ADAM CORNFORD: COULD BE TRUE

READ THIS PIECE BY ADAM CORNFORD, people. You can't go wrong. The first two paragraphs are below, but go to his blog and read it all up.

Apart from the issue of corporate money, I think there are deep historical reasons for the collapse of conservatism American-style as an ideology. They have to do with the senescence of possessive individualism in the age of global human cooperation and massive human impacts on the biosphere. Possessive individualism as a worldview originated with the hyperacquisitive English gentry class in the later seventeenth century and was codified into philosophy by thinkers like Adam Smith. It is worth remembering that the wording Madison wanted for the opening of the Declaration of Independence was “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Property.” Possessive individualism has been the ideological foundation of capitalism ever since.

Now, however, it is obsolete, for two reasons, both global in scope: the rise of the transnational corporation, and the advancing ecological crisis. Karl Marx long ago described the joint-stock corporation as “capitalist communism” and believed that its global development would unify humanity, but in a coercive and destructive way, dragging the world into deeper and deeper cyclical crises that would result in mass unemployment, hunger, and war. He therefore anticipated a point at which the working people of the world, recognizing their own transnational unity and practical interdependence, would collectively overthrow capitalism and establish what he called “the free association of the producers” in which “the full and free development of each depends on the full and free development of all.” This, not state ownership, was Marx’s vision, founded on the notion of the “social individual” for whom the freedom of others is not the limit of her own, but its expansion. In other words, socialism offers a fundamentally different vision both of freedom and of the individual. This vision was eclipsed both by authoritarian state capitalism masquerading as “socialism” in the USSR, China, and elsewhere, and by the enormous postwar boom that was actually premised on a greatly enlarged public sector. As that boom collapsed, the response of the ruling elites, especially in the US and the UK, was to promote possessive individualism with a vengeance (as “conservatism”) through a vast and well-funded network of foundations, think-tanks, media outlets—and churches.

WHY DON'T CONSUMERS OWN WHAT THEY PAY FOR?

Nazis didn't like socialism either

The consuming taxpayers pay for everything in the world. We pay the wages of the politicians and the dividends of the wealthy. We pay through taxes for certain necessary services and for personnel to operate those services, and, through the price of our purchases, we pay the salaries of all corporate people and the wage earners of those corporations. Isn't that clear enough—as consumers we pay each others wages in both the private and public sectors? 


Since we workers pay for everything, we ought to be pretty furious at those who sit around and skim the cream off the free market (capitalistic) economic system while the real generators of wealth go hungry and go without good health care. What we need to do is figure out a way to get all those top dog corporate monkeys, stock holders and dividend takers off our consuming, taxpaying backs, but how do we do that without making ourselves vulnerable to a government that we might make too large and before they assassinate real reformers? Where are the Teapublicans when we need them? This "free market" economic system ought to make all us tax paying consumers mad as hell!

SELFISHNESS BRED INTO US. CAN WE WHIP IT?

Keep this to the front of our minds as the Teapublican Party continues holding impoverished children, the handicapped, retired seniors and veterans hostage in order to get a budget agreement that permanently harms those vulnerable groups. Four percent of any population is sociopathic. Then there are many others with very low empathetic (conscience) brain functions. I'm sure conscience or lack of it can be plotted on a bell curve just as can most human traits. I believe it's safe to say that the Teapublican Party is dominated by those two groups of people. It's not their fault—they were born that way—but the rest of us should watch out when they try to con us into going along with them by attempting to manipulate our evolved adaptations for selfishness. Our agreement with their selfish policies might indicate we also might be brain damaged. Let's hope the human species is slowly evolving toward more altruistic behavior than selfish behavior. The world need not be as selfish as it is. 

TEAPUBLICANS MIX UP CAUSE AND EFFECT: A BRAIN DEFECT

Republicans frequently mix up cause and effect when they discuss human behavior. Clear evidence of that confusion is revealed in their plan for cutting back on COLA increases for seniors on social security. It's called chained consumer price index (CPI). Roughly, chained CPI assumes that as one's income decreases, he (or she) will spend less on food (i.e. steak to chicken) or prescriptions or medical care, etcetera. Thus, according to Republicans, senior benefits can be reduced since they will spend less. However, that is assbackwards. The chained CPI reduces money to people on social security benefits and creates the effect of people spending less on necessary items. A chained CPI will force people to spend less because they'll have less to spend.

Republicans think the same backward way about capitalism. Obviously, for capitalism (or free enterprise) to work, many must be poor so that a few may be wealthy. I can see no evidence in history or currently where capitalism does not create much poverty while allowing only a very few to fully benefit from it, but when altruists discuss helping those whose poverty is created by capitalism, the wealthy Republican, instead of feeling responsible to relieve the poverty their economic system creates, blames the poor for being poor in a system which needs many to be poor if it is to work correctly. Cause and effect are clearly turned around in a Republican's brain. 

I think Teapublicanism is a brain defect of cause and effect caused when the circuits between moral feelings and one's actions aren't fully developed. In order to be so callous, one must not be able to feel the pain of others very deeply. 

