Santa Isn't Real. Merry F&#k^%g Christmas, Kid.

When I was three, my folks took me to see Santa. They told me he was the real, one-and-only, original Santa (because I asked if he was). When I sat on his lap, I saw a fake beard.

By the time Easter rolled around, all of the childhood lies we tell our kids about the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny (which never really made sense to me why a bunny would run around hiding colored eggs until later on when I realized Christians had stolen most of the pagan festivals for their religious holidays) and so on and so forth had been rationally debunked by my three year-old self. I wasn't that disappointed, do be honest, because the lie hadn't been told often enough. But I did wonder why my parents, who told me to never tell lies and beat me if I did (spanking today is considered beating, right?), would lie to me.

Magical thinking is fine for fantasy and imagination, but it's not so great for a child to be lied to - ESPECIALLY by their parents. Being lied to by your parents undermines parental authority. When is it okay to lie? A child does it most of the time out of fear of punishment for telling the truth. So when will the parents be punished for not telling the truth? The answer is never. When the parents aren't punished for telling lies, it tells the kid that punishment for lying is arbitrary. If some lies are punished and others aren't, it means a kid is more apt to lie in the hope that the telling of the lie won't lead to punishment. Further, the lie is repeated and the older and sadly wiser kid is often told to participate in the lie or get punished for destroying the childhood of others. So when they're told they'll be punished for NOT lying about the existence of non-existent creatures, the message is muddied even more.

But worse than that is the hit to the self esteem of the child. No one likes being the butt of a joke. But being told Santa Claus is real and being misled to believe it is much like a huge practical joke being perpetrated on those least-equipped to discover the truth and who certainly won't be laughing along when they do. That kind of resentment can adversely affect a person in many ways. All for the sake of what? Childhood?

"Sorry, Timmy, the being we told you about and in whom you believed as real for your entire life is, in fact, a myth perpetuated by greedy merchants who want to sell their products so they can make a profit for the year. Welcome to adulthood."

No wonder Lassie kept finding Timmy down a well...

One wonders how many people have trust (and other) issues because their parents - aided and abetted by a mostly willing society - kept them thinking Santa was real for far too long. Now, toss in the rampant consumerism associated with the holiday and you have a recipe for disaster. After all, it's one thing to be told by your parents why you won't be getting the present of your dreams. It's quite another to never know why Santa didn't get you what you wanted. Kids quickly learn that if being good isn't properly rewarded, then there's no real point to it. They grow up to become some pretty obnoxious people.

Another thing to consider, for those of you who are of a religious bend, is to think of the symbology involved here. We have a myriad of God-like symbols out there - most of which involve a white-bearded man. Much like Santa Claus. God separates who's naughty and who's nice. So does Santa Claus. God rewards the good and punishes the bad. And so does the Great Bearded Red One.

The trouble here is that the kid is being told an imaginary creature is real every year. They can even be "seen" (as happened with me) if you go to a mall or department store between Thanksgiving and Christmas. This reenforces the reality of the myth. Television, movies and other media reenforce the myth, bringing in other creatures we're a lot less likely to see in real life like the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. They're on television or in songs and such, but they're NOT REAL.

At the same time, we take our kids to Church and tell them the exact same things about God's existence as we do Santa and the Tooth Fairy. We don't see God in real life until we're dead (at least according to your mythology), but like the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy, He's portrayed in pictures and even movies (He apparently looks like George Burns or Morgan Freemen today) and like Santa, kids are encouraged to talk to Him.

THEN you come along and tell your kid that Santa (who we can supposedly see in real life) is just a guy dressed up in a fat suit and the Easter Bunny (who we can't ever see in real life) and Tooth Fairy (who we also never see in real life) are lies, too. But after all that you tell your kids they're supposed to keep believing a God whose existence is even harder to prove to them.

And you expect your kids to keep believing in your God?

Let's replay that conversation:

Timmy: "Santa isn't real?
You: "I'm sorry, Timmy, no. He's not."
Timmy: "What about the Easter Bunny and tooth fairy?"
You: "They're not real either. It's all just us parents doing it."
Timmy: "What about God?"
You: "Oh, God's real. I believe it so you have to believe it."
Timmy ( upset and wondering where the closest well to jump in is): "But you said the exact same thing about Santa, and the tooth fairy and they're not real. So God must not be real, either."

Kid logic. This is why Timmy's an atheist today and doesn't send Mother's day or Father's day cards.

Here's a little factoid that may or may not be relevant: Back in the 1800's and early 1900's, Santa Claus was not that big of a deal. The giving of gifts during Christmas (and the need to create a mythological figure to do the delivering of said gifts) wasn't popularized until the late 1800's. (Another minor factoid: The celebration of Christmas itself was banned repeatedly in the United States from time to time in several places for various reasons.) Ever since the early part of the 20th century, when Santa rose as a major mythological figure, memberships in many churches have gone into decline. One could say that the Information Age is most responsible for this decline and they'd probably be right. Yet I can't help but wonder how much of that decline is directly due to lying to children about Santa and other unreal creatures. One can't deny that childhood traumas and resentments carry over into adulthood and if you look at the time-line, it may have had more of an impact than people think it would.

Despite the obvious advantages of kids possibly rejecting invisible sky-friend religions due to the lies told to them about childhood figures, I don't advocate lying to your kids. I understand some reasons to lie - after all, they're young and don't understand some things like finances - but tactful, reasonable honesty is always the best answer. If they ask, tell them the truth. If they're mistaken, correct them. Treat their learning about the world with respect, instead of a wink, a grin and a pleasant lie that will always, eventually, blow up in both of your faces.

Everyone Needs To Come Out Of the Closet

This post is a touch different for me. At least based in the last year's blogs I've done, that is. This post is for everyone out there who keeps their peccadilloes bottled up because they think no one else feels the same.

We, as individuals, have been placed in a position where we feel obligated to uphold social expectations because society tells us to. Society tells us kids are the be-all and end-all of existence. Society tells us we're all either right-wingers or liberals. We must believe in a God, because society tells us we must. And above all, we must believe that every American is well above average.

Look, if you agree in whole to maintaining the social illusions foisted on all of us I mentioned, then move along. There's nothing for you in this post.

To living up to all of these expectations, I say, "Bullshit". You don't need to agree with all of these things, but if you agree with the bullshit part to any of them, then great. Sit back and have a good read.

I call upon all persons with a functioning brain and critical thinking skills to denounce these social expectations vocally, loudly and frequently. Come out of the social expectation denouncer closet and defy convention by actually telling the TRUTH about the way you feel.

Hey, if you want to believe in invisible sky friends, great. Go for it. But if you don't, yet think you have to give lip service to those who do, screw them. It's THEIR delusion. Not yours. If you don't like it, say so. You can be polite about it if you want - kind of like dealing with a person who has a mental handicap or, as I like to call it, suffers from a highly contagious psychosis. But usually, with these folks, it's best to be impolite. They don't react well to that. Or claim you worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster, live in the embrace of his Noodley Appendages and consider Olive Garden to be a place of worship. They don't know how to handle that.

Either way, if you've reached the age of reason and don't like people pushing this stuff on you, then tell them. Don't play along. Take a stand. Be firm. It's YOUR decision, after all, and they should respect it.

How about politics? Tired of letting the right-wing tell you that you're a liberal because there's something about them you object to? Or are you tired of the liberals thinking you're a right-wing radical because you agree with something the right-wing does? Seriously this is a problem in our country. We need to know you're out there, because the far right thinks you're a leftie and the left thinks you're a terrorist. The other moderates out there have no idea you exist - that is we know there are others but we don't know who they are or how many of us there are.

If we show some backbone to the lefties and the righties in our political discussions, taking a stand on the issues we believe in and refusing to accept their labels because neither fit, we could actually effect some kind of change on the political landscape by creating our own representatives.

I, for one, as I'm sure any regular reader of my blog knows, would actually love to be politically represented in whole rather than constantly being forced to hold my nose to select the candidate that stank the least every time I went to vote. I imagine there are a hell of a lot of you out there who feel the same way.

SPEAK UP! We all need to know who to count as like-minded individuals among us.

Speaking of politics, how about the current selection of candidates? What, Lloyd and Harry (From Dumb and Dumber) weren't available? So they got Crazy, Dopy, Horny, Shooter, Scooter, Anonymous and Anti-Christ? Sounds like some psycho's idea of the seven dwarfs. Only in this case, they aren't dwarfs in stature, but in mental ability.

