Knowing Me, Knowing You

IT IS REALLY IMPORTANT for me to avoid conversations with evangelical Christian political conservatives, other than about the weather, football, or baseball, none of which they often seem to know much about. I sense they assume, a priori, that I, and everyone else, share their beliefs. Why not let them linger in delusion? They don't need to know me. People resist the truth only because they fear they might perish if they accepted it. (Goethe). And really, I have heard that humans are too puny to change the climate, that the Lord is on his way back so it doesn't matter anyway, that socialism has never worked anywhere and never will, and we certainly don't want it to come here, that Obama is a Muslim...quite often enough. When one of these geniuses, as if reading from a cue card, reminds me that I live in a nice house, and drive a nice car, so why am I trying to tell everyone else to give away their money and live in log cabins to save the planet, I bow up, and comfort myself that my blood pressure medication is at home, ready. OK, I drive a car. I inherited it from my mother, God rest her soul. My house is fifteen hundred square feet, cute only because its new. I had it built on what was formerly the parking lot of a natural gas dealership. I smile when I imagine the confusion on their faces were I to mention that the Christian religion began as a political uprising which failed, and turned moral and spiritual. Or that cults of human sacrifice and fertility flourished across the near east during the century before a compelling rabbi attracted a larger than normal following. That the chosen people may have invented monotheism, or they may have borrowed it from earlier folks in Persia, but letting the blood of valuable livestock and virgins is clearly a precursor to political crucifixion, which was a Roman method, borrowed from the Carthaginians, who were colonists from Phoenicia. I would invite Christian fundamentalists to read Bart Ehrman (Jesus Interrupted), or to listen to anyone in the Harvard school of divinity. Certainly, don't take my word for it. Socialism, it turns out, was invented by paleolithic people, before animal husbandry and land owning replaced communal living. It came to these disunited states early, and has lingered, if inconveniently. Try finding an evangelical politically conservative christian who favors free market, privately owned, profit seeking highways, bridges, police departments, and senior centers, or suggest that his house of worship be sold to the highest bidder. When it comes to redistribution of wealth, Jesus was downright hard core. He meant business, his business being voluntary poverty. His message was never ending voluntary sharing, utopian socialism. Perhaps in the evangelical conservative capitalist Bible, revised edition, Jesus admonishes all to accumulate personal wealth. The reference to the Christian conservative community as "geniuses" was not merely gratuitous and condescending. To simultaneously embrace American corporate capitalism and the message of Joshua ben Joseph requires a special kind of insight. One definition of a saint is a person who can simultaneously embrace two seemingly contradictory concepts. Free market, neo-liberal capitalism, and sell whatsoever thou hast and give unto the poor. That sort of thing. Render unto Caesar, and the TEA party. Folks like me, (progressive humanists) must be content to live in a world in which socialism, which is sharing required by government, and Jesus, who seems to have encouraged sharing, are compatible, and are good things. For someone to simultaneously embrace competitive, profit seeking capitalism and give unto the poor render unto Caesar Jesus seems to folks like me nothing short of miraculous. That the conservative evangelical Christian community elected Donald J. Trump is an even greater miracle. Wasn't it Jerry Falwell Junior who said that it is not necessary for the president of the United states to be a good person? Really? I didn't know that either. I always believed it was essential that the president be a good, honest person. Donald J. Trump is very popular at Liberty University. These politically conservative evangelical Christians are truly amazing, ostensible saints and geniuses, able to find compatibility in concepts which are apparently contradictory. Maybe the reason I avoid conversations with them has nothing to do with their lack of interest in or knowledge of baseball. Maybe, just maybe, I am just downright jealous.

Going Crazy, Being Crazy, Criminally

NOAM CHOMSKY became a professor of linguistics and philosophy at M.I.T. in 1955, the year I was born, and he's still there. He has done for the science of linguistics, the study of human language, what Einstein did for physics; rewritten its rules in theory and practice, revolutionized it. Chomsky is regarded as the leading intellectual in the United States everywhere in the world, except in the United States, where his radical political ideology and activism renders him somewhat of a mainstream outcast, and keeps him out of the mainstream conservative media. (yes, America's mainstream media is conservative, not liberal, as it is corporate owned, and speaks for corporate interests.) Chomsky is somewhat of a cult figure within the progressive and far left communities, so, he gets plenty of attention. he considers himself a "socialist anarchist". No, those two words, which imply big government and not government, are not contradictory, nor mutually exclusive. In face a large body of literature is devoted to this economic political concept, in which all government resides in the hands of local democratically operated committees, and economic equality is mandated. Much of Chomsky's writing, many of his books, explain America's role in the world, and the fact that the United States, ever since it acquired world hegemony after World War Two, has essentially ruled the world and insists on absolute obedience to its wishes, under penalty of military conquest. Among his latest book is, aptly title "Who Rules the World"? Noam Chomsky says that the Republican party is the most dangerous organization in world history, probably because of its ability to control the behavior of the most powerful nation in history, and its tendency to control the U.S. in a manner antithetical to not only the rest of the world, but to almost all of its own citizens. He goes further. he refers to the G.O.P. as the most deadly terrorists organization in the world. Foreign wars of aggression, justified by fake claims of defending freedom and democracy but really in pursuit of foreign resources, mainly oil, instigated by deceit and immoral diplomacy, contribute to this assessment. For decades he has pointed out that the desperate poverty with which much of Latin America is afflicted derives directly from deliberate American foreign policy, based on the false assumption that America knows best, and that making the world safe for American corporate exploitation and economic domination serves not only America's interests, but everyone else's as well. American foreign policy architects, and American corporate policy makers of course know full well that only the wealthy owners of American corporations benefit, or are intended to benefit from U.S. foreign policy. The reality is one thing, the propaganda is another. Every country from which the massive flow if immigrants is currently coming to the southern border has been made poor by American corporate exploitation. The usual scenario is that a small Central American country duly elects a socialist president, who pledges to redistribute land and wealth equally among the poor, the United States objects, then overthrows the socialist government and replaces it with a dictator who favors corporate capitalism and enriches himself by turning over land and other resources to American corporations for their profit, at the expense of the newly impoverished masses, who then head north. Every claim made by Chomsky he footnotes, give full attribution, backs up with facts. Anyone wishing to do so can research what he says, and confirm it. Chomsky currently claims that Donald Trump and his devout followers are criminally insane. he cites the constant, blatant lying, and its acceptance by those who support him. he goes into greater detail about Trump and his supporters, sticking with his charge of criminal insanity and supporting it with facts. it is easy to use the internet to listen to Chomsky's lectures, to read what he writes, and to research the factual basis for his statements. Just as everyone is to some degree physically ill, with small physical ailments of one kind or another almost constantly. In essence, we are all a bit crazy. Its reflected in and manifested by our thoughts and actions. Fifteen percent of the Republican party denies the reality of human made climate change. That's a good start. Anyone who believes that he or she knows more about the earth's atmospheric conditions than people who spend their lives and accumulate advanced degrees studying such matters, and believes that the fact that the hundreds of thousands of such people, trained professional scientists, who all tell us the same thing, are wrong, are, arguably, a tad shy of a full deck, if not criminally insane. Bear in mind that for twenty years the U.S. Department of Defense has warned us that human made climate change is the greatest threat to American national security, based on simple science and by simply looking around at the climate. What, other than a criminally insane traitor to the United States is a person, who denies reality for the mere sake of self esteem and defense of personal political ideology? That seems to be the point Chomsky is making. But again, anyone can see for himself, or herself.

