Well, now that it’s a foregone conclusion that the entire global ecosystem is going to crash and burn and destroy most life on the planet within about a decade, my liberal instincts are making me feel a little more guilty (groan, beat chest, heap ashes on head) about my environmental footprint. Having just taken an “ecological footprint quiz” at Redefining Progress (www.myfootprint.org/), I am vaguely comforted to learn that my footprint is roughly 63% of the national average, but considering that the national average is scandalous and a crime against humanity, that’s cold comfort. I eat most of my meals out, which is supposed to be a horrendous drain on resources (but supports local labor); I refuse to freeze my ass during winter or fry my ass during summer, which entails horrific energy expenditures. But I do walk reasonable distances to places most other people drive to, and I use a lot less water than most people because of personal hygiene standards which some would consider less than optimal. And a lot of my deficiencies are simply due to the fact that it requires more or less money to correct them by various sorts of technological fixes, and I can’t afford to. I mean, let’s face it, strict environmental conscientiousness is a luxury of the moderately well-off because it costs money. This is, of course, one of the major sticking points at all the international conferences on climate change where profligate wastrels in the developed world tell the poorer nations what they should do to reduce global warming and the poorer nations politely tell them to take a flying fuck at the moon. And if one becomes overly scrupulous and a little paranoid, one can start self-flagellating over such things as using a computer, which some sources say consumes vast amounts of both energy and resources; or eating tofu because of the horrible waste of resources involved in raising food animals, only to find that growing soy beans has its own environmental impact; or even farting too much because of the contribution of methane to global warming. It is, in fact, ultimately impossible to be totally pure environmentally. Living as simply as possible has its own unavoidable impact.
So, I have finally reached the only logical conclusion. You may remember (of course you do) a post on this blog back in 22 August 07 entitled “Save the planet: Kill yourself,” which was about a satirical (we hope) cult called the Church of Euthanasia which recommended just that. Its defining principle was population reduction, but the same logic applies to reduction of environmental impact. The only way to have zero impact is to kill yourself. Unfortunately, your one last impact will be the air pollution involved in cremation, but after that, you can congratulate yourself on having made the ultimate sacrifice to save the planet. Not that it will work, but at least you can feel smug and self-righteous about it up in Heaven while looking down and watching Earth continue to collapse in apocalyptic cataclysm, as well as feeling immensely relieved at having gotten out of it in time.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Saturday, November 7, 2009
The end of the world
Some of the readers of this blog may find a welcome respite from the rather tawdry spectacle of political war and general social collapse, in the news that the world is coming to an end on December 21, 2012. Not only is this a peculiarly specific date, but I have even seen one page time it with even more peculiar specificity to 11:11 GMT. It happens to be my 76th birthday, and I can’t think of a better birthday celebration than the end of the world—if I live that long. This peculiarly specific date has been derived from a Mayan calendar called the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, the first appearance of which dates back to 36 BCE. There are various scenarios for the end of the world, including a collision with some rogue planet called Nibiru (predicted by someone in psychic contact with extra-terrestrials), or an alignment between the Sun and the black hole at the center of the galaxy. Naturally there are the inevitable party-poopers who point out that the Mayan calendar actually doesn’t say anything about the end of the world on that date, but simply the end of one cyclical period and the beginning of another, and that if Nibiru were close enough to Earth to collide on that date, it would already be visible to the naked eye. But of course, true believers are never bothered by facts, as you can tell from two minutes’ conversation with any advocate of Intelligent Design.
I’ve long been fascinated by apocalyptic predictions. And by “apocalyptic,” I do not include predictions of such relatively minor events as the end of civilization as we know it. I’m rather of the opinion that the end of civilization as we know it would be a welcome relief, since civilization as we know it sucks. (Mahatma Gandhi is supposed to have said, when asked what he thought of Western civilization, “I think it would be a good idea.”) Even severe eco-catastrophe probably wouldn’t count as the end of the world, if it did nothing more than rid the planet of that pestilent killer ape species and maybe half the other species on earth. After all, the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event 65 million years ago simply got rid of dinosaurs (and an estimated 17% of all families) and paved the way for domesticated primates, and the present extinction event will get rid of them (all right, us) and clear the way for something else, maybe a civilization of dolphins. (Read Olaf Stapledon’s Last and first men [1930], one of the most profound science-fiction works ever written, of which Wikipedia says: “it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which our own is the first and most primitive.” This species, 100,000 years hence, reduces their population to 35 people by a global catastrophe that sounds eerily like a nuclear holocaust, written 15 years before such a thing was imaginable, and these 35 survivors are the progenitors of the Second Men. As visionary as Stapledon was, the idea of eco-catastrophe within a century could not have occurred to him at that time.)
No, the kind of apocalyptic predictions I’m thinking of are those that are characteristic of the various pseudo-Christian millennialist cults, and it is hardly surprising that such ideology is found in the present 2012 movement, although the secular and New Age elements in it may be stronger. Perhaps the basis of the movement in a pagan calendar helps explain the relative weakness of Christian apocalypticism in it. Christians are obviously not the only ones obsessed with the end of the world, but they have formulated what are probably the most elaborate and bizarre theories about it. Most of these doctrines are based on the Revelation of St John, to which have been attributed hundreds of ridiculously asinine ideas which never crossed John’s mind. In fact, the Book of Revelation is often called the Apocalypse of St John. The Book of Daniel also makes its contributions to eschatology because Daniel’s weird dreams were supposed to predict the end of the world.
