The Point

Funny how things work out sometimes.

I'd been writing an essay for almost a month about my serious issues with The Bible, pondering why so many Amerikkans use a book from the Bronze Age as the benchmark for their lives, and why IMHO it makes no sense to do so in our modern society.

I'd done extensive research, re-acquainted myself with both The Bible and Darwin's 'Origin of Species', and developed what I felt is a strong indictment on the capacity to place any stock whatsoever in The Bible's ancient myths, fables, parables and tales. Although I knew my carefully measured words might incite anger and hostility from family and friends, I always write from my head AND heart and refuse to pull any punches.

Then just a few weeks back, our infamous Supreme Court handed down two sane and intelligent opinions: the first saving the Affordable Care Act from yet another a nonsensical partisan challenge, the second granting first-time equality status to same-sex marriage in all fifty states. After the horror of the racist murders in Charleston, South Carolina, Barry's amazing eulogy for Reverend Pinckney, and the long-overdue formal denunciation of the Confederate Battle Flag, the week ended with a flourish of jurisprudence, democratic process and civil morality.

And right on cue, the Religious Conservatives went into full-tilt spittle-flecked vein-popping nuclear meltdown mode.

Based on their universal derision of the SCOTUS decision on the ACA, you'd think they were ready to impeach and/or lynch the liberal justices, that Chief Justice John Roberts was being blackmailed by the Usurper Black Man Probably-A-Muslim Non-President, and that a pogrom of anti-religious sentiment was being fostered to lock up Believers in re-education camps underneath shuttered Wal-Mart stores that weren't already being used for the impending overthrow of the Republic of Texas.

But that was just the appetizer.

When the decision legalizing same-sex marriage was announced, I was astonished at the vehement reaction by those same patriotic Religious Conservatives. As usual when things don't go their way, they screeched about losing their religious freedumbs, and that our nation would cease to exist as a beacon of morality and be plunged into a dark cavern of forced gay marriages leading to the spectacle of dogs and cats living together, or something to that effect.

What really got my attention was the unhinged hysteria, threats of political retribution and physical violence against any and all who choose to side against them on this issue, all in the name of their pissed-off omnipotent Sky Wizard:

"God is still very much at work! He's still very much at work, and He will not tolerate this. While the president is decorating the White House with the rainbow colors, lighting it up... which, by the way, an unbelievable affront to God. Do you understand really, that the rainbow, has it been so perverted, and so co-opted, in this country, that people listening and they don't understand that that was God's sign to mankind that he would never destroy the earth again by flood?  And he destroyed it because of the things that men were doing to each other! And so you take his symbol and you use it for a sign of sexual behavior that is ungodly, unallowed, the boundaries, God says 'No, no, no,' and you take his sign, and you think that you're rewriting the laws of nature? That the creature is telling the creator how it's going to be? And you think that's not going to have some consequence? No, my grief is for you because you don't understand what you just did! You don't understand. Now to get more practical about this, the terror threat against this nation has gone up exponentially." 
Sandy Rios, American Family Association

"Same-sex 'marriage' is not the ultimate issue, it is a stepping stone. The real issue is the Obama administration's dogged determination to eliminate anything and everything that stands in the way of the President's radical agenda. Silence dissent. And to do that, you punish speech - and belief. Orthodox Christianity's truth doesn't change, and as long as we remain tethered to this transcendent, unchangeable truth, we are a problem for them. If you can't change it, you must eliminate it. Which is what they are seeking to do. With the Supreme Court ruling to redefine marriage, things are going to get rough for Christians in America." 
Tony Perkins, Family Research Center

"This ruling is not about marriage equality, it's about marriage redefinition.  This irrational, unconstitutional rejection of the expressed will of the people in over 30 states will prove to be one of the court's most disastrous decisions, and they have had many. The only outcome worse than this flawed, failed decision would be for the President and Congress, two co-equal branches of government, to surrender in the face of this out-of-control act of unconstitutional, judicial tyranny. The Supreme Court can no more repeal the laws of nature and nature's God on marriage that it can the laws of gravity.  Under our Constitution, the court cannot write a law, even though some cowardly politicians will wave the white flag and accept it without realizing that they are failing their sworn duty to reject abuses from the court.  If accepted by Congress and the President, this decision will be a serious blow to religious liberty, which is at the heart of the First Amendment."
Mike Huckabee, Former Governor of Arkansas, current Presidential candidate

I've had just about enough of this ignorant, fanatical bullshit.

I've had it with Christian zealots trying to claim that they alone are the arbiters of what is and isn't 'Constitutional', when they freely admit that their belief in God and The Bible is more important to them than The Constitution and Man's Laws.

I'm done with these religious fanatics who obviously have little if any actual understanding of how our three separate branches of government are supposed to work, separately and together.

I'm sickened at the notion that supposedly-educated adults will try and frame serious and important social issues within the context of their faith-based mysticism.

Here's what disturbs me the most: these religious fanatics... the Rios', Perkins', Huckabees... are the same ones who are always issuing threats against anyone they don't agree with. Fire, brimstone and damnation. Second Amendment Remedies. They love guns (you know I'm right), and are the first to use insults and eliminationist rhetoric, veiled or overt, to push their agenda forward. They claim they have their God's blessing and approval, so anything and everything they do is for His glory, and therefore acceptable.

See that image at the top of this essay?  It asks you to explain the difference between a Christian Warrior and a Muslim Jihadi.  The explanation is:  THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE. They are both totally fucked in the head.

When religious fanaticism and zealotry take over a person's brain, heart and soul, they become society's worst enemy, doesn't matter which society or country.  When they no longer place Man's Law above their chosen God's Law, they're already dead and in their respective heaven, they just haven't left this mortal coil yet. I've said more than once that I fear a violent Christian uprising in this country far more than I do anything that can be mustered from the Middle East, because the Christian fanatics are already here, and they are armed, baby!

On (almost) every continent around the globe, the fires of sectarian wars and death are raging, all in the name and honor and glory of one deity or another.  It's a sickness, this ability to give up your humanity for some faith-based cause that promises immortality if only you suspend your free will and sanity. It's Hutus against Tutsis, Sunnis against Shias, Muslims against Christians. It's totally insane, yet they keep killing each other over their faith.

