Obstructionism for Dummies. Like they need it.
Archive for the ‘depression’ Category
Vote Reality
3 November, 2008Neoconservatism is based upon faith. Faith that, if we deregulate business and finance, they will suddenly behave themselves and act ethically. Faith that, if we lie to children about sex and prophylaxis, they will not experiment with their bodies. Faith that we will be welcomed with flowers in Bhagdad. Faith that tax cuts pay for themselves. Faith that tax cuts for the rich will help the poor. Faith that one can shape reality, can create a new reality, through sheer willpower. Faith that, because we are creating a new reality, the laws do not apply. Faith that everything that our founding fathers wrote has been misinterpreted by virtually every historian and that we are a Christian nation.
Faith, as I have said before (see here and here) is the ability to believe something despite no evidence or evidence to the contrary. Read the rest of this entry ?
Vote Competence
2 November, 2008One of my friends is a Republican. Dyed in the wool, lifelong Republican. He also rationalizes to an unbelievable extent. Why is he voting for McCain and Palin? A couple of reasons. Abortion (he seems to think that Republicans would actually shoot that cash cow). Taxes (he seems to think that Obama will raise his taxes and McCain will cut them). Competence (he seems to think that during the last seven years and nine months the nation has been run with competence).
Competence? Competence? I asked him to name one thing that the Bush administration has done right. Read the rest of this entry ?
A Little Bit of Housekeeping
12 September, 2008Yesterday’s 9/11 post was, coincidentally, my 200th post. I wish to hell I could always write like that. Unfortunately, I very rarely have that much emotion, am that troubled, or that depressed. Or maybe fortunately. It was not what I had planned. I had planned to discuss how the Republicans used national unity to force through their neocon agenda, demonize large chunks of the American populace, and start a voluntary war. The response to the attack could have been positive, but conservatism has never been real positive, so I guess that was always an impossibility.
Anyway, if you look up at the bottom of my son’s watercolour painting, you will notice that “Saved by the Bill” is gone. No responses. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
Instead, there is now a “Contact Me” page for anyone who (for reasons I cannot fathom at this time) wants to contact me off line. My email address is iambilly@doubt.com billytheatheist@gmail.com (it is not my regular address, merely my email for this blog).
Today, I got hits from people searching “decomposing flesh,” “decomposing music,” and “9/11 smell of flesh.” Who the heck searches these terms? And, more important, why? Of course, yesterday, I was found through searches of “Campbell’s Pepper Pot and Scotch Broth” and “Scrapple and American Cheese.” And I still get about 10 visitors a day looking for “Absinthe.” Strange.
Anyhoo, just thought I’d mention the changes.
Memories of September 11, 2001
11 September, 2008Traffic on I-81 was stop and go for a couple of miles this morning. I found myself following a tractor trailer. I don’t think the driver was very experienced. He kept riding the brakes, filling my car with the smell of burnt metal with a slight aftertaste of plastic. Add to that, I was stopped cold for about 3 minutes next to a three-day-old deer carcass.
Burnt metal. Burnt plastic. Decomposing flesh.
My stomach began to churn. I knew what was coming. And it didn’t even dawn on me until later what today is.
Three days after the terrorist attacks in New York City, I was sent down to the Javitz Center to provide security for the Southwest Incident Command Team. The team supported the search and rescue teams. I was there for three weeks.
I found myself inspecting trucks for bombs. Controlling access to a warehouse in which the supplies for the team, FEMA, and the S&R teams were received and stored.
I worked 16-hour days. My hotel was a few streets above Times Square (near the Stage Door Deli, if that helps). Most nights I was so stressed that I walked the 30-minutes up to my hotel rather than catch a ride in the van.
I was at Ground Zero about seven times. The smell is what sticks with me.
Burnt metal. Burnt plastic. Decomposing flesh.
As a student in high school, and a trumpet player, I found myself blowing taps during the Memorial Day celebrations and observances in Sharpsburg, Maryland, at the National Cemetery. Ground Zero gave me the same eerie feeling — too many deaths, too many youngsters killed, too much violence.
Burnt metal. Burnt plastic. Decomposing flesh.
Those smells trigger memories that I do not want. Memories of the towers coming down. Memories of wasted life. Memories of violence. Memories of blowing taps.
I know what comes next. Three or four nights of being afraid to go to sleep because I know that the nightmares will come. For a few nights, I can look forward to dreams about the attack. And I can look forward to waking up at three in the morning with that smell in my mind.
Burnt metal. Burnt plastic. Decomposing flesh.
I look at the violence done in the name of god(s) throughout history and despair. The inquisition. The conquistadors. The Thirty Years War. The Holocaust. India and Pakistan. Israel and Islam. The Sudan. Eritrea. Iraq. Iran. Afghanistan. Ireland.
