10-23-07

I've made a post similar to this one before. On closer examination, you may ultimately decide I have nothing new to say here, at all. But I want to dedicate this rant to my favorite group of Republicans - the "Christians".

Maybe the quotations are not wholly deserved. Maybe, technically you guys are Christians, and it is those who lead you who are the "Christians". Maybe, but my take is that since the system of beliefs that you practice are so wholly anti-thetical to the beliefs that Christ endorsed, I can not in good faith sully his name and teachings by associating your behavior with them.

Let's get this out in the open. I am not your friend, politically. I could be your friend, on a personal level. I know many "Jesus" Freaks who are quality individuals with an earnest desire to do good. I'm not accusing you of being evil people - I'm accusing you of being mislead, without condoning your decision to follow.

But I don't agree with any of your political views. And neither does any somewhat influential member of our Party, deep down inside, no matter what he says or how he votes to protect his job security.

But here's the thing - neither do they. The difference between us and them is that we haven't been playing you for the last 30 years. Honestly, we never thought you'd be so dumb as to believe that crap. The Republicans, they did. "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." H.L. Mencken, I believe.

They don't believe anything they say - anything. They've been selling you the same turd for 30 years now, polishing it, and coming back next year with it again. "We're gonna overturn Roe v. Wade." (As if! What would they do if their teenage daughter got knocked up by the pool boy? You don't think they're gonna let Gustavo to marry into that family, do you? Ha!) "We're gonna put a stop to this gay marriage thing once and for all." (What a joke, gay marriage in New England and California would be the best thing for these people - they could use it as another way to demonize us.) "We're gonna restore Christian values to Congress." (What part of Christianity, I wonder, involves snorting drugs of a male prostitute's cock, cyberfucking - talking dirty over the internet, to the uninitiated - their 15 year-old-boy pages, fucking lady prostitutes in a goddam diaper, or tapping on the floor of the stall next to you so you can have some anonymous stranger come into your stall and rail you in the ass, and coming up with a fucking cop at the other end. And then trying to lie about it!!! The Democratic gays don't do that shit. Can you imagine Barney Frank fucking in a public men's room? If you can, that's one of us.)

Everything they've told you is a lie. And now, it's right there in the open. The Republican front runners include two candidates are out in the open pro-Choice, and the Mormon governor of Massachusetts who used to say he was Pro Choice but now he says he's against it.

Oh, and that heathen Mormon, he's the only candidate on his first wife. Do you know which Democratic front-runner is not on his/her first spouse? I'll give you a clue - none of them.

Look - this business about forming your own Party - do it. Hell, that proposal you made, about all moving to South Carolina or some shit and starting your own Republic - consider me your ally in this project. The internet roots are becoming the predominant force in the Democratic Party. Splinter yourselves from the Repubs, and we can work together to get all the Red Tape out of your way. Don't entangle yourselves with these hypocrites any longer. It's not doing your image any favors to continue to be snookered by them.

I read a survey recently (I can not recall when it was published; it may have been as long ago as 2004 or as recently as this year) that said that 55% of American adults believed that God created man, in his own image, exactly as he appears today. These people believe that the world is (according to which one you talk to) 6,000-10,000 years old. Some of them believe dinosaur bones are a hoax perpetrated on us by "Satan", others that dinsoaurs did exist, and in fact cohabitated peacefully with humans.

I want to ask that latter group of people something. If dinosaurs were around in the biblical era, if they truly roamed the Earth along with the world's first peoples, as you suggest, don't you think that the Bible surely would have mentioned them, SOMEWHERE? I mean, it's only the world's most perfect book, right? Written by God Almighty HimSelf (are you supposed to capitalize the H and the S in himself? I'm not entirely sure of the etiquitte you're supposed to use on deitetical pronouns... Deitetical? is that even a word?)? Don't you think that it seems a little bit odd that the world's most perfect book, the World of the Lord, didn't see it fit to mention that gigantic fucking lizards with razor-sharp teeth were roaming the countryside, brutally slaughtering and devouring anything hapless enough to come across its path?

