We are very pro-life here…

Welcome to America.

We are very pro-life here.

Mind the bodies. COVID, you know… nothing to be done. Mandates? No, here we encourage people to do their own research on Infowars.

But we very much believe in the sanctity of life.

Kindly, keep your gaze from the ghosts on the right. They perished from the guns we make and sell. Many find their accusatory stares of the children to be discomfiting.

Personally, I don’t get it. There’s nothing we could do to stop it.

Every human life is precious and created in the image of God.

To your left, you’ll see the gallows where criminals are executed.

Yes, sir, unlike those godless countries, we value human beings.

Those? Oh, those are the ghosts of people who were killed by our police.

Guess they should have complied, am I right?

Every child is precious to us.

To your right, you’ll see the cemetery where the war dead are buried. It’s quite large.

We’re adding more space every day.

But life is precious to us.

Mind the hungry moochers over there. No, giving them anything to eat will just make them lazy and entitled.

Some people just don’t want to work for a living.

Yes, we love God and we love life here.

Clueless

“I just don’t know how so many conservatives could believe Democrats are evil, Satanic pedophile baby killers who hate America!” says conservative Jonah Goldberg who spent entire career saying Democrats are evil, Satanic pedophile baby killers who hate America.

What life in America feels like right now…

Conservatives elect bigoted ash-hole rapist with zero experience running the government and horrible business sense.
Democrats and the media: Gosh! How could this have happened? We need to try and reach out and understand them better!
Conservatives: We hate you and want to murder you.
Democrats/Media: Oh, my. It must be economic anxiety.
Con: We really hate you and want to murder you.
Kidnapping and caging of children happens.
Dems/Media: How could anyone possibly do something like this?
Con: We hate you and want to kill you.
Nazi marches and riots happen.
Dems/Media: Is this really the sort of company you want to keep?
Con: We hate you and want to murder you.
Vaccine for deadly pandemic is made. Conservatives refuse to get vaccinated and yell in people’s faces about being asked to wear a mask to help save lives.
Media: Clearly they’ve just been misinformed.
Cons: We hate you and want to murder you.
Attempted coup happens where a white conservative mob tries to murder Congress.
Dems: Clearly we have to get to the bottom of this. Let’s discuss it in a committee.
Media: We just don’t understand why so many conservatives think the election was rigged and won’t accept Biden as president.
Cons: We HATE you and want to MURDER you.
Congressman tweets out video of him murdering another congressman and threatening to murder the President.
Dems: Okay, this is just too far. You’re getting a mild slap on the wrist, buddy.
Media: Gee, I just don’t understand why Republicans aren’t condemning this video… it’s a mystery.
Cons: We fucking hate you and want to fucking kill you all.
Media: Yep… just a complete mystery…

Guns…

Leaving home to go pick up my daughter from school a few days ago and I heard a bunch of sirens maybe a block or two over on the main road and my first thought is instantly “active shooter”.

I fucking hate that.

And I fucking hate that my kids have done active shooter drills. I hate that both my son and daughter have said that their greatest fear is a shooter coming to their schools. And I’ve never shared my fears with them. This is just the world they live in now.

I hate that if I go out, I mentally plot out ways to the emergency exits. Malls, movie theaters, restaurants. I’m not obsessed about it, but the thought ALWAYS crosses my mind at least once.

“What would I do if…?”

I hate what the NRA has become. I hate the toxic gun culture and the culture of indifference, greed, and bullying that tolerates it.

And I really fucking hate guns now. Didn’t used to. Now I do.

And now I do want to take them all away, crush ’em, melt ’em down, turn them into playgrounds, appliances, or car parts.

I know it’ll never happen here in America. The tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of first graders, movie goers, and beauticians from time to time after all…

A day of remembrance…

On this day, 103 years ago, at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the guns would fall silent in Europe. The War to End All Wars was over.

Nine million soldiers were dead and 21 million more were wounded. Some would suffer all of their lives from their experiences in the trenches and on the Front. At least five million civilians also died from disease, starvation, or exposure caused by the war. Fields and towns would remain No Man’s Land for decades as landmines and unexploded shells littered the landscape.

The cost was unimaginable at the start of the war as old men promised young ones glory and honor and in the end paid them nothing but a hellish misery.

The guns fell silent. The dead even more so. Did they look on in judgment at their sons as the fires of hatred burned and ignited a second world war that was even more savage than the one they had fought? Do they silently watch us now starting war after war, sending them ever more silent dead to watch and judge our actions, our refusal to consider the cost?

I do not know.

But I cannot imagine they will judge lightly today’s old men insisting that young men and women go off to kill and be killed for honor or glory.

Armistice Day or Veteran’s Day, may we stop and consider the cost of war now and forever and let the dead rest in peace by refusing to send any more to join them needlessly.

