Random Thoughts – Page 5

Welcome to the Irrational Age

Side effect #1 of the Internet… because information is available to everyone, expertise is no longer valued. The ironic part is most people dismiss expertise without ever availing themselves of the information available on the Internet, because of side effect #2… because everyone can publish an opinion, everyone’s opinion is thought to be equally valid, therefore information is irrelevant.

Facts are nothing more than the archaic relics of an outdated way of thinking. Belief is all that matters now, and we will bend and shape the “facts” to fit the belief. The very idea that facts are immutable, or can and should be used to shape belief, is an unnecessary absurdity from a bygone era.

Our country was founded in an Age of Rationalism. Today, our country may well fall in an Age of Irrationalism.

Remember when we had facts?

We’ve reached this weird reality where any statement is just as valid as any other. And attempts to refute statements with facts are just other statements that is just as invalid as any other. Statements rise and fall based solely on their appeal to the listener, and facts have zero weight in the equation. We have literally factored out facts, to the point where most people don’t even recognize them as facts, or even understand why they might be important.

This is the new factless society, where rhetoric reigns supreme, where fear and hatred are the currency of the day, and facts are these useless ancient relics that only a handful of nerds collect and care about, like trading cards. No more trying to win an argument with facts, who needs that, way too tedious, just speak your mind and say what you think. If you say it, it is automatically valid, no matter what it is. Everybody gets a trophy.

We Are At War

Okay, let’s be real clear about something here. WE ARE AT WAR. And it is important, now more than ever, that we understand WHO our ENEMY is.

Muslims are not our enemy. There are 1.6 billion (that’s “billion”, with a “b”) Muslims. That’s one fourth of the planet. Most of these Muslims are non-Arabs, living quiet, peaceful lives in and around Southeast Asia. Only 20% of Muslims on the planet live in the Middle East. These Muslims tend to live lives that are neither quiet nor peaceful, but most are too busy fighting, or at least positioning, amongst themselves to be concerned too much with the West.

Arabs are not our enemy. Of the 300 million or so Arab Muslims in the Middle East, there are maybe 200,000 members of ISIS at most, and maybe half as many members of Al Qaeda, and those are the high estimates. That’s maybe 300,000 terrorists with both the interest and the capability of attacking us. That’s about one tenth of one percent of all Arabs, and less than two one-hundredths of one percent of all Muslims.

If we killed all the Muslims, not only would that mean wiping out one fourth of the population of the entire planet (probably not a good idea in and of itself), but it means we would have to kill over 5,000 Muslims just to get one terrorist. That seems like an awful lot of extra work.

Islam is not our enemy. Yeah, I know, they call themselves “Islamic”. So what. Have you never met someone who calls himself a “Christian” who didn’t quite live up to the ideal? The IRA and the KKK were “Christian” organizations. Calling yourself something doesn’t make it so.

Take Christianity as an example. Based on the number of different denominations and sects, it seems there are a huge number of possible interpretations of scripture. And if you are so inclined, there are plenty of calls to violence if all you’re interested in is killing people who aren’t like you.

Islam is no different. One one-hundredth of one percent of Islam claims to follow a version that requires them to kill the infidels. The other 99.99% of Muslims mostly understand that killing is wrong, and are generally more concerned about maintaining their personal relationship with God than going to war with others.

Terrorists are our enemy. Terrorists. I don’t care what word you put in front of “terrorist”, it is the fact that they are terrorists, and nothing else, that makes them our enemy.

Terrorists kill, rape, and torture to inspire fear. Everything they do is designed to inspire fear. Fear and hatred. They WANT us to hate Muslims. They WANT us to hate Islam. Their goal is to bring about a World War, one that unites East against West, Muslims against Christians, Islam against Christianity. They think the Muslim world will unite behind them. They think they can win this World War, and rule over the entirety of whoever happens to survive.

In reality, the chances of anyone actually uniting the Muslim world are remote, but it is literally impossible unless they can unite the Western world against the Muslim world. Conversely, they know their days are numbered if we ever got smart enough to unite, Christian and Muslim together, to stand against the terrorists.

They want us divided. They need us divided. Their whole plan is to have us at war with each other. That is WHY they want us to hate Muslims. That is WHY the want us to hate Islam. It’s all part of their plan.

Let me say this again, it’s important. They want us to hate all Muslims. They want us to hate all of Islam. Everything they do is designed to bring that about.

Know your enemy.

And please, for the love of God. STOP giving the terrorists what they want.

