux of the argument is mostly as follows, and applies in general to a range of subjects, from HIV positive mothers, to abortion, to drug use, etc.:

“I request people respect my choices, therefore I must respect theirs. And when all is said and done, it’s none of my business who chooses to have a child. Their age, their gender, their sexuality, religion, medical history, etc are none of my business.

While it saddens me many women with incurable illnesses want to have children, and in many cases end up passing on tainted genes and genetic problems, it is none of my business. I made my choice to stop the buck here, to not pass on my crappy genes but I can’t force others to do the same.”

But… that’s a stupid choice… and a false dichotomy

When I first came into my political being, I deeply embraced my liberalism in general; anti-authoritarianism chiefly, and a maximization of rights, which took form in individual rights and collective rights. Or positive and negative freedoms, depending on what language you want to use. Anti-authoritarianism, for me, has always been fairly easy to define; if society can function absent [enter authoritarian institution here], than that institution is not needed. And political positions can thus be drawn.

However, as I’ve explored and discovered my liberalism, I’ve had harder and harder times balancing individual and collective rights, which has led to more acceptance of authoritarian positions. Some have been fairly easy. Does a person have a right to smoke cigarettes? Of course. Do I have a right to breathe clean air at a bar? Of course. Do smokers then have a right to smoke in a bar that non-smokers visit? It is not hard for me to say that, no, rights to clean air trump rights to an unhealthy habit that leads to lung cancer. Or, do I have a right to not wear a helmet on a motorcycle? Sure. Does society have a right to the work I will do , the taxes I will pay, the cures for cancer I may invent, and to NOT pay for my brain matter to be cleaned off the side of the road? Yes. Which takes precedence? Clearly, I think societies right to have me live trumps my right to die stupidly.

This, of course, is an authoritarian trap, and I fully admit that. I think that is bad. I feel it should be answered. Solved. But, I feel it is better than the alternative, when the alternative seems to be that one must accept allowing HIV positive mothers to have a 1 in 4 chance of them having a child with a death sentence at about 24 years. Which is the current life expectancy. And an expensive life expectancy. The highest rate of HIV infections comes from single African American women. Empirically, a single African American woman is not going to be in the highest income brackets. (And do not call me a racist sexist for pointing out that society is racist and sexist.)

So, frankly, I do not even feel that I have to explain why I do not think an HIV positive woman should have children without retrovirals. For reasons of empathy and compassion of the child with a 24 year death sentence, for reasons of seeing a terrible disease die out, for reasons of not inflicting additional economic disadvantages onto people already in poor economic disadvantages because of the cost of their own medications, it is self-evident.

So, as a liberal, for liberal reasons, I advocate taking away a smokers right to smoke in public. A motorcyclists right to drive without a helmet. An HIV positive woman’s right to have a child. And you can go on; I advocate making people pay taxes for roads they won’t use, making people pay taxes for roads they can’t use if they’re drunk, making people by car insurance and health insurance, making children go to public schools until they’re 18, where they will learn evolution. All of these deny individual rights in favor of either collective rights or the good of the original individual. All of these are inherently authoritarian.

All of these are cases where I or you DO NOT have to respect choices of others. Where there conditions ARE your business. Where you can force others to do the same as you would do.

Why?

Because we aren’t simply a collection of individuals, but a collection. With individuals. We establish governments. Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Governments that pass laws that say, for instance… you can’t bring a kid into this world only to die of AIDS 24 years later. You can’t give non-smokers at public bars lung cancer. You have to wear helmets. You have to buy insurance. You cannot buy or sell heroin.

In a way, I admire the person that wrote the quotation that spawned this. She is probably an exemplary Noble Savage in the tradition of Rousseau, and in a different society very very much unlike our own, she may be an iconic symbol of all we should live up to. But her time is not now. The social contract is signed and done, we all live in an organized society of laws and norms, and… and… and…

We don’t have to accept your immoral choices simple because we expect you to accept our moral choices.

I do not claim to respect your choices in exchange for you respecting mine. That is not the status quo. That is not the agreement we have reached.

I claim to seek out what is right and what is wrong, and allow you to seek out what is right and what is wrong. And we will have a civil public discourse to decide which if us is right. And then we will legislate accordingly.

