Keeping it simple

The other day, I saw in a comment thread someone mention the following quote:

“The world always makes sense.  If something doesn't make sense, you don't have enough information. “

I did a quick search and couldn’t find who the author might have been.  But this comment brings to mind something that doesn’t make sense to me.

Yesterday, DT & Co. made a comment that the American Media is the “Enemy of the American People”.  Bill Maher made a video wherein he lamented over the nonsensical fact that the GOP, the Party of Patriotism, once the Defender of America, has flipped into the Party of Critics of America, who now support our once arch nemesis, Russia.  And all without so much as a mention or a bit of regret or so much as a facial tic.

DT & Co.’s remark is a slap in the face of the Constitution and one of the most important rights enshrined in that document - so important it was placed into the First Amendment alongside the guarantees of religious freedom and the freedom to petition the government and the right to gather with like minded people - the guarantee of a free press.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”  

There it is, right there.  Enshrined in the Constitution, in the Bill of Rights, a document supposedly sacred to the Right Wing and Republicans.  Yet, when DT & Co. denigrate the press, calling it the Enemy of the American People, do we hear a peep?  A gasp?  Something of a facial tic?  Nope. Nothing, nada, nichts, not even the slightest of peeps.

None of this makes sense.  

Here we have a man whose entire life is a stain on the American business world, whose tactics are the epitome of capitalist greed that sparked the 19th century limitations on the worst of those peoples’ practices, such as the laws against monopolies, who both woos the press on one hand yet calls them Enemy of the American People on the other.  A man whose personal life has been a prime example of the evil that christianity and Jesus’ teachings have railed against for centuries.

And yet both the GOP, as the party of the Defense of the Constitution, has voted for and backed this man fully, even as he begins the process of dismantling the democracy the Republicans have supposedly devoted its life to protecting, and a huge percentage of Evangelicals - those devotees of Christ - not only voted for, but still enthusiastically support and defend.  In spite of his flagrant violation of the values Christ supposedly preached, thus destroying Evangelical credibility in moral issues.

Forever.

Yet, why?  What makes that support for Trump worth it?  Worth in fact, condoning violations of the Constitution either group would have condemned outright not two years ago.  There may be some answers, and none of it will make you feel good.

John Podesta, Hilary Clinton’s chief of staff, said this today:

“Trump is deploying a strategy, used by autocrats, designed to completely disorient public perception,” Podesta wrote. “He’s not just trying to spin the bad news of the day; all politicians do that. He seeks nothing less than to undermine the public’s belief that any news can be trusted, that any news is true, that there is any fixed reality.” 

Podesta compared Trump’s aggressive stance toward the media to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the autocratic strongman whose government U.S. intelligence officials believe ordered the hack into Podesta’s email account during the campaign. 

“He is emulating the successful strategy of Vladimir Putin,” Podesta wrote, cautioning that Trump’s behavior puts the U.S. “in danger of experiencing an information void like Russia,” where people are so cynical that they “hear something on TV and assume it’s a lie.”

In the op-ed, Podesta urged Americans to “maintain a heightened vigilance” and be wary of things they read on social media, but also “be wary of any effort, particularly from the White House, to disorient or discredit reliable information.”

Journalists, in turn, must continue to fact-check the White House, he wrote.”

Trump has been accused of mental illness, as well as being incompetent.  This view makes the assumption that he is neither, but is working a plan.

Does the Republican party have a plan?

I don’t think so, but somebody else does.  Back on November 18th, I posted an article entitled “Once more into the breech!” in which I first noted this idea that our true enemy is the Corporatists, who are members of the 1% engaged in a long term conspiracy to turn this country into an Oligarchy.  One of the techniques in getting there is exactly what Trump is engaging in, according to Podesta.

Remember the first rule in examining something and looking for an answer:  the KISS Principle, also expressed as Occam's razor.  No need for long, complicated conspiracies, or convoluted multi-level plans.  The simplest is most likely to work, hence is more likely to be the best explanation.  The more complexity, the more likely points of failure there are.

In this atmosphere today, when the Chief Executive is doing his best to confuse, confound and create chaos, it is perfectly normal to be exactly that - its’ the intent, after all!   That;’s why we need to be alert, be aware, and on the lookout for clues to what makes all this make sense.

In the meantime, keep your other eye on the ball - the corporatist ball!

Once we have enough information, it’ll make sense.

What a government is all about, including what public employees do and think.

This post was first posted a couple of days ago on my personal Facebook page.  At this writing, it has been shared 21 times, which I am honored to see.  I thought since Ophelia Benson had shared this also on her blog Butterflies and Wheels, I should probably put it up on mine, too!  (Thanks, Ophelia!  I appreciate it!)

So, (hopefully) enjoy.

A remark made on one of my posts, last night I think it was, caused me to stop and think about what your average American knows about being a government employee.

To start out, for those who don't know me or haven't checked my profile yet, I was a Federal employee for 42 years and 4 months. I served the US Army for four years, and the Food and Drug Administration the rest of the time, starting out as a mail & file clerk and ending up as a senior IT tech overseeing a group of contractors who kept the FDA desktops updated and secure.

Along the way, I worked with scientists, lab people, investigators, inspectors, medical personnel, lawyers, contracting officers, instructors, administrators, and in one capacity or another, others from almost every Center in FDA.

Many of those people had worked in other major Departments, including a supervisor who had once worked for the Justice Department, and a Branch chief whose former intelligence agency employer was so classified, he still was prevented by law from disclosing that to us.

As many of you know from the private sector, each organization, private or public, has its own culture. Much of that culture comes from the top down and is informed by its mission - what it does as a primary function.

But governments, whether local, State or Federal, are different than private companies, large or small.

Why? Because governments don't exist to make a profit.

Private companies do. That is the very reason they exist! If they cannot make a profit, eventually, they are forced to close and have their assets sold off to satisfy their debts.

Governments don't go bankrupt. At the worst, they have their credit ratings cut to nothing, forcing them to "live" and operate from cash receipts obtained through statutory incomes, like taxes or receipts from licensing activities, fines, etc.

Their mission is to provide for the safety, welfare, public peace and security of the American people.

That's a whole lot different from making filthy lucre to fill the bosses' pockets. That's why they operate differently, and that's why Republicans are wrong to try and make the US Government run like a business.

Because it isn't one.

That's why the culture of each governmental Department is different, and why each has its own take on transparency.

Yeah, Transparency. Believe me, that's a tightrope each and every supervisor in the government has to weigh on a regular basis.

Some agencies, by their mission's demands, cannot be transparent. Intelligence agencies are a good example. We cannot allow foreign governments to know if, when, or how we may or may not be spying on them. We want them to be guessing, constantly, and we want them to guess wrong, every time.

Others, like the military, have inherent activities and equipment that by their nature, need to be secret. Otherwise, their effectiveness in combat is greatly lessened. Enemies who have to guess about what you may bring to the table in a conflict will be cautious and very careful before committing themselves.

Civilian agencies which are by nature enforcing various Federal laws are bound to be secretive in some ways for two reasons: First, they are bound by law to protect proprietary information belonging to the companies they need to inspect as part of that law enforcement activity. Second, they don't want their enforcement activities to be publicly revealed, because sometimes a surprise inspection is what you need to catch someone who is willfully violating the law. Give them a chance to clean up, and you've got nothing for your efforts!