Burnt metal. Burnt plastic. Decomposing flesh.
These are the smells of religion. These are the smells of god(s). These are the smells of violence done in the name of ideologies and theologies. These are, for me, the smell of despair.
And will I ever get the smell of despair out of my mind?
Unintended Consequences
11 July, 2008At least someone is benefiting from the economic stimulus package:
An unforeseen and surprising beneficiary of the Economic Stimulus Plan, a plan that George Bush contends will “boost our economy and encourage job creation,” has surfaced this week. An independent market-research firm, AIMRCo (Adult Internet Market Research Company), has discovered that many websites focused on adult or erotic material have experienced an upswing in sales in the recent weeks since checks have appeared in millions of Americans’ mailboxes across the country. (via Pure Pedantry )
I guess that gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘disposable income.’ This really does not surprise me. The economy is in the dumps. The stock market is in free fall. Gas is up to $4.00 or more per gallon. Food prices are skyrocketing. Bush and McCain want to attack Iran (though McCain has no idea the nature of the threat). When people are depressed, worried about their economic future, and realize that the powers that be could care less whether they live or die, they will look for pleasure where it is available. Sex, whether within the bonds of marriage or without, whether solo or with a partner(s), whether manual or mechanical, is pleasurable (for at least one, not necessarily both).
I wonder how Bush’s Christianist, dominionist, fundamentalist and batshit crazy right wing religious ass hats are taking this. Considering the way that Dobson and his Fascist Family Focus Focus on the Family have come down on hotels for allowing pay-per-view adult movies, and have railed against masturbation and any form of sex other than man on top of woman with no birth control, I have to wonder. Will this affect his blind and unwavering support of George W. Bush and Retheopuglican Party? Or will this just come down to another instance in which the radical religious right ignores reality and declares that what they believe is TRUTH!
Is Death a Reward or a Punishment?
5 July, 2008A few weeks ago (back before I went to the fire), a tornado slammed through a Boy Scout camp in Iowa, killing four. The next day, one of the news networks (CNN, I think) carried an interview with a surviving scout in which he said that God must have wanted to call home these four because they were such good people.
While down in Virginia, I overheard a conversation at the next table (I was not eavesdropping, I was reading All My Sins Remembered by Joe Haldeman and they were talking LOUD!). They were discussing a mutual acquaintance who had apparently died only a few days before. They were discussing his ‘sinful’ life: co-habitating and having two children with his mate, not attending church, and voting for Democrats. One of the women said, “Yes, he’s dead. God punished him for his sins.”
I remember when AIDS first reached the public consciousness (and the press) many conservative pastors insisted that this was God’s punishment of homosexuals. I have heard soldier’s families state that God has brought their son/daughter home. Christian groups have been urged by their leaders to pray for the death of ‘enemies’ – imprecatory prayers. A high school graduate dies while swimming during a thunderstorm and the parents and friends console each other by suggesting that God loved him so much He couldn’t wait any longer before taking the boy to heaven.
Sheesh! Make up your minds, Christians! Does God reward good people by killing them and taking them to heaven while at the same time punishing sinners by smiting them? So what does that mean for the rest of us? Are we neither evil enough to be smote nor good enough to be brought to heaven early? Sound hinky to me.
Human beings tend to seek patterns and meanings. We look at random landforms on Mars and see ‘Jesus’ face’ in the shadows. We play our birthday in the daily numbers. We see faces in tree stumps, toast, oil stains and spackle. We try to find something that makes our life and death meaningful. I’m guilty of it myself.
In 1988, my sister Amy was killed while visiting friends in Arizona. She, along with everyone else in the Jeep, was drunk. The driver was drunk. No one was wearing a seat belt. When the Jeep rolled, she landed on a rock, smashing the back of her head. She was dead instantly, but her body took a long time to realize it. Her corneas, tendons, lungs, heart, liver, kidney, blood vessels, damn near every salvageable organ or tissue found its way into the transplant flow.
I know that she died due to her bad decisions. But I can console myself that parts of her live on in others. Some good came from her death. How’s that for a major rationalization? I can’t picture her living forever in heaven, but I know bits and pieces of her live on in strangers. God didn’t call her home; stupidity contributed heavily to a fatal accident. It took me around ten years to fully recover from her death. Prozac helped, as did counseling, as did my wife. A theist friend suggested that acceptance of God’s plan would heal me faster.
So if I accept that either Amy was a sinner who was smote by an angry and vengeful God or that she was so good an pure that God couldn’t wait another fifty or seventy years to have her by His side, I will feel better. Bull Shit! This incredibly divisive coping mechanism allows believers to ignore needless suffering and death — suffering is either deserved punishment or a test, and death is either a reward or a punishment.