These are the same people...the 55%, both the dinosaur believers and the hoaxheads, who wonder why our kids suck so badly at school. It's because of you, you idiots. You fill your kids' heads up with this preposterous nonsense, and tell them that their teachers in school are going to try and indoctrinate them against Jesus, but stay strong, and ignore what they tell you, it's all lies. So the little fuck-ups don't know any better, they ignore everything they're told in school, just like their parents told them to do, they fail all of their standardized tests, and then the parents scream, "see, I told y'all they aren't teaching any good in that there school up there; let's pull them out of that public hell-hole and send them to a place that will teach them about Jesus!" And then the little brats go to a school where all of the horrible shit their parents told them since they were a little baby gets reenforced. If the family can afford to save up enough to send this poor kid to college, it will be the only kind of college that would accept a kid as backwards as this - a degree mill that isn't even recognized by the academic community and that only serves to pump money into the wallets of the very successful con-men who are good enough at their craft of robbing old ladies of their prescription pill money to have enough capital to get one of these operations started, and then nobody but nobody will actually recognize this degree when they go job-hunting, so college was pretty much a waste anyway. And when the child "grows up" (physical maturation in the only aging process going on here, folks) he turns around and spews out the same shit at the poor little bastard who has the unfortunate fate of being this asshole's offspring. And the cycle continues - a perfect circle. In many ways, a perfect circle of perfect circles.

Let me ask the Christian believers out there another question. Does it bother you, deep down, to know that the true history of your religion is obvious to all but the least impartial of observers? Or have you successfully buried it under the sand, hoping it will never turn its ugly head again? What is he talking about, you're asking yourselves, trying desperately to cling to the belief that you have no idea what I am talking about. Like most of your beliefs, you cling to it the face of a mountain of evidence, out of sheer terror of what lies outside of the wall of lies you have fed yourself over the years.

What happened is that life was pretty well shit 2,000 years ago. There was no running water, no electricity, no iPods or HDTVs or even Harry Potter books to distract yourself. And, apparently, everyone who didn't live in Rome lived in the desert. People were bored pretty much of the time, and nothing on God's Green Earth is more capable of horrifying acts than a mass of people who are bored, with the possible exception of a mass of people who are afraid. So, people did what they do best: they killed each other. They killed each other for wealth, they killed each other for power, they killed each other in the name of their Emporers, and they killed each other sheerly for the entertainment of others. Then this guy comes along, this Jesus fellow. He goes around saying that people should be nice to each other. For the most part, he's ignored at first, but he assembles a following, not unlike Socrates did 400 years before him. But unlike Socrates, whose message of "what is wisdom?" was largely unappealing to the masses, mostly because existential debate is outside of the realm of concern for people who are trying to subsist on what they can provide for themselves on a daily basis, Jesus's message, "let's all be nice", was very appealing to the general population, probably because they were tired of being thrown into wars by their Emporers. If only the poor fools knew what was in store for their descendants because of this.

Then, when the Romans (not the Jews) executed Christ, shit really hit the fan. Now, Jesus was the original martyr. The angry populace, who could not see why their government would execute someone who's only alleged crime was going around teaching people to act civilized towards each other (the reason, of course, being that the government wanted these people whipped up in a frenzy of fear, hate and anger at all times, because scared, hateful and angry people are the easiest to manipulate), turned in the masses to what was called Christianity but was really an amorphous collection of beliefs, that largely were changed from person to person, and finally the Emporers knew they could no longer contain this following, had to act decisively to retain their power. And they acted immediately, and ingenuisly - they "converted". Suddenly, hey, they believed all of this Christianity stuff. And to show how much they meant it, they would build a Church. So, they built the Church, from the ground up. They installed a heirerarchy, and put all of their guys at the top. Including at the very top, from which the voice would be as if from God Himself. And, oh yeah, they made a few changes to the story. Instead of being just a philisopher, Jesus was the Son of God, and therefore, anybody who did not convert to the new "Church of Jesus", the one we just built and put our men at the top of, was making an offense against God. And to top it off, they made the story say that it wasn't them, the Romans, who were responsible for the execution of Christ, no it was those dirty Jews; that the public believed this at the time and that many still do is indicative of what a group of stupid assholes the public can be, especially in light of the fact that Jesus was, himself, a Jew!

Oh, and by the way, the first act of this new church was to use its Holy Authority to declare that the Emporer - the guy who just installed all of the people making this decision - had divine right to rule, a lovely concept that is still with us today. If you ever wanted to know how the Roman Empire became the Holy Roman Empire - well, that's it, right there.