But other agencies have a tougher row to hoe regarding that word transparency. They have to balance letting the public know how they are operating in making policy vs. allowing either political opponents or foreign opponents know secrets that may allow them to counter those policies in ways harmful to the public.

Sometimes, getting that balance right is hard.

One of the things that turned me aside from being a republican early in my government career was their constant ragging on us for being lazy, or corrupt, or leaches sucking at the "government teat".

I've known hundreds if not thousands of people in my career, and with the exception of one or two, not a damn one of them was lazy, or corrupt or anything approaching the description of a leach. They all worked hard for their paychecks. Many of them could have gone outside and gotten much bigger paychecks working for large corporations.

But they stayed, most of them, and they do because they CARE. The mission of the FDA is, among other things similar, to keep your food, your drugs, your cosmetics, your radiation emitting devices, your medical devices, safe, effective and the best American companies can make them to be. Every single FDA employee I've worked with cared about that single mission, cared about how their job, whether it was leading a Center, running a computer, or inspecting Mexican produce crossing the border, and how their job impacted the primary mission of the Agency.

I cannot imagine anyone in any other governmental agency feeling any less, whether they are working for the Federal government or a State or local government.

So, folks, when you hear the Republicans continuing to belittle public employees, whether they are US Park Service Rangers, or EPA scientists, or federal Judges, remember this post. Remember that these people CARE - they care about you, me, and their neighbors. They are there, doing their jobs, probably making less money than they could on the outside, because they give a damn about OUR COUNTRY.

They each took an oath, which is very similar to the one Trump just took, to protect and defend the Constitution. Not an oath of loyalty to a President, or to an Agency, or to a boss. To the Constitution of the United States of America.

To serve YOU. That also includes Congress, by the way.

It's up to you to determine which of those public servants are upholding that oath.

And which are, very publicly, not.

There's a hidden cancer infecting America

I've been doing some genealogical work off and on for decades.  I've managed to find ancestors (in concert with others on Ancestry.com) going back to the 15th century, at least on the German side.  Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of biographical info to be found going that far back, but given that the earliest I can find that do, my folks in that country were farmers.  I've got others in Britain, Ireland and Scotland, and the DNA says also in the Scandinavian countries.  (Given the history, they were probably viking settlers in England.  Yay, Vikings!)

So far, there isn't anything that indicates that very many, if any, of my ancestors had much education, nor that any may have been aristocrats.  There are a few pics of some Scottish folks going back into the 19th century who were wearing what appears to be suits, so they may have been fairly well off merchants.  One guy living in Ohio around the Civil War was a printer, and well known for starting a newspaper in Oklahoma before he moved back east again.  His brother was an Ohio Supreme Court Justice, according to his obit.  Probably the most successful of my ancestral line in this country anyway.

But, no evidence any of them got a University education.

I do.

So, I may be the first of my family in who knows how many generations to actually graduate from a University with a degree.  Yay, me!  (Thank you, again American taxpayers, who, through the GI Bill, financed that education.  I mean that sincerely.  It was a fair trade, I gave you four years of my life standing tall against the USSR, and you gave me a four year education.  Kudos all around!)

But.  (Isn't there always a "but"?)

There are those in the Republican party (and I ran into one earlier this week) who would have you think I am some kind of "elite".  That a University education will turn you into some kind of liberal (as if that is an insult - go figure...) atheist brat that is somehow a kind of moocher.  (???  I can't figure that out, if a degree gets you a higher paying job...?)  Maybe they're jealous or something.

Their accusations are even more wacky, given that the very politicians who are pushing that "elitist" bullshit are, themselves, grads of such places like Harvard or other Ivy League institutions.  Talk about elitist!

But, I want to address this crap.

I, and most of the people who graduate today, especially on the GI Bill, are not elitists.  We are your average American, trying to get ahead.

I worked hard, for over eight years, for that degree, and went to two institutions.  I worked during the day at a full time job (which did not meet all the bills by any means, and we had NO credit card debt) and went to school after work, evenings, and often on Saturdays.

I missed a lot of watching my kids grow up.  I spent a lot of time hitting the books when I could have spent it with my wife or playing with the kids.

And you DARE to call me an elitist?  Elite compared to whom?  What elite "club" do I belong to?  Oh, yeah, maybe you're talking about the alumni groups.  Well, the one (if there is one) for the community college I went to has never contacted me.  Some "club".

The alumni folks at the University of Texas (Dallas) where I got the degree have contacted me over the years, and I am probably listed in the alumni book.  But that never got me a job, it never resulted in any other advantages, save an opportunity to tour the CIA HQ facility at Langley.  Which was fun, but it didn't pay any bills.

So I am at a loss to tell exactly what that "elitist" tag is supposed to mean, except to try to set me apart from your average American.  It's the newest cancer infecting the body politic in this country, this distain and almost outright hatred for people with an education.  The funniest thing is, what sets me apart isn't my education - although it helped me get this job.  It's the nice pension I plan on cashing in on in the not to distant future.

You see, I worked for that too.  Forty-two years and four months when I finally walk out the door, to be exact.  Yeah, what sets me apart is that work ethic!  You know, that work ethic Republicans claim that only REAL Americans have.

But not liberals.  Nope, not liberals, at all.  We're "elitists", we're lazy as Federal workers, with no work ethic.

Well, screw you folks.  I'm voting for Bernie Sanders during the Democratic Primary, and if he wins, I will PROUDLY cast my vote for the first real LIBERAL to grace an American national ballot in decades.  If he doesn't, I'll vote for Hillary, and I'll spit in the general direction of the Republican National Committee Headquarters.

Twice.

Society in Transition - from Religious America to a Post-Religious America?

Last week was a bummer for Conservatives.  Including today’s ruling by Colorado’s Supreme Court allowing citizen committees the delegated power to set voting districts (thus setting the stage for more battles over gerrymandering), the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) led the parade by granting petitioners’ suit for the right for gays to wed, on top of the ruling that saved the Affordable Care Act, as well as upholding a critical piece of the Fair Housing Act.

Any one of these would have been enough to set conservative teeth to grinding, but it was the victory over gay marriage that set off the fireworks.

First in the lineup is Rick Santorum, who says Supreme Court judges should face retention elections every few years.

Or on Tim Barton’s Wallbuilders:  

Tim Brooks: Here is the only thing that will satisfy this agenda, and it's very clear — participation. We want you to come out of your house and participate with us. Now as I read this story, Lot was not forcing his lifestyle on them. Lot never tried to force his lifestyle on them, he never even brought that up. They are trying to force their lifestyle on him.

Rick Green: And so that goes even beyond "you have to celebrate with us. You have to actually participate with us."

Tim Barton: Yes, come out and have sex with us — have to participate. They're going to force participation and that's what we're seeing around the country.

It's unsafe in a city where the homosexual agenda has control.

Or on, of all places, Time, Inc., where Rod Dreher opined (in my favorite of the selection):

Obergefell is a sign of the times, for those with eyes to see. This isn’t the view of wild-eyed prophets wearing animal skins and shouting in the desert. It is the view of four Supreme Court justices, in effect declaring from the bench the decline and fall of the traditional American social, political, and legal order.

We live in interesting times.

I’m assuming he meant that in the sense of the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”

No, that ruling doesn’t mean the decline and fall of the “traditional” American orders he mentioned, but it certainly does mean the decline and fall of the “Conservative” orders of both social and political influence as they’ve enjoyed them in the past.  