"My God's bigger and better than your God, and I will kill you to prove it."

Ignorant. Infantile. Immoral. Insane.

"The true civilization is where every man gives to every other, every right that he claims for himself."

Robert Ingersoll, political leader, orator (1833-1899)

I love how those who are dead-set against same-sex marriage refuse to equate it as a civil right, as if the struggles for Black Americans to survive and thrive was somehow different. Here's a few choice comments being used frequently by those who hate the idea of same-sex marriage:

"It's unnatural."

"It's contrary to God's will."

"It's about illicit sex, not committed relationships."

"The majority of Americans oppose such marriages."

HA!!!  Fooled you... these are the exact quotes that good, decent, God-fearing people said about interracial marriages back in the day, back during the most recent national struggle for civil rights of people to live their lives the way they chose. In fact, you can take ANY derogatory statement about same-sex marriage being spouted today, replace the words 'same-sex' with 'interracial' and you have a verbatim message as used by those God-fearing regressives who felt our country would fall into the Godless abyss if the coloreds were allowed to marry their lily-white virgins.

But that's not really The Point of this essay.  Here's The Point:

We have a growing Christian fanaticism problem in this country, a far greater threat to our democracy than from any nascent offshore extremists. 

We have a segment of our population that believes their version of Christianity is more important and vital than The Constitution, which they really don't even understand or comprehend.  We have a portion of our society who, although they've never actually studied and/or understood the framework of our democracy, have decided their religious indoctrination trumps their civil responsibilities. To them, God's Will overcomes Man's Law, and that's a dangerous mindset to have. It is literally the same exact philosophy that allows ISIL jihadists to destroy ancient artifacts, murder innocent people and threaten the stability of the entire Middle East. Their God rules, an they will PROVE IT WITH GUNS.

The two women pictured above are one in the same... they are both brainwashed religious warriors, unashamed to glorify violence as their pathway to immortality.  Their skewed views on faith allows them to justify violent religious insurrection. There's no other way to interpret the visual messages.

They are both terrorists.

"Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!"

"Allahu Akbar!"

Ignorant. Infantile. Immoral. Insane.

Although I choose not to cede my free-thinking mind over to religious voodoo, I revel in the notion that people in this country are free to believe whatever they choose, or not to believe at all, just like the First Amendment states:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

So when the fanatics like Huckabee, Santorum, Gohmert, Graham, Perkins, Hamm, Rios, Cruz, et al ad nauseum, make statements that our nation should be ruled by Biblical Law instead of Constitutional Law, they're fomenting insurrection... sedition... treason. They're stating their intention to establish a theocracy, and are not shy about threatening civil disobedience and inciting their followers towards violence to reach that goal.

Ignorant. Infantile. Immoral. Insane.

But it doesn't have to be that way... honest! We must simply choose to be the opposite of what they are, which is:  Intelligent. Mature. Moral. Sane.

Several years ago, The Artist and I visited the 'Body World' exhibit at the California Science Center, a somewhat controversial display of self-donated human bodies that had been subjected to a process known as 'plastination'. Essentially, this process replaces the tissue and blood with polymers that maintain the integrity of soft structures, allowing the body to be dissected without decomposition and that lovely aroma. The exhibit included dozens of adult and child cadavers, showcased in a radically beautiful format that allowed us to see the skinless inner workings of the human body almost exactly as they are in live beings.

We learned that the originator of the exhibit, Gunther von Hagens, first presented the complete bodies with no external facial features, but that people had a hard time relating because they were displayed without the facial features the skin provides.  To counter that off-putting visage, he began to leave the lips, eyebrows and nose on the faces, which immediately made the bodies much more pleasant to view, and therefore accessible to the viewer.

"I've got you under my... oh, wait a minute."

As we walked through the amazing exhibition, I had an epiphany about the bodies: even though we knew people from all over the world had donated their bodies to be plastinated, it was impossible to discern their race, because they all looked the same without the skin! I got excited about the notion that it was a perfect metaphor to counter the divisions we humans seem to have between each other based on our religious beliefs and skin color. You know, the very divisions that typically lead to ethnic and sectarian strife, hatred, violence and bloodshed.

We are all the same under our skin.

It's the same with our minds.  No one is born a racist... a homophobe... a religious fanatic... it's all learned from someone else. If we're going to survive as a species, we must learn that it's OK to have a deeply-held faith and live your life according to the precepts of that faith. However, that faith must be counter-balanced with the knowledge that every single person alive is unique and operates under a different set of principles, some that are agreeable and some that aren't.  It doesn't make them bad or evil or wrong, just... different.

As a species, we must learn to accept those differences and revel in the idea that as different as we all might be in our philosophies, our minds and bodies are all exactly the same under the skin... there is no difference. In this country, we must adhere to our co-owned heritage of The Constitution as OUR laws... all of us, believers and non-believers, and never allow religious doctrine or dogma to take precedent over our most valued values, the ones we co-own. Together.

"It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
John Andrew Holmes, american politician, poet (1773-1843)

Of course, sure as my head is shiny and bald, there are going to be certain people who will read this essay and automatically assume that I advocate for the destruction of their religion, to suppress their faith and quash their religious freedom. Their reasoning is faulty and misguided, but they will hold fast to those concepts because they are blinded by their faith, a requirement to maintain such a naive view of our varied and complex world.

The secret to casting off the shackles of intolerance and ignorance, of religious fanaticism and sectarian hatred, is to be a human being who loves every other human being equally and without reservation.

To be Intelligent. Mature. Moral. Sane.

That is the difference.

That is The Point.

Lead image, 'Inherit The Wind' and Neil Young 'Imagine ' videos, gracias de youtube.com; Body World image, gracias de darkroom.baltimoresun.com.

Genie In A Bottle

We modern Amerikkans certainly are lucky, amirite?

