Pride and Prejudice (and Jesses)

If you've spent any amount of time on the Internet, you've either participated in, or at least been an uncomfortable witness to, unwinnable arguments with mindless bigots. Mindless prejudice is, after all, among the many things the web has greatly simplified. Never before has it been easier to anonymously tell the world about how whichever minority/religion/gender/sexual orientation/phase of the moon is destroying the world! And, if you've spent any amount of time on the Internet, undoubtedly you've noticed that these arguments are unwinnable because every mindless bigot in the universe has the same irrefutable argument against anyone who might question their prejudices.

"You people are all awful awful hypocrites because you're prejudiced against people with prejudices!"

Wait, did I say "irrefutable"? Of course, I meant "completely invalid and illogical and silly". It's like criticising someone who's being shot at for fighting back against their attacker because it makes them every bit as violent and immoral.

They're sort of right about one thing, though. We ARE all hypocrites. We may not be racists, or sexists, or homophobes - the really nasty sorts of prejudices that will cause the world to crumble - but there's still not an individual among us who hasn't found a reason to look down upon some arbitrary grouping of people out there. As a species who still haven't managed to evolve past the life-or-death competition of our tribal days, people love to find people that they just do not approve of in any way, usually without even realising they're doing so! Let's take a look at what we, as a society, still see fit to hate people for:

• Weight. Everyone who's ever paid attention to comedy knows that overweight folks are one group that everyone still has free reign to poke fun at with no real consequence, for some reason! I don't approve of it, but the general public seems willing to accept it, even in a country with as many big-boned people as we've amassed. People, of course, justify this one by saying it's okay because they did it to themselves, and they could easily lose the weight at any time by going on a diet. Skinny people helpfully offer this advice, as though overweight people have never heard of the concept of dieting. Perhaps they even expect to be thanked for offering up this nugget of advice, compressed into one sentence and disregarding the fact that it's not simple at all but, in fact, involves a ton of work! And, well, can we really entirely blame overweight people for being overweight now that we live in a country where the government itself has decided that pizza counts as a vegetable?
• Intelligence. At one point, intelligence was something to be proud of. Mankind was wowed by the many wonders that scientific progress brought us, just as we were entertained by the work of brilliant poets, playwrights, and composers. We were eager to have the world around us illuminated in whichever way possible. Fast-forward to the twenty-first century, where this ill-defined "Middle America" (not to be confused with Central America, which is filled with people that Middle Americans don't much care for) has apparently determined that we've advanced as far as we possibly can so why bother, and if you still want to learn any more, then you're just some sort of horrible elitist. Learn too much in today's world, and you'll find tons of people ready to disregard anything you say because, hey, what right does some pansy college boy have to tell me anything? The ever-widening divide between reason and "tradition" has resulted in a nation less similar to the Thomas Edison who was fascinated with the infinite possibilities of the magical process of invention, and more similar to the Thomas Edison who electrocuted elephants out of petty jealousy because he wanted to win an argument. As basic questions of biology and of basic freedom of expression increasingly become treated as political issues for some reason, being someone who actually knows stuff and stuff will be looked down upon more and more, by roughly half of the country. (Perhaps it's slightly comforting that this is happening in parallel with the gradually increasing acceptance of geek culture for the other half...but not much.)
• Christianity. This is, like, the weirdest double-standard ever, and one that I confess I'm guilty of from time to time. The more liberal among us will always jump to the defence of Jews and Muslims when someone says something particularly offensive about their respective religions, for instance, because it's obvious to anyone with a brain that disparaging entire religions, and anyone who happens to follow them, is just wrong. So, then, why do some of these same people with brains think it's just peachy to do the exact same thing with Christians? I totally understand possessing a distrust of organised religion - as with any other type of organisation in existence, no church out there is free of corruption. It only takes one bad apple to start a fruit-rotting epidemic. But, clearly, there's a line being crossed when that distrust of a central organisation extends to casting a broad net of distaste for literally anyone who happens to believe in their religion. Some atheists out there talk about Christians as though every last one of them is a horrible vicious little monster. They're horrible vicious little monsters because they're so prone to intolerance, we're told by groups of people who don't tolerate them. After all, why else would some of them skew so very conservative? It couldn't possibly be because ultraconservative politicians are the only ones who don't spend their time talking down to them, could it? Wait, that actually makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Just like literally any other group of people in existence, surely these conservative Christians are far more likely to buy into what you're saying when you're not interspersing your spiel with explanations of why they're just so, so stupid! The moral, of course, is that intolerance is a two-way street. And speaking of two-way streets of intolerance...
• Political beliefs that differ from your own. After all, everyone knows that Republicans are all fat sweaty old white guys who love oil but hate women and minorities because they know that Jesus wants them to kill everyone who isn't a fetus in His name! And everyone knows that Democrats are all godless acid-loving hippies who dabble in homosexual witchcraft when they're not paying for recreational abortions with their welfare money! But sometimes that's just too much of a mouthful, so as a sort of convenient political shorthand, each side will save time and energy by just referring to the opposition by the codename "Hitler". You've really gotta envy ol' Adolf, he's more chic in the 21st century than ever before!
• Unemployment in the face of a bleak economy. Important Wall Street executive-types like to challenge the Occupy Wall Street protesters with the eternal rallying cry of the ruling class: "Get a job, hippies!" (Well, okay, maybe they don't outright say "hippies", but I find it impossible not to mentally throw it in anyway.) Never mind the fact that their companies aren't hiring at all, because why waste money paying a few new workers when you can take what you'd otherwise have to use to pay their salaries, to add to your own? They disparage the lower classes for their ridiculous sense of entitlement, as though they themselves are not also acting entitled (in a way that is honestly far more harmful to far more people, at least on an individual basis). Like intolerance, entitlement is a two-way street, and with each passing day, it seems as though America careens further towards fully embracing the sort of outright class warfare that one would stereotypically associate more with those wacky Europeans and their wacky monarchies. (Sadly, we're lacking in someone Fryishly witty enough to satirize it.)
• Enjoying the consumption of marijuana on occasion. Picture, if you will, two people. One is an irredeemable alcoholic who stumbles home after a long night chugging cheap beer at the bar to punch his wife, to punish her for the horrific crime of being his wife. The other is a far more productive member of society, coming home after a day of menial office work to support his family, and treating himself to a glass of red wine with dinner, to calm his nerves and maybe take in some antioxidant goodness in the process. Your average person off the street will have no trouble whatsoever in seeing the difference between these people, even though they both like drinking. Even someone who doesn't drink will probably see no issue with the second guy, so long as he doesn't spill his wine on their furniture. And yet, if we change those examples up ever so slightly - maybe replace the first guy's beer with, let's say, crack, and the second guy's red wine with a little bit of cannabis - the general public will be far more willing to believe that they're both just lousy. Obviously the first guy's still terrible, but they'll also think it's shocking that the second guy, for example, "puts on a show of being a productive member of society, despite leading such a seedy double life". When we make these substitutions, lots of people will completely throw their sense of proportion out the window (much like how guy #1 has probably thrown his wife out a window at some point). It's especially puzzling when you consider that the people in the first example, correctly regarded as wildly different, are both consuming the same substance, which, y'know....isn't even true in the latter scenario.
• Being a "hipster", whatever that actually means by this point. Everywhere you go on the Internet, you'll hear someone whining about how, oh my god, hipsters are just the most obnoxious thing ever. This one's not really a big problem, seeing as it's just the epitome of whiny youngsters whining at each other with no real consequence. I only mention this one because it's so fucking weird. Here we have loads of people rallying against a group of people that they can't even really be bothered to clearly define. If you've ever worn a silly T-shirt, or a trucker cap, or any sort of hat that has been arbitrarily deemed to be obnoxious (note to the masses: if you find yourself getting upset at something as minor as the general style of hat someone chooses to wear, maybe you have too much fucking time on your hands); if you've ever watched something because it delights you in an ironic sort of way; if you're even so much as just a young person in general, there will someone out there who has decided on your behalf that you're a hipster, and therefore the scourge of civilised society! Here we have a term that, at some point, really ceased to mean anything at all, just becoming the latest catch-all term for people that people more curmudgeonly than yourself don't particularly care for. Hipsters are the Hitlers of the future, is what I'm getting at.

Of course, humans have an infinite capacity for petty disapproval, so it goes without saying that the list could go on and on. Feel free to share your own observations!