It has been well documented for some time now that the demographics of the American population is dictating at least two things conservatives loathe:

A growing number/percentage of young Americans are moving away from and actively rejecting the conservative set of ideals.

A similarly large percentage and number of young Americans are moving away from and rejecting religion.

Both of these herald the decline and fall of conservatism as we know it today.  It won’t happen before this next election, probably not within the next five years, but certainly in the next ten years, many conservative institutions now seen as bastions of conservative thought will fall, losing sufficient financial support to keep them going.   As the numbers of Americans willing to donate their hard earned dollars to the cause diminish, so will the institutions they now support.  Eventually even the wealthiest of conservative supporters will realize that throwing good money after bad is not a good investment as the numbers of politicians willing to pay homage to their money falls to unsustainable levels.

On what do I base these predictions?  Well, numbers help.  The US Census is part pof it, the PEW polls of recent weeks are there too, and I’ve posted this link before, which is a slide show from a site that is trying hard to alert American Christians to the dire future their religion has unless they take desperate measures.

Much like Mr. Dreher, above.

He tries to sound reasonable.  He uses a calm, collected tone, yet asserts the most ridiculous claims.

“One can certainly understand the joy that LGBT Americans and their supporters feel today. But orthodox Christians must understand that things are going to get much more difficult for us. We are going to have to learn how to live as exiles in our own country. We are going to have to learn how to live with at least a mild form of persecution. And we are going to have to change the way we practice our faith and teach it to our children, to build resilient communities.”

Of course, what he is talking about is the loss of the “traditional” privileges Christianity and its adherents have enjoyed in this country.

You know, the ability to know that every elected official is Christian.

That every legislative session is opened with a Christian prayer.

That every school day was begun with a Christian prayer.

That (as he mentions) Christian churches enjoy a decided economic advantage through their tax exempt status, even for their profit making entities.

That every hamlet, town, city and State can erect Christmas displays with Christian themes at the public’s expense.

That our currency reflects a Christian themed motto, which is emblazoned in every courthouse in the country, even in the Supreme Court.

That every one of our 44 Presidents have been (at least publicly) Christian.

There’s more, but I should link to a few sites that have extensive lists:

Christian Privilege Checklist.  

Beyond the Wand. 

Christian Forums. 

Here’s one on Tumblr:  

Alas!  A blog

Whew!  That’s a lot!  Sure, quite a few are repeated in one way or another from site to site, but still, the list is extensive.

My problem with Mr. Dreher’s article is that once you look at a list like these, you realize that many of these aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.  It ill take a major shift in social norms before many of these fade into the woodwork so that being Christian isn’t so normal any longer.

Now, it IS true that the major ones which I listed first are likely to be the first to disappear, since they depend upon the ubiquitousness of Conservatives in government to maintain them, and a few elections going the other way will easily allow Progressives to turn those corners.  In fact, several of those items have already come under fire, and at times fairly effectively, too, through rulings by the SCOTUS.  School prayer and publicly funded Christmas displays, for instance.

But, given these things, how likely is it that Christians will see his dire predictions come about?

Some will, some are clearly bogus.  The claims of future persecution, for instance are pure unadulterated bunk.  Obviously, he is conflating a loss of privilege with persecution.  A common scare tactic.

His claim that, “Indeed, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito explicitly warned religious traditionalists that this decision leaves them vulnerable. Alito warns that Obergefell “will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy,” and will be used to oppress the faithful “by those who are determined to stamp out every vestige of dissent.”  is obvious bullshit, as the First Amendment will protect pure religious practice.

Now, to be fair, it is true that those who insist on discriminating openly against gays will eventually (and to an extent will now) be shunned by more progressive folk.  But that is a cultural consequence, which the Constitution does not guarantee you any protections from, and is something a lot of folk from groups who have been badly treated by Christians in the past can hardly be blamed for participating in.

This brings up, “For another, LGBT activists and their fellow travelers really will be coming after social conservatives. The Supreme Court has now, in constitutional doctrine, said that homosexuality is equivalent to race. The next goal of activists will be a long-term campaign to remove tax-exempt status from dissenting religious institutions. The more immediate goal will be the shunning and persecution of dissenters within civil society. After today, all religious conservatives are Brendan Eich, the former CEO of Mozilla who was chased out of that company for supporting California’s Proposition 8.”

Again, his warning is probably a good one here.  There is already a movement to eliminate the tax exempt status of churches, but that would apply to ALL religions, not just Christianity.  Shunning and persecuting?  Well, the shunning we’ll hardly have to worry about needing to do, given his suggestion for how they should deal with all this, but I’ll get to that.   Persecution?  Again, we’ll not go down that rabbit hole.  This is till, despite his protestations, America, and the Constitutional protections of religion will still remain in affect, though folks like him will consider having to live by the same rules as everybody else as persecution.

The reference to Mr. Eich is an example of the kind of social shunning and negative affects that non-Christians have been suffering for years.  Let an atheist in many parts of the country let that be known, and they’ll lose their jobs faster than you can say “lickety-split”.

It’s kinda tough to feel sorry for folks facing the realization that such things are no longer something they’re protected from, although I would bet that a future progressive society will prevent such things from happening.  It is, after all, unfair.

His third complaint about the future as he sees it, “Third, the Court majority wrote that gays and lesbians do not want to change the institution of marriage, but rather want to benefit from it. This is hard to believe, given more recent writing from gay activists like Dan Savage expressing a desire to loosen the strictures of monogamy in all marriages. Besides, if marriage can be redefined according to what we desire — that is, if there is no essential nature to marriage, or to gender — then there are no boundaries on marriage. Marriage inevitably loses its power.”

Again, I see this as something else he is probably right about.  There is a growing movement in this country for something called Polyamory, which has as a central theme the freedom of avery person to love and be loved by multiple people at once, and specifically teaches about marriage under such conditions.  Others do push the idea of marriages with multiple partners, either male of female, with strong protections against underage abuse and coerced conditions.

I don’t see this, myself as a problem, since my moral outlook is a bit more liberal than his.  I do envision definite legal changes to our system to account for new types of marriage for the protection of minors and to protect against scams.  But this is a problem only to those whose moral ideals cling to the one-man-one-woman theme.  To those with newer ideas, these complaints fall on deaf ears, and even may elicit cries of joy.

Will marriage lose its power?  Of course not.  Marriage, by definition, as it is known today, is a legal state joining two people for the purposes of simplifying the legal, financial, inheritance, and property affairs which may arise in the course of their lives together and any eventual ending of the marriage, either by divorce or death.  The change of the allowed sex of the parties or the addition of more numbers to the marriage don’t make it “lose its power’, but actually continues to enhance society’s ability to order the affairs of its citizens.

Which, of course, was its initial purpose for becoming a legal state of affairs in the first place.

So, are we beginning a period of Post-Chrisitanity?  Is Derher right?

Yes, and no.  Yes, we are entering a period in which more and more folks are challenging Christian privilege.  More and more folks are jumping ship in favor of more open and inclusive values, rejecting the intolerance and the false teachings Christianity offers.  The support which marriage equality gained in the last ten years is a good marker for how quickly the country is shifting gears and becoming more progressive.

