“I Want to See What Happens Next”

August 30, 2022

A friend died two weeks ago, Keith Beseke was, I believe, 75. Usually, when someone is said to have “fought” cancer, I try to nod politely. It is hard to think of a way for a patient to actually actively participate in the fight against his own cancer. But Keith did fight his cancer with every ounce of his being. He stayed incredibly active for almost all of the 3 years he fought that battle. The general life expectancy estimate for "stage 4 pancreatic cancer patients [is] about three to five months, depending on the condition of the patient." When Keith was diagnosed, in July of 2019, he was in pretty amazing condition, a long distance runner, an avid bicyclist, and an active outdoorsman (hunting and fishing). Keith jumped through every hoop to stay alive. For most of the past 3 years, his attitude was considerably better than mine. He often told me he wanted to live as long as possible because “I want to see what happens next.” He was actually excited about the future. He did manage to outlive Donny Trump’s reign of corruption, incompetence, stupidity, and banality, which I’m sure was satisfying. Many of his friends and relatives were mindless Trump cult followers, which seriously confused and disappointed him. He and his wife, Sue, were strong supporters of Joe Biden in 2020 when I was certain Trump’s fascist handlers would steamroll Biden if Joe made it past the primaries. I was wrong, they were right and I’m glad.

As Sue wrote the morning she told friends Keith had died, “Pancreatic cancer won.” But cancer didn’t win easily and it was an unexpectedly (except to Keith and Sue) long fight.

I am very different from Keith. He was, mostly, an optimist; a grouchy optimist but he had some kind of powerful faith in the possibility of good outcomes. He spent almost all of his life in Minnesota and loved the state and the area as only an outdoorsman can. He was a project engineer for the Department of the Interior and most of his working life was spent creating bird habitat on the upper Mississippi River. I suspect you have to be an optimist to imagine positive outcome for a river so abused as the Mississippi has been for as long as white people have been pissing and shitting in the river. While those hard-won outposts of waterfowl rest and rehab are under constant threat and blatant damage from industry, farming, and the small and large towns that drain their sewers into the river, the valuable remnants of Keith’s projects still provide birds, fish, and other wildlife a place to stay on their seasonal trips north and south. I learned a lot from his example, although I suspect my basic nature is fixed to a negative pole.

When we first met, I think in early 2016 or late 2015, Keith was the only adult student at the local music “school.” All of the other students were 16-and-under, many of them way under. Keith told me when he retired, at 55 from the Interior Department, he was either going to go back to school and study mathematics or learn to play lead guitar. Keith was never much of a lead guitarist, which always made me wonder how well he’d have done as a math student. He had a strong, rich voice and wrote interesting songs and was always generous and fun to play with at jam sessions and open mics. In the last couple of years, he and Sue had a fair number of jam sessions at their beautiful home in Welch and I got to meet some wonderful people there.

Unlike Keith, I’m not excited to see what comes next. I fully expect the US and too much of the rest of the world fall into the mindless fascist easy chair of compliance and obedience. I don’t feel any need or desire to see any of that. Keith, however, would have tried to look through the smoke and mirrors and bullshit to see what the people who are always trying to do the right thing for the right reasons are doing now. He would have found them, pointed them out to me, and reminded me that things that are broken can be fixed.

The Bottom of the Water Slide

My sister, a devout traditional Christian, often asks me how I can face death believing it is the end of the road. The question baffles me. My father, for instance, who was also a fairly traditional Christian was terrified of death; especially at the end. So, obviously, faith isn’t enough of a comfort for some. Lack of faith in an afterlife, so far, has been incredibly comforting for me.

The image of life that comes to mind is the trip up and down a really large waterslide. The early stages of life, for many of us, are a long slog up a bunch of stairs to “the top,” which might not be much altitude in the end but the climb is pretty much the same for most of us. 

Growing up, education, career, family, friends, economic ups and downs, and the rest of life are all part of that climb up to the top. Mostly, it’s a slog for everyone but the very rich or very lucky. We all end up at the top, though. 