Disappointing

"WHAT A PIECE OF WORK is man, how noble in reason"..begins a wonderful monologue by Hamlet. For an uplifting experience, read its entirety. It will give your admiration of mankind a boost. Hamlet is also the person who asked himself "to be or not to be?". He at once comprehended the miraculous beauty of life, and yet, seriously considered snuffing out his own. "Noble be man, compassionate, and good", said Goethe, who is widely regarded as surpassing even Shakespeare in literary brilliance. It is comforting to know that the two greatest writers in the English language, arguably, were both capable of harboring a positive attitude towards humanity, although both lived through turbulent times. But, don't we all? At other times, in other books, both writers expressed disenchantment with humanity. For me, the tendency is, the older I get, the more the contempt in which I hold the human species, excepting, of course, myself. I adore myself. When I was twenty, in 1975, I recall telling one of my friends that I liked somebody, and he responded "hell, you like everybody". Back then, in fact, I did. That seems like a long time ago. Then again, it doesn't. Now I tell myself repeatedly that I don't like anybody, that I prefer cats and dogs to humans, and that I have only contempt for humanity. I think I mean all of it. Simultaneously, I feel that I truly appreciate the wondrous beauty of the human species, the pricelessness of people, and the awe inspiring beauty and complexity of all life, and nature. I conclude that I love my fellow humans, but that I love them far more if I keep some distance between them and me. A college student wrote a letter to Einstein, telling the famous scientist that life was a disappointment, and that he often wondered why he even bothered to live. Einstein, a modern American celebrity, hated his celebrity status but answered many of the hundreds of letters he received. He replied to the young man that he personally found his life to be immensely interesting and very much worthwhile, and believed that everyone, with a little introspection, could find value and meaning. The most famous picture of Einstein has him sitting behind a desk in his study, wearing a grey sweat shirt, with a pen clipped onto it, and looking up at the camera with his head angled downward, a somber expression on his aged face. He had just answered an interviewers question by saying that as long as there are people, there will be war. In 1975, a friend told me that within fifty years, only a handful of Beatles songs would be remembered. Time is running out. He was wrong. My prediction was that someday everyone would have a flat screen on every wall in the house, which would serve as a television, a computer, and a picture telephone. I don't recall whether I had my computer spitting out cardboard cards. I night have, I hope not. My prediction of forty four years ago wasn't half bad, excepting that I never imagined portable pocket telephone computers. Neither did anybody else, with the exception of the guy who watched Star Trek, got jealous of Spock to Kirk, and invented the cell phone. I think his name was Smith, and he died a few years ago. Most of my childhood fantasies about the future were extremely optimistic. In the nineteen sixties, and on into the nineteen seventies, I believed that I would live long enough to visit a lunar base, and a Martian base. Now, it seems as if nobody will live to visit either. Back then, we were in love with space travel. I also figured that all of humanity's problems would be solved by science. In 1969, in ninth grade, Paul Ehrlich brought me down a bit with his "The Population Bomb", which, fortunately, didn't come true. He's still on campus at Berkeley, and he's glad about the agricultural revolution which made a liar out of him. The lesson is; human beings are very poor at predicting the future. The United States is the nineteenth happiest country in the world, and slipping. I saw a post thanking Trump for that, but it isn't his fault. Its ours. America is an angry, disappointed culture. The young are disenchanted with the world they are inheriting, old folks like me still want to visit Mars and live in a world devoid of disease, hunger, and especially warfare, as we expected to someday do when we were children. This truth is eternal: the choice is ours as to whether we find life disappointing.

Reading the Bible, Literally

THE NEW COOK at the senior where I volunteer is a pleasant young lady, and I am glad they fired the three truculent employees, and replaced one of them with her. when they replace the other two, I can go home less exhausted. The new lady is thirty six, a millennial, half of whom do not identify with any religion. She does. She didn't show much interest in my background, but for some reason I want people to know that I work in the kitchen because I want to, not because I have to. As retired college instructor, I've made my money. Without conversation a kitchen van become dreary drudgery, so I told her the story about the time I lost my high school teaching job because I told a class that Thomas Jefferson was, in effect, an atheist. I love that story. The principle called me in, asked why i was telling teenagers in a small southern town such a thing, and I invited him to take a wild guess. For Jefferson, as for many men of science, the term "god" is interchangeable with the terms "nature", and hence, from the Biblical Christian perspective, he was an atheist, a non believer. I asked the new help if she was disappointed. I don't recall what she said, but she made one fact perfectly clear: people who do not accept Jesus as their lord and savior in this lifetime, people who do not accept the truth of the Biblical doctrine of god's judgment, when such people die, then, they most certainly will. I remarked off hand that I feel the same way, that I can hardly wait for the time to arrive when everyone accepts my religiosity as universal truth, and drops the primitive religions crap. I mentioned that in 1797 congress passes, unanimously, a law prohibiting the United States from being a "Christian" nation, the law intended to support the first amendment. I mentioned that the Bible says that the world is flat, and she told me I might have to show her that in the good book. I don't think I'll bother. I can read her Isiah twelve all day long, about "the four corners of the earth", and she would point out that the term "flat earth" does not appear. No, it doesn't, but only a flat , non circular surface has "corners", and, if the Bible is the literal word of God, then, corners means corners. The quite devout do not believe in evolution, in they do not believe in God's word as the literal truth when it reveals god to be a liar, or ignorant of planetary geometry and geography. they believe that if humans descended from monkeys, there would be no monkeys on earth now. they think themselves clever for this formulation. I must refrain from telling her that neither Darwin, nor any evolutionary biologist since ever said than humans evolved from monkeys. they said, and still say, that humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor, an animal which in fact no longer exists, which, in a limited sort of way, justifies their belief that monkeys do not or should not exist in an evolutionary paradigm. The Christian resisted accepting the sun as the body around which the earth revolves, and now it resists evolution an climate change, just as it has always tried to deny scientific fact. But four corners are four corners, and that can only happen on a flat square four sided surface, which, by the way, according to the bible rests upon four pillars. As for the stars themselves, they are either pin pricks in the dome of heaven through which God takes peaks at us from heaven, or shiny trinkets hanging from the dome which will, when the Lord returns, fall from the sky and smash to pieced upon the ground like glass ornaments, depending on which book, chapter and verse you happen to quote.

