A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND ART
Camille Paglia shows her ignorance of science and the current state of knowledge about consciousness when she says on page 232 of Sexual Personae that “His [Rousseau’s] narcissism evolves into Romantic solipsism, doubt about the reality of things outside the self.” She’s being negative of course. Paglia, like so many Republicans and their religious right, deplores the 60s and 70’s for their Romantic unreality, disorder and disregard for authority.
The truth is that anyone who doesn’t question “the reality of things outside the self” is sadly out of touch with reality. Another way to consider Paglia’s case is to think of “appearance versus reality” as Dennett does in his book, Freedom Evolves. Quite accidentally I happened to read in both these books one night and came across these contrasting views of reality. Let me quote from Dennett:
“The recognition of the difference between appearance [what we think is out there] and reality [what’s really out there] is a human discovery. A few other species... show signs of appreciating the phenomena of ‘false belief’—getting it wrong.” But animals lack the capacity of “reflection” which allows humans to understand the problem of appearances. “That sort of bridging of the gap between appearance and reality is a wrinkle that we human beings alone have mastered.
“We are the species that discovered doubt,” Dennett writes. (At least some of us have, the non-religious among us.) “Is there enough food laid by for winter? Is my mate cheating on me? Is it safe to enter this cave? [Why should I believe there’s a god?] “[Animals] cannot actually ask themselves these questions.... They are stuck in a world of appearances, making the best they can of how things seem and seldom, if ever, worrying about whether how things seem is how they truly are. We alone can be racked with doubt, and we alone have been provoked by that epistemic itch to seek a remedy: better truth seeking methods.” (Dennett, pp. 164-165)
Doubt about reality can be a good thing, Camille.
HUMANISTS WORK TO GOOD EFFECT
“On May 6, 2004, the FDA rejected the request to make Plan B emergency contraceptives available over-the-counter. Plan B is currently obtainable only by prescription despite the fact that increased availability would drastically reduce the risk of unwanted pregnancy after unprotected sex or contraceptive failure. To counter this attack on reproductive rights, the American Humanist Association released a statement condemning the FDA’s pronouncement. Now the AHA is supporting a move to investigate the political pressures around the decision.” (FreeMind magazine, August/September, 2004, p. 9.)
I believe, when we look deeply enough for political pressure, we’ll find another case of certain congresspersons’ religion being promoted over scientific objectivity. Now how can that be in a nation in which we supposedly have a wall of separation between church and state? Who is breaching this wall and why?
OUTFOXED (Buy It!)
The recent study of Fox News Network contained in the VHS production, “Outfoxed”, comes up with some very enlightening information. Did you know that if you watch Fox News exclusively, you are three times more likely to have wrong information about Iraq than if your news source was some other media outlet? These figures were derived from asking viewers after the facts were established what they believed the facts to be. By a number of three to one, Fox viewers believed false information.
Also, it may not surprise you to know that Bill O’Reilly is a nut case of the worst variety, an almost pathological liar. The powerful pundit slandered a young man for almost a year after he came on O’Reilly’s show to speak of his father’s death on 9/11 in the Trade Towers. O’Reilly continually made up statements that the young man did not say and totally distorted the young man’s position.
Since the young man was not a public figure and could, he did look into suing O’Reilly for slander. However, the lawyer who listened to the situation opined that before a case of slander can be made, the young man must first prove that Bill O’Reilly knew that he was speaking falsely, but since O’Reilly is notoriously misinformed and lies so frequently, it would be difficult to prove that O’Reilly does know truth from falsity. In short, if you lie pathologically as O’Reilly does, you can’t be sued for lying.
Also, it should be noted that on the day of the original broadcast, O’Reilly was so enraged and out of control that staffers for his show made sure that the young man got out of the building safely and quickly because they were afraid for the young man’s continued health. A fascist figure for sure is this Bill O’Reilly. It’s bad enough being an honest man in O’Reilly’s Foxdom. I definitely wouldn’t want to be a Jew in his Germany.
_______________________________________
"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination." —Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) [They had fundamentalists too.]
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
A DOG MAKES COLONS OF US ALL
“ ‘Use it or lose it’ is a motto with many applications in the animal world. For instance, the brains of domesticated animals are significantly smaller than the brains of their nearest wild kin, and this is not just a by-product of selection for large muscle mass in animals raised for food. Domesticated animals can afford to be stupid and still have lots of offspring, for they have in effect out sourced many of their cognitive tasks to another species, us [humans], on which they have become parasitic. Like the tapeworms that have ‘decided’ to trust us to handle all their locomotion and food finding tasks for them so that they can drastically simplify their nervous systems, which they no longer need, domesticated animals would be in tough shape without their human hosts to live off. They are not endoparasites, living inside us, but they are still parasites.” —Daniel Dennett in Freedom Evolves, pp. 163-164
Lo, how the humble dog has come up in the world! Parasite that he is, he makes us feed him and take care of him and some of us spend thousands of dollars to keep him alive when he grows old and feeble. The dog without elaborate language skills has indeed studied and mastered us.
BUSH STIRS UP A HORNET’S NEST
A Spokesman Review story (August 9, 2004, p. A8) tells us about multiplying “al Qaeda franchises”: “The emergence of these groups is making the fight against terrorism more challenging.... It’s like McDonald’s giving out franchises..,” said Dia’a Rashman, an Egyptian expert on militant groups. These bin Laden al Qaeda franchises “pose a ‘catastrophic threat’” to the United States and its friends and allies.
Thank Bushman for brilliant planning and foresight and nuanced thinking. All kinds of groups of Islamic terrorists are arising from a common hatred of America, and they are only connected by that common hatred. You can kill all the bin Ladens you want, and these new groups will go on. Bush has loosed the hydra-headed beast.
BUSH STIRS UP OIL PRICES
Whereas oil supplies in Iraq keep being disrupted by Bush’s war while demand rises and whereas Bush and Republicans have always been unsupportive of increasing automobile fuel efficiency, we know who is responsible for stirring up oil prices, don’t we?
PILOT SHOT DOWN
(Spokesman Review, 8/10/04, p. B1). I see that the shot down pilot, Scott O’Grady, visited Spokane, Washington recently (where he no longer lives) to support Bush for president. O’Grady claims to admire Bush because he “says what he means and means what he says” whatever Scott means when he says that Bush ‘means what he says’...? I mean... who doesn’t mean what he says—even when he means to deceive? It’s what Bush means when he says what he means that’s the trouble. I just wish bushmen could speak clearly and intelligently.
DECLARATION ON SIN, HUMANIST STYLE
From “FreeMind”, the Humanist Magazine, (August/September 2004, p.6):
“We, the members of the American Humanist Association assembled at the organization’s sixty-third annual convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, wish to declare to a candid public that there is no sin. We say this because sin is a theological concept, not a moral one, and as Humanists, we have no theology.
“Therefore, while recognizing the existence of ethical wrongs, unwise personal behaviors, and socially harmful practices—all of which should be discouraged—we see nothing legitimately warranting the epithet, ‘sinful’. Nor do we judge a whole person as a ‘sinner’ for wrong acts.
“This outlook causes us to look at each so-called sinful behavior or practice in a fresh way, unbiased by traditional prejudgment, so as to independently assess whether it is or isn’t harmful to individuals or society. We then respond accordingly. Because we hold such an approach to be the most consonant with compassion and reason, and because we anticipate significant public and personal benefits if such a view were widely adopted, we further recommend it to all.
It’s why my current bumper sticker says: ATHEISTS DO NO EVIL.