And the legislation will be right more often than it will be wrong. And when it is wrong, it will more than likely eventually be improved.

And you will be compelled, for your own good and/or for society’s own good, to not smoke in public, to where helmets while driving, and to not have HIV infected babies.

(For god’s sake, just adopt!)

You, author of that original quotation, provide a false choice.

And, I cannot help but think two things: 1. my assertion that we will debate who is right and wrong, and legislate accordingly, is more right than her assertion that we will all respect all choices. 2. Wow, I’m really fucking authoritarian.

And being authoritarian, almost by default, almost by definition, is bad. But when the alternative is allowing mothers to have children with a 24 year time bomb in their bodies, people dying in car crashes that helmets where helmets would have allowed them to live, people being subjected to second hand smoke in bars, people not buying car and health insurance….

When that is the alternative… when that is so clearly the end result of a reductio ad absurdum argument, because, really, when those are the logical conclusions that your live-and-let-live philosophy brings you, you are oh so clearly wrong…

I feel less bad about my falling into this inherently-liberal authoritarian trap.

My final point is that, I think, Kantianism blunts most of this authoritarianism. When the sanctity and dignity of human life, not using humans as ends to means, honesty, and more are categorical imperatives, this authoritarianism within a liberal framework cannot lead to executing or imprisoning dissidents, labor camps, genocides, wars… all the things that authoritarianism has come to mean. It leads to universal health care and stern Surgeon General warnings on cigarettes.

Which, while not ideal… strikes me as acceptable.

So I just want to say a few facts. Facts, as in, these things are not in doubt in an intellectually honest discourse.

1. 91% of Canadians are happy with their health care.
2. A majority of Canadians want more government control of their health care.
3. Canada has: a. a higher life expectancy b. a lower infant mortality rate c. lower per-capita expenditure on health d. lower heath care costs as a percentage of GDP e. even managed to spend a lower percentage of government revenue on health care than the USA.
4. Canadians traveling to the US for medical care is extremely rare.
5. Americans traveling to Canada for cheaper prescription drugs is… less rare.
6. There are no lotteries for medical care in Canada.
7. Yes, there are wait lists. They are often short, and deal with only very specialized medical treatments. An exception is the barren, unpopulated areas of Northwestern Canada where doctor’s dont live. This is a problem of geography, and not government health care.
8. Medicare, a health care insurance program run by the US government, is more popular than private insurers.

Now that those FACTS about health care have been states, lets have an honest debate about a public option.

In the dream, she had started experimenting with weed, and was growing fond of it. So we went to the cliff, she lit up, and then offered me some, to which I said no. And then we began to have sex, which was in no way graphic. It is just a blank spot in the dream… not even fading to black, but fading to fading to black.

I think we started doing that every night, or every couple of nights on a regular basis. Which started to tempt me into drug use but I always said no, although i did make an ethical calculation that it would be alright to make concerted efforts to get a contact high.

Then, the dream kind of morphed. I think I woke up, and went back to sleep, and the dream only kind-of continued. But there was definite continuity. The grassy cliff morphed into a giant meadow with trees and cherry blossoms, and a giant temple very similiar to a temple that I had visited in Kyoto. Except, in the dream, it was referred to as Hiroshima.

Then one morning, very early in the morning, I was browsing /wg/. However, it was so incredibly early in the morning, that 4chan was undergoing a daily/weekly… rebooting of sorts. Like it was opening up for business for the day, and people were posting (but could not post pictures because of the reboot) and were waiting for it to start up again for the day.

I got this really great feeling of community and belonging because I got to see the reboot. And I realized… I live right next to a major city. So, still feeling the euphoria of community and belonging, I made a post saying that there should be a /wg/ gathering in Washington DC, at Hiroshima. And the thread took off, and everyone said it was a great idea.

And it was.

We all headed into DC, and there was a huge party and people ran around with banners and everything. It was a giant 4chan /wg/ fesitval (without trolls, newfags, memes, etc.)

I met up with a girl named Catherine (who I knew from my Japanese Club in high school and went to university with for a year)… who I believe was Katie from earlier in the dream… and we hung out.

Now, this is the LOL random part.

Suddently, I was Will Smith from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Not Will Smith the actor, but Will Smith the character. And I was with Carlton. And we were strolling around, and I was acting like a rich obnoxious but loveable and charming 90s kid. like Will Smith.