Another completely laughable idea came along later. You see, Christ told us all to love one another, and that's great, but people really like a fight. I mean, they REALLY like it. And they think that if you don't like a good fight, you must be a pussy. And noone wants to follow around a religious icon that's a pussy, right? Well, some folks have no problem with this idea - those would be the original Christians. Those that did have a problem with it were the ones who became "Christians" because the new Church added another chapter to the tale. This is the one of the End Times, the Four Horsemen, the Rapture, and all of that. Suddenly, Jesus, the guy who wanted us all to love another, all to treat the least among us like our equals, he becomes, well, he becomes fucking Beowulf. All of the sudden the motherfucker is swinging around a flaming sword, chopping the heads off a seven headed beast, and casting Satan into a lake of eternal flame. And the people who wanted peace could imagine that they were going to skip all of that ugliness by Rapturing away, while those that liked a good fight could all pretend they were going to be among the elite Jesusguard, covering the Big Man's back as he fought the demons back with his phallus - errr, sword.

Speaking of phalluses, we want you - errr, that is, God wants you - to not fuck outside of marriage.

You see, because then you end up with all of these little bastard kids, you see, and they're an awful strain on our economy.

And that is where the "Christian" obsession with sex comes from. That and the fact that, later on, after the Church had the brilliant idea to keep it's clergy from ever marrying, so they could be "married to God", i.e., so their loyalty to the Emporer is not corrupted by a wife, I suppose, the clergy who weren't getting any resented all of the people out there who were, and so they put as many restrictions on the practice as possible without killing off the peasant population entirely, upon whose backs the royalty and the church higher-ups feasted.

And the restrictions against homosexuality - same story. It used to be that homosexuality, or at least, bisexuality, was openly accepted practice. In bath houses it was commonplace. In both the Greek and Roman societies, it was common for an older man to take a younger boy as a companion. If you outlawed all sex between men and women except in instances of procreation, then the men would simply have sex with the men and the women with the women. So you had to outlaw that, too. Tada. The proof is in the wording: "if any one lie with a man as with a woman...". The only phrase left out in the final version was : "were it not that we had essentially already outlawed that practice, as well...."

Why do people continue to believe this? Well, first of all, they are afraid. They are afraid that, after all, what if this is right? Won't we look like assholes in front of God? Didn't my mommy say that these so-called scientists didn't know what they were talking about?

But they are also afraid of death. Death is the great unknown. There is no way of exploring Death and then coming back to tell the rest of us what it's like. If we reencarnate, apparently we lose all sense of our former selves. But the Bible gives us something to look forward to - to pretend to know. That there is a Heaven and a Hell, and that we will be sent to one or the other depending on how much of a good little "Christian" we were.

Without "Christianity", that alleged certainty crumbles. Now there is no safety net, just the prospect of the great unknown, coming to collect us at any time. Should there be fear, in light of this? Certainly. But there should also be bravery - anticipation, even, for the final adventure. And we should live our lives trying to figure out as much about the universe around us while we are here, as long it takes before our final adventure should begin.

So, you're probably saying to yourself, does this guy have any religious beliefs? I'll bet not. I'll be he's one of those Athiestic Communists. As a matter of fact, I am not an athiest (nor am I a Communist, but that's a different story). I resent the fact that everyone assumes that if you're not a mamber of a mjor world religion, you are an athiest. Athiesism is as distasteful to me as any major religion, from a logical standpoint. Athiests, like theists, argue that they KNOW THE TRUTH, without having any possible way of even beginning to.

So, what are my religious beliefs? Well, I'll tell you the main tenent of my religion, the only one I proselytize: God is Great, far Greater than anything we can imagine, by ourselves or in groups, no matter how large. His awesomeness defies all comprehension. But, human beings being what we are, we will attempt to imagine It anyway. So, if you must try and imagine what God is like, do it yourself. Come up with your own picture of how God and the Universe relate. If you think he should be worshipped, worship him. If you think he should be asked for guidance, then ask him. But keep your beliefs to yourself, and understand that they are most certainly wrong. Be prepared to modify your beliefs to fit new evidence that comes to light. For when we pass away, if we find out how God really is, we will find something much more and much better than whatever we came up with.