The Religioustoerance.org website from the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, has a page on How Many North Americans Go Regularly to Church.  On that page, they conclude, among other things:

How many people lie about going to religious services? 

Various studies in recent years have cast a grave doubt on the 40% value. 

Public opinion polls generally do not report real opinions and events. They report only the information that the individuals choose to tell the pollsters. Quite often, their answers will be distorted by a phenomenon called "social desirability bias." Pollees answer questions according to what they think they should be doing, rather than what they are doing. For example, a poll by Barna Research showed that 17% of American adults say that they tithe -- i.e. they give 10 to 13% of their income to their church. Only 3% actually do.  

The gap between what they do and what they say they do is closer in the case of religious attendance. It is "only" about 2 to 1.

Gallup has been telling us for 60 years that upwards of 80% of Americans are Christian.  In light of these results, I would conclude that we are closer to that post-Christian culture than we might think.

All this seems to indicate that the days of political and social influence of the religious right in this country are close to being numbered.  For the sake of the disadvantaged and minority groups, I sincerely hope that is true.

But when I look at the long lists of Christian privilege I linked to earlier, I have my doubts about who long it may be able to hang in there.

But, on the other hand, Dreher’s solution is quite different from what other Conservatives are bleating over.

It is time for what I call the Benedict Option. In his 1982 book After Virtue, the eminent philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre likened the current age to the fall of ancient Rome. He pointed to Benedict of Nursia, a pious young Christian who left the chaos of Rome to go to the woods to pray, as an example for us. We who want to live by the traditional virtues, MacIntyre said, have to pioneer new ways of doing so in community. We await, he said “a new — and doubtless very different — St. Benedict.”

Throughout the early Middle Ages, Benedict’s communities formed monasteries, and kept the light of faith burning through the surrounding cultural darkness. Eventually, the Benedictine monks helped refound civilization.

I believe that orthodox Christians today are called to be those new and very different St. Benedicts. How do we take the Benedict Option, and build resilient communities within our condition of internal exile, and under increasingly hostile conditions? I don’t know. But we had better figure this out together, and soon, while there is time.

Sounds like his solution is for Christians to come together and for their own little enclaves, like the Quakers or the Amish, both of whom have survived for a very long time as small close-knit groups within American culture.

Could that work?  Can what are literally thousands of denominations of Christianity within the US ever come together to form such a group?  Could they resolve their dogmatic differences for the sake of saving the faith?  Or would a few be able to get together, forsaking the others and letting the rest die out?

I’m not a sociologist, nor a political scientist.  Nor am I a seer with the power to peer into the future.  (If I did, I wouldn’t be working for a living.)

What I do know is that a growing number of Americans (and indeed people around the world) are leaving both religion and conservatism behind.  A greater percentage of the newest generation are also, and that trend shows no signs of stopping or slowing down.  This does seem to be part of a transition, or at least the beginnings of one.  Christianity isn’t dead yet, nor has it given up its overly large share of political power.

But the wrestling of that power from the grasp of religion, in the US at least, begun so long ago in Europe with the Enlightening, is bearing fruit today.  Rod Dreher, despite his alarmist rhetoric and his over the top predictions, at least has that much right.

Someday, we may see Christians living in their own little enclave, selling handmade furniture and doilies.

I think I’ll pass.

Ssshhh!! It’s a Secret…

It’s a hard thing to do, exposing people’s secrets.  It’s rude, tasteless, obnoxious, and utterly necessary.

In this case, the secret at hand is the answer to a question many folks I know on the left side of the political divide are asking themselves:  Why is it that otherwise respectable, educated and intelligent people are spouting the most extreme, batshit crazy opinions in increasingly painful amounts?  What could they possibly get from it?  Could they really believe it?

Of course they don’t.  Don’t be silly.  (Before going any further, read this.)

The secret is this:  All that batshit crazy nonsense does one thing, it keeps the racial, political and religious tension in this country at a fever pitch.  It keeps the extremist right wingers at a constant high pitch of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD).

FUD is useful stuff.  It keeps the faithful (this is NOT a slap at Christians - this one is about right wing crazy fundies) in the fold, ready and willing to donate their money and their political votes to the right wing “in” crowd.

The inner ingredients to the secret include one essential element - their sacred persecution complex.

Right wing Evangelists consider themselves to be the only “true” Christians.  All the others are either “watered down” Christians, or affected in varying degrees by Satan or one of his subordinate demons.  (Yes, really)  This results in the numbers of “true” Christians being down to an alarming (to them) 15% or so of the population.  Think about that for a moment.  This is why they talk so much about persecution, and “taking back” this country.  When you think the percentage of “real” Christians has shrunk from a majority of over 80% to less than 15%, you are talking about a truly alarming and horrifying trend of the country away from what they see as “the arms of God.”  In their little fantasy world, God cares about these things, and acts to destroy a country that He thinks has “turned away” from His true path.  The very idea frightens them to no end.

But, never mind, the Bible has a solution!

Fundamentalist Christianity has as a central element the idea that when a Christian is persecuted for his/her faith and does not waver, admission to heaven is almost guaranteed.  You become one of the favored few Christ will admit in the final days.

So, in order for them to be admitted to heaven in spite of their sinful ways, it is required for them to be persecuted so that their many shortcomings (which they are painfully aware of) can be overlooked.  Being a big fish in a very small pond is much better than being a small fish in a considerably bigger pond.

So, it is necessary to keep things going inside their own little echo chamber, where nobody dissents, everybody admires them for their strength in opposing the heathen, and are willing to donate money and votes to keep things rolling right along.  For somebody like Dylann Roof to suddenly come along and take their words seriously is a tremendous threat, believe it or not.

Remember, to themselves, they are good decent people.  They are (my generation of conservatives) living in a safe secure world where, in reality, they have little fear of personal violence, which is why their tactic of FUD is so effective.  When someone like Roof blows nine people away (after spending an hour talking to them) they are, once they wake up to the rest of society’s responses to it, quite horrified.  Not because of the violence done to innocents, but to the possibility that the violence will wake up the rest of the very liberal population, which might then take action conservatives do not have the will or power to prevent.

The possibility of being made personally responsible for the consequences of their own words is horrifying, not because it is consequential to themselves, but because it would end this neat little political gravy train they are riding.  The tension keeps the country off balance and prevents us from seeing the Conservatives’ lack of answers and inability to fix the country’s problems.  It keeps the faithful donating and voting them into office, and distracts the rest of us.  Remember, they LIKE having the rest of us so liberal, because it gives them a legitimate reason to claim persecution.  But we have to be distracted, so their fan base is able to gain the traction to get them elected to office.  Since they have no real solutions to the problems they would face, the prospect of actually being in charge and expected to perform is frightening.  Being a minority and persecuted is much better.

That’s the entire secret.  Obfuscation, distraction, projection all are tools of the Conservative mindset.  But don’t you dare upset the neat little scheme, the money is rolling in as planned…

What year is this, anyway?

I can't decide if I'm living in the USSR, Czarist Russia, North Korea, Medieval Europe, or some combination thereof.  Or at least in a developing something the designers can't make up their minds where they're going with it all.

It's bad enough that Dominionists have been trying to remake American History to show the US as a Christian country.  But now, Oklahoma's legislature is trying to ban AP American History and replace it with some crackpot version of a perfect Christian America.