Of course 2012 is certainly not, by a long stretch, the first apocalyptic prediction in history; depending on how they’re defined, there have been dozens of others. Rather surprisingly, the year 2000 caused more concern about computers crashing than it did about apocalyptic millennialism, even though the date was by definition millennial (in the Christian calendar, at least). Perhaps one of the more famous examples is the event in the history of the Millerite movement (predecessor of the Seventh-Day Adventists) called the Great Disappointment, when William Miller, the founder of the movement, predicted that Jesus would return to earth on 22 October 1844, and convinced thousands of followers to sell all their possessions and wait to be taken up to Heaven. The theological somersaults that the leaders of the movement went through to try to explain why this didn’t happen are good for laughs. And there are other cults and denominations that believe in apocalypses and Second Comings without trying to date them precisely. Jehovah’s Witlesses (as I like to call them) evidently expect to see the Second Coming within the lifetime of any individual believer, even though generations of adherents have been disappointed.
Christian apocalyptic millennialism focuses on such ideas as Armageddon and Anti-Christs and the Second Coming, but it also serves, perhaps primarily for many people, as a quasi-religious explanation for all the shit happening in the world, which is all seen as leading up to the End Times. In general, a movement predicting a certain date for an apocalypse is simply a crystallization of the firm conviction of the social misfits of every generation that the world is so fucked up that it simply can’t, or shouldn’t, go on much longer; and, assuming that it can’t be made any better, the only solution is to wipe things clean and start over. At least there’s something to be said for expecting this to be brought about by more or less natural means or historical events, rather than trying to precipitate it yourself by armed warfare and revolution. But the fact that all past predictions of future dates have been proved wrong by the simple fact that we’re still here and still fucking up, does not stop idiots and fanatics from continuing to predict more future dates. So, stock up your survival supplies for December 2012. Don’t ask me how you’re supposed to survive the end of the world; ask the survivalists. And ask them why they want to. Christian millennialists, of course, don’t expect or want to survive here on Earth because they expect to be taken up to Heaven. Let’s not get into the Rapture, beyond noting the bumper-sticker popular a few years ago which said, “In case of Rapture, this vehicle will be unoccupied.” There are times when I’m so humiliated by the appalling stupidity—not to mention the sheer evil—of some people who call themselves Christians that I’m tempted to become a pagan.
It’s gonna be an exciting, fun-filled three years.
I’ve long been fascinated by apocalyptic predictions. And by “apocalyptic,” I do not include predictions of such relatively minor events as the end of civilization as we know it. I’m rather of the opinion that the end of civilization as we know it would be a welcome relief, since civilization as we know it sucks. (Mahatma Gandhi is supposed to have said, when asked what he thought of Western civilization, “I think it would be a good idea.”) Even severe eco-catastrophe probably wouldn’t count as the end of the world, if it did nothing more than rid the planet of that pestilent killer ape species and maybe half the other species on earth. After all, the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event 65 million years ago simply got rid of dinosaurs (and an estimated 17% of all families) and paved the way for domesticated primates, and the present extinction event will get rid of them (all right, us) and clear the way for something else, maybe a civilization of dolphins. (Read Olaf Stapledon’s Last and first men [1930], one of the most profound science-fiction works ever written, of which Wikipedia says: “it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which our own is the first and most primitive.” This species, 100,000 years hence, reduces their population to 35 people by a global catastrophe that sounds eerily like a nuclear holocaust, written 15 years before such a thing was imaginable, and these 35 survivors are the progenitors of the Second Men. As visionary as Stapledon was, the idea of eco-catastrophe within a century could not have occurred to him at that time.)
No, the kind of apocalyptic predictions I’m thinking of are those that are characteristic of the various pseudo-Christian millennialist cults, and it is hardly surprising that such ideology is found in the present 2012 movement, although the secular and New Age elements in it may be stronger. Perhaps the basis of the movement in a pagan calendar helps explain the relative weakness of Christian apocalypticism in it. Christians are obviously not the only ones obsessed with the end of the world, but they have formulated what are probably the most elaborate and bizarre theories about it. Most of these doctrines are based on the Revelation of St John, to which have been attributed hundreds of ridiculously asinine ideas which never crossed John’s mind. In fact, the Book of Revelation is often called the Apocalypse of St John. The Book of Daniel also makes its contributions to eschatology because Daniel’s weird dreams were supposed to predict the end of the world.
Of course 2012 is certainly not, by a long stretch, the first apocalyptic prediction in history; depending on how they’re defined, there have been dozens of others. Rather surprisingly, the year 2000 caused more concern about computers crashing than it did about apocalyptic millennialism, even though the date was by definition millennial (in the Christian calendar, at least). Perhaps one of the more famous examples is the event in the history of the Millerite movement (predecessor of the Seventh-Day Adventists) called the Great Disappointment, when William Miller, the founder of the movement, predicted that Jesus would return to earth on 22 October 1844, and convinced thousands of followers to sell all their possessions and wait to be taken up to Heaven. The theological somersaults that the leaders of the movement went through to try to explain why this didn’t happen are good for laughs. And there are other cults and denominations that believe in apocalypses and Second Comings without trying to date them precisely. Jehovah’s Witlesses (as I like to call them) evidently expect to see the Second Coming within the lifetime of any individual believer, even though generations of adherents have been disappointed.