There have been times in my life…

… when I have been drunk. Shocking, I know, but… I have been drunk. I mean really drunk. No, I mean really, really drunk. I have been pass-out, blind, stinking, staggering, slobbering drunk.

I have made bad decisions. I have gone places I shouldn’t have. I have passed out in places I shouldn’t have. I have woken up in places I shouldn’t have. I have woken up in places I didn’t even recognize.

I’ve been so drunk I thought I could sing. I’ve been so drunk I thought I could leap off buildings. I’ve been so drunk I thought I could catch a duck. (Hint: You can’t, if you get close, those suckers know how to fly.) In short, I have been all kinds of drunk, but…

I have never, ever been so drunk that I thought it was okay to fuck a woman passed out behind a dumpster.

I don’t think it’s possible to get that drunk.

You see, you are either a person who thinks it’s okay to fuck someone who is passed out, or you are not. No amount of alcohol changes that.

When people do things drunk that they wouldn’t do sober, it is always, and I mean always, things that they wanted to do. The only reason they didn’t do them sober was because they feared the consequences. That is what alcohol does — it removes fear.

So, if you get caught fucking a woman passed out behind a dumpster, it’s not the alcohol. I don’t care how drunk you were. It just means you are the type of person who would fuck a woman passed out behind a dumpster. In short, it means that, drunk or sober, you are a rapist.

God spoke to me…

He told me to tell you to leave the gays alone. They’re not hurting anybody, plus He really enjoys the Project Runway. He said what you should really focus on are the people who eat shellfish, they’re the real sinners. If they don’t change their ways, those dirty little clam-eaters are going straight to Hell. …… (Um, yeah… No, still talking about shellfish.)

Practical Guide to the End of the Republic

I’ve gone through the other traditional steps of grief: Anger, Denial, and Bargaining. Now I think I’m ready to move on to… Acceptance.

Yes, I’m trying to wrap my head around the idea that cartoon character “Donald J. Trump” will likely be our next president, and in the process will very likely dismantle our federal republic, a system of government that has stood for over 200 years.

As a student of history, I take some solace in knowing that I will be witnessing a major historical event. It’s not often one gets to witness the birth or death of a nation, especially one’s own nation.

So… lock all the doors, turn out all the lights, grab a bag of chips and your favorite shotgun, curl up on the couch, and together, collectively, we will turn on the TV or laptop, and over the next few months watch the end of civilization as we know it.

For those of you who don’t know what to watch for, here now is my “Practical Guide to the End of the Republic”, for the casual observer…

Suspension of Constitutional Rights. We’ve already seen a preview of this…

Freedom of Religion? Only if you’re the “right” religion, otherwise we’re creating a national database to track your movements. And we’re closing the border to you.

Freedom of Speech , Freedom of the Press? Nope, we’re going to “open up” libel laws to make it easier to go after people that say bad things about us. This is clever, after all Freedom of Speech and of the Press does not protect libelous speech, so all we have to do is redefine “libel”. (I expect the new definition to be something like “words not double plus good about Trump”.)

Freedom of Assembly? Sort of, if you can take a punch. For a preview, just look at how protesters fare at any Tump rally today.

Other constitutionally guaranteed freedoms? Yeah, they’ll stay mostly intact. Unless you’re Mexican. Or look like you’re Mexican. Or know someone who might by Mexican. Or eat too many tacos. Nope those folks we’ll cart off to, oh I don’t know what we’ll call them, maybe “deportation camps”, where they can help build the wall.

Suspend the Constitution. Don’t think it can happen? It’s probably easier than you think…

The Constitution provided for the checks and balances we all know about between the President and Congress. but… Today is different. Teddy Roosevelt established the precedent of going around Congress with a little something called the “Executive Order”. It’s meant to allow the President to direct various governmental departments on how to do their job, but over time has become essentially a unilateral law-making ability for the Oval Office.

Now before you go blaming Obama or George W for this abuse of power, understand this… Obama and W each issued less than 300 executive orders, none of them particularly ground-breaking. Teddy R. issued over 1,000 of them, and distant cousin FDR over 3,500 of them. TEN TIMES the number of the typical modern president. So… blame the Roosevelts.

But here’s the thing. In 1933, when a certain German president suspended that country’s constitution, he did it with a single executive order, just one, issued in response to an act of terrorism. And that is exactly how I expect it to happen here. This is how we created the Department of Homeland Security. This is how we passed the Patriot Act.

Trump has four years to wait for an act of terrorism on American soil, then, in a single patriotic-sounding executive order, and with great fanfare about protecting the people, he will do away with all those liberal, politically-correct concepts of yesteryear, such as the Bill of Rights (whatever remains of it), national elections every four years, and so on.

