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