LUNATICS OF THE RIGHT: JUSTICE SCALIA

proves that reason is not necessarily sanity

Yesterday I saw a tee shirt that read, WHEN NOTHING GOES RIGHT, GO LEFT

I often am surprised when an old friend (who admits he still lives in fear of the devil) and I discuss things from afar how far I've entered into the intelligent world and have left behind the "things of the devil". Another old friend once told me that "we become what we fear". I see evidence of that fear turning people nasty whenever an old crack brain like Scalia reveals how far back into the dark ages his brain has sunk. It's sad that a grown man has not grown emotionally beyond the 9-11 year old stage when fairies and other invisible things are very real. You can see the work of punishing nuns and priests in such beliefs as Scalia endorses. Further, if he truly believes in the devil, he is but one step removed from punishing people he imagines are witches. In fact, he would probably be one of those nit-pickers, looking for proofs of witchcraft in things like the shape of a person's head or color of their eyes. Read or watch Arthur Miller's The Crucible to see how reason can twist reality until reality seems a nightmare. That's what reason does. People who still believe in that devil nonsense are scary and completely irrational in all their beliefs. (For example, they would destroy a nation's economy in order to get their way.) They are exactly like the Abbot of Citeaux, Arnaud Amalric, the crusader whose army reached the outskirts Béziers. When he was asked if all in the city should be killed since some of them were Christian, he told his crusaders, "Kill them all. God will know his own." That's reason at work. Spooky man is Scalia. 

FLIPPING THE TRUTH...A TEAPUBLICAN TACTIC

the face of terrorism in America

The Teapublican terror brigade's alien cell in the American government hopes that we don't recall what they've been saying for months, i.e. we're going to shut down your American government if you don't do what we want. Their allies in terror at Fox News have already forgotten or they never knew, since, mostly, they just make up the news as they go along. If the Teapublicans and their wealthy friends in broadcasting manage to flip the responsibility for the shutdown, then we'll know that the American people have lost their ability to think for themselves. Like the Nazi's the Teapublicans believe that if they lie long enough and frequently enough, the people will come to believe the lie. Will it work in such an obvious case as this one? 

WANT TO UNDERSTAND REALITY? READ FICTION.

from the Columbian:

People who don't understand the rage that many black youths must have for white Americans just don't understand the individual human heart. Even Pitt's, himself black, misses something. That one of the attackers has a white mother is one more reason why he'd feel so conflicted and enraged by his condition. His behavior is no mystery at all.  

Until we begin to look at each individual as a novelist or poet or psychologist looks at human beings, we will fail to see them correctly. Generalizations driven by labels won't get at the truth. We must view each other as individuals and try to fathom our behaviors as novelists and poets think about our emotion-driven behaviors, with an effort to understand how the individual's emotions drive his actions. We don't have to agree with a novelist's presentations, but we do need to approach one another as novelists or poets think about them—imaginatively. Then, we'll all at least be in the same ballpark, watching the same baseball game. It's emotions that drive all our behaviors. Not ideas. Until we understand one another as emotional beings, we'll remain lost in labels and generalizations. Ironic as hell, but true: read good fiction if you want to understand reality as it must be understood.

AN ALTERNATIVE RATIONALE FOR HUMANIST IDEALISM

a human being not in a state of acceptance

The human species evolved through blind processes of procreation and survival. This fact makes competitive struggle instinctive in the human brain and cultures. Within a capitalistic economic system, the survival instincts are summarized in the word, greed. Capitalism will usually favor those with the best instincts for greed in the evolutionary struggle for survival and apportions rewards roughly according to the genetic gifts and the upbringing that each human is endowed with. Some humans are extremely lucky in the genes and nurture that their parents give to them. Others receive poor inheritances.

human in a state of acceptance

If humanity cannot evolve beyond greed, many humans will forever labor in the service of other humans gifted with the genes and/or nurture better suited for competitive success. Conflict is guaranteed, and human history is full of examples of domination by the more aggressively gifted over those more passively inclined. The meek have never and will never inherit the earth. Fortunately, because the human being is a social animal and must function within a social framework, the human species has evolved an acute altruistic instinct by which our species navigates social relationships. Altruism might be an adaption that brings peace to Planet Earth.

If it ever becomes a fact that humanity’s survival rates are increased in a global culture in which no one has too much while others have not enough, the human species might achieve global harmony. If altruism achieves better survival rates, the human species will evolve more peacefully and finally escape what seems like an eternal animal competition for survival. Will the more aggressive among us realize (i.e. verbalize) that they must surrender certain privileges in order to live in a more peaceful world? Will the meek realize they must have/take certain privileges in order to live on a more just globe? Who knows if a peacefully just human culture can be achieved? Thousands of years of religion have not achieved it. Will a thousand years of scientific knowledge through neuroscience and biology help humanity achieve a more peaceful coexistence?

In the meantime, all an individual member of humanity has for its peace of mind is a psychobiological state of mind and body that can be characterized by the term acceptance. Biologically, acceptance is present in an individual when that human is free of psychic pain and physical threats to its existence. At those moments of acceptance, the individual human does not feel the need to take from others either as a beggar or as a capitalist. Paradoxically, at those moments, each is psychically dependent upon the other for the fulfillment of its survival needs. In that mutual state of being, perhaps global peace is a possibility.