And I ended up being in some kind of tower, still at the /wg/ celebration and a woman came up to me, asking her to make her some iced tea, because I was apparentlty still a barista. I can’t escape Starbucks even in my dreams. And I do, and I make it, and give it to her.

She asked me if I had some kind of special ice to put in the drink. I don;t remember the word she used. I had never heard of it, asked what it was, and she said it was the latest rich person fad… it was ice somehow made with vaginas.

I still do not know.

Then I woke up for good.

(As random as this dream is, I can make sense of every aspect of it.. how every random aspect of the dream relates to real life over the last few days. A friend of mine is starting a cooking blog, where she attemps to recreate food found in anime, and was taking suggesstions fo what to cook. One of the suggestions was a local food in Hiroshima that I tried and hated. also, two nights ago, I was writing the story thing, and posting updates on a thread on /r9k/ and got really emotional replies: ‘Wow, this is exactly like my childhood’ or ‘Wow, I went through this exact phase’ and ‘Please keep writing… this is beautiful.’ I was shocked at how friendly and receptive 4chan was. And a friend of mine was offered shrooms a few nights ago, and her and her friends have been debating if they should take them, so I spent a good portion of the time before the dream debating drug usage.)

Knowing nothing of strategy, and with only a vague understanding of the rules, I see no problem playing Magic: The Gathering with a 5-color 150-card deck. Luckily, neither does he. We spend an inordinate amount of time trying to shuffle these monstrosities we call decks, and discussing house rules to try and mend our minimal understanding of tempo, card advantage, and mana curves. Unlimited land drops per turn, drawing extra cards to make up for drawing those boring land cards, damage being erased from creatures each turn so that we didn’t have to keep track of it (ends up, of course, that actually is the rule), and others. And we have no conception of the stack or LIFO, so everything is at sorcery speed.

We hear his parents go to bed, and so we tip-toe down the hall to refill our glasses with Pepsi. Obviously, my palate isn’t as refined as it could be, but the caffeine addiction has already long-since taken hold. Caffeine must flow. Especially if we’re going to stay up later than midnight. We pour, sip, and tip-toe back to his room under cover of darkness.

It’s not long before we double- and triple-stack creatures in rows four and five cards long. Dropping four land on your first turn helps bring out those Llanowar Elves, and an army of Scaled Wurms (the greatest card in the game when you’re a 12-year-old Timmy) quickly follow.

Brandon plays a Sandbar Crocodile, and we ponder out loud what ‘Phasing’ could mean. Again, we tip-toe into the den, where the family computer is located. Opening Netscape, we read the rules text for this strange contraption. Thinking about it now, I still don’t know what ‘Phasing’ does. Luckily, no one else does either.

Few have known a battle this epic since the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. Neither of us wanted to take a swing big enough to do damage because we didn’t want to be left open for a counter attack. And neither of us could be bothered to do the mental math to calculate what would be needed for a successful attack. Perhaps we had sorceries or enchantments powerful enough to tip the scales, but did we really know how to use them? Did we want to? We had this army of gigantic 7/7 creatures, and by God we were going to win with them.

We eventually decked ourselves, but we were old enough to laugh at such a farce of an outcome. In the final hour of the game, I honestly believe we both started rooting for it. A secret but deep seated schadenfreude, or perhaps just a love of the absurd.

2. Loneliness
I’m 13, perhaps, but time, and thus age, have little bearing here. The alarm clock radio plays quietly, and I can do nothing but stare at the dim green glow arching across the walls and ceiling. It is my only companion as it constantly tells me the answer to all of my queries; 1:17 AM. 1:17 AM. 1:17 AM. 1:18 AM.

I was gradually coming to accept the debilitating extent of my introversion, still horrified that the idyllic teenage high school years I was told about through television and books and movies would likely not come true for me when I finally entered through that hall of slightly-higher education. I was doomed to isolation, and it took me a while to let go of fantasies involving high school football games, dances, dates, and varsity jackets.

It was natural conclusion to attribute my lack of drowsiness to simple lethargy; I had few friends, few extracurricular activities, and few hobbies that didn’t include sitting in front of a television, computer, or book. If only I could wear myself out during the day, like normal people, with their friends and sports, I could sleep. Like normal people. But there is nothing I want to do during the day, and if insomnia be penance for my disposition, than I bitterly accept.