Trusting the System

SOMETIMES, DESPITE ALL ODDS, despite all politically motivated attempts to the contrary, the American judicial system actually works, actually works to render equal justice under law. America's politically conservative political community, most notably the elected legislators thereof, has for decades been bound and determined to pack the nation's judicial system with extreme right wing judges, as if doing so has anything to do with dispensing justice, with achieving a truly just system of justice. There has been no such effort from the progressive community, which has demonstrated a willingness and even a preference for appointing politically neutral or moderate magistrates. Why conservatives consider it so important to have a system of justice which reflects politically conservative values rather than one which dispassionately executes its responsibilities with logic, reason, and fairness is debatable; it would seem, in any event, that ideology is more important to conservatives than objectivity. But there seems little reason for concern. When the chips are down, when justice is on the line, often conservative leaning judges disappoint their conservative appointers by handing down decisions contrary to conservative values. Two decisions of the current Supreme Court come to mind. The high court, with conservative justice John Roberts as chief justice, upheld Obamacare, and then, in an even more disappointing decision for social conservatives, legalized gay marriage. In both cases, the court placed constitutional considerations above their personal values. It is highly likely that the conservative judges who voted to legalize gay marriage do not personally approve of it for religious reasons, and yet saw the importance of interpreting the constitution fairly, in a manner which seems consistent with its wording. When Donald Trump issued an executive order restoring off shore drilling, a federal stepped in, and declared his action illegal, despite the wishes of most hard core capitalistic conservatives. Similarly, Trump's prohibition against Muslims entering the country has been severely limited by federal court action. this has not met with the approval of the conservative community, which tends to be suspicious of all Muslims, as possibly harboring terrorists. In Wisconsin, when a Democrat was elected to the governorship, replacing a Republican, the Republican majority state legislature promptly passed laws severely limiting the new governor's authority, in what appeared to be a purely partisan effort to cripple the new governor's powers before he even took office. The federal court system stepped in, and blocked the dubious move. And within the past few days, the ninth circuit federal court, notorious for its liberal minded judges, stopped Trump's plan to keep refugees from crossing into the United states. We must have faith in our judicial system, because we must have faith that our system of laws is adequate to maintain a well ordered, stable society. The more we politicize the judiciary by seeking to place on the bench judges of one political persuasion or another, no matter what the particulars, the more we are disregarding the prime purpose of any system of justice, and poisoning it with political prejudice. Whenever a court noted for its conservative justices make a ruling contrary to ostensible conservativism, or a court known for its progressive minded judges makes a decision contrary to liberal values, it is cause for a renewal of confidence, confidence in our ability as reasoning human beings to rise above our personal prejudices, and to elevate ourselves to the level of true fairness and reason, because, as a wise man once said, law is an ornate platform elevating the human species above the rest of the animal kingdom.

Hiding An Empire; America's Unawareness Of Itself

THE UNITED STATES is neither a democracy, nor a republic, but rather, a plutocratic empire, owned and operated by and for the wealthy corporate elite. Just so you know. It was intended by its founders to be a plutocratic republic, a system in which the people in general were largely excluded from power, and would be governed by their superiors, the wealthy elite. That plan ganged agley as early as 1763, before it was ever implemented, when people like Daniel Boone began defying the Ordinance of 1763 and headed west, beyond the Appalachians and British control. I recall several years ago when the conservative members of an online class of '73 discussion group, in the midst of a discussion on America's role in the modern world, insisted that the United States is not an empire, never has been, nor ever shall be. Lacking the fortitude to engage in an explanation of westward expansion, overseas expansion, Hawaii, Alaska, Samoa, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and any possible argument over whether eight hundred and some odd American military bases scattered all over the world constitutes an "empire", I left the group, and struck out on my own, a sort of online version of Daniel Boone. There are two traditional explanations for America's unplanned but now seemingly inevitable expansion across North America to the pacific, and beyond. The more traditional is Frederick Jackson Turner's "frontier thesis", according to which geographical expansion is inherent in the American opportunistic character. The other, an amended version, holds that westward expansion has been the safety value by which open warfare between America's two classes, the rich, and the poor, has been postponed, to date. The Spanish American War is the accepted date of the commencement of the true U.S. empire, when overseas possessions were stolen after a trumped up war versus Spain. For a few short years maps depicted the United States as the continent from Atlantic to the Pacific, and included little boxes on the lower right hand side of the page, in which were located its newly stolen oversees possessions, including the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the rest. Then, the maps stopped including the imperial possessions in boxes, and went back to depicting only the mainland, plus Alaska and Hawaii, and have largely remained so, ever since. For a few short years, during the McKinley and Roosevelt administration, Americans were proud to be an empire, and then, the thrill faded, faded into eventual denial. Why? Why did we become ashamed of our empire? Was it the dubious manner in which it was obtained? Partly. Was it the fact that we haven't treated it very well? Consider Puerto Rico, today, in real time. The island was hit by a devastating hurricane, and human infrastructure was mostly wiped off the map. Aid to Puerto Rico has been like pulling teeth; difficult to send, difficult to apply. The president has often talked about the island as if it were not part of the United States, as if he is totally unaware that its people are American citizens, as if they are foreigners. When he visited there several months ago, he stayed for a few minutes, saw very little, and underestimated the death toll by a factor of a few thousand. He, and we have resisted sending the massive assistance required to the extent that Puerto Ricans spent months without electricity and shelter. "How To Hide An empire" by Daniel Immerwahr, is perhaps the best history yet written of the evolution from American republic to American empire, and the curious manner in which the American people celebrated the glory of their newly acquired and declared imperial majesty for a few short years very early in the last century, then basically forgot all about it. Racism plays a part. Most of America's overseas subjects were non white non Christian, and after killing millions of Philippinos trying to force cultural conformity to American values, the islands were set free in 1946. Most Americans do not realize that people in Puerto Rico are in fact citizens of the United States. We are ashamed of our empire, and thus we hide it from ourselves. We do this to the point that if you mention the term "American empire" to a group of conservatives, they are likely to look at you as if you are crazy, when in fact, they are.