You could look at retirement being the time you spend on the platform waiting for your turn down the slide. Or maybe the years after the kids have (hopefully) moved away and into their own lives and you get to enjoy the remaining calm, productive years of your life. Some people get a couple of decades on the platform, some a few minutes, some get tossed headfirst from the top of the ladder to the slide. For many of us, the platform is particularly uncomfortable because of our fear of heights, discomfort from the long climb, 

The ride down the slide represents the moments at the end of life; often a few seconds to a minute or two as we slip from life to death. There is some research that indicates that there might be intense pain, fear, and/or hallucinations in those moments and that portions of the brain may live for as long as 10 minutes after “death.” Regardless of how much brain activity there is or how long it lasts, it will always be a tiny fraction of the lifetime we’ve lived and, as such, it’s a fast slide down into death and oblivion. 

And then the ride is over.

I do not see any of that as either scary or undesirable. Honestly, I feel like I’ve experienced more of life than I needed to see; especially life with other humans. The level of stupid that appears to be state-of-the-species is mostly depressing. This country has long worshipped corruption, greed, injustice, and outright evil and I’ve seen enough of that. The fact that there is no afterlife, no more requirement to put up with idiots and criminals, is damn comforting. In fact, it might be the best thing about being old and having more years behind than in front of me. If I had the slightest bit of doubt that there might be more of this bullshit after death, I would be far more afraid of death than I am in knowing that religion and superstition are man-made bits of bullshit designed more to control the masses than to comfort them.

Parents or Not Parents?

June 3, 2014

It’s summer 2014 and I’m getting Facebook, Twitter, and email bombed with “we’re having a kid” notices from ex-students and friends. I guess I’m supposed to be happy for them, but if that’s what they expect they don’t know me very well. Do they?

I’d offer a general rule of thumb (with the original definition of that rule intact) for prospective parents: If you would have hated to be your own parent (think during ages 13-25) you will be a lousy parent and will raise a terrible kid. Sure, there are a tiny number of exceptions to that rule, but they mostly prove the rule.

Remember, even alligators care for their babies as does about every species on the planet, but humans need care, feeding, nurturing, patience, investment (emotional and financial), training, and protection well into young adulthood. Babies are the easy part and if you have never cared for a baby I recommend you put in some time doing that before you consider reproducing. Of course most people aren’t considering reproducing at the time of conception, anyway. They are just fucking. After they discover what fucking leads to, they pretend they wanted to be a parent all along because they’re too lazy and cowardly to hunt down an abortion clinic. Not long after that, a kid is born and lousy parenting ensues.

Still, it’s all easy and somewhat fun and games until the little brat turns into a teenager. Then it all goes downhill fast. The kid turns into a fair reproduction of the parent at that age. The “parent” loses patience with the mirror reflection of him/herself and the kid continues the cycle with another kid; or ten.

And don’t forget, if you reproduce you have to pretend to care about your kid’s future. You can fake-pretend by joining a religious cult (all religions are cults) that absolves you of responsibility for the environmental, economic, and social disasters you’ve left for your kid to suffer and clean up, but that’s just avoidance. Every generation in front of us did the same damn thing and that’s why much of the ocean’s surface and bottom are covered in plastic and human waste. It’s why we stumble from one war to the next, each one driving society closer to total war and global annihilation. It’s why our species and culture gets dumber and dumber, because smart people do not reproduce (or do in small numbers; ie. less than 2).

Of course, you could actually care about the next generations’ futures and try to do something right for your children and your children’s children. But if that’s the kind of person you are you probably didn’t meet the criteria I started out with in the beginning of this essay.

What Part of Death is Complicated?

When I was teaching, every semester a few hours to a week or more after the course’s final exam, a few "students" would call or email me messages with a variety of excuses asking when they could "make up " their missed or failed exam. Since the final often accounted for 30-45% of the total grade, sleeping in that day was expensive. For more than half of my life, I’ve been convinced that “a lack of preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.” From the beginning of my teaching career, my syllabus clearly stated that final exams would only be administered on the day the exam was scheduled; a date and time clearly identified the day class began. With that as a background, my only response to those messages was, "What part of 'final' do you not understand?"

A concept that we regularly tried to reinforce in our classes was that there are “get fired moments” that can be career-stoppers. In a highly competitive business, like recording music, there is always someone right outside the door waiting to take your job. It really is a business where “there is no try, only do.”

Lately, some of my religious friends and relatives have been prying at my atheism asking, "What do you think happens after death?"

There could be a lot to unpack in that question, but for someone who does not believe in magic of any form the question has a pretty straight-forward answer. Remembering the final exam moments, this question does feel like déjà vu. It is all I can do not to rudely respond with, "What part of death do you not understand?" Because that is the rational answer, obviously. Death is the ultimate final exam.