1:41 AM. And I think I’m the only person left alive in the universe. Call me George Berkeley.

I roll and twist and contort and bend and flex and stretch in an amusing assortment of shapes, trying to get comfortable in a shifting waterbed. Or to wear myself out. The radio continues playing, and I incidentally further develop my love for rock music. Because there is nothing else to do.

So, I sit, and think, and listen, and think, and wait, and ponder, and think, and contort, and listen to music. 2:38 AM. Because there is nothing else.

But, to be perfectly honest, every night, I’d expect this phase to end. But, almost a decade later, I still pay this pound of flesh.

3. Interconnectedness
I’m 16 now, and, and I’m set in my summer routine. My room is scorching hot from the same heated water bed, the 90 degree weather outside, a bulky desktop running 20 hours a day, and my stereo playing AFI nonstop. It’s 12:30 AM, and there is nothing to keep me cool save for a dripping-wet half-full glass of Coke. A more refined palette, of course.

And I’m so awake. Life had been nothing but sleepwalking until this baptism.

My eyes are permanently bloodshot from sitting nine inches away from my monitor, and my wrists show the classic signs of carpal tunnel syndrome. But the body is a mere vessel of the mind, and the mind is simultaneously connected to millions of other minds over a 56k modem and a 266 MHz processor that is most assuredly hotter than I am.

Must watch the uncut, uncensored airing of Gundam Wing tonight. Must write a reply for Alleria.

My keyboard, dull grey and loud, is an extension of my body; my fingertips are home keys and I sometimes forget that there is a world beyond, in front of, and around my monitor. I am one with a greater universe.

A quick visit to a few websites, and then settle into the task of writing. I’m a dwarf bearing a flail (which is not a mace, nor is it a morning star), marching in an army towards sure glory and death. We sing songs of gay merriment, testaments to feudal fidelity, steal sips of flasked firewater, and march.

But I’m also a moderator for this battle, and I argue with others about how big such an army can be. How can we support it? Feed it? How fast can they march, and how healthy will they be when they arrive? How many caravans will we need in order to keep up proper supplies? Food, fatigue, and fear. All factors to take into account as we write novels of hypotheticals, questions, responses. Post an action, moderate, post a response. Roleplaying at its finest, and, in all honestly, no roleplaying game matched the talent and creativity of Alleria. I dedicated several years of my life to the game as a player and as a game master.

I do take frequent breaks in order to concentrate on the Midnight Run. The idea fascinated me; the forbidden allure of watching anime late at night was irresistible. I knew, somewhere in my suppressed unconscious that uncensored really only meant that characters would say hell or damn, or cough up blood on occasion, but I was convinced that there was more to be had. Real violence, or sex, perhaps. I just had to watch. And despite the lack of anything spectacular, I was never disappointed.

I move gracefully from the waterbed as to not disturb my parents, and back to my internet outpost. The stereo at its lowest volume, the television on, but muted for some ambient light, and the hum of my desktop’s fans. A wonderful convergence of quiet sound and dim light and soft heat, like Thanatos has lead me back in the womb and I am where I belong, and no sun heralding a new day can take that away from me.

I have things to write, things to read. People to converse with. Things to do. I’m still incredibly hot, and I’m low on Coke, but I’m alive.

Now, do not get me wrong. I have a pretty low regard for the average human intellegence, but even I think that most people can hold two thoughts in their head simultaneously.

Those two thoughts being:
1. Michael Jackson was a creepy, surgery-addicted possible pedophile that let his grasp on reality slip away and ruin the end of his career, his reputation, and his finances,

and

2. Michael Jackson is one of the best musicians in a generation.

No one forgot anything, and no one is suddenly remembering anything. Both of those statements are both undeniably true, and, in light of Michael Jackson’s death, one is suddenly much more relevant than the other. And trying to construe something to that affect is nothing short of shallow elitism. “Everyone only focused on how weird Michael Jackson was, while I only remembered him for his music. Shame on you latecomers to the MJ train!”

For my own part, the first item of music I ever owned was a cassette tape of Thriller.