Plumbing The Secrets of Trump's Hugely Complicated Tax Returns

MUCH ADO is once again being made about Donald Trump's tax returns, because it has been a tradition since the nineteen seventies that all presidential candidates release them to the public, and the Democrats, now in control of one half of Congress, are determined to uphold tradition. The tradition began when the full extent of Richard Nixon's white collar treachery was revealed to the public, and ensuing seekers of the Executive Office decided to become a bit more forthcoming, as a precaution against the then gathering public mistrust of politicians and their promises, which remains with us today. Wherever the Republicans hold sway, there is no such interest in transparent tradition. Trump's fellow grand old partiers are evidently quite content to take the president's famously reliable word for it, that there is nothing of interest to be seen in his taxes, that they are currently under audit and therefore unavailable, and that they are so terribly complicated due to his enormous wealth and far flung investments and extensive charitable donations that nobody in the world except himself and a few select windmill cancer research scientists have the necessary intellectual skills to comprehend them, even if they were laid open for scrutiny for all the world. The unwashed masses, it would seem, lack the ability to even remotely comprehend the taxes of Donald Trump. Consider yourself a member of this benighted super majority. Precisely how the president's taxes can at once be so enormously complicated yet hold nothing unusual nor of interest has not been explained. What is certain, however, is that there is nothing about being under audit, in the law or anywhere else, which prevents someone's, anyone's personal taxes from being disclosed to whomever the taxee so designates. In 2014, a similarly taxalogically reticent Trump insisted that in the highly unlikely event that he were ever to run for president, his tax returns would be immediately forthcoming. Then, when he decided to actually make a go of it, he promised that shortly after his election, he would come forth with the concealed document. Then, when he indeed was elected, he postponed the grand disclosure until after the inauguration. Do we detect a pattern here? Well, of course, all the promised disclosure due dates came and went, with no tax returns. now we have arrived where we now stand; the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives is demanding to see the damned thing, and will soon vote to do exactly that, and the president has hired a formidable team of tax attorneys to resist the assault, much like the folks at the Alamo sent out urgent requests for assistance shortly before the Mexican army launched its final assault. The difference is that that tax lawyers willing to take Donald Trump's money are far more available than either willing, ready, and able Alamo defenders, and far more reliable than nineteenth century Mexican military conscripts. In 1924, in the wake of the infamous "Teapot" Dome' scandal, in which members of President Warren G. Harding's cabinet were taking bribes for favors in connection with oil drilling rights out west, Congress passed a law which clearly stipulated than Congress may, at any time, issue a subpoena requiring any American citizen's tax returns to be divulged for Congressional scrutiny. The law includes a provision requiring Congress to have a clear and present and specific reason for the subpoena, which is the part that Trump's lawyers, demonstrably highly competently bull doggish, are going to use in their defense against disclosure. We may never know why this president is so determined that his income tax returns shall never see the light of day, because the litigation over their erstwhile disclosure may continue until not only Trump and the rest of us are long dead, it may continue until all life on Earth is made extinct as a consequence of climate change, the greatest threat to American national security according to the Department of Defense, and which Donald Trump has never even made any false pretensions to fight. Maybe Trump is far less wealthy than he has always bragged about being, or maybe his returns would shed light on a few nefarious financial dealings upon which Trump would much rather shed none. And since Donald Trump never does what he says he is going to do, we can be well assured than when he doesn't even claim that he will do something, like delay the destruction of the environment, it will never, ever get done.

Feeling The Wonders Of God's Word

THE FACEBOOK POST was from a friend of mine and his wife, a high school classmate who became a diabetes doctor. Nice post. It has a depiction of a pair of hands, feminine, holding an opened book, which appears to be a Bible, judging from the tightly organized words into the all familiar small square parcel packages lined neatly up and down the page in two columns. The caption said: "May the wonders of The Word of God fill your heart today". You can see why I assume the depicted book was a Bible. Being an inveterate smart ass and trouble maker of the pseudo intellectual kind, I had to chime in. I commented: The wonders of the one hundred and thirty seventh psalm". And then, a few minutes later, filled with blood lust, I came back for a second strike, much like the Zeros at Pearl harbor. "The wonders of Mathew chapter fifteen verse four" I typed. Yes, I will return yet again to the scene of the crime, like any amateurish common petty criminal, but not to do more harm. God willing, the creek don't rise, and if I can control my evil impulses, I will not strike again. Haven't I already done enough damage to someone else's good intentions? I will return to see how they are cleaning up the mess I made, how they are responding, if at all. They are a lively pair; I can expect retaliation. They are a smart pair of wise and mature well educated people, I might expect to be ignored, which would serve me right. But if they choose to retaliate, and to show anger in so doing, it may start a war, because I actually had, and have, a point to make. For anyone wanting to know what that point is, simply consult the scriptural passages I cited. The Psalm, if memory serves, says something about smashing a baby's brains out against a boulder. The verse in Mathew has Jesus admonishing that whoever curses the father and the mother must be given the death. The Psalm is recited after one of the many destructions and diasporas of God's chosen people, and their lamenting and anger and despair resulting therefrom, and their desire for revenge against the enemy's infants. Righteous retribution against the most innocent. In the Mathew verse, Jesus is merely reiterating what we are told in Leviticus I believe it is; that children must honer and obey their parents, under penalty of death. My point is best made by Mark Twain, the noted author, stand up comic, and atheist, who said: "The Bible contains come noble poetry, clever fables, a great amount of obscenity, and no fewer than one thousand outright lies." Or something like that. A few facts about the Bible. For one, mark Twain was right. So was Thomas Paine, the founding father of America who wrote "Common Sense", which motivated the colonists to start the revolutionary was, and then later wrote "The Age of Reason", a withering attack on the Bible in particular and the Christian religion in general. Paine said that the Bible contains so much obscenity, violence, and obscenity that for him it was much more the word of a demon than of a benevolent deity. Both of Paine's famous pamphlets are must reads for students of history. Paine went from being a hero of American independence to being an outcast whose funeral was attended by no more than six people, owing to his atheism. In America, atheists have historically been treated like outcasts, much like gays, lesbians, transgenders, blacks, and several other non white non male non Christian types we needn't mention here. Another Biblical fact: if God truly intended His Word to be contained in a book, any book, God is an idiot, because there is no worse method known to man and woman. We the children of God do it that way because we don't know any better. God has far better means; just take a look around you, at the universe. The Bible has been translated, edited, plagiarized, added on to, and otherwise altered so many times that it bears little resemblance to its original version, and in fact every century has its own version, ever since its compilation, by people, at the council of Nicea in 325 A.D.. Like Goethe said: "Behold the phenomena, for they are the doctrine". Another Biblical fact; the bible is among the most violent books ever written, and Thomas Paine was right about that. The bible is, and should be treated as nothing other than a valuable compilation of ancient literature and history,the most important book ever written, nothing more, and nothing less. but as for the "Word of God", I'll take a star filled sky, a sunrise, a sunset, a mountain vista, a new born babe, a litter of kittens, electromagnetism, gravity or a million other magnificent manifestations of nature, any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