One response to my hopefully scientific take on life and death was “it’s easier for me to believe in a divine creator than the idea that everything came from a Big Bang that was created from nothing.” Most Americans have a terrible grasp on mathematics and science, so it is pretty easy to understand how the most sophisticated and complicated field in science, astrophysics, is incomprehensible. However, many of the people who cling to religion for their information about how the world works, have almost no clue about even the most basic and well-accepted proven science. While they claim they don’t believe in the science behind astrophysics, they offer no excuses for not understanding most of the technology that is all around them: computers, television and radio, internal combustion, the internet, medicine and biology, and practically any complicated thing that has been invented or discovered in the last 100 years. If it were up to them or their religion, none of those things would exist today or tomorrow. It’s a wonder, to me, why anyone cares about the philosophy, religions, or the opinions of people who have provided so little contribution to progress of any sort.

The disinterest they express in understanding how even life works should be a disqualifying admission in any serious conversation about the complexities of the universe. Why, if you know so little about how life works, would you assume expertise on something as poorly-understood as death? For the most part, science knows a lot about life on earth and even a good bit about how life might exist on other planets with totally different atmospheres. Science knows more than most of us would like to know about the moments after a heart stops beating, too. However, science doesn’t make any claims about life-after-death; that remains in the territory of the con artists often known as “ministers,” “priests,” and the rest of the hucksters selling real estate in another dimension.

In a talk broadcast on MPR, Thomas Friedman recently said, “Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology, and physics. She will do whatever chemistry, biology, and physics tells her to do. She always bats last and she always bats 1.000. You do not mess with Mother Nature.” (I really recommend that you listen to Friedman’s talk on this link) and nothing more or less. Nothing about spirituality has anything to do with “chemistry, biology, and physics.” Religion and the afterlife are just weird ideas made up by sheepherders and primitive people who didn’t have “chemistry, biology, and physics” to use as tools to understand the world we live in. Of course, many American citizens are also without those tools; along with mathematics, economics, philosophy, psychology, computer science, engineering, and every other aspect of advanced, modern human knowledge. Because they are clinging to ancient religions, most of which they have barely studied, and their parents and offspring are handicapped by their devotion to dead religions and imaginary gods.

An optimistic person would imagine that the stresses from global warming, a radically changing world economics, economic and social inequality, and international competition would force a “first world country” like the USA to pull itself together and get into the game before it is too late. I have spent too much time in rural America. The thing to learn from being around marginally educated, timid conservative small town citizens and politicians, and racially isolated and deluded white nationalists is that change terrifies them and they imagine they have some control over a naturally occurring, rapidly accelerating, and unstoppable change in every aspect of human life. They hope to pray away the change. If that doesn’t work, they plan on living forever in a magical afterlife where all of the problems are solved by a god.

I’m 70. I don’t expect to see any sort of useful solutions in my lifetime. On some levels, I don’t care. I wish for solutions that will allow my kids and grandkids to live long and good lives, but I won’t be here to know how that works out. Since, as far as I’m concerned, life everywhere will end when I die it’s hard to me to get really concerned about what happens after I’m dead. Believe it or not, I’m not afraid of death at all. I expect it’s possible that the few seconds after my heart stops my brain will go into overdrive and it might even be painful, terrifying, and sad. But 2-20 seconds late, it will all be over and I’ll be dead. That will be the first final exam in my life that I will have failed.

The Face of Racism

Pick any one of these guys, they all appear to be the same privileged, spoiled, hate filled racist assholes. Have you wondered who they are, where did they come from, and how they ended up being such despicable semi-human beings? Some of these faces have become well-known, at least in their hometowns, thanks to the internet. The rest of us are left wondering if these people are our neighbors and that is the question we should be asking. Charlottesville, Virginia, to many of us, is the kind of place where we’d expect racism, fascism, and ignorance. It’s the South, isn’t it? To people who know the place, it’s more subtle than that.

For example, the Trump-spawn asshole front-and-center of this now-famous picture is a University of Nevada scumbag named Peter Cvjetanovic, who is now whining “I’m not a racist,” in spite of overwhelming evidence. Even when this guy speaks in self-defense and with some preparation time, he comes off no differently than his now-famous picture, “As a white nationalist, I care for all people. We all deserve a future for our children and for our culture. White nationalists aren’t all hateful; we just want to preserve what we have.” I assume he means his white privilege is the “what we have” he wants to preserve. Equally unsurprising, the University of Nevada is sticking by their Nazi student and employee. University of Nevada, Reno President Marc Johnson said, “There have been numerous inquiries about Peter Cvjetanovic, a student at our University who participated in the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. Based on discussion and investigation with law enforcement, our attorneys and our Office of Student Conduct, there is no constitutional or legal reason to expel him from our University or to terminate his employment.” Moral values are, clearly, not part of the student code of conduct in Nevada, since that would typically give the university plenty of leeway for firing a neo-Nazi if they cared about that sort of thing.