It seems they object to the technique of learning from the past by pointing out where we went wrong so future generations won't make the same mistakes.

I can understand how seeing your most cherished values being pointed out in school as mistakes and wrong might be upsetting.  But as a past (but reformed) Republican, I can testify from personal experience that one can learn from one's past and one can move on to a better way of thinking.

It really doesn't hurt at all.  It's kind of liberating, in fact.  Oh, sure, one does get the odd pang of regret if current events smack you in the face with something you used to think was cool but was really harmful.  But I see those as reinforcing the initial lesson.  Kind of like reminders:  "See?  Weren't you stupid then?  But you're smarter now!"  In the end, they remind you that you've come a long way, baby!

But I guess some folks just can't get past it.

I can understand that, really I can.

What I can't understand is why you'd want to paint over those past mistakes by turning our lovely country into a totalitarian nightmare.  Remaking the past is something we accused the Soviets and the Maoists of doing.  You know, those dirty commies who painted out the totalitarian rulers of their countries' past and replaced them with monsters to contrast with their own "perfect" replacement?

In our case, the Dominionists want to replace the very real monsters on our own past with visions of lollypops, candy canes and unicorns farting rainbows so their kids will never question Jesus.

Probably because they want to keep making the same mistakes and call them "family values".  Or whatever.

But in so doing, they are destroying what they claim to love about our country.  Its liberty.  Its freedom.  Whatever happened to "Truth, Justice, and the American way"?  Somewhere, on the way to the forum, it got lost.  Or waylaid, or mugged or something.  Probably something, because it sure ain't what I was taught it was supposed to be when I went to school.

Nobody taught me that it was Ok to lie, cheat, and steal your way into office, and when we learned about politicians who did, it was never presented as an honorable way to act.

The one thing Conservatives always forget in their zeal to protect their way of life is that all things come to an end.  People change.  Countries change.  Societies change, often rapidly.  The one thing about American Destiny that Conservatives always are proud of (and justifiably so) is the huge number of technological changes America was responsible for in the 19th century.  We were instrumental in an extremely rapid advancement of humanity out of the horse and buggy days and the days of direct fire based energy into the 20th century where our transportation methods were advanced by hundreds of years in just a few decades, and we marched into the age of electricity almost overnight.

The problem for Conservatives is that such technological changes always - always - bring social changes as well.  Old technologies die.  Remember the old buggy whipmaker example?  As I typed that, Autocorrect wanted to change it to "chipmaker".  So old professions die, too.

A few hundred years ago, the very best swords you could ask for were made with Damascus steel.  A decade or so ago, some guys trying to relearn the old ways of the blacksmiths realized that the techniques for making Damascus steel had been lost.  Nobody knows today how those swords were made.  We have made guesses, but we don't know.  Not for sure.  We may never know for sure.

That's because we can kill people faster, better and from farther away with weapons using gunpowder.  You don't win a war by showing up with Damascus steel swords.  That's how you die.

These changes are not made in a vacuum.  The social changes that come from dying professions, new classifications of devices, better and faster ways of doing things are and have been immense and have caused the old comfortable Patriarchy to be shaken to its foundations.

Young people in America today are overwhelmingly progressive.  They accept and think little about the homosexual issues of the day and are accepting a more equal role for women in jobs, marriage, and politics.  Demographically, the old Conservative way of thinking is dying, and probably won't survive more than another decade or two.

Dominionists and Conservatives (especially the ones who are both) know this, and are doing all they can to stretch out the days before they lose power.  Education of one of their best efforts.

Unfortunately, their efforts are unAmerican and damaging to our democracy to an extreme degree.

We shouldn't really let them get away with it.

Why Democrats might lose this election, and why they shouldn't.

If the Democrats lose this election, I'm going to be pissed.

Not at Republicans, they're doing what any stupid animal does - what comes naturally.

No, I'm going to be pissed at the Democratic Party, because this (and every election going forward from now) are theirs to lose.  The Republican Party is so reactionary, so blindly stupidly conservative, pushing so many of the fear buttons, you've got to be an idiot not to notice.  They've managed to piss off so many different voting blocks, it's a wonder even white males are willing to vote for them.

Unless you've been propagandized, like so many Americans have.  The Republicans may not be able to govern their way out of a wet paper bag, but they are masters at obfuscating the truth and making everybody think up is down and right is left.

Along those lines, there is one truth about the Republicans' long and well trod road over the last 40 years nobody can argue against - they've managed to make the word "liberal" into a cuss word.  They've made everybody think that government is incompetent and constantly conspiring against us, both at the same time, all the while convincing us that it should be small enough to drown in a bathtub, and that it SHOULD be drowned in a bathtub.

How they've managed to claim that government is incompetent by gaining power in government and PROVING it is without the entire population of this country noticing that it has been Republicans' incompetence and not that of Democrats, I'll never know.

Republicans have managed to make almost every liberal position seem like evil incarnate.  Socialism is now a dirty word even though most Americans wouldn't know a Socialist if one bit them on the ass, and have almost no clue what they stand for.

If we lose this election, it will be because The Democratic Party has given up.

They have not even tried to call Republicans out on their stupidity or their lies or even the obvious hypocrisy on display almost every time a Republican politician opens his/her mouth.

Most egregiously, they have failed utterly to defend liberal, progressive ideas and principles.  They have stood by silently while the Republican Party and conservative Democrats have dragged the political discourse in this country so far to the right that there isn't so much as a dogcatcher who can be elected on a true liberal ticket.

Every single time Obama has managed to get a law passed in his Administration, you'll notice that they all were originally proposed by conservative Think Tanks!  Even the ACA, Obama's signature accomplishment, is based on the Massachusetts law, which came straight out of the Heritage Foundation!

Ya wanna know why the Democrats are losing?

Because liberals are staying home.  In droves, because there isn't a single solitary politician who is representing the true liberal position and principles in this country.

Not one.  Even Independent Senator Barney Sanders of Vermont can't manage to defend liberalism, no matter how hard he tries.

It is time to stop letting the Republicans set the agenda.  To stop letting them define who liberals are and what liberalism is.  It is time to explain to the American public what liberals stand for and why.

It is time for LIBERALS to set the talking agenda.  It is time for Liberals to define Republicans so that America and the world can see what they truly are and what they truly stand for.

Politicians today are afraid to stand up and defend their principles.  Poor things, they might lose and have to sit out a few years away from Washington!

NO!

Stand up!  Defend yourself, defend your principles.  DEFINE yourself, DEFINE the principles you stand for, the values you love.  Do it passionately, do it with feeling.  Shake your fist, pound the table,  rouse the crowd with passionate, earth rattling rhetoric!

Emotions are the key, and Republicans know that.  They are masters of the fear signal.  They can push their constituents' fear buttons and get the reaction they want immediately.

But passion and excitement can overcome fear.  Talk about the future!  Extol our scientific advances! paint visions of the very real utopia we can advance towards, if only we can give up our addiction to war and violence.  Describe the world we can build together if only we can cooperate together, and bring every American up to a better standard of living.  How much growth we can bring to our country by educating ALL of our children, and making this country a leader in science and industry again.

There is a lot to defend, and a lot to look forward to, if only we will get together and COMMUNICATE these things to our fellow Americans, who are sick and tired of hearing the negative and the fearful.   People want to hear about the positive things, the good things we can do, so let's tap into that and help them see what a wonderful future we can bring to this country together!