FIVE SUPREME COURT TRAITORS UNDERMINE DEMOCRACY

These five men are traitors to the American Constitution. From left to right, the traitors are Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas,  Samuel Alito, and below right, Anthony Kennedy whose smug crooked smile (up on one corner, down on the other) could be put on the face of all five of these very average men. They have made a mockery of the idea of fair elections in America, helping to return America to the days of Jim Crow election practices in the South. The most frightening thing about this Supreme Court misruling is the realization that these members of our Supreme Court are so corrupted by partisan politics that they willingly and openly participated in the brazen Teapublican plan to disenfranchise American voters. Not since Hitler's days has a top court of justice gone along so brazenly with one political party in an effort to destroy the right to vote of another group of voters. In Hitler's Germany, it was the Jews who were disenfranchised. In America, it's blacks, Hispanics and older citizens that these corrupt Supreme Court justices are helping the Teapublicans to disenfranchise. When a nation's supreme court of law is so corrupted as this one is by one party, no citizen is safe from politicians willing to destroy the democratic ways in which we select those who will represent us in our Republic. I think, if honest lovers of our Republic should ever achieve enough power to do it, these five Justices of the Supreme Court ought to be tried as criminals for their aid to the Teapublican Party's plan to undermine the Constitution of the United States. They are due no respect. They've dirtied their pants, crapped on the bench where they sit in shame. They stink. The five are corrupt Teapublicans, root and branch, with loyalty only to the wealthy people who fund the Teapublican Party.  

REPLY TO AN EMAIL FROM A CATHOLIC FRIEND #2

Aquinas

"The reason the Church opposes contraceptive devices is because it is a DEVICE. It is not human, it takes away from the humans involved any control of their own wills and leaves it in the hands of some device made in a FACTORY. The Church wants men and women to try to the best of their ability to give their trust into the hands of God their Father. He knows what is best for them. WE have done that, Yuri, and it works! The church's stance is a call to human beings to take responsibility  for their actions, not to give that responsibility into the hands of the corporate world who make theses devices for a profit. How much of that profit goes back to society, very little I would bet. Take care. [Your Catholic Friend, in Jesus'name]." 

Some humans choose to be responsible. Others throw up their hands and take no responsibility at all. Birth control decisions are responsible HUMAN decisions, my Catholic Friend. I suppose you have given up driving because god gave you legs to walk on? The Catholic Church’s logic, if its logic is your logic, is as full of holes as Aquinas’s five non-proofs for the existence of his imaginative idea of a god.

What is the responsibility of the Catholic church for the overpopulated world which over-population is the direct cause of poverty, inadequate potable water in much of the world, the wars, recently decreasing life spans and increasing infant mortality? Your church’s policies are death warrants for the poor and, perhaps, for the human species. I don’t care if the Catholic church wants to keep most of its women barefoot and pregnant, but its irresponsible birth control practices are harming my paradise, the Earth.

If you're wondering how my "god" looks at these global issues, follow the sensible and intelligent argument offered by my higher power:  

"You have received by 'my will' a wonderful and abundant place for the human species to live. If the balance is right between the numbers of your species and the natural resources I have provided, then you are in harmony with 'my will', but if you are profligate in your procreation, then you will suffer the natural consequences of your profligacy. Further, if you do not believe me and need proofs of the result of disobeying 'my will', look around you at the paradise 'my will' gave you and recognize how your profligacy has fouled it. Look specially closely at all the vanished species and ask yourself why they vanished. This is how you will know 'my will' for you."  

My dearest, one of my oldest Catholic friends, the marvelous thing about my higher power, my god, if you will, is that It does things in such a way as to make Its laws easily available to human reason. An intelligent human animal can study the will of my higher power and draw verifiable facts from that study. 

EMAIL TO A CATHOLIC FRIEND...OR ANY RELIGIOUS FRIEND

Dear friend, I liked the Catholic Church when its priests were into liberation theology, supporting peasants in their armed battles against wealthy conservative forces in whatever nation they found themselves. Yes, that was good stuff, but the big dogs didn't like that and liberation is dead now. I see the Pope did tell the impoverished youth of Brazil to "shake up the church", then he directed them to proselytize on the streets which has nothing to do with shaking up Mother Church. He appears to want Catholics to be more like dogmatic Muslims, Mormons and Protestants, knocking on doors.

I understand his wish to grow the Church. When you promise impoverished masses they'll be rewarded in the afterlife, you help keep them cooled down and obedient to their masters on earth...the wealthy. Jeez, Friend, nothing new there. I wish I could eavesdrop during those Cardinal gatherings when they elect the Pope. Their strategies and aims are obvious: "Okay, we put in a conservative Pope when that's likely to more popular, and we put in this more liberal Jesus type when the liberals and socialistic forces are on the ascendency." It's coldly calculated to keep the Church in the best possible light. 

Notice that where poverty is greatest so also all religions have the most members. Sadly, the Pope once a year, around Xmas time, says, "Hey, World, help the poor," but the church does nothing constructive to help the impoverished masses except dole out insufficient charity, enough to hold the poor just above starvation levels and dependent on the Catholic Church. The Church officially sponsors no progressive legislation in any nation that is aimed to lift the poorest peoples out of poverty. Nor does the Pope support liberal and progressive forces in any nation that are struggling to make REAL POLITICAL CHANGE happen. In fact in America the church supports the Teapublicans who in North Carolina actual ended unemployment payments and supports the Teapublicans in other Southern states who are dumping the poor off Medicaid. My friend, the Pope is all smoke and mirrors, mouthing platitudes while doing exactly nothing to really help the poor.

If there were such a thing as an anti-Christ, the Catholic Popes, most of them, have fit that bill. I'm glad I don't believe in religious ideas or I'd be frothing at the mouth about the Pope's anti-Christ identity, but since I interpret what's happening through the rational lens of science, everything makes sense. Everyone is acting just as you'd expect they'd act if they had evolved out of jungle roots and each of them was desperately struggling to keep themselves alive in anyway they can—the Pope being no exception.

