The Farce of July

Hello! Welcome back to my blog, my three loyal subjects! I’ve been gone for some time working on my first novel in an attempt to distract myself for the daily nonsense that is the world. Distraction is hard to come by in this day and age given the degree of insanity popping out of anyone’s mouth day in and day out, least of all from the guy who allegedly won the last U.S. presidential election. Since this will be President Trump’s first Fourth of July as the U.S. President, we can all be sure to be hearing the phrase ‘MAGA’ for the next week. And, we’re going to hear it from people taking no part in making that actually happen. That brings me to recap a ‘funny if it weren’t true’ article about Trump supporters I recently read, “If you still support this guy, I know 7 things about you instantly.” I’ll briefly recap the article with my own thoughts and add a few numbers of my own. If you’re interested, you can find the original article here.

If you still support Trump as U.S. President, here are 7 (or more) things I know about you instantly:

One – You like to be ruled, not governed. Absolutely true. You don’t even need a study to understand that some groups of people, say, Evangelical Christians, love to be told what’s good for them as long as you invoke God, the king above kings, while doing it. Being ruled requires no thinking and, well, you see what I’m getting at. If not, that proves my point.

Two – You have no class. Also true, at least for the average middle-to-lower class U.S. citizen. In classifying a reporter who criticizes him as having been ‘bleeding from the face’ thanks to bad plastic surgery, Trump surely scores points with people who think it’s okay to refer to your own daughter as a nice piece of ass (shocker). They also think Trump’s low-brow tweets are ‘fighting back’ against a media that routinely thumps him while forgetting he actually won the presidential election and is well protected by the Secret Service.

Three – You are not someone I would trust to do business with. No doubt! While the article groans about shady business practices and tax evasion, I wouldn’t do business with anyone so adverse to regulations. Sure, businesses and industries can be over-regulated, but no regulation? That means you’re up to no good.

Four – You are racist or a racist enabler. Not always true but true often enough. White people, men in particular, voted for The Don. Overwhelmingly. I mean, when the KKK endorses a candidate, well, they don’t endorse just any ol’ person! I’m pretty sure Trump is racist himself – I could be wrong – though he does hire just enough black people to make us question his racism just a tiny bit.

Five – You have issues with women. Obviously. Three wives, affairs, certain ‘comments’ I won’t reiterate, the Megyn Kelly debacle. Surely this often stems from evangelicalism which hates that women are even allowed to leave the house with shoes on. Of course, some women voted for Trump, so what’s their deal? See One; sometimes thinking for yourself is just too…too…difficult.

Six – You aren’t quite as Christian as you claim to be. Please refer to my previous blog “You are Not a Christian.” Or if you’re in a hurry, think about Jesus being alive today and following last year’s presidential election. Can you imagine Jesus saying, “Oh, yeah, I’m voting for this guy!” I’m sure Jesus wouldn’t be happy with voting for Hillary either, but if forced to choose, I think he’d go with the lesser of two evils. Or be crucified instead. Heck, I considered it.

Seven – You are anti-constitution. Yes. The Emolument Clause means nothing to you – which is why you’re okay with the Muslim travel ban that doesn’t include countries that actually attacked the U.S., like, um, Saudi Arabia where Trump does some business. You also don’t care about the separation of church and state (for obvious reasons) and free speech (to spare your guy any criticism, which is funny because Obama).

Those are the original article’s point’s which I think left a few things out…

Eight – You hate science. Of course you hate science; you’re religious! Despite the fact that your life is incredibly cushy and convenient thanks to science, you are thankless to a fault. That’s all because you don’t want anyone questioning your religious beliefs. You think everyone else should question their religious beliefs because you – uneducated white guy who counts on Fox News for real news – you’ve got it figured out. That’s likely.

Nine – You want Trump to install a theocracy. You whine like holy hell about Sharia law because a Christian theocracy would be SO much better, said no evidence ever.

Ten – You’re oblivious to the obvious. White Americans are FAR more dangerous and likely to shoot and kill you than an illegal alien terrorist. By like, A LOT. You’re also more likely to be shot by a toddler who got their hands on a gun than a terrorist. But, you do nothing to curb these incidents because…you like guns. No reason to have them, you just like guns.

Nine – You cant spel. Trump supporters are notoriously horrible with the English language they so desperately demand everyone else speak. If you’re a Trump supporter, it’s highly unlikely you’ve noticed this blog’s numerous spelling or grammar typos. Want MAGA? Try spelling it out with no mistakes.

Ten – You’re a snowflake. Surely the average Trump voter has already called me a ‘libtard’ or some other innovative metaphor by this point in my spiel even though I’m a registered independent. Another point proven. 

