This is the End.

Abandon all hope. We elected our first neofascist President.
Sure we've elected some embarrassing Presidents over the years. Reagan was a shitty actor with low IQ and GW Bush was an ignorant spoiled dunce but this is another level. Sure it's horribly embarrassing that Trump is a reality TV show star and has zero experience in governing. And sure it's beyond irrational to expect experts in all other walks of life (doctor, lawyer, scientist, police officers, military officers, etc) yet not at the highest office in the land as the leader of the free world. No. It's not just this. It's something much more sinister. Trump is a con man. He's a machiavellian master troll and he has a troll army. He has a cult of personality following him something akin to Scientology. These neofascist cult members of Trump's have threatened anyone who opposes him. There are many examples of this. Trump can "condemn" (*wink *wink) their actions but of course Trump is an opportunist and he's using their threats of violence like any good fascist demagogue would for their own gain.

America died the day we elected our first neofascist. That's it. It's over. The American Experiment has now failed. I've had arguments with so many people about this. Most of which I disagree with are people that I would consider fellow liberals. Many think I'm being conspiratorial or hyperbolic to paint the picture of our reality as so deeply grim. To them I simply say you haven't been paying close attention then in the past year. When I say people should buy fallout shelters to protect themselves against nuclear war I admit it sounds at first listen like a conspiracy theorist speak. They ask aren't you a skeptic? Don't you usually bat away most conspiracy theories now? Why is this different?

Why? Because I have eyes and I'm just merely reading Trump's tweets in black and white. It's not a secret he is taunting the unpredictable leaders of Communist China and North Korea with tweets about nuclear weapons. This is happening and he's not even the President yet... And why? What is the point of these tweets? To make a joke? Will Kim Jong Un really "get" that joke?! To be entertaining? When your President who's first job is to protect the country is directly and pointlessly putting the country in harms way then this President is not fit to be President. FUCKING PERIOD. Obama and congress must take any action possible to stop this madman. Of course they won't. This much is clear. There are only a few Republicans left standing such as Lindsay Graham and John McCain who are speaking out against the anti-American fascist sway (and they should be careful of Trump's cult). The GOP has proven that first and foremost they care about staying in power even if it means selling out the republic to a fascist. GOP leaders like Newt Gingrich have been in full boot-licking fascist mode for Trump for a long time now. They will be rewarded by Trump. That's how he bases everything.. like a mafia boss - on LOYALTY. Just take Mitt Romney for example who Trump recently made a very public display out of. The message is clear you don't bend the knee then you are going to be publicly humiliated, bitch. Fall in line. Hang a picture of our dear leader above your alter at home you sellout fascist pigs.

Then there is Russia interfering with our elections to specifically get Trump elected. Putin wants Trump to be our President. Both the CIA and the FBI have concluded that Putin interfered with our election to get Trump elected. That should be the end of it, Trump cannot take office. Done. It's over right?? Despite what Sean Hannity says (praising Assange - who he once called to be executed for leaking US reports). We have a serious breach and seriously no one is outraged. The media is consistently being played by Trump and when Obama acts it totally backfires and he is painted as the warmongerer while Putin and Trump as the peace-loving level-headed leaders. Make no mistake: This is essentially a right-wing coup. Trump is redrawing the connections of who our allies are and who are enemies are. Putin took a huge risk by doing this. If Hillary would have won he would have been up shit's creek, but against all polls and odds Trump pulled it off. By the way, I called it for Trump. I was against the grain on this prediction clearly but I knew idiocracy was much stronger in this country than most liberals thought. Check a few blogs back.  So now we basically have a Russian plant for President. This is starting to sound like a Tom Clancy novel, but IT'S REAL! I guess all these freedom-loving, patriotic, constitutionalist conservatives are fine with Russia interfering in our democracy. No problem. Not a traitorous act at all. It's our turn liberals to call this shit out. If you support Russia interfering in our elections you are UN-AMERICAN damn it! You are a traitor, (as you once said to me as I opposed the pointless Iraq War) - AMERICA: LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT! Well, what's it gonna be there, Fox Neutered O'Reillyites?? You with the Evil Empire (Russia) or you with America?!

When people get sucked into the Trumpnado and they start doing these mind-blowing cognitive dissonance mental acrobatic feats of wonder on a scale that should really be in some sort of Olympic event they say to me I'm being paranoid and ridiculous. Just wait. We don't really know Trump will be horrible or do any evil fascist shit. I always tell life-long conservatives to start reading some of the oldest and most consistent intellectuals on the right. Read David Frum or Bill Kristol's articles in the Atlantic. Read Andrew Sullivan. These men were all completely against Hillary Clinton (many loved GW Bush like you did!) but they realize the absolute danger of electing our first neofascist. The founders would be disgusted by us letting go of our republic willingly. These intellectual conservatives (some even neocons from the GW Bush era) from day one have been critical of Trump. They all say he is overwhelmingly unfit to serve as President. No one listens to the intellectuals. Instead its what a talk radio pundit says or cable news talking suit.

Idiocracy always holds strong. It's not just idiocracy, it's anti-intellectualism. This is how you go from a nuclear physicist to Rick fucking Perry as the Energy Secretary. It's also how you go from a woman with a masters in environmental science and policy to a baseball team owner with zero environmental science credentials as the head of the EPA. It's also how you go from a constitutional lawyer to a reality TV show star as PRESIDENT!

Also, I highly suggest conservatives look at what our usual allies are saying about Trump. The countries we have had for decades now as our friends and allies (countries in Europe for example) are horrified by Trump. When Europe is afraid alliances could be broken and think your President is a fascist madman you may want to rethink what's happening. Why do suddenly conservatives feel the need to side with Russia over Europe? Just think for a second how utterly mad that is! Everything has flipped on it's head. Trump has turned the world around. You have Julian Assange friends with Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck friends with Samantha Bee, and Glenn Greenwald friends with Tucker Carlson you know the world is changing! I encourage them to look at what the last sitting Presidents had to say about Trump during the campaign. Doesn't it bother you at all conservatives that your heroes GHW Bush and GW Bush have openly showed disdain for Trump calling him unqualified to be President. Did this not resonate with any of them?!

No. just grab 'em by the pussy and move on I guess.