A little more surprising is the story of Cole White, who lost his job at Top Dog, a Berkeley, California “libertarian hot dog restaurant.” Top Dog, a downtown Berkeley restaurant, posted a sign on its door saying, “Effective Saturday 12th August, Cole White no longer works at Top Dog. The actions of those in Charlottesville are not supported by Top Dog. We believe in individual freedom and voluntary association for everyone.” Supposedly, White “voluntarily resigned” his weenie job with his weenie employer who went the extra mile to let the world know they did not fire their neo-Nazi employee. The last thing libertarians want is for anyone to think they have ethics. Just ask Paul Ryan how Ayn Rand would feel about that. I have to wonder what kind of idiot would buy a hot dog from someone who doesn’t believe the state has the right to ensure the safety of food?

Mostly, the faces from Charlottesville are unsurprising. They are the the bad guy in every Karate Kid movie. They are the spoiled, upper-middle class kids whose parents foot every bill and enable every moment of their miserable, useless lives. Unfortunately, I think calling out every neo-Nazi, every homicidal militia Klan’er, every future abusive middle-manager or cop in that crowd is going to be a thankless task. The country has been breeding for this class of creep for 250 years.

By the way, both of you know you are going to be bald by 40, right? Enjoy that pre-skinhead look while you can.

When Nothing Means Anything

It struck me, last night about 3AM, that the Age of Trump has proved something many of us hoped wasn’t true: that nothing means anything. Religion, decency, justice, honesty, fairness, truth, reason, and many of the institutions and people who represent those institutions have all been shown to be hollow and insignificant, thanks to the election and support of Donald Trump. There are all kinds of ways to take this sea change: ranging from fighting to restore America’s values to assuming that is a lost cause and going full nihilist. At 70, the fight is pretty much out of me, but I have to hope younger, better people decide there is some point in restoring moral values to our government and country. Otherwise, the American experiment is finished and it was a failure. Best case, the country collapses into disarray and becomes irrelevant. Worst case, we destroy life on this planet in an effort to prove one of the many insane religious scenarios that pollute our national discourse.

Trump’s assault on decency began the moment he entered public life, back in the 70’s. The Republican campaign against all of the values that Trump’s existence opposes has been going on a lot longer than my 70 years. Since the moment Teddy Roosevelt left office, Republicans have been scraping the bottom of the ruling class barrel for candidates and talking heads to lead their class war against working people and the poor. Starting with Taft and accelerating that movement with Reagan, Republicans have lowered the bar for what passes as “leadership” to the point where we now suffer Donald Trump. Personally, I don’t see much improvement in our future, but I tend to see the glass as half or completely full of sewage.

Religion, in America, has taken a radical turn to the right, which is not only traditional for religion (redundant, I know) but reason to doubt the sanity of anyone who still calls themselves a “Christian.” The difference between Judaism, Islam, and Christianity is the carpenter-turn-minister character: Jesus. Without Jesus, fundamental Christians are just Jews who hate Jews; unless the Jews are at war with the Muslims. Without Jesus, there is no charity, no humility, no generosity, and plenty of tolerance for hate, war, greed, and prejudice. Without the moderating words attributed to Jesus, Christians are unbounded by any rules other than to pretend to believe in their gods. A rational look at the lifestyles of the evangelicals and televangelists would convince any sentient person that the purpose of religion is to make a very small number of hyper-corrupt people very, very rich. Those people, not surprisingly, are totally behind Donald Trump and his obscene administration. The only interest they have in government is protecting their tax-exemption and Donald has no intention of betraying their trust; unless they actually begin to act like Christians. Not likely, though. Is it?

The country’s frayed and decaying justice system is taking a beating these days, too. Trump is praising cops who violate laws and act like the Gestapo he desperately needs to “reform” this country into the fascist model he imagines will make him fearless leader. Trump and the Republican congress are appointing judges who will set back civil rights, election integrity, and Sessions is reversing every half-progressive order Obama’s Justice Department issued.

