Life as usual

Shock politics as usual. Pay attention to what's going on behind the curtain, not to the blowhard talking in front of it.
 

Today, our sound bites tell us that children are being ripped from their parents' arms at the U.S./ Mexico border as a result of Jeff Sessions' directive to detain and prosecute every single person coming into the country without proper papers. The truth of the matter is that those violations have historically been prosecuted rarely in the event that the asylum is granted, but Sessions has gone full crazypants with his "zero tolerance" policy, to the outrage of millions. While all that is happening, damaging legislation is being put up for votes to a group of harried, beleaguered Senators and Representatives. Budgets are being set and...

...Meanwhile in the most populated state in the nation, a measure has gotten enough signatures to go on the ballot to split the state of California into 3 separate states. This isn't the first time it's gotten attention, but piled on top of everything else that's going on....

...Oh right and don't forget all your safety nets for old age are going to go away as a result of the feckless government's inability to cut military spending for its endless wars or to stop giving tax cuts to the people who have/have donated the most money.
I've never been a Republican, and I've only recently signed up as a Democrat, but it's always a "lesser of two evils" choice for me and I hate it.

Right now, this is a country of whole evil and I have no voice left at all. The Repubs are swayed by religion and the Dems are swayed by money. Two party system is NOT working. One side or the other is just going to strip away what the previous administration did and only a scant few things will truly stick.

But, what are we supposed to do? We can't stop looking. We have to witness and record the atrocity that is our country in the hopes that history won't repeat itself for the umpteenth time. We'll either make it through this next 2.5 years and start to repair the damage, or we'll tear each other apart into a new something-or-other. We are living though something terrible and dramatic and awesome, in the most literal sense.

Now I go back to not thinking about all this and living the day-to-day, but also feeling supremely guilty for not thinking about all this. Words on a page are all I have left, because it offers me a chance to step back and organize myself. So I'll see you at knit night, game night, work, or whatever social outing we're doing together, because if I don't keep doing those things I might just pack a bag and walk away until I can't walk any further. Thank you for reading/listening. I can't afford therapy.

dumb, dumber, pious

Human quality of life, regardless of the political upheavals of the moment, can be directly attributed to human curiosity and the scientific method of testing hypotheses. Luckily for all of us, brilliant minds have always followed their curiosity despite religion's mandate of ignorance, often at great personal risk. That's why I'm so sad to read that Turkey is no longer teaching evolution before college. "Evolutionary mechanisms" yes (whatever that means), but not the greater overall concept. They think it's too "controversial" for kids' widdle bwains to handle.

My absolutely inexpert hot-headed opinion is that it's yet another attempt to dumb people down to religion's level and eat away at how people know their world. Systematically removing the tools for skeptical inquiry is the best way to keep your populace in line. Political and religious leaders are very good at creating a sense of strong identity around this ignorance. They use words like piety and patriotism to describe how "we know best." Encouraging ignorance helps no one.

What could I say to get you on my team here?

Folks, there is no scientific controversy surrounding evolution. The word "theory" has six definitions. While I think that's a really good reason to change the way we describe scientific discoveries, I don't think it is a good reason to stop teaching children how to think about the world around them.

That science has become a dirty word, spat out by religious authorities around the globe does not make it any less of a good tool for understanding the world around us. Without past scientific studies, which use the same exact methods as evolutionary biology, we would not know that Aspirin is a painkiller. We would not know how to create the combustion engines needed for vehicular travel. We would not have the orbital knowledge to create Global Positioning Systems that could get us from point A to B with staggering accuracy--not to mention the real-time traffic updates of Google Maps and Waze.

Please understand my resolute atheism from this perspective. Religion quashes the desire to further improve the human condition under the guise of a deity's love after you die. I was taught for the first 22 years of my life that if you do what deityman wants, you can die whenever and it's fine, because you'll be reunited with all your family and friends who die too! That engenders, whether on the surface or not, an attitude that it doesn't matter what happens to OTHER people as long as deityman is being served appropriately by YOU.

But there is something that tugs inherently at us when we see suffering. That is why Mother Theresa's beatification bothered me so much. She created an entire theistic branch based on the glorification of extreme suffering, while receiving all the money she could ever want, the medical care usually reserved for heads of state, and the adulation of kind people who didn't have the access to information which painted her as she truly was. There's willful ignorance, sure, on the part of many Catholics, but when those of us who aren't of that faith hear the name "Mother Theresa" we get a warm view of an old nun who helps people, right? Why? Because that's what information we were given in or out of school.

 

So, when someone says "we won't teach evolution" all I hear is the silent "because we want people to associate biology with deity so we can continue as an institution." It all ties together, in the end.

Dark Days

Amidst wailing and gnashing of teeth, reason and truth died yesterday.

There are three things to blame.

1) The consistent decline and devaluation of an honest 4th Estate. The media has become so embroiled in the "scoop" mentality that it is willing to allow bias and lies in as fact. Journalism is dead and our new president could not be happier. You no longer report, you editorialize everything into sound bites that will get the most ad revenue. You are broken.

2) Your faith. You sat back and let prayer decide the future of this country. You are a testament to the wrong-mindedness of belief. Your fundamentalists elected someone who should never have been in the running for president. If that is what your fundamentals are, you need to rethink the whole system. Your reliance on prayer has cost us the world's respect and our country has no dignity left because of you. Next time, start a conversation with your neighbor and ask them what you can do to help their situation improve.

3) A short collective memory and unwillingness to speak up. We have proven, as a nation, that it does not matter how many times you lie in public, if you have the ability to believe your own lies and push them forward, you will win every time. This is true in elections, and this is true in life. You know that friend who insists acupuncture works for them therefore it must be science? That's the friend you never correct. You never ask them to read that scientific paper because you don't want to rock the boat. Well guess what? This is your fault, too.

That's all I have at 4:30 am. I can't breathe, and I certainly can't sleep. This is permanently on the internet now, like every other opinion out there. And like those opinions, it doesn't matter because it's too late.

manufactured doubt

In which I regurgitate opinions, and encourage some reading.

Quotes from Merchants of Doubt, by Naome Oreskes & Erik M. Conway:

On peddling false information: "Magical thinking still informs the position of many who oppose environmental regulation. As recently as 2007, the George Marshall Institute continued to insist that the damages associated with acid rain were always 'largely hypothetical,' and that'further scientific investigation revealed that most of them were not in fact occurring.' The Institute cited no studies to support this extraordinary claim."

On political motivation for anti-science mentality: "Some environmentalists no doubt are Socialists, but in our experience few climate scientists are. Moreover, even if all environmentalists were socialists, it does not follow that global warming is a myth."

On global warming: "Imagine a gigantic banquet. Hundreds of millions of people come to eat. They eat and drink to their hearts' content...Then, one day, a man arrives, wearing a white dinner jacket. He says he is holding the bill. Not surprisingly, the diners are in shock. Some begin to deny that this is their bill. Others deny that there even is a bill. Still others deny that they partook of the meal. One diner suggests that the man is not really a waiter, but only trying to get attention for himself or to raise money for his own projects. Finally, the group concludes that if they simply ignore the waiter, he will go away."