We have every convenience that science (if you believe in that stuff) can offer. Spacephones that provide all the information we could ever want right there in our hands unless we drop the damned thing and the touch-screen goes CRUNCH.  We have cars that are also Wi-Fi hot spots and mobile entertainment pods, with ass-vibrators to warn us about other cars or slow-moving skin bags because we’re too busy looking at the spacephone while we’re backing up.  We have mega-screen plasma HD 3D teevees that will stream digital movies, browse the web, order a crappy pizza and display multiple basketball games so you don’t miss a single point or foul or cheerleader up-skirt.

Yep, we sure are lucky. Unless, of course, you are a woman who decides she doesn’t want to be pregnant.

Here we are, in the second decade of the 21^st century, living in arguably the wealthiest and most liberated nation on the planet, yet still having a terribly dividing discourse on whether or not women have the right to decide for themselves if they wish to have children or not.  It’s a real-world issue that is muddied-up by sanctimonious morons who champion their Bronze Age religious dogma as justification for making sure their personal beliefs are codified into laws for everyone else. First Amendment?  What First Amendment?

But that’s not primarily what this essay is all about, nope nope nope.

This essay is about big stiff dicks… raging hard-ons… massive cocks… turgid penises… throbbing dongs.  You know, that which is held most exalted in the male performance-dominated psyche, fixated on what all  men are supposed to be truly concerned about:  getting a great big dick whenever it suits him.  And we have the technology to make sure that happens, thanks to modern medicine.

Are we a nation filled with men who are obsessed with having huge, stiff boners that will stay hard as a Louisville Slugger for hours at a time?  This is a serious question, and I think the answer is “Yes”.

Consider the amount of advertising dollars being spent to market the promise of a raging hard-on for any man who wants one, who needs one, who simply is not a real man unless he has one.  It’s becoming almost comical, this intense focus on the erect male member.  We dare not refer directly to the throbbing boner, nor can we EVER actually show one (unless PORN), but obsessed with the throbbing boner we are, and it is big bidness, baby.

 I never watch traditional stick-and-ball sports on teevee because they bore me to death.  However, I watch a lot of network news and NASCAR racing and OMIGOSH it seems like every commercial break is peppered with ads for Viagra and Levitra and Cialis (what's up with the damned bathtubs?!?) and Androgel 1.62 and all the other modern meds that work wonders on flaccid dicks, making them ramrod-straight and potent.  The ads are filled with are not-so-subtle phallic imagery, from sailboat masts to redwood trees, from Doric columns to muscle cars, from surfboards to large rock formations… anything that issues the subliminal message that you too can be ‘ready’ at a moment’s notice to have sexual relations with your significant other, your medically-induced boner leading the way.
 

 

Can't get much more phallic than that, right?

And the people in the ads who are ready to bang away, they all have the same insipid grin on their faces, hee hee hee, because he’s gonna have a BIG DICK in about 5 minutes and she is just so happy about it.  I wonder… is she using birth control, or is she too old to get preggers? Think he’ll use a condom? And the men in the commercials, so handsome and craggily virile, all hetero male and no guessing.  Sure, they might look slightly middle-aged, but they are in CONTROL of their lives… er, that is, they can control their hand that pops a pill in their mouth so that in a few minutes they can wave their fresh boner around and stick that thing right where they want to.  He knows how to MAKE THINGS HAPPEN.

Now, don't get me wrong... I totally understand that our sexuality is a very complicated point of reference, whether male or female. We all want to remain vital sexual beings as long as possible, so it's no surprise that some women turn to hormone-replacement therapy to stay sexually active and satisfied as their baby-making years wind down.  For men, getting older also means lower testosterone levels and the resultant impact on popping a successful boner.  The problem with the male plumbing is that the big dick (or lack thereof) is a clear visual indicator of liftoff or crash-n-burn, and it can be devastating to the terribly fragile male ego when things go awry.

There’s a reason why male and female hormone levels drop as we age.  It’s called GETTING OLD, and it was something that adults just dealt with until boner pills and HRT became readily available. Yes, I know all about modern medicine, why we should take advantage of it to make our lives better yadda yadda yadda, but this medical dick-stiffener thing has me wondering why it’s become so pervasive, so important.  It makes perfect sense to me that as we age, our body’s natural chemical cocktail would begin to curtail hormone production because no more babies, but I also understand that we want to extend (heh heh heh) our recreational sexual lives for as long as possible because even us olds like to fuck.

There's another layer to this medically-induced boner thingie, and it has nothing to do with the phenomenon of 'erectile dysfunction'. Boner pills are doing a huge business with men of all ages who simply want to guarantee they can bang for hours, thus creating a false reality for themselves. Why (the advert-centered thinking goes) should ANY man not have an insta-boner at his beckoned call? I have known many guys, all younger than me, who made it a point to have the boner pills in-hand for their next big date, their weekend in Las Vegas, their next party run, no thinking necessary.  Just eat the pill, stand back and watch the fun begin.  What happens when they don't have that pill, that guarantee of being able to perform?

Here’s what I really wanna know:  why does it seem like there are never enough ways to market boner pills for men on the teevee, but it is verboten to do the same for meds and procedures for women who want to prevent or end an unwanted pregnancy?  Why are erectile dysfunction and ‘premature issues’ such pressing and urgent concerns that hundreds of millions of advertising dollars are spent to market boner pills, but don’t even THINK about airing ads for condoms or birth control (when was the last time you saw a birth control ad?) or family planning, all to prevent those medically-induced wild boners from knocking-up every fertile female within ejaculation range?

Why indeed.

It’s all about the big dick.  It’s why men take their countries to war (LBJ would actually whip out his dick in cabinet meetings during the Vietnam war to tout his mastery of the situation).  It’s why mouth-breathers buy huge 4WD trucks that never go off-road, or insanely fast sports cars that never see the inside of a race track. It’s why guns of every imaginable type are so popular in this here US of A.  They are all proxies for the big dick, snickering allusions to what supposedly really matters to modern males. Mine is bigger than yours, and here’s a nuke to show you just how much bigger.  Here’s a matte black assault rifle slung on my back to stand in for my tiny penis but you’ll act like I have a massive dong because I have a gun that looks like a big dick.