If the human species really did have souls and free will, if it really did obey a higher directive, if it really believed in the afterlife of punishment and reward, this globe would be a very different sphere. Modernity wouldn't look so much like the product of a species a few thousand years out of the jungle. My dear Friend, it's so obvious what's going on I think any intelligent human computing machine would see it, but my wish, again, is hoping that people were more than they are, but, so far, they are performing right to type as evolved animals struggling to adapt to modern civilization and not doing too well at it...liberality bless them in the name of goodness.

From your friend, another human being, doing the best he can to stay out of harms way,

Augusto Philipi Lovingstone

IF YOU SING, TEAPUBLICANS ARREST YOU

I'm 75 and these parents are older than that. We remember the Depression and we don't forget, either, what wage earning was like before strong unions were born, back when Teapublicans (still called merely Republicans back then) fought in every way possible to eliminate unions in order to keep profits high for their extravagantly wealthy owners. At least in those days there was some risk involved in getting wealthy. Now, with our tax dollars continually insuring that corporations don't fail, there is little risk for the biggest fat cats. Teapublicans! The wage earner's curse! Who insures the wage earners? Certainly not Teapublicans in North Carolina where unemployment benefits no longer exist.

As to a person's age, Teapublicans don't care a hoot about that. Their attacks at the federal level on Social Security and Medicare proves they don't care about seniors. We wage earners and retired wage earners, the young and the old, the union wage earner and the non-union wage earner who hopes for better wages and benefits, the unrepresented wage earner at Walmart and Poopy John's...we must begin to stand together to reverse this Teapublican attack on wage earners. It's no accident that they've been responsible for the greatest transfer of money from the middle and lower classes to the top 1% since the early days of the last century. Since 2009, the wealthiest Americans have seen their incomes increase by 123% while the poorest Americans have seen their incomes decline by 4%. The middle class remains stagnant. Solidarity, friends.

WHO MADE ME AN INURANCE POLICY FOR THE RICH?

All the historic financial dislocations of the last hundred years whether it's the Great Depression or the Great Recession have something in common. They're all caused by under- or unregulated financial schemers. 

I'm tired of bailing entrepreneurs out of their messes with my tax dollars. Time to return to the good old days when they go broke and end their lives in poverty. Entrepreneurs claim they deserve more reward than wage earners because they take risks. Well what happened to that risk factor when wage earners continually pay their way out of their stupid messes? The wealthy capitalists continue to live in mansions while the rest of us see our American Dream fade into the past. Who named us and our tax dollars their insurance policy? 

A way to budget surpluses? Long jail terms for financial malfeasance. Split the giant financial corps up so that their failures won't threaten America's economic well-being. Cut way back on the bloated military budget. Increase the tax rate on just the top 10% of Americans. See how much better the situation becomes for education and the social programs that benefit us all by making sure that no one among us lives in poverty.  

Return to the visions of FDR and cast off the blinders of pure capitalism. Vote a progressive ticket and continue to work diligently at your own jobs too. You might even consider unionizing or, at least, support unions anywhere you find them. Look to sports unions to see what excessive unions can do, but also at public service jobs which are middle class unions, smack in the middle income range all wage earners expect for themselves.

FREE WILL, AN IMPORTANT ILLUSION

Tonight on Through The Wormhole, the subject was free will. Do we have free will? Of course not, but the human animal must cling to the concept for the sake of its mental health. To feel as if one does not have "control" of one's behavior is a bewildering state of mind. I felt that way many days back when I drank. Now that I understand I have no free will, I actually and paradoxically feel more in control. In a sense, the truth has set me free, but free from what?

If you watch this particular episode of Wormhole, you'll quickly see that the men who are doing the experiments are the ones concluding that the human animal does not have free will whereas those who believe we have free will did a lot of philosophizing. Stick with the experimenters, the scientists. You'll always be closer to the truth, and I generally feel better the more I know the facts. Odd...that no women were featured in this episode. Why?

One philosopher among them did say that the more each of us knows, the closer to having a sense of control seems possible. I agree with him because the computer with the most data in memory will naturally have more information informing the decisions it makes for the consciousness called "I" that it makes decisions for.

MOST TOP APES ARE LESSER HUMANS

I'll tell you what's scary. I'm certain of the facts of evolution, and I understand the sense of entitlement these "top apes" in the Teapublican Party were lucky to be born with and the adaptive and conscienceless emotional drives that force them to drive for the top, but those drives also make MOST of them more selfish and less caring than the average monkey.

The saddest fact is that the Teapublican power base in the American Bible Belt does not understand or recognize evolution. Thus those Southern "lesser monkeys" go right along currying favor (i.e. picking the nits off those top gorillas' backs by voting for them). However, these Teapublican gorillas at the top don't return the favors of the "nit pickers" like real gorillas do. 

Evolution stands out so clearly in these battles between we clever liberal chimps who can understand the dynamics of the situation and the selfish gorillas of the Teapublicans who are fighting mad to maintain their dominant place in the concrete jungles of the globe. If only MORE of our brothers and sisters to the American South understood the actual situation that they nourish with their nit picking votes and began to vote as if their personal welfare depended on it. If only...! Sadly, at this time, these nit pickers in the South remain the tools of the greater apes who use those lesser monkey's Yankee hatred to divert them from the damage being done to them everyday in the Southern concrete jungles.