Christian apocalyptic millennialism focuses on such ideas as Armageddon and Anti-Christs and the Second Coming, but it also serves, perhaps primarily for many people, as a quasi-religious explanation for all the shit happening in the world, which is all seen as leading up to the End Times. In general, a movement predicting a certain date for an apocalypse is simply a crystallization of the firm conviction of the social misfits of every generation that the world is so fucked up that it simply can’t, or shouldn’t, go on much longer; and, assuming that it can’t be made any better, the only solution is to wipe things clean and start over. At least there’s something to be said for expecting this to be brought about by more or less natural means or historical events, rather than trying to precipitate it yourself by armed warfare and revolution. But the fact that all past predictions of future dates have been proved wrong by the simple fact that we’re still here and still fucking up, does not stop idiots and fanatics from continuing to predict more future dates. So, stock up your survival supplies for December 2012. Don’t ask me how you’re supposed to survive the end of the world; ask the survivalists. And ask them why they want to. Christian millennialists, of course, don’t expect or want to survive here on Earth because they expect to be taken up to Heaven. Let’s not get into the Rapture, beyond noting the bumper-sticker popular a few years ago which said, “In case of Rapture, this vehicle will be unoccupied.” There are times when I’m so humiliated by the appalling stupidity—not to mention the sheer evil—of some people who call themselves Christians that I’m tempted to become a pagan.
It’s gonna be an exciting, fun-filled three years.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Why am I eating this?
Several people have told me recently that I absolutely must see the new movie Food, Inc., which tells about all the horrible stuff we eat as a result of the food chain having been taken over by the evil food industry and its corporations. Well, as an old failed chemist, I’m already far more aware than I want to be of the shit the evil food corporations want to feed me, and I try to avoid it to a great extent (though I’m not purist enough to avoid it entirely) by not eating their more egregiously disgusting products. In my naïve innocence, I thought I might achieve this in part by buying salads from the deli of the local supermarket—which is, of course, part of the evil conspiracy. And I often read the labels they put on the salad containers, which contain the list of ingredients of these innocuous-looking salads. But I recently paid slightly closer attention than usual to this label and its list for a “cashew chicken salad.” It was quite a revelation.
Blogger won’t let me do formatting, and I have formatted the list by tab-indenting for each of several nested levels, in which the ingredients of sub-components are listed under the components. But you can’t see this, which is a pain in the ass, and a major fault of Blogger, in my opinion. To try to describe it without formatting: the first ingredient is chicken, which is a good start. Then under this is a solution (in which I suppose the chicken is soaked) which has a seasoning with seventeen ingredients. Next major heading is a “rub” with nine ingredients, then a “creamy dressing” with mayonnaise and sour cream, each of which has its list of sub-ingredients, of which the mayonnaise has eight.
At this point, they ran out of space on the label, and they hadn’t even gotten around to the cashews yet! (Makes you wonder what kind of processing they submitted the cashews to.) Or a warning label that says, “This food has been processed in a facility that employs Moslems.” The reason for this is that the nested levels require them to list sub-ingredients present in microscopic quantities before they list macro-level ingredients like cashews and celery. And an old failed chemist has to wonder about some of the ingredients present even in microscopic quantities. Disodium inosinate (in the rub)? What the fuck is that? An old failed chemist might assume it’s a sodium salt of inosinic acid, which I never heard of back when I was flunking Chem 201; but there really is such a thing as inosinic acid—C10H13N4O8P (Blogger doesn't do subscript numbers either—piece of shit), a “nucleotide of hypoxanthine.” Similarly, disodium guanylate (also in the rub) is a sodium salt of guanylic acid, C10H14N5O8P. Calcium disodium EDTA (in the mayonnaise)? Salt of ethylene-diamine-tetra-acetic acid, a chelating agent “capable of producing toxic effects which can be fatal”; so what the fuck is it doing in food? (Are you getting all this? You’ll be tested tomorrow. And I already know it without even seeing the movie.) And there is corn in four different forms—hydrolyzed corn protein and corn syrup solids in the soaking solution, corn starch in the rub, and the ubiquitous corn syrup in the mayonnaise. Corn is everywhere in the industrial food chain and is now regarded as the new villain, for economic as well as dietary reasons. High fructose corn syrup is increasingly replacing sugar as the omnipresent sweetener, since white sugar has long been regarded as another toxin (although it's a major component of the rub anyway), but corn syrup isn’t much better.
Further, a Google on disodium inosinate reveals that the inosinate-guanylate combination is now a standard flavor enhancer comparable to monosodium glutamate (MSG), which has gotten decades of bad press for the allergic reactions it causes, and which the inosinate-guanylate combination is evidently intended to supplant. I’m skeptical enough to take a rather cynical view of some of the more hysterical claims of the food fanatics that MSG and, by association, inosinate-guanylate are deadly toxins, but the fact remains, they are additives that shouldn’t need to be added. Back in the old days, foods had enough flavor on their own so they didn’t need enhancing, but we’re talking about Food, Inc. here. The flavor would not need to be enhanced if it hadn’t already been destroyed by production and processing.
