Aaaaand I’m back!

Hey kiddies. Long time no post. Seems I’ve sort of neglected this. I think at one point I had an audience of as many as 20 people. I’m pretty sure we’re back to zero now. A lot has happened. To all of us. When I started this blog it was many many years ago. I was married, I had two kids, and my wife was going slowly insane. We still don’t know exactly what is wrong with her, but I have a few amateur armchair suspicions. What’s important is after a long drawn out legal battle in a justice system that is skewed against dads and, in particular, atheists, I divorced my wife and eventually got residential custody of my kids. My kids went through hell and there was nothing I could do to stop it. They’re both grown adults now, and I think they turned out pretty well despite everything. And by everything I don’t just mean their mom. I made plenty of mistakes myself. The difference is that I own my mistakes. Anyway… rambling again.

Another impetus for this blog was the trauma of leaving a religious cult. Those folks fuck with your mind, and I spent a lot of years sorting through who I was and what I believed. As part of my recovery I took a class in Logic and Critical Thinking and it was the single best thing I ever did for myself, although it changed my life irreversibly. I’m now an atheist, a science enthusiast, and (by American standards) a crazy ass whacked out deranged libtard. That’s American for “I care about people I don’t know.”

I sorted through a lot of things on this platform. Actually, it was another platform and it’s been so long now I don’t even remember what it was. But it had an orange logo. I imported everything here. That’s probably about the time I lost the handful of followers my blog had at the time. Sometime around then Facebook and Twitter became the bright shiny new thing. I started tweeting. A lot. Don’t go looking for it, that account is gone. When Elon Musk went full on far right psycho I deleted the account. I don’t really have a social media presence left. Not as Dr. Cowboy anyway. But while I was doing the incessant tweeting thing, broadcasting every stupid thought that popped into my head out into the interwebs, I stopped blogging. I got married again. This time to someone with mental conditions that range in the two digit range (e.g. she was diagnosed with more than 10), none of which I knew about when I took those vows. So that was fun. I learned all about narcissistic personality disorder. And antisocial personality disorder. And a few others. I popped back in for one more blog post in 2019 in the middle of that shitstorm. I don’t think anybody read it. I doubt anybody will read this either. The blog has always been for me, with the rest of you invited along for the journey. I’ll probably keep exploring all of those topics, because the trauma from all of them still lives in my head. I’m still working through all of it. And now, we have orange Jesus in the white house. And every trigger I’ve accumulated over the last 2 1/2 decades is being triggered again. We’re gonna explore that too. I’m gonna have a hard time getting through the insanity that’s coming our way. Hopefully we can get through this together.

We’ve had quite the journey, y’all. Where do we go from here? Well, the country decided to elect an over the top narcissist with apparent dementia and a felony fraud conviction and a history of insurrection and stealing classified documents. Because why the fuck not? What’s the worst that can happen? Well we’re finding out day by day. We’re only a couple of weeks into the second term and the shit is flying fast and furious. I’m not going to be able to keep up with that, so don’t look to me as a news source. Plenty of others are doing that already. I’m here for us regular types who didn’t drink the orange koolaid, and are trying to keep our sanity intact while deciding what to do. When we studied Nazi Germany in school some of us wondered, or perhaps even asked by the teacher, “what would you do if you lived through that?” I think we can say for certain now that most of us gave a bullshit answer. Most of us should have said “not a goddamned fucking thing.” I don’t want to be that one. I intend to resist. I intend to keep people safe. I intend to be the person who hid Anne Frank, not the one who turned her in. Although sometimes I wonder if I’m not in danger of being Anne Frank. Let’s hope it doesn’t get there, but folks, we can’t assume anything yet. We’ve got at least four years of this shit to get through. One hopes our form of government holds long enough to retain elections for that long. That’s not what happened in Germany. Or Russia. I mean, technically Russia still has elections, but… c’mon. We all know, Vladimir.

So once again I need this outlet. I have no idea where we’re going. Let’s start finding out.