Is stupidity contagious? I'm beginning to think so - especially among the right-wing. But while these candidates are all losers in the critical thinking skills department, they're not the only people out there who you think got viciously and repeatedly assaulted by a stupid stick. It's OK to tell someone they are dumb. It's best to point out why. But you don't have to be polite to these people. Society tells you to be polite to them, but WHY? They're lowering the average. Yes, they make you look like a freaking genius by comparison (which, In fairness, is probably one reason to be polite to them) but you don't need to be polite to anyone in an elected position if they are fundamentally stupid. They're your employee, after all. You're the public and they're the public servant. It's a good idea to remind them who they work for, once in a while. And we want our servants to be bright enough to at least pound sand properly.

But random acts of stupidity abound and you don't need to stay quiet about them. Point them out. Maybe, if we all did that often enough, people would get a clue.

Finally, we come to my least favorite of all of today's social expectations: Child worship.

I do not like children. I especially don't like other people's children (given I have no children, and never will, this may be a redundancy in statements). And I loathe and despise the children of other people who expect me to respect, like, watch out for or even remotely care about THEIR child.

We live in a society where everyone expects other people to respect their uterine discharges when they pop out a kid as if that child was the most special thing on the face of the planet. I have news for them: They aren't special. They are pathetically common and the world respects them about as much as mother nature respects the sanctity of life. Which is to say not at all.

Be proud of your kid. That's fine. But don't expect me to cut your brat a break because they're kids. Don't expect me to cater to your delusion that I like to have a kid screaming in my ear, pulling on my hat or flying by like a midget banshee in a restaurant. Don't ever think I like to have your child playing out in front of MY house or that I will do anything in the event of an "emergency". YOUR kid, YOUR responsibility so keep it on YOUR property.

My respect for kids is when they are well mannered, polite and respectful - you know, like people are SUPPOSED to be more often than not. My respect for their parents goes up exponentially when their kids are well mannered, polite and respectful. But since I've encountered exactly three children who fit that description in my life, I'd say the rest of the world's parents, and kids, have a hell of a lot of catching up to do.

If you agree with any part of that anti-kid rant, great, SPEAK UP about it. Kids are not as special as their parents think and I'm tired of their parents - and society as a whole - telling me to think they are. We need to stop being complacent and start being vocal. Have designated "Adults only" theaters, restaurants and residential units for those of us who don't want to have anything to do with kids or their pretentiously deluded parents.

There are a lot of closets from which we as a people need to emerge. Politeness is generally good, but complacency isn't. The bottom line is that we are being expected to accept unreasonable behavior. That's where the division between reason and unreasonable complacency lies. We need to tell people when they've crossed the lines of reasonable behavior so they stop doing it. If we don't tell them, they'll keep doing it.

And it seems to me the one thing this world could use more of is reasonable behavior.

It's High Time to Bring Back the Shed

I was reading an article in the local paper about two 16 year old boys who have been bound over for trial for abducting, beating and raping two teenaged girls. I couldn't help but think about how much we as a society spend on feeding, clothing and housing these wastes of existence and wondered why people keep doing this stuff.

Then it dawned on me: People are, of course, animals. Hell, we've only had about 10,000 years of domestication. Dogs have been human companions for at least 25,000 years and they still attack and kill their owners at times and they're not nearly as smart as we are. (Then again, if you think about it, they get free food and shelter for the cost of a little stick chasing. Not bad for "unintelligent animals". But I digress...)

The point is, we need something much more effective than housing criminals. Prisons are just breeding grounds for creating more capable felons. Recidivism (that's being arrested again after being released from prison) in the U.S. runs between 60 and 80%. Obviously, as a deterrence to crime, prison holds no fear for anyone.

So my proposal in my more lucid moments is to bring back the Shed.

Way back in my youth, we talked in hushed and frightful tones about being taken "behind the shed". This was always where punishment was meted out by a wide, leather belt to the behind for a number of strokes in proportion to the severity of the transgression. It was something to avoid. It was something to fear.

That kind of fear is what needs to be instilled in the minds of the public who decide to transgress the laws of the land. Prison is uncomfortable but it's not designed to be PAINFUL. The human animal is designed to avoid pain. Pain HURTS. It's nature's way of saying "Don't do this!". It's basic and elementary. It impacts the animal in everyone and every living thing. Inflict pain and that memory lingers.

Of course, beating a dog has to be done quickly because the lesson - why they're getting beaten - doesn't correlate well if there's been a long period of time between the transgression and the punishment unless the punishment is meted out with a reminder of what not to do (Like rubbing the dog's nose in the mess it made). With people, it's a little different, to some extent. The human animal is able to know why it's being punished even years after the fact, but sometimes that's not quite enough.

So let's bring back the shed, only put it on television and make it a public affair. Sell tickets, or even have free admission to the viewing public. I'd make it mandatory viewing at least once a year if someone wants to drive or register to vote. (I'm pretty sure the registering to vote thing would be problematic, but you could add it as a requirement for driving, vehicle registration or any other thing that's done annually.) This way EVERYONE sees it. EVERYONE knows what will happen when you transgress society: You're taken "behind the shed" by Uncle Sam, who beats the living crap out of you, and maybe beats some sense INTO you.

But why make Uncle Sam the heavy in this? Yes, these people transgress the laws of society, so society can exact its punishment, but these transgressions, more often than not, involve real, actual people. Certainly those two teenaged girls are real people deserving of their full share of justice - if not retribution.

So my proposal is further modified to include a mandatory minimum number of lashes, with the victim(s) of the convicted criminal meting out their measure until they feel justice has been served.

Now, to keep this from turning into a bloodbath, there ARE some limits to this (I'm not THAT much of an animal... Well, yes I am, but I like to be somewhat reasonable about it.). First of all, we create a lashing machine that can be calibrated to the physiology of the criminal so that regardless of how many times they're lashed, no permanent damage (maybe just scarring) will ever result. Limits would be placed on it to keep anyone from actually dying.

Another limit would be to keep the lashes to once every five seconds, instead of incessantly beating them over and over without a pause.

But the goal of the machine would be to inflict a measured and rational amount of pain on the criminal per stroke.

Finally, to make this "humane", we can establish a metric whereby someone beaten receives a maximum amount of pain with a minimum amount of lasting physical damage.

The simple fact is that humans require a great deal of incentive to change their ways. We are creatures of habit and if we get into the habit of being utter asses, then we will be asses until we come up with good reasons not to be like that. Pain is how creatures big and small avoid doing things that inflict that pain. People aren't terribly bright most of the time, but USUALLY they can figure out that if X behavior results in Y pain, they will stop doing X behavior.

So I say bring back the Shed. Bring back that terrifying time behind the shed for everyone convicted of a crime regardless of age. They WILL LEARN not to do that again. It's an instinctive act to avoid pain. If our penal system was as catering to our instincts as it is to our sensibilities, we'd never, ever have another repeat offender.

Why Johnny can't HEAR YOU!

Once upon a time there were urban crickets: Car alarms that went off whenever some mouse three counties away hiccuped. We'd get to listen to the various tones for a wonderful 20 minutes that would lull us to sleep, not really caring that someone may have gotten their car broken into. The "boy who cried wolf" factor made us pretty much not care by the time we heard a car alarm go off for the 10,000th time.

But today, we have new urban crickets. Only in this case, they're locusts. They swarm, invade, destroy and move on to swarm, invade and destroy somewhere else. You hear them all the time, at all hours of the day and night - the constant throbbing of their wings making your ears ring, your body shake and your mind turn to green Jello.

These locusts are those boom boxes on wheels you see kids and some adults who should know better driving around in. You hear them coming. You feel them as they go by. The kids think they're being "cool", and I can't say what the hell the adults who do this nonsense are thinking. In their case, I think their higher brain areas have been liquified by too many decibels and they're just brain-dead morons moving on instinct.

In case you haven't gotten it yet, I hate these things. I loathe and despise them - and you should, too. Why's that? Simple: THEY'RE HARMING YOUR HEARING!

Have you ever been in a movie theater and wondered why the sound was so LOUD? In part, it's to drown out the inconsiderate bastard on his cell phone, or who seems to think a darkened theater is the perfect place to explain their views on life, the universe and everything to anyone who is within shouting distance, but increasingly it's because the idiot sound checker is some kid who just got out of a vehicle whose sound system was set at a level exceeding FAA regulations for jet-aircraft noise limits on residential area take-offs and landings.

This is NOT hyperbole. I mean it. The FAA has a thing called DNL, which is the Day-Night Average Sound Level, which takes the noise of an airport's activity over a 24 hour period. It's then averaged. That limit is 65 decibels. The sound levels from the bass inside these cars in which people often spend hours per day can exceed 130 decibels and average over 100.

You can safely listen to these levels for... Well, never. Anything over 80 means you are experiencing damage to your hearing. Repeated damage to your hearing becomes permanent. If you experience 100 decibels, you can "safely" listen for 15 minutes, but that's only before you start to experience PERMANENT damage. Anything above 80 is unsafe.