I'd tell you more, but my religion forbids it.

6/6/07

On Sunday, the Democrats had their second debate, this time in New Hampshire. I didn't get a chance to catch this one, although I did see a clip where Wolf Blitzer asked Hillary Clinton if it was a mistake on Bill Clinton's part to sign the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy into law. Hillary's answer was that DADT was an important step, and so it was not a mistake. Blitzer then asked which candidates, by a show of hands, thought the time had come for DADT to be eliminated altogether, allowing gays to serve openly. All of the candidates raised their hands, with Senator Gravel blurting out "it should have been ended 20 years ago!"

Clinton's response, as well as Gravel's reaction, are a perfect example of why I have no problem supporting a mainstream candidate (Obama) over a fringe candidate (say, Gravel or Kucinich). In addition to being factually absurd (it would be pretty tough for a 14-year-old law to have been done away with 20 years ago), Gravel's response showed a complete disconnect to how politics work in America, which is odd, considering he is a former Senator. What Gravel and Kucinich, along with their supporters, along with everyone associated with the Green Party, don't understand, or at least seem not to understand, is that compromise is an important part of American politics in general, and of progressive politics in particular.

Another example is civil unions. New Jersey recently legalized civil unions for homosexual couples, and reactions in the liberal blogosphere fell into two camps. One camp celebrated the victory, another bemoaned how they were "at the back of the bus" and chided the rest of us (I count myself in the former group) for daring to celebrate what they perceived as a selling out of the gay rights cause. My answer to them is the same as Hillary's answer to the DADT question: civil unions are not the final piece of the puzzle. They are a stepping stone. Did the labor movement stop with the establishment of a weekend? Did the civil rights movement stop with the emancipation of the slaves? Did the gay rights movement stop with DADT? Of course not. But all of those are important examples of first steps that got the ball rolling. To use the back of the bus metaphor - before that legislation, gays weren't even on the bus. They were walking down the sidewalk. Now that they are on the bus, they can start making their way up front.

Happy does not mean satisfied. Of course, we're not "satisfied" with civil unions. But then again, progressives are never "satisfied". That's what progress means. Once we've won a concession, then its on to the next one. But every concession, every victory, is indeed something to celebrate, and to be happy about.

After all, when the conservatives and the progressives make a compromise, who wins? Conservatives want to keep things the way they are. Progressives want to change things. So, when a conservative says, "ok, you can have this change, but we're keeping that the way it is (for now)", or "ok, we'll change this by this much, but not by as much as you want it", it is by definition a progressive victory, because things are, in fact, changing. And once progress is made, it rarely, if ever, rolls back. Conservatives are forever ceedeing ground to us, but they fight for every inch.

Which brings us back to Obama vs. Gravel/Kucinich. Many progressives would want to know why I'm "sacrificing" my core values to back a more centerist candidate. The fact of the matter is, it's ahistorical to think the world is going to change in the blink of an eye. Change takes place over time, like the evolution of species. Think of this as the evolution of man. Kucinich and Gravel want us to wake up tomorrow with a larger frontal lobe, or infrared vision. Obama knows that improvement takes time. Does that mean we won't get everything we want, right away? Sure. But does that mean we won't get it all, eventually, if we can just be patient? Nope. Eventually, it's all going to happen. We just have to wait it out.

5/30/07

I want to write about something that has been on my mind for a little while, now. Last week, Democrats across the nation were incensed by the alleged "capitulation" by Congressional Dems to W regarding the War in Iraq. Keith Olberman even did one of his Special Comments on the subject.

The gist of the arguement that they make is this: The People elected the Democrats to end the War, and by bowing to W's will they are ignoring The Will of the People, and throwing away their Mandate.

The problem with this is twofold. One, the real losers in any game of chicken between the White House and the Congress would have been the troops in Iraq. The President showed the nation, by refusing to sign the original bill passed by the Democrats, that he was willing to play with the lives of the soldiers (in case the fact that they were over in Iraq in the first place wasn't proof enough of this fact). The Democrats, on the other hand, by ending the game by sending a much more relaxed bill, showed that they were not. If putting the lives of the soldiers before your own political gain is a sign of political weakness, then I for one am glad that my party is weak. It's called sympathy, and it's what seperates us from them.