While the Republican-supported War On Women continues to scythe through women’s individual medical decisions, the boner pill issue hasn’t gone unnoticed by female legislators.  In state houses across the country, female representatives have tried to turn the tables on their male (and many female) counterparts who are bound and determined to eliminate access to birth control, contraception and abortion.  The gals decided to amend the anti-choice laws with their own bills, ones that would issue restrictive guidelines on ‘male enhancement’ medications, forcing men to jump through the same hoops women now must navigate in order to get their dirty slut baby-killing pills or patriotism-hating soshulist abortions.

In Virginia, as the Senate debated requiring trans-vaginal ultrasounds for all women seeking legal abortions, Senator Janet Howell proposed mandating rectal exams and cardiac stress tests for men seeking their Very Important erectile dysfunction baby-making pills. Her amendment failed by two votes, while the girlie-parts-probing sneak-a-peek bill was overwhelmingly passed and signed by the Governor.  Hypocrisy much? In Ohio, a bill introduced by state Senator Nina Turner would have compelled men to get psychological screenings before getting prescriptions for boner meds. Her bill also failed.  Shocking. 

Time after time, in one state house after another, Republicans have passed numerous anti-choice laws, all to subjugate and eliminate a woman’s right to decide what is best for her.  But when the discussion turned to passing the same type of ‘we know what's best for you’ laws aimed at men, the male legislators suffered brain aneurisms at the very notion of MEN being subjected to restrictions before they could get their boner pills.  The misogynistic lawmakers even had the audacity to claim that while boner pills were a necessary ‘medical’ treatment, contraception was nothing more than a ‘lifestyle’ choice and not a health or medical issue.  The gals lost their arguments to the testicle-draggers in every case.

Excuse me?  Pregnancy prevention is not a ‘medical’ issue?

What I don’t get is the disconnect, the cognitive dissonance that leads conservative men to demand access to and cherish the boner pills and the rampant sexing that results, but to also denigrate contraception and birth control as unnecessary lifestyle choices, as if boners and babies have no bearing on each other.  It reeks of the longstanding fact that whatever men think is important to them is sacrosanct, but whatever doesn’t directly affect them, no biggie, don’t matter, perish the thought.

Assholes.

As the bumper sticker sez:  “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”
 

I may be a dense wolverine, but even I can see the latent hypocrisy in this issue of boner pills vs. contraception.  I submit that since these two modern medicines are inextricably linked by sex and biology and human nature, for every teevee commercial hawking boner pills, there should be a matching ad for contraception or family planning. 

Yeah, I know.  It will never EVER happen, because our society is still ruled by the mostly dumb and always hypocritical Conservative Men's Club, at least for now.

So here's the crux of the biscuit: we USians are indeed wallowing in the most advantageous period of human existence to this point.  We have access to the best technology, the cleanest and healthiest foods, a lifestyle that allows us to live far longer than even our grandparents, and modern medicines that give us more control of our health than we could have ever hoped for.  It stands to reason that both men AND women should be allowed to control their own destinies when it comes to sex and procreation.  We are not dumb animals (at least not most of us), beholden to the ancient and primitive state of existence, living merely to eat, sleep, procreate and die.

If a man can legally buy and consume a pill to ensure he can get a stiff dick with which to fuck, a woman should be able to legally buy and consume a pill to make sure she doesn't get or stay pregnant.  Why is this such a difficult concept for so many of our fellow 'Murricans to grasp?

Why indeed.

"Today's so-called 'conservatives' don't even know what the word means. They think I've turned liberal because I believe a woman has a right to an abortion.  That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman, not up to the Pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right. It's not a conservative issue at all." -- Barry Goldwater

Pill image, gracias de mashangel.com; transporter image, gracias de jayski.com; Music Machine 'Talk Talk' video, muchismas gracias de youtube.com.

The Church of the Blessed Bullet

 

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them, and they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." – Barack Obama, Uppity Socialist Kenyan Usurper Not-The-Real-President (black man)

Ya, I know… another essay about guns, but this time I think perhaps I’ve learned something that so far has eluded me.

I think I finally get it.

The gun-fondling thing, that is.

Through all the media baloney, political posturing, pearl-clutching and hand-wringing. Through all the school and shopping mall and theater and home and gun show and vacation spot shootings and the bloody aftermath of each.  I finally get it.

I finally understand the bug-eyed screeching, the waving around of loaded weapons, the invocation of what it means to be a ‘true patriot’, the threats of secession and insurrection and watering the tree of liberty with Type O positive. The notion that ‘an armed society is a polite society’. The idea that if every law-abiding citizen was armed, no one would DARE try to rob or hurt or otherwise be mean to anyone else for fear of being blasted by other law-abiding citizens packing heat.

I get it now.

It’s not really about the Second Amendment to the Constitution, because anyone who actually reads those few words… ALL of them, not just the part they like… and then allows their grey matter to cogitate for a few scant moments will realize the pro-gun arguments now being flung at every wall are simply wrong, outdated remnants of an antiquated mindset from a bygone era.

It’s not about the right to bear arms, because when the Second Amendment was written, the modern firearm of choice was a flintlock musket, not a matte black dildo-with-bullets. Really, you want to own a whole bunch of guns as you imagine the Founding Fathers intended?  Fine… as long as they’re muskets.

It’s not about personal freedom, because if there’s one thing that will NEVER EVER happen, it’s that someone from the Black Helicopter Brigade will come knocking at your patriotic door to take away your guns and register you with the ‘Hates Government’ FecesBook page.

It’s not even about the inherent and implied violence that surround guns like a stinky brown fart, something that gun fans use as their unspoken-yet-always-evident threat to anyone who even hints at the notion that a household with guns is 40 times more likely to have someone living in the home shot with that very same gun.

Nope, it ain’t any of those things that propel the rabid supporters of unfettered and unregulated gun ownership.

It’s a RELIGION, this gun ownership/fetish/fondling thing. I’m serious here, so think about it… HARD.

Doesn’t matter if you are a Obama-hating libertarian or a solid church-going registered voter/citizen.  Doesn’t matter if you hoard guns to fend off The Takers who will inevitably come around when the Zombie Apocalypse finally starts, or if you just enjoy hunting or target shooting or the mechanical nature of firearms. How else can one explain the love and devotion and passion and sheer blissful ecstasy that is demonstrated by The Armed Ones when they are fondling their beloveds?