There should be some kind of freedom in knowing that nothing matters. It doesn’t feel free, though. It feels lawless, dangerous, and unpredictable.

Trump’s Election Upside

Buying local is expensive and a hassle. Most conservatives don’t bother with spending their welfare and social security money on local produce or on local products or services. Without progressives, liberals, and moderates there wouldn’t be any local businesses outside of second hand stores.

In 2016, 1,322,891 Minnesotans voted for Trump and 55% of Goodhue County residents voted for everything Minnesota Nice was supposed to oppose. There were worse places in the state, some voting as high as 74% for Trump (Morrison County, where 32,000 barely-educated, 97%-white, timid Fox News-misinformed souls live in rural isolation) and many of the non-urban counties citizens voted Trump in 60% or greater numbers. Morrison County is typical of those outstate Minnesota ungrateful wretches, where unemployment fell from 12% in 2009 to about 4% in 2016. “Thanks, Obama,” said no one while they voted for a guy who relished their displacement and economic destruction in 2009.

So, when I go to buy groceries, household products, building materials, appliances, furniture, services, or anything locally, I have to think, “I have a 60%-or-better chance of subsidizing a Trump nutjob with my money.” Obviously, if I buy from Target or Wal-Mart there is a 100% chance that I’m handing my money to a corporate fascist but I’m spending considerably less money (For example, $0.89 for eggs vs. $4+ for locally grown eggs). The premium I am paying might be for the expectation that I’m buying chemical-free produce, but I wouldn’t trust a Trump supporter to be half-honest as an organic food supplier. I wouldn’t trust a Trump supporter not to be a slave owner, for that matter.

This puts local suppliers in a tough position. They advertise they are not Republicans or Trumpeters and alienate 60% of their neighbors but self-identify with 90% of their customers? They don’t advertise their political positions and people like me assume they are part of the 60% and we pass on gambling that they might be sentient humans? Not my problem. My job is to avoid the Trumpeters as much as possible and that means I either go with known quantities or avoid local producers because they are expensive.

#129 Imagine This (2005)

All Rights Reserved © 2005 Thomas W. Day

This strange . . .  parable(?) was sent to me several months ago by a Kansas family member.  I hung on to it for weeks, considering sending a "reply to all" as a correction to the many logical flaws in this irrational rant, but decided that the Rat is a better place to "publish" my response.  The "letter" is highlighted by lines beginning with ">" and my response is found in the bits without that weird punctuation.

• Imagine this happening to you...
• One Sunday morning during service, a 2,000 member congregation was
• surprised to see two men enter, both covered from head to toe in black
• and carrying submachine guns.  One of the men proclaimed,
• "Anyone willing to take a bullet for Christ remain where you are."
• Immediately, the choir fled...
• the deacons fled...
• and most of the congregation fled....
• out of the 2,000 there only remained around 20.
• The man who had spoken took off his hood...
• He then looked at the preacher and said "Okay Pastor, I got rid of all
• the hypocrites... Now you may begin your service. Have a nice
• day!"
• And the two men turned and walked out.

This foolishness was described as heavy" by the sender.  Heavy was once a hip term that described an idea requiring considerable contemplation for understanding.  This message is considerably below the hip standard.  Usually, my email filters catch this crap and auto-deletes it.  When that fails, I figure it out pretty quickly and delete it, manually.  That day, it just tripped a trigger and I couldn't let it pass without comment.  This whacked-out author asks us to believe in the judgment of the 20 dimwitted, terrified, or petrified folks who were convinced that two jerks with machine guns would represent God.  Why would anyone expect holy inspiration from any one who OWNS an automatic weapon, let alone hauls one to church?  Is there something that conveys sanctity when gun-toting clowns add black masks to their costume?  If that's true, I wonder why we all aren't bowing and scraping when Islamic women parade by in their black tent suits?

• Funny how simple it is for people to trash God ...
• and then wonder why the world is in the condition it is today....

Funny how a powerful majority religion can be so paranoid about its status in a country that it clearly rules with fear and repression.  Even non-believers are afraid to express disagreement in the current climate.  Like Islamic fundamentalists in Iran or Saudi Arabia, neo-con Christians continue to push their agenda on everyone who thinks like or unlike them.  When anyone questions their ethics, honesty, fantasies, or superstitions, they cry "persecution!" and act like "freedom from religion" is the worst crime Jefferson perpetrated against humanity. 