A freight train going by at 15 meters is 80 decibels.

Way too many people out there are hearing impaired, and they don't even know it.

Don't believe me? Check out this article that says there are far more people in America who are hearing impaired than previously thought. Upwards of 20% of Americans have enough hearing impairment to cause problems with oral communications.

Is all of this due to the urban locusts we call boom boxes on wheels? In the case of young people, almost certainly. They're the ones who are at rock concerts and then listen to that music incessantly and loudly in their cars afterwards.

If you think your kids aren't listening to you, it's probably because they're stone-cold DEAF from exposure to loud music.

Now, I'm all for people using ear buds and blowing out their own hearing. After all, an iPad ear bud can hit 117 decibels. Darwin and all that makes me fine with it. If they want to destroy their own hearing and reduce the chances that they'll hear approaching disaster (like stepping in front of traffic when they think it's not coming because they don't hear it), I'm down with that. It's okay to remove your stupid genes from the gene pool.

When it comes to spreading your music out and about like locusts, no, I can't say that I approve of your attempts to fuck up MY hearing along with yours. To highlight this, allow me to regale you with an incident from my past.

I recall a time that some young punk was sitting across the street from my place, being all "street" and "gangsta" with his bad self. His stereo was so loud the toy soldiers on my shelves were marching all by themselves. I walked across the street and stood outside of his peripheral vision (yes, he had rear-view mirrors. No, apparently, while parked, he doesn't notice movement in them). I stood, being pummeled by the vibrations of his sound system for a few moments, trying to think of the most effective way of demonstrating his anti-survival of the fittest actions for a good fifteen or twenty seconds. Then I pulled out my Leatherman tool, (love those things), put the blunt end against his neck and shouted BANG! as loud as I could.

He suddenly had a new sunroof.

When he turned down the music to shout at me, I said to him, "If you're into the gangsta lifestyle, I'd think that the more you can hear around you when you're sitting in your car, the more likely you'll be to hear when someone is actually sneaking up on you to bust a cap in your ear."

He never played his music loud around my place again.

So my advice to all of you idiots out there fucking up your hearing for the sake of looking bad-ass, no girl wants to be shouting at you to get you to hear her. You might actually like to hear her moan (or tell you to stop doing that) when you're having sex with her. And you'll DEFINITELY live longer if you can hear what the hell is going on around you.

So turn it down, sucka. You don't look nearly as bad-assed as you think you do - especially when you're constantly saying "eh?" like your grandfather does when he can't hear anything, either.

How Creepy Is Christmas?

It's September 21th, 2011 - technically the first day of autumn. I say technically because the temperature is 91, the humidity is the reverse of that number at 19, the trees are full of leaves and no one is even talking turkey day. Little did I realize what horrors awaited me.

I'm at my local Costco store, doing my usual monthly run to stock up on consumables. My wife and I are strolling down one of four main lanes toward the back where they keep the food when my wife comes to a halt, a look of puzzlement on her face. The puzzlement is soon replaced by a growing realization that something is NOT RIGHT. Fear, terror and incomprehension war together as the awful, awful truth dawns.

"Oh my fucking god! Is that CHRISTMAS SHIT ALREADY?" she exclaims.

(Note: My wife spent a lot of years in the Navy. You get used to it from her. Seems somehow natural for her to talk that way, actually.)

What it's called is Christmas Creep.

Christmas Creep is the phenomenon of merchants to try to extend the Christmas shopping season by bringing out the wrapping and tinsel and plastic nativity scenes they couldn't sell last year earlier and earlier each successive year. It's purely secular and has nothing to do with religion. It also has everything to do with the bottom line.

While gift giving has been a long-standing tradition for all faiths, and the season (the winter solstice or the shortest day of the year) a time of celebration and feasting (and other actual atrocities which would make most people blanch), the whole commercialization of Christmas actually started in 1931 when the Coca Cola company commissioned a swiss ad agency to create a "Santa Claus" wearing a coke-emblem-red suit drinking a Coke to advertise their product.

The concept of Santa Claus goes back a long way, thanks in part to Christmas. But the idea of Christmas as a time to celebrate the birth of Christ was definitely contrived by the Catholic Church in an effort to bring pagans into the flock.

The Saturnalia was a Roman convention wherein the law was suspended for a week before the solstice. A single person from each village would be picked to fulfill the role of "enemy of Rome" and the embodiment of all that was bad. They were over-fed and forced to drink too much and tormented among much debauchery and lawlessness within the people. At the end of this celebration, this poor slob would be killed and the proceedings would be declared good since all lawlessness, bad behavior and whatnot went with him (or her) for a year. While over time they did away witl killing people, the general debauchery and lawlessness (or a suspension of morals - which in some places meant the same thing) continued. It was an immensely popular thing to do.

The Catholic church, seeing how beloved this celebration was, decided to call the solstice the day Christ was born. Originally they said it was on the 25, which several hundred years ago during the 4th century was when the winter solstice usually fell. Precession caused by the rotation of the earth has changed that to between the 20th and 22nd of December, usually on the 21st, so the day of "Christmas" and the solstice are no longer the same. But the celebrations continued and the Catholic church wanted new converts, so they came up with this excuse to keep a "time of celebration" in order to get them.

In consequence of this decision, Christmas time was also a time of when Jews were often abused in some way. In Rome, the pope was often watching in approval. This practice of abusing Jews during the Roman Saturnalia continued through the 19th Century.

This isn't exactly the "reason for the season".

Now, I talked about all this before some time ago, but that was more about religious use of public lands. The point is, without the Catholic church deciding that co-opting Saturnalia would be a great way to get more pagans, we'd probably not have much in the way of gift -giving as a seasonal thing. But it took an ad agency to popularize it.

Merchants never used to rev up for the Christmas season. Most of them were looking forward to the break. But after 1931, and the revamped Santa Claus born from the mind of an ad agency, the idea of a "Christmas shopping season" came into being. It was heavily promoted, of course, because selling things is what businesses do. If they could come up with an excuse to create this shopping season to drive up sales, then they would.

And they did.

The term "Black Thursday" was coined, originally, for the October 24th day in 1929 when the stock market crashed. The term "Black Friday" was coined to indicated the day after Thanksgiving when, usually for the year, the merchants broke even. All of the sales from that point on turned a profit for them.

So naturally, they wanted MORE profit, and the Christmas Shopping Season was created.

Being a good businessman, I see the shrewdness of the move and approve.

For decades, the Christmas Shopping Season started on Black Friday and ended on Christmas Eve. Before Thanksgiving, all you would see were Thanksgiving things. All that over the river and through the woods stuff to get you to Grandma's House and all the goodies for the Thanksgiving feast.

But about twenty years ago or so, things started changing. Christmas decorations started appearing BEFORE Thanksgiving. People commented on it, but did nothing. As time went on, those green, red, gold and silver decorations started appearing earlier and earlier. This year, they've made their earliest appearance ever.

This is Christmas Creep.

The concept behind the Christmas Shopping Season was to have a special time to buy special things for that special someone (or those special someones). But it's gone too far. Merchants want to get more profit because business sales are slow, people are looking for deals and low prices and margins are tighter than before. I get this.

The point is that by extending the Christmas Shopping Season, it dilutes its impact. The pace of shopping becomes relaxed, unhurried - and NOT very impulsive. Profits are generated by impulse shopping and the more of it the better. Too much selection is fine, but the price per unit is low and so is the margin. People who are unhurried are give TOO MUCH TIME to shop. They can compare prices, find the best deals, hunt down something in another store. In short they can find the most at the least profit to the merchants.

Consumers may be expecting this, and that may be why Christmas Creep is so awful this year. But times were bad before and Christmas Creep didn't happen then. The merchants have forgotten that they can buy fewer items, available over a shorter amount of time, generating increased demand, and therefore increased premium on the price.

Today, if a toy or item available at Christmas time is popular, EVERYONE HAS ONE. That completely undermines its unique qualities. If only a few have it, and a lot want it, that makes it much MORE special to those who have it. But if everyone has it, that detracts from its uniqueness, making it less valuable, and therefore unable to command a premium price.

It also creates a throw-away and very wasteful society at a time in human history when such acts will have some very long-term, negative repercussions for the entire species. If their toys are commonplace, they're treated as commonplace and tossed on a whim. When I was a kid, I never threw away my toys. They were hard to get, fun to play with and valuable in my eyes.

(Disclaimer: I knew these Christmas presents came from my parents from the age of 3. Never let a genius sit on the lap of a Santa billed as "the one and only Santa Claus" who is wearing a fake beard. Once I figured out Santa was fake, the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy were quickly filed into their proper mythological places.)