Religion is the reason, and I’m not taking about a sectarian religious belief writ in any book or scroll or sheaf, although that kind of religious belief more often than not allows followers to rationalize their use of guns to mow down infidels who do not agree with them, amirite? Nope, the religion I speak of surrounds the very notion that guns = power, guns = authority, guns = don’t tread on me, man, or you’ll be eating lead.  Governments believe it, so it’s no wonder there’s always a shooting war happening somewhere, with opposing sides blasting away with fire in their eyes and their deity-of-choice right there with them, weapon in hand, spewing out their power one bullet at a time, in rapid-fire succession.

“Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of…” well, you know the rest.  The Church of the Blessed Bullet. Holy, Holy, Hole-y. ALL MUST KNEEL AT THE ALTAR OF THE BLAZING MUZZLE! “Body of Glock… (amen)… Body of Glock… (amen)… Body of Glock… (amen).” 

Let’s take a look at this long-standing religious belief that centers around, and holds as most exalted, the Almighty Gun, PRAISE THE TRIGGER.

Think about it: even if you adhere to the basic tenets of the Bible or Qur’an or Talmud, you cannot possibly take every word, every phrase, every concept written in those ancient tomes as literal, actual facts and specific unerring guidelines to live by in our society unless you are a fundamentalist religious zealot, in which case please stop reading this now and forget you ever heard of me. 

EVERY religion now being practiced on this planet cherry-picks their teachings and follows those precepts they like, glosses over those they don’t and simply ignore the ones that harken to a much more brutal and hostile world than the one we live in today. Enlightened believers understand those religious tomes are allegorical, not literal… they are morality plays written for uneducated masses of the past to be lulled into acquiescence and servitude at the hands of the learned religious scholars who sought to control them. Don’t believe me?  Look it up.

It’s the same for The Church of the Blessed Bullet. Here, read this:

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

As anyone who doesn’t get all their information from Fox News knows, the gun-fondlers currently pointing their death sticks in our direction never EVER refer to anything in the Second Amendment before the second comma.  They prefer to quote the abridged version that doesn’t speak to ‘a well-regulated militia’.  In fact, we are now learning the version above was actually a re-write of the original text so as to allow state-sponsored militias, also known as ‘slave patrols’ in the South, to continue their activities to track down escaped slaves and keep them on their respective plantations, without interference from the federal gummint. Don’t believe me?  Look it up.

Like the followers of sectarian religions do with their ancient teachings, the gun-fondlers cherry-pick the Second Amendment to mean only what they want it to mean and disregard the part they dinna like, PRESTO CHANGE-O! It’s what religions do and have always done to try and stay relevant. So it is with The Armed Ones, who love invoking the Founding Father’s (abridged) words about gun ownership for the masses without the tiresome chore of actually understanding the context of their words. That’s what blind faith does to people.

Another hallmark of hardcore religious belief is the ability to reject any facts or information that does not confirm those firmly held beliefs, no matter how solid or educated or confirmable those facts might be. “The Earth is 6,000 years old… God created man and Earth and the universe… evolution is bunk… ancient men rode dinosaurs… no other life exists beyond our planet… man has no impact on climate change… the Constitution is based on the Bible… a fertilized egg is a human being… the United States is a Christian Nation...”  You get the drift, right?

For The Church of the Blessed Bullet, the firmly-held beliefs around gun ownership are rooted in the same type of ideas devoid of facts, context or even historical precedent.  “The Founding Fathers would approve of unfettered and uncontrolled gun ownership… the Second Amendment helps the citizenry to prevent tyranny… the government should have no say about what kind of guns a citizen may own… more guns in more hands means a safer world for everyone… anyone who lawfully owns a gun is automatically a ‘good guy’ that we should not fear… guns don’t kill people, people kill people…” Blind faith as reality, armed and dangerous, with a hair trigger.

It doesn’t stop there. Whether they will admit it openly or only within their cloistered circle, followers of sectarian religions typically make the assertion they are somehow better than either non-believers or those who choose another non-approved path to redemption (whatever the hell that means). Their belief makes them special, a cut above, chosen, imbued with the glory and promise of life everlasting with their savior when they finally take the dirt nap, as long as they believe. The Armed Ones are blatant about how special they are, whipping out their death sticks and holding them close to their hearts, comforted with the knowledge that anyone who deigns to question the bullet’s superiority can be silenced from a distance, in rapid-fire succession. The Armed Ones believe they are the only true patriots, and they will point their sacred scimitars of freedom at your face in an instant if you beg to differ… PRAISE THE TRIGGER!

About the comment made by NRA spokesmodel Wayne LaPierre that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun… is a good guy with a gun.” Two words:  CHRISTOPHER DORNER. Trained by the military to be an assassin, hired by the L.A.P.D. and given access to as many assault weapons as he wanted, he was the quintessential ‘good guy’ until he snapped and became the vilified ‘bad guy’.  He was a law-abiding and well-armed citizen soldier until his addled brain convinced him that The Church of the Blessed Bullet would give him the justification he sought to right some wrongs and… well, after a week of terror and four dead bodies and many wounded and thousands of spent rounds and a couple of lobbed tear gas canisters... BBQ! Yep, he was good, then he was bad, then he was crispy.

Pity Chris The Assassin. His world was steeped in gun love, in gun worship.  Watch the videos of him in action and see a man totally and completely enamored with the strength, the power, the authority bestowed upon him merely because he chose to kneel at the Altar of the Blazing Muzzle. It was his deity, and he lived to use that power for what most would consider ‘good things’… until they weren’t good any more. He used his blind faith in guns to mete out his own warped sense of justice, making himself the arbiter of death and the one we all fear is probably standing right next to us in line for coffee, loaded weapon hidden from view, angst gnawing at his consciousness, a worn-out spring wound far too tight.

Chris Dorner was a good guy until he was a bad guy.  Sorry Pastor Wayne, your concept sucks donkey balls.