Even worse than owning slaves. A psychologist might diagnose this as either paranoia or megalomania.  From my perspective, it seems more like the kind of insecurity that has driven religious despots since the beginning of human communities.  Vicious historic actions like witch hunts, the Inquisition, England's purge of all churches other than the Church of England (not long before the American Revolution attempted to separate politics from such oppression), and Hitler's purge of Jews and other non-white, non-Christian citizens in 1945 are examples of this insecurity in action. I'm unconvinced that a significant number of people in any culture "trash God."  However, it's obvious that all people do not believe in the same gods.  Or the same ideals from a shared God.  If that's trashing God, I guess my last paragraph explains this statement.  If the writer hopes to create a unified human mind, she's living a drug-addled superstitious fantasy.

• Funny how we believe what the newspapers say...but question what the Bible says...

Again, it's not like Christianity is a consistent source of information.  There are almost as many bibles as there are countries.  Counting the versions of the bibles from the variations of religions, there might be as many bibles as there are newspapers.  From about 800AD we've been blessed with the Wyclif Bible, Luther's German New Testament,  William Tyndale, Coverdale's, Matthew's, Taverner's, The Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, the Bishops' Bible, Douay-Rheims, King James, William Whiston's Primitive New Testament, John Wesley's New Testament, Griesbach's 2nd Greek New Testament, Griesbach's last Greek New Testament, the Apocryphal New Testament, Young's Literal Translation of the Bible, Tischendorf's 4th Greek New Testament, Tregelles' Greek New Testament, Alford's New Testament for English Readers, Rotherham's English translation of Tregelles' text, Eberhard Nestle's Greek New Testament, the American Standard Version, the First edition of Weymouth's New Testament, and the Twentieth Century New Testament which takes us to the beginning of the last century, when biblical editions really exploded.  From then on, a version of the Bible appeared practically every two years for the next 100 years.  This site lists 100+ versions of the Bible (http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Scriptures/), pick one that makes you happy. 

 The history of this often-edited book is anything but clear and unambiguous.  Which makes it easy to pick and choose what you want from the version that most suits the crime you want to commit.  Depending on the section and the edition it's not difficult to find arguments for "loving your neighbor" or "killing the heretics."  The argument you choose probably says more about you than it says about your faith.  Aside from Christianity, we have the Book of Mormon, the Koran, the Torah, the sacred documents of 60-some Indian (not Native Americans, India Indians, you dolt) religions, the Buddhist Bible, and only the gods know how many other religious documents exist. 

There is no shortage of gods to celebrate and everyone seems to think the believers of other gods are heretics.  Personally, I don't have time to sort out who's right.  Living in the here and now is tough enough without inventing and justifying the "next life."  People of faith have used the Bible and other famous religious books to justify slavery, genocide, infanticide, homicide and assassinations, war, theft, greed, selfishness, and every other human fault.  How, exactly, do you know when a person is acting in good faith or in self-interest? 

 Obviously, Christians are not particularly good at making that determination, since they picked a marginally recovered drunk and drug addict who swindled his home city for his share of the $7.5 million dollar debt for a publicly financed baseball stadium.  Choosing a man who executed 250+ people, while claiming to be "pro-life" is equally inconsistent.  Bush's list of un-Christian acts would go on for pages and pages, but he's just one piece of evidence that life is, apparently, more complex than defining the hereafter.  As for the claim that "we believe what the newspapers say," most people rarely believe much that newspapers say.  The press has a credibility rating that is considerably beneath used car salespeople.  Maybe that's because so much of the press is dominated and owned by the same folks who want us all to bow to the same religion?  Rupert Murdoch and Sun Myung Moon own right wing newspapers that are regularly quoted as "unbiased Christian sources."  Right.  If the Klan is unbiased, so are those sources.

• Funny how everyone wants to go to heaven...
• provided they do not have to believe, think, say, or do anything the Bible says.

That word "everyone" is overused by almost everyone.  Some of us, hundreds of millions of Buddhists for example, would be satisfied with not having to return to life.  Believe it or not, everyone has a different concept of what heaven might be.  The male Islamic heaven, with its 27 virgin slaves, sounds hellish to many women, for example.  Everyone would not be interested in the heaven imagined by everyone else.  I, for example, would rather go almost anywhere than be where a chorus of shrieking Midwestern protestants are howling their out-of-key, rhythm-less "praise."  Heaven is not a universal concept and it's absolutely not a universal vision. 