People need to appreciate what they get. If they don't, they treat things like crap. If everyone can get the Sparkly Pony with the Kung Fu Grip, then it's not special to them and that toy will find itself under the tires of the family car because they didn't care about it enough to bring it in with them when they were done playing.

Extending the holiday season may be how merchants are extending their profits, but to me, they're blowing a golden opportunity. Quantity will never return as much profit profit as quality. They need to stock only a limited number of things, and charge as much as the market will bear. If some folks can't afford it or get one due to limited supply, oh well. That's how life is. And disappointment in childhood often leads people to doing more and better in adulthood.

Kids need to learn about disappointment and how to handle it, and to appreciate the things they do get. It's a life lesson that's good not only for them, but for everyone in the long run.

And maybe we can de-creep the Christmas Creep.

Fair Taxation With Representation

Much has been bandied about in the news these days about a Flat Tax. Proponents (the right-wing, of course) say that simplifying the (admittedly complex) tax code would be good for everyone.

Actually, it's pretty bad for about 50% of Americans, but hey, we already know that the Republicans are the lapdogs of the wealthy, which is the 15% of Americans a flat tax would actually benefit.

The idea behind a flat tax is to tax everyone the same percentage of income. If everyone had basically the same income, that isn't an unwarranted idea. But obviously incomes vary from a few hundred dollars to a few hundred million dollars annually. That kind of disparity in income is why a flat tax doesn't work. You can see how this works in my blog about how taxing the wealthy more and the poor less will stimulate the economy.

A flat tax means everyone pays the same rate, but it doesn't impact everyone the same way. Someone who is taxed at 10% earning $25,000 is losing a hell of a lot more of their spending power compared to someone who is taxed at 70% earning a million dollars. Let's face it, there aren't a lot of millionaires out there starving on $300,000 of income per year while there are people out there starving on a $22,500 annual income. Making a flat tax of 20% means the millionaires are taking home $500,000 MORE and the poor are taking home $2500 LESS.

This is called robbing from the poor and giving to the rich.

Not exactly a good way to manage the economy by taking money away from the multitudes who will likely spend it and giving it to the few who don't.

But if people are looking for simple, then how about this: One formula. No deductions, exemptions, alterations. And it is applied for the average income of the household. The average income is the total income of the household divided by the number of people living there, and each person pays for their share of the income.

If you have two people and one income for the household, the income is averaged for each person. Let's say you have two people who live in a household whose income is $34,000 between the two. You divide that by the two people to give an average income of $17,000 each. Each person files for a $17,000 income regardless of who got the income.

A family of four? Same thing, only each person would be paying taxes on $8500 dollars instead - a much smaller tax burden.

This doesn't mean that everyone has to file a tax return, of course. There would one form for each person to be listed by name, SSN and such, a simple formula to calculate the taxes on the average income and then multiply that tax times the number of people listed in the household.

One page, maybe two depending on how large of a household we're talking about, with extra pages to list more people added.

Income would be defined as, "If you get it in that year and you can use it, it's income". This means interest earned in IRA's or bank accounts and any increase in the value of investments over which you have control of deposits and withdrawals would be income. You can't write off a loss.

On the bright side, since you were taxed on the money you used to put into an IRA (No deductions, no loopholes) or buy an investment, and were taxed on the IRA and investment earnings, you aren't taxed separately for taking that money out and spending it. You've paid taxes for the returns you received already. It's like a bank account and you pay taxes on the interest and earnings.

The tax formula itself would have to be worked out by someone with better math skills than I, but I imagine it would be something simple that increases with the increase in income, yet stays below the cumulative amount that would be paid if filed as one person's income. I expect it will be a logarithmic table or a place you can go online and enter your averaged income for the tax you fill in and multiply by the number of people in the household for the total tax burden.

If you have one person with $34,000 in income and 8 people with $34,000 in income between them, those 8 people in one household should pay less in taxes together than that one person in one household.

This takes care of the deduction for kids and other such standard deductions.

As for the other deductions, you're out of luck. No tax shelters. You pay taxes on interest You pay taxes on investment gains. You don't pay taxes on principle since that was your money to begin with.

Whatever the formula is (and if there's a math guru out there who can use a person's income as a specific basis for an increasing tax rate as described here, let me know), and whether it's put online for the convenience of tax payers or something they can do with a pocket calculator (A whole new cottage industry would be an app for it or a stand-alone electronic device), the idea is to simplify the codes and do it in a way that doesn't so grossly advantage the rich.

Flat rate taxes are the wet dream of the wealthy and the nightmare of the poor. The tax codes can be simplified by many other means that don't involve this kind of inequity.

Of course, there will be a lot of tax prep agencies put out of business by this, but in life, there are no guarantees - especially with regard to employment.

We ARE Our Brother's Peeper

Much has been said about the virtues and vices of the current Internet fad, Social Networking, and I feel rather remiss in not bringing this to the attention of mankind by throwing in my own two cents on the subject. To make it short for those of you with limited attention spans because you have to get back to making sure your crop doesn't die in Farmland, I like the concept of social networking. I don't like the implementation of social networking. (Better hurry back now, the asparagus in the south 40 are drying up due to the drought!)

For the rest of you with lives and some curiosity about what I mean, please feel free to grab some coffee, unplug from the mindless tedium of examining the walls and posts of your friends to make sure none of them "tagged" you in an embarrassing photo and thereby sowing the seeds of the destruction of your professional career, sit back and read on.

I like the IDEA of social networking. A way to keep in touch with friends and family is great. I do it all the time. I call this technology e-mail, telephones (or, if you're a touch more modern, cell phones which then bring in texting and picture sharing over a phone), cards, letters and, occasionally, something called a "face-to-face" wherein the parties involved engage in a conversation without the use of any kind of technology. (You can add video conferencing, if you want. Same idea but without the touch, taste or smell and with the intervention of technology).

I know, I know, this kind of technology may be obsolete, time consuming and wasteful, but it gets the job done for me while preserving something I value quite a lot: PRIVACY. All of the forms of social networking I do are those in which I can specifically and deliberately moderate and control the type and amount of information I disclose to or share with others. I can even tell select, trusted individuals not to pass along particularly sensitive information to others and, by and large, they are good about complying with that request. In return, I do the same for them when asked.

This is how REAL LIFE works and I'm good with it. In fact, I'm so used to it that I've gotten quite adept at it. It takes me little time to stay in touch to the level or degree that I want and others feel the same about it.

But then came along MySpace, and and after that Facebook.

On the face of it (no pun intended. No, really, it wasn't intended. The title of this blog was, but not this time.) one would think that having a central place for a person to put up the events in their life where their family and friends can check to keep up would be a good thing. But let's examine that concept and the implementation of what has become modern Social Networking.

Rather than just a place to put up pretty pictures of the kids and turn a website into basically a static, high-tech equivalent of "home movie viewing night" (Oh the pictures of the kids were DARLING! Look, Little Mikey spit up again and I got it in video this time!), modern Social Networking has turned into an electronic window on EVERYTHING YOU DO. I'm not narcissistic enough to want to put out to the world at large EVERYTHING I do. The world at large does not need to know that much about me. I am not willing to share that much about me with the world at large. And yet, this is what Social Networking is: Sharing EVERYTHING about you with the world at large.

Let me say that again: You share EVERYTHING about you. The worse part is that you have little to no control over what you share, when you share it or with whom. Now, I know there are those who will look at the "privacy settings" (snort, choke, giggle hysterically at the thought of privacy controls on an electronic forum which automatically shares everything you do and often times resets those controls to release even more information you DIDN'T want released) and think they're being discrete or vigilant.

They're not.

The rule of thumb (and all of the other fingers, toes, elbows... in fact the whole body) is that once you put it out there, it's not yours anymore. It's not private. It's not secure. It belongs to whomever you put it out on and they can do with it what they please.

Let's look at one example: My own.

The date: September 26th, 2011.
The time: (Who the hell knows - in the afternoon, or evening I think. I don't keep track of minutia like that).
The place: My home computer.
The victim: Facebook.
The mission: To find out whether they are as fucked up as the reports say they are about privacy.

I WANTED to create an organization page to promote this blog. But they don't allow organizations to "network" there. Apparently, organizations must have a real person (singular, not plural, so even partnerships, you figure out who the senior partner is). Once I signed up, I could create one, but I had to sign up as an individual first.

Okay fine. Before signing up, I first signed up with a proxy server. A proxy server changes the Internet address you use to connect to the Internet (and thereby revealing your location in the world - within a few miles - to everyone else). They use this information to deliver you location-relevant ads and data. Your cell phone does much the same thing if you have Internet on it. They want to know where you REALLY are, it seems. Before I did anything, I thought to myself, "I don't want to share that." and took precautions.

I found out where that Internet location was, got a zip code from there and was set to continue.