Why I’m Voting for Bernie Sanders in 2016

Anybody who’s read a fucking thing I’ve written knows that Republicans scare Oooh scary black man! the shit out of me these days. They pretty much lost their shit back in 2008 when the scary black man took office.

It was an amazing moment in 2008 when Barack Obama won the election for President of the United States. For the record I did not vote for him because of the color of his skin. I don’t care if he was black, white, purple, green and dirty yellow polka dot, a woman, a man, a 3 foot tall midget, a giant blue alien, a platypus, or a former stripper named Candy. I voted for him because he was the best candidate available.

I followed a debate between John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. The question came up (Iraq was still a thing then) would you use small tactical nuclear weapons in I shoot polar bears from helicopters! combat. Hillary and McCain both said yes, and only Obama said no. He won my vote at that very moment. It had nothing to do with the color of his skin and what the very first black president might mean for a country that still had fucking confederate flags flying over several state capitals. It had everything to do with his positions and his views. I actually mildly liked John McCain prior to his run for president, and this was before he got Holly GoWhiteTrash for a running mate. Over the course of the election, of course, he abandoned every principle he ever had and totally started sucking the RNC’s tiny little old white man penis.

Prior to 2009, I could have still brought myself to vote for a Republican, given that they weren’t a total whack job. John McCain, prior to about 2008 seemed to fit that bill. Sadly, he’s a joke now. The maverick that opened his asshole for the RNC to drill. Sarah Palin… where the fuck do I start? The entire RNC seems to have remodeled themselves after the former beauty queen redneck half term governor of Alaska who can’t seem to form a coherent sentence without a teleprompter.

I can follow scripts really well!

Palin, of course, sealed the deal. A bumbling indecisive vice president like Dan Quale to fill out a presidency is one thing (not necessarily a good thing) but this is totally something else. A complete neocon brain dead extremist who apparently can write entire books without having actually ever read one (shuh, right). McCain was out, permanently.

But back to 2008. I did appreciate what Obama’s election meant for this country. I empathized with the pictures of African Americans crying with joy. Who wouldn’t? It’s a major major step. A black man, a member of the single most maligned ethnic group in this country to this date, was elected to the most powerful office of the most powerful country in the entire world.

That’s kind of a big deal.

If there were no difference between McCain and Obama, I probably still would have voted for him for that reason alone. But there was a difference, and it’s an important one. Bush dragged us into the black mires of war twice. The media for the most part protected us from the horrors Bush was inflicting on our servicemen and the countries of the middle east, so most of us soft cushy fat armchair pundits back here in the states could go “WOOT WOOT GO ‘MURICA BLOW THEM FREEDOM HATING BASTARDS TO HELL” without having to see the ugliness of war up close. They didn’t have to see dead soldier after dead soldier coming back, or even worse, the wounded who survived. We just didn’t even have to fucking see it.

You know, I can’t think of a single fascist regime where they let the public see the horrors of the wars they fight. Interesting…

So of course, after selling the average conservative voter on the benefits of war and how it makes America fucking awesome, McCain declared that he would declare on the rest of the world we weren’t already fighting. Starting with motherfucking Iran. Why Iran? Because. We already don’t like brown people, let’s blow up some more right next door the the ones we’re already blowing up. Seems legit, eh?

I don’t want more wars. I don’t want any more dead bodies coming home. War is a last resort, not a hammer that fixes every problem. There are times when we have to go to war. We haven’t had a good reason since the 1940s, yet we’ve been in some kind of conflict somewhere in the world every single year since the 1960s. Enough. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for a man who had a major hardon for yet another war we didn’t need, white trash extremist running mate or not.

So here we are back in 2015, looking down the barrel of another presidential election. Every single Republican running is a pro-Plutocracy pro-Theocracy right wing extremist puppet. I’m not even going to address them here. The RNC ran off the rails as soon as we had the audacity to put a non rich old white man in the office. They’re fucked, as far as I’m concerned, and I’ll be happy if we never elect another.

So what’s left? Well, Hillary is back.