In conversation, its easier to just say I prefer my Western civilization, with its individual rights and liberties, equality for women and minorities (if oft only lip service), rule of law, etc. than an Islamic civilization, and so I do. But, in reality, what I am saying is that I support logic, which supports the notion of rights, liberties, equality, and laws, and that Western civilization embodies them more than any other civilization.

I grant that it may just be semantics, but I do not feel that it is. I think that it is an important matter of causality.

That said, even within my sphere of moral absolutism, I disagree with most absolutists. Most moral absolutists are religious, and base their beliefs upon the idea of holy books and prophets, who lectured followers on how to properly behave. My main fault with this–with deriving morals from religion–is the non-universal nature of religious teachings. If there is a God (certainly a big ‘if’), it must absolutely follow that how to please him is universally known. If we define pleasing him as ‘doing good’ (as opposed to sacrificing goats… an ‘if’ of course, but I do not think a very big one), how can it be that religious specifics are required to do that? If I am an impoverished, illiterate subsistence farmer in Senegal in the year 2009, how can it be that I am expected to know that a carpenter in Israel 2,000 years ago preached the proper life, was the son of God, was executed by a now-extinct empire to make up for my sins, and was resurrected? Or, an impoverished, illiterate subsistence farmer in present-day Senegal in the year 19, making him a contemporary of Jesus?

If there is a God, and if he wants to be pleased, and pleasing him is the same as doing good*, than how dare he handicap–nay! withhold entire cultures and civilizations and time periods the ability to properly do it. To say that a man born in a time and place where the One True Religion is dominant, where belief in the importance of the lectures of an excuted carpenter in Israel are commonly held, will be more able to please God (and, in most cases, be rewarded in an afterlife) than someone born in a time or place where that belief is not commonly held is absurd.

Therefore, even if Christianity defeats Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism as the One True Religion, it is impossible for pleasing God, doing good, acting in a moral way, to be intertwined with knowing the specifics of the life and teachings of Jesus.

Or Mohammad. Or Moses. Or Zoroaster.

What, then, is a universal method for determining morality? What is universal to all of humankind, and not dependent on history, experiences, background, or the like? What is a synthetic a priori way of extracting morality?

Logic, generally. The Categorical Imperative, specifically.

*If there is not a God, then religious moral absolutism fails automatically on that level. If he does not want to be pleased, than religious moral absolutism again fails because God ceases to be a relevant factor in deciding morality. If pleasing God means something other than doing good on a secular level, where good is doing something other than what benefits men as men, than God himself must be the benefactor and thus has needs which he himself needs to be filled, and falls victim to an early trap of Socrates used against Euthyphro, where a God with such needs is no God. What does God need with a Starship? I believe that only leaves, for the religious moral absolutist, a God which seeks men to do good for the sake of other men.

Or:

If no God, then religion is wrong.
If no God which cares about human actions, than religion is wrong and/or irrelevant.
If a God which has metaphysical requirements of men, then no God.
Therefore, if a God, he wants us to act in a moral, humanistic fashion.

“And opening up a whole other can of worms…there are no moral societies, at least what you perceive to be a moral society. What is moral to Americans today, was not moral to Americans when this country was founded.

Morality, like laws, changes over time to reflect the society at hand. Not to mention, morals are a personal quality…but like I said that is a whole other can of worms that I don’t wish to open.”

I find this offensively stupid.

First, to a moral relativist as the original writer says he is, I recommend telling a woman about to be stoned to death in Saudi Arabia for being a rape victim that there are no (relativistic) moral societies. Societies based on morals are everywhere. I am somewhat curious as to what societies he would list as not being based in some moral thought, often (but not always) among religious lines.

I, of course, am a moral absolutist.

I think that people that know me well know of my moral absolutism; that there are timeless and universal moral truths that are logically attainable to people regardless of time, culture, and circumstance. And what was moral for one person 10,000 years ago will be equally moral to different person 10,000 years from now. These morals are best understood in terms of Kant’s Categorical Imperatives, which he summarized in three ways. The first two formulations, which are more accessible to the non-Kantian are: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” and “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end.”

To argue moral relativism leads to several conclusions. Among these are, one, that there is a final, if limited in time or geography, decider what is and is not moral, be that on personal or societal level. And that, at some level, people or things can change what proper actions should be taken in specific situations.