Of course, the FIRST thing they want you to do is agree to their Terms of Service.

I read them. Yes, yes I did. I've seen the Southpark episode and didn't want Zuckerman (the owner of Facebook) to turn me into a Facebook-inspired human-powered iPad. The thing that got me the most was the fact that you agree they can keep everything you post, upload or offer to them pretty much forever, and they can use it as they see fit.

Let me repeat this: THEY can use YOUR STUFF as THEY see fit - forever.

And you have to agree to this or you don't get to play in their little garden of horrors. I thought to myself that I'm glad I'm not going to be "me" or this could seriously fuck up my life in unimaginable ways. This is especially true for young kids (teens and early twenties) who have more life ahead of them to get fucked up than I do. I had already confirmed one rumor: Facebook keeps your stuff even if you "get rid of it". It's still there. Once you upload it, you can't get it back. You can't delete it. You can't do a do-over if you upload the "wrong thing". It's out there, it will remain out there and you will never know when, where or how that will be used by them.

So I clicked "I agree" and moved on. One of those little things you agree not to do was use a proxy server, but I had already figured out that my Facebook foray was going to be fast. I wasn't going to give them any real information anyhow. Why would I scruple to tell them where I really am?

Next it wanted to know things a resume would demand you put on it: Where do you live, what do you do, gender, date of birth and all of the normal things you usually tell an employer. Then it wanted me to put in hobbies, interests, movies I liked, books I had read, all of the other things you DON'T put on a resume.

I managed to resist the impulse to put in anything accurate. I listed my name as something other than my name, my occupation under the "other" category as "Gadfly" and everything else came from the "Guide To NOT Losing Your Identity Online" in that I told them nothing accurate. My date of birth was the wrong month, the wrong day and the wrong year (but over 13). My location was based on the Internet address from the Proxy Server I was using.

After about an hour of messing around, I managed to get it all set up. The "privacy" settings were hard to find, but once I did, I made sure that they were set to "Share with NO ONE."

As if that was going to help.

One of the things I found most annoying was the "People you might know" section. There was one person in it, who, of course, I had never heard of. I fail to understand how anyone could derive that a person with no true identity, no true age, no appearance, no other accurate information could possibly know anyone. But this poor person was sitting there in my "People you might know" section, urging me to "Friend" them. There was no "No thanks", "Go away", "Leave me the fuck alone", or "Get out of my People You May Know section!" button.

Facebook desperately needs an option other than "Like".

I discovered that if you want someone to go away, you can't do it wholesale. It's strictly a retail thing. Each person has their own individual like and don't like settings. That is, if you want to be left alone by people you don't actually INVITE, guess what? You have to tell the whole world to fuck off face to face, one at a time. Maybe this works for Facebook and it's fresh-faced fans, but for me it would be tiresome, tedious and time-consuming. Facebook needs a less open policy than allowing anyone to "Friend" you and you having to set the level of privacy you want for each one, one at a time.

(Keep in mind that privacy isn't, so when the whole exercise of not sharing with some people can be erased at the touch of an "upgrade" on the whim of some sociopath nutcase who decided being face to face to make friends was too much work, all of the things you may have done in the past to keep yourself "safe" may well be rendered moot at any time."

For someone with a couple of hundred "Friends" this kind of thing can take hours, or even days, to deal with. If you consider it can only take a single update to undo, one begins to see the problem with Social Networking.

But the most interesting (and scary) thing was yet to come. Once I got the account all set up (I even made up a nice, little graphic that meant "Destiny" for it) and was ready to FINALLY get on with my life, Facebook followed me EVERYWHERE I went online.

I post in a lot of comments threads in various news organization sites. Each one I visited while holding Facebook cookies in my cookie jar threw some stupid little pop-up urging me to "like" the site. Well, I knew that if I "Like"'d anything, it would immediately appear on my "wall" where anyone browsing my profile - whether friend or NOT - could see it. The same went for various business sites I occasionally visit. Everyone wanted to be "Like"'d.

That was pretty much the last straw for me. I signed in, "Deleted" my account, deleted the cookies and haven't been back. I say I "Deleted" the account because that's what the option was, but it didn't "delete" it. The account can't be deleted - just suspended. Remember those Terms of Service that let them keep everything you give them? That's right. They "suspend" your account so that if you have Account Deleting Remorse, you can re-activate it again anytime just by signing into your account. How long do they keep it suspended? The data doth not say. It could be for as little as a month, but it's likely forever, like the ToS agreement said.

So my foray into Facebook was finished. Even though I put in nothing that can lead back to me, I still felt violated and in need of a four hour shower.

What did I learn in all of this? Well, for one, Facebook is evil. The concept of sharing one's life with others has been turned into a farce - a constantly streaming overload of intimate and not so intimate details which no mentally stable and healthy person ever needs to know about anyone else. Least you think this is just a trivial matter consider these facts:

You don't really know everyone you "friend". Maybe some of you are careful about that, but probably not. You don't know who who looks at your "wall" - which details your life with such precision, people can find out the patterns of your life and location so well, they can stalk you, know when you're not home and rob you or simply observe you for whatever twisted reason they may have.

And you have almost no control over that.

Even your friends can screw you over. You're all linked together. If any of your friends tag their photos as you, and someone checks out your Facebook page, then the ones of your friends, your topless dance at that private party you over-indulged that one time five years ago may become the REAL reason your boss wants you fired from your dream job - even though it wasn't on the company time or the company dime.

It can all be summed up in one acronym: TMI. Too Much Information.

Your life is laid bare for anyone to peruse and you can do little to nothing to keep it to yourself.

So why is it this way? Money, of course. All of that information out there about you can be used by Facebook to direct advertisers to you thereby monetizing your life for their benefit. The data is useful to businesses, police agencies, spy agencies and other such folks whom Facebook cares to share your data with. Remember, they can use it howsoever they see fit.

The really sad part is how enthusiastically Facebook users embrace the raping of their privacy, lives and futures. It's probably ignorance on their parts. Possibly it's the "it can't happen to ME" mentality the young are afflicted with for too long. The only other option left is "I don't care", which means you have given up all desire to control what people know about you and have abdicated any chance to avoid criminal activity.

The only defense against this is to not get involved in it at all, ever. If you're not on Facebook, your friends can't tag their photos and link them to you. Maybe your name will come up, maybe not. Normally, people don't include full names and locations, but it's possible. However by removing ones' self from Facebook you remove 90% of the danger of that level of "Social Networking".

By not being on Facebook, no one will know whether you like something without you telling them. You can also avoid the up-and-coming feature everyone's talking about (which I didn't experience since it wasn't implemented for newbies by then): The Timeline.

The Timeline is supposed to be just that. It's supposed to be a convenient way of seeing what you did and when you did it.

This will make it FAR easier for criminals to decipher your patterns, learn where you are, hunt you down and rob you of that new iPhone you bragged about getting, wait until you are due to leave home on vacation and rob you blind (because he's seen the pictures of your home you posted by posting family photos and knows in advance what he wants and where it is), or even follow you as any good stalking pervert will.

Before, they had to actually work at things to make a timeline to find your habits and patterns in order to use them to their advantage. Now, Facebook will do that for them. It will also generate gigatons of metadata to follow people around, learn their habits and bother you even more with "relevant ads" wherever you happen to be.

And all the while you, and your friends, are willing and eager accomplices to all of this simply by signing up for a Facebook account.

Now, I know that it's entirely possible you found my blog through someone else's Facebook account. I recently enabled the "like" feature on the blog so it could be liked. This may make me some kind of hypocrite except for the fact I'm writing this blog so soon after doing that. As it turns out, I don't need a Facebook account to promote it in any way. I just need others to promote it by liking it. But at the same time, I'm urging everyone to suspend their Facebook accounts and never, ever, sign into them again.

If you like by blog, fine, bookmark it or add it to your favorites. You can sign up to get an e-mail when I post a new one if you want to keep track. But dump the Facebook ASAP. Even without the stupid games, it's a time suck of epic proportions, it's violating you in ways you don't even know about yet and, assuming you have a future life you want to live to distance yourself from any past youthful indiscretions, is simply a privacy time bomb lurking out there ready for one Wall view to screw up a lifetime of hard work.

Failing that, go ahead and "Like" the blog. If you can't save yourself, maybe by doing that, you can save someone else.

Dispelling the Myth of My Liberal Bias

Today, the United States military, through the now familiar vehicle of an armed observation drone, fired a missile at an American citizen and blew his ass to Hell. This was done without benefit of a trial, or any other "due process" the Constitution guarantees. I expect most of the readers here to be thinking I'm against this, that due process is the right of every American citizen and that the Obama Administration should be held accountable for war crimes.

Bullshit. Let the fucker burn in Hell. I'm GLAD they did it.

A little background is in order here.