Fortunately, east Boulder County (including Lafayette and Longmont), has a number of “health food” stores where one can shop to avoid the toxic assaults of Food, Inc. By way of contrast to the above, perhaps erring on the side of brevity, an egg salad sandwich made locally and sold at the local Vitamin Cottage lists the following ingredients: “Egg salad (eggs, mayonnaise, mustard, onion, herbs, spices, salt), bread, lettuce (contains eggs & wheat)”. What dark secrets lie hidden in those simple words “mayonnaise” and “bread”? Hopefully not calcium disodium EDTA. The warning that egg salad contains eggs is, of course, consistent with the warning that peanut butter contains peanuts, or that items just removed from the oven may be hot. Anyone selling anything in this degenerate society these days has to assume that everyone is halfwitted, in order to avoid being sued for not telling them the glaringly obvious; unfortunately, the assumption is correct depressingly often. However, rumor has it that the sinister fiends of Food, Inc. are now infiltrating and taking over the “health food” market and passing off their vile poisons under false pretenses. Which naturally (sic!) leads to the boom in farmer’s markets and home gardens. We are gradually learning not to trust any food store—the latest member of the long list of institutions we can’t trust. They’re all out to get us.
So, why do I keep eating this shit? Because it’s cheap and I’m lazy. That’s how they entrap everybody, isn’t it?
Blogger won’t let me do formatting, and I have formatted the list by tab-indenting for each of several nested levels, in which the ingredients of sub-components are listed under the components. But you can’t see this, which is a pain in the ass, and a major fault of Blogger, in my opinion. To try to describe it without formatting: the first ingredient is chicken, which is a good start. Then under this is a solution (in which I suppose the chicken is soaked) which has a seasoning with seventeen ingredients. Next major heading is a “rub” with nine ingredients, then a “creamy dressing” with mayonnaise and sour cream, each of which has its list of sub-ingredients, of which the mayonnaise has eight.
At this point, they ran out of space on the label, and they hadn’t even gotten around to the cashews yet! (Makes you wonder what kind of processing they submitted the cashews to.) Or a warning label that says, “This food has been processed in a facility that employs Moslems.” The reason for this is that the nested levels require them to list sub-ingredients present in microscopic quantities before they list macro-level ingredients like cashews and celery. And an old failed chemist has to wonder about some of the ingredients present even in microscopic quantities. Disodium inosinate (in the rub)? What the fuck is that? An old failed chemist might assume it’s a sodium salt of inosinic acid, which I never heard of back when I was flunking Chem 201; but there really is such a thing as inosinic acid—C10H13N4O8P (Blogger doesn't do subscript numbers either—piece of shit), a “nucleotide of hypoxanthine.” Similarly, disodium guanylate (also in the rub) is a sodium salt of guanylic acid, C10H14N5O8P. Calcium disodium EDTA (in the mayonnaise)? Salt of ethylene-diamine-tetra-acetic acid, a chelating agent “capable of producing toxic effects which can be fatal”; so what the fuck is it doing in food? (Are you getting all this? You’ll be tested tomorrow. And I already know it without even seeing the movie.) And there is corn in four different forms—hydrolyzed corn protein and corn syrup solids in the soaking solution, corn starch in the rub, and the ubiquitous corn syrup in the mayonnaise. Corn is everywhere in the industrial food chain and is now regarded as the new villain, for economic as well as dietary reasons. High fructose corn syrup is increasingly replacing sugar as the omnipresent sweetener, since white sugar has long been regarded as another toxin (although it's a major component of the rub anyway), but corn syrup isn’t much better.
Further, a Google on disodium inosinate reveals that the inosinate-guanylate combination is now a standard flavor enhancer comparable to monosodium glutamate (MSG), which has gotten decades of bad press for the allergic reactions it causes, and which the inosinate-guanylate combination is evidently intended to supplant. I’m skeptical enough to take a rather cynical view of some of the more hysterical claims of the food fanatics that MSG and, by association, inosinate-guanylate are deadly toxins, but the fact remains, they are additives that shouldn’t need to be added. Back in the old days, foods had enough flavor on their own so they didn’t need enhancing, but we’re talking about Food, Inc. here. The flavor would not need to be enhanced if it hadn’t already been destroyed by production and processing.
Fortunately, east Boulder County (including Lafayette and Longmont), has a number of “health food” stores where one can shop to avoid the toxic assaults of Food, Inc. By way of contrast to the above, perhaps erring on the side of brevity, an egg salad sandwich made locally and sold at the local Vitamin Cottage lists the following ingredients: “Egg salad (eggs, mayonnaise, mustard, onion, herbs, spices, salt), bread, lettuce (contains eggs & wheat)”. What dark secrets lie hidden in those simple words “mayonnaise” and “bread”? Hopefully not calcium disodium EDTA. The warning that egg salad contains eggs is, of course, consistent with the warning that peanut butter contains peanuts, or that items just removed from the oven may be hot. Anyone selling anything in this degenerate society these days has to assume that everyone is halfwitted, in order to avoid being sued for not telling them the glaringly obvious; unfortunately, the assumption is correct depressingly often. However, rumor has it that the sinister fiends of Food, Inc. are now infiltrating and taking over the “health food” market and passing off their vile poisons under false pretenses. Which naturally (sic!) leads to the boom in farmer’s markets and home gardens. We are gradually learning not to trust any food store—the latest member of the long list of institutions we can’t trust. They’re all out to get us.
So, why do I keep eating this shit? Because it’s cheap and I’m lazy. That’s how they entrap everybody, isn’t it?