I also seem to remember Socrates and Euthyphro discussing something similar. Something about whether a thing was moral because it was chosen by said decider-of-morals as moral, or whether a thing was moral and said decider-of-morals simply acknowledged that fact?

With regards to a personal level of moral code, that people are responsible for deciding their own morality, it means that all people are individually charged with developing and acting on personalized codes of moral conduct, that all six billion of these codes of conduct are equally legitimate, and thus, that all people must respect all other people’s personal codes. Because who is to judge one code as being superior to another? The ramifications of this are staggering, especially with regards to ‘justified’ murder, for instance. And do not think there are not (a very small) amount of utilitarians out their willing to make that argument. On a larger level, genocide could be defended on a moral basis, again by said utilitarians, as anyone with a policy debate background can attest to.

For a societal level of moral conduct, perhaps governments and their laws are the ultimate decider? Or societal norms? The reductio ad absurdum argument to the notion that we should equate ever changing laws (say, global execution laws) with codes of moral actions write themselves. One needs only to list the hundreds or thousands of absurd, contradicting, antiquated, and repugnant laws across the globe and equate them with morality to see the flaw. And societal norms often fall to the exact same arguments. Slavery was the de jure and de facto truth in the United States (and not just the South) for over two hundred years. Do we thus give a pass to generations of slaveholders for perpetuating the buying and selling of human beings as a commodity, or do we accept the culture and laws they grew up in as excusing their behavior?

The logic behind not buying and selling human beings was true then as it is today. Human beings were born free then as they are today. Their legal and social norms excuse nothing.

What I do believe in, however, is the growth of the human mind and the mental capacity to deduce moral truths. While morals do not change, our understanding and interpretations of moral truths do change and evolve. And that is more than semantics. Kant himself cited the death penalty as a moral imperative, although I refuse to believe he would say as much today. Ritualized murder, rape, dietary laws, slavery, etc. were society’s interpretations of moral laws. The Torah states the moral fact that thou shalt not kill, but still people were executed. This does not justify or do away with the immoral acts of times passed (or times current), but it does explain them. And I think that the way in which we look at Leviticus today, as being outdated, barbaric, and cruel, will be the same way people 3,000 years from now will look at, say, the Constitution. 3/5ths of a person? Really now?

Because there is a dialectic in human nature, progressing us ever and ever closer towards…. freedom, I believe. Or autonomy, as Hegel would describe it. Towards science and technology, away from charismatic, personal, and intervening gods, towards fraternity and egalitarianism, away from bigotry and divisions, towards forgiveness, ad away from retribution.

Towards the Form of the Good, I suppose.

2. There are two many championships. Manchester United, for instance, plays to win the English Premier League, the Football Association Cup, and the UEFA Championship. Barcelona has the La Liga, Copa del Rey, UEFA Championship; it happens to hold all three at the moment. Aside from that, individual players also have their national teams, which includes the World Cup, the Olympics, and possibly even more.

I don’t know how the players, teams, and organizers keep up with all of it. I suppose it is kind of impressive.

3. If I hear one more angelic choir exclaim ‘Champions’, I’m going to shank somebody. Probably that chav Wayne Rooney. It’s not just that they happen all the time, its that they happen all the time AND in rapid succession. A UEFA commercial, followed by a Heineken commercial, followed by a UEFA commercial. All of which under 10 seconds long.

4. Related, I think, to the angelic choir, is the language used by people describing soccer. Nothing about soccer is brilliant, fluent, sublime, bewitching, or mesmerising [sic, stupid British English], just to name the adjectives used in the first half of the ESPN report on the match. Likewise, the words beautiful, poetic, and elegant are highly overused.

5. Everything I wrote after watching the 2006 World Cup remains true. I’ve included it below the fold.

I want to write a non-troll, honest assessment of why I, and probably most Americans, hate soccer. Ya know, to try and enlighten the Europeans here.

So… here we go.