So why, theists, why does God (the Abrahamic God of the Old and New Testaments, the Q’uran, and the Book of Mormon) use the exact same method to reward and to punish? Too good? Kill ’em. Too evil? Kill ’em. Or maybe, just maybe, there is no God and death is a matter of chance, modified by personal decisions. Maybe it really is random. If God is removed from the equation, the result remains the same — chance. There is no overarching plan, no pattern (except that bad decisions increase the chances of death), and no supernatural meaning to our lives. Good or bad, our lives are governed by chance.
The Decline and Fall of the United States of America
10 April, 2008One of the great works of Western historical literature is Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Though his conclusions have not stood the test of time (new information forces revisionism in all works of research), it is still one of the best, certainly most well known, works covering this significant period of history.
I have to wonder if, a hundred (or five hundred, or a thousand) years from now, an historian will write the history of the decline and fall of the United States of America, focusing on the period from 1980 to 2010 as the decades in which the decline became irreversible. The most curious part of this, for me, is the realization that the policies of the most hyper-patriotic (the neo-conservatives and theo-conservatives (at least, patriotic by their standards (and thus the standards of the main-stream media))) appear to be working the hardest to create a situation in which the fall of (arguably) the most powerful nation in the history of the world can be contemplated. Why do I lay the decline of America at the feet of those who are quickest to praise the country, quickest to deny the possibility that America has (or could make) a mistake, and those quickest to accuse citizens with different ideas of treason?
America’s strength is economic. We are the largest economy in the world. We still lead the world in the number of patents granted. We can create new industries more quickly, create new ideas, create more wealth faster and more reliably than almost every nation on earth. Our economy is being destroyed.
How is it being destroyed? Believe it or not, through deregulation. How’s that for counterintuitive?
Government regulation (through such entities as the DOJ, SEC, etc.) ensures that corporations remain honest in their financial dealings. Government regulations (through entities such as the FDA, EPA, DoA, etc.) ensure that the products produced by corporations are safe and perform as advertised. Government regulations (through OSHA, MSHA, etc.) ensure that workers are safe while producing the raw materials for industry and the finished products. Government regulations (through the FDA, DOA, etc.) ensures that what we eat is safe, is produced in a safe manner, and harvested in the least harmful way. Government regulations (through the FAA, DOJ, STB) ensure that our airlines, busses, railroads (or what is left of them), highways and bridges are safe. The stated goal of the conservative movement from the 1970s through today is the elimination of regulations.
Conservatives claim that deregulation allows companies to compete better, be more efficient, and make more money. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. For a perfect example, look at the airlines. In the 1970s, air travel was moderately expensive and the airline stocks were reliable performers (no big gains, but few losses). The airline industry was stable. Reagan changed all that (especially the stability part). Since deregulation, what have we seen? Bankruptcy, mergers, debt and instability.
Conservatives are also fond of claiming that the marketplace is self-regulating, that people will buy from companies with business practices the consumer likes. The number of food contamination cases has exploded. Lead paint in uninspected toys and other consumer goods. Coal mine cave-ins. I don’t like any of those things, but I have to buy food (even if it is not inspected), goods, electricity, you name it. Some things I can control (I don’t shop at Walmart), but I can’t control which mine my power company buys coal from , can I? Unbridled capitalism is based upon delivering for less. One of the easiest way for a company to sell for less (and please its investors) is to skimp on safety and self-inspection. By this argument, our food, toys, mines, etc., should be safer now that there are so few inspectors. Has that happened?
Deregulation also destroys social mobility. America today is more stratified (less movement from poor to middle class, middle class to rich) than most other industrialized nations (though moving from middle-class to poor is still an option being exercised by many). Small companies were, in the past, protected from predatory pricing and unfair business practices through federal regulation. ‘Leveling the playing field’ gave start-up companies a chance to compete. Now, Walmart, Lockheed Martin, Dell, IBM, and 7-11 can squelch upstarts, eliminating future wealth-producing companies. This is great for the wealthy — they get richer, the middle-class and poor get relatively poorer, and there will be less competition in the future.
The American economy is beginning to mirror third-world oligarchies. One percent of our population now controls around one third of the nations wealth. Their toadies in congress give them tax cuts and pass laws protecting them from their mistakes. Congress bails out the richest failures, leaving the majority of the country with the bill. If this trend continues (and I see no reason it will not), China and the EU will pass America, and we will be relegated to an economic also-ran.
The only way that I see to get out of this is through reasonable regulation of business practices coupled with good inspections and harsh penalties (the Justice Department doesn’t even both chargin companies with crimes anymore, they just defer prosecution as long as the company promises to be good (yeah, that woulda worked with Arthur Anderson)). Right now, though, the political will does not exist. Only another Great Depression could create that kind of will.
That scares the shit out of me. I actually think that a major depression could be the spark to get America back on the right track. Either that, or a 28th century historian is going to become very well known for a study of us.
(((Billy))) The Atheist 