A FEW MORMONS LEARN WHAT ALL FAITHS NEED TO KNOW

studying fossil evidence through a Bible

Some Mormons have found internet evidence that many of their beliefs are doubtful, but any rational examination of any faith would lead a rational human animal to conclude that all religions serve human emotional needs, and that none of the evidence for supernatural activities has any testable evidence to support it. These conclusions are so obvious one must be blinded by fear or religious books (like, for example, the Koran) not to have arrived at them and found them to be true. 'Nough said.

REPUBLICAN, LIBERTARIAN, PROGRESSIVE.

We are fighting wars and not increasing taxes to finance them. Thus we finance our wars on the backs of the poorest Americans and by letting America's infrastructure rot, and by depriving children of inexpensive college educations through which they can compete with the children of the wealthy in our free market economy. 

Republican Eisenhower held the lowest tax rate at 19% until the 2nd World War and the Marshall Plan were paid for. Deficits can be met by increasing revenue as well as by slashing social programs and privatizing everything and letting corporations own all of America. Corporations aren't good citizens. Corporations gave us Enron, our Great Depression, the recent Great Recession, the dot.com bubble, the penny stock fiasco and the Savings and Loan crash. We taxpayers underfund education and social programs to bail corporations out of the messes they make of our economy. If we didn't have to keep bailing out business and financial corporations, we'd have money to maintain our social programs, our infrastructure and our educational systems.

We Americans must stop blaming politicians for our personal poor budgeting that has made us live beyond our means so that we are not willing or unable to meet our responsibilities to the poor, to our children and to our infrastructure. Bitching about taxes plays into the Republican plan to undermine and weaken government so that deregulated businesses can repeatedly rip us off and, then, blame government for what business has done to the American economy. It's the Republican strategy. When a Republican says that "government is the problem, not the solution", he's misrepresenting the facts.

Libertarians would turn everything over to businesses and, thus, they also will give us more of the same unregulated free market scams that have ruined the American economy time after time. They are Republicans in disguise, but they've sure got the pot smokers behind them. I'm beginning to think of myself as a Progressive. We might become as happy as the Danes under Progressive leadership, but Americans have been brainwashed by the idea of personal freedom to the point they can't see themselves as one among many in a nation of millions. Pride is our weakness. We like the idea of the dog eat dog struggle that is capitalism, no matter how unhappy it is making us.

DETROIT BANKRUPT FINANCIALLY AND AMERICA MORALLY

When I read today that DETROIT has filed for bankruptcy, I was moved emotionally in ways I was surprised to understand and wrote the short piece I've linked to above. Then I realized that all human animals with their complex consciousnesses experience these feelings if they live long enough. Nothing special, I guess, but if you're the animal feeling that feeling, the experience seems to be unique and quite original. If this is how all older citizens feel who've witnessed much change in their culture during a long lifetime, I guess I'm okay with how I feel because I'm experiencing a piece of the universal pattern of all human lives in these days, full of fast-paced change, more change than one human animal can take in and keep up with at the same time. 

The photo above is from a Time Magazine photo essay, revealing Detroit's decline. It's specially ironic to me to see that news magazines like Time are also in decline. Decline within decline. 

Excuse me a moment, please, while I sit down on this curbstone beside the street and remember the rag man's horse drawn cart, clopping down my grandmother's street in Dayton, Ohio where I was raised as a child and, also, the ice man toting in a huge block of ice on his shoulder to put in the top of my grandmother's brand new ice box. 

TRAYVON, THE REAL SCENARIO

Scenario at 2:30 am:

I'm in a strange town, visiting. I don't know anybody in the town except my Dad, and I'm walking home to my Dad's house down a strange street in this strange town when some crazy guy comes after me and shows me a gun in his pants belt and seems to be inappropriately crazy-acting angry. I've got three choices...fight or flight or freeze. 

If I freeze the dude could easily shoot me. If I run he might shoot me in the back. I know the dude must be crazy to be confronting me when all I'm doing is walking home. Paranoid crazy people do that sometimes, attack others for no sensible reason. So, my only choice, faced with this armed madman, is attack so fast that he doesn't have time to pull his weapon and quickly do enough damage to the dude so that he won't be able to pull his gun and kill me. That's what any sensible male, acting on instinct, would do when confronted by what seems to be an armed maniac in a strange town.

The only error I make is I don't beat the guy senseless. I let up a minute because I'm a human being, and I don't like to kill people. That's my mistake...I don't knock the guy completely unconscious, so, because I'm a human being with a conscience, I'm dead, and a shyster lawyer makes sure that the paranoid racist, nut job gets off by making sure that nobody gets a chance to really understand the dynamics of the situation. The prosecutor began by reading the very clear racist remarks of that nut job when he reported "suspicious" [walking down the street?] behavior. Zimmerman made clearly racist comments at the time. What he committed was a clear hate attack that he instigated, and only in the deep South would he get away with it. We all know that, anybody my age of 75 with a bit of brain in his head knows it, anybody who saw McCain defeated by the race card in South Carolina during his first run at the presidency knows it...the South is full of prejudice. Hell...it's the whole reason the South went from Democrat to Republican after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

Now...will I be able to sleep?

BLACK COLLAR CRIME: SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT

This was first posted in April 2006:

If you're lucky enough to be a member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, you'll receive the kind of news 6 times a year that I'm passing on below for your attention. Crime amongst the clergy is as active as in any other profession, and, if you ask me, sexual crimes are more prevalent within the clergy than without it. That's because of the peculiarly repressive attitude in churches toward sex. Not only that, churchly codes of silence means that in many churches children are protected from the sort of information that might save them from predators. Thus predators enjoy church congregations and have an easy time of it in houses of worship and within naive congregations. Not only that—most sexual attacks come from people known to the child. Where else but in friendly, close congregations can predators have such easy access to naive children? There's so much unwarranted trust within congregations.