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Stupid Americans
It’s been a long time since I have seriously considered leaving this country because I can’t stand to watch it go down the tubes. The last time, I think, was when Emperor Ray-gun was elected a second time and churches started offering performances of the Greek Orthodox hymn “O Lord, save thy people.” That was twenty-five years ago, and being 25 years older now, I’m far less resilient for such a major upheaval. On the other hand, now that I have a meager retirement income and don’t have to look for work in Canada, all I have to do is figure out if I can live below the poverty level there. More likely, they’ll use that as a reason for not letting me in in the first place.
I should hardly need to explain what has brought me to this depth of despair. Even the Reign of Terror under Emperor Dubya did not reduce me to such hopelessness because I thought things would get better when he was dethroned. Well, he’s been dethroned by the Great Brown Hope, and all Obama’s attempts to start doing things right are being blocked and thwarted by the lunatic far-right. When I first thought of writing a post on how stupid Americans are, I googled “stupid Americans,” and was so depressed and horrified by what I found that I almost gave up trying to deal with it (although, as you see, it didn’t stop me from trying anyway). I’m beginning to think a growing proportion of the populace is not just stupid, but psychotic as well. Bill Maher has been quoted as saying that the Democrats are moving to the right and the Republicans are moving to an insane asylum. The spectacle of armed maniacs screaming and ranting at public meetings is not something to give one the warmest confidence in where this country is heading. Behavior which in some places and at some times would have gotten its perpetrators put before a firing squad for treason and sedition, is now smiled upon and encouraged, not only by the molders of public opinion but by the molders of public policy.
The google on “stupid Americans” linked to such things as YouTube clips of a journalist interviewing supposedly representative people on the street who can’t name a country beginning with the letter U (like their own), or who think a triangle has one side, or who don’t know what religion Buddhist monks are; and to YouTube clips of Bill Maher’s now infamous (and, frankly, overly glib) rant on 27 July about stupid Americans, which (perhaps justly) won him a lot of flak. (Jay Leno, in his “Jay-walking” segments, used to make fun of the staggeringly moronic answers of people on the street to questions a bright fourth-grader could answer correctly, but I often wondered if people deliberately gave moronic answers so they could be shown on the Tonight Show.) In a 7 August rejoinder to his critics, Maher defended himself by quoting poll statistics showing that “a majority of Americans cannot explain what the Bill of Rights is; 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War; more than two-thirds of Americans don’t know what’s in Roe v. Wade”; etc. etc.
But there are also, mostly among the comments to these clips, a few who point out that, horrifying as this ignorance of simple facts is, it is not the only, or even the worst, manifestation of stupidity. What might be considered worse than this is the propensity of stupid Americans to believe preposterous nonsense, such as that dinosaurs and humans occupied the earth at the same time, or that the sun revolves around the earth. Worse yet is their total inability to critically recognize bullshit when they hear it, and their mind-numbing gullibility to the demonically vicious lies fed to them by the far-right demagogues, such as that Obama is a Muslim or was born in Kenya. In fact, the impetus for Maher’s diatribe was the spectacle of the so-called “town hall meetings” on health care being reduced to chaotic free-for-alls by the above-mentioned armed maniacs, many of them thugs paid by the corrupt rackets who profit from the status quo, who were yelling the lies they had been told by those racketeers and by the far-right demagogues, the most patently absurd, and therefore the most cited, being the idea that government death squads will euthanize grandma. There are some radicals who believe that democracy is not supposed to work like this. One of the revolutionary (the small r is deliberate) fathers said something to the effect that democracy could not work unless the citizenry were sufficiently educated to know what they were doing as citizens, and that certainly cannot be said of the majority of people these days; ergo, democracy cannot work, and is not working in this country at the present time and in its present form.
I have often referred to the “Divided States.” A google (I use that a lot, don’t I?) on “Divided States of America” shows that the idea is rather widespread, with a number of scenarios, ranging from the interesting to the bizarre, being put forth as to how our great nation might fragment into separate, autonomous sub-republics in the near or far future. One of the more reasonable divisions suggested for such a fracture is, not surprisingly, based on religion. Michelle Haimoff, commenting (11 Sept 08) in the Huffington Post, says: “It’s time for the two separate countries residing in the United States of America to part ways in peace. There exists an ideological schism so extreme that it no longer makes sense for us to stick together as a nation. Perhaps it’s time to abandon the union that the Civil War maintained. The schism has become increasingly pronounced with each presidential election and it was unmistakable at the recent Democratic and Republican conventions. The rift begins and ends with the political parties’ conception of God.” Grieve for poor Lincoln; there goes the Gettysburg Address down the drain. I may be accused of some regional (and religious) bias for suggesting that such a fracture, which would essentially let the Deep South (along with Texas) re-secede, would very handily separate the great majority of terminally stupid people from the rest of us, although other scenarios suggest isolating Utah and Idaho as an autonomous Mormon republic, or selling Alaska back to Russia (which has nothing to do with religion but makes perfect sense geographically, and would have the additional benefit of getting rid of the moose-shooting beauty queen). However, some scenarios lump Colorado in company I’d rather not keep, but let’s not go there.
So, will the appalling stupidity of the American people lead to the dissolution of the United States? Almost certainly not; but in my dourer moments, one of which is right now, I almost wish it would. Barring that, Canada is beginning to look more and more tempting. Too bad they won’t accept me.