Diagnosing Trump, and Trying To Help

SOCIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND PSYCHIATRY are all rather new sciences, having been born in modern form only in the nineteenth century, and only now just barely beginning to make some sens of human society and the human mind. we have come far in our understanding, but we have along way to go, and, like Einstein said about the universe: "we don't know one millionth of one percent of anything." Until quite recently it was believed that emotions originated in the heart, and that mental illness was caused by bad morals and demonic possession. now we are taking detailed pictures of the brain, and identifying the function of each part of it. So, we are starting to learn. For obvious reasons, the psychiatric profession, which deals with mental health, has a strict code of conduct for it practitioners; they are treading on unstable ground, even when practicing their craft with extreme caution. with extreme caution. When presidential candidate Barry Goldwater started talking a bit too loosely about the possibility of using atomic weapons against America's enemies in the 1964 presidential campaign, his opponent, Lyndon Johnson, warned the country about Goldwater's gun slinging personality, and the American psychiatric Association issued dire warnings about his personality type and possible mental illness. Aware of potential unintended consequences, such as inadvertently destroying the career of a perfectly healthy, competent person, the psychiatric profession rapidly backtracked, and made it illegal for practicing professional to publicly offer opinions and diagnoses of politicians seeking office. this restriction does not apply to psychology professors and researchers, of whom approximately forty thousand signed a letter shortly after Trump's election warning of his potential mental poor health. now, more than two years into the Trump presidency, the chickens, so to speak, would appear to be coming home to roost. Among mental professionals, there is widespread consensus that the president is not mentally well. This consensus is long standing, but is deepening by the day, as Trump's behavior becomes increasingly erratic and painfully bizarre. Trump has always been paranoid, vengeful against people who fail to do his bidding, dishonest, and narcissistic. When Donald was a young man just starting to branch out on his own in his expansion of his father's real estate empire, Ed Koch, the mayor of new York, commented: "I wouldn't believe a word Donald Trump says if he had his tongue notarized." In the cut throat world do competitive big business, a bit of paranoia, mistrust, and tough minded retaliation can be an advantage; Trump's father, who was born in the Bronx, not Germany,taught this to his ambitious son. Now, however, confronted with the stressful requirements of the presidency, all these neuroses are getting rapidly worse, getting out of control, becoming a toxic, lethal combination of full fledged pathological psychoses. There was a time when Trump's constant lies revealed a pattern. he distorted and destroyed the truth whenever it suited his political agenda. He attacked people who were a very real threat to his personal ambitions. Thus, in his mind, millions of Mexicans were pouring across the border, all intent on rape, pillage, and murder. Hillary Clinton was, in his criminal mind, a criminal, worthy of incarceration. now, there is no rhyme, reason, nor discernible purpose. he seems to actually believe that his father, not his grandfather, was born in Germany. In the past, he claimed to be of Swedish ancestry, to facilitate business transactions with the Jewish community in New York. And then, suddenly, there's the windmill cancer thing. This is the most bizarre manifestation of delusion yet. There was a time when Trump was able to use half way reasonable sounding, if transparent lies to attack sensible, progressive policy proposals. Now, this pathological claim. Everyone is making fun of it, perhaps cruelly. His supporters are, as usual, ignoring it. This brings to mind an even greater threat to American social stability: the bizarre behavior of Trump's millions of supporters, their evident refusal to acknowledge and accept the reality of any of this. Like Trump, they seem intent on stubbornly continuing their refusal to believe in man made climate change, despite the overwhelming proof which basic science has long been providing. Climate change, like Trump's mental illness, is beyond obvious; it is a great white elephant in the room, one of many. Mental health professionals tell us that mental illness can be and often is contagious; it often spreads to and afflicts family members and friends. And that appears to be precisely what it happening among millions of Trump supporters, as they retreat into a state of denial. Renowned scholar and social observer Noam Chomsky calls Trump and his inner circle "criminally insane". Chomsky's flaw is that he fails to tell the entire truth. the entire truth, tragically, is that there are millions of mentally ill Americans, just as there are millions of physically ill Americans. the mentally ill have all congregated conveniently, and made themselves easy to identify; they are the one in the red MAGA caps.

