We’ll Take Our Country Back From Unspeakable Darkness, Says Mitt August 31, 2012

Okay, the RTP piece of wood didn’t actually say that last night.

What he did say, among all the nonsense and empty flim-flam language and phony homespun babble, was that the United States is supposed to save the world from ‘unspeakable darkness’. The context was vaguely historical, but given the RTP’s affinity for Klannishness, it’s not far fetched to suggest that he was throwing some meat to the racial bigots, to the peanut throwers, the animal feeders, out there in the convention center that was built with taxpayer money from blacks and whites alike.

And today, babbling some other speech somewhere, he shouted, in his finish, ‘We’re going to take America back.’

We’re going to take America back.

Now that’s a bit ambiguous.

Does he mean he wants to take America back to the nineteenth century, or the eighteenth, or possibly the Dark Ages? That’s where RTP policies, such as they are, would take us. Of course Mitten would be satisfied to take us back to the status of a third-world country by bankrupting us with his lust for absolute military power at the cost of every other aspect of American life except for the part where he gives even more money to his rich friends and masters.

Or did he mean he wants to take America back from some force or power that took America away? Last time I looked the country was being run and staffed by Americans, duly elected. Perhaps he means the Americans in the White House. That American. Obama. The black guy who took America away from the real Americans, you know, the white ones who mumble in their sleep, mumble in their coffee, and blither in their get-togethers that they want to take ‘their White House back from the nigger.’

Mittens may not have offered a single bit of substance in his entire primary campaign and during the entire RTPNC convention in Tampa, but he sure does seem to be whistling Dixie to the white RTP people whose hearts belong to the Klan.

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To See The Stars, To Know One’s Mind August 26, 2012

I’m normally a pessimist regarding global warming, the depredations of the human race, and the big issues. And with justification, I think. Civilization is coming to an end because we screwed with the laws of physics and as a species we continue to demonstrate that we simply don’t understand the laws of physics and that they apply to us. So, civilization is over. Mass extinction is underway. Our intent, as a species, is to hasten it.

But this morning, while the sky was still dark, I went out on the porch and looked up. A bright planet to the east, I think Venus, sat like a jewel among the stars. So many stars, yet only a small fraction of what I could see if the lights of the town and the neighborhood were off. Even so. So many. So bright. So far. It was wondrous to look at them, to realize what they were, to understand how they got there, how they came to be, how they work. And equally wondrous to know that there is so much we don’t know about them, and how much we can learn.

That’s a feeling the religionists cannot have. To them their god made the stars and planets. Not for them the understanding of the subatomic processes that keep the stars glowing for billions of years. Not for them the incredible processes of a nova, a supernova, a stellar collapse. God did it. Religion, religious belief, god: those stunt the mind, weaken the intellect, narrow mental and emotional horizons, undermine the human species, and now, hasten life toward extinction.

Perhaps that is pessimistic, to think, to believe that most of life in this biosphere will soon disappear. On the other hand I’m not afraid of it, no more than I am afraid of my own death. Because I am an atheist the religionists tell me I will burn in eternal torment once I die, while they will go to some place of eternal bliss, such place usually described as one of the most inconceivably boring, dull, terrible places imaginable, where one’s whole being must spend eternity worshipping some hugely narcissistic being. I’ve always said that given the choice I’d take the torment because the really interesting people and interesting ideas would be found there. Religious people tend to be boring even in this life: apparently their idea of bliss is eternal boredom and enslavement to a narcissistic being, and their idea of hell is a ferment of ideas and questioning and seeking after facts and evidence and truths. They have much to fear, and much to torment themselves with.

I have none of that. I think it sad that we are so incompetent as a species that we are willing to destroy life on earth in order to satisfy the whims and stupidities and fears of our weakest minds, but I know that the laws of physics will operate no matter what we do. By understanding and following them, we might save the biosphere. Unfortunately, and in large part due to religious ignorance, willful ignorance it must be said, and human stupidity and greed and selfishness, we choose to ignore physics. Nonetheless I take comfort in the fact that the laws of physics do work, that they aren’t subject to the caprice of invisible beings, and that we can understand them. That knowledge gives me a sense of optimism, a sense that though we will extinguish most life, including our own, in time life will rise again on the planet, and it is to be hoped that it will be devoid of the flawed intelligence evolution gave us, intelligence that cursed the world.

As for the theists and the rest of the superstitious crowd, frankly I do hope they get to their heaven of eternal worship. I can think of no greater curse to call down on them while I drink my morning coffee and gaze at the stars.

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Ronald Reagan Redux, America In His Darkness August 23, 2012

It’s evening in America.

Today fewer men and women will go to work than ten years ago.

With banks paying virtually no interest on savings, with a financial sector filled with thieves, hucksters, and con men drawing astronomical salaries as they destroy American’s ability to take care of their families, Americans are more fearful and less secure than ever.

Hundreds of young men and women will marry today, and they can look forward to a nation that values weapons more than education; that values scientific ignorance more than facts and evidence; that values people with money more than people struggling with three jobs to support their families; that sends American jobs overseas to enrich wealthy owners who pay little or nothing in taxes; that gives pride of place to religious superstition and ignorance instead of knowledge and understanding; that seeks to degrade women to the status of farm animals.

It’s evening in America, and under the cover of darkness the forces of wealth, amorality, and ignorance, the forces of forty years of Republican and Conservative political deceit and lies, our country is weaker and worse off than ever.

Ronald Reagan told us it was morning in America and then he started turning out the lights.

Today in America, night is falling and the lights are still going out. Why would we ever want to put Republicans back in power?

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Go look at America’s new hero August 7, 2012

Spinny’s got a thing up about America’s new political hero, the man who will save us from our follies, who has a brain like a steel trap… which pretty much closed a long time ago and can’t be pried open for anything. Take a look: Spinny’s place.

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