__________________________________________________
Speaking of "without language": "It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it." — that's right, you guessed it, it's —President Bush (1750-1810)
“ ‘Use it or lose it’ is a motto with many applications in the animal world. For instance, the brains of domesticated animals are significantly smaller than the brains of their nearest wild kin, and this is not just a by-product of selection for large muscle mass in animals raised for food. Domesticated animals can afford to be stupid and still have lots of offspring, for they have in effect out sourced many of their cognitive tasks to another species, us [humans], on which they have become parasitic. Like the tapeworms that have ‘decided’ to trust us to handle all their locomotion and food finding tasks for them so that they can drastically simplify their nervous systems, which they no longer need, domesticated animals would be in tough shape without their human hosts to live off. They are not endoparasites, living inside us, but they are still parasites.” —Daniel Dennett in Freedom Evolves, pp. 163-164
Lo, how the humble dog has come up in the world! Parasite that he is, he makes us feed him and take care of him and some of us spend thousands of dollars to keep him alive when he grows old and feeble. The dog without elaborate language skills has indeed studied and mastered us.
BUSH STIRS UP A HORNET’S NEST
A Spokesman Review story (August 9, 2004, p. A8) tells us about multiplying “al Qaeda franchises”: “The emergence of these groups is making the fight against terrorism more challenging.... It’s like McDonald’s giving out franchises..,” said Dia’a Rashman, an Egyptian expert on militant groups. These bin Laden al Qaeda franchises “pose a ‘catastrophic threat’” to the United States and its friends and allies.
Thank Bushman for brilliant planning and foresight and nuanced thinking. All kinds of groups of Islamic terrorists are arising from a common hatred of America, and they are only connected by that common hatred. You can kill all the bin Ladens you want, and these new groups will go on. Bush has loosed the hydra-headed beast.
BUSH STIRS UP OIL PRICES
Whereas oil supplies in Iraq keep being disrupted by Bush’s war while demand rises and whereas Bush and Republicans have always been unsupportive of increasing automobile fuel efficiency, we know who is responsible for stirring up oil prices, don’t we?
PILOT SHOT DOWN
(Spokesman Review, 8/10/04, p. B1). I see that the shot down pilot, Scott O’Grady, visited Spokane, Washington recently (where he no longer lives) to support Bush for president. O’Grady claims to admire Bush because he “says what he means and means what he says” whatever Scott means when he says that Bush ‘means what he says’...? I mean... who doesn’t mean what he says—even when he means to deceive? It’s what Bush means when he says what he means that’s the trouble. I just wish bushmen could speak clearly and intelligently.
DECLARATION ON SIN, HUMANIST STYLE
From “FreeMind”, the Humanist Magazine, (August/September 2004, p.6):
“We, the members of the American Humanist Association assembled at the organization’s sixty-third annual convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, wish to declare to a candid public that there is no sin. We say this because sin is a theological concept, not a moral one, and as Humanists, we have no theology.
“Therefore, while recognizing the existence of ethical wrongs, unwise personal behaviors, and socially harmful practices—all of which should be discouraged—we see nothing legitimately warranting the epithet, ‘sinful’. Nor do we judge a whole person as a ‘sinner’ for wrong acts.
“This outlook causes us to look at each so-called sinful behavior or practice in a fresh way, unbiased by traditional prejudgment, so as to independently assess whether it is or isn’t harmful to individuals or society. We then respond accordingly. Because we hold such an approach to be the most consonant with compassion and reason, and because we anticipate significant public and personal benefits if such a view were widely adopted, we further recommend it to all.
It’s why my current bumper sticker says: ATHEISTS DO NO EVIL.
__________________________________________________
Speaking of "without language": "It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it." — that's right, you guessed it, it's —President Bush (1750-1810)
Sunday, August 15, 2004
BUSH DIRECTS US MILITARY TO HAVE NO COMMENT ON. . .
silencing the Press in Iraq. They've shut down Sadr's newspaper, al Jazeera's TV station and now all newsmen are forbidden to be in Najaf. Does this remind you a bit of something like Hitler or Stalin would do? Or the British during the American Revolution? Does this sound like democracy in action? Well—I guess—this would be democracy in a Bushman type democracy, if and when he gets finished with Iraq and America.
BUSH WAR IN IRAQ FREES NORTH KOREA TO CONTINUE. . .
to mess around with atomic bombs. Bush has made America and the entire world less safe by building up terrorists forces and allowing nuclear development to continue in countries like Iran and North Korea. He's spread us so thin we look like toilet paper to our enemies and ass wipes to our friends. What more can we do? Fundamentalist American Christian bushmen care nothing about Bush's ignorance as long as he sticks to their faith.
______________________________________
"One murder makes a villain, millions a hero." —Beilby Porteus (1731-1808)
silencing the Press in Iraq. They've shut down Sadr's newspaper, al Jazeera's TV station and now all newsmen are forbidden to be in Najaf. Does this remind you a bit of something like Hitler or Stalin would do? Or the British during the American Revolution? Does this sound like democracy in action? Well—I guess—this would be democracy in a Bushman type democracy, if and when he gets finished with Iraq and America.
BUSH WAR IN IRAQ FREES NORTH KOREA TO CONTINUE. . .
to mess around with atomic bombs. Bush has made America and the entire world less safe by building up terrorists forces and allowing nuclear development to continue in countries like Iran and North Korea. He's spread us so thin we look like toilet paper to our enemies and ass wipes to our friends. What more can we do? Fundamentalist American Christian bushmen care nothing about Bush's ignorance as long as he sticks to their faith.
______________________________________
"One murder makes a villain, millions a hero." —Beilby Porteus (1731-1808)
Saturday, August 14, 2004
IT’S SO SIMPLE AND OBVIOUS
For the thousandth time, let me explain. We’re animals trying to learn to be human. Doesn’t that explain everything? The seeming insanity, the murder, the war? What perfect supernatural creature would create such a cockeyed world? Huh? He’d have to be a sadistic nut case to make a world like this, but if we accept evolution, then everything becomes natural, sensible and understandable. Our instincts still make us survival oriented animals while our consciousness makes us aware of what we do. There are no more things than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio. Our consciousness does make humans of us all when we surrender, at last, to it and the truth.
ON/OFF SWITCHES LEAD TO FREEDOM
Yep, we’re back to the book Freedom Evolves where Dennett writes about maple trees and the switches which turn on the coming of leaves in spring and the falling of leaves in autumn. He says a chain of simple on/off switches controls it all. Determinism clearly, but even at this level of unconscious activity he spies the beginning of freedom. Let me quote from page 162:
“But even a simple switch, turned on and off by some environmental change [onset of winter], marks a degree of freedom, as the engineers say, and hence is something that needs to be controlled, one way or another. A system has a degree of freedom when there is an ensemble of possibilities of one kind or another, and which of these possibilities is actual at any time depends on whatever function or switch controls this degree of freedom. Switches (either on/off or multiple choice) can be linked to each other in series, in parallel, and in arrays that combine both sorts of links. As arrays proliferate, forming larger switching networks, the degrees of freedom multiply dizzyingly, and the issues of control grow complex and nonlinear. Any lineage equipped with such an array confronts a problem: What information ought to modulate passage through this array of forking paths in a multidimensional space of possibilities? That is what a brain is for.
“A brain, with its banks of sensory inputs and motor outputs, is a localized device for mining the past environment for information that can then be refined into the gold of good expectations about the future. These hard-won expectations can then be used to modulate your choices—better than your conspecifics can modulate their choices. Speed is of the essence, since the environment is always changing and teeming with competitors, but so is accuracy... and so is thrift. These conditions on evolution generate a set of tradeoffs, with a premium on swift, high-fidelity, high relevance sensory attention....”
These two passages should serve as just a hint of the spicy flavor in Dennett’s book as he works hard to soften the impact on the determinism which surely lies at the genetic, atomic level of human existence.