It's a shame, I suppose, that childish innocence must be shattered, but how else do you protect children from predators? If they see only Disney movies, designed for kids and adults who are still like children, then they'll be vulnerable when confronted with danger, nor will their erstwhile protectors be any more likely to see through a predator's sweetness.

As you peruse the list below, remember that the list of crimes does not count the other lists in the paper such as "convicted and sentenced" and "civil suits settled" and cases under investigation. Not only that, this list only scratches the surface since it is only people aware of the FFRF publication who will send these in. That number will be only a small percentage of Americans. Imagine how long these lists would be if everyone contributed their local news to this national paper.

Arrested/Charged

• Rev. Eugene Marriott, Fort Washington, MD: raping & beating a woman in Fairfax, VA. The minister for men at Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church was accused of attacking and raping the woman in his car. Her body showed signs of having been hit with a belt & fists. Marriott told police that the attack was a form of role-playing. Sources: United Press InternationaI 3/8/06, wtopnews.com 3/8/06

• Michael Willis Heard, 27, & Gregory Railey Jr., 26, Canton, OH: 4 counts of theft by deception. Heard is founder & chief executive officer of Xzuberant Faith Basketball Association, a Christian-based basketball league. Railey is chief operating officer. The league scammed at least $60,000 from hundreds of people, by promising that nobody would be refused pro contracts as long as they paid registration fees. Sources: The Repository [OH] 3/5/06, 2/11/06

• Rev. Terry Hornbuckle, 44, Arlington, TX: failing to stay in custody long enough to be fitted with an electronic monitoring device. The pastor of the Agape Christian Fellowship Church has been in & out of jail since March last year. He was initially arrested for drug abuse & sexual assault, then arrested three more times for violating the terms of his bail. He was ordered to pay the costs of his twice-weekly drug tests & monthly bond supervision. He cannot consume alcohol or drugs unless prescribed by his doctor & pre-approved by the court. Source: Dallas Morning News 3/3/06

• Rev. Elidio Tapia-Renteria, 45, Owatonna, MN: 4th-degree criminal sexual conduct. The preacher at Calvary Church in Owatonna & Rios De Agua Viva in Faribault was charged with molesting his assistant several times over a 7 month period. He reportedly told the woman she was doing God's work by helping him to liberate himself, & threatened that something bad would happen to her & her family spiritually if she refused. Source: St. Paul Pioneer Press 3/1/06

• Rev. George Silva, 73, Raton, NM: 4 counts of sexual misconduct involving a minor. The Catholic priest was arrested by FBI agents on charges including transporting a boy under age 16 from New Mexico to France & Portugal for criminal sexual activity. He is on administrative leave pending an internal church investigation. Source: Santa Fe New Mexican 2/24/06

• Rev. Morales Saintilus, Long Island, NY: 4 counts of incest, 2 counts of endangering the welfare of a child, & 2 counts of sexual abuse. The pastor & owner of the Ebonizer Baptist Church, attended by Haitian Americans, was charged with raping at least 3 female family members under age 17, some as young as 12. One teen said she was raped nearly twice a week for 4 years. Saintilus is a fire-&-brimstone preacher who often speaks about atoning for one's sins. Source: WABC- TV 2/9/06

• Rev. Kevin Thompson, 48, Bay Area, CA: illegally catching & selling 465 juvenile leopard sharks. The pastor of the Bay Area Family Church & 5 other people were charged with harvesting leopard sharks that were too small for commercial distribution & therefore protected under state law. Source: San Francisco Examiner 2/9/06

• Rev. Vincent Kohn, Springfield, FL: abandonment & cruelty to animals with unnecessary suffering. The pastor of The Anointed Church of God was arrested after a witness saw him throw several puppies into the woods from a pickup truck, leaving them to die. Police who went to Kohn's house found more puppies & their mother, all malnourished and/or with no food or water. Source: local6.com 2/7/06

• Rev. Michael Peters, 36, Denver, CO: 2 counts of sexual assault of a child by a person in a position of trust. The minister at New Hope Baptist Church was charged with sexually assaulting a girl, 17, in 2003. He was then pastor, choir director, & counselor at the 2nd Baptist Church in Boulder. The girl was in the church choir & had come to him for counseling after being a victim of a previous sexual assault. Source: Denver Post 2/7/06, 9news.com 2/7/06

• Rev. Jimmy McCants, 54, Chicago, IL: misdemeanor criminal trespassing. The pastor was arrested in the middle of his sermon at the Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church. The church's board of directors told police they had fired McCants in December, & a woman affiliated with the church had signed a complaint against him for trespassing on church property. Source: AP 2/7/06

• Msgr. Bernard Prince, 71, Ontario, Canada: 2 charges of sexual assault. He was accused of abusing an altar boy, 12, when he was a parish priest in the 1960s. Now retired & living in Rome, he was once secretary general for the Vatican's Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith, & was close to the late Pope John Paul II. Source: AP 2/3/06

• Rev. Charles V. Shifflett, 54, Culpeper, VA: taking indecent liberties with a child. This is the 3rd time he was arrested in just over the same week. The pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, who resigned last November, was charged with an incident occurring in March 1998. He was previously charged with 2 counts of child endangerment in incidents occurring in 1992-93, & taking indecent liberties with a child between 1991-93. He was a leader at Calvary Baptist Academy, a church-run private school. Source: Free Lance-Star 1/27/06