The name of the maggot who was offed with extreme prejudice was Anwar al-Awlaki. He was born in New Mexico. He gave lectures at the same mosques attended by four of the 9/11 hijackers (at the same time they were there). He has inspired the attempt to bring down an air-liner with the now infamous "underwear bomber" (This is according to the underwear bomber himself). He forwarded the plot to send explosives-laden printer toner cartridges through various postal carriers to wreck havoc wherever they happened to be when they exploded (This is according to documents recovered in Yemen last year). And he was the inspiration for the traitor who committed mass murder of American servicemen at Fort Hood (This according to the traitor who did the crime).

He has steadfastly urged his "followers" to commit murder in the name of Islam, with a special emphasis to murdering Americans where ever they can be found. He declared war on the United States and, today, he became an extremely justified casualty of war.

I don't give a rat's ass if he was an "American citizen" or not.

No one, anywhere, has expressed remorse over Osama Bin Laudin's death. Bin Laudin was the leader of Al Qaida, the terrorist network responsible for the 9/11 attacks in New York, the Pentagon and another airliner that plunged to a fiery end in Pennsylvania when the passengers fought back. Bin Laudin didn't kill anyone, personally. He was never tired in an American court. He had no "due process". But an anonymous SEAL team hero put a bullet through his turban and offed the most evil person to ever walk the planet. Even most Muslims are glad he's dead.

My personal scale of right and wrong reserves a special place of animosity for people who sit behind the scenes and urge other people to go out and kill, or die, for a repressive, misogynistic, obsolete mythology unable to cope with the changes in the world today (Or any other cause that advocates violence in order to restrict freedom and liberty, for that matter). If they were on the front lines, risking death or doing as they urged, that at least earns them some points for putting their lives where their words are (not much, of course, but some). But hiding behind a microphone, in secret, by surprise and against civilians who have nothing more to do with the "conflict" than nationality... No. There's a special, very painful place in the afterlife for them. And if there's no Afterlife, then at least the stain of their existence on the honor of Mankind can start to be erased with their passing.

Anwar al-Awlaki (may his name be cursed by Allah and His Prophet) was EXACTLY the same as Bin Laudin. He hid behind the scenes and urged other people to kill Americans in the name of HIS religion. Bin Laudin was a Saudi Arabian, born into luxury who decided America was decadent and deserved destruction in the promotion of Islam. In some ways, that's understandable. He never lived in the US. He didn't know what the US was (supposedly) about. But the maggot al-Awlaki was an American. He was born in New Mexico. He KNEW what America was all about. And yet he decided repression, murder and violence was better than freedom, liberty and the rights he enjoyed as a citizen of the United States.

Fuck him.

ANYONE, citizen or not, who urges the murder of their fellow civilians has vacated their right to be a citizen. They have vacated their right to speak their mind. They have vacated their right to even breathe the same air as their fellow citizens. By their actions, they have vacated - no, not vacated. They have refused - the right to "due process".

In my opinion, a hellfire missile up their asses IS "due process".

I do not often advocate for the death of anyone. But like I said, some people deserve to die. Once they reach that level of animosity on my personal scale of right and wrong, I couldn't give a shit if they were citizens, my own brother or the whack-job, raving nutcase terrorist they are. Some people SHOULD die. Not because of what they've done themselves. But for the violence, death and terror they inspire others to commit.

So for those of you who think I'm a liberal, fuck you. I'm an American who loves my country.

For those of you reading only this and think I'm a conservative, fuck you, I'm an American who loves my country.

And this American who loves his country is a moderate. Moderates have points of view that align with the left or the right at times. Try to remember, we don't HAVE to be polarized as a people. Only the politicians, who live to get elected, have to appeal to a particular bias. The rest of us are free to be ourselves - and it would be nice if all of you reading this voted for a moderate.

For this blog post, you get to see my conservative side, my Pro-American side, my love of country and the ideals for which it stands side. It's also my "yeah, go ahead and kill the fucker" side most people would associate with conservatives. I do have that side. Everyone does to some extent. I just try to reserve it for the most deserving of those who should be poster children for retroactive birth control, rather than some average fellow citizen whose politics differ from mine (which is what some other conservatives often do).

Some of my views defy categorization altogether. But regardless of our political differences, our religious differences and even our social differences, in my mind, if you don't put the good of the country ahead of all, then you don't deserve to live here, let alone be a citizen of my country.

Sometimes I'm a flaming asshole. But I'm a proud AMERICAN flaming asshole. Fuck with my country, you will die.

It's times like this that I wish I believed in the Christian Hell and I hope Anwar al-Awlaki is burning there. At the very least, I'm glad he's resting in pieces. Those who think the rule of law has been broken, the Constitution violated and the government on some slippery slope of offing American citizens on a whim anywhere in the world, I simply say that if Anwar al-Awlaki had his way, there would only be Sharia Law and a hell of a lot more people would be killed for a lot less reason and with a lot less "due process" than waging war against the United States. The ONLY "mistake" I can think of is that the United States didn't strip this filth of his citizenship BEFORE the missiles flew. If they had, Anwar al-Awlaki would have had no more legal standing in the U.S. than Osama Bin Laudin.

Maybe the U.S. government will remember that for the next time it happens - assuming it ever happens again. It's a minor formality - proving treason and pronouncing a death sentence - but it's "due process". I expect that will shut up the bleeding hearts who think the government is out to get everyone who criticizes it.

Some people deserve to die. Bin Laudin is dead. Anwar al-Awlaki was next in line. I hope #3 on the list is shitting little green kittens and is constantly looking over his shoulder right about now. Maybe if we kill enough of the ones urging others to go out and kill people over religion, politics or ideology, they'll stop trying to urge others to go out and kill people over religion, politics and ideology. But even if not, there's one less maniac in the world tonight and I'm good with that.

Of Open and Closed Minds

In an article I read in the National Review Online, the author, Jay Nordlinger, quoted a Match.com engineer who said that conservatives were far more likely to be open and tolerant than liberals when it came to the search for love.

Now, in the face of this it seems ludicrous. After all, conservatives kill liberals over political or religious differences far more often than the other way around. These are not the actions of a tolerant-minded people.

But let's examine the special circumstances here. A person who is open minded (which describes a liberal more than a conservative) is far more likely to look for someone who is open-minded as a life partner, or even someone to hang out with. Liberals do not like conflict and arguments. Someone who is open minded is far more likely to be able to see both sides of an issue and discuss them rationally than someone who sees the world though a closed, unyielding mind.

Closed-minded people, on the other hand, don't want to deal with other close-minded people unless they're EXACTLY like they are. Those are extremely hard to find. Instead, they usually end up looking for open-minded people who can put up with them, because odds are much higher that there are more open-minded people who can put up with them than there are closed-minded people exactly like them.

So the assertion is likely true, within its own context: WHEN LOOKING FOR LOVE, conservatives are probably more tolerant of who they date than liberals.

But that doesn't make them more tolerant as a people.

If you click on the link, read the comments posted by die-hard conservatives. They are not the words of a tolerant people.

I don't know if the thrust of the article was to paint conservatives in a different (and by extension, not necessarily true) light, whether it was tongue in cheek or just reporting an odd fact. Whatever the case, the conservatives had a field-day ragging on the liberals and, by doing so, proved the author's implication - that conservatives are more tolerant than liberals overall - was utterly untrue.

Never before have I seen an author so completely undone by the "applause" of the crowd.

I can only hope that he was being ironic.

The Zombies Are Here!!!

Last night, I had a Zombie dream.

Now, to be perfectly honest, though I have a vivid imagination and have dreamt of many things, I have to admit Zombies was not what I would have expected me to dream about. Zombie movies have never been a favorite genre for me and way too much has been written about why people like them. The last thing I would have expected me to dream about was Zombies. I've never done it before, and haven't watched a Zombie movie in many a month. None the less, last night, I dreamt about Zombies.

I'm not sure it was the classic Zombie movie, but it had elements of it. Zombieland is a Zombie movie I actually enjoyed because it was so tongue-in-cheek (and in seat, and on floor and flying through the air and... well, you get the picture), but it had elements my (apparently deranged) mind threw into my dream. That is to say, it didn't focus so much on the beginning of the disaster as the point of view of someone just trying to make it through the day.

It all started out normal enough (as all Zombie movies do). It was from the perspective of a "regular guy" (yours truly) who was just going about his life. Only, occasionally, someone would pop up as a Zombie.

Mostly, they were ignored.

They'd be in theaters, in the supermarkets and malls, going about their business as well. But they were Zombies and everyone knew it. Gradually, though, more and more of them appeared. They still went about their business, but they were a touch more hostile than all the other "normal" people out there. If you pointed out to one they were a Zombie, they'd actually attack you.