Well, it appears that her disturbing similarity to McCain policy wise seems to be resurfacing. Let’s be honest, in ANY European country Obama would be considered a moderate conservative and most likely so would I. The Republicans aren’t conservative, they’re right wing extremists now. So Obama is already mildly to the right of center. Hillary, not so mildly. She’s not a progressive by any stretch of the imagination. She’s remarkably similar to the actual policies of the Republicans, sans the crazy Theocracy talking points. She clearly rode her husband’s coattails to success and built a name for herself from there. She didn’t build herself up from nothing like Obama did. She part of the establishment and I don’t trust her. I would vote for Elisabeth Warren in a heartbeat, but she refuses to run. So my choices are pseudo Republican Hillary Clinton and crazy Republican WhoeverTheFuckActuallyRuns. I mean, Hillary is just who the democrats will run, right? It’s her turn. She’s waited long enough. She’s in the special category of people who actually have a shot. Unlike this guy….

Wow, I’m really not excited about this election.

Wait, what’s this? There’s a new contender? Oh shit, this crazy old man is going to split the Democrat vote and let another TheoPlutocrat into the White House! We’re DOOOOOOMMED!!!!

HOLY FUCK! He…. says things that make sense. He actually represents views I support. He…. WOULD BE AN AWESOME FUCKING PRESIDENT!

But I’m torn… What if he does split the vote? What if he does let Ted Motherfucking Cruz into the White House?

But… but… Aw fuck it.

The two party system has always pissed me off. Vote for this big party candidate or that one. No other choice is viable. Fuck that. Let’s flip both parties the fucking bird this time. Let’s vote a real fucking progressive in for once. Let’s catch the fuck up with the rest of the world and leave this dumbass fuck ourselves in the ass mindset behind. I’m voting for this guy, consequences be damned. This is the man who represents my beliefs on every level. This is the man who just might save our country from the Roman demise it’s rapidly rushing towards.

To be fair though, that’s easy for me to say. I’m from motherfucking Kansas. Kansas’s electoral votes are going to go for whatever dumbass fucknuts corporate moral mojority puppet the Republicans run. It wouldn’t make any difference if I wrote my own goddamn name in in 2016. But I’ll know I did the right thing whether it makes a difference or not.

This? Again?

So this happened:

(I’m having a little trouble with the link in my blogging software, so I’ll post it here just in case it goes horribly wrong).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNl_1gQqrWI

First of all, I like Russell Brand. I do. I don’t exactly think he’s any kind of bastion of intellectual thought, but his heart is in the right place. But here, like with Ben Affleck, he’s adopted this mainline liberal idea that Muslims are this big giant group of peace loving hippies and there’s just a couple of bad apples who run around blowing up buildings trying to make Islam look bad.

So I find my self in the uncomfortable position of actually agreeing with Fox News. Yes, they got something right. There are scores of human rights abuses in Islamic countries ruled by Sharia Law. However, Fox is right but for the wrong reasons, and they get the point wrong as usual.

You see, Fox has an agenda. They target a Christian conservative audience and play on their fears to increase viewership. To a conservative Christians, Muslims are fuckin’ scary. We sort of ran out of bad guys with the fall of the (godless communist) Soviet Union in the early 90s, and 9/11 gave us a new one: Muslims!

In this case, the facts fit Fox’s narrative beautifully, as long as you don’t back up and look at the bigger picture. The Quran does endorse subjugation of women. It does call for killing infidels and apostates. Fox says that you can be killed for “sins” but it’s actually a bit more specific than that. Only certain sins will merit the death penalty, and leaving Islam is right up there. I can only assume they dodge that one because *gasp!* it makes atheists look persecuted. Fox hates atheists too, so they can’t go there. But back up a little, take the 40,000 foot view, and you can say that Islam commands death for the commission of (certain) sins. See how easy it was to twist that little fact to fit a narrative?

So lets take Brand’s claims into account here. There’s 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, and the vast majority of them aren’t running around blowing up buildings. Yes, true. But Fox was actually talking about human rights abuses, and these occur at an alarming rate in many Muslim theocracies. The problem, of course, is more complex than anything that can be summed up in a simple sentence and plastered on a picture of Morgan Freeman for circulation around the internet.

