“Canon Fodder”
FOX NEWS IS PORNOGRAPHIC:
We don’t have to take pornographic mail, why should we have to take FOX? I don’t want to pay for pornography. All that phony-baloney religious programming and shopping channels are offensive, too. I want the freedom to choose. Why do I have to watch commercials when I pay for the satellite/cable? I don’t want to pay to watch ads. Give me “a la carte” television. Let me pay only for the shows I want. Why are television shows sold like blood diamonds? They use the same scam DeBeers Diamonds invented – “take the crappy diamonds to get the one good one – no exceptions – this is a monopoly.” I want a la carte television. A useless boatload of shows will disappear from public notice if they aren’t packaged with the Top Ten and have to stand on their own merits – no more slopover prosyletizing, or monopoly broadcasting. I want some person of legislative importance and influence to reform the broadcast rules and reinforce the fairness doctrine. I want to turn off Fox Noise.
NOTHING IS HOLY IN THE “HOLY” LAND:
Any claim to “holiness” in ownership of the “Holy” Land, by any constituent of any side, is preposterous. People of every persuasion have been killing each other over this crap hunk of real estate for thousands of years, to no apparent resolution, pretty much to malign purpose, and to the point of certifiable mental disease.
Their feuds are mindlessly generational, and they routinely dishonor their prophets and messiahs. Peace is an illusion, reason is a poor orphan; “right” is confused with “rite;” and “hope” is just a word.
The people of the “Holy” Land are primarily useful to International Capitalists as trade route and pipeline handlers – since ancient times. Their demographic division is a matter of greed supported by superstition. Their migratory waves have pushed each other back and forth from Baghdad to Cairo for six thousand years. Don’t let ‘em kid you, the protagonists have been a blood thirsty bunch for a mighty long time – no foolin’. The “Holy” Land has always been incredibly harsh and savage; and its peoples have never been any different. This is a piece of earth that people kill and die over repeatedly.
In practice, “god” – whatever Her, His, or Its name is – is a “get out of jail free” card for murder, and a justification for crimes against humanity and the planet. Most cultures condone and/or pardon violence done to the “Alien Other.” Fathers teach sons, who teach sons, who teach sons how to hate. In that sense, the peoples of the “Holy” Land are not unique – just amazingly obsessive about that little crap hunk of real estate.
Who’d be so damned stupid as to stick his big old idiot foot into that “holy muck?” Perhaps, a megalomaniac, a psychopath, a sectarian nut, or a greedy sucking oil baron. In the “holy” land, believers sing about morality, peace and love in mind-numbing chorus. In the Sixties, the Beatles sang, “Give peace a chance.” In the Seventies, John Lennon added, “All you need is love.” Of course, nobody listened to any of those do-gooders, and we now sing, “Waist deep in the Big Muddy, and the Big Fool says to Push On!”
It’s very hard to believe that any respectable or self-respecting god might have any interest and/or want to claim any responsibility for the disastrous generational holocaust in the so-called “Holy” Land. Self-deception is, indeed, the fundamental core value of the human race. It enables us to do so many terrible ungodly self-interested things that a conscience and compassion might prevent.
“RIGHTEOUS” SWORD?
“Some Christians pretend that Christianity was not established by the sword; but of what period of time do they speak? It was impossible that twelve men could begin with the sword; they had not the power; but no sooner were the professors of Christianity sufficiently powerful to employ the sword, than they did so, and the stake and fagot, too; and Mahomet could not do it sooner. By the same spirit that Peter cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant (if the story be true), he would have cut off his head, and the head of his master, had he been able. Besides this, Christianity grounds itself originally on the Bible, and the Bible was established altogether by the sword, and that in the worst use of it – not to terrify, but to extirpate. The Jews made no converts; they butchered all. The Bible is the sire of the Testament, and both are called the word of God. The Christians read both books; the ministers preach from both books; and this thing called Christianity is made up of both. It is then false to say that Christianity was not established by the sword.” – Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, p180
PEOPLE LIKE GOD LIKE SUPERMAN:
People like god for the same reason they like Superman. They’re looking for a he-man hero savior who will kill all the bad guys and make the world safe for puny mortals. People like a quick fix and noble selfless gods and superheroes can, at least imaginatively, give them one.
A child may dream, “If I was god/superman, oh, the changes I would make!” An adult knows this will never happen, and if it did, they probably couldn’t handle it. However, adults can and do choose to believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing god/superhero who will (eventually) “make everything better.” The child says, “Close your eyes real tight and make believe with all your might.” Adults pray for deliverance.