I should hardly need to explain what has brought me to this depth of despair. Even the Reign of Terror under Emperor Dubya did not reduce me to such hopelessness because I thought things would get better when he was dethroned. Well, he’s been dethroned by the Great Brown Hope, and all Obama’s attempts to start doing things right are being blocked and thwarted by the lunatic far-right. When I first thought of writing a post on how stupid Americans are, I googled “stupid Americans,” and was so depressed and horrified by what I found that I almost gave up trying to deal with it (although, as you see, it didn’t stop me from trying anyway). I’m beginning to think a growing proportion of the populace is not just stupid, but psychotic as well. Bill Maher has been quoted as saying that the Democrats are moving to the right and the Republicans are moving to an insane asylum. The spectacle of armed maniacs screaming and ranting at public meetings is not something to give one the warmest confidence in where this country is heading. Behavior which in some places and at some times would have gotten its perpetrators put before a firing squad for treason and sedition, is now smiled upon and encouraged, not only by the molders of public opinion but by the molders of public policy.
The google on “stupid Americans” linked to such things as YouTube clips of a journalist interviewing supposedly representative people on the street who can’t name a country beginning with the letter U (like their own), or who think a triangle has one side, or who don’t know what religion Buddhist monks are; and to YouTube clips of Bill Maher’s now infamous (and, frankly, overly glib) rant on 27 July about stupid Americans, which (perhaps justly) won him a lot of flak. (Jay Leno, in his “Jay-walking” segments, used to make fun of the staggeringly moronic answers of people on the street to questions a bright fourth-grader could answer correctly, but I often wondered if people deliberately gave moronic answers so they could be shown on the Tonight Show.) In a 7 August rejoinder to his critics, Maher defended himself by quoting poll statistics showing that “a majority of Americans cannot explain what the Bill of Rights is; 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War; more than two-thirds of Americans don’t know what’s in Roe v. Wade”; etc. etc.
But there are also, mostly among the comments to these clips, a few who point out that, horrifying as this ignorance of simple facts is, it is not the only, or even the worst, manifestation of stupidity. What might be considered worse than this is the propensity of stupid Americans to believe preposterous nonsense, such as that dinosaurs and humans occupied the earth at the same time, or that the sun revolves around the earth. Worse yet is their total inability to critically recognize bullshit when they hear it, and their mind-numbing gullibility to the demonically vicious lies fed to them by the far-right demagogues, such as that Obama is a Muslim or was born in Kenya. In fact, the impetus for Maher’s diatribe was the spectacle of the so-called “town hall meetings” on health care being reduced to chaotic free-for-alls by the above-mentioned armed maniacs, many of them thugs paid by the corrupt rackets who profit from the status quo, who were yelling the lies they had been told by those racketeers and by the far-right demagogues, the most patently absurd, and therefore the most cited, being the idea that government death squads will euthanize grandma. There are some radicals who believe that democracy is not supposed to work like this. One of the revolutionary (the small r is deliberate) fathers said something to the effect that democracy could not work unless the citizenry were sufficiently educated to know what they were doing as citizens, and that certainly cannot be said of the majority of people these days; ergo, democracy cannot work, and is not working in this country at the present time and in its present form.
I have often referred to the “Divided States.” A google (I use that a lot, don’t I?) on “Divided States of America” shows that the idea is rather widespread, with a number of scenarios, ranging from the interesting to the bizarre, being put forth as to how our great nation might fragment into separate, autonomous sub-republics in the near or far future. One of the more reasonable divisions suggested for such a fracture is, not surprisingly, based on religion. Michelle Haimoff, commenting (11 Sept 08) in the Huffington Post, says: “It’s time for the two separate countries residing in the United States of America to part ways in peace. There exists an ideological schism so extreme that it no longer makes sense for us to stick together as a nation. Perhaps it’s time to abandon the union that the Civil War maintained. The schism has become increasingly pronounced with each presidential election and it was unmistakable at the recent Democratic and Republican conventions. The rift begins and ends with the political parties’ conception of God.” Grieve for poor Lincoln; there goes the Gettysburg Address down the drain. I may be accused of some regional (and religious) bias for suggesting that such a fracture, which would essentially let the Deep South (along with Texas) re-secede, would very handily separate the great majority of terminally stupid people from the rest of us, although other scenarios suggest isolating Utah and Idaho as an autonomous Mormon republic, or selling Alaska back to Russia (which has nothing to do with religion but makes perfect sense geographically, and would have the additional benefit of getting rid of the moose-shooting beauty queen). However, some scenarios lump Colorado in company I’d rather not keep, but let’s not go there.
So, will the appalling stupidity of the American people lead to the dissolution of the United States? Almost certainly not; but in my dourer moments, one of which is right now, I almost wish it would. Barring that, Canada is beginning to look more and more tempting. Too bad they won’t accept me.
Monday, July 6, 2009
In case you thought I'd died
The possibility exists, of course, that you never even missed me, or even knew I was here in the first place, but I'm used to that. Five months of no pompous blathering--and no excuse for it, which you didn't want anyway. I mean, no real excuse, like being on a long trip or being in hospital. Just the usual: apathy and depression, not giving a shit what happened in the world.
So, why the return? A change of heart? Har har; fat chance. Why would I? Again, no excuse, which you again didn’t want anyway. Have you given up reading this yet? If so, then you didn’t read that question. Are you asleep?