Make no mistake Hillary Clinton is very much to blame for our first neofascist "dear leader". She was not allowed to lose. That was not an option yet she fucking did. She was a deeply flawed candidate from day one but let her selfish entitlement get in the way of our democracy. "Isn't it time?" was her pompous shitty slogan. Yeah, time for you to lose to a fucking reality show star! Bernie could have lost to Trump, possibly. No one will know for sure, but he certainly would have been much more clean and scandal-free than her. Plus, there was not one member of a "Hillary-or-bust" movement, that wasn't a thing, where there was a rather large group of Bernie-or-Bust voters out there who wasted their vote for Jilly Stein or Gary Johnson. Wrong time to protest vote, assholes! When the very fabric of our republic is on the line it's probably best to go with the rational choice of sHillary Clinton. I hated the Bernie-or-Bust movement so much. They helped get our first neofascist elected President as well.

There is a lot of blame to go around for Trump but at the top of the list is the propaganda right wing media machine of Fox News and their cult following of old white people from the midwest. Right now a channel that would not stop talking about the unpatriotic left when they protested the Patriot Act and NSA spying is PRAISING Wikileaks and wanted criminal Julian Assange for hacking into the DNC emails and leaking documents illegally. Fox News is now opposite of government agencies such as the CIA and FBI who have concluded Putin interfered with our election to get Trump elected. A channel that once treated Ronald Reagan's birthday as the greatest spectacle celebration of all time (when really there were just a few people there) and praised his ending the Cold War and opposing the evil empire (Russia) now is praising the Evil Empire and it's neofascist leader. This is a Twilight Zone episode. There are pundits on Faux News that literally consider Putin a better and more admirable leader than President Obama. Just let that soak in. If you know even the slightest bit of Russian history about Putin and his rise to power you should be shaking your head right now at the sheer stupidity of what I just wrote.

Lastly you must lay most of the blame at conspiracy culture which is where our "tremendous" Phoenix-Trump originated in all his orange-tinged glory. The first real major splash Trump made, his introduction into the political spectrum, was by saying President Obama was not an American citizen. He was the first public figure to publicly ask our first black President for his papers. The contagious Trump disease was birthed out of racism as well as conspiracy culture. This was debunked quickly and yet still Trump danced around this not quite conceding, as he does. People believed it despite knowing that it was false. This was the origin of the rise of conspiracy culture into the mainstream. I implore you to go back and re-watch some of those interviews with Trump about Obama's birth certificate and you'll see the master troll at work. Some of my liberal friends say Trump is just winging it, he's a moron who doesn't know what he's doing. No. Trump is a master tactician and troll. He knows exactly what he's doing and why he's doing it.

Think about this: Trump as sitting President has agreed to appear on the Alex Jones show. If you don't know who Alex Jones is find clips of his on YouTube. Turn the volume down and adjust your color settings because it gets really loud and really red. You will soon discover that this man is a popular conspiracy theorist who believes that 9/11 was an inside job which Bush knew about, that Sandy Hook massacre of little children was all staged with "crisis actors". Jones' believes in chemtrails, aliens, satan, demons, fluoride poisoning us all, that Michelle Obama is a transgender and so on and so on. Oh he also propelled the "pizzagate" story, where Hillary Clinton and top aids ran an underground pedophilia ring in the basement of a pizza parlor. (by the way even after this has been debunked with zero evidence nearly half of Trump voters STILL believe it to be true. - This is how their mind works.) Yes, Alex Jones is about to get an upgrade to a legitimate status pundit when President Trump grants him an interview. Trump is normalizing conspiracy culture to usher in the death of facts, rationality, and reason on a national scale. The trolling is so masterful that I sometimes have to pinch myself to see if this isn't a dream. Some horrible horrible David Lynchesc dream. Everyone around me is being conned. Even many of my liberal friends are still lost in the weeds with Trump. They don't know how to talk about him and when they do the adjectives they use to describe him are completely off-base demonstrating that they STILL do not know what Trump is all about.

Conspiracy culture pushed Trump to the top. Think about all the insane conspiracies Trump has spun throughout this election run. Remember when he said Ted Cruz's dad could have been, I don't know, I'm not saying, I'm just saying- I heard somewhere... (you know how our "dear leader" speaks) that he was connected to Lee Harvey Oswald who assassinated JFK. Everything is conspiracy theory with Trump and this is completely by design so that he can operate in a fact-less or truth-less realm. He's created this space for himself so that he can say and do nearly anything and the media is off chasing a crazy tweet he just said 2 min. earlier. He floods the media with this constant contradictory horrifying gibberish to distract and to shape the reality in which we're forced to live in. He said that global warming is just some elaborate hoax perpetrated by the Chinese government. The list is endless really and we have to realize what is happening. Trump is more than just a liar, he's a bullshit artist. He's a very talented con man who just conned the entire country into electing him President.

If you want a trajectory of what Trump plans to do look to his friend Putin and his history. Throw red meat to the masses (Trump may even govern Bernie Sanders-style left if it means keeping him in power by getting most people voting for him) Trumpcare? Rising minimum wages? Most likely because these things will keep him popular. Another characteristic is to be a fascist tyrant with the media. This has already happened. Trump met with the top media outlets and a person in the room described it as a lecture session where Trump went off on them forever then told them they must treat him favorably and fall in line. This is total-Putin. Trump and Putin have similar outlooks on the media and how to handle them. Would I put it past Trump to "indirectly" have media members killed all Frank Underwood style? Not at all. You must understand the basics: Trump, like Putin wants only two things. 1. Money 2. Power. It's that simple. Like Putin did with Russia, Trump will basically turn the US into Trump Inc. enriching his brand in all sorts of ways here in America and abroad. Wars for oil pipelines? Count on it. Whatever makes the Trump brand more money and keeps Trump in power will be the goal of Trump. Everything fits through this lens. He will side with literally anyone (democrat, republican, fascist dictator,  you name it) as long as it means his brand profits. Keep that in mind.