Religion has a unique tendency to alter the worldview of ardent followers, and it doesn’t really matter what philosophy makes up those belief systems. Arab against Jew, Christian against Muslim, Tutsi against Hutu… it all runs together, it all degenerates into the same anger and bloodshed, the same zealotry and insanity. The Armed Ones are the first to say that they hold all that cards, hold the power, hold the ability to mete out patriotic justice and death one bullet at a time, in rapid-fire succession, and they wave their loaded cards at everyone else.  They smile broadly, hearts and minds devoted to the trigger and the bullet, convinced their guns mean they will be in control, convinced their guns mean they are always gonna be right, convinced the rest of us will just blithely cede power to them because BULLETS.  Holy, Holy, Hole-y.

I don’t have any answers here, and I don’t pretend to know what will come of our current national dialog about guns and death and good guys and bad guys and armed janitors and 100-round drums and school shooting drills and blood-soaked liberty trees.  I don’t understand the gun fondlers, or why they worship the idea of holding the power of instant death in their hands. I don’t understand the wide-eyed fear of ‘the other’ that spurs so many people to buy as many guns as they can, as if the Zombie Apocalypse was on the news just last night, right after the Weather Goddess predicted acid rain for all eternity.

 

As a non-believing anti-theist, my only guess is that FEAR is the driving factor in the religious fervor surrounding the death sticks, and the Uppity Black Man seems to have hit the nail on the head in his remarks during the 2008 Presidential campaign.  Fear is what gives religion its power... fear of death, fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of pain, fear of not mattering, fear of weakness, fear of loneliness, fear of 'the other', fear of being inconsequential.

 

The Church of the Blessed Bullet is based upon a foundation of fear that, at least from my perspective, has no place in a modern, civil society.

 

I do not fear death or spiritual emptiness or being involved in a multi-car pile-up on the 405 freeway. I do worry that The Artist will someday realize she could find someone much better than me, but as long as I show her love and tenderness and support and keep making tacos and cleaning bathrooms, she will accept me for my shortcomings. I do not fear pain or old age or infirmity or being extraneous in the grand universal scheme.  I worry that an adherent to The Church of the Blessed Bullet will make the decision to take me out without my prior acknowledgement or approval, Holy Holy Hole-y.

Guns = death. Guns = sorrow. Guns = hatred. Guns = violence. Guns = humanity de-evolved.

 

I do not live in fear.  I am made from the stuff of stars, and when my spring can no longer be wound, I will freely give my life's force back to Mother Earth to use as she will.  There's nothing to fear about that, and I don't need guns to make me feel safe or better about myself, about my world or my place in it.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
 

Lead image, gracias de theird.org; Tom Lehrer 'National Brotherhood Week' and Jimi Hendrix 'Hey Joe' videos, muchismas gracias de You Tube; Fuck the NRA; muchismas gracias to Alan Eggleston for introducing me, a weirdo high-school Freshman, to Tom Lehrer in 1970.

The Meaning Of Life

“There are some kind of men who are so busy worrying about the next life, they’ve never learned to live in this one.”
–Harper Lee, writer

When I start to think about my life, my existence, my waking consciousness, I get a little weak in the knees. That’s because my view of how all this came to be and what it means is based upon science and knowledge and reality, not religious dogma or superstition or spiritual voodoo. Of course, there are many people who would simply shake their heads and feel sorry for me because I haven’t ‘found God’, their be-all end-all answer to the great questions about The Meaning Of Life.

That being said, I totally understand why so many humans have made the decision to accept their religious teaching of choice, I really do. Life can be so complex, so venal, so cruel… sometimes only the gentle poetry of religious belief will salve a wounded soul, shredded and bleeding from the slings and arrows of daily life. I’ve always understood that our ancestors knew so little of the world they lived in, it was natural for them to create a spiritual context in which they could place themselves at the center, with everything else revolving around them. It’s the curse of being human, using that self-awareness to torture ourselves with.

Let me explain.

I’ve often shared my firmly-held belief that, as modern science (YAY!) has quantified, we humans and our Terran roomies live and die on an astral dust speck in the vastness of the Universe. Heck, it’s not even a dust speck… our Earth is an atom of a molecule of a dust speck that floats among the hundreds of billions of other dust specks that reside in the celestial ‘hood. Our puny little solar system, a galactic sweet spot that allows us to survive and plunder each other, is so spectacularly tiny as to be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Are there millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of other molecular dust specks like ours where ‘life’ of some sort also thrives? Of course there are, but we’ll never have the chance to find out since we’ll probably kill each other off before then.

When I think about the amazing fortune that I/you/we have living here, sitting pretty with an oxygen-rich atmosphere, I am gobsmacked to realize how incredibly lucky we are to survive at all. The odds are against us, what with gamma rays and radiation and meteor missles and all the astral nasties that are out there, waiting to bring us to a fiery end. But no… here we are, having sex and shooting each other and poisoning that very life-giving atmosphere, seemingly oblivious to the oblivion that awaits us just outside that skinny little band o’ goodness we breathe. When I think of my existence within that context, I feel giddy and powerful and infinitesimal and obscure and terribly, terribly small.

And yet… we survive, by some weird and wonderful stroke of luck. It is invigorating to ponder how it worked out in our favor, and doing so makes me feel more alive, more grateful, more human than any dogma or doctrine could possibly provide. It makes me laugh out loud when those of the religious persuasion try and place themselves and their deity in the center of that vastness, as if their religious belief can somehow overcome and negate the powerful physical universe. Humans have used that same hubris for thousands of years, and yet they still persist, ignoring science and knowledge and wisdom, all in an effort to confirm their certainty. I say more power to them… but it is a fruitless, pointless task that only we humans waste our energy on. It’s that self-awareness thing again.

Think about our atmosphere… the life-giving, radiation-reflecting, moisture-bearing oxygen ocean that we live in every day of our conscious being. Using that most-excellent scientific method, it has been determined that the thickness of our atmosphere in relation to the size of Earth is the same as the thickness of the skin that covers an apple. Yep… THAT thin. So little is really known about how and why this skinny band of life stays glued to Earth’s surface, it’s a bit humbling to realize how tenuous our lives are, bathed in that apple skin-thin oxygen ocean, breathing in, breathing out.