Teachers Teaching People How To Hire People

WHEN I ENTERED THE ROOM in cyberspace, the argument had already started. The retired teacher, a progressive and the wife of one of my high school classmates from 1973, was obviously upset. I read her comment which said: "I don't understand why teachers get to deduct only two hundred and fifty dollars in expenses for school supplies from their income tax each year, while corporate executives get to deduct from their taxes the expense of an entire corporate jet." She was using capital letters, yell typing, a sure sign of anger. Her adversary, another high school classmate of mine, one I never liked, and considered a moron forty six years ago and do to this day, made a smug, dismissive reply: "Businesses hire people. Teachers don't." I just had to jump in. I typed: "Teachers teach people how to hire people." And that was the last of the conversation. Nobody said another word. I never figured out whether my comment was so profound that it rendered all further discussion useless, which I preferred to believe, or whether the other participants suddenly got phone calls, and never came back. In American culture, there is no definitive argument, because there is no one willing to concede an argument, under any circumstances, no matter how strong the evidence presented. We are a nation in which everyone is always correct, and nobody ever stands corrected. I assume that my conservative moronic classmate had no idea what I was talking about, and assumed that I, whom he knows to be a liberal, was insanely ranting liberal lies. Perhaps had I gotten the chance to explain to him that hiring people requires literacy and social skills, both learned in school, and that one can never hope to become a business executive without the direct assistance of teachers, he would have grudgingly understood. More likely, he would have had some inane response, right wing style. Maybe he would have said that without business revenue, public education would be impossible. Hell, who knows? Of course, public education is socialism, and paid for by taxes on capitalistic private property. Was my pro corporate jet classmate trying to say that tax deductions are given for private jets in order to allow businesses to take the money thus saved and invest it in hiring more people? Really? As if that is automatically what they will do with it? How does he know? He doesn't. Similarly, when large corporations get tax reductions, like the big one given to them by Trump and the Republicans last year, supposedly, the reduction from thirty five percent to twenty one percent will enable them to hire more workers. But saving money by paying lower taxes is not why businesses hire more people. The reason why businesses hire more people, the one and only, eternally true reason, is an increase in the amount of business they do, an increase in the demand for the goods or services they provide, necessitating the hiring of more workers to produce and provide said goods or services. That's it. If a business has more customers, the business must of necessity hire more workers to produce what the customers want to buy. Hell, if you own a business, and you save money by suddenly paying lower taxes, you can do whatever you want with the money saved, anything from raising salaries for workers, raising salaries for executives, paying out dividends for shareholders, or reinvesting the money back into the business. Research has been done on this, asking the question; how do business most generally use money saved by tax reductions? The answer, it turns out, is not surprising. Tax savings, overwhelmingly, go towards increased executive salaries and bonuses for the top executives, or go to the major share holders, in the form of dividends. Workers do not get hired, money is not reinvested into the business in the form of equipment purchases, or upgrades to existing systems and buildings, upgrades to physical facilities. And, most unsurprising of all, the money which corporations save from tax reductions almost never goes to increasing worker's salaries, or to charitable donations, animal shelters, anti-poverty programs, or contributions to houses of worship. Whether business hire people has nothing to do with whether they pay for their own corporate jets, and everything to do with demand, supply, and necessity. Maybe my pro private jet friend would have learned that in school, if his teachers had been paid better, or had been able to afford more school supplies.

Ignoring Threats, the MAGA Trump Way

WHEN THE ORIGINAL WORLD TRADE CENTER came a tumblin' down, in what we blithely refer to as "nine eleven", the United States revealed its sudden paranoia by establishing the "Department of Homeland Security", implying that our military was not up to the task. Bin laden and friends were a bit too sneaky for us, and required special bureaucratic attention. Bin Laden had a valid complaint, and we all knew it, but pretended, and still pretend otherwise. When a military superpower sends its military halfway around the world, half a million strong, attacks, invades, conquers, occupies, and destroys an Arab country, more than a few Arabs are going, quite simply, to be angry, just as you or anyone else would be in their place. Condemn Bin Laden's methods, but not his motive. Terrorism, generically, was thus recognized and established as the enemy of America, aside from the fact that much of America's foreign policy can be and often is described in similar terms. It was eventually, with reluctance, conceded that there are more forms of terrorism in heaven and Earth than are dreampt of in our biases, above and beyond the radical Islamic kind. Of particular prominence is the white supremacist sort, invariably waged by devout, right wing fundamentalist Christian extremists. The Oklahoma City Federal Building comes to mind, among many other examples which need no mention here. During the Trump administration, hate crimes in general, and white supremacist terroristic mass murder in particular have proliferated, and, in many if not most cases, the mass murderers have given Donald Trump credit, immediately before acting out, for having inspired them. Unwittingly or otherwise, Donald Trump seems to have become something of a role model and inspiration for those intent on killing as many non white non Christian people as possible, in defense of what the mass murderers, as well as many white conservative Christians, perceive as their religious ethnicity under assault by non Christian people of color. Trump supporters vehemently deny this, not surprisingly. Trump supporters deny much, most of it undeniable. It can be convincingly argued, however, that when a person who is preparing to kill many people cites a particular person as his inspiration for the killings, then proceeds to carry out the killings, that the killer has proven his point, has very convincingly backed up his attribution of inspiration, has proved his credibility, and deserves to be believed. Who are we to doubt that someone who kills twenty to fifty people was inspired by the person he says inspired him? Only Trump himself, the Inspiration-In-Chief, and his supporters. There is more proof. President Donald Trump has officially disbanded, eliminated, the department within the Department of Homeland Security which deals with white supremacist terrorism, almost as if it is unnecessary, almost as if there is no white supremacist terroristic mass murder occurring with alarming frequency. What better way to prove that a government response to white supremacist mass murder is unnecessary, that white supremacist mass killings are not a problem and do not exist, than by eliminating the agency responsible for mounting a government response to resist and eliminate them? With but a single stroke of Trump's pen, white supremacy killers are no longer a problem in America. How convenient for Trump, and his far right white Christian extremist supporters. It is a fact that a very high percentage of all terrorism in the United States over the past few decades has been carried out by white supremacists, and that hardly any terrorism has been carried out by radical Islamic terrorists. To verify this, consult the FBI. They keep close track of such things. Or, for that matter, consult the department of Homeland Security, what's left of it, any division. Climate change does not exist, says Trump, and neither does white supremacist terrorism, notwithstanding the hundreds of dead victims of it scattered across America's homeland, and reaching as far as new Zealand. If you didn't know better, you would almost expect Trump's next move to be the elimination Obamacare, Medicare, and Medicaid by executive order, and his declaring that health problems do not exist, and are nothing but fake news, a left wing conspiracy of the mainstream media, the Democratic party, the deep state, and the Chinese, whose purpose is to destroy the Christian faith, the American way, and to prevent Trump and his MAGA members from making America great, again.