KOKO ASKS FOR DENTAL CARE: AN EVOLUTIONARY TALE
Koko the gorilla who may have mastered as many as 1000 bits of sign language “began telling her handlers at the Gorilla Foundation in Woodside [CA] she was in pain.” Dentists were called, a tooth was removed and Koko doesn’t have to tell her handlers she’s in pain anymore.
However, all was not painless. When Koko learned that her vocabulary of a thousand words was barely more than President Bush's vocabulary she was crestfallen and felt she'd let down her simian ancestry.
EVIL IS AS EVIL SEES
The evil world of the religious continues unabated. It’s the religious who make an evil world real. How do I know this? Because they tell me so. Bush calls his enemies evil and his enemies call Bush evil. Why would I question the judgment of experts in evil when they judge each other as evil? If they see evil in their world, let them. Meanwhile, I’ll just keep living in a sane, rational natural world....
___________________________________________
"Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father—an act which made a deep impression on me at the time." —Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
For the thousandth time, let me explain. We’re animals trying to learn to be human. Doesn’t that explain everything? The seeming insanity, the murder, the war? What perfect supernatural creature would create such a cockeyed world? Huh? He’d have to be a sadistic nut case to make a world like this, but if we accept evolution, then everything becomes natural, sensible and understandable. Our instincts still make us survival oriented animals while our consciousness makes us aware of what we do. There are no more things than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio. Our consciousness does make humans of us all when we surrender, at last, to it and the truth.
ON/OFF SWITCHES LEAD TO FREEDOM
Yep, we’re back to the book Freedom Evolves where Dennett writes about maple trees and the switches which turn on the coming of leaves in spring and the falling of leaves in autumn. He says a chain of simple on/off switches controls it all. Determinism clearly, but even at this level of unconscious activity he spies the beginning of freedom. Let me quote from page 162:
“But even a simple switch, turned on and off by some environmental change [onset of winter], marks a degree of freedom, as the engineers say, and hence is something that needs to be controlled, one way or another. A system has a degree of freedom when there is an ensemble of possibilities of one kind or another, and which of these possibilities is actual at any time depends on whatever function or switch controls this degree of freedom. Switches (either on/off or multiple choice) can be linked to each other in series, in parallel, and in arrays that combine both sorts of links. As arrays proliferate, forming larger switching networks, the degrees of freedom multiply dizzyingly, and the issues of control grow complex and nonlinear. Any lineage equipped with such an array confronts a problem: What information ought to modulate passage through this array of forking paths in a multidimensional space of possibilities? That is what a brain is for.
“A brain, with its banks of sensory inputs and motor outputs, is a localized device for mining the past environment for information that can then be refined into the gold of good expectations about the future. These hard-won expectations can then be used to modulate your choices—better than your conspecifics can modulate their choices. Speed is of the essence, since the environment is always changing and teeming with competitors, but so is accuracy... and so is thrift. These conditions on evolution generate a set of tradeoffs, with a premium on swift, high-fidelity, high relevance sensory attention....”
These two passages should serve as just a hint of the spicy flavor in Dennett’s book as he works hard to soften the impact on the determinism which surely lies at the genetic, atomic level of human existence.
KOKO ASKS FOR DENTAL CARE: AN EVOLUTIONARY TALE
Koko the gorilla who may have mastered as many as 1000 bits of sign language “began telling her handlers at the Gorilla Foundation in Woodside [CA] she was in pain.” Dentists were called, a tooth was removed and Koko doesn’t have to tell her handlers she’s in pain anymore.
However, all was not painless. When Koko learned that her vocabulary of a thousand words was barely more than President Bush's vocabulary she was crestfallen and felt she'd let down her simian ancestry.
EVIL IS AS EVIL SEES
The evil world of the religious continues unabated. It’s the religious who make an evil world real. How do I know this? Because they tell me so. Bush calls his enemies evil and his enemies call Bush evil. Why would I question the judgment of experts in evil when they judge each other as evil? If they see evil in their world, let them. Meanwhile, I’ll just keep living in a sane, rational natural world....
___________________________________________
"Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father—an act which made a deep impression on me at the time." —Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
Friday, August 13, 2004
GETTING THE WORD OUT, ONE TORTURE AT A TIME
In a Newsweek (August 9, 2004, p. 37) report about abuse of prisoners in Iraq, we read the following: “Some on the commission also believe that Rumsfield and senior officials failed early on to set up clear, baseline rules for interrogations—an ethical ‘stop’ sign, in a sense. This opened the way to abuse in an atmosphere in which President George Bush and senior officials were demanding better intel and were openly questioning the Geneva Conventions.”
Why do neocons always undermine safeguards against the torture and abuse of prisoners everywhere and uphold the death penalty? What is it in the conservative nature that makes them so eager to harm others in their paranoid seeking to control and dominate everyone around them? Let’s hope that the conservative temperament isn’t the best survival mechanism and that their maniacal genetic makeup will die out.
Many of us think it’s all right to torture someone else until we realize that if our intelligence services can devalue any human life, they can also devalue your life. Once into the business of torture, torture becomes perfectly natural and acceptable. Then comes the day your government decides you might be the enemy and it’s your turn to be tortured for information. Now the rights which defended you are gone because you wanted your enemy to be tortured, and you didn’t foresee that, did you?
How do you explain what the South African intelligence forces did to their own citizens except by a slow loss of compassion for the humanity in each of us? They became like the American poultry workers who smash birds against the wall. By the time it’s your turn to take the water torture, to be smashed against the wall, it’s too late. You should have spoken up to protect the law before your turn to be tortured arrived.
GUARDSMEN WHO REALLY GUARDED
Spokesman Review story in August 8, 2004 paper: I say, “hurrah” for Oregon troopers in Iraq who stopped the beatings of prisoners by Iraqi policemen! Glad for that, but also aware, now, of the third incident which shows that my prediction is accurate, that, soon, ex-Saddam policemen will be beating up the same people under the new government that they beat up under Saddam’s. Everything changes but everything remains the same. I don’t really believe that, but in this one instance, in Bush’s Iraqi mess, it’s true.
Let me slip this in here: if we return Bush to office, we make all Bush’s stupidity America’s stupidity. If we vote him out, we repudiate bushman tactics and show that America has rejoined the human race and is part of the world once again. Not only that, Bush out/ Kerry in will give us the flexibility and excuse to try anything new. Kerry won’t be beholden to Bush’s pride and stubborn resistance to declaring his mistake. Kerry will have a clean slate.
EVERYBODY MUST BE ARMED!
Spokesman story tells us (August 9, 2004) about a Bristow, Oklahoma man who shot himself in the ass when he stuck a 22 pistol in his belt. Why did he stick a 22 pistol in his belt? Paranoia.... He’d heard that somewhere in his community a fugitive was on the loose. He wanted to be able to take a pot shot, we must suppose, at the fugitive if he showed himself in the neighborhood. Now... how he’d be able to recognize a fugitive if he saw him I don’t know, unless he planned to stop every stranger in his neighborhood or just take a shot at any strange auto passing through.
Imagine if we all carried around concealed weapons as many neocons suggest. Multiply this one accident by thousands a week. How long do you suppose before accidental gun deaths superseded auto accidents in the number of deaths reported? Can you imagine the day in, day out carnage of accidental shootings, not to mention the homicides caused by angry men pulling guns on one another.
Besides, the everyday carrying of guns has been tried once in American history, back in the days of the wild West. The bushman's favorite historical period. The only way that carnage was halted and the West tamed was when sheriffs forced anybody entering their towns to turn in their guns while they were in town. Eventually, these temporary confiscations of guns mutated into laws about carrying weapons. These laws have been around for a long time, and nobody seemed to be bothered too much about them until the N.R.A. made a bunch of paranoid males even more paranoid. The danger with paranoids is that they are the kind who shoot first and ask questions later.