• Timothy Robert Frahm, 40, San Antonio, TX: indecency with a child by contact. The religion, literature, & physical education teacher at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church School was charged with molesting a female student, 12. He has since resigned. Source: San Antonio Express-News 1/26/06

• Rev. Lorenzo Dixon, 40, Arcadia, FL: simple battery & improper exhibition of a firearm. The pastor of Assembly of Praise Church was arrested at the Fairfax Tabernacle Church in Jacksonville for being involved in a fight with another man. During the argument, Dixon wielded a handgun. Source: local6.com 12/28/05

• Rev. Galen Ermil Peckham, 71, Waterloo, IA: indecent exposure, assault with intent to commit sexual abuse, & 2 counts of simple assault. The visiting minister at First United Methodist Church resigned after being arrested for molesting an elderly woman at a care facility. Peckham was also told to refrain from active ministry pending the investigation. Source: Waterloo Cedar-Falls Courier 12/22/05

• Rev. Joseph Briceno, Phoenix, AZ: 8 counts of sex crimes involving 2 minors. The fugitive priest was arrested near the Mexican border. Source: AZ Daily Star 12/17/05

LITERALLY, THE LITERALIST DROWNS IN THE LAMB'S BLOOD

Monday, April 25, 2005  [This entry was originally posted on this date. Blogger refuses to believe that this posting exists so I'm re-posting now in larger typeface. I wanted to enlarge the original, but it won't come up when I feed in that date.] 

"... the language of religion, including most of the Bible, is necessarily figurative or symbolic and therefore the literalist, who by definition, lacks imagination or poetic insights, is the least religious of men."  (from THE DARTMOUTH BIBLE, 2nd Edition, p. xl)

I'm always troubled when I discuss atheism or religion with fundamentalists because they're so sadly dead and plodding and unpoetic. They don't know what they're missing. Oh, they're emotional enough, writhing in the clutch of their Jesus experience, but they are also like frothing pit bulls who won't let go the seat of his pants. As to any larger feel for the visionary Universe, they get nothing. Their god is a puppet maker who whittled humans from mud and who never left earth. Their god has no imagination. He's a petty choirmaster who punishes them or the choirmaster's wife who gives them milk and cookies.

Never mind that in every encounter with the details of science, fundamentalists have, throughout history, lost in the courts of time. You would think that, therefore, they would embrace a less literal interpretation of their big book and take up a poetic and symbolic interpretation.

Christian and Muslim fundamentalists are more alike than they are different when it comes to a contrast with most rational Americans. They are ever people of the law rather than people of the spirit. As Thomas Merton writes, "One cannot apprehend a symbol unless one is able to awaken, in one's own being, the spiritual resonances which respond to the symbol not only as sign but as 'sacrament' and 'presence.'"

I've lost much of my own poetic spirit with the ravages of time. A certain ability to concentrate my consciousness seems to have declined, but, still, I recall how spiritual and painful is the truly poetic way of experiencing reality. The poetic and symbolic way challenges the petty laws of the literalist and allows doubt to flourish. In the brief passage I quoted above from the Dartmouth Bible, I found for myself an explanation of the literalistic problem which I have never forgotten, and then, recently, Joseph Campbell explained further:
 
"The symbols of the higher religions may at first sight seem to have little in common," wrote a Roman Catholic monk, the late Father Thomas Merton, in a brief but perspicacious article entitled 'Symbolism: Communication or Communion?' "But when one comes to a better understanding of those religions, and when one sees that the experiences which are the fulfillment of religious belief and practice are most clearly expressed in symbols, one may come to recognize that often the symbols of different religions may have more in common than have the abstractly formulated official doctrines.

"'The true symbol,' [Merton] states in another place, 'does not merely point to something else. It contains in itself a structure which awakens our consciousness to a new awareness of the inner meaning of life and of reality itself. A true symbol takes us to the center of the circle, not to another point on the circumference. It is by symbolism that man enters affectively and consciously into contact with his own deepest self, with other men, and with God. God is dead . . . means, in fact, that symbols are dead.'

"The poet and the mystic regard the imagery of a revelation as a fiction through which an insight into the depths of being—one's own being and being generally—is conveyed anagogically. Sectarian theologians, on the other hand, hold hard to the literal readings of their narratives, and these hold traditions apart. The lives of three incarnations, Jesus, Krishna, and Shakyamuni, will not be the same, yet as symbols pointing not to themselves, or to each other, but to the life beholding them, they are equivalent. To quote the monk Thomas Merton again: 'The symbol is an object pointing to a subject. We are summoned to a deeper spiritual awareness, far beyond the level of subject and object.'

"Mythologies, in other words, mythologies and religions, are great poems and, when recognized as such, point infallibly through things and events to the ubiquity of a 'presence' or 'eternity' that is whole and entire in each. In this function all mythologies, all great poetries, and all mystic traditions are in accord; and where any such inspiriting vision remains effective in a civilization, everything and every creature within its range is alive. The first condition, therefore, that any mythology must fulfill, if it is to render life to modern lives, is that of cleansing the doors of perception to the wonder, at once terrible and fascinating, of ourselves and of the universe of which we are the ears and eyes and the mind. Whereas theologians, reading their revelations counterclockwise, so to say, point to references in the past (in Merton's words: 'to another point on the circumference') and Utopians offer revelations only promissory of some desired future, mythologies, having sprung from the psyche, point back to the psyche ('the center'): and anyone seriously turning within will, in fact, rediscover their references in himself."  (from MYTHS TO LIVE BY, Joe Campbell, pp. 265-266)
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"All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable." —Fran Lebowitz (She spends lots of time looking in the mirror too.)