So can our country survive our own version of Putin? Will we look something like Russia in 8 years? Who knows and who knows if we make it through even a single year under a Trump presidency. He has been tweeting out nuclear threats for no reason ... that could be the beginning of World War 3. It's not easy to wake up and remember that that orange neofascist psychopath is about to be our President, like FOR REAL in just a few short weeks. I didn't even mention climate change mitigation. That's a distant memory under Trump. Nothing will be done and he's even called for increasing carbon-heavy energy. So a Trump presidency is most likely a death nail for the planet as Noam Chomsky once correctly warned. There really isn't much hope here. Obama looks like the greatest President of all time and in some ways he certainly was in my lifetime. Obama was against demagoguery, while Trump is a demagogue. We of course must try to fight the fascist and his cult but it won't be easy and it's going to get really scary and shitty really fast. So just keep that in mind while I play us out to this fitting Door's song- "This Is the End":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSUIQgEVDM4

Vote Corruption Over Fascism

This blog is my final plea to sway anyone reading this to vote corruption over fascism tomorrow on election day. I'm not going to insult Trump voters and call them morons or rednecks. I'm not going to say you are stupid for not supporting Hillary Clinton. As I've stated previously I am not a fan of Hillary Clinton. I voted for Obama over her in 2008 democratic primaries and was a passionate supporter of Bernie Sanders over her this time. I don't expect anyone to like her. In fact on a very primal, visceral level I like watching and listening to Trump speak over Clinton, but this is not reality TV, this is reality and I don't pick my doctor or my dentist because he's good at making me laugh or entertaining me. We should not be aligning who we want to lead this country to the lazy part of our brain.

We should want a leader that is knowledgeable and competent. We should want a President that is rational and experienced. This was one of the main reasons I thought Bernie was the far superior candidate to Hillary in the general because with Bernie you get not only honesty and integrity but experience and he's anti-establishment (in the healthy way!) But we are forced between these two less than ideal choices. There is no going back. Bernie or Kasich will never be elected president in 2016. We have to accept the reality of this situation.

And with this horror of a reality we land about where most people I know feel about this election. They say, "these two candidates are equally horrible" or "picking the lesser of two evils is still picking evil" or "I refuse to vote for someone I do not want to be my President". I understand the sentiment to all of these but there is no way one of these two will not be our President. It will never be Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, or "Vernon Supreme"! So if you vote 3rd party or "none of the above", as they call it a "protest vote" you are part of the problem.

I don't want to try to convince you Hillary Clinton has earned your vote. I would say she has done literally nothing to earn mine. This election seems to be voting for a candidate that will stop the other candidate. It's an election of voting against someone not for someone. That is just the reality of the situation, and this gross narrative could all have been avoided with Bernie. Not a whole lot of people loathe Bernie they way they do Hillary. So what we have to do is convince you voting against Trump is much more sane than voting against Hillary.

I have several friends that see Hillary as Satan. Some have even compared her to Hitler. She's a murderer, a traitor, an evil secret reptilian Jew alien.. you name it. There are legit concerns about Hillary and her corruption. I find most of the outrage from Republicans to be overblown but there is some cause for alarm. You can say she paid off the FBI to get out of indictment. You can say she paid off the those that cleared her of wrong doing in Benghazi and not produce evidence but you have to understand that your bias is screaming through here. You need to reel it back and look at the facts we have.

With Trump we have a clear case of "strongman" authoritarian. He said in his GOP nomination acceptance speech that "he ALONE can fix this country". I often wonder how many times people just laugh their way through Trump's silly speeches and forget to catch red flags. He has praised 3rd world dictators like Kim Jong Il. He has made no apologies for really admiring ex-KJB and Russian leader  Vladimir Putin. He has quoted Mussolini in tweets. He has mentioned opening up the libel laws to sue journalists for lying about him. He talks of shutting down satirical television shows that make fun of him like SNL. He has on several occasions called for outright war crimes, breaking international law like torturing more than just waterboarding (even if it doesn't work) and bombing the family members (innocent women and children) of terrorist organizations to teach them a lesson.

 Trump is a thug. Trump is a pathological liar (there is data showing he lies 70+% of the time. Let that sink in! Trump is a true narcissist. He is a fascist demagogue.  He very talented con man and master troll. If will not release his taxes, breaking tradition by all presidential candidates in modern American history. Likely reasons he will not: He isn't as rich as he claims (a true psychopath that cannot be undone) or he has ties to Russia. Trump incites violence at his rallies.. telling his supporters that you should punch protestors in the face, take them out on a stretcher and he'll pay for the legal fees. He is a passionate opponent of free speech and if you are a Tea Party conservative constitutionalist American patriot and don't see a problem here you need serious mental help. He is a hollow human that has no idea what it means to self reflect. A quote from the movie American Psycho best sums up Trump,

There is an idea of Patrick Bateman (aka: Donald Trump); some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply and not there. - Patrick Batemen

I want you to close your eyes and imagine voting for someone with this psychological profile and laying your head down at night with a clean conscience. I know many of you hate Hillary with the passion of a thousand suns but giving this mad man the keys to the nuclear codes is suicidal. Giving this man the ability to "bring back coal" and shut down alternative energy in this country would destroy the progress we've already made towards mitigating climate change and ramp up the effects of climate change. If the U.S. completely embraces the environmental policies by a climate change denier like Donald Trump the rest of the world could follow suit. If America doesn't care why should we? Coal is much much cheaper and easier to process energy from.

We are looking a world wide disaster possibly Tuesday on election day. You can either be on the right side of this or the wrong side of this. I know many of you cannot vote for Hillary. I get it (sort of) but just at the very least be a person of integrity, patriotism, rationality, grace, and class to NOT vote for Donald Trump. If Trump gets into the White House it will likely spell the end to our republic. A fascist authoritarian was the exact type of figure head our founding fathers warned us about. He will shatter this country and those of us that are not part of the fascist cult will be on the radar.

You have to understand too fascism isn't just some scary authoritarian ego-manic as a leader of a country. It's a cult. It's anti-intellectual and deeply hyper-nationalistic. The in-group/out-group is on hyper-drive among the cult. Fascism is grass roots and anti-establishment (in a bad way!) The cult does the dirty work and just like in all neofascist situations the dear leader can say oh I never gave the direct orders to lynch this journalist or kill this Muslim American... BUT it's been done. The cult takes on a life of its own and those that oppose the cult are the enemies. Do you oppose the cult? If Trump is elected this cult gets legitimized. The red hats are coming, but you can stop this. Please I beg you to use the rational part of your brain here, be pragmatic... vote against Fascist Don.

Vote corruption ONLY to stop fascism.