Eleven - You don't care if people are unqualified to do important jobs. You figured Obama was a community organizer with little government experience, so why not abandon experience altogether? Why not have a brain surgeon in charge of housing or a science denier who campaigned on fossil fuel industry money in charge of the EPA? Meanwhile, you keep complaining that the barista at Starbucks got your order wrong. Again.

Twelve - You have no sense of history. Make America Great Again? When was it great before? When there was slavery? Before women could vote? Before civil rights? When there was child labor? Before there was an EPA? When we used nuclear weapons on civilians? When we put a man on the moon thanks to a Democratic President? What happened to all that greatness, I wonder. Oh, yea, the internet. Sigh.

The United States: It's Not All Bad

“Today's the fourth of July / Another June has gone by / And when they light up our town / I just think what a waste of gunpowder and sky.” Aimee Mann

I often have difficulty finding nice things to say about my native country, the good ol’ U.S. of A. Given the various collective consciousness’ of Americans and not finding myself a part of any of their groups, I find it nearly impossible to consider myself an American; if anything, I consider myself a citizen of the world. Still, it would benefit me to find something nice to say about the country I live in despite the overwhelming stupidity I am often surrounded by. With that in mind, there is definitely something nice to say about the United States of America, namely, that it is a country that against all odds eventually gets it right. Sometimes it is a country that even apologizes.

I am speaking chiefly of two recent news items. One, the recent Supreme Court ruling that gays and lesbians be legally allowed to wed across the country; a shocking and staggering decision given the judges currently sitting on the Supreme Court. (Of course, the vote wasn’t unanimous. You can always count on Justice Scalia to be a dick to every non-white, non-Republican, non-Christian citizen.) Two, little more than a week earlier, a white supremacist shoots nine dead in South Carolina, prompting a weeks-long national backlash against the South’s traditional symbol of racial hatred, the Civil War era’s Confederate flag.

Naturally, the racists went practically Darwinian on us and attempted flooding the Internet with 'clever' memes like this one:

And the meme works…for about a second until you think about it even superficially. Did the U.S. government slaughter Native Americans and screw them out of their land? Yes. Did they intern innocent Japanese citizens during WWII? I believe so. Did the Bush Administration OK torture of Iraqis? You betcha. Is police brutality a major issue these days? Yes, yes it is. So, the thinking goes, the U.S. flag and the people it represents must be as bad if not worse than the Confederate flag and the people it represents.

Whoa, little fellers! There is one major difference between the U.S. flag and the Confederate flag and the people they respectively represent: The U.S. government eventually apologizes for the mistakes it makes. Even if such apologies are lip-service, apologies are often made and some kind of relationship is established between the victimized parties and the perpetrators. Those who are beholden to the Confederate flag have never done this or even tried; they have never said, “Gee, we’re really sorry for our ancestors doing what they did to your ancestors.” Instead, they continue to fly a flag – a symbol – of their continued hatred of groups of people simply because such proponents are dimwitted and unable to understand anything in the world beyond themselves. Proponents of the Confederate flag will insist that their flag is merely a part of their roots, conveniently leaving out the part about being racists who would gladly lynch a black person if they thought they could get away with it. While I personally see no need to apologize for anything someone in my family might have done to anyone else, I can have sympathy towards someone’s pain and remove symbols that indicate and reinforce what a terrible person I am. Upon a moment’s reflection, the formerly ‘clever’ meme is nothing of the sort.

Conversely, though it may come late in certain situations, the U.S. as a whole gets around to making an apology. In a few years, when it is seen that gay marriages didn’t cause the universe to implode, the U.S. will get around to apologizing to the LGBT community. "Hey, guys, we're real sorry we treated you as if you weren't human. That was messed up of us." This is  something great about America, something most other countries cannot say.If you are wronged, the U.S. will eventually apologize, hopefully not posthumously like, say, the Vatican is famous for.  

The gods be willing, the U.S. may even one day apologize to itself for being a black hole of idiocy.

(Figure out the problem with this one yet? The U.S. has no jurisdiction over the pyramids which are in Egypt. And, as far as I know, Egypt has never apologized for the fact that the pyramids were built by slaves, probably because tourism brings in a boat load of money. Surely, the Egyptian government doesn’t go out of it’s way to explain how the Pyramids at Giza were built. Hint: They were really built by aliens! A belief only Americans hold. Sigh.)

Independence From Religion Day

Christians have apparently forgotten what it is like to be persecuted.