Saving Stray Cats, And Loving Them For Life

THE FACEBOOK CAT CLUB question of the day was: "If you saw a pregnant cat by the side of the road, would you stop and pick her up, and take her home, and take care of her and her kittens, forever and a day? Or something to that effect. It didn't offer specifics, such as, are we talking about a remote stretch of road, a major highway, or an urban environment, and does the cat have a collar on, or what not. People, as always, chimed in. Overwhelmingly, the consensus was that yes, I most certainly would, in a heartbeat. After all, these are hard core cat people. I know the type, being one of them. I chimed right on in, eagerly asserting my good intentions, my willingness to saddle myself for the rest of my adult life. After all, I have already done exactly that, twice, have adopted two mothers and their litters, all seven of whom cats now reside comfortably in my garage, even as we speak. They're adorable. I recommend it. One kill joy had the temerity and percipience to point out that the pregnant lady was quite likely to run from anyone getting out of a car on a highway; we remained silent. Why spoil the hypothetical fun? Trying to warm things up a bit, I congratulated all the would be saviors for their compassion, when, suddenly but not surprisingly, some trouble maker blurted out that just because not everyone answered the question "yes", they still care. Brilliantly, I returned that I never said they didn't. She just had to win the argument, so was willing to contradict herself to do it: "I never said they did". I knew it was time to leave the room. I parted with "yes you did, see above". By now, she may have figured it out, asuming she went back, reread her own words, and gave it a moment's thought. Cat conversation can stimulate as much spontaneously camaraderie as bitch sessions about the weather, and are far more interesting. Then too, they can lead into dark places. I shall never forget the time I was praising Islamic culture at the senior center, for their love of cats, and its compassionate treatment of all stray cats. Cats were beloved by the Prophet. He gave a cat credit for saving his life by killing a snake, and in the Quran, cats are mentioned with affection, and, unlike dogs, may enter the home. Cats in Islam are considered clean and communal. Everyone is responsible for the care and well being of all cats. They roam the streets of all Islamic cities, beloved. if you dare harm one, its curtains for you. I really love and admire that. The folks at the senior center saw fit to chastise me for making favorable remarks about the infidel. Beloved Pentecostals, I was merely talking about cats. the beautiful white female who came into my yard looked hungry, so I fed her. and again. She settled in, then, one day, brought her litter over, and showed them to me. Four cuties. One one survived. then came her sister, another white beauty. same scenario. First, wrap the old man around my pretty paw, then, bring forth the litter. This time, all four survived, and I help nurture them to young adulthood, their current state. the two mothers and five children now let me touch them, and I see years of happiness straight ahead. The expense of having all seven spayed, neutered, and vaccinated cost me my retirement savings, but hell, who wants to live forever? these two white sisters were born in the big yard across the street, as were their litters, so they often cross the street, perhaps seeking their roots. i wish they wouldn't do that, but at least its a quite, suburban street. The offspring of feral mothers, I discovered, begin life feral, in imitation, and I am still conquering this with slow but steady love. its going to work out. they swarm at my feet when I bring forth the feast, and I can now bend over and stroke all seven on their sweet backs, with impunity. they don't even start anymore, and are comfortable with me, and the electric blanket and heated kitten beds I provided. And boy, do they ever eat well. Left over chicken and beef from the senior augment of healthy cat food. they even enjoy the occasional meatloaf snack, but I am careful not to give them too much of a not cat human thing. They aint going nowhere, and, it turns out, neither am I. So much for my retirement plans of leisure and travel. I have babies to care for. Europe'll have to wait, maybe for another lifetime. At least I have my precious babies.

Keeping The Electoral College, Or Not

THE OFT MALIGNED electoral colleges has been much more maligned than usual since the election which elevated Donald J. Trump to the presidency only because of it. The modern maligning has been and still is, understandably and unsurprisingly, precipitated largely by sore loser liberals. Conservatives and Trump supporters, also understandably, either support the institution or are silent on the matter. They are currently quite content with the peculiar institution, dating back to the election of 2000, when George Bush the second was elected because of the electoral college, the Supreme court, or both, take your pick. Strictly vote countingly numerically, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton should both have become president, had the popular will prevailed, which in America it seldom does. We are a Republic, not a democracy, just the way the framers intended. We are a nation made by Madison wherein we the common masses are duly represented and governed by our elite wealthy superiors, again according to plan, for our own good. In Madison's day our elite wealthy superiors consisted of the landed white male gentry. Today, we allow the corporate oligarchy to do the heavy lifting on our alleged behalf. Madison, never one to trust the less socially prominent, doubtless would have approved of our present day penchant for corporate governmental oligarchy translated into government, and its insistence on supplanting democracy, which requires economic equality to function properly. hence, the world has never actually known a democracy, but only an ameliorated form of it, of one type or another. The electoral college places yet another buffer between the people and political power by giving elected legislators one final chance to overturn the popular vote, just in case they happen to elect an unacceptable demagogue. Since we recently did the demagogue thing, and since the electoral college and not the people chose said unacceptable demagogue, the electoral college may be said to have done the exact opposite of its intended purpose, an argument in favor of throwing it out. Madison stood five foot four, dressed in all black attire, especially on Sundays, and was unaffectionately known as "Little Jemmy". He was a serious man, and place us in categories. In his arbitrary bifurcation of the body politic there ware "the better sort" and "the lesser sort". The well to do, and everybody else. And so it remains today, less formally attired, yet, quite extant. We Americans are a conservative people by nature. Who are we to buck tradition? Hell, we can barely stand even the thought of improving the constitution, let alone are basic electoral system, or, perish the thought, our purposefully unequal social, political, and economic system. Scrapping the creaky, outdated old constitution and replacing it with a new and improved version, suitable for our times and circumstances, as both Madison and Jefferson envisioned, seems quite beyond the realm of possibility. Most likely we are stuck with the antiquated, aristocratic electoral college, at least for the foreseeable future. There has long been, and still is, a false rumor afloat that the college of electors somehow levels the playing field for the small states, giving them equal representation. Even a cursory examination of the math reveals that quite the opposite is true. Under the current system, Wyoming gets three electoral votes, and California gets many multiples of ten as many. how does this achieve small state large state parity? By going to a one vote per person paradigm, and leaving it at that, and simply adding up all the votes, one has the same electoral impact, whether one lives in Wyoming or California. but in the United States of america, equality is the very last thing on our minds.