Two - the American people had their opportunity to end the War. They knew exactly what they were doing when they re-elected Bush in 2004. They could have put an end to the whole madness right then, but they chose the path we are on, now. Another Bush term meant four more years of War - that fact was made crystal clear to everyone the whole election cycle. The mid-term elections may have put the breaks on the Republican War Machine, but they can not be expected to undo the '04 Presidential Campaign. Bush IS the Chief Executive, after all, and he IS Commander in Chief of the Armed Services. Those facts are no more easy for me to swallow than they are for the next guy, but they are the truth. And if the American People learn one thing from this whole experience, it is this: if you want the War over, you have another shot to end it next fall. Don't blow it again.

5/23/07

Well, I made my first donation of the campaign season yesterday. $25 to the campaign of (suprise!) Barack Obama. It was the first donation I have made to any political candidate since Howard Dean in 2004.

For me, the donation means that, unless something very drastic changes, I am firmly entrenched in the Obama camp. If I was penciled in to his campaign before, now I'm in there in pen. This should come as no suprise to anyone who has been reading my blog over these past few months - Obama has been my guy for some time now, and I had called him the "Big Winner" of the first Democratic debate just a couple of weeks ago. Ultimately, my decision to support Obama has come down to several factors:

- I feel that Barack Obama is the most electable candidate, Democrat or Republican, in this field right now. He has a charisma that at least approaches, and arguably exceeds, that of Bill Clinton. He gives well-thought out, intelligent answers to every question he is asked, whether by an interviewer or by a debate moderator. His speeches are impassioned yet substantive, informative yet exciting, motivational yet not preachy, and artfully constructed without being pretentious or bombastic. People just love this guy. And the race thing does not concern me one bit. Anyone who wouldn't vote for a guy because he isn't 100% white isn't going to vote for a woman, or probably any Democrat at all. And while the African-American voters aren't lining up behind this guy quite yet, when push comes to shove you had better believe they'll be there.

- The war. I know a lot of Democrats are tired of hearing about how Obama is the only candidate among the Big Three to have opposed the invasion of Iraq from the beginning, but you really cannot overstress the importance of this. Most Democrats, the ones on the street, not the ones in office, knew that going into Iraq was not a good idea. They knew that the intelligence that was being peddled to us and to the world by the Bush Administration as rock-solid evidence that Sadam Huessein had/was building weapons of mass destruction (and, even more ludicrously, a nuclear weapons program) was anything but, and that Huessein and Osama bin Laden were mortal enemies who would never cooperate on anything, even if they were bridge partners, and that the notion that we could march into a country full of people who did not like us to begin with, kill a slew of them in the invasion, and then start up a government in a western image, and they would just accept it all was complete fallacy. We KNEW this, and yet our elected officials in Congress, House and Senate, overwhelmingly rolled over and voted with the Republican majority to support the invasion. This whole business of "if I knew then what I know now" being spat at us by Edwards and Clinton is cynical, self-serving bullshit. WE knew then, so why the fuck didn't they? Why were they marginalizing us, calling us hopeless idealogues and saying that we didn't know the realities of the situation? Because they wanted to cover their political asses, that's why. We're trying to elect the President of the United States - the Leader of the Free World (or at least it used to be, back when the Free World still respected us). He or she should be concerned with doing what they know is right, not with doing that which is politically expedient. By the way, Edwards and Clinton both also voted for the Patriot Act. If only they knew then what they know now, eh?

- Every other issue. I can't tell you about all the diaries I've read on DailyKos that start off like this. "Well, I'm not very happy with the mainstream Democratic Candidates. When it comes to (issue here), they all look just like Republican Lite. Oh, all except for Barack Obama." Here's an example. From the war to health care to civil rights and right on down the line, Obama routinely finds himself on the correct side, and all the way over on the correct side, of every issue. This isn't about finding a candidate who is central enough to be "electable". This is about a candidate who is electable and for whom we do not have to sacrifice ANY of the virtues we look for in a President.

And for the record, I'm not concerned with the supposed issues of specifics or experience. First, the specifics is a slander the media has been pumping out about the Obama campaign since its inception. If you have any questions as to the specifics about Obama's plan, please go to his website and check it out. It's all there. He doesn't go around listing them in all of his speeches because, well, that makes for boring speeches (see Gore, Al). But the plans are there, detailed and practical, and clear as day.