 Having read a good bit of the Christian Bible, I think it's impossible to not "do anything the Bible says."  The Bible can give justification to just about any act, if you look for a specific justification.  Murder ("an eye for an eye"), genocide, incest, it's all there.  The Old Testament, in particular, is specially ruthless and wide open for interpretation.

• Funny how someone can say "I believe in God"...
• but still follow Satan (who, by the way, also "believes" in God).

Having watched the results of the last Presidential election, I am amazed at how true that is.  How Pro-Life Christians can vote for a man who executed more than 250 people and, by his own words, has a clear conscious, is amazing.  But not funny, it's scary.

• Funny how you can send a thousand 'jokes' through e-mail and they
• spread like wildfire... but when you start sending messages regarding
• the Lord, you think twice about sharing. 

Apparently not.  I have received no shortage of this kind of message.  To trap and dispose of internet preachers, cheap Viagra sources, and body organ enlargement systems, I have constructed a half-dozen email filters and, still, most of the junk slithers its way into my mailbox.  I only wish this last erroneous statement were true.  Jokes and porno are much easier to filter than superstitious claptrap.

• Funny how the lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene pass freely through
• cyberspace... but the public discussion of Jesus is suppressed in the
• school and work place.

If by "suppressed" the author means that fellow workers, especially management, are not allowed to forcibly harangue other employees about their "faith," I suppose this is true.  If she means that public schools, paid for by all of our taxes, are not allowed to promote a national religion? Again she's right.  But you're living in a fantasy world if you believe that "public discussion of Jesus" does not happen in schools or at work.  It's practically impossible to escape from cubicle evangelists pushing their special perversion of religion.  But, I guess, if they can't force it on us by power of law and gun, religion is being repressed.  So much for Christians being fed to the lions: Christians are the lions.

• Funny, isn't it? Funny how someone can be so fired up for Christ on
• Sunday... but be an invisible Christian the rest of the week.

Again, look to the White House for a wonderful example of Sunday Christians.  Drop bombs Monday thru Saturday, worship the Lord (and drop bombs) on Sunday.  Steal from the needy, the uneducated, the disabled, and the dying Monday thru Saturday,  and ask forgiveness on Sunday.  Why would ordinary citizens behave differently if the folks at the top get away with murder and still, apparently, float into Heaven?

• Are you laughing?
• Funny how when you go to forward this message...
• You will not send it to many on your address list because you're not
• sure what they believe...

Less funny, you who do send it on won't care what others believe.  They believe that their particular take on their specific offshoot of Catholicism should be universal and all other versions of "the truth" should be suppressed.  They don't worry about offending people with different views because they believe the law should pick our position and force it on us.  Possibly, like Rev. Jimmy Swaggert, they believe god is so dumb and unobservant that He wouldn't even notice their murdering another human, as long as he lied, convincingly, to Him.  With that kind of arrogance, no wonder shipping religious propaganda to everyone they know seems inconsequential.  They might even imagine that they are doing the rest of us a favor.  

• or what they will think of you for sending it to them. *Funny how I
• can be more worried about what other people think of me...... than what God thinks of me.

Strange use of repetitive periods, wonder if there is some underlying Satanic meaning to six periods separating a statement?  This six period thing occurred several times in this message.  Care to interpret? Inspirational messages are universal and they are always welcome.  Religious propaganda is less welcome, regardless of the source or the motivation.  Considering the feelings of friends and relatives is not immoral or heresy.  Forwarding a poorly written, irrationally considered, irritating cant that is as likely, or more likely, to offend as it is to inspire is not a religious act; it is a political act.  It used to be that religion, politics, and sex were off limits for general discussion in polite company.  America is not a polite society, maybe it never was, but we're so divided today that we may be on the verge of a second Civil War.  Like the first Civil War and the Revolutionary War, this will be parent against child, brother against brother, friend against friend, and it will be a waste of time and energy because nothing will change when it's done.

• Are you thinking?
• Will you share this with people you care about?
• Or not?

Normally, no.  I'd just let it go as another of the thousands of attempts to mind-control.  This election and the radical right wing that controlled it has ruined my civility.  The less quiet the radical right is about it's dream for a "New Christian America," a return to the theocracy we escape during the American Revolution, a government similar to that suffered in Iran, today, the less inclined I am to quietly suffer the disrespect intended in this kind of message. 

 January 2005