The two best links on Fascism and the dangers of it rising here with electing Trump:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html

Trump or Clinton? (A Blog Short)

American politics currently has become utter madness. This presidential election is a nightmare, one of those types of nightmares where it seems everyone is blind to something you and a handful of others are seeing. Is everyone being conned by a textbook conman or by a mostly identity politics-driven corrupt politician? It is a choice between the lesser of two evils. Like, really this time! We often say that but this time it appears that there has been a raising of the bar for evil. Our choices: "Boundless Corruption" or the "End of the Republic"? Here's a few of my thoughts now that my pick for President, Bernie Sanders, is no longer in the race. Let's start first with Hillary:

Is Hillary corrupt? Yes.

She likely deserves to be in jail if justice came properly for criminal negligence. Now there is often scandal and corruption. It's a spectrum. There was Nixon and other corrupt presidents in U.S. History. Hillary if elected will be probably one of the most corrupt President yet. I'm willing to admit this right off the bat.

But knowing all of that I would still pick Clinton over Trump for President. Not because I'm democrat. I'm actually currently not. I was a registered republican in the GOP primary in  2012 to elect Ron Paul as nominee. I was a delegate here in my home state supporting Ron Paul. Then for this election I registered democrat and became a delegate to elect Bernie Sanders as the democrat nominee for President. However, once I viewed, with my own eyes, the disgusting anti-democratic display by the DNC/DNC chair here at the Nevada democratic convention I burned my DNC registration card. I then registered as an independent. I have no party now. 

I've been here before. I've been down the 3rd party route before. But not this time. No. Even after my first hand horrible experience at the NV DNC I'm still going to vote for Hillary. I hate her. I will vote for someone I hate just to stop trump. Wait! It gets worse! I actually like Trump's personality better than Clinton's personality. When he's not playing the role of a racist xenophobic bigot he's much more fun and entertaining to watch. He doesn't cackle like a witch. He doesn't dress like a communist dictator from North Korea. He's just much more likeable to me than her on a visceral level.

I even find myself really enjoying when Trump often very accurately calls out her specific corruption. His tweets about her corruption are many times exactly right. Hillary is bought out by Goldman Sacs and Wall Street. She is the poster child for donor money in politics. Trump is right about this, but even with all of this I'm still voting for Clinton to stop Trump.

So why am I voting for Hillary over Trump? It's simple. With Trump we are voting to fundamentally change the essence of our country. I don't mean this in some Sean Hannity or Michael Moore abuse of apocalyptic prediction sense. I mean this very literally. Neo-fascism if let in will end our republic as we know it. Fascism has led to mass genocide and so many other horrors that are unmatched in world history. We cannot change courses to this. Trump offers nothing of any substance to the American people because Trump is nothing but a con man troll. Trump's slogan "Make America Great Again" is essentially hyper-nationalism where he wants to introduce America to neo-fascism. We do not have a typical politician on our hands with Donald Trump. And I'm not saying this in "a good way" I'm saying this in a "this man is a neo-fascist with aspirations of dictatorship" way. This has become obvious but so many otherwise well-meaning conservative voters are still being conned and are not seeing it. Their "bullshit detectors" are rusty and they cannot see when they are being trolled.

I wish I could properly express my desire for conservative voters to simply read what their party's most intellectual thinkers are saying about the dangers of electing Donald Trump. That's it. Shut off the usual talk radio pundits and read only the conservative intellectuals with advanced degrees in political science. That's all I ask. Maybe then and only then could conservative voters heed their warnings. Intellectual conservatives right now are saying exactly what I'm saying.

Another thing to let sink in for conservative voters on the fence about Trump: If I'm wrong about how Trump is fundamentally trying to turn this country into his own personal neo-fascist enterprise than why on earth did every single GOP President of the past several decades NOT attend the RNC last week!? Because they know this Machiavellian demagogue is NOT a conservative or republican. He's a neo-fascist. Trump is the Master Troll. Understand Trump plays a conservative, Trump plays a republican, Trump plays many roles many different times. He is all things to all voters so he can maximize votes.

Listen to him speak. He more often than not cancels himself out by saying one thing than contradicting himself within the same sentence. He is saying literally NOTHING. Just recently Trump said he didn't know who Putin was. Then in the same interview talked about knowing Putin. This type of confusing rhetoric is on purpose. Read about Napoleon. His positions were often extremely confusing to scholars because he was all over the place politically. This is by design for a fascist. This is the way they speak. Go right now and watch of the utter nonsense-speak of Adolf Hitler speeches. 

Trump, like all cult of personality demagogues, is nonsensical and deeply narcissistic and thus much more dangerous than just another deeply corrupt politician like Hillary. Hillary wants to at least be corrupt within our current system. Trump wants to fundamentally change the system of government. And I for one cannot support handing this country over to a neo-fascist demagogue. Yeah, fascists don't get my vote. Figured that one out when I was a child. I wish America could break the spell, break the con of this conman. Please read some of the following articles:

Recommended links for further reading:

How an Obscure Adviser to Pat Buchanan Predicted the Wild Trump Campaign in 1996 from The Week magazine:

http://theweek.com/articles/599577/how-obscure-adviser-pat-buchanan-predicted-wild-trump-campaign-1996

America Has Never Been So Ripe for Tyranny from New York magazine:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html

History Tells Us What May Happen Next With Brexit & Trump from The Medium:

https://medium.com/@theonlytoby/history-tells-us-what-will-happen-next-with-brexit-trump-a3fefd154714#.an97vpae5 

Anti-Trump videos worth your time (Please share on social media!): 

(S)hillary Clinton Campaign Ad (?):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnncrGurHfY

Donald Trump: Make the World Fascist Again Ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOop_9Tb-sU

Dictator Donald Ad: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37qRaQjRg4M

Photo credit source: JOHN DARKOW/COLUMBIA DAILY TRIBUNE, MISSOURI

Where Are the Moderate Christians At? (A Blog Short Rant)

1. On Anti-Gay Terrorism

Just this week 49 people died in this country's largest terrorist attack since 9/11/2001. A homophobic radical Islamic psychopath busted into a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida and calmly shot and killed 49 people / injuring 53 people. Reading the survivor's accounts of terror will give you chills. The horror these people had to experience is mind-boggling.