The Party which can bring a positive vision of the future can and will win.  Let's stop enabling the Republicans in their sick, negative picture of America.  Let's show America and the world what LIBERALS can do to bring us a bright and shining future!

The first step is for every liberal and every independent who cares for this country to get out and vote.  VOTE BLUE!  VOTE DEMOCRAT!

I mean, hey, it's only the welfare of our kids and grandkids at stake.

It’s your government. Why do you want to kill it?

I’ve made no secret of the fact that just last September marked the 40th year I’ve worked for the United States Government, first as a GI in Europe, then as civilian employee at FDA, under the Department of Health and Human Services.  I’ve worked with people as diverse as Vietnam Vets, entomologists, lawyers, contract specialists (who spend millions of your tax dollars), real estate specialists, IT personnel with a huge diversity of specialities, drug manufacturing inspectors, retired military personnel of several different services, and people with many other talents.  Some of them were functionaries who worked at the same drudgery day after day and complained constantly - others were some of the smartest people I’ve ever known.  Almost all of them, complainers or not, showed up regularly, worked to the best of their ability and many of them could have quit Federal Service and gone to work outside of government service for more money than they made inside.  Some of them a considerable amount more.  The one thing they all pretty much had in common was a willingness to work in service to the United States and its people with the understanding and the knowledge that their work made a difference.

I know of very few who could point to a Federal salary which led to wealth and fame.  It just doesn’t work that way.

I’ve never seen any evidence that any of us were involved in a conspiracy to take your guns, infect huge numbers of Americans with deadly diseases or detain millions of you in concentration camps.  All I’ve seen is normal Americans engaged in careers that benefited the US and her people tremendously.

Yet, there is a persistent group of people whose purpose in their political lives is to convince as many of you as possible that your government is engaged in a large number of nefarious plots and conspiracies to kill, imprison, enslave, and generally wreak havoc on, in particular, white Americans.  Their plot revolves around another point, contradictory to the first, that the very same government is so inept and clumsy that it cannot perform the simplest of basic governmental functions without completely making hash of the effort.

The right wing would have you think that the situation is so dire the only way to solve the problem is to make the government as small as possible so it can be conveniently drowned in a nearby bathtub.  Without water, preferably, so as to make the entire operation as cheap as can be.

As the Right Wing Saint Ronnie put it, “The government isn’t the solution to the problem, the government IS the problem!”

Bullshit.  That’s just plain, unadulterated bullshit.  Pure, unrefined and complete.

We do not live in a country which is governed by the military.  The Supreme Leader of this country doesn’t exist.  There is no “Feuhrer” and no “Dear Leader”.  The government of this land is controlled, as described by the preamble of the document that establishes the framework of our government, by We, the People.  It is, as established and empowered by that document, a Representative Democracy, or as otherwise described, a Republic.

The Representatives, as elected by Us, are empowered by our collective Voice.  Their power and ability to act is only delegated to them through the collective actions of The People through regularly held elections.  The Government is headed, in the Executive Branch, by a President, elected by the People every four years, and has the power to sign legislation into Law after it is duly passed by both the House and Senate.

This is the part of the government which is guided and informed by The People - or a majority of them.  That’s where the democracy comes in.  Popularly known as government By Majority.

But, the Founders knew that Power corrupts. They knew that a majority could be convinced that the Constitution was wrong and needed to be circumvented, because, well, GOD!  Theocracy in Europe has a long history (in fact, throughout world history, not just Europe).  Many of them had personally experienced what that meant, and the recent history of religious war in Europe was well known to all of them.

Few of them wanted that repeated here!

So, they came up with a third Branch of government, and tasked it with the crucial job of protecting both the Constitution and the minority of people who disagreed with the Majority!  The judiciary has the power to nullify laws (otherwise duly passed and signed in a procedurally correct manner) which are not allowed under the Constitution.  So, even if the Majority hates some ethnic group and wants to discriminate against them legally, the courts have the ability to nullify those laws based on the Constitution’s Equal Protection clauses.  If the majority wants to give a particular religious group some advantage under the law, those laws too, can be nullified under the auspices of the First Amendment.

That is NOT judicial activism.  That is NOT judicial “legislation”.  That’s the courts doing their fucking job.

Look, the preamble of the Constitution says very clearly that the government is established by We, the People to “…form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”.

It is that General Welfare clause that encompasses much of the government’s power.  The Supreme Court has interpreted that clause very generously, and the fact is, that interpretation has actually worked out pretty well.

There is a reason that people have, for over two hundred years, virtually broken down the gates getting in here, and lots of them still experience tremendous hardships to do that, legally or not, in order to experience those “Blessings of Liberty”.  The reason is that our government provides for us pretty well compared to others around the world.  We enjoy a peaceful existence and a freedom from violence that many other countries envy tremendously.

Our frontier traditions have instilled in us the urge to care for those whom misfortune has struck, and as the country has grown in population, we have decided that the most effective way to pool our efforts is through the government.

That is an advantage over private charity, and there is one reason why.

Control.

We cannot control, as a society, the uses private charities put our money to.  There are some legal restraints, yes, but by and large, private charities can legally put that money to whatever use they please.  Much of the time, what pleases them is to enrich themselves.

But when we give that money to the government and establish programs to distribute it or use it for caring for people who have specific problems, that money WILL be spent for that purpose.  There is, legally, no choice.  If at some point, we decide to repurpose that effort, through Congress and the President, that gets done just the way we want.

Control.  If the government is doing it, EVERYBODY gets a say in how that money is spent.

If private charity is doing it, who knows where it will go?  Only the people who run that charity have the authority to make that decision.

Which is why the Right Wing wants you to give to private charity.  Because the rich folks run them, and get rich doing that, and the Right Wing gets to decide much of where it goes, and to whom it goes.  A lot of that is based on religious charities.

They do not have the control and cannot benefit from that money if it is funneled through government programs.

So, you get the Right Wing meme that government is corrupt (which they have proven by joining it and corrupting it), inept (which they have proven by joining it and MAKING it inept), and cannot solve the country’s problems (which they have proven by joining it and making sure it cannot solve those problems.

Fuck these people and their false values!  Their every effort is to convince you and the rest of America that private enterprise is more effective than government, and that American Values are somehow based on GOD.

Both ideas are wrong, bankrupt and just plain unAmerican.

Vote Blue!  Vote Democratic this November!   Throw the bums out and lets take our government back!

Playing Catchup!

I was just looking at the blog stats today (down, but surprisingly, not out) and realized I've not posted anything for over two months.

(Caution - Excuses ahead - if you cannot tolerate excises, lame or not, you might want to skip a paragraph or two...)

The summer was brutal - tenants moved out and we had to clean the place up, deal with contractors, etc., in preparation for putting the house on the market, which we did last month.  Every single weekend has been gobbled up by that house - and it is a bit over an hour away, so just going there is a chore.

Physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting.

Well, we've had a couple of weeks of only a single trip up there (not both weekend days) and that just to water some flowers and make sure the A/C/Heater is working properly for the weather.  The house is professionally staged, and to let the flowers wilt into an early death might spoil the affect, dontcha think?  The Cyber-wife thinks so, so we go - or at least I do...

But all this while, I've been perusing Facebook, reading the news, talking with friends, online and off, and generally trying to soak up the feelings this election cycle.