NATURE AT WORK, STARK RAVEN MAD

You ain't going to believe this, but a crow has a grudge against me. Last week, as I walked to the bank, a crow began to caw loudly and circle above me and swoop down. It was so continuous that I watched it for quite some time till it perched on a light post nearby and quieted down, then I continued on. This week, at the same spot, a crow again began to caw and circle above me. I took videos of it, but I also noticed that another crow and a small (baby?) crow eventually joined in the cawing and circling. I began to think it was a crow fight, but then, returning back from the bank on the other side of a wide main street (Mill Plain), at the same point, this crow swooped down on me again, cawing like mad. At that point, I took this video. No other crow came near. Here's the video of the second attack. No kidding. I'm pretty sure it's personal, and I've recently read that crows do remember offending members of the human race, but, as far as I know, I've done nothing to offend this old crow unless it's the crow in Spokane that I tried but failed to shoo away from the sparrow he was pecking to death, but that was a decade ago.

IS EVERYTHING BAD REALLY FOUND IN SOUTHERN USA?

If you live in the South of the US, in almost every bad thing that can be charted, you are at the top of the chart. Conversely, almost every good thing charted, you are at the bottom of the chart. Southerners, as a Yankee who cares for you, I must ask how long will you let the man hold you down by his constant tactic of directing your hatred at those of us Yankees who have escaped the power of the man? Look at the policies and people who keep you poor and in bad health. If you cannot see how you are being treated by the policies and people you follow, then don't blame others for your plight. Wake up Johnny Reb. You're being taken to the cleaners by your leadership. Up here, we're all cheering for your recovery. We need your strength beside us to make America work again for the middle class and the poorest Americans. Come join with us. It's a win win situation.

ARE YOU A MAN OR AN APE?

Recently, advanced imaging techniques have allowed neuroscientists to watch what happens in the brain of a member of the human species when it smiles. They found that when a smile breaks upon the human face, the chemicals that create happiness are engaged. When happy-making chemicals are released in the human brain via a happy circumstance, those chemicals also create a smile as a byproduct to show a fellow robot, most likely, that he or she is making us happy. If they like us, they'll be sure to do that action again to us or in our presence. It's a social thing for survival's sake. 

This marvelous wiring works either way and, of course, proves once again that humans are electrochemical robots because if we fake a smile, then conversely, the happy chemicals are  released in the brain. That means we can all increase our happiness factor if we just smile more. No shit!

With those happy facts in mind, I have

begun to practice a behavior which I hope will improve the circumstances of my life. If faking a smile will release happy chemicals, will strutting like an alpha male, help me increase my image and security among males of my species? If that little pipsqueak Bush Junior could own a ball club and become president of the US, then I figure copying his strut may help me get more done with less worry. 

Since I walk every day for an hour, I've got a good forum in which to practice my new strut. I've begun to throw my shoulders back and swing my arms during my walk, like a president approaching the podium. I can tell you already that it takes more energy to walk "manfully" than to do the stroll, but I also notice that hints of aggressiveness come into my thoughts and feelings as I walk like a conqueror. I become more outgoing toward those I pass in my walks. I believe I'm onto something. More later, and thanks again, neuroscience. 

KKK GREENSBORO MASSACRE 1979

This film shows gun nuts from the past in Greensboro, NC, doing their thing with weapons that gun nuts do. 

"The marchers killed were: Sandi Smith,^[2] a nurse and civil rights activist; Dr. James Waller,^[3] president of a local textile workers union who ceased medical practice to organize workers; Bill Sampson,^[4] a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School; Cesar Cauce,^[5] a Cuban immigrant who graduated magna cum laude from Duke University; and Dr. Michael Nathan,^[6] chief of pediatrics at Lincoln Community Health Center in Durham, North Carolina, a clinic that helped children from low-income families." 

Readers can see the killings were targeted at leadership types. The murderers were all acquitted. This is what the South does to people who want to advance the welfare of wage earners in the South, black and white. Unfortunately many white wage earners in the South still line up with their masters, their white bosses. This massacre happened in the South where the Republican Tea Party Party has its greatest strength.

I separate from this group of gun nuts all those men (and women) who like to hunt, target shoot, enjoy finely made weapons and the history of weaponry, but I ask all those sane members of the NRA to publicly and frequently disavow those politicized members of their organization who do not recognize the fact that their fellow citizens have the right to want guns regulated. It's not the American government that wishes to regulate guns, it's a majority of their fellow citizens who are asking for these regulations. 

Sensible members of the NRA could start by getting rid of their new NRA president who imagines the gun issue is a Civil War issue and who equates Americans who want gun controls with members of the Yankee army who joyfully burned thru Georgia with Sherman to the sea.

PLUTOCRACY BARKS, REPUBLICANS OBEY

Rep. Connie Mack pushes bill benefiting big donor  Rep. Connie Mack, head of a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, has scheduled the panel's first markup of the year – on a bill that would benefit a big donor to his campaign. www.usatoday.com

If only Republicans were this tough on their good friends, the offshore American companies that evade paying taxes. In the House of Representatives too...their special stronghold where the Republicans do much to hold back American progress and protect the plutocracy that owns them "lock, stock and barrel" as the saying goes. The plutocracy barks and the Republicans leap, asking first, "How high, boss man?" If only their boss were the average American Joe.