As with most mass shootings in this country the aftermath is essentially democrats trying to pass some semblance of common sense gun reform and the republicans block this legislation. The right say it's the damn Muslim's fault not the weapons. The left says it's not Islam it's just the weapon. Of course we rational Americans realize it's a combination of many of these factors.

We often hear cries from people in this country asking where are the "moderate Muslims" standing up and denouncing this sort of terrorist behavior as being wrong? Sure, there was some response to this from the American Muslim community. But I also ask simply, where are the "moderate Christians"at?! I asked several of my Christian friends on social media why they were so silent. Some it took well over 48 hours to even say the simplest of meaningless phrases --"we're praying for the victims". My father, who is Christian and I've written about before in my blogs, was awkward when talking about this terrorist attack. He never said "this is what they deserve for their sinful lifestyle" or anything but there is this biting of the tongue that comes across as obvious to me.

Now we're watching all these once openly bigoted Christian Republican politicians saying all these nice things about the LGBT community. Suddenly they love the gay community. After 50 of them were slaughtered by some ISIS-lover! Well, I say fuck that! Where have you been all along, moderate Christians?!! I'll tell you where they've been all along: They have been on the wrong side of history fighting against LGBT rights, denying equal rights to marry who they love. They have been fighting for transgender citizens to use the "correct" bathroom. They have been shaming gay and lesbians in they're churches and in their homes for their "sinful" lifestyle. They founded "curing you of your gayness" camps and sent their poor homosexual Christian kids there. They "pray the gay away" and force their LGBT loved ones into a closet of shame for their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The "moderate" Christians more often than not think they are so hipster and cool; they are "totally cool" with gay people and show their blood-cult love by rubbing shoulders with them while patting themselves on the back for not being part of those horrible "God Hates Fags"-type Christians.

... But yet they still think that acting on their sexual orientation (if it's with the same sex) is a SIN! The core of their very biological essence is an offense to God! Think about how mean that is for a second. Some also think that if they don't identify with their biological sex then they are living in sin. Now let me be extremely clear here to even the most liberal of Christian... if you agree with me that people have the right to be whoever they want and to love and be with whoever they want and it's not some SIN!... if you agree with me, even the most of progressive of Christians then....

OPEN YOUR FUCKING MOUTHS!!!

and start being vocal publicly AND frequently about allying yourself with these people who deserve equal rights under the law for whatever lifestyle they choose.

Why the crickets though? Seriously, where are the moderate Christians at?!

2. On Religion Being Taught in Public Science Classrooms

I've had several different discussions with a few Christian friends that accept evolution or say they don't but that it wouldn't affect their impenetrable faith *if evolution was true. Well, of course evolution is true. Any of us with the slightest of education in the biological sciences know this, but yet when Christians promote pushing religion in the public science classroom on school boards across this country, . . . not a fucking peep from these same "moderate Christians". Why is that?! These people are part of your blood cult not mine.... Speak up! I can't hear you! You need to stand up to this if you know it's wrong because many of these "moderate" Christian friends of mine scoff at the silliness of Young Earth Creationism but strangely don't really say much publicly against it when it creeps up in our public science classrooms.

I should be reading articles in "moderate" Christian publications denouncing the actions by the Christian fundamentalists who want to teach unfounded mythology as science in science classes in public schools. I should be reading these articles before reading them from atheist blogs or secular coalitions group publications. These people are part of your religion, your team, your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ... Call them out! and speak the fuck up when you do it, please!

Where are the moderate Christians at? Why are they so often quiet on this subject?

3. On Donald J. Trump

Lastly, another subject the "moderate Christians" tend to avoid publicly is Donald Trump. During the G. W. Bush years in the glory days of the evangelical political right of this country you could barely separate politics and religion in churches across this country to meetings in congress.

Apparently most of God's children in America choose a fascist as their candidate: Donald Trump. It makes sense, I suppose, since Yahweh is the Supreme Dear Leader Celestial Fascist. But most of my "moderate" Christian friends who deeply dislike Trump and don't support him will send out a tweet or facebook post from time to time denouncing Trump, but that's about it. They aren't organizing to "get out the vote" ...  Why aren't more "moderate Christians" speaking out specifically against Trump .. as in the best way you can ** actually make the most difference - by telling your congregation and you yourself VOTING for Hillary. I hate Hillary too but clearly you cannot bitch and moan about Trump my dear New Christian friends if you don't fucking vote against him where your vote actually counts, in the general election. If I as an informed politically intelligent Bernie Sanders supporter have to suck it up and vote for the "lesser of two evils" then so do you, "moderate" Christian!

There are many ways you can bitch and moan about moderate Muslims, some of this is warranted but not all because Christians built this landscape of homophobia in this country with their own gloriously bigoted sweat and tears. This country is and has been overwhelmingly Christian. You all started this so if you REALLY are for LGBT people then speak the fuck up and support their rights. You can't have it both ways. You are either on the side of equality or you are not. If you are not. You are a bigot and you can fuck off.

In conclusion please by all means take a pause from quoting your selected "nice" Bible verses on twitter while ignoring all the bigoted, sexist, racist Bible verses. By all means set aside for a second discussing theological "problems" of your specific brand of  blood cult dogma. Take a minute away from blogging about animated films or superhero movies and the parallels to your favorite antiquated old book of mythology and wake up to join us in the real world with real problems. Open your mouth and speak out against things you seem to only quietly support or are against. Make some noise! Or else we'll just brush you off into the trash bin of history where your ancient super-woo blood magic cult belongs. -- With the rest of the bigots and garbage human history.

Where are all the moderate Christians at?! That's a serious question. Anyone Christian want to answer it?

It Is Enough (A Blog Short)

It is enough.

The verifiable fact that we are star dust is enough. So many religious believers are not satisfied by the simple awe, question, and mystery that envelopes us non-believers who look into the cosmos and see it for what it is: a universe that (as far as we know now) isn't looking back at us; it isn't staring or caring back at us. Since I broke the spell religion had on my life over a decade ago my argument has always been a religious worldview totally robs us of the purity of our sense of awe and wonder at the cosmos.