Eventually, of course, there were Zombies everywhere. They weren't interested in eating your brains so much as they were interested in turning you into another zombie, or killing you if you resisted. Not typical Zombie behavior I grant you, but it was pretty typical of the mentality (if not NECESSARILY the actions) of some folks today.

It took a while for me to remember, but the Zombies in my dream were Red, White and Blue and looked like they lived mostly in trailers before they went on their world-wide rampage of "Join us or die!!!".

Is anyone out there beginning to draw the same parallels I did?

Let's look at politics today: A bunch of people who can't think being led by party platforms which have no chance of becoming reality, each using the platforms of the other party as the boogie man's whip to keep their followers blindly in line. Anyone who raises a voice against these blindly shuffling, Red, White and Blue zombies of either party are shouted down, attacked (and in some cases killed) or vilified as someone who must be converted to their point of view or "die" (metaphorically at the least, literally at the most).

Now, I tend to equate violent zombies with the right wing (mostly because a conservative is more tolerant of violence, and tends to use violence and violent imagery as their "weapons" of choice in convincing others to go along with them, but I digress), but in this case, both parties can be called Zombies. Right wingers believe in their political nonsense because politicians tell them what they must believe. Left wingers believe in their nonsense, partly as an anti-reaction to the Right-wingers platform, but also because they believe what their politicians tell them.

The politicians are the APPARENT zombie masters. Of course, the politicians are themselves zombies of the Corporate World (and if you don't believe the corporations run the world, you should read up about what the British trader said on the BBC the other day about how Goldman Sachs runs the world and not governments ), which makes the Corporate World and bankers the true Zombie Masters. I expect he'll meet a bad end in the near future. Defamation or death is what I expect to see happen. He was telling the TRUTH, after all, and the Corporate World doesn't want anyone to know the truth.

But the bottom line isn't so much who controls the zombies. It's that the zombies really made themselves by refusing to think for themselves. I've written about the dearth of people thinking for themselves before, but perhaps haven't mentioned HOW they fuck this up so badly.

Most people believe they are thoughtful and hold opinions that are well considered. They think they listen to what other people say and decide for themselves whether to believe in it or not. Of course, this isn't what's really happening, but they think it does. They then become entrenched in these beliefs and will often react belligerently when those beliefs are challenged - ESPECIALLY when those awful, inconvenient "facts" are used against them.

That is NOT being thoughtful nor creating well considered opinions.

The truth is, in politics, OPINIONS SHOULD NEVER BE SET IN STONE. EVER!

Life isn't static. It's always changing. Societies grow. New technologies create new ways of looking at things. Knowledge and discoveries open new vistas and new horizons. And because of this, what was true about things yesterday may not be true about them tomorrow. Going back to my favorite whipping boy, politics and the right wing, I can say with utter certainty that today's right wing was NOT what it was twenty years ago. Today, it's militantly opposed to compromise that would benefit the people and the country. Even if you go more than half-way to their position, they will not accept that, and demand they get everything their way or nothing gets done. They aren't called the Party of NO! these days just because they're against drugs, sex - outside of a marriage between a man and a woman, of course - and abortion.

Since the right wing refuses to budge, the left wing has started doing the same thing and nothing is getting done.

People aren't thinking. They're reacting.

If the reactions were beneficial, that would be fine, but the reactions are to only entrench one's opinions more solidly in an unyielding matrix of political ideology.

Way back when, I had a friend who recited T. A. R. as a way to go through life. It turned out he was looney as a Wanner Brother's cartoon, but this advise always struck me as one of his more lucid moments.

T. A. R. Think. Act. React.

Notice the first word. Think. Always think first. You think about your action AND your reaction. When I was in college, I did a speech on this using the acronym SCAB Act. - Stop and Consider Actions Before you Act. I said that if you remember SCAB, you might avoid a few of your own. I thought it was catchy.

The point is THINK FIRST! ALWAYS think first. But here's a few more hints about how to do it since, apparently, people are so out of practice in doing it for themselves.

The first thing you do is stifle the emotional reaction. Being emotional is a reaction. It's not thinking. You can use the energy to do something constructive like mow the lawn, build a sky-scraper or something equally affirming, but the last thing you want to do is use that emotional reaction to respond.

Next, consider what you heard/saw/experienced. People often go with a first impression of what was put before them without actually absorbing it. They have prejudices, preconceptions and perspectives that may interfere with what was actually intended to be put across. Flying off the handle by jumping to an erroneous conclusion is a great way to end up with foot-in-mouth disease.

Once you've accurately absorbed what you experienced, next consider WHY. Now, granted, there isn't always a why. But if it's an argument, and someone is trying to convince you of something, or is getting angry at you over something, consider the whys. Whys are the underlying motivations for what you have absorbed. When considering the whys, try not to let your prejudices, opinions and other set-in-stone aspects of your personality/life get in the way of arriving at a conclusion. This may not be possible for some people to do, but none the less, it's a step that shouldn't be skipped.

Finally, respond. Do it calmly, rationally and with a factual basis to support and justify your response. Because sure as hell, when you respond in such a manner, the other person will probably fly off the handle and your point looks far more reasonable and rational than theirs.

Thinking, as I pointed out 20 or 30 years ago, should be an Olympic sport. It requires CONSTANT practice and it's obvious some do it a lot better than others. But it's an activity that everyone should be doing whether they're good at it or not. An open mind, some has said, can't hold onto anything. But a closed mind can't get anything into it. What we need are minds that allow things in, and can arrange them neatly according to our own experience and reasoning.

No one is going to be perfect at this - especially those whose opinions tend to be handed to them on silver platters and catered to by those wishing to manipulate them. So to finish it all off, when it comes to thinking, assume no one is telling you the truth.

In politics, this is ESPECIALLY true. There is so much spin going on to sway and convince that no one really knows what the truth there is anymore on either side of the political spectrum. If you assume everyone in politics is hiding something, spinning the truth, trying to get their own way at the expense of everything else (a not unreasonable starting point given the way Washington hasn't worked in the last two or three years), think before you react, try to discern all of the whys and, above all, search for the truth on your own using sources that are NOT part of the world where the spin is coming from, then you are well on your way to creating well considered, thoughtful opinions which can change as the circumstances and world changes.

Zombies can't think. And even if you paint them all red, white and blue, they're a hazard to life because they want you to be just like them. The horror in my dream had more to do with becoming a mindless automaton unable to think or mentally do for myself than any possible physical mutilation of body that becoming a zombie might bring. (I don't look good in red or white, but blue is okay).

In my dream, feeling cornered, I stopped running from the Zombies and started attacking them instead. I was using my fists - but in reality I was using my mind. I could think. They couldn't. In the end, I was the one left standing amid a lot of broken Zombies and the world was once again safe to be in.

We need more thinkers and fewer zombies if THIS world is to be safe again.

U.S. Founded as a Christian Nation? Yeah... Right...

The Right Wing (Or the Evil Empire, take your pick in my book) has asserted, often loudly and with great reverence, that the United States was founded as a Christian Nation!

Not hardly...

It's Final Jeopardy and the category is: US Myths and Fallacies

The answer is, "All of them." You have thirty seconds. Please put your answer in the form of a question.

(30 seconds later)

Right wing, contestant number one, you have thirty trillion dollars and own 85% of the wealth of the United States. What was your answer?

Uh, I said, "How many of the Founding Fathers were Christians?"

Oh, I'm sorry, Right Wing. That is an incorrect answer. The Correct answer is "Which of the Founding Fathers were businessmen?"

That's right, boys and girls and all the ships at sea, our Founding Fathers were Businessmen first, liberals (yes, really, liberals, interested in freedom, democracy and wary of large tyrannical powers that sought to limit personal freedom and choice) and, mostly not too fond of religions.

Now, it must be pointed out that they were against ORGANIZED RELIGIONS. This is an important distinction. They believed in faith, but they adamantly refused to allow a personal faith to interfere in the business of creating a government. They went so far as to put that into the FIRST AMENDMENT in the bill of rights.

You see, organized religions have this habit of screwing up governments. As observed by Thomas Jefferson (you know, the guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence? Third President of the United States? Banged his own slave girl and fathered children with her? THAT Thomas Jefferson?) in a letter to German Baron von Humboldt in 1813:

"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose."

Now, let's fast-forward to today. Our right-wingers have availed themselves of the lowest grade of ignorance to manipulate the poor, southerner/mid-westerner for their own purposes.

Now, least you think that perhaps he was talking about corrput politicians and priests and not about religions in general or Christianity in particular, he went on to say at another time:

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."

The score is Reason 2, Religions 0. And proof that not all of the founding fathers were interested in making a "christian nation."

But let us go further and examine the right-wing notion that they were trying to do just that: create a Christian Nation.