Michigan, Mississippi and a spate of other states already had a similar law in place. Indiana, Virginia and now Arkansas have just passed an anti-gay/pro-discrimination law as well. The

Rallying against hate.

difference, though, is that Indiana and Virginia, for example, doesn’t have any laws that protect LBGT’s as a class. As Addictedinfo.org reports on Virginia (and basically pertains to Indiana also), “The state of Virginia is set to pass a law which would allow anti-LGBT business owners to bar gay people, purely on the basis of their sexuality. The Virginia Bill states that anyone seeking or holding a business license from the state of Virginia in the state can refuse service or entry to gay people, on the grounds it ‘would violate the religious or moral convictions of such person with respect to same-sex marriage or homosexual behavior.’”

Seriously.

It is legalized discrimination meant to protect business owners who are also Judeo-Christian from catering to gays, though we all know that in reality the laws may eventually extend to anyone a business owner doesn’t like (and they will be able to invoke ‘religious objection’ in their defense). To be clear, I do think that a business owner should be able to deny a person service provided there is a good reason, where ‘a good reason’ is one grounded in reality. (That is to say being a religious Jew, Christian, or Muslim is not grounded in reality.) While those of us in the good ol’ U.S. of A. with any semblance of sanity or aren’t insane about inflicting our exclusionary beliefs on others can talk and give lip-service to how terrible these laws are, no one is doing much of anything about it. Sure, there have been street protests and several companies have bailed on planned expansions into Indiana, for example, but I don’t think it is enough. The people creating and passing these laws simply don’t understand how hateful they are being, where being hateful is simply primitive at this point in human history.

It is no longer acceptable. But you cannot reason with the kind of people who support these laws, the kind of people who, say, claim to be Christians but don’t act anything like Jesus. Take the Indiana Gov. Mike Pence for instance, who complained in an interview of, "an avalanche of intolerance that has been poured on our state" but seemed not to understand that what he’s done is allow the government to sanction just that, intolerance. You can only make such people understand by demonstrating what it is they are doing to people when they deny a person basic human rights. You can only hope to make them understand by putting them through the very thing they insist on doing to other people. That being the case, I am calling for a national day of protest, a day in which Christians are denied services by non-Christians based, of course, on ‘moral objections.’ Without getting into the particulars of my system of ethics, let’s just say I find the morality of Judeo-Christians quite disturbing. Why shouldn’t I, or anyone else with a different system of ethics – one based on science since science is apparently a religion to the Christian right-wing – deny Christians service based on a ‘moral objection’?

Unfortunately, Easter is too close to raise awareness of and organize such a protest. My solution is to make July 4, 2015 in the U.S., America’s Independence Day, Independence From Religion Day* by being intolerant of the religiously inclined and invoking a ‘moral objection’ as the reason for denying certain people services. On a day that is only allowed to be celebrated by straight Judeo-Christian patriots – since you’re not a patriot if you’re not a straight Judeo-Christian – I say we hold what is the social equivalent of the Boston Tea Party; the rest of us are going to take the rights straight Judeo-Christians take for granted and throw them overboard. Extremist straight Judeo-Christians need to be shown that freedom from religion in just as important as the freedom of religion.

[Sorry, can’t think of a catchier title at the moment.]

This was a lifetime ago! And today?

I will admit that this seems like a rather extreme measure to take but ‘extreme’ is the only thing extremist straight Judeo-Christians understand. There is only a shred of hope that the people who wish to legally discriminate can come to see that Independence Day really should be called ‘Interdependence Day;’ America has long suffered from a fractured psyche (in no small part due to the Reagan Years) and it is time to re-establish a national identity. These discriminatory laws cannot accomplish that. Making bullies understand what they are doing by showing them how it feels is the only possible hope in putting the U.S. back on the road to unity. Okay, okay, not that the U.S. was ever really unified – some group somewhere was always getting the shaft – but few will argue that the U.S.’s current national identity isn’t like Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde at best. The sane among us cannot stand idly by and let religious lawmakers create laws in their favor. And so the sane among us have no good recourse but to deny their kind service.

Certainly there will be practical difficulties. For instance, it is not always immediately clear who is and who isn’t a religious wing-nut. In cases where it is known, servicing a religious person should be politely declined and the reason for denying service given; “I’m sorry Mr. White, but I morally object to the nature of your ethics and therefore cannot in good conscience serve you today.” There is also the matter of whether to deny service to religious people who are not dicks, which in actuality would be most religious people (in my experience). Should those people be denied service? For the sake of consistency, I would have to say ‘yes’ as doing so would result in the situation being recanted to the denied party’s family and friends who are also likely to be religious. While I don’t like the idea of there being ‘collateral damage,’ no good revolution has come about without some innocent ‘blood’ getting spilled.

The year is 2015. Americans are not dirt-snorting, cave-dwelling misogynist towelheads that like to behead people for petty reasons. Some people should stop acting like that’s what they want to be, or if they want to, be that person somewhere else. The U.S. is no longer the place for you.