Going Rogue

CALL ME CRAZY (some do) but I am a fool for verbal attacks on mainstream American culture. Give me a radical revolutionary intellectual book, speech, or TV show anytime! And, you might admit, the pickings are so very easy. So much to attack, in mainstream American culture, and so little time in which to do it all. The wealthiest nation in the world, with one fifth of its children hungry. A litany of foreign policy disasters, the U.S. of A. Oh yes, a veritable litany, from Viet Nam to Iraq, and back again. Liberals are complainers, by nature. They don't like the world as they see it, or as it is, so they bitch about it, and they want to change it. Conservatives are a more contented lot, and this makes them smug, and arrogant. They have a happier attitude than liberals about the status quo. But, in all truth, when you come right down to it, isn't there a great deal to complain about, to worry about, to try to change? If you deny global warming, or that other problems and catastrophes exist, you don't have to do anything about it, or complain about it. Its fun and easy to be conservative! Suppose you conservatively embrace the traditional religion of your people. All the questions are answered, no uncertainty, life is clear and stable and absolute! The opiate of the masses, and the salve of the individual soul, is religion. Its humorous listening to conservative religious non scientific non intellectuals talk about science, about how limited and horrible it is. Why, science, you would think by listening to right wingers, is nothing but a scam! Science is always changing its mind, disagreeing with itself, and that proves it doesn't work! say our conservative people of piety. Good luck trying to convince them that all the arguing, uncertainty, disagreement and change in science is not only a good thing, its the only thing, the only thing that works, its why science works, and religion doesn't, for gaining new knowledge and using it to improve life. Science has given us medicine, technology, and comfort. Religion has given us...what? Dogma and circumscribed human creativity and behavioral freedom? Liberalism is change, conservatism is tradition. Science and climate change are for liberals, religion and denial of climate change are for conservatives. How appropriate.