And that’s just the start of it. The oceans of coalesced water molecules that cover our planet are made up of the same ones that existed at the very beginning of Earth’s transition from a ball of molten rock to a beautiful garden of habitation. Same for the resulting breathable atmosphere, recycled millions of millions (billions?) of times through the gills and lungs and mitochondria of myriad species. All the water and all the oxygen we’ve ever had is what we still have, reused, recycled, restored into the stew of life on which we all thrive. We ain’t getting any more from the black vacuum, that’s for sure. All we have is all we have.



Think about that for a moment. We breathe the same air as the dinosaurs did so very long ago. We sup from the same pool of water that a Brontosaurus peed in while grazing on swamp grass, somewhere on Pangea, perhaps in a vast wetland that we now know as Kansas. This isn’t supposition or theory. We KNOW the dinos existed, we KNOW where they lived, we KNOW what they et. Only those humans who deny an ancient Earth could muster an argument against these facts, and yet… some humans do. I am more than amused at recent attempts of high-viz religious folk who want to twist scientific history to fit their faith.

And so it goes… the chemical merry-go-round that supports our lives on this planet, all with little or no help from us humans, with the notable exception of our insatiable desire to pollute and deforest and deface and deplete. Maybe, just maybe, if more people considered our incredibly finite natural resources and apple skin-thin atmosphere, they’d think differently. But no, we humans don’t like to go there, because it allows our self-awareness to consider our own mortality, and we dinna like that not one bit, NO SIR, NO MA’AM.

For me, it’s different… WAY different. See, I have come to grips with my life, my pending and unavoidable death, and my place in the whole grand Circus Maximus we call civilization. In my world, devoid of religious fables or dogmatic belief, we each have only one life to live, our conscious life. We are borne by other humans, created via the tried-and-true method of sexual procreation, and we live this conscious life until our bodies are no longer able to regenerate skin and bone and infection-fighting white blood cells. When I die, and I surely WILL die, my conscious life ends and… well, that’s the end of my conscious life. There is no ‘afterlife’ to speak of, there is no heavenly paradise awaiting me or anyone else. I be dead and gone, and nothing can or will change that fact. Others might disagree, but they simply cannot prove what their belief systems tell them, because they have ‘faith’ that tells them what to believe. How human, how self-possessed, how self-aggrandizing that is.

However, in my world, the incredible energy that pumped my heart and powered my brain and allowed the wondrous capability for me to actually live… that energy will not be wasted, oh no. That energy, just like all the water and all the air… that energy will be recycled into the amazing ephemeral grid that powers our atmosphere, allowing it to cling to this small Blue Earth with a tenacious grip. My life’s force will be absorbed and reused in some other way that matters not a whit to me, because I’ll be DEAD, because my conscious life will have ended. Mixing with the filtered radiation and sunlight and oxygen and water molecules, that invisible ocean in which we live… that’s where my energy will survive and thrive. I dinna care if it’s used to sustain a human or a tree or a rabid wolverine or (shudder!) a Republican or a patch of kelp floating off the Cali coast. I couldn’t care less how my life’s energy force will be utilized, but I know it will be, and it will not leave this Earth.

We are surrounded and infused by the energy, the life force, the primal motivation of every living thing that has ever lived and died on this Earth. The unseen ocean of atmosphere is chock-full of goody, filling our lungs and eyes and ears and hearts, a steamy and fragrant cocktail that we all sip on, every second of our conscious lives. And when we finally take the dirt nap, we unwillingly donate our energy essence to those we leave behind, those not yet born, to drink deeply from our collective pool of chemical funk. Yum!

Does any of this make you uncomfortable? Have you ever given even the smallest amount of time thinking about this type of spectral philosophy? Does your religion of choice prevent and/or discourage musing on alternate views of birth and death?

I reckon my philosophy could be construed as being based on reincarnation or Buddhist teachings, but I don’t see it that way. This Earth, this planet, this massive object hurtling through space… it is a living thing, and it feeds off of the teeming bacterium of life that covers the land, fills the oceans and spews crap into the atmosphere. We live, we die, we live, we die, we live, we die… and our Terra is the best recycler there is, at least in this tiny corner of the galaxy. It takes all we can give it, and when we have finally dessicated the surface and used up the resources and destroyed the ozone… when the surface of our world can no longer support ‘human’ life (and we haven’t blown it to bits with our self-aware bullshit), it will regenerate another type of life that can and will survive in the crappy environs we’ve left behind.

I rather enjoy the idea of that. Of course, it won't matter to me, because my energy… OUR energy... will power whatever life forms that survive and thrive in the hellscape we self-aware humans created.

Soooo… The Meaning Of Life. I could be trite and say it’s ‘to love one another’ or something insipid like that. Nope, ain’t gonna do it, I want to be honest here. For me, TMOL is simply to live every moment, every second, every day with verve and vigor and purpose and conviction, because no matter what you might think or believe, we only get one shot at a conscious existence. Anything that happens before or after this conscious life is of no consequence, because none of it… NONE OF IT… can be proven or established as fact. Doesn’t matter how grand or banal your life and times may be, the important thing is to derive all the maximum mental, emotional and philosophical joy you can.

Do you dread having to go grocery shopping? Not me… I love to walk the aisles, picking and choosing the items that will make me a happy wolverine come mealtime. Talking with strangers who need help figuring out how to tell if a cantaloupe is ripe. Shagging a cart that some miscreant left in the middle of a handicapped parking space. Checking out the Hot Wheels display, looking for that vintage Corvette Stingray to add to my collection. It is ALL GOOD.

Hate cleaning the bathroom? OMFG… you need to read my last essay titled ‘You’re Soaking In It’ to know how much enjoyment can be had with a sponge and some Comet.

Unhappy with how your life has turned out, even though you've tried to fix it? THEN CHANGE IT. Holy crap, our time is so short on this planet. Change your job, find a new mate, tell your kids to suck off someone else's money teat for a change, move somehwere else... just DO IT. Do what you need to do to make yourself happy, even if it hurts, even if it is hard, even if it costs you everything you own.

"So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning." -- from Mitch Albom’s ‘Tuesdays with Morrie'.

You get the picture.