Bush’s failure to stop the purchase of automatic weapons in America shows either that he’s secretly in sympathy with the terrorists who are shooting up Iraq and thinks that Americans need also to be armed with automatic weapons and ready to shoot up Americans he doesn’t agree with or that he’s just plain stupid. The choice is yours, dear reader.
______________________________________________________
"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so." —mathematician, atheist, social activist, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
In a Newsweek (August 9, 2004, p. 37) report about abuse of prisoners in Iraq, we read the following: “Some on the commission also believe that Rumsfield and senior officials failed early on to set up clear, baseline rules for interrogations—an ethical ‘stop’ sign, in a sense. This opened the way to abuse in an atmosphere in which President George Bush and senior officials were demanding better intel and were openly questioning the Geneva Conventions.”
Why do neocons always undermine safeguards against the torture and abuse of prisoners everywhere and uphold the death penalty? What is it in the conservative nature that makes them so eager to harm others in their paranoid seeking to control and dominate everyone around them? Let’s hope that the conservative temperament isn’t the best survival mechanism and that their maniacal genetic makeup will die out.
Many of us think it’s all right to torture someone else until we realize that if our intelligence services can devalue any human life, they can also devalue your life. Once into the business of torture, torture becomes perfectly natural and acceptable. Then comes the day your government decides you might be the enemy and it’s your turn to be tortured for information. Now the rights which defended you are gone because you wanted your enemy to be tortured, and you didn’t foresee that, did you?
How do you explain what the South African intelligence forces did to their own citizens except by a slow loss of compassion for the humanity in each of us? They became like the American poultry workers who smash birds against the wall. By the time it’s your turn to take the water torture, to be smashed against the wall, it’s too late. You should have spoken up to protect the law before your turn to be tortured arrived.
GUARDSMEN WHO REALLY GUARDED
Spokesman Review story in August 8, 2004 paper: I say, “hurrah” for Oregon troopers in Iraq who stopped the beatings of prisoners by Iraqi policemen! Glad for that, but also aware, now, of the third incident which shows that my prediction is accurate, that, soon, ex-Saddam policemen will be beating up the same people under the new government that they beat up under Saddam’s. Everything changes but everything remains the same. I don’t really believe that, but in this one instance, in Bush’s Iraqi mess, it’s true.
Let me slip this in here: if we return Bush to office, we make all Bush’s stupidity America’s stupidity. If we vote him out, we repudiate bushman tactics and show that America has rejoined the human race and is part of the world once again. Not only that, Bush out/ Kerry in will give us the flexibility and excuse to try anything new. Kerry won’t be beholden to Bush’s pride and stubborn resistance to declaring his mistake. Kerry will have a clean slate.
EVERYBODY MUST BE ARMED!
Spokesman story tells us (August 9, 2004) about a Bristow, Oklahoma man who shot himself in the ass when he stuck a 22 pistol in his belt. Why did he stick a 22 pistol in his belt? Paranoia.... He’d heard that somewhere in his community a fugitive was on the loose. He wanted to be able to take a pot shot, we must suppose, at the fugitive if he showed himself in the neighborhood. Now... how he’d be able to recognize a fugitive if he saw him I don’t know, unless he planned to stop every stranger in his neighborhood or just take a shot at any strange auto passing through.
Imagine if we all carried around concealed weapons as many neocons suggest. Multiply this one accident by thousands a week. How long do you suppose before accidental gun deaths superseded auto accidents in the number of deaths reported? Can you imagine the day in, day out carnage of accidental shootings, not to mention the homicides caused by angry men pulling guns on one another.
Besides, the everyday carrying of guns has been tried once in American history, back in the days of the wild West. The bushman's favorite historical period. The only way that carnage was halted and the West tamed was when sheriffs forced anybody entering their towns to turn in their guns while they were in town. Eventually, these temporary confiscations of guns mutated into laws about carrying weapons. These laws have been around for a long time, and nobody seemed to be bothered too much about them until the N.R.A. made a bunch of paranoid males even more paranoid. The danger with paranoids is that they are the kind who shoot first and ask questions later.
Bush’s failure to stop the purchase of automatic weapons in America shows either that he’s secretly in sympathy with the terrorists who are shooting up Iraq and thinks that Americans need also to be armed with automatic weapons and ready to shoot up Americans he doesn’t agree with or that he’s just plain stupid. The choice is yours, dear reader.
______________________________________________________
"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so." —mathematician, atheist, social activist, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Thursday, August 12, 2004
JUST NATURALLY DIVISIVE AND AUTHORITARIAN
Anyone wondering why our culture has become so splintered has only to look to Christian fundamentalism. Christian conservatives, by definition, can be no other than biased, undemocratic, authoritarian, unable to compromise and divisive in their views. Why would I say that, you ask?
The core of liberalism is to be impartial and all inclusive in its views of the world, to spread the benefits of democracy to everyone, to, for example, treat all religions equally, topple kings, free women from drudgery, blacks from segregation and gays from bigotry. By definition, by its stated purpose to be progressive and impartial, liberalism’s relativity can only be the enemy of those who think there is but one inflexible moral path, their Bible way. That’s why democracy’s fairness and inclusiveness is considered liberal and evil by conservatives.
Since good reportorial work always tries to present the facts of an issue without assigning moral values to it, conservatives will always see an impartial, nonjudgmental media as being liberal. They will only accept conservative exclusiveness as true and, of course, conservative exclusiveness naturally leads to biased world views. Once we understand the authoritarian necessity in fundamentalism, we can see why religious conservatives are the enemy of democracy and freedom. Their world view is by necessity undemocratically discriminatory.
FITZCARRALDO! FITZCARRALDO! I PRAISE THEE
Just rented from our library this old Werner Herzog directed movie about a madman compulsively interested in opera, whose goal is to bring opera to a backwoods settlement in Brazil. A laughing stock in his community, first he needs money. Already a failure as a railroad magnet, Fitzcarraldo embarks on an economic adventure which needs for its success to tote a huge steamboat over a mountain. Full of bizarre cinematic visions, comedy, tragedy, surprise and surrealism, and unbelievable non-special effects, it’s a must see. Wait till you see a boat climbing a mountain! Wait till you hear opera echoing through a jungle wildscape! Klaus Kinski’s manic hair is enough to make the movie wonderfully cinematic! To love a madman might be its subtitle. How the whole adventure comes out, I’ll leave for your viewing.
WHAT? ME WORRY?!
Why do neocons from the bushman party try to worry us about the fate of Medicare so that they can cut benefits and help destroy yet another liberal benefit to America? Neocon Bible fundamentalists try to tell us that because of declining population it will soon take 2 1/2 Americans to support each member on Social Security, yet, in a recent article in the Spokesman Review (August 8, 2004, p. B4), we read that the 18-24 year old New Millennium Generation is larger than the Boomer Generation. I’d say we’ve got many decades before Medicare and Social Security will be threatened.
BUSH STAND-INS CLOSE TV STATION IN BAGHDAD
Iraqi police recently silenced Al-Jazeera for a month in Baghdad. With America’s closing down of Sadr’s radio station two months ago and now America’s stand in Iraqi government following in America’s footsteps with Al-Jazeera, we see ominous signs that democracy is being stifled in Iraq. Bush is only too happy to see freedom of expression crushed in Iraq so we must ask, since he obviously hates the media in America (except for his hand picked men at Fox News) would he gladly see the same thing in America? Many of his American followers, if you read letters to the editor or listen to the Limboland types, seem also to equate dissent from the party line with betrayal of America. We’re not even going to state the obvious Constitutional argument against their fascist hatred for debate. But, obviously, the only news allowed in Iraq is going to hew to the party line. Another case of the Republican Party supporting dictatorial leadership anyplace in the world they want to control.