What Fox is missing is the fact that any criticism that can be leveled against Islam can also (and should be) leveled against Christianity. Christianity had Theocracies with human rights abuses a while ago too. We call them the dark ages now. Islam is currently in it’s own dark age.

You see, the problem isn’t Islam, it’s Theocracies. It’s following bronze age religions in the information age. But you have to love the irony of Fox News decrying a Theocracy, considering how much time they’ve spent suggesting that we become one.

Liberal Pseudo-Intellectual Arrogant Shitheads

In case you’ve been living under a rock, you may have missed the little spat between Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Reza Aslan, and Ben Affleck.

That’s right. Ben. Fucking. Affleck. Because his opinion is somehow important.

So let’s recap to bring you up to speed.

First this happened:

Just in case you didn’t take the time to watch those (or they’ve been taken down since I posted this) I’ll recap:

Bill Maher: You liberals who defend Islam suck. Islam is bad. Rih rih bad. They kill you n shit. Liberals who don’t speak out against the violence of Islam suck.

Reza Aslan: Oh no you didn’t! Bill Maher is wrong because he’s dumb. I’m smart. Listen to me. Islam fucking rulez, beeches! BTW I’m smart and he’s dumb!

(Spoiler alert: that’s called the ad hominem attack and is a way for pseudo-intellectual assholes to assert their superiority without actually making good factually based arguments. I kinda hate that shit)

Bill Maher: Huh? Islam kills you n shit for not being Islamic. Or leaving Islam. Or drawing Muhammad. Or basically doing fucking anything that isn’t sucking Allah’s imaginary motherfucking dick.

Ben Affleck: Whatever. Islam is awesome.

Bill Maher: WTF? Here’s some facts. They’ll fucking kill your ass!

Ben Affleck: Whatever you motherfucking racist!

Bill Maher: Racist? Islam isn’t a race, it’s a motherfucking religion, bitches! WTF are you talking about?

Ben Affleck: I’m right because I’M MOTHERFUCKING BEN AFFLECK BITCHES!

Bill Maher: But… but… facts?

Ben Affleck: FUCK YOUR FACTS BITCH! I’M MOTHERFUCKING BEN FUCKING AFFLECK AND I SAY ISLAM IS FUCKING GREAT N SHIT! MEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! COME SUCK IT BITCH!!!!

Sam Harris: Ok, I’ll concede this one point to you…

Ben Affleck: FUCK YOU BITCH! WHO’S YOU DADDY?!? ME!!! I’M YOU MOTHERFUCKING DADDY! CUZ I DID UR MOM! LIKE THIS!! OOOOOH YEAH!!! SMACK THAT ASS BABY!!! WOOOOO!!!!!

Okay, full disclosure: I’m drinking while I write this, so my synopsis of the exchange might be slightly off, but I think I got the general gist of it. Basically I’m the Mr. Cranky of the liberal atheist blogosphere. Except people actually read Mr. Cranky.

So as you might have surmised, I have a slight problem with this. I’ll give you the right answer in advance: Bill Maher was right.

It goes like this. When you say “black people be like” you’re a fucking racist. There’s no African-American manual where you can glean what they think from. They’re people. If you generalize them, you’re a bigot. End of story.

When you say “White people be like” you’re the same fucking thing. To get to the point slightly faster, you can put any race or gender in there and you get the same thing. Bigot.

But religion is different. When you criticize Christians, they have a manual. They’re more than happy to wave it in your face and quote from it. They get pissed off if you know more about it than they do and point out the bad parts. But some of them actually read the bad parts, and dutifully try to apply them. We call those assholes extremists. Islam is the same. You’ll find plenty of “moderate” Muslims who don’t go killing atheists or Christians or former Muslims or beheading cartoonists or filmmakers who have the audacity to tell the stories of abuse from the Muslim world, but they’re not exactly speaking up either. And the bad shit is in their holy book too, same as the extremists. So you can paint Muslims and Christians (and most other religions) with the same brush, because they actually have a source they’re getting this shit from. And we can go right to the source and criticize it, and we should, because there’s a lot of bad shit in there.