Compare:

Two scenarios: Two different people are out star gazing in the middle of the Mohave Desert on a perfectly clear night. The Milky Way is crystal clear and the colors of the spiral arms of this galaxy are bright and near blinding in their brilliance. I'm sure we've all experienced some place so free of light pollution that the stars appear so bright they almost hurt your eyes. It always feels like you are in a dream, swimming like an astronaut among the stars flecked among the deep black. It is a very surreal experience. Something our ancient ancestors saw every night.

One of these people looking up is a pastor of a local church. He is staring up at the galaxy and thinking about a Father "out there", somewhere beyond and above the entire universe he created. This Father is outside of his creation looking right back at us with deep love for us. This night, with the galaxy coating all he sees, he is reminded of this Father's Son that is also the father too (with a ghost) that "wrote himself" into the story (his creation) that he began at the Big Bang. This is the story with an extremely long prelude-- where the Father waited patiently while giant reptile-monsters (dinosaurs) ruled for several hundred million years, five major mass extinctions killing altogether some 99% of the life he created on this planet, then several 100,000 years of painful early hominid species suffering/death to lead finally to Genesis and Adam and Eve in the Bible! - all of this to get to this one moment.

The moment of the pastor and his Father.

Beautiful right?

This pastor rejoices in this moment at the confirmation that it is the CREATOR of the universe that cares! This creator cares about our lowly species! How miraculous! This pastor then connects this thought of a Father God that loves him so, who created this universe with him in mind, who created this very moment with his only begotten Son(himself). This god-son that became man (one of his creation) fills this pastor with joy. He becomes overwhelmed with gratitude and peace when he reflects on all that pain and suffering experienced by the Son of God on that ancient cross. Hallelujah!

It wasn't just the torture. Many common criminals and zealots were nailed to this Roman torture device. The pain and suffering was a trillion times over due to the Son of God taking on all human sin! Did this sin-drenched pain and suffering hurt worse than all the living species pain and suffering in all five mass extinctions up until this day? Yes. It REALLY hurt so much! The pastor didn't remember if this was in the Bible but it probably was!

This pastor is reflecting on the cosmos through a Christian worldview. This night sky, this stunning beauty of a color-speckled galaxy full of billions of stars causes this pastor to reflect further on the "rules" of this cosmos. The rules that forced God to send his only begotten Son/himself. "It's all damned. All of it!"- The pastor thought. "It's all going down due to the 'first two humans' in a magical perfect garden." The first two of our species god created specially are the ones who fucked it all up. These first sinners pulled the whole future of the human race (and even somehow the other hominid species of the past) down with them. Yet before all of this, God's favorite angels rebelled against him and were cast out of heaven. The leader of these rebellious angels took the form of a snake in this magical garden to tempt these "first two humans", pulling the overwhelming majority of humans down to hell to burn forever.

All of this the pastor soaks in as tears roll down his face. This is the Christian worldview. You see, this beautiful spiral galaxy on full display above this pastor's head leads this Christian to ponder all of these things: Angels, demons, Satan, a magical garden, miracles, God's Son, a specific ancient Roman torture device, blood atonement, appeasement of a wrathful yet also loving Cosmic Father. This is all tacked on to the null hypothesis (- where the atheist starts its worldview). The Christian knows so much about the cosmos when looking up at it! It's amazing! So the creator of the moon, the sun, the stars, the galaxy does "care back" at stargazing humans! The Father who created it all, behind it all (even guided evolution of species) while also among it all (by his guiding hand in the natural world: prayer works obviously!), does care about our species. He cares so much!... Why?

Well, because dads cares, why wouldn't they?

The second person looking up at the night sky is an atheist. Like the pastor he/she may be very knowledgeable of cosmology and astronomy; he or she may know enough physics to realize physical laws in motion above. This atheist may understand enough about human anatomy to realize the mechanisms of our eye and how the starlight interacts with it. This person may understand the details of the evolution of how eyes evolved and their importance in early species.

This person may be transported back in time when we were fish moving in and out of water for food with our fins, or more accurately described as proto-limbs! This atheist reflects on the giant shells of geologic time that has passed not only above him but on the solid rock that makes up the planet in which he is standing on. Tears roll down the atheist's face as finally he/she realizes the genetic lottery that he/she won to even be here at all! The fact that the atheist is a conscious, big-brained ape that can understand the overwhelming evidence of the evolution of life on his/her home planet is mind-boggling. To the atheist this one life is all we most likely have. There is no evidence of afterlives. The atheist realizes in this very profound moment of awe and wonder while basking in the night sky that this very moment is all there is and time is somewhat of a puzzling substance.
 However, time has gotten the best of both of these two stargazers. The pastor and the atheist both, separately get into their vehicles and drive home, back to the light pollution cities they call home. They both go back to their loved ones, their friends and family. They both enjoy the social pleasures and friendships that create a meaning that is local while the cosmos exists above - cold, indifferent (as if it makes sense to attribute these attributes to an attribute-less entity)

These two stargazers: The atheist and the theist looking up at the night sky are ultimately robbing themselves in the end because they eventually are thinking about how the other one is thinking about the cosmos. The atheist is laughing and shaking his head at the childishness, archaic absurdity of the Christian worldview of the cosmos while the theist is wondering how the atheist can be a nihilist and still be filled with equal awe and wonder. If there is no creator then creation is meaningless - despite what the atheist says. Maybe one day we can fight the notion of being so dogmatic all we think about is worldviews and how they are wrong or right. As Carl Sagan said we should be delighted in the profound fact that a part of the cosmos (those species that are sentient and can contemplate the cosmos) has become aware and able to know itself. This is enough. No mythical creatures or gods required to make this powerful. It just is and that is all.

for now.

We the People... Are Shutting the Door to a Revolution

Like many Americans I've been going through something as of late. I'm going through a very painful broken heart. America has broken my heart and I'm not dealing with it very well. How about you? I know I'm supposed to fall in line and vote against my best interest, and the interest of my country but there was a revolution here. I saw it once on TV I think. Yes, it was brief and downplayed on TV but I caught it for a second. The revolution was vivid online but there are a lot of things online. Those closest to the revolution, those in the party of the revolution are the ones who shut the door to the revolution. Even though this revolution would give these fucking door-shutters a better life they were convinced by old, tired brand names (Clinton). They were convinced that we all must fall in line for the status quo. "Isn't it time?" Could that be more condescending of a slogan from Hillary. "Isn't it time?" No. It wasn't in 2008 and those of us progressives that clearly still have our brains and recent memories intact say "Fuck No!". It's STILL not time! Hillary has been and will always be far to right-wing for true progressives to accept as their candidate. Let me remind you she voted for the Iraq War and the Patriot Act!