An Idiot's Guide To Respecting Evangelical Trump Supporters

IT WAS TOO WINDY to stack BBs, so, I began pondering idly, day dreaming, always a dangerous pursuit for me. I betook myself to seeking an answer to the question: Precisely, what, if anything, would it require for me to respect Trump supporters, to gain some modicum of respect for the evangelical Christian community, which comprises, amazingly, the lion's share of the base of Trump support? At length, after much rumination, I arrived at an answer. A trump supporter, in particular an evangelical Trump supporter, to gain my respect, would have to say something like: "I fully realize how horribly degraded Trump's personal behavior is. I get it about all the women, all the lies, the vicious slanderous attacks on people who have the audacity to merely disagree or displease him, the greed, the narcissism, the lust for attention at any price... I get that part. However, I support him, with many reservations, because he pursues an agenda containing certain basic tenets with which I agree, and, after all, he was the strongest vote getter in the Republican primaries, and thank God he defeated Hillary Clinton, who would have had us, forced by the government, to render unto Caesar and give unto the poor, and only Christ has the authority to do that. Trump cut taxes on the wealthy, which I agree with, because I believe the wealthy deserve a break, they already pay more taxes than their fair share, and if they are going to sell whatsoever they hast, and give unto the poor, it should be Jesus instructing them to do so, not the government. Trump does not believe in climate change, and therefore does nothing to help fight it, and I agree with this policy, because it really doesn't matter whether climate change is real; if God Almighty wants the climate to change, He will change it, and if He does not, He will not allow it. I support Trump's wall. I believe we must keep the immigrants out. If we are to welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, and care for everyone, we should do so because Jesus commands it, not because the United States government does. We should do so voluntarily, from following Christ, not from government coercion. Before we can take care of anyone else, we must take care of our own; surely the Lord mandates this. Cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will only make us stronger, more self sufficient, and my Christian conservative upbringing tells me that this is the proper way to behave, each one of us being strong, and taking care of ourselves. Trump may in fact be a womanizing, lying, profane man who insults many people, but the people he insults deserve it, and the things he is doing will make America great again, if they already haven't, and in fact might well already have. I forgive Trump his sins, and I embrace his agenda as being far more Christian that what we would have had from that goodie two shoes Hillary Rodham Clinton, what with her high taxes, redistribution of wealth, and environmental protection socialist non Christian agenda"......Obviously, I'm reaching here, bigly. The reasoning just presented above, while quite possibly a roughly accurate portrayal of what the evangelical Trump supporters believe, is insane, but its very insanity is precisely why it is probably a fair approximation of the aforementioned evangelical ideological insanity described above. Obviously Trump is the opposite of Jesus, and should be despised and rejected by all true Christians, who love him only because he is conservative, like they are. That they embrace him fully exposes their evil and their hypocrisy. And obviously, whatever Jesus taught, and we know pretty well what he taught, to reflect that teaching with American government action is good, not bad. When analyzing the reasons for Trump support, all Trump support, evangelical or otherwise, insanity is what you are going to get, the best one can hope for. But at least, at least it would be refreshing if even a single one among the insane minority would simply acknowledge that Trump is a pure, clear reprobate, and then, having done that, move on to the insanity. Thus far I have not found a single one among the insane forty two percent who is willing to even acknowledge, or own up to Trump's debauchery, his vile personality. At least, doing that would be a step in the right direction, a step towards honesty and sanity, but don't look for it, don't hold your breath. Trump supporters, after all, are not known for their nobility of character or soul.

Changing Words

THE TERMS "global warming", and "climate change" are both accurate, and acceptable, but not interchangeable. Global warming refers to the process which causes climate change. It is the cause, and climate change is the effect. The two are closely associated, but not the same. Global warming is far older than climate change, etymologically. The term fist appeared at least as early as 1988, when scientist James Hanson of NASA gave his now famous testimony in Congress, warning that global warming was taking place, describing the causes of it, mainly human industrial activity, and further warning that if left unchecked, it could eventually have serious consequences for the ecosystem, and ultimately, human survival. For many years global warming was the only term widely used. then, at some point after the beginning of the third millennia, the expression "climate change" became widely used, the ways words and expressions do in modern civilization; by someone with influence bringing it into existence, and gradually, through imitation, spreading it far and wide. Climate change replace global warming as the go to term primarily because it was considered more important to actually enumerate the effect, rather than the underlying cause. The change was made, in effect, for the sake of accuracy, as an improvement in descriptive verbiage, as often happens among English speaking people, and presumably, those who speak other languages as well. the transition was not without a backlash. People who insist that there is no such thing as climate change, or that even if there is human activity has nothing to do with it, and therefore it can't be helped, and therefore we shouldn't even try to change it or worry about it, but instead should simply go about our business routinely, as always, as if nothing is happening - these people seized upon the change in terminology as proof that the whole affair is nothing but a hoax. If it were real, they said, then the term "global warming" would be sufficient, and the very fact that a new term has been substituted proves conclusively that those who alleged its existence are fabricating the whole business. that this argument is dubious to the point of being laughable probably never occurs to them, many of whom still make the same argument. A similar transformation has occurred with the terms 'carbon dioxide" and "carbon". the climate change crowd, namely, scientists, used to warn us that humanity, by injecting tons of CO2 into the Earth's atmosphere, was causing global warming, leading to climate change. Then, almost overnight, said scientists started warning us about the effect o carbon on the climate, almost as if oxygen doesn't matter. this, in fact, is exactly the case. oxygen simply does not matter, and actually never has. Indeed carbon is inserted into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide, with two oxygen atoms clinging to every carbon atom to form the CO2 molecule which humans exhale from their bodies and from their factories, but since scientists knew all along that carbon is the culprit, and that oxygen merely an innocent bystander, they dropped the dioxide word from the list, justly exonerating it from all implications of blame. well, once again, out came the unscientifically educate conservatives, in full force. The media, the know nothing egg head know nothing out of touch every tower scientists, and the liberal do gooder socialist redistributors of other people's wealth were at it again, substituting one word for another, playing word games in their evil attempt to use a fabricated emergency to change the political and economic system, to send us all back to the stone age, to confiscate the wealth of the achievers, and redistribute it to the lazy impoverished masses. or, something like that. people who deny the obvious science fact of climate change are so crazy and deluded that trying to explain their point of view makes them seem crazy, which, by the way, they are. the far right climate change denial community is still at it, crazier than ever. Eighty five percent of Republicans belong to it. It is arrogant to believe than human kind has the power to change the climate, they say. Only god can do that. The Lord is coming back son, anyway, they say, so nothing else matters. the climate is always changing anyway, they say, so therefore people can't possibly be impacting it. And the piece de resistance: climate change is happening all over the solar system, on every planet, so it must have some cause, most likely an increase in solar radiation, which has nothing to do with human activity. Each of these arguments, upon cursory examination, is stark raving, crazy. the good news, if there is any, for us all, is" "climate change" is most likely the final version, since it seems completely descriptive an accurate, and will most probably not be supplanted by any new terminology, sparing us from further etymologically inspired uproar.