America

America is no more blessed or chosen by God than the Greeks, the Romans, the Huns, the Mongols, the Germans, the Spanish, the English, or any other nation that grew prosperous and enjoyed military supremacy for a time was.

Like every nation, we have done some good things and some evil things. Our ideals and actions have inspired many, but likewise our actions and our failure to live up to those ideals have hurt many as well.

We are neither uniquely good or uniquely bad.

We are humans standing on both the good and evil of our fathers.

And we should remember that, lest the hubris of assuming that what power and prosperity America possesses are a reward from God for our own righteousness or uniqueness as a culture. They aren’t.

Rains fall on the just and the unjust alike.

Honesty…

Ecclesiastes is probably the book in the Bible that comes close to honesty, though Job’s presentation of the problem of evil comes close.

4 Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun:

I saw the tears of the oppressed—
    and they have no comforter;
power was on the side of their oppressors—
    and they have no comforter.
² And I declared that the dead,
    who had already died,
are happier than the living,
    who are still alive.
³ But better than both
    is the one who has never been born,
who has not seen the evil
    that is done under the sun.

Thoughts on (white) Evangelicalism

When I departed Evangelicalism, part of the reason was that my observations of their behavior changed my definition of the core tenets of Evangelicalism: that one must hate LGBTQ people, that one must be anti-abortion, that one must vote Republican, and to simultaneously believe in an omnipotent god who could be cast out of schools and thwarted rather easily by laws.

These days, I’m more convinced than ever that to be a white Evangelical, one must embrace all of the seven deadly sins as virtues.

You must be proud, arrogant, assume you have all of the answers, and condescending to anyone who holds a different opinion. You are the best. Your church. Your religion. Your nation. Your history. Your culture. Your color of skin.

You must believe that greed is good, that the accumulation of wealth is not a moral flaw, but a God-approved thing. You must sneer at and dismiss the poor as lazy, stupid, or refuse. You must embrace libertarian economics. You must walk past sick Lazarus day and day and never take notice of his plight.

Lust. How many “scandals” are there now? Millions? Tens of millions? You must believe in a system of power where women are subordinate and where men are not expected to be able to control themselves and can indulge in their lust freely.

You must envy the more powerful, the more wealthy, let it drive you. Let your ambitions run free and take everything you can and give nothing back unless it’s by force.

You must consume. And I’m not talking just about food. For certain, food is a part of it. The laughing and ridiculing at suggestions that you cut down on meat consumption for the greater good. The systems you support that generate food waste while millions go hungry. Buying a giant truck or fuel inefficient car you don’t need and doing it with pride. Burning more and more fossil fuels. Deforestation. More. More. More. All to feed your appetites.

You must be angry. Constantly. Every man, woman, and child is your enemy and you are theirs. Blacks, Latinos, Asians, the LGBTQ, feminists, refugees, immigrants, liberals, scientists, doctors, doesn’t matter. They aren’t like you and therefore they must be evil. Guns. Must have more guns. Non-violence is for suckers. Life is a constant battle of all against all and there’s no way you’re going to give up a single inch to anyone.

Sloth is one that seems difficult to place at first, until I realized that all of the pursuit of wealth, power, and control, all of the rejection of a temperate, modest life is also a pursuit of a life of ease and convenience for them at the expense of others. I look at the exaltation of TFG’s work ethic when he spent a year of his administration golfing. The ultimate goal of climbing the ladder and fighting to stay on top is to enjoy all of the good things, while millions work and toil in misery to feed your desires.

Anyway, just a few thoughts that occurred to me.

I complain about stupid things

Plastic straws:
– Awesome
– Horrible for environment
– I guess we need to get rid of them… UUUUUUUUUGH…

But what of the alternatives:

Metal straws:
– Futuristic
– Cool.
– Good mouth feel
– Must wash. Not suitable for restaurants

Bamboo straws:
-Tropical
– It’s like I’m on vacation
– Put a tiny umbrella on this Diet Coke now!
– I don’t care that this is Arby’s! Find a tiny umbrella now!

Paper straws:
– Boo!
– You suck!
– I hate you.
– Feels like your sucking on spitball.
– Go away!
– DIAF

No straw:
– What is this? The 1800s?

In conclusion: Stop using paper straws, restaurants. Give me a bamboo straw and a tiny umbrella.

This has been your blogger complaining about stupid things.

A war of all against all…

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of War, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them with all. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Leviathan XIII – Thomas Hobbes

I sometimes wonder if Republicans got to that part in the book, read that bolded line and thought, “Yes! By God, yes! This is the way life should be! This is what mankind was made for!”

I really can’t explain their behavior any other way than that they honestly believe they are at war with every other man, woman, or child, and every other man, woman, and child is at war with them.