Isn't it time ... To take this country to the right? This is what Hillary's logo indicates (the H with the arrow through the center pointing to the right). This door to the revolution was shut by the elderly that mostly laughed off the sincerity. At the same time they kill off the passion of the young that wanted to see what was through this door to a better life. Remind me when I'm a senior citizen, nearing the end of my life, not to be so stupid and selfish as to think that my narrow antiquated political philosophy should be more important than those young American citizens who have their whole life ahead of them. Fucking old people- so stubborn and bitter. Don't let people tell you the elderly are much wiser than you - they are not (clearly!) This election proved it. The old people often like to make fun of the younger generation and their naive passion. As we get older we all tend to look down at those younger than us. Is it jealousy? Sure. But mostly it's just stupidity. I'll be the first to admit this younger generation is much smarter than I was when I was younger. -- This is mostly due to the news they get is being more accurate than cable news (the news of the old fucks). The information is much more accurate from the New Media over the Old dying media.

Not only do I blame the elderly for shutting this door to the revolution but I blame old, religious African-Americans. Bernie Sanders was crushed in the deep south states. Why? Why would older black democrats vote for a woman who worked for a pro-segregation Republican in the 60's over a man that was arrested for marching for civil rights at that time? Why would older black voters vote for a woman that once called black criminals "super predators" that needed to be "brought to heel" over a man that has fought for civil rights in congress for his entire career? Is it a Jewish thing? The Jews did kill their Sky Daddy's son. Well, there are a myriad of reasons that should make any older black voter with half a brain vote against Hillary Clinton. Older black people in the south are deeply into their superstitious woo woo. They are heavily under the spell of their blood cult: Christianity. Hillary Clinton had the old religious deep south black vote on lock down from day one. The faithful flock, (AKA: dumb sheep) always follow their leader (AKA conman), their pastors. I can guarantee you that those fire-and-brimstone charlatan fags preached that "I'm with her" gospel all across those southern states. *I use the word "fag" here as slang for "closeted gay people who are bigoted against gay people".

I blame low-information voters and the media for shutting the door on the revolution. I blame poor voter turn out and suppression of votes (from precincts heavily favoring Bernie). It is a fact that when voter turn out is low Republicans win and the New Republican (or neoliberal) Hillary Clinton won in many of these low voter turn out states. I blame the elderly white and black blue dog democrats, the neoliberals, the religious, the low-information voters, and the media. My family is mostly Republican and Fox News has so warped their brains that they actually think that a fascist like Donald Trump would be better as President then a democratic socialist like Bernie Sanders. A Mussolini or Napoleon would be better than a Franklin Roosevelt or Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ, the stupidity on the right is palpable! This is how twisted the world is according to Faux News viewers. Their brains have been succumbed to 8 solid years of Obama-bashing, blaming him for every problem (real and imaginary), and painting this country as a 3rd-world hellhole because of his presidency. The cult of Fox News and it's followers are finally meeting their Frankenstein creation after a decade of false narrative: Donald Trump. We can thank the dumbing down of our parents and grandparents for America's first fascist President!

But we had a revolution in our grasps! Many of us Bernie supporters saw the light through the door and how good the future could be if we just reallocated all this money to focus in on the health of our own country- the entire country, not just the 1%, not just wars with countries that never attacked us (something Hillary voted for). As with Obama the criticisms of Sanders are based in fact-free fantasy-land. The one thing we hear continually from the brainwashed zombies on the right (you know-- our family and friends!) is that Bernie is promising "free this" and "free that" and then they laugh smugly with their dumb hill-billy, slaw-jaw, faces. Of course, literally none of these mouth-breathers have taken 10 seconds to actually look at the details of Bernie's proposals. The mentally challenged haven't even attempted to look at the numbers, his tax proposals, or how he'll pay for all these "free" things. As they lean back, laughing as if they made some wonderful defeating argument I often want to grab them by their fat pink jowls and introduce them this concept of other modern, industrialized countries in the world that have already had these "free things" (like healthcare and college) for years. Unconscionable morons! There is no hope! I'm afraid we are drowning in an ocean of idiocracy.

Here's a cold hard fact we have to accept now: Bernie will most likely not be the Democratic nominee for President this year. Those of us with hearts and functioning brains have to come to grips with that. I originally never expected Bernie to make it this far. Not many people did. I watched a recent segment from Samantha Bee's new show called "Full Frontal" where she mocks Bernie supporters. She makes light of this idea of "a revolution" which of course feeds into what I've been talking about. She seems to either ignore or not fully grasp why this movement to get Bernie the nomination is called "a revolution". It's simple: Bernie is not for sale. The overwhelming majority of Bernie's contributions have come from small donors from average American citizens. Isn't this fact alone worth your vote. Do you really want another candidate that is bought out by special interests? Hillary Clinton has received millions of dollars from some of the same financial institutions that brought down our economy. This revolution is a glimpse of light through the door. This revolution is about overturning Citizens United and getting money out of politics so we, the non-billionaire, the non-Wall Street 1%er, the non-Koch brother can have a fucking say just as much as the rich do!

Hillary Clinton has refused to release her speeches to Goldman Sachs. Why? Of course she has something to hide. She doesn't want us to see, even though she talks the "tough talk" about Wall Street and special interest groups, that in reality, behind closed doors she talks fondly of her Goldman Sachs friends. Of course she shills to these people. They have her attention much more than the average citizen of this country. The majority of democratic voters have watched her squirm and make up absurd excuses and deflect from this in many debates and yet somehow this same democrat voter is fine with all of this. Democrats want to keep the status quo. Democrats want to keep electing liars that shift with the $ at the drop of a hat. Democrats want to elect someone that is not principled at all and can be swayed by the special interests. Democrats want to keep the door shut.

Well, thank the Holy Spaghetti Monster I'm not a democrat!