Suppress the opposition. Here there’s not much to do. The Democrats have already done most of the hard work for him.

I mean seriously, Hillary Clinton? That’s the BEST they could offer as an alternative? It’s like they want him to win. Have they completely given up already?

But that’s not the only opposition to presidential power, what about Congress? No problem, they’ve spent the last two decades using partisan obstructionism to render themselves completely impotent anyway, without any outside help. They’ve made it easy. If they ever do pass anything, all Trump has to do is veto it, when’s the last time you saw a veto override. And Trump can do anything he likes, via the previously mentioned executive orders. Eventually our Congress will disappear in much the same way as the Roman Senate, victims of their own self-induced irrelevance.

What about the Supreme Court? Our third branch. Sounds good right, nine individuals, appointed for life, beholden to no one. Surely they can stop the abuse of power, right? Nope. Hear again, Congress has already shown the way on how to eliminate the power of the Supreme Court. Currently there are only eight justices, and they won’t rule on anything important for fear of a 4-4 deadlock.

Here’s how you would normally get a 9th justice: the President appoints someone, and Congress approves them. Yet, Congress has made it perfectly clear they are willing to approve no one, literally not a single person on the planet, and let the Supreme Court do without, for as long as they like, in this case until there’s a new president.

So all Trump has to do, is appoint only Trump yes-men, Congress can either approve them, or do nothing, and eventually the existing eight will die out. Either way Trump wins. Trump is young enough he could outlive the entire Court, and unless Congress re-stocks it exclusively with Trump minions, it will disappear entirely.

Adopt a new title. Every elected leader turned fascist dictator has adopted a new title for themselves, something to set them apart from the past, something for history to remember them by.

So, what then for the orange one… “Furher”? No, way to German. I mean Trump is probably an admirer, he liked the salute at his rallies until someone pointed out the connection, so no. “Dictator-for-life”? No. To third-worldey. “President-for-life”? Even worse.

I think he will probably take a page from a slightly older history. When Rome transitioned from republic to empire, the dictators took the title “Caesar”, in honor of their first dictator, Julius Caesar. It only remains to be seen, will future American dictators be referred to as “Trumps” or as “Donalds”. Of course, my first instinct is to call him “Orange Julius”, but that’s just me.

Today’s topic: Friends.

I saw two news articles on FB today about friends.

In the first, a gay couple in Ohio sent out wedding invitations to all their friends. They received a reply from one of their friends stating that not only do they not support them, but that they would forward their invitation to an local anti-gay group so they could organize an anti-gay protest to disrupt their wedding. They closed by stating how much fun they were going to have watching their day be ruined.

In the other article, there’s these two girls who are described as friends. They go out one night with this third guy they know, and before the night is over, they go back home where the younger girl gets raped by the guy, while her friend takes out her phone and live-streams video of it to the Internet.

So, my question is, this word “friend”… have I been using it wrong all my life?

Branding

It occurs to me….

If you don’t hate poor people, you’re branded a “liberal”.

If you don’t hate rich people, you’re branded a “conservative”.

So two questions…

1) When did we begin defining our political affiliations based on hate?

and more importantly….

2) I don’t hate poor people. I don’t hate rich people. On the other hand, I do hate people in general. What does that make me, politically speaking?

Super Bowl Halftime Show

Just an observation…

As I’ve been browsing facebook today, I’ve noticed a lot of comments along the lines of Beyonce’s outfit was inappropriate, or the lyrics were not appropriate, or they were offended by the “black panther” style costumes or “black power” gestures. And something occurred to me.

These are the very same people, in many cases, that complain about people today are too easily offended, that people are too sensitive to every little thing, that political correctness has run amok, and political correctness is just ruining this country. We need to say no to political correctness, speak our minds, stop filtering, and stop worrying so much about offending others.

So what I’ve gathered is this. When white people say or do something inappropriate, black people need to calm down and not get so offended by it, don’t be so sensitive, after all it’s a free country, and we’re not hurting nobody, and we’re all free to express ourselves any way we like.

But when black people say or do something inappropriate, black people need to realize what they’re doing is offensive to others, this is not the right time or place, and they need to take that somewhere else, or keep it to themselves, because we don’t want to see it. Show some sensitivity. That there are boundaries and decorum and folks shouldn’t just go around willy-nilly expressing themselves any way they like.

Again, just an observation, feel free to discuss…

The Shining City upon a Hill

I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it and see it still.

— Ronald Reagan