As for experience, well, the last President from Illinois was a one-term Representative who lost his only previous Senate bid. In terms of legislative experience, Obama has him trumped. And that other guy, named Lincoln, he turned out ok. And even if you want to comapre him to his rivals, he still comes out pretty solid. Hillary Clinton has only been in the Senate since 2000. John Edwards was a one-term Senator who hasn't even been in government since 2004. I don't see how one full-term means that either Clinton or Edwards is prepared to run the country while a half-term isn't enough out of Obama.

So, anyway, that's where I am right now. You'll see Obama's website linked on my page until something changes. Tomorrow I'm back to my personal log. Till then...

5/16/07

Jerry Fallwell died yesterday. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

I'm just kidding, of course. Jerry Fallwell was a disgusting, reprehensible piece of shit. Good fucking riddance.

It's pretty well taboo to be dancing with joy when a fellow human being passes away. I don't give a shit. This guy took the taco.

Of course, Fallwell is mostly remembered for blaming the 9/11 attacks on gays, lesbians, members of ACLU, the prochoice, and anyone else who he didn't like. But beyond that, though, he had his various Christian activities - like going around on Earth Day spraying aerosol cans into the air because, well, because Fuck Everyone, that's why. And what's a more Christian attitude than that?

My view on death is, it's a part of life. Specifically, it's a part that removes you from the rest of us, at least for now. And Jerry Fallwell was somebody who long needed to be removed from the rest of us. He was a cancer on society. His death is like a successful tumor removal.

And this isn't a liberal/conservative thing. I know Republicans and conservatives who are decent people at heart. I don't wish for the death of any of them, nor will I be happy when they're gone, should I outlive them. I took no great pleasure from Ronald Regan's demise, or Richard Nixon's. And if W kicks the bucket tomorrow, the party wouldn't be at my place (now, Dick Cheney, on the other hand...). But Fallwell is a special case. He was hatred personified. He was just a downright horrible person. And now that he's gone, a Green Day song comes to mind...

Ha ha you're dead
And I'm so happy
In loving memory
Of your demise
When your ship is going down
I'll go out and raid the town
Ha ha you're dead
Ha ha you're dead
Ha ha you're dead

Ha ha you're dead
The joke is over
You were an asshole
And now you're gone
As your ship is going down
I'll stop by to watch you drown
Ha ha you're dead
Ha ha you're dead
Ha ha you're dead



Keep a spot in Hell warm for me, Jerry!

5/2/07

Today is the big day...W is going to demolish what is left of his credibility and popularity by vetoing the bill that would fund the troops doing his work in Iraq. Why is he doing this? Because Congress had the gall to ask the President to begin to plan for the pull-out of the troops and the beginning of the end our involvement in a war that has lasted longer than the United States' involvement in World War II.

How do the American people feel about this? Well, the fact that the Democrats had the necessary majority to get the measure passed in the first place is testament to the fact that Americans have had enough of this deadly foolishness, and want no more part in it. It's true, the 2006 elections had a lot to do with the culture of corruption that made Jack Abramhoff, Duke Cunningham, Tom Foley, and Tom DeLay household names, and the Terry Schiavo thing really freaked everyone out, and people were probably wondering why the guy who was in charge of regulating the internet was saying things like, "the internet isn't a dump truck - it's a series of tubes", but the real reason the Repubs were removed from power on the Hill so forcefully was that the people had had enough of this war, and they wanted exactly the kind of legislation passed that W is going to veto tomorrow.

W is not only destroying his own legacy at this point, he is smothering his own Party's chances in 2008. Show the American people that the only way to get out of this mess is to have a Democratic President AND Congress, and I can promise you they'll do again exactly what they did this past election.

The American people have had it with your war, Mr. President. They've had it with your foreign policy, they've had it with your Party, they've had it with you. The Democrats have shown willingness to compromise and continue to fund this war - they just want to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Do the right thing and maybe you can hope to dig yourself and your Party out of this hole you have dug. Do the wrong thing, and everyone suffers - most of all the troops in harm's way. But, of course, if you gave a shit about them, I suppose they wouldn't be there.