With so much appalling shit happening in the world, far too many instances for me to begin listing, why should anyone give a royal rat’s fuck what happens in the Divided States? And yet, there’s still a part of me that mumbles, in a sort of snarling whine, “What the fuck ever happened to the Golden Age promised us by the Great Brown Hope?” And I’m not by any means the only one who is embittered and disillusioned, not only at his inability to achieve anything substantial of what he promised, but at his perverse ability to do things that nobody who voted for him wants. Cries of “turncoat” and “Bush lite” are growing in volume, and more and more people are shaking their heads and resigning themselves to another four years of essentially business as usual.
And yet, interestingly enough, one of his most vigorous apologists is the Rude Pundit. I find this interesting because Rude is usually eager to disembowel, castrate, and commit endless colorful atrocities on almost anybody and everybody with fervent, pornographic, scatological glee—usually Republicans and right-wingers but also occasionally Dummy-crats whom he thinks are betraying the cause. And yet he responds to the disillusioned critics of O-man with the essential message: Back off and give him a chance. He’s only been in office five months, and before he can build very much positive, he has to clean up the godawful pile of shit he’s been handed that it took the Bush Crime Family eight years to create. Since I’m not clever at embedding links, I’ll quote directly from Rude’s “Barack Obama is not afraid of you and he will kick your ass,” 6/23:
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of mind-numbing opiates
Once more, another Codependence Day has come and gone, and I’m reminded that all the fireworks that everybody loves so much are actually stylized warfare. “The rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air” was penned by Francis Scott Keyhole during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812, and was not about fireworks. Granted, adding the salts of strontium, calcium, barium, sodium, magnesium, and copper to the gunpowder does make for prettier blasts than your basic improvised explosive device, but the principle is the same. This year I didn’t attend any of the public celebrations but sat inside the house in Longmont that I was taking care of for relatives. But I could clearly hear all the explosions not far away, and I had the eerie feeling of almost being able to imagine I was in a house in Kirkuk, Iraq, with a real war raging outside. There were times during the Reign of Terror (2001–08) when I was almost in favor of another revolution, except that without the wisdom of people like Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Franklin, Paine, et al., we’d probably royally fuck up another one, like the French and the Russians did with theirs; and the fascist thugs in control at the time probably wouldn’t have hesitated to machine-gun us in the streets.
I did not fly or wave any flags for the big day; if I were to fly any flag, it would be the Earth flag. At the place where I was working about twenty years ago, someone started taking donations to buy a flagpole to put out front, and I told them I’d contribute if they’d fly the Earth flag above the United States flag, since the Earth had obvious precedence over the U.S., having existed very nicely without it for several billion years, whereas the U.S. self-evidently could not exist at all without the Earth. The look I got suggested they probably thought I was some kind of Commie radical. (Nope, just a hippie tree-hugger.)
So, why the return? A change of heart? Har har; fat chance. Why would I? Again, no excuse, which you again didn’t want anyway. Have you given up reading this yet? If so, then you didn’t read that question. Are you asleep?
With so much appalling shit happening in the world, far too many instances for me to begin listing, why should anyone give a royal rat’s fuck what happens in the Divided States? And yet, there’s still a part of me that mumbles, in a sort of snarling whine, “What the fuck ever happened to the Golden Age promised us by the Great Brown Hope?” And I’m not by any means the only one who is embittered and disillusioned, not only at his inability to achieve anything substantial of what he promised, but at his perverse ability to do things that nobody who voted for him wants. Cries of “turncoat” and “Bush lite” are growing in volume, and more and more people are shaking their heads and resigning themselves to another four years of essentially business as usual.
And yet, interestingly enough, one of his most vigorous apologists is the Rude Pundit. I find this interesting because Rude is usually eager to disembowel, castrate, and commit endless colorful atrocities on almost anybody and everybody with fervent, pornographic, scatological glee—usually Republicans and right-wingers but also occasionally Dummy-crats whom he thinks are betraying the cause. And yet he responds to the disillusioned critics of O-man with the essential message: Back off and give him a chance. He’s only been in office five months, and before he can build very much positive, he has to clean up the godawful pile of shit he’s been handed that it took the Bush Crime Family eight years to create. Since I’m not clever at embedding links, I’ll quote directly from Rude’s “Barack Obama is not afraid of you and he will kick your ass,” 6/23:
We’re impatient, yes, yes, we are. The deluded who thought they were getting beautiful Barack to ride in on a giant stallion and slay the big, bad Bush machine are impatient. The realists who knew they were getting a really damn smart, slightly left of center guy in Obama and not an avenging liberal, they’re impatient, too.Well, perhaps “impatient” is a kinder way of putting it than “embittered and disillusioned,” and Rude himself mentions some of the things Obama has failed to do that he promised, or did that we think he shouldn’t have. And as I said earlier about Mark Udall (4 Oct 08, “Preaching to the choir”), I suppose Obama must be given credit for trying to work bipartisanly with the Right, even though they adamantly refuse to cooperate with him and it basically means hopelessly compromising all the principles on the basis of which he was elected. And yet, despite Rude’s call for patience and all attempts to give O-man credit where credit is due, I’m still embittered and disillusioned and feeling deeply betrayed, and my instincts for anarchy are once more vindicated. Any and all change that occurs will be for the worse, and I look forward to the imminent collapse of civilization and the global ecosystem with dour apathy.