I do tend to be a bit optimistic at times, but my considered opinion is that the Republicans are screwed.  Why?  The polls are mixed.  None of the pundits agree, either with me or with each other.

President Obama is still in office, the Republicans are still livid that he is, and determined to obfuscate at every opportunity - and even when there are none.

Republicans are still spouting nonsense, some are getting arrested or investigated, and the rest are acting like either children in kindergarten or high school kids with hormonal problems.

Democrats are still divided, one or two are playing the get-arrested-for-idiocy cards like Republicans and are still failing to play political hardball to take full advantage of Republican faults - which are many.

And Pat robertson is still talking like a demented Altzeimer's patient on steroids.

In short, everybody is doubling down on what they were doing last election, including Bernie Sanders, who seems to make more sense than most of them.

So, why do I think Republicans are going to not win this election?  (Notice I said "not win", instead of "lose" this election.)

Because they pretty much didn't win the last one, and they've done nothing to change their game.  While they've attempted a bit of fluff here and there to try to reach out to women or Hispanics, none of it went far, and never was a serious attempt, so neither went anywhere.  No wonder, all their energy went towards marginalizing and shitting all over both groups.

In at least one Senate race, today, it was noted the Republican in the race, an incumbent, is down with women by 18 points.  That is not an insignificant amount, and could lose him that election.  I don't remember the State, unfortunately, and I'm too lazy to go look it up.  They didn't say if that State has a significant Hispanic population, but the media has largely ignored those fine folk unless commenting snidely about immigration.  But the number of States who do is growing by the year, and in many of them, that population is often tending towards the Democrats, and not the Republicans as in the past.

I guess that wall down along the Mexican border is finally sinking into the Hispanic consciousness.  Republicans still haven't realized that the demographics there are catching up with them, and the media ignoring them hasn't helped.

That's cool, I hope they keep it up!

Last election, I posted almost daily about the shenanigans the Republicans were getting into - ;was passing against women, pronouncements against immigration, crazy, stupid statements about rape, abortion and women, and all of the typical crap they tend to spout.

I've avoided that this year for a couple of reasons.

First, I'm sick of it.  I could, if I wanted, do that again, but then again, I'd be repeating myself.  Day in, day out, like a broken record (younger set, google that!), same old crap.

Which brings up the second reason - if you really want to read any of that, just go back in my past posts and look up the last cycle - no use writing it again, I've already done that!

In short, Republicans haven't done anything different.  Same old anti-Obama crap, anti-immigration crap, same old anti-woman crap, same old anti-abortion crap.  Maybe a bit of shallow discoloration as camouflage, a few wilted leaves here, a bare branch stuck in a cap there.  Nothing to really disguise what they are still selling.

Unadulterated conservative crap, leavened with corporate bribery and topped with the fluffy whipped cream of religion.

It is less than a month before the election, folks, and some States allow early voting beginning SOON!

GO VOTE!!!  Get off your ass and get your friends, family and neighbors out to vote - especially if they are Democrats.  Urge everybody to vote Democratic.

Everybody.

Not only can't we afford to lose the Senate, but we really need to narrow the lead of Republicans in the House.  I don't know how much good that may do now and in the next two years, but it sure will make the next election easier to take the House back when we have a better chance!

And it wouldn't hurt to change a State House or two back to Democratic control, either.

First they came for the Socialists...

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Socialist. 

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— 

Because I was not a Trade Unionist. 

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— 

Because I was not a Jew. 

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. 

Martin Niemöller

The original intent of this remark, given in speeches around Germany, was to point out that Germans—in particular leaders of German Protestant churches—had been complicit through their silence in the Nazi imprisonment, persecution, and murder of millions of people.

Today, in the United States, the Republican Party is responsible for the intensification of racial animosity against minorities - blacks and hispanics in particular - and are the cause of much of the violence against blacks now being acted out on the public stage by the growing militaristic police presence in this country.  White militia groups, openly carrying loaded weapons, now patrol the US-Mexico border against the "incursion" of hispanic children!

Recent stories in the press, such as the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and several additional instances of such violence have resulted in a growing unease in social media about not just official violence against blacks, but the increasing trend of police violence against any public dissent against that violence, regardless of the race or ethnicity of the protestors.

Additionally, numerous Stand Your Ground laws in various States have resulted in civilian violence against minorities which have allowed the perpetrators to walk away without fear of prosecution.  These laws have been promulgated by Republican legislatures over the loud and vociferous protests of Democratic and pro-gun control groups.

I am greatly troubled by these various developments.

While law enforcement violence against blacks and hispanics is nothing new, especially in the South, to see such violence pop into the public eye in places like Missouri and California is troubling, to say the least.  And to see the situation in Missouri escalate into such a state that the police turn the town into an armed camp, arresting both members of the press and a State Senator, is beginning to border on the absurd and the alarming.

I add here the recent execution of Troy Anthony Davis (October 9, 1968 – September 21, 2011), an American man convicted of and executed for the August 19, 1989, murder of police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia.  In spite of the recantation of numerous prosecution witnesses and the admission of guilt by another inmate, the State of Georgia went ahead with the execution.

I can add several more, indeed, four out of the top 5 wrongful executions in the US were of black men.  It is well documented that the US justice system, nationwide, is stacked against minorities.

It is an interesting phenomenon that the only groups of pro gun demonstrators "exercising" their open carry rights are white.  There are no documented cases of groups of black men so demonstrating their "right" to open carry anywhere in the United States.

I wonder why that is?

I think the situation is getting out of control.

I think the fact that it is out of control is deliberate.

Republicans have been running on a platform which asserts that the "government" doesn't work and is a burden on the American people.  They have worked very hard, using every opportunity to ensure that their assertions work out to be true, sabotaging good government at every possible turn.

They have ensured that American police departments, under the aegis of the "War on Drugs", have loaded up with as much militaristic weaponry and equipment as possible using Federal money to finance that buildup.

Their campaigns of fear and uncertainty aimed at the poorest elements of white America have stoked the fires of racial animosity and hatred in order to ensure the re-election of Republican leaders at every level of government, using State and local powers to subvert Federal laws and regulations wherever possible to foil the increasingly liberal march of American social beliefs and morals and any influence that may have on US law.

The trust and confidence of the American people in our police, in the courts, and in the prosecutors who administer our system of justice is eroding daily.  When police concentrate on blacks and hispanics, ignoring whites, and prosecutors apply different standards of justice to minorities, public trust in these institutions begins to erode.

When the courts begin to allow these other groups to violate the rights of minorities without consequence, the erosion of public trust accelerates.

Sooner or later, the people of this country will decide that they've had enough, and Republicans hope that they can cash in on that decision.

Don't let them.  Speak out!  The best way to do that is to vote.  DON'T STAY AT HOME!

This November, get out and vote.  Vote Democratic!  Toss out the Republican Party and force them to go into exile, where they can hopefully restructure their party and relearn what it is to be an American.

I think they've forgotten completely.

The Negative Consequences of Believing in Superstition - Part III

This is Part III of a three part series.  (Go read Part II if you've not seen it yet!)

Politics/Law

America is in the middle of a severely dysfunctional period of political and social change.

Over the last hundred years, technology has rocketed us from the horse and buggy days to jet aircraft and rockets to the moon.  From simple telephone tech to cell phones and computers in our pockets.

