KONY 2012 is a scam

[Delphinus]

Oh look, another devil figure to direct irrational hatred at. Oh look, this one's brown as well. Oh look, he's not even a serious threat on the global scale. Oh look, by supporting this cause people can feel they're making a difference.

There's a whole essay about symbolic enemies waiting to happen here. There are millions of people like Kony in the world, and quite a few of them are busy running/ruining entire countries. Yet the most popular campaign is against someone who does direct harm to children. This doesn't reflect well on the WASPs who are supporting this rather than doing anything that might require any sort of evaluation of their own values and lifestyles. You know what? Who cares about Kony? There are an infinity of better problems to deal with, starting with obedience and conformity to accepted thought-patterns and including climate change. Did everyone forget about climate change? The thing where everyone dies? Oh yeah, we stopped caring as soon as the economic crash hit. How about accepting an illegitimate leader's authority? Everyone seems to be in favour of the rape of the US constitution and the laughable mess of UK democracy and the European Central Bank installing a leader to further their own agenda, right?

Kony is a huge deal, guys. The death of democracy and humanity to crass materialism is unimportant.

“This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”

[CypressDahlia]

But aren't guys like Kony like a picture perfect example of everything you've been complaining about in Psalm 14 for the past 4 years straight? I thought he, and organized religion, were the biggest threats to humanity.

Also I don't see how "lack of democracy" in the US/UK trumps heinous war crimes. I'm not saying Kony is an issue now. His relevance //today// is questionable, but c'mon now let's not overstate first world issues.

[Delphinus]

Let's not overstate first world issues.

Okay, because a dogmatic, corrupt, unrepresentative government has never been known to perpetrate atrocities against its own people.

Oh wait.

And the subjugation of humanity to systematic and unemotional rationalism has likewise never caused problems.

PS: Fyi my opinion on religion in general has changed recently; my opinion on some types of organised religion remains similar, though you picked the worst atheist on the forums to direct that remark at, given I'm a bit of an apologist and always have been. The Catholic conception of God is better than the Protestant conception; the Catholic church as an organisation is far worse than the Anglican church (the nearest thing to a unified Protestant sect).

[CypressDahlia]

You are weighing the act of detainment under suspicion versus the act of ruthlessly killing innocent civilians for no reason other than "God told me to". I understand what you're getting at and all but those issues aren't even in the same league.

Besides, McCarthyism is even less relevant than Kony, as of right now. If you wanna talk about corrupt governments, we should be looking at Syria, not the United-somethings.

EDIT: I should never type while laying down too many typos

[Sylux]

Why should we care about them? We have our own problems. I think that's what he's trying to say.

[CypressDahlia]

Well then he sure phrased it badly because he sounded like he was trying to out-prioritize issues based on severity.

And "Why should we care about them?" is kind of oxymoronic in a sense because you said "we". Under that logic, why should I care about "we'? Why should I care about anyone but myself? I have a hangnail, so I'd rather complain about that. By identifying as "we", you are suggesting that you sympathize for a group, so saying one shouldn't be sympathetic while making an inherently sympathetic statement is mehhhh~. The only thing you can really argue is priority, and, as I said, our issues aren't //that bad//.

[Sylux]

We, as in: First-world countries heading towards Fourth-world status.

[Delphinus]

Sylux has it. If corruption and such gets much worse in the first world you can kiss the idea of a first world goodbye and say hello to your nice new shanty house. Personally I'd rather expend my energy on not being subjugated under the iron fist of neoconservativism (and/or neo-marxism) than on fighting a useless and irrelevant battle. Kony is a symptom, not a cause.