______________________________________________
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." —President Theodore Roosevelt
Anyone wondering why our culture has become so splintered has only to look to Christian fundamentalism. Christian conservatives, by definition, can be no other than biased, undemocratic, authoritarian, unable to compromise and divisive in their views. Why would I say that, you ask?
The core of liberalism is to be impartial and all inclusive in its views of the world, to spread the benefits of democracy to everyone, to, for example, treat all religions equally, topple kings, free women from drudgery, blacks from segregation and gays from bigotry. By definition, by its stated purpose to be progressive and impartial, liberalism’s relativity can only be the enemy of those who think there is but one inflexible moral path, their Bible way. That’s why democracy’s fairness and inclusiveness is considered liberal and evil by conservatives.
Since good reportorial work always tries to present the facts of an issue without assigning moral values to it, conservatives will always see an impartial, nonjudgmental media as being liberal. They will only accept conservative exclusiveness as true and, of course, conservative exclusiveness naturally leads to biased world views. Once we understand the authoritarian necessity in fundamentalism, we can see why religious conservatives are the enemy of democracy and freedom. Their world view is by necessity undemocratically discriminatory.
FITZCARRALDO! FITZCARRALDO! I PRAISE THEE
Just rented from our library this old Werner Herzog directed movie about a madman compulsively interested in opera, whose goal is to bring opera to a backwoods settlement in Brazil. A laughing stock in his community, first he needs money. Already a failure as a railroad magnet, Fitzcarraldo embarks on an economic adventure which needs for its success to tote a huge steamboat over a mountain. Full of bizarre cinematic visions, comedy, tragedy, surprise and surrealism, and unbelievable non-special effects, it’s a must see. Wait till you see a boat climbing a mountain! Wait till you hear opera echoing through a jungle wildscape! Klaus Kinski’s manic hair is enough to make the movie wonderfully cinematic! To love a madman might be its subtitle. How the whole adventure comes out, I’ll leave for your viewing.
WHAT? ME WORRY?!
Why do neocons from the bushman party try to worry us about the fate of Medicare so that they can cut benefits and help destroy yet another liberal benefit to America? Neocon Bible fundamentalists try to tell us that because of declining population it will soon take 2 1/2 Americans to support each member on Social Security, yet, in a recent article in the Spokesman Review (August 8, 2004, p. B4), we read that the 18-24 year old New Millennium Generation is larger than the Boomer Generation. I’d say we’ve got many decades before Medicare and Social Security will be threatened.
BUSH STAND-INS CLOSE TV STATION IN BAGHDAD
Iraqi police recently silenced Al-Jazeera for a month in Baghdad. With America’s closing down of Sadr’s radio station two months ago and now America’s stand in Iraqi government following in America’s footsteps with Al-Jazeera, we see ominous signs that democracy is being stifled in Iraq. Bush is only too happy to see freedom of expression crushed in Iraq so we must ask, since he obviously hates the media in America (except for his hand picked men at Fox News) would he gladly see the same thing in America? Many of his American followers, if you read letters to the editor or listen to the Limboland types, seem also to equate dissent from the party line with betrayal of America. We’re not even going to state the obvious Constitutional argument against their fascist hatred for debate. But, obviously, the only news allowed in Iraq is going to hew to the party line. Another case of the Republican Party supporting dictatorial leadership anyplace in the world they want to control.
______________________________________________
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." —President Theodore Roosevelt
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
DR. PHIL BEATS AROUND THE BUSH
I hear tell that Texan, Dr. Phil, is going to help the Texas Bush-league team by interviewing Laura and George about parenting. I can’t wait to learn the secret of how a couple of average or below average Texans can raise two daughters to be empty-headed, inarticulate, tongue-sticker-outing, hard-drinking party girls while another couple on the front pages these days manage to raise two articulate, intelligent, informed and interesting young women. Can you?
STRENGTH AND WISDOM ARE NOT OPPOSING VALUES
Enough said?
Now... if we can only get someone in the oval office who has the second to go with the first.... On second thought, since “strength” is the military’s purview, actually, we only need the second in the oval office. Will we get it come November?
THIS ‘SPLAINS BUSH P’URTY GOOT
In a USA Today article on literacy (August 3, 2004, p. 50) you can find why the bushman is what he is. In the top ten most literate cities, nine are northern states. Denver, not a southern state, is #7.
In the bottom ten, five cities are in Texas. Now do we understand why Laura Bush has to read and digest the papers for George? Now do we understand why Texas was number one in murder a few years back, why the whole South is poverty stricken and backward, why the Southland is the home of the Bible Belt, why compassion, as demonstrated in the welfare system, is so lacking in the South, why Republicans under master dunce Bush are able to hoodwink the entire undereducated southern populace and gain political ascendancy, why prejudice and integration persisted so long in the South? I still don’t know why we didn’t let the South secede.
By the way, I was born and raised in Ohio. Akron, Toledo, Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland came in high among older, industrial cities. That’s why I’m such a smart a--—I mean—intelligent fellow.
VOTERS NOT SO DUMB?
In a Robert Samuelson article in this week’s Newsweek (August 9, 2004, p. 35), Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, is reported as saying “that people’s party identities, their views on issues and the economy still determine far more than 90 percent of voting decisions.”
In my own case, that’s true enough.
GOOD OLD SOPHOMORIC DAYS....
STILL IN VOGUE?
Back in the mid-Sixties, when I was attending grad. school in Carbondale, Illinois, one of my buds came up with a sure fire way to demoralize our Soviet friends and possibly set them up for failure. He said we ought to “bomb the hell out of Scotland. Sad,” he added, “to lose all that good scotch whiskey, but,“ he winked, “we’ll make everyone think we’re so crazy they'll steer clear of us.”
As far as I know, my old buddy doesn’t work for the bushman’s regime in Washington, but someone sure as hell thought like him when we propelled ourselves into Iraq as an answer to Saudi-inspired terrorism.
ONCE MORE, PLEASE
The battle is over as far as evolution is concerned, but just as the average European in the Dark Ages didn’t know that the world wasn’t flat so the average Bible literalist doesn't know that evolution is here to stay, along with psychoanalysis, a round globe, the Big Bang and the wheel.
Their failure to live in the real world causes literalists to misrepresent so many things to themselves. It’s why they see “liberals” everywhere they go. Since evolution is a fact and is presented matter-of-factly in NPR shows and other modern media, literalists call NPR and other media “liberal”. They still believe, on ever-fallible faith, that evolution is an opinion, open to debate.
The bad fact of their ignorance, however, is that no matter how far backward the media bends to present politics in a fair and balanced way, the media would have to lie about science in order not to be called “liberal” by literalists. Literalists are so far out of step with knowledge that I don’t know if they can ever be in the mainstream again unless they take over America and force dogma and falsehood on us as the Catholic church did in historical times. Then they’d make the media be their way even if not the factual way.
________________________________________________
"I have had just about all I can take of myself." —S.N. Behrman (1893-1973) on reaching the age of 75
I hear tell that Texan, Dr. Phil, is going to help the Texas Bush-league team by interviewing Laura and George about parenting. I can’t wait to learn the secret of how a couple of average or below average Texans can raise two daughters to be empty-headed, inarticulate, tongue-sticker-outing, hard-drinking party girls while another couple on the front pages these days manage to raise two articulate, intelligent, informed and interesting young women. Can you?
STRENGTH AND WISDOM ARE NOT OPPOSING VALUES
Enough said?
Now... if we can only get someone in the oval office who has the second to go with the first.... On second thought, since “strength” is the military’s purview, actually, we only need the second in the oval office. Will we get it come November?