You see, the difference is that religion is an idea, not a set of physical attributes. And as an idea, like any human idea, it is open to criticism. And it should be. Religion is a terrible idea.

I’ve never identified myself as a liberal, even though most people consider me to be so. Most of my political leanings are to the left, because I believe that people are more important than things. That’s right, you don’t have to have a holy book to think morally like that. But these pseudo intellectual shitheads like Affleck and Aslan piss me right the fuck off. They’re liberal because they think it’s cool. They don’t give a fuck about facts, they take whatever they think they’re supposed to think and run with it.

Fuck that shit. Islam deserves criticism.

Michael Patrick Leahy in plain English

You may have heard about the recent flap over the Coca Cola commercial that so enraged the right wing ideologues. Of particular interest was a blog post by Michael Patrick Leahy (at Breitbart.com, so you know this will be entertaining) who is upset that America the Beautiful might be sung in a language other than English. However, since he only speaks ideologue, I found that ironic. I’ve decided to help out and translate his blog post into plain English so that we can all benefit from his wisdom.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/02/02/Why-Coca-Cola-America-The-Beautiful-Ad-Was-Offensive?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

“Executives at Coca Cola thought it was a good idea to run a 60 second Super Bowl ad featuring children singing “America the Beautiful” – a deeply Christian patriotic anthem whose theme is unity – in several foreign languages. The ad also prominently features a gay couple.”

Executives are bad when they make decisions I don’t like. When they pay me to push their point of view though, they’re awesome. America the Beautiful mentions God therefore the entire song is about God, not America. I’ve never actually listened to the words. There were two men in a shot together for a half second therefore they must be gay because I’m a bigot and hate gay people.

Conservatives instantly lit up social media with objections, with many vowing to boycott the soda company’s products.

Haters gonna hate. That’s us. We’re the haters. We must object to this message of tolerance and acceptance. There’s no money in that shit.

“If we cannot be proud enough as a country to sing ‘American the Beautiful’ in English in a commercial during the Super Bowl, by a company as American as they come — doggone we are on the road to perdition,” said former GOP Rep. Allen West.

I know a black man, therefore I’m not racist. I wonder if his ancestors loved America enough to learn the language within five years when they got here…

The lyrics of the song, written in 1893 by Wellesley College Professor Katherine Lee Bates, ask God to grant America “brotherhood / From sea to shining sea.”
As far as the executives at Coca Cola are concerned, however, the United States of America is no longer a nation ruled by the Constitution and American traditions in which English is the language of government. It is not a nation governed in the Anglo-American tradition of liberty. It is instead a nation governed by some all inclusive multi-cultural synthesis of the various forms of government in the world, as expressed by the multiple languages used in the Super Bowl ad to sing a uniquely American hymn that celebrates our heritage.

America is for white people. I really only know white people. I get scared when I see people with dark skin. It’s ok if they’re cleaning floors and stuff, but mostly I only want to see white people because people who aren’t like me scare me. Also, something or other about the Constitution. Actually I’ve never read the thing and I don’t have the first clue why the Constitution has anything to do with this, but you’ll think I’m smart if I act like I know what the Constitution says. Actually I’m just an uninformed bigot but you morons will buy anything I say.

“We don’t get to pick and chose whether America should be diverse or not,” says one of the women featured in the ad on a behind-the-scenes video posted by Coca Cola, “It is diverse…..We need to celebrate all the different diversities.”

If I close my eyes and cover my ears and shout “LA LA LA” I can actually make myself believe that America is populated entirely by English speaking white people. Diversity is bad. Everybody should be like me.

The old “America the Beautiful” is beautiful because of the blessings God had heaped on it and because its government offers “liberty in law,” while aspiring for togetherness. Coca Cola’s America is beautiful because of the differences in its people. When the company used such an iconic song, one often sung in churches on the 4th of July that represents the old “E Pluribus Unum” view of how American society is integrated, to push multiculturalism down our throats, it’s no wonder conservatives were outraged.