The lack of strategy and accuracy probably bothers me the most. Football is, in many ways, a game of inches; whether the left toe of the wide receiver managed to touch down in bounds on the sidelines, or if the tip of a football cracked the goal line, or if the quarterback’s arm was moving forward or simply up when the ball left is hands are the subject of 2-minute replays to determine near-exacting accuracy. Passes are threaded through the arms of one defender, above the arms of another leaping defender, and into the awaiting hands of a wide receiver that is parallel to the ground after leaping forward to 10 feet to catch it. It’s exacting, meticulous, and… accurate. Soccer, on the other hand, seems to be little more than lobbing soccer balls deep down field and hoping a lone forward can run under it (note the difference: the quarterback passes to the receiver, while the attacker runs to the pass), and make magic happen while usually outnumbered 2-1 or 3-1. So much of the game seems to be just that– one side kicks it to the other side, hope their hopelessly outnumbered designated goalscorer can work magic, and, when said scorer fails to make magic, the other teams aimlessly lobs it to the other side. Rinse, repeat, recycle. Nothing happens until all the defenders happen to trip over their own feet, fall away from the ball while the goalkeeper is taking a cigarette break, and somehow the ball manages to roll into the net.

And this is despite the goals themselves being ridiculously huge, seemingly 10 feet high and 25 feet long. But still, so-called goal scorers can’t get the ball in such a huge target more than once a game (compare basketball teams putting a ball with a 9.5 inch diameter into an 18 inch hoop perhaps upwards of 50 times a game). And it’s not just that they miss, its that they miss wide. Beckham’s free kick doesn’t ‘bend’, and instead travels 50 feet into over the net, into the stands.

And so, soccer players never score. I invest 90+ minutes of my time to watching people kick a ball around a field, and the raison d’etre of sports, scoring, happens… maybe twice? Even shots are rare, and are cause of a moral boost and celebration. “He shoots! He… misses the crossbar by probably 15 meters. But still, what a nice break by the striker! Maybe in 45 more minutes, they’ll have another chance to connect on that pass again for another chance.”

And what happens? 45 minutes later, they connect on that pass again. except this time, they score! “Oh shit, son! They scored! GOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! OLE OLE OLE OLE OLEEEEE… Er, lol, j/k. Someone somewhere was offsides. Still 0-0.” What the fuck?

What is the predictable end result? Aside from a riot, the gamed ends 0-0. 90 minutes of your life, plus injury time, and nothing is actually settled. Somehow, you’ve invented a sport where, on average, both teams manage to lose. People run, people kick, people sometimes even shoot, one team may have even dominated, but with the help of a good goalkeeper and a few of those mysterious female-orgasm-esque offsides, nothing is actually resolved. Game over, go home, riot a bit, and get ready for the next offensive shootout.

Except, most of the players don’t even actually run most of the time. If they aren’t directly involved with the ball, they leisurely walk or jog around the field, around defenders, and wait for something to happen. That is how slow and boring the game of soccer usually is.

I think one of the things that makes me, not dislike, but disrespect soccer and its players the most is seeing people fall to draw cards. Doctors in hospitals should carry around yellow cards in their pockets.

“Oh noes, I have cancer. I am dying. Doctor, do you see this!” *writhes in agony*
“Yes, I see it. Yellow card. Free kick.”
“I am magically cured!”

Because that happens every five minutes.

I mean, the players embarrass themselves. Most soccer fans I know even admit they’re ashamed of it. In football, something like that simply isn’t tolerated–a player that faked an injury like that would be laughed off the field. In fact, they are. Kickers and punters (the only players to do this) regularly fall over backwards, trying to draw a roughing the kicker flag, and they’re ridiculed for it, and are also the most expendable players on the team. Same happens in basketball; some players have reputations for falling, trying to draw fouls, and they’re ridiculed, and rarely even make teams. Unless they’re great players, then basketball does admittedly tolerate it, and referees do admittedly encourage it. But not the fans.

In 2006, I watched pretty much every World Cup match I could find on ESPN (I also caught a few Euro2008 games and some Olympic games recently). The single event that most struck me was seeing how a lot of people cheered for what Zidane did in the 2006 Final. In Football, he wouldn’t have left the field alive; his own fans would have stormed the field and murdered him for throwing their team under the bus in a selfish act of vengeance. Seriously. To be the best player on your team, at the end of the ultimate game of your sport, and to let anger get in the way of victory, and get ejected… fuck no. If it’s the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl, and Tom Brady lost his cool, and got ejected in a fight, he would be cut from the team before the next play. And no team would give him a second chance. Because you can’t put your feelings or pride ahead of the team and victory.

tl;dr: Soccer sucks, Football is superior.