THIS ‘SPLAINS BUSH P’URTY GOOT
In a USA Today article on literacy (August 3, 2004, p. 50) you can find why the bushman is what he is. In the top ten most literate cities, nine are northern states. Denver, not a southern state, is #7.
In the bottom ten, five cities are in Texas. Now do we understand why Laura Bush has to read and digest the papers for George? Now do we understand why Texas was number one in murder a few years back, why the whole South is poverty stricken and backward, why the Southland is the home of the Bible Belt, why compassion, as demonstrated in the welfare system, is so lacking in the South, why Republicans under master dunce Bush are able to hoodwink the entire undereducated southern populace and gain political ascendancy, why prejudice and integration persisted so long in the South? I still don’t know why we didn’t let the South secede.
By the way, I was born and raised in Ohio. Akron, Toledo, Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland came in high among older, industrial cities. That’s why I’m such a smart a--—I mean—intelligent fellow.
VOTERS NOT SO DUMB?
In a Robert Samuelson article in this week’s Newsweek (August 9, 2004, p. 35), Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, is reported as saying “that people’s party identities, their views on issues and the economy still determine far more than 90 percent of voting decisions.”
In my own case, that’s true enough.
GOOD OLD SOPHOMORIC DAYS....
STILL IN VOGUE?
Back in the mid-Sixties, when I was attending grad. school in Carbondale, Illinois, one of my buds came up with a sure fire way to demoralize our Soviet friends and possibly set them up for failure. He said we ought to “bomb the hell out of Scotland. Sad,” he added, “to lose all that good scotch whiskey, but,“ he winked, “we’ll make everyone think we’re so crazy they'll steer clear of us.”
As far as I know, my old buddy doesn’t work for the bushman’s regime in Washington, but someone sure as hell thought like him when we propelled ourselves into Iraq as an answer to Saudi-inspired terrorism.
ONCE MORE, PLEASE
The battle is over as far as evolution is concerned, but just as the average European in the Dark Ages didn’t know that the world wasn’t flat so the average Bible literalist doesn't know that evolution is here to stay, along with psychoanalysis, a round globe, the Big Bang and the wheel.
Their failure to live in the real world causes literalists to misrepresent so many things to themselves. It’s why they see “liberals” everywhere they go. Since evolution is a fact and is presented matter-of-factly in NPR shows and other modern media, literalists call NPR and other media “liberal”. They still believe, on ever-fallible faith, that evolution is an opinion, open to debate.
The bad fact of their ignorance, however, is that no matter how far backward the media bends to present politics in a fair and balanced way, the media would have to lie about science in order not to be called “liberal” by literalists. Literalists are so far out of step with knowledge that I don’t know if they can ever be in the mainstream again unless they take over America and force dogma and falsehood on us as the Catholic church did in historical times. Then they’d make the media be their way even if not the factual way.
________________________________________________
"I have had just about all I can take of myself." —S.N. Behrman (1893-1973) on reaching the age of 75
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
BLOWING WHISTLE ON SELF
I think I’m so damn smart! But, memory is such a strange faculty. The more I study the brain the more I see how memory always plays tricks on everybody. And here’s one on me. Someplace I got the idea in my head, I clearly recall reading it, that at one time in the history of America, U.S. senators served for a lifetime. I clear as hell remember reading that piece of info in conjunction with the idea that reforms in America during the Populist era reduced the term of a Senator to 6 years. At the time, Senators were in the hip pockets of rich capitalists and that’s why their terms became limited.
Now isn’t that strange? I’ve been saying this and passing it along in letters to the editor for the longest time. Now, through a show on PBS, I’ve been corrected. Where did I get this idea, that’s what I want to know? When did it start? How long have I been wrong? Was it a state senate I read about? Was it an idea the founding fathers discussed? I didn’t just make the idea up out of whole cloth because I can recall reading about a senator’s length of term. I can see myself looking at a page discussing some battle between progressive and conservative forces. Maybe it was the British system I was reading about! Fascinating!
BLACK BOXES AND OTHER ILLUSIONS
The Feds are calling for black boxes in all cars so that they can study causes of motor wrecks. (And keep track of where every citizen of interest is driving her car?) They also want to know what you’re reading at the public library. Can you imagine the power of Bush’s proposed combined foreign and domestic intelligence service? Remember when the census only counted people? How about the Feds playing fast and loose with our Social Security information? Glad I won’t be around long enough to watch the final end of America as we all knew it back in the Fifties. I picture the Fascist States of Fundamentalist Christianity within 50 years.
THAT’S A LIE!
What I just wrote above is a lie, based in my own fears. Actually, it’s the super religious who won’t survive. They sense their demise right now. That’s why they fight so hard, whether they’re fundamentalist Moslems or Christians. They know that their way of thinking is going extinct in the modernity of the globe. That’s why they’re withdrawing from the world, trying to deny the realities of the modern world. They don’t fit into it.
I heard a word of mouth rumor that Southern Baptists have all but given up on the schools. They equate education and intelligence with an attack on them. In other words, they equate ignorance with godliness. And, we must admit, the Bible is full of warnings about being intelligent. To be too intelligence is to put yourself on a par with the god. But who can control the intelligence genes they’re born with?
Fundamentalists are dooming themselves to a quicker end by ignoring the culture which surrounds them. Some will wise up. Some will go mad and kill themselves. Some will kill others (like the terrorists), but in the end, super religious ideas, out of touch with reality, will be blown away like summer clouds after a rain shower.
Science is the wave of the future because it has the only demonstrable truths. Fundamentalist religions will soon be as extinct as the dodo bird.
WHERE ARE YOU GOING?
On my drive to the library today, I passed a church sign that read WHERE ARE YOU GOING? I understand I can read that two ways. Is my conduct of my life taking me toward misery and emptiness? Or where will I end up: in heaven or hell?
Of course, like most people who go around thinking like that, the people who put up the sign are telling me more about themselves and their fears than they are telling me about reality. My heart goes out to them and the terror that haunts their subconscious.
I know where I’m going. I’m going to die and sleep and never dream or think again. It’ll be heavenly, but I won’t know it. The entity called George will be vanished forever. Now I know that it is the very finality of death with which the religious are not able to cope, so they invent heavens and hells as a sort of addictive mental system to protect themselves from the truth. Then the Christian writes his signs to try and frighten others to join his cause as if the numbers who believe as he does will protect him from his final fate—DEATH.
Nighty-night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite....
___________________________________________________
"For three days after death, hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off." —Johnny Carson
I think I’m so damn smart! But, memory is such a strange faculty. The more I study the brain the more I see how memory always plays tricks on everybody. And here’s one on me. Someplace I got the idea in my head, I clearly recall reading it, that at one time in the history of America, U.S. senators served for a lifetime. I clear as hell remember reading that piece of info in conjunction with the idea that reforms in America during the Populist era reduced the term of a Senator to 6 years. At the time, Senators were in the hip pockets of rich capitalists and that’s why their terms became limited.
Now isn’t that strange? I’ve been saying this and passing it along in letters to the editor for the longest time. Now, through a show on PBS, I’ve been corrected. Where did I get this idea, that’s what I want to know? When did it start? How long have I been wrong? Was it a state senate I read about? Was it an idea the founding fathers discussed? I didn’t just make the idea up out of whole cloth because I can recall reading about a senator’s length of term. I can see myself looking at a page discussing some battle between progressive and conservative forces. Maybe it was the British system I was reading about! Fascinating!
BLACK BOXES AND OTHER ILLUSIONS
The Feds are calling for black boxes in all cars so that they can study causes of motor wrecks. (And keep track of where every citizen of interest is driving her car?) They also want to know what you’re reading at the public library. Can you imagine the power of Bush’s proposed combined foreign and domestic intelligence service? Remember when the census only counted people? How about the Feds playing fast and loose with our Social Security information? Glad I won’t be around long enough to watch the final end of America as we all knew it back in the Fifties. I picture the Fascist States of Fundamentalist Christianity within 50 years.