Like the song says, “Love this life… don’t wait until the next one comes.” Breathe in deeply, walk in the rain, grab your honey’s butt just because you can, do a good deed daily. Make every second count, even the ones spent without reason or direction. Wake up in the morning and be glad a meteor didn’t take us all out overnight, that the atmosphere is still so clingy, that the coffee you make doesn’t taste like Stegosaurus pee (or does it?). Our waking and conscious lives are chock-full of amazing and wonderful things to eat/drink/taste/touch/feel/hear/smell… don’t waste a second of it being a typical self-aware humanoid. Be like the birds overhead, the descendants of those peeing dinosaurs, flying and spinning and chirping and jumping and living in the moment, living the life they live, without fear of the unknown. Because in the end, it is all unknown, all undeciphered, all uncontrollable. We are just Bozos on this celestial bus, squeaking each other’s noses as hard as we can.

"Life's journey is not to arrive safely at the grave in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting ‘Holy Shit... What a ride!" – Mavis Leyrer



TMOL lead image Gracias de sapientology.com; Quicksilver Messenger Service 'Fresh Air' and Crowded House 'Love This Life' videos, Muchismas Gracias de YouTube.

My (never sent) Response To A Religious Ben Stein Viral E-mail Forwarded To Me By My Dad.

Hi Dad… a word of warning: this is a rant, so please understand that when you send me religious e-mails, you’ll know in advance how I feel about the subject. I don’t mean for you to stop sending them to me, but you should be aware of my opinions. If you choose not to read and understand my point of view, well, that is your right, but please don’t hate me for having a perspective that differs from yours. That said…

Sorry, but I think Ben Stein is full of crap. This country is not atheist, no one wants it to be and he is totally wrong for thinking or saying any such thing. In this country we have freedom OF religion, which also means freedom FROM religion, if we so choose. Our nation was founded as the result of the Church of England forcing their doctrine upon people who chose not to bend to their teachings and decided to leave rather than have someone else’s beliefs foisted upon them. Mr. Stein better read up on his history, as well as The Constitution of the United States of America. I carry a copy of it with me every day.

What Ben Stein is saying MAY relate ONLY to those who choose to agree with his particular brand of religious philosophy… what about Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Rastas, Rosicrucians and all the other faiths that don’t follow the teachings of Christianity? What about the millions and millions (like me) who choose NOT to believe at all? And that baloney about Christians getting pushed around is ludicrous… this country is filled with Christians, and they are getting radicalized by a minority of fundamentalists who want to turn this country into a theocracy.

Pat Robertson blamed 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina on godless people and homosexuals infesting the US… Pastor Wiley Drake invokes imprecatory prayer asking God for President Obama to die… domestic terrorist Scott Roeder murdered Dr. Tiller in his CHURCH because he hated the doctor’s practice of performing a legal medical procedure for women in need… dry-drunk and born-again evangelical George Bush lauded the war in Iraq as a holy mission to destroy ‘radical Islamists’… please tell me how these religious people are doing anything but sowing hatred and evil on those who choose not to follow their brand of ideology? Tell me how these Christian warriors are any different than the Taliban in Pakistan or the ones that brought down the World Trade Center.

The American church pays no Federal taxes and is not answerable to the government, yet they are working hard politically to foment a persecution complex on their followers and force those of us who choose not to have their brand of faith to bow down or suffer the consequences. Over the last decade in particular, Christians were told by our previous administration to go ahead, flex your muscles, no one will deter you from your holy task to turn this country into a God-fearing Christian nation. To me, that is the height of hypocrisy from a cabal of people who tortured and killed for a phony cause.

Look around the world and see how many countries are afire because their government and religion have melded into one. I have no desire to live in a country where a religious doctrine determines what I can say, think, do or how to live, but don’t kid yourself – that is EXACTLY what evangelical Christians are all about, and they will freely admit it. Will I leave if their efforts gain traction? HELL NO… I will fight for my right to be free of religious tyranny with the same patriotic fervor that Washington’s armies did against the British during the birth of our nation. I claim my right to be a non-believer and reject any effort to force me to accept religious doctrine, laws or teachings.

I know… this all probably upsets you greatly, but you must know that my goal is not to denigrate your faith – only to inform you that your faith is not my faith, and that we hold different philosophical beliefs about the world. I choose not to follow a dogma that is based upon a book written 1600 years ago about a man that the writers heard about, did not know and never met. And that book has been re-written and edited and redacted and changed and interpreted and re-interpreted and revised, all in an effort to try and keep it relevant. And it is, for those who choose to believe it.

The Bible was written by those in power at the time who sought to establish their authority and control over an ancient uneducated populace who feared the unknown. I believe there are many positive allegories and morals that can be gleaned from The Bible, but taking those written words as fact and manipulating them into a blueprint for living is an abdication of free will.

When people like Ben Stein, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Randall Terry, James Dobson, Ralph Reed and other self-professed Christians try to blame the world’s problems on a lack of God-fearing faith, they are speaking with a narrow-minded perspective that they alone see the way things are. How arrogant! Their proclamations mean nothing to me, have no validity in my life and show them for the charlatans they are. However, when they seek to access the levers of political power to enforce their code of behavior on others who hold a different view, then we are going to have a throwdown.

OK… if you made it all the way to this point, I am both impressed and appreciative of your patience. Normally, I don’t feel the need to respond to your religious e-mails… I just chalk it up to your faith and belief, which is your right and choice. In this case, when someone like Ben Stein says such patently outrageous things and those statements start whipping around the blogosphere and on television, that’s a different kettle of fish, so to speak.

Ben Stein is dead wrong. Our world is in turmoil because humans are fallible creatures who struggle to survive and thrive, and sometimes humans try and control other humans, much to their disaster. Our species is like a fungus, a virulent bacteria that crawls across the face of Mother Earth, trying to force our will upon nature. Ultimately, we will either succeed or fail depending on our ability to love one another and accept that our fates are tied to how well we protect and defend our small Blue planet from ourselves. Our differences are literally only skin-deep, and no matter how high we build, how much cement we pour, how strong our weapons, underneath it all is still dark, sweet soil and clear water. I hope we don’t destroy it before we decide to save it.

You and I are at once different and scarily the same. I reckon that’s the way it will always be with Father and Son… how cool is that?