I don’t actually understand patriotism, just religion. I spew hate and intolerance and call it patriotism. You people believe me. Actually America was built on diversity and acceptance and that’s true patriotism, but what’s really going on here is I’m bitching about the free market at work. I preach the free market all the time but don’t actually understand that either. I’m going to complain when it doesn’t work the way I want it to and try to twist something more enlightened than I am into some kind of threat. We neo-conservatives thrive on fear, so we spend a lot of time trying to make you afraid. We’ve actually figured out how to make money off of it. Thanks, morons!

9/11/2013

It’s become a little bit of a tradition, I suppose, for me to evaluate where we are every September 11th. I thought about this earlier today and realized, I don’t have anything very profound to say this year, the 12th anniversary of the worst attack the United States has suffered in my lifetime. Not that anything I ever say is all that profound.

However…

The day before, President Barack Hussein Obama addressed the nation on the current Syrian crisis. I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about this.

The Syrian crisis is complex (as any international conflict is) and I’ve only taken a cursory look into what’s happening. The only thing the government and the media have really focused on is the fact that the Syrian government appears to have used sarin gas in a suburban area killing something on the order of 1400 Syrian citizens. I don’t know all that much about sarin gas either, but it’s apparently quite nasty. Foaming at the mouth, bleeding from places you should never bleed from, altogether a quite horrible death.

The United Nations has outlawed the use of chemical weapons and for very good reason. Some have made the argument that dead is dead and we don’t get that worked up when thousands are hacked to death with machetes. We should, in fairness, but chemical weapons are especially nasty.

But strangely the U.N. seems reluctant to enforce this law when it comes to Syria. The reasons for this, too, are complex. Syria is a Russian ally, and Russia is boycotting any action to be taken as a result. It seems odd to me that Russia is single handedly powerful enough to prevent the U.N. from enforcing international law, but I don’t pretend to understand all of the complexities here.

Long story short, since this isn’t really a post about Syria, is that John Kerry seems to have accidently stumbled across a possible diplomatic solution, and Russia and Syria so far seem to be on board. I hope that pans out, but I find it slightly amusing that John Kerry, former Vietnam war protester, who in 2013 seems to be all for bombing the fuck out of Syria, accidentally found a possible peaceful solution. Again, this isn’t really about Syria, so I’ll leave it at that.

The reason I bring up Syria, and more importantly president Obama’s speech, is because as I was watching it, I was uncomfortably reminded of President Bush and his administration’s arguments for the invasion of Iraq. We all know how that turned out.

As I said, the Syrian conflict is complex. The Syrian government seems to be tyrannical and despotic, but from what little I’ve learned about the rebels, we really don’t want those assholes to replace this guy. I read a story just yesterday about how one of their leaders shut a boy in the face in front of his mother for supposedly blaspheming Mohammed. By the way, if any Syrian rebel leaders happen to be reading this FUCK MOHAMMED AND FUCK YOU YOU SICK FUCKERS. TAKE YOUR FUCKASS BLASPHEMY SENSITIVITIES AND STICK THEM SO FAR UP YOUR ASS IT COMES BACK OUT YOUR SHITTY EARS.

Sorry. That kind of shit pisses me off.

The point was, I hope history isn’t repeating itself. I hope we’ve learned something from the past 12 years. I feel for the Syrian people, but at some point we have stop going to war.

Goodbye, Mr. Ebert

Roger Ebert died today. I haven’t talked about him much, but in recent years he’s become a real inspiration for me. I knew he was sick, but I didn’t expect that we would lose him so soon.

I forget the exact article I read that keyed me into the fact that Roger Ebert was so much more than just a movie critic, but I began reading his blog. My favorite posts was the ones where he was not writing about movies, but pondering on our polarized political climate, gun violence, and other issues. I think one of his most powerful posts was one of his last, this one: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2013/03/a_shooting_in_harsh_park.html

He doesn’t posture, he doesn’t preach, he simply relates yet another senseless killing by gun related violence. The power of the post comes from the fact that it’s short, for the most part simply relates an incident most of us probably didn’t hear about, and most importantly the final paragraph. You can sense his frustration with humanity, almost defeat in his tone. There’s a world weariness that comes through. He sees this incident through a lens that most of us don’t. This is a story that should have made national news. It should have dominated headlines across the country for weeks. But it didn’t. It was lost in an onslaught of other, equally tragic, gun related murders that happen each and every day. We, as a society, as a people, as humans, should all be working together to find a solution, but we don’t. The only discussion that every happens is political posturing. One side shouts “guns don’t kill people, people kill people!” and the other side shouts “gun control now!” All any of us seem interested in is winning an argument, but in the meantime we continue to kill countless numbers of ourselves every single day.