. . . it’s gonna take a fuck of a lot of work to get us back to zero, to the way things were before George W. Bush came in and pissed on our beds, raped our dogs, tied us up, set the house on fire, and left without calling 911. And then, once it’s back to zero, we can talk about how it gets better. Doesn’t make any of us less impatient and it doesn’t excuse some of the shit Obama’s doing (like continuing to argue the Bush administration side on cases left over from it), but we gotta recognize that the circumstances are: “We’re fucked – can we be un-fucked?”
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of mind-numbing opiates
Once more, another Codependence Day has come and gone, and I’m reminded that all the fireworks that everybody loves so much are actually stylized warfare. “The rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air” was penned by Francis Scott Keyhole during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812, and was not about fireworks. Granted, adding the salts of strontium, calcium, barium, sodium, magnesium, and copper to the gunpowder does make for prettier blasts than your basic improvised explosive device, but the principle is the same. This year I didn’t attend any of the public celebrations but sat inside the house in Longmont that I was taking care of for relatives. But I could clearly hear all the explosions not far away, and I had the eerie feeling of almost being able to imagine I was in a house in Kirkuk, Iraq, with a real war raging outside. There were times during the Reign of Terror (2001–08) when I was almost in favor of another revolution, except that without the wisdom of people like Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Franklin, Paine, et al., we’d probably royally fuck up another one, like the French and the Russians did with theirs; and the fascist thugs in control at the time probably wouldn’t have hesitated to machine-gun us in the streets.
I did not fly or wave any flags for the big day; if I were to fly any flag, it would be the Earth flag. At the place where I was working about twenty years ago, someone started taking donations to buy a flagpole to put out front, and I told them I’d contribute if they’d fly the Earth flag above the United States flag, since the Earth had obvious precedence over the U.S., having existed very nicely without it for several billion years, whereas the U.S. self-evidently could not exist at all without the Earth. The look I got suggested they probably thought I was some kind of Commie radical. (Nope, just a hippie tree-hugger.)
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
You shall have no other gods . . .
I’m beginning this at 11:10 Tuesday 20, immediately after having watched the inauguration of Obama on TV. It was indeed a stirring and historical event, the inauguration speech full of moving and inspiring rhetoric and memorable lines, shots of weeping girls and women everywhere, all very heartwarming. And yet, in spite of Obama’s explicit scolding and chastisement of cynics who think nothing can change for the better, I’m an old dog resistant to learning new tricks. Maybe I’ve been reading too much Joe Bageant and “Gloom and doom report.” But actually, I’m not really cynical so much as I’m worried.
My last post here (“News flash,” 22 Nov 08), almost two months ago but two weeks after the Great Victory, was a gentle, Onion-like satire depicting the public’s perception of Obama as a sort of Christ-like miracle-worker. What I saw this morning only more strongly confirmed that impression. There was a distinct air of adoration, even worship, which made me very uneasy. Notwithstanding the title of this post, it doesn’t really have much to do with idolatry, though a case might be made for that. It’s just that I think everybody is expecting entirely too much of this man, much of which may simply be impossible for him or anyone else to accomplish, not just in four years, but ever. I’m sure he will effect a great deal of beneficial change, but I’m equally sure that he will not meet everyone’s expectations, simply because many of those expectations are wildly unrealistic. He is human, and therefore fallible. He will inevitably make mistakes; and unfortunately, much of what he does right will probably be perceived as wrong by those who had a conflicting agenda. And when he is seen to make mistakes, whether real or perceived, he will be mercilessly and savagely crucified, not only by his diehard enemies but by all his worshipers who expected him to fulfill all their dreams. For those Christians familiar with the Passion narrative, remember what happened to Jesus between Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday. Every president, of course, has a honeymoon of indeterminate duration, and what happens when the honeymoon is over and his worshipers discover he has clay feet, and how he deals with their disillusionment and fury, will to a great extent determine what the remainder of the term will be like. We can only hope and pray for the best, or even just the acceptable, but an inveterate cynic and curmudgeon finds that difficult to do with any conviction.
My last post here (“News flash,” 22 Nov 08), almost two months ago but two weeks after the Great Victory, was a gentle, Onion-like satire depicting the public’s perception of Obama as a sort of Christ-like miracle-worker. What I saw this morning only more strongly confirmed that impression. There was a distinct air of adoration, even worship, which made me very uneasy. Notwithstanding the title of this post, it doesn’t really have much to do with idolatry, though a case might be made for that. It’s just that I think everybody is expecting entirely too much of this man, much of which may simply be impossible for him or anyone else to accomplish, not just in four years, but ever. I’m sure he will effect a great deal of beneficial change, but I’m equally sure that he will not meet everyone’s expectations, simply because many of those expectations are wildly unrealistic. He is human, and therefore fallible. He will inevitably make mistakes; and unfortunately, much of what he does right will probably be perceived as wrong by those who had a conflicting agenda. And when he is seen to make mistakes, whether real or perceived, he will be mercilessly and savagely crucified, not only by his diehard enemies but by all his worshipers who expected him to fulfill all their dreams. For those Christians familiar with the Passion narrative, remember what happened to Jesus between Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday. Every president, of course, has a honeymoon of indeterminate duration, and what happens when the honeymoon is over and his worshipers discover he has clay feet, and how he deals with their disillusionment and fury, will to a great extent determine what the remainder of the term will be like. We can only hope and pray for the best, or even just the acceptable, but an inveterate cynic and curmudgeon finds that difficult to do with any conviction.
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