Selective Service

I'm overdue registering for the draft, and I've started receiving letters.  Well that's fantastic.  The draft is by far the stupidest, most outdated, least logical, most unethical government program currently active.  How can I say that?  Well, examine it, shall we?

THEN WHY DO YOU HAVE THE OPTION, YOU IDIOTS?

Problem number one: it's sexist.  This is part of to what I'm referring when I say it's outdated.  It is not something made with a modern mentality, it is something written decades ago and never revised.  Women are perfectly capable of serving in the military.  In fact, recently they were permitted to serve on the front lines, and I think it's pretty ridiculous that it took them until 2012 to do that.  Moving on, the problem persists in that only men are required to register for the selective service.

In fact, it's not made with a mentality fitting of a few decades ago, either.  It's made with ethics more fitting to the Roman Empire or an ancient Greek city-state.  It's acting as if there is no greater contribution one can make than to serve your country in combat.  While I do respect our soldiers, I politely disagree on the grounds that war is not good.  I might hazard to say it's a little bad.  Programs that encourage war would, by association, be less than optimal.

Frankly, it doesn't matter whether or not you agree, because I have my opinion.  If my opinion is that war is rarely if ever justified, and I am being forced to serve in the military, then my right to my opinion has been violated.

The military is an enticing package.  Scholarships, legs up in employment searches, decent pay (I said decent, not great, they're still underpaid for what they do).  Believe me, if there was anyone who would be "just okay" with joining the armed forces, if there was anyone with little enough reason to resist that they wouldn't mind a sudden mandate for them to do so, they would have already enlisted.  Just about everyone else would be doing so against their will.  Not everyone, of course, but I'm going to say at least a good-sized chunk of the people who are registered for the draft would have a problem with being drafted.

Then they have the gall to say "current law does not permit females to register".  Permit?  PERMIT?  Let us get one thing straight, this is not a privilege, this is a demand.  This is reducing our liberties.  That is just nauseating, that they would say "permit", as if this is some grand glorious right that we males are lucky enough to receive from our benevolent leaders.  I have received letters ordering me to register.  Golly gee, I hope they let me.

Oh yes, I'd hate for anyone not legitimately in America to take away my hard-earned right to unwillingly serve an entity I oppose.

Let me make another thing abundantly clear: I don't love this country.  Why should I?  Yes, it's better than a lot of places; I could have been born into far worse circumstances.  However, the United States is not the pinnacle of all that is good and right with the world, and it hasn't been for a very long time.  "The Land of Opportunity" and "The Home of the Free" are borne from a time when the US was the only developed country not run by a monarchy.  Nowadays, our monopoly on democracy is a bit less absolute.  Further, America is one of the worse democracies available.  What do we have that's so great?  A system of election that's broken almost beyond repair from political parties, the spoils system, and rigidness?  Citizens too stupid, stubborn, and/or apathetic to work towards fixing it?  Public school systems so bad they're an active detriment to their students half the time?  Corrupt businesses satisfied with making the American Dream a fairy tale?  You're lucky I'm not actively fighting against you!

I'm not trying to blame Obama or Bush or Clinton.  I do blame Bush Sr. and Reagan a little bit, but not really.  Nor am I trying to blame any of the presidents before them.  This was a gradual problem centuries in the making.  While "The Founding Fathers Wanted" is an idiotic argument, I do feel the need to point out that the Constitution was mutable for the very purpose that they recognized they weren't perfect, and they wanted the government to be able to change to fit the needs of the people or to be able to incorporate new ideas that would improve it.  We have not acted on that.

I'm actually a little more lenient with countries that have obligatory military service, like Israel.  In that case, you know it's coming, you're signed up for it.  I still think the government is spitting in the face of its citizens, but it's a little better than being given a packet of spittle and being told to hold onto it and apply to the eye when instructed.

June 25, 1993.  I'm eighteen, like everyone required to register.  This of course means I am seven years too young to be elected to the House of Representatives and twelve years too young to be elected to the Senate.  Wonderful.  This also means that everyone who might be able to argue on the topic will be entirely unaffected by it.  That will work, we've seen how quickly they passed women's suffrage.  At least it's better than the first several decades of the draft, when the average soldier in Vietnam was two years short of being able to vote.  But of course, that's a matter of maturity.  How can we count on someone so young to make important decisions, or be intelligent enough to study the important issues that rule political discussion?  Not to mention they're young, we don't want to put too much pressure on them.  Much better to give them a gun, ship them off somewhere they've never been, and order them to kill people they don't know.  Much better indeed.

See, the government actually bankrolled an argument against their own policies.

Yes, eighteen is quite young.  As I pointed out, they are twelve years too young to run for the Senate.  They are 60% of the age needed to run for the Senate.  They will not be able to drink for three more years, or rent a car for seven.  Many of them are still in high school.  Does no one else see anything wrong with this being our drawing pool?  "But it's still the best age available!" some may say, but if the "best age available" is still an absolutely horrible age at which to be drafting people, then it seems pretty obvious there is no age when drafting is appropriate.

Here's the complete form.  As you can see, there is no "conscientious objector" checkmark, no "opt out".  You're eighteen, you're a guy, sign the form.