Many people apparently don’t want to work for deliverance. They want it delivered; in fact, expect to receive it by hand from their imagined, and of course invisible, giant god/superhero in the sky (by and by). It requires determined ignorance and dogged superstition to resist reason and responsibility. Science has to be suppressed and rejected so that it won’t threaten the house of cards. Regular, preferably daily instruction in ignorance and superstition is mandatory; indoctrinate the youth early – always a good ideological strategy.
One may wean from Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy to embrace an even grander imaginary friend and benefactor with whom one may never share a single real word or thought, either. Too many accept the secondhand word of a person declaring him/herself to be expert in a book of largely anonymous secondhand anecdotes written by largely superstitious ignorant men. The book was gathered from a multitude of completely unverified sources over several thousand years of political, social and philosophic revolution, weeded, edited, and reissued as a certified collection of largely anonymous secondhand anecdotes now purported to be directly inspired by an imagined invisible cloud being, god, superhero by a secular monarch who wanted to use it for political control of his polyglot fractious empire. Believe it, or not. Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews — A History by James Carroll
Ignorance and superstition are encouraged by the bland, if fanatic, reassurance that “all’s right in god’s world, or will be made so” (sometime). The self-interested and often greedy people who deliver this message may actually believe the claptrap that they preach. However, they cannot deny their venal interest in resisting any and all freethinking, diversity, or dissent.
A venal leadership inevitably yields vengeance and oppression. Throughout history, such leaders have been the instigators of hatred, prejudice, bigotry and violence on a worldwide scale. As for dead, dead’s dead – even a dog knows it when it sees it – and you can’t get much more empirical than that.
Thomas Paine taught us that reason, no matter how resisted or reviled, is the only path to truth.
RINGADINGDING:
Okay, I don’t like Star Wars. I can’t accept George Lucas as my personal lord and savior, and parts I-III, and V-VI suck. Retitle the series: Cliché Bores. I do like Lord of the Rings, Tolkein didn’t pretend to wisdom. However, I take issue with Peter Jackson’s film version: it didn’t matter in the books, but on gigantic screen, the military ineptness of all the principals is strikingly awful. Consider:
- No moats, and obviously no drawbridges, on any of the castle-fortresses! Attackers walk right up to the walls and the front door without effort.
- The major fortresses back against cliffs, inviting attack from above. The attackers display their ineptitude by not discovering and using such major weakness; the defenders by not noticing when they built the stupid joints.
- No gauntlet or enfilade towers. Attackers rush to the front door, bust it open and they’re in. Very stupid. Even primitive motte and bailey castle approaches were through narrow gate passages with arrow loops to shoot invaders in them, and flanked by towers to fire at enemies from all sides.
- No horse or anti-personnel traps in the perimeter, not even sharpened stakes or concealed pits with spikes in the bottom. The whole horde is on your doorstep at once. “Oh, god, we only have stew for five!”
- No ship obstacles or defense nets in the harbors – landing parties always welcome, bring your own beverages.
- No dock defenses, not even a guy with a hammer; just hop off the boat and waltz right in, without so much as a teamster organizer in your way.
- No battle formations! The armies line up in impressive scowling mobs and then run at one another, crashing into an every man-woman-thing for him-her-itself melee. Subtlety, thy other name is idiot chaos.
- No security screens, no spies out gathering information of any kind – not even, “How’s the weather down there, Gimli?” when Gimli the Dwarf complains of not being able to see the enemy; he should be so special?
- No guerilla sorties – no harassment tactics. No attacks on supply lines. No need for supplies? Orcs carry everything needed for one big overwhelming it’s a done deal battle? That’s self-confidence, or more evidence of how militarily (at least) dumb they are; echoes of George W. Bush, Halliburton and the Republicans in Iraq.
- No boiling oil/water/Greek fire. I’ll give them the Greek fire since Middle Earth is theoretically before that, but it’s clear to see why M.E. didn’t survive long enough to benefit from Greek inventiveness. No one exercises much imagination in stopping the bad guys, not even starting an avalanche when the baddies are walking at the bottom of a big honking mountain talus slope that’s ready to slide at a wisp of wind or the touch of a hairy little Hobbit foot.
Well, I could think of more, but this appeared the most obvious, so there it is. A friend once said, “If the communist menace [so-called] was as monolithic and efficient as described by our leaders, we’d be dead; fortunately they turned out to be as screwed up as we are.” So, root for Frodo, and pray his fellowship survives its own ineptitude. Given the collapse of communism and Bush’s record in Iraq, I guess it’s realistic after all. – 6-22-05 
Off the Banks of Goldman Sachs.
LAST WORDS:
Whenever we come to the Book of Revelations we must always ask the same question, “Who wrote this crap?”
Resurrection Machines
John Legry's Blog 