For many years now, you and I have been shushed like children and told there are no simple answers to the complex problems that are beyond our comprehension. Well, the truth is that there are simple answers. They are just not easy ones.-Ronald Reagan, Far-Left Liberal-
I haven't posted for a while, here or elsewhere. What was my way of dealing with the madness of Bushworld has become a bit of Sisyphean madness of my own, as the comment made to my last post does illustrate. The question of whether the US is too stupid to realize that it's insane or too insane to realize that it's stupid doesn't seem worthy of much attention any more. I just don't care.
Every Sunday, there is at least one letter in the paper about how the Constitution guarantees rights only for Christians, that criticizing a bad president makes one unworthy to defend a better one, that Republicans are a majority and ACORN rigged the election and Nancy is going to take our guns away, that Diebold rigged the election for Al Franken and all the other creative fantasies about Obama you've heard time and time again. Everywhere, the incessant American background noise of liberaliberaliberaliberaliberal, like the sound of some infant sucking on an imaginary pacifier, permeates life and makes it foul and hateful. Far-left Liberal! From George Washington to Ronald Reagan. Don't understand someone? He's a farleftliberal!
The offense of their verbal assault is less than the offense of their idea that they're making a trenchant point that I can't refute, that they're making sense. Insane? Stupid, Stupidly insane? Does it matter? The barbarians have been preaching that this is a mean, nasty and ugly world for so long that they've made it so, and the only freedom they recognize is the freedom to do just that.
I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. I've been watching a TV series about how natural processes will erase all signs of humanity from the planet in a rather short time after we are gone and I find myself impatient for it all to happen, if only the insipidities and smug platitudes would be washed away along with all the beauty and majesty of all that we have done in our brief era and despite the dogs of God and the hate filled hordes.
For every complex answer there is a simple answer . . . and it is wrong.-H.L. Menken, Far-left Liberal-
The barbarians have been preaching that this is a mean, nasty and ugly world for so long that they've made it so, and the only freedom they recognize is the freedom to do just that.
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly right - very well said!
But let's not forget that the barbarians are not running the show anymore. They may think they are - and many of our liberal "leaders" try hard to accommodate them - but that doesn't mean it's true. When we have a president who gives speeches in Cairo like the one Obama gave last week, I can't help but feel like we're finally going in the right direction.
Take heart, Fogg, even though the loonies continue to pour out of the woodwork, the light of reason is slowly frying them to a crisp. We just have to keep pushing back.
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ReplyDeleteCaptain: “ I've been watching a TV series about how natural processes will erase all signs of humanity from the planet in a rather short time after we are gone …”
ReplyDelete… and I await a time when rising seas will inundate Washington, and all cephalopods of the deep will occupy the White House without ever having to win an election. Long live the Sargasso Republic! May there be plaice in our time!
I dunno, they are experts at drowning out reason and truth. After all they've got half the country believing in angels and witches and the 6000 year old earth and that Burger King owners know more than paleoclimatologists about climates because they're ConSERVative.
ReplyDeleteHumans just aren't up to the task and only a percent or two are intelligent enough to see through them.
drown 'em all and nothing with two legs gets on the Ark unless it's got feathers.
"After all they've got half the country believing in angels and witches and the 6000 year old earth..."
ReplyDeleteI read on a blog, I don't remember the name of it just now, how strange it is that the same people who believe the earth is 6,000 years old also promote the idea that we should drill for oil.
How do they reconcile that?
I read on a blog, I don't remember the name of it just now, how strange it is that the same people who believe the earth is 6,000 years old also promote the idea that we should drill for oil.
ReplyDeleteHa! That thought never occurred to me. But you know - God put the oil there and gave us drills with which to harvest it and cars with which to guzzle it. He truly is all powerful.
Seriously though - how do they reconcile that?
There was an article today in the paper about a bone fragment found near Vero Beach that had a mammoth carved on it and speculation was that it must be no earlier than 13000 years old, since that's when mammoths disappeared from these parts.
ReplyDeleteOf course, you guessed it, this is Florida and the frenzy of denouncing carbon dating as a joke because " how can you tell it works" and largely fraudulent and science is just a kind of faith so legend is just as reliable and besides god made the world old, oil, fossils and zircon crystals with 4.5 billion years aging on them, to fool us.
This is what I mean -- I give up. Our species does not deserve one more minute of survival.
There are two things in life you can't fight Poverty and stupidity.. A big reason is that many of the poor and stupid choose to be poor and stupid. It's easier to believe what the preacher said than read the whole Bible, or any book for that matter.
ReplyDeleteSarah Palin can tell us that God filled the Earth with oil from his mighty bladder and 35 to 40% of the Country will believe it because they're stupid. And it's easier than reading about ancient carboniferous forests.
I personally choose to laugh about it instead of driving myself crazy trying to talk reason with fools.
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteYes, as a Jurassic-epoch dinosaur (and therefore a living reproof of anti-eeevolewshunists) I find the persistence of the false debate over evolution amusing, if frustrating. It seems there is no way to disprove an assertion to the satisfaction of those who are determined to believe it anyway. I suspect that a lot of the harm done in the world comes from people who insist on maintaining and enforcing antiquated notions without modification by the pressure of events or new discoveries.
"There are two things in life you can't fight Poverty and stupidity.."
ReplyDeleteAlbert Einstein said “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
I have just finished up a long, long, painful argument with a wingnut, asking her to give me proof of her accusation that President Obama is a traitor and a racist.
Except for citing something called her "internal logic," she had no evidence to back up her slander. (In actuality, she didn't like Mr. Obama's speaking about the "lash and the whip" of slavery in his Cairo address, and said it showed the US in the worst possible light while he was on foreign soil--[as though the students at Cairo University had no idea of our history.])
After pursuing this on two blogs, she turned on me, accused me of trying to "shut her up" (I practically begged her to tell me exactly how she came to the conclusion that the prsident was a traitor).
Then, predictably, she became a victim of my "hounding," because I insisted that she justify her calumny.
I have learned my lesson well.
In all fairness to Bloggingdino, we should honor his ancestors and leave the oil in the ground.
ReplyDeleteDespite naysayer denials about global warming, a simple fact remains: Untold volumes of carbon were sequestered underground since the Carboniferous Period. What nature accomplished over 350 million years was undone by less than 20 generations of human beings who dug up this stuff and threw it back into the atmosphere. Cough! Gasp! Talk about shtoopid!
I'm tired of talking about stupid, but stupid is like a collection agency or an alumni association - it finds you.
ReplyDeleteTrolls are becoming more like raging psychotics as we see here, projecting the boiling, roiling,incoherent hate onto us all as if they were all Buddhas of eternal tranquility until we "farleftliberals" transgressed against them. Some show up smiling condescendingly as if they were slumming -- telling us some of their best friends are "farleftliberals," but they're all stupid religious rage inside. Others wear their hate on their sleeves, but either way it's hate on a plate.
Yes, I should have me head examined for engaging such people. I know it's hopeless. I know you can't argue brains into a hollow skull. I know the stupid and ignorant will always far outnumber even the mediocre and I know that the most cherished notions of the masses are no better than mental viruses for which there is no cure. I know all this, and I've always been able to isolate myself from it with books and music, the company of smart people and sojourns in the wilderness, but a door works both ways once you open it by posting and I cannot resign myself to living on this planet of vermin where one has to swat flies and pick the lice out of our blog every morning.
Orkin, Orkin -- why hast thou forsaken us?