Gun violence is a complex issue without a single simple solution, but we as a society seem incapable of having a serious honest discussion about it and implementing any kind of solutions at all. It kills one’s faith in humanity.

Gun control is almost certainly part of the solution. What the second amendment actually says aside, I don’t think it’s necessary to ban all weapons, but there is no reason that average citizens in a civilized society need assault weapons designed for combat. An AR-15 has one purpose and one purpose alone, to kill lots of people quickly. It is only being used properly when being used to kill lots of people quickly. Whatever else my be true of the Sandy Hook killer or the Colorado movie killer, they were using their weapons exactly as they were meant to be used. There is no justification for weapons of this sort to be made available to the general public.

But there are so many other factors that factor in to the issue. Poverty, poor education, and economic inequality are all factors that are rectifiable, but we can’t have honest discussions about these issues either.

In short, I share his frustration when watching Americans posture and shout and sling old tired memes around rather than trying to find a way to make life better for anybody. I identified with the man. More than I even knew. Michael Shermer reposted this article written by Ebert then I had never read before:

http://www.salon.com/2011/09/15/roger_ebert/

I didn’t know he was an atheist. It honestly never occurred to me to wonder. He didn’t blog about religion much. He was simply Roger Ebert, human being, supporter of the philosophy of Kindness. I respected and identified with him without even knowing that he was religion-free just like me.

That’s how it ought to be for all of us.

I will miss Roger Ebert. I will miss his thought-provoking insights, his desire to see humanity rise above itself, his powerful intellect. And yes, dear sister, those times when we were kids and would all sit down and watch Siskel and Ebert review the new movies together.

Good-bye, Mr. Ebert. The world was made better for having had you in it.

Gun Control

I’ve been very disappointed in Americans and in particular my friends recently. In response to the recent tragedy everybody is spouting the same old tired clichés.

“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”
“Cars kill people too, but we don’t ban cars”
“This violence is because we took God out of schools”

The stupid, it burns.

Guns kill people. Period. Yes, a human has to pull the trigger and point it, but the gun is what kills them. This argument is bullshit.

Yes, cars kill people too, but there is a significant difference here: cars are a tool designed to transport people from one place to another. They are not designed to kill people, and only do so when used incorrectly. Guns are a tool designed with one purpose and one purpose only in mind: to kill people. That is what they were made to do. The killer in Connecticut killed 26 people using a tool EXACTLY AS IT WAS DESIGNED TO BE USED.

I can give you a valid reason I need a car: to get somewhere. I can give you valid reason I need hammer: to build something. I cannot give you a single valid reason for needing to own an assault rifle. It is not legal, nor do I have any need of murdering large numbers of people. That is what assault rifles are for, killing large numbers of people. It has no other use.

And taking God out of schools is also bullshit. Nobody took God out of schools. Nobody is preventing children from praying to whatever God they believe in, they’ve only removed people’s ability to force children to pray to a particular God. That’s all. If your children were forced to pray to Allah in the morning at school and study the accomplishments of Mohammed, the outcry would be enormous. Yet these people see no hypocrisy in forcing Muslim children to pray to the Christian god.

Furthermore, implying that your god allowed children to be murdered out of spite due to the enforcement of the freedom of religion clause in the constitution should be offensive to all Christians. This is making the claim that your god is an asshole. I’m astounded that no Christians are offended by this implication.

I’m a what???

I find that sometimes people assume that because I unabashedly and vocally support gay marriage and homosexual equality, that I must be gay. I find this incredibly amusing. That is similar to saying that if I support racial equality, I must be black. Or if I support gender equality, I must be a woman. Or if I support animal rights, I must be a dog.

