SWEARIN’ OFF

Today, I do abjure forever the name of “liberal Democrat” and assume only the small letter title “atheist”. (Unless I forget that today I swore off.) My wearing both titles, gives religionists who think only with their brain stems an excuse to attack liberal causes which are more humane, democratic and Christian-like than any fundamentalist cultural program I’ve ever experienced. Not that many Christians don’t get involved with the poor, but at bottom, they have the ulterior motive of making converts so all their efforts are self-serving rather than charitable.


A NEW PARTY? REPUCRATS or DEMOCANS

I’m sure liberals and conservatives of old have much more in common with each other than truly conservative Republicans have with fundamentalist Christians. Clinton’s Republican-like balancing of the budget added to a liberal’s natural tendencies to want to make society a fair and just place ought to be able to forge a new party with undeniable strength.


STALKING THE OPPONENT

At this very moment, I’m looking at a conservative male who doesn’t know I know he’s a conservative, and he doesn’t know I’m an atheist whose observing him. He’s eating lunch and visiting with his daughter.

He’s got a stony face and seems unable to have a real smile on his face. His eyes shift around, and he rarely makes eye contact with the people he’s talking to. He’s very guarded. This is not the kind of man I’d like to have guarding me in an Iraqi prison, if you get my drift. Anyhow, in twenty minutes, he’s not cracked a smile, even when he’s talking to his daughter. The funny thing is that I know his disability is all genetic, and I can’t take any more credit for my tendency to smile and clown around than he can for his genetic tendency to frown. The one difference between us is that I accept the genetic truth of our natures, and he doesn’t.

Speaking of the neocon smile—just take a gander at the VP’s smile on page 28 of the July 26, 2004 Newsweek. That smile is in the mouth and not at all in the eyes which is how you can tell a real smile. Neocons don’t know anything about traits like this, and if they do read or hear about it, they dismiss it as nonsense. Neocons just don’t know anything about human nature. All their info is based on moral and intellectual abstractions. They make their observations on how life ought to be rather than on what human nature.............

I’m tired of saying what I was just about to say. The truth may be that well-educated liberals and conservatives pretty much know all they need to know about human nature. It’s what they want to do with the knowledge that makes them different. A liberal wants to make society safer for the less-advantaged while the neocon wants to make the society more punishing.


ROUN ’N’ ROUN SHE GO AND ONLY THE PO’ ‘RAQIS KNOWS IT’SO

In a post some weeks past, under the title, “PREDICTION”, I predicted that Saddam’s police would soon be torturing Iraqi’s just as in the old days, only this time for a new regime. Man! I was right on. Turns out this Allawi guy is a real strongman, the kind of strongman that only a neocon could love.

“He [Allawi] has flooded the streets with cops, many of them from the old regime. He’s started a new General Security Directorate, otherwise known as the secret police.... There’s a danger that Iraqis may end up with a pro-American dictator, the sort of banana-republic despot that an American leader once famously called ‘an SOB, but our SOB.’ Then one of the last good reasons to have invaded Iraq will have proved as illusory as those long-lost weapons of mass destruction.” Newsweek, July 26, 2004, p.37

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"I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown." —Woody Allen