THAT’S A LIE!
What I just wrote above is a lie, based in my own fears. Actually, it’s the super religious who won’t survive. They sense their demise right now. That’s why they fight so hard, whether they’re fundamentalist Moslems or Christians. They know that their way of thinking is going extinct in the modernity of the globe. That’s why they’re withdrawing from the world, trying to deny the realities of the modern world. They don’t fit into it.
I heard a word of mouth rumor that Southern Baptists have all but given up on the schools. They equate education and intelligence with an attack on them. In other words, they equate ignorance with godliness. And, we must admit, the Bible is full of warnings about being intelligent. To be too intelligence is to put yourself on a par with the god. But who can control the intelligence genes they’re born with?
Fundamentalists are dooming themselves to a quicker end by ignoring the culture which surrounds them. Some will wise up. Some will go mad and kill themselves. Some will kill others (like the terrorists), but in the end, super religious ideas, out of touch with reality, will be blown away like summer clouds after a rain shower.
Science is the wave of the future because it has the only demonstrable truths. Fundamentalist religions will soon be as extinct as the dodo bird.
WHERE ARE YOU GOING?
On my drive to the library today, I passed a church sign that read WHERE ARE YOU GOING? I understand I can read that two ways. Is my conduct of my life taking me toward misery and emptiness? Or where will I end up: in heaven or hell?
Of course, like most people who go around thinking like that, the people who put up the sign are telling me more about themselves and their fears than they are telling me about reality. My heart goes out to them and the terror that haunts their subconscious.
I know where I’m going. I’m going to die and sleep and never dream or think again. It’ll be heavenly, but I won’t know it. The entity called George will be vanished forever. Now I know that it is the very finality of death with which the religious are not able to cope, so they invent heavens and hells as a sort of addictive mental system to protect themselves from the truth. Then the Christian writes his signs to try and frighten others to join his cause as if the numbers who believe as he does will protect him from his final fate—DEATH.
Nighty-night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite....
___________________________________________________
"For three days after death, hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off." —Johnny Carson
Monday, August 09, 2004
BLACK LOCUST TREES AND HOMELESSNESS
The Spokesman Review reported on Tuesday, August 3, 2004 (p. A7) that a single mom heard her car being demolished when a black locust tree blew down in a wind storm and crushed it. Working a part time, minimum wage job at Tesoro, she will not be able to replace her little steed she called “Girl”. Now the question in my mind is how far must she go to get to work, how much is bus fare and can she afford it, can she walk to the job and other questions of financial import. Back of my mind lifts the thought, “Not very much separates any of us from potential homelessness. A windstorm, a minimum wage job in expensive America, a broken tree and voila! Maybe you next.... I’m retired, but unfortunately in a time when retirees are about to come under the Republican gun. I could also be next....”
KATHLEEN PARKER SPEAKS ON TWO SIDES OF AN ISSUE
The Spokesman Review, our local rag, gives Kathleen Parker entirely too much space. She’s much too hypocritical.
This week in early August, Kathleen wrote a mocking portrayal of strong, independent Democrat first ladies and compared them to shrinking violet, Republican first housewives. The housewives get the better of it. I don’t get her drift. Kathleen allows herself to be sarcastic, abrasive, critical and stupid without condemning herself. But here’s my bottom line.
Teresa Heinz speaks her mind, not always in agreement with her husband, and is definitely her own woman. I respect that, and such a woman I do not fear. The kind of woman I fear is the one who suppresses her true nature and beliefs until she explodes and leaves her husband. The poor sap usually doesn’t know what hit him.
Now what about Laura Bush who silenced a gathering of poets a few years back because she found out that many poets she’d invited to a Gray House gathering didn’t support her husband’s Iraq folly. It’s typical of priggish Southern women to support the “ah’ts” until they realize that the vast majority of artists (in the all inclusive category) are liberal by nature, free spoken, difficult, defiant to authority or totally apolitical.
I lost all respect for “librarian” Laura when I saw how easily she’d censor free speech and bend over for her husband’s wrong-headedness and go along with the death of so many young Americans. Most librarians are not at all like Mrs. Bush Junior. They defend our right to read and to free speech. But like all such women housewife Bush “stifles” herself for her husband’s sake. Why do Americans who supposedly honor America’s freedom to speak have anything but contempt for the Laura Bushes of the world? Is it that conservatives really don’t honor free speech?
PASSING ON SOME INFO FROM “HANDFUL OF SALT”
Haiti’s Aristide seems to have lost his way by surrendering to America’s refusal to allow much socialism in his country. Aristide was popular with his people when he promised to redistribute the wealth of Haiti. But America would have none of that helping the poor of Haiti so Aristide lost his popular base and had to leave office, and Haiti lost constitutional rule.
Read more about another American blunder in “Handful of Salt” (July-August, 2004, p. 9). Or go to the source: Bill Fletcher, Jr. in “Dollars & Sense #253” (May/June 2004). Fletcher can be reached at bfletcher@transafricaforum.org.
________________________________________________
"Death is nature's way of saying, "Howdy!" —Unknown, but how about giving it to Alvy Singer?
The Spokesman Review reported on Tuesday, August 3, 2004 (p. A7) that a single mom heard her car being demolished when a black locust tree blew down in a wind storm and crushed it. Working a part time, minimum wage job at Tesoro, she will not be able to replace her little steed she called “Girl”. Now the question in my mind is how far must she go to get to work, how much is bus fare and can she afford it, can she walk to the job and other questions of financial import. Back of my mind lifts the thought, “Not very much separates any of us from potential homelessness. A windstorm, a minimum wage job in expensive America, a broken tree and voila! Maybe you next.... I’m retired, but unfortunately in a time when retirees are about to come under the Republican gun. I could also be next....”
KATHLEEN PARKER SPEAKS ON TWO SIDES OF AN ISSUE
The Spokesman Review, our local rag, gives Kathleen Parker entirely too much space. She’s much too hypocritical.
This week in early August, Kathleen wrote a mocking portrayal of strong, independent Democrat first ladies and compared them to shrinking violet, Republican first housewives. The housewives get the better of it. I don’t get her drift. Kathleen allows herself to be sarcastic, abrasive, critical and stupid without condemning herself. But here’s my bottom line.
Teresa Heinz speaks her mind, not always in agreement with her husband, and is definitely her own woman. I respect that, and such a woman I do not fear. The kind of woman I fear is the one who suppresses her true nature and beliefs until she explodes and leaves her husband. The poor sap usually doesn’t know what hit him.
Now what about Laura Bush who silenced a gathering of poets a few years back because she found out that many poets she’d invited to a Gray House gathering didn’t support her husband’s Iraq folly. It’s typical of priggish Southern women to support the “ah’ts” until they realize that the vast majority of artists (in the all inclusive category) are liberal by nature, free spoken, difficult, defiant to authority or totally apolitical.
I lost all respect for “librarian” Laura when I saw how easily she’d censor free speech and bend over for her husband’s wrong-headedness and go along with the death of so many young Americans. Most librarians are not at all like Mrs. Bush Junior. They defend our right to read and to free speech. But like all such women housewife Bush “stifles” herself for her husband’s sake. Why do Americans who supposedly honor America’s freedom to speak have anything but contempt for the Laura Bushes of the world? Is it that conservatives really don’t honor free speech?
PASSING ON SOME INFO FROM “HANDFUL OF SALT”
Haiti’s Aristide seems to have lost his way by surrendering to America’s refusal to allow much socialism in his country. Aristide was popular with his people when he promised to redistribute the wealth of Haiti. But America would have none of that helping the poor of Haiti so Aristide lost his popular base and had to leave office, and Haiti lost constitutional rule.