A hundred years ago, information was limited to those who could read, which for the population of the US as a whole was about 90%.  In 1979, that rate was 0.6%.  The ability of people to distribute information was limited.  For a regional audience, newspapers were the norm, and was limited to what the editors would print.  A wider audience could be reached in book publication, but that was limited to what the major publishing house editors thought would sell.

Accordingly, the public picture of what was normal was limited to what people could read, and that was tightly controlled, even with what was then a fairly free press.  The abnormal was easily ignored and any contradicting speech or dissension was often swept under the rug.

Until women got angry, and began working to change things.  By 1920, the 19th amendment allowed women the right to vote after a long and contentious public debate, including protests outside the White House, often resulting in arrests.

Today, information is everywhere.  The Internet allows instant connection to just about any repository of information that has an online presence.  Many traditional repositories of information, including the Library of Congress, are rapidly digitizing their collections.

The Internet has changed communication as well.  In the early 20th century, overseas telephone calls were expensive and rare, requiring coordination by letter so both parties were available at a coordinated time.  While this got easier with time, even as late as the 1960's, calling overseas often required advance reservations of a time slot, and were still not cheap.

By the 1970-'s, with modern satellite communications systems well under construction, such calls became both cheap and easy compared to just a decade earlier.

The Internet changed all that.  Today, there are multiple methods for connecting to people, even across the globe.  Email, texting, land line calls and even cell phones can be used to connect to people instantaneously.  While the online bulletin boards of the early 90's allowed communications by text, today, with such Internet giants as Facebook and Google, communication with huge numbers of people across wide swaths of the globe are as easy as sending an email, posting to a Facebook page or setting up a web site.  Skype and FaceTime allow instant face to face communication across the globe.

Any of this can be done on a cell phone.

This communication explosion has greatly changed the character of our political discourse.  While Americans slowly and quietly moved away from devout religious observance during the course of the late 20th century, the 21st, with the advent of instant internet communication, has resulted in an explosion of secular movements and groups.  The demographic of "None" as related to religious affiliation is the fastest growing category world-wide, not merely in the US.

Many in the movement attribute this to the Internet and the ability of people of a secular point of view to see - for the first time - that they are not alone and are part of a growing and dynamic community.

The growth of secularism, from the 60's on, resulted in a backlash of religiosity, starting with the Moral Majority, and Ronald Reagan's Presidency.  This backlash has grown in political influence, spurred on by the Republican Party allying itself with the religious right in a bid for increased political influence.  Successfully, I might add.

The Religious Right (RR) has gained influence on a regional and local basis through intense local organizing and political activism.  The resulting political power thus gained has allowed the Republicans control of a substantial majority of State Houses, allowing the RR to bend the political discourse far to the right of center.

A movement known as Dominionism (of which I've written here extensively) has orchestrated much of the successful passage of laws undermining education and science, causing much social controversy and political division, especially in the area of abortion and women's reproductive health.  In many States, there is a virtual dearth of any legal means of abortion, and now the fight is being directed towards a subject everybody thought was won decades ago - contraceptives.

So, today, after decades of successful advancement of women's rights, including the right to vote, the right to divorce, including no fault provisions, the right to contraceptives and abortion, and the right own property (largely won in the 19th century), women's groups are now having to gear up and spend vast amounts of money fighting for the continued existence of rights once thought secure.

Most of this is due to religion.  Patriarchy, biblical proscriptions against women (whether real or not) and a Dominionist movement intent on converting the US from a democracy to a theocracy have all brought the American political scene to a complete and utter standstill.

RR's efforts haven't stopped there.  There is a litany of things they are working on.

abstinence-only education - Instead of medically accurate information and thoughtful conversation about intimacy and childbearing, teens get promise rings and slut shame. 

Opposing protections and rights for children.  Thanks to the influence of biblical Christianity, the U.S. stands alone with Somalia in failing to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.  

Undermining science - The scientific method has also become an existential threat to Bible belief. We know now that the Genesis creation story is myth, neurotransmitters rather than demons cause mental illness, mandrake roots and dove blood don’t improve female fertility or cure skin diseases, and the cognitive structures of the human mind predispose us to certain kinds of religious belief.

Promoting war - George Bush didn’t need to seek input from his earthly father about the invasion, because he asked his Heavenly Father.  Besides, Jesus is coming soon and war in the Middle East is predicted in the Bible.  That makes it not only inevitable, but—in a manner of speaking—desirable.

Abuse of LGBT persons and refusal of equal rights - They've fought equal rights for these folks for decades, and still are, and it would be bad enough if we were simply talking about history. But homophobic American Christians, thwarted at home, have turned to inciting oppression in Uganda and Nigeria where their hatred still finds fertile ground.

Destroying Earth’s web of life and endangering future generations - Climate change denial and refusal of reasonable methods of keeping our air and water clean and unpolluted is based on biblical scripture giving man "Dominion" (there that word is again) over the earth and all its animals, as well as the believed inevitability of the Second Coming, where God will simply create a new and better Earth guarantees that the RR will refuse to assist in doing anything to protect the environment or protect future generations from the consequences of our irresponsibility today.  Add Republicans' devotion to Corporate welfare, and the die is cast.

(Thanks to Valerie Tarico at Salon.com for her ideas and some of her language.)

I guess the greatest harm in general that religion (right wing fundamentalism in particular) does to this country is through its insistence that we support Israel.  The most vile technique they use is to accuse detractors of being anti-Semitic.  Even people who have reasoned and logical arguments against that support are branded with that epithet.

I am not, in principle, opposed to Israel.  I am not even against some form of support for it.

But our foreign policy regarding Israel is held hostage by the RR for religious reasons (because of the Second Coming) and tolerates no deviation from complete and total support.  Regardless of whether American interests are harmed or even devastated by that support, they insist that we continue to support Israel, blindly and without digression.

This has resulted in anger towards the US and much hatred of us by the Muslim world, and has resulted directly in the attacks on the World Trade Center (both of them), and a continued campaign of terrorist activity against American interests.

Our responses to that have been goaded by the RR to the point that our constitutional rights are now under attack at home and US Intelligence has eroded America's reputation for even handedness and high standards of morality to the point of almost nonexistence.  The RR's toleration and indeed, insistence on, classifying water boarding and "advanced interrogation techniques" as acceptable has completely destroyed the ability of this country to hold other countries accountable for similar actions against our own citizens, resulting in the inability of the government to protect American Citizens overseas.

Even if the Progressive movement (such as it is) managed to gain political ascendancy in the next election by some miracle, it would take decades for us to regain our good reputation for being a humane and law abiding nation.  As it is, forget it.

Obviously, this examination of the negative affects of having the population of this country believe in superstitious Bronze Age beliefs is incomplete.  If I tried to classify it all, I'd have to write a series of books.  One wouldn't be enough.

But the short story is a beginning.  If the only negative affects of religious belief were what I have touched upon here, it would be bad enough to justify organizing the secularists of this country to incite political influence and action to combat it.

But it is far, far worse than this.  The struggle to overcome religiosity and its negative affects on this country will continue into the future, and may never be fully complete.  Christianity, Judaism and Islam have been here, collectively, for over three thousand or more years.  That kind of influence doesn't go away overnight; we've been fighting it since the beginning of the Renaissance in the 12th century.

Let's not allow it to make a comeback.