They were crafting a nation. They only needed a 2/3 majority to get the work done. And all of the 13 original states had to sign onto the newly drafted Constitution. If we were a nation of people wanting it to be a Christian nation, why didn't they put it in the Constitution? Why, instead, did they specifically and categorically deny the right of the government to dictate what religion a person had. Not only that, but why did they put that prohibition against the government into the very FIRST amendment which became our Bill of Rights? Going one step further to pound this home, why did they make that the FIRST PROVISION OF THAT AMENDMENT IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS? If these were all good and godly men foaming at the mount to create the first truly Christian Nation, why did they go so far out of their way to shoot themselves in the foot on the journey to that religious destiny?

Well, the easy answer is because they weren't that interested in God. In fact, they were so not interested in God, that the word God doesn't appear in the Constitution. Nowhere. Not a peep. In fact, "deity", "Creator" or any reference to anything even remotely of a religious, let alone "christian" nature is glaringly absent from the Constitution - aside from the prohibition on the part of government to create laws based on one.

You think, maybe, they were sending a message?

To refresh your memory:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Not only did our founding fathers tell the government you can't establish a religion, but it went on to say that you can't pass laws that tell others how to live based on a particular religion or faith since they may have a different faith and that law may interfere in the free exercise of it.

This isn't exactly what I would call "Christian Nation building" here.

The truth of the matter is that the founding fathers saw what the Church of England had done to the people in England (and elsewhere where other religions governed or had a strong hand in the running of a government). They knew that allowing any religion, regardless of who believed in it, or how many, to be able to take power in the government would be a disaster for the free, open society they envisioned.

So why were they so into a free and open society? Aside from a large dose of off-shore repression England engaged in before the Revolutionary war (and for a period of time thereafter, in fact), the founding fathers were BUSINESSMEN. Almost all of them were rich land-owners. Almost all of them were extremely well educated. Almost all of them owned businesses or were heavily invested in them.

In ANY society run by dogma, the clerics only need to decide something is subversive or immoral, then pass a law to outlaw it or restrict it. In a free and open society, people can smoke, drink and fool around howsoever they please. They can indulge in the vices the church often railed against: Smoking, drinking and fooling around. Many of the founding fathers owned (or were invested in) distilleries. Others owned tobacco plantations. Almost all of them owned slaves (something ELSE the churches hated and wanted abolished).

The founding fathers were creating a businessman's paradise, folks, NOT a nation of Christians. The LAST damned thing they wanted was some stupid church to get its meat hooks into the government to shut down their distilleries, make them stop harvesting tobacco (and hemp, by the way), or, heaven forbid, take away their slaves. Profits would plummet.

A cadre of "Christian Nation Builders" they were not.

So the next time you hear a right-winger talk about our found fathers as Christians interested in a Christian nation, you can do what I do: Laugh, point and call them ignoramuses who don't know anything about the nation they want to run into the ground.

Tell them I sent you...

Which Do You Hear, the Messenger, or the Message?

One of the things about human nature I've noticed is how often people will hear a messenger, but not the message. That is to say, what is being said seems less important to the listener than who is saying it or how it's said (or both).

When evaluating information coming to us, there are preconceptions people place on those providing the information. This prejudges the information, deeming what is being said to be valid or invalid simply because of who is speaking. Even the manner of delivery will have an impact on whether anyone bothers to listen to what's being said.

This proclivity becomes especially pronounced in politics. If the person saying things (regardless of the "things" being said) has a bad "presence", poor speaking voice, odd appearance or a history of saying/doing really odd things, the listeners will not hear what's being said. They'll focus on the oddities, the things that bother them, rather than on the words coming out of the speaker's mouth.

This is, of course, a two-edged sword. A "bad" politician will be unable to sway a crowd with presence/appearance/voice alone. But a "good" politician won't have to say anything memorable, relevant or factual provided s/he says it in a manner that is presentable, visually appealing and appeals to the aural needs of the crowd.

A few years ago in the late fall, during a commemoration of fallen war dead, a tall, awkward-looking, soft-voiced man stood up and spoke for a few minutes. He followed several speakers who orated with great passion and at length, to the delight of the crowd. There were several reporters covering the event. Barely anyone noticed what was being said by this tall, awkward-looking man and only one reporter out of dozens jotted down the speech for posterity. It was a remarkably short speech.

The presentation of the speech was poor. Barely anyone noticed when it was being delivered. Few paused in their writing from the previous speaker's orations and several never heard it at all. But it became one of the most moving speeches in human history - only AFTER it was published where no one had to listen to the speaker or be distracted by the now utterly lost and irrelevant but well spoken orations of the others at that event.

The speech started out, "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal..."

In this case, what was being said was FAR AND AWAY better than how it was said, or even who said it.

Sadly, in today's world, we are caught in a reality of sound bites. The three minutes it takes to recite the Gettysburg Address is too long for the attention span of news organizations who seem to think that quick, out-of-context or viciously short barbs and quips are actually relevant provided the right people say them. We are becoming less concerned about what people say, than how they say it or even who is saying it.

Politicians are great at rhetoric. All you need do to to get people cheering is to stand up on a stage, toss a bit of confetti in the air, drop some appropriately colored balloons and shout, "God Bless America!" in a well practiced, booming voice. But the "science" behind his goes a few steps further, and was touched upon in my "Rednecks" post.

Politicians never say insightful things today like Lincoln did 146 years ago. Today, politicians are strictly out to get elected. Lincoln was speaking to the future beyond the next election. In order to get elected, politicians now have talking points and each time, those points are changed slightly to accommodate the prejudices, sensibilities and expectations of the crowd. All of these talking points can be summed up with the phrase, "I believe in what you believe in, so vote for me."

It doesn't mean the politician is telling the truth.

At a Democratic rally, you'll hear politicians talking about protecting the environment, reducing military spending, increasing aid to the needy. At Republican rallies, you hear them talking about banning gay marriage and abortions, building a strong America with a strong military and bringing prayer back to schools. Both sides talk about fiscal responsibility (Yes, the liberals actually do that because to do otherwise would be to play to the stereotype). Both sides talk about doing the "will of the people" because "it's what Americans want!"

So you elect your liar of choice and what happens? Pretty much nothing. Neither side is willing to let the other side "win". One side's America isn't the other side's America. WHAT they said means nothing. It was all in the delivery. Next time you go to a political rally, LISTEN TO THE WORDS. The actual amount of meat (or meaning) in them wouldn't feed a hummingbird. Look at the crowd and judge for yourself if those words are just what they want to hear, or actually go beyond the moment (or at least beyond the coming election).

I don't expect politicians to be Mark Twain, Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln in what they say. Great oratory isn't written by the orators these days. Often times, great oratory isn't even written by anyone. It's all sound bites of quick, compact messages designed to influence you and convince you to vote for that guy (or gal). They don't move you so much as stick to you so that when you're in the voting booth, you vote for them in the hopes those sticky, icky bits of bites will FINALLY wash off.

And be forgotten.

With all the rhetoric out there in politics today, it's easy to get caught up in the stickiness of it all. But keep in mind, that stickiness is deliberate. They don't want you to remember what they said (god forbid they be held accountable for all of those promises!). They want to sell that feeling you had when you were cheering them (even if you weren't quite sure why you were doing that) long enough for you to go to the polls and vote for them.

At Gettysburg in 1863, when Lincoln finished his speech, there was a smattering of applause from the gathered dignitaries and reporters. That reception of his few minutes of speaking was almost silent compared to the cheers and applause which had punctuated the conclusions of the previous speaker's remarks. Lincoln thought what he had said was not liked or, worse, somehow insulting. The war between the states was a time of great passion, great emotion and great suffering. Our nation had been torn asunder by innate differences in how we viewed our fellow man and was poorly stitched back together by the imprecise, violent surgery of war without the benefit of anesthesia.

Over the years, that short speech, delivered so poorly by a man who would be assassinated fifteen months later because of the delusions of those who refused to accept the changes which had been wrought on the nation, has since resonated throughout American history. In the Boston Globe, on June 1st, 1865, a reporter wrote,

"Lincoln was mistaken that "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." Rather, the Bostonian remarked, "The world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech."

No one remembers what the other speakers said. It was a bunch of bombast, pomp and circumstances. To quote another man who was good with a phrase,

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Think about THAT the next time someone is speaking to you from a podium and inflames your passions about the things you think you believe in. Are those issues you're cheering about really that important? Or are you just so lost in the moment, you don't think about the future? Or, worse, do you even know why, or what, you're cheering?

The future is out there, and it's coming at us faster than you think. Next time you see a politician, LISTEN to what is being said. If you come away hungry, they're not saying enough. And if they're not saying enough now, there won't be enough from him when the future arrives.