Read more about another American blunder in “Handful of Salt” (July-August, 2004, p. 9). Or go to the source: Bill Fletcher, Jr. in “Dollars & Sense #253” (May/June 2004). Fletcher can be reached at bfletcher@transafricaforum.org.
________________________________________________
"Death is nature's way of saying, "Howdy!" —Unknown, but how about giving it to Alvy Singer?
Sunday, August 08, 2004
PRE- AND POST-FREUDIAN HUMANS
Most modern thinkers realize that the human race has entered a new era of evolution, in that we are in a position to control our own evolutionary destiny. We’re in an age of consciousness, of reason and science that we could never before imagine. However, many human animals lag far behind, dragging their religious chains behind them, like so many Joseph Marleys.
We Americans should look to the Europeans as our leaders in this. They’ve been living within the artificial walls of conscious civilization for far longer than us. We’re still primitives in this, still down home types, still bound in the chains and boxes of religion. Europeans are farther along toward the freedom of atheism and/or at least secularism and into the freedom that modern science opens the door to.
America remains divided unevenly between those who are becoming modern and those still in primitive religious chains, those still looking for a philosophy or a superbeing to enslave themselves to. We progressive, forward-looking Americans must hope that our science malingerers don’t find an earthly being (yes, like Hitler or Stalin) to bind themselves to before they can find true freedom of will. We should never forget that it was the religious psychologies of the Russians and Germans which made them vulnerable to world leaders who inspired them to hatred, violence and revolution.
As an aside, I just wonder if African-Americans stay faithful to the freedom struggling Democratic party rather than the conservative, mentally enslaving, religious Republican party because of their history in slavery. Even though African-Americans count among their number so many Baptists of deep religious dye, they sense, I hope and imagine, the slavery which lies under conservative religious fundamentalist beliefs. They sense that old time religion in Republicanism which had no trouble enslaving them because of Bible beliefs.
FREEDOM EVOLVING
Let me pass on another thought from Daniel Dennett’s book, “Freedom Evolves”. It’s a fascinating book and I come across so many ideas that I want to pass on. Only a reader of the full book can enjoy its treasures:
“Free will is like the air we breathe, and it is present almost everywhere we want to go, but it is not only not eternal, it evolved, and is still evolving. [Like earth’s atmosphere] the atmosphere of free will is another sort of environment. It is the enveloping, enabling, life-shaping, conceptual atmosphere of intentional action, planning and hoping and promising—and blaming, resenting, punishing and honoring. We all grow up in this conceptual atmosphere, and we learn to conduct our lives in the terms it provides. It appears to be a stable and ahistorical construct, as eternal and unchanging as arithmetic, but it is not. It evolved as a recent product of human interactions, and some of the sorts of human activity it first made possible on this planet may also threaten to disrupt its future stability, or even hasten its demise. Our planet’s atmosphere is not guaranteed to last forever, and neither is our free will....
“What happens... when we try to imagine living in a world without the atmosphere of free will? It might be life, but would it be us? Would life be worth living if we lost our belief in our own capacity to make free, responsible decisions? And is the ubiquitous atmosphere of free will in which we live and act not a fact at all, but just a facade of some sort, a mass hallucination?
“There are those who say that free will has always been an illusion, a pre-scientific dream from which we are now awakening. We’ve never really had free will, and never could have had it. Thinking we’ve had free will has been, at best, a life-shaping and even life-enhancing ideology, but we can learn to live without it.” (Freedom Evolves, pp. 10-11)
Hey! Do these passages take your breath away as they do mine? Do they make you tingle with thought and emotion? Do they make you feel freer or more imprisoned? Do they frighten you as they once did me? I’m the sort who’s willing to think I don’t have free will, but who actually lives as if I do, one who accepts the illusion and who continues to live mindlessly mindful, untroubled by the intellectual ramifications of the matter.
An interesting companion read to Dennett’s book might be Robert Wright’s “The Moral Animal” (Buy It!) which traces many moral behaviors to other animal kingdoms.
_______________________________________________________________
"Perhaps there is no life after death. . . there's just Los Angeles." —Rick Anderson
Most modern thinkers realize that the human race has entered a new era of evolution, in that we are in a position to control our own evolutionary destiny. We’re in an age of consciousness, of reason and science that we could never before imagine. However, many human animals lag far behind, dragging their religious chains behind them, like so many Joseph Marleys.
We Americans should look to the Europeans as our leaders in this. They’ve been living within the artificial walls of conscious civilization for far longer than us. We’re still primitives in this, still down home types, still bound in the chains and boxes of religion. Europeans are farther along toward the freedom of atheism and/or at least secularism and into the freedom that modern science opens the door to.
America remains divided unevenly between those who are becoming modern and those still in primitive religious chains, those still looking for a philosophy or a superbeing to enslave themselves to. We progressive, forward-looking Americans must hope that our science malingerers don’t find an earthly being (yes, like Hitler or Stalin) to bind themselves to before they can find true freedom of will. We should never forget that it was the religious psychologies of the Russians and Germans which made them vulnerable to world leaders who inspired them to hatred, violence and revolution.
As an aside, I just wonder if African-Americans stay faithful to the freedom struggling Democratic party rather than the conservative, mentally enslaving, religious Republican party because of their history in slavery. Even though African-Americans count among their number so many Baptists of deep religious dye, they sense, I hope and imagine, the slavery which lies under conservative religious fundamentalist beliefs. They sense that old time religion in Republicanism which had no trouble enslaving them because of Bible beliefs.
FREEDOM EVOLVING
Let me pass on another thought from Daniel Dennett’s book, “Freedom Evolves”. It’s a fascinating book and I come across so many ideas that I want to pass on. Only a reader of the full book can enjoy its treasures:
“Free will is like the air we breathe, and it is present almost everywhere we want to go, but it is not only not eternal, it evolved, and is still evolving. [Like earth’s atmosphere] the atmosphere of free will is another sort of environment. It is the enveloping, enabling, life-shaping, conceptual atmosphere of intentional action, planning and hoping and promising—and blaming, resenting, punishing and honoring. We all grow up in this conceptual atmosphere, and we learn to conduct our lives in the terms it provides. It appears to be a stable and ahistorical construct, as eternal and unchanging as arithmetic, but it is not. It evolved as a recent product of human interactions, and some of the sorts of human activity it first made possible on this planet may also threaten to disrupt its future stability, or even hasten its demise. Our planet’s atmosphere is not guaranteed to last forever, and neither is our free will....
“What happens... when we try to imagine living in a world without the atmosphere of free will? It might be life, but would it be us? Would life be worth living if we lost our belief in our own capacity to make free, responsible decisions? And is the ubiquitous atmosphere of free will in which we live and act not a fact at all, but just a facade of some sort, a mass hallucination?
“There are those who say that free will has always been an illusion, a pre-scientific dream from which we are now awakening. We’ve never really had free will, and never could have had it. Thinking we’ve had free will has been, at best, a life-shaping and even life-enhancing ideology, but we can learn to live without it.” (Freedom Evolves, pp. 10-11)
Hey! Do these passages take your breath away as they do mine? Do they make you tingle with thought and emotion? Do they make you feel freer or more imprisoned? Do they frighten you as they once did me? I’m the sort who’s willing to think I don’t have free will, but who actually lives as if I do, one who accepts the illusion and who continues to live mindlessly mindful, untroubled by the intellectual ramifications of the matter.
An interesting companion read to Dennett’s book might be Robert Wright’s “The Moral Animal” (Buy It!) which traces many moral behaviors to other animal kingdoms.
_______________________________________________________________
"Perhaps there is no life after death. . . there's just Los Angeles." —Rick Anderson
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)