I am a white heterosexual middle class [human] male. I am privileged in every conceivable way with the exception of my lack of religion. I have nothing tangible to gain by supporting equal rights. I do so because it is right. I reasoned myself into this viewpoint, because I can find no logical reason that any human because of their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or any other method by which we arbitrarily segregate ourselves should be denied any rights that are given to others, including myself.

I support equal rights with no expectation of a reward in an afterlife, but ironically those who do believe in an afterlife tend to be those who do not support equal rights. By accident of birth I receive that which should be given to every human regardless of the genetics of their own birth.

If you do not support equality in any of the forms in which it has had to be fought for, why?

9/11/2012

I wrote a blog post on 9/11 of last year. I think what I said in that post still pretty much sums up my feelings about 9/11. I’m still continually disgusted at how politicians try to politicize 9/11. The truth is, It’s just another day now. For 11 years we’ve commemorated 9/11, but I think it’s time for us to collectively move on as a nation. The resulting fallout from 9/11 is some of the most frightening things I’ve seen in my lifetime. I’ve seen our liberties eroded, our young soldiers killed, foreign civilians killed, foreign leaders overturned and executed, and our country tip towards the brink of fascism without even knowing it.

9/11 has often been compared to Pearl Harbor. It’s not quite the same, but even so, we commemorate Pearl Harbor quietly these days. The pain of that attack has subsided. World War II was fought and ended. We fought and toppled fascist governments, discovered unthinkable crimes, and tried and convicted those responsible. What happened after 9/11 was a little different. We entered a war, but not with the foreign power who attacked us, because there was no foreign power that attacked us. It was a ragtag band of religious zealots living in the deserts of Afghanistan. The government of Afghanistan refused to cooperate with us, and we entered into the nation’s single longest war (that isn’t really a war because it was never declared by congress) with that government. We almost immediately lost sight of the criminal who murdered 3000 of our citizens, and turned our attention to another despot who hadn’t really done anything to us. That conflict cost us dearly. but no matter how dearly it cost us, it cost the citizens of Iraq much more dearly. We are not popular in that part of the world, and there is a reason for that. And no, it is not “because they hate our freedoms”. But recently we’ve found the criminal who murdered our citizens, and he was killed in the event. I will not entertain conspiracy theories about that event either.

9/11 will forever remain for me the epitome of what religious extremism can lead to. Unfortunately, it can get far worse. The crusades were a religious war, and they were fought with middle ages technology. Imagine if the crusades were fought today. That is the future we must avoid. Religious zealots are constantly trying to control our government, and the moderately religious are encouraging them to do so. This is the danger of even moderate religion, as Sam Harris points out. If we fall to fascist powers and become a religious state, the world as we know it will be in danger.

It is time to return to the ideals that made America great in the first place. Our freedoms and liberties must be restored from erosion of the last 11 years. Our adherence to the separation of church and state must be absolute. The balance of powers must be restored. And we must once again strive to be an example to the rest of the world as we once were, not the bully that the rest of the world is afraid of that we are now.

The last year has been very eventful for me. Around this time last year I had just started dating the first girl I had dated since I met my ex wife. Since then I’ve had quite the emotional rollercoaster. My divorce has been finalized. My children finally know that there are alternatives to extreme religion, and they’ve returned to public school. I’m alone, but I’m free of my ex wife to as much of a degree as possible. My house has been foreclosed on and soon to be repossessed. My apartment is overrun with cats whom I’m desperately trying to find homes for. I’ve returned to the job I had 11 years ago, as much as that job still exists, and I was with and lost a woman I’ve been secretly in love with for over a decade, and whom I consider to be my perfect mate. Sorry, fairy tale endings don’t happen in real life. It’s amazing how much can happen in just a year. I haven’t even covered everything that’s happened in my life, I’m sure yours has been just as eventful.

A year is a long time. When 9/11/2013 rolls around, it would be nice if we didn’t have to once again call for the freedoms we’ve lost to be restored again.