Really, we could pay for a lot of our underfunded programs by cutting money from the military.  We have no real reason to be involved in so many international affairs, much less militarily so.  As we've seen over and over again, getting involved with other countries ends badly for us, and we go bankrupt in the process.  That's why the other countries are beating us.  That's why they have things like universal wi-fi, high-speed rail, and decent education systems.  They aren't wasting trillions of dollars screwing themselves over.

Honestly, I'm not even concerned about myself.  I'm not a healthy person; I'm sure I've got something or other that disqualifies me from serving.  I'm concerned about all those other men who are trapped in an unfair, outdated system.

I'm not registering.  Not only do my plans see me living outside the United States anyway, but I would rather serve five years in jail than support this program.

Signs and rules

I'm a moral relativist.  Ethically, I'm a utilitarian, and to that end I have a very strong tendency to go for the flexible, spirit-of-the-law, ox-in-the-mire, exception-to-every-rule, highest-respect-for-the-law policy of enforcement.

The exception, and it's a huge exception, is the laws of transit, to which I am a stickling moral absolutist.  This is because, as far as I can tell, the laws in place are set up almost perfectly to ensure that transportation is safe and fair.

"But what if I'm running late?"  Then you should have left sooner.  That extra fifteen kilometers per hour is not going to make a difference, and you'll just be stopped at the same red light as the people going the speed limit anyway.  If not, you've just saved about thirty seconds.  Thirty seconds and about fifteen meters of stopping space.  Most of the time, I'm a cyclist, and I can tell you, you're a dick.  I'm basing this on the "mean to the waiter" theory of human behavior--if a person is nice to his or her date but mean to the waiter, he or she is not a nice person.  You may be a loving mother of three who donates to charity, but if you drive like a dick, I have very strong evidence you're a dick.

That's not even the stupidest thing drivers do.  Now, I'm prone to exaggeration, but when I say that since 2008 I have seen a grand total of twenty-four people make a complete stop behind the limit line before turning onto the main street, know that I am dead serious.  I don't believe there's any way they could simply not notice the limit line, because it's a huge white line, made with paint that includes flecks of metal to make it stand out under light, which is preceded by a two-meter long "STOP" also made of highly visible white paint on a black or dark gray background, accompanied by a STOP sign (which by the way is the only red sign and the only octagonal sign used in most of the world, meaning that an illiterate person could still recognize its meaning even if their vision was so bad they couldn't recognize either the color or the shape) and considering that under scientific study white on red draws attention more than most any other combination of colors, I can only assume they see the sign, the writing on the ground, and the line and decide, "Yes, I see these, and I know what they mean, but I'm going to ignore them, plus the fact that this is a T-intersection in most cases as well as ignoring the laws which enforce these signs and laws because..." and I'm sorry but I can't think of any way to finish that sentence, unless every driver I've ever seen is actively malicious.  I'd believe it.

And while it's not the subject of this rant, drivers seem to have a disturbing tendency to believe it's okay to specifically target cyclists for harassment.  So far I have seen people pull into the bike lane and start driving in it towards me for no discernible reason; I have been hit by four water balloons, a half-full soda, a chicken sandwich, and something round and hard wrapped in paper which I didn't bother to identify, all thrown from moving vehicles.  An almost weekly occurrence would be for someone to honk at me at full volume or perhaps roll down the window and scream as they passed me.  Why, I wonder?  I have not yet received an answer.

This problem, this blatant disregard of law and order, has only worsened here at BYU-H.  Again, I point out I'm not exaggerating; I have seen each and every posted rule violated within range of the sign.  On my way to the dining hall, I passed three "No Skateboarding on the Sidewalk" signs and six people skateboarding on the sidewalk.  I passed no people skateboarding in the street, where it is permitted.  In fact, it's become a rarity to see people riding their bikes, skateboarding, rollerblading, or what have you anywhere but the sidewalks.  I know they must be seeing the signs, and again ignoring them for no reason.

As I said, I'm a relativist, and I'd be willing to ignore this as long as these skateboarders (hundreds upon hundreds of them) were decent people about it.  They are not.  They seem unwilling to move even slightly when they are in people's way or when they are about to crash into them; worse, they get angry at the pedestrians.  I recall that only one of use is violating the rules.

I would, however, like to give props to the guy who figured out the loophole that unicycles are never prohibited on the sidewalk.  Well done, sir.

Moving on, every single posted sign has been violated at least once, usually more.
-"Please do not stack your cups!" on the dishes repository has been interpreted as "Come on, man, you can make it to twelve!"
-One young woman decided to overfill the waffle iron, add something other than waffle batter in the iron, and then remove her waffles with a metal instrument, thus breaking every rule of the waffle irons in the sequential order those rules were listed.  On a huge sign, dangling over the exact waffle iron she was using.  Well done.
-"Quiet hours are from 10:00 PM-7:00AM!"  Aaahahahahahaha.
-"Women are not permitted past this point."  To be fair, I'm not sure what I was expecting.  Maybe something like the vampires in Buffy.
-Not even the "Caution: Slippery when wet" sign is right.
It has gotten to the point where I oppose posting the Ten Commandments.  It's a religious school, I oppose it out of concern for my personal safety.

While there are exceptions to rules, of course, they're in place for a reason, and likewise exceptions have to be made for a reason.  Martin Luther King said that to break an unjust law represented the highest respect for the law, but somehow I doubt that crosswalk is infringing on your rights.