All of us who are informed and care about fundamentally changing the system (getting money out of politics at all costs and taking our democracy back) are faced with the grim fact of Hillary being the democratic nominee. We are to somehow magically transfer our passion for Bernie (feeling the Bern) into passion for "Isn't it time ... for Hillary?" Needless to say that will never happen. I'm not a "Bernie or Bust" person though know a hell of a lot of them. Hillary will simply just not win over a giant block of progressives. Her unfavorables are through the roof. Those of us who will be voting for her over Trump are doing so despite our emotions. Those of us that will be voting for her over Trump are doing so strictly based on rationality. I cannot express the high degree of torture and stress that this brings us Bernie supporters that must vote for Shillary. It's a hostage vote. Vote for this horrible human you do not want to be your President OR this fascist wins! We do not want to do this and find it near impossible to do so. All you so-called "progressives" that find it not problematic at all, not a conflict of conscious at all, to vote for Hillary are simply not real progressives or have not been paying attention all these years.

It's best to reword where I'll stand in the general election: My vote will never be a vote /FOR/ Hillary but a merely vote /AGAINST/ a fascist. Donald Trump, sufficiently diagnosed, will lead to the correct conclusion that this man is a cult of personality and thus a fascist. We can never elect someone like this as our President. It's not just about him being unqualified or idiotic. Trump is not an idiot at all. In horrible ways he's extremely brilliant. Trump will shatter the system we have (and not in a good way!) and electing him could spell certain doom for our republic in the United States. I don't deny people can know these things and yet still be a "Bernie or Bust" voter (voting 3rd party or not at all, even in a swing state) but these are the people we have to convince.

... In time... It's too soon for me. I haven't properly dealt with my mourning. I'm still dealing with my broken heart. I'm still mourning democracy, I'm still mourning shutting the door to a revolution. I am currently crawling under a rock to really soak in that America just passed on one of the best presidential candidates in this country's recent history. I may sleep this off for days... Wake me up when it's time to vote against that fascist.

Anti-Theism Rant 4/24/16

 

I'm going to die
... and people are going to keep believing stupid shit.
I like being a firebrand atheist. It bothers me deeply if someone were to misrepresent who I was when I die. I'm afraid my very religious family or friends will co-opt my death for their religion. I get it. It makes them feel better when grieving but it's dishonest to who I am. I used to be a Christian, sure but I haven't been for over a decade now and I'm very much an anti-theist. I do not believe in a God and think that if there was one that would be horrible. I wish to worship no one! or to be a slave to no master! Who the fuck wants that?! What is wrong with you people?! Especially a slave to something that's not even real! I chose autonomy and freedom. This is why I broke the spell years ago. I was indoctrinated as a child and kept in near isolation with other believers. Some even reading this may have been through the same mental child abuse. It is a form of child abuse.

There have been people die lately. Of course people die all the time but brutally and locally. Getting shot at this point is getting more and more common in this country. That's a price we pay for all these guns and we'll never give up our guns. But it's been somber as of late around me. People are sad and jolted back to the very stubborn fact that one day we're all going to die. And that day could be tomorrow and that death could be brutal and painful.

The very thing you that are religious are so afraid of - the pain, the death, the suffering, the earthquakes and floods, the Muslim terrorist... all the things that keep you terrified and keep you clutching your Bible is the very thing that make me feel at ease. Many that are religious are so concerned about what it would be like to embrace NOOOOOOOOTHHHHIIIIIIINGGGG! NOOOOOOO! There is Jesus or there is the void. That is all there is! And even if we atheists live a long happy life ... well, that point of "Jesus or nothing" isn't invalidated you see because where we can't be proven right or wrong .. the "afterlife" is where you will face the "nothingness!" How convenient.

But there is a freedom in nothing! That's what makes me laugh when I read something about the alternative to "the gospel" is nothingness because I get such comfort from this "nothingness". The control these people must have over their lives is astounding! They must not only be satisfied with all the science (well, some of the science! Not that icky human evolution science tho!) but they must know what's "beeeeeeeyyyyooooondddd the natural!" See, there must be a SUPER-Natural! They must know what's even beyond the cosmos. As if this cosmos isn't fucking enough to fascinate our ape brains!

I feel sorry for the theist. I feel sorry for the ones that must have answers to all the big questions- even if those answers are made up or found in an old magical book. There is freedom in letting go belief in magical gardens, noah's ark, blood sacrifices, resurrecting god-sons. There is freedom in just being a species of animal and stopping there and just letting that fact soak in. It is deep to be in the real world. It fills me with awe to not project any desires or feelings about what sounds nice or what would be nice or what my pastor says but to just be an animal. It feels freeing to look at my pet rats and realize we were once this small. We survived the dinosaurs by being this small. We have so much deep time and history. And we don't need to postulate sky daddies like our ancient ancestors because that's childish. We are growing up as a species and we're letting go of childish things (religion) as the polls are showing (in this country at least)

Hopefully someday you will join me in the sentiment of - I don't know what the fuck is going on with this cosmos and neither do you! You can believe in your gods, you gins, your fairies, your angels and demons you lambs washed in blood but do not pray over me. Do not co-opt my death for your religious nonsense. I have someone I've very close to that understands my strong anti-theism stance and promised me she would keep it on the real. I will not be remembered as a believer. That makes me feel good because I grew up over a decade ago. You should too!

My Take on Trump - (An Email from Jeff Hurley)

"Watching the Trump phenomena is almost surreal. We are watching the rise of a populist fascist movement. Something that the classical liberal traditions of the United States has been able to keep at bay for all of these years. The failure of government, the political correctness of the regressive left, the republican party encouraging jingoists, protectionists and nativists, the idiocracy culture are to blame for the rise of Trump. With the current failure of statism, many people have been mesmerized by Trump. They see Trump as being the only one with the will powerful enough to challenge the establishment. They see him as someone who is speaking to them. We must keep in mind that Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, and many other dictators were anti-establishment.

Trump is a master of persuasion, effective language and evolutionary psychology. He has studied Machiavelli, Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, hypnotism and as we can see a number of dictators. He is Machiavellian demagogue capable of deflecting every attack, turning negatives into positives. He is a master of ad hominem, loaded question, straw man and slippery slope attacks. His vagueness of speech allows people to fill in the holes with their own beliefs. He makes statements about everything to create broadened appeal and free himself from being attacked for not having said something. He even sometimes says things that I can agree with.

Trump preys on the fantasies and fears of the people. He is intentionally trolling America, appealing to people on an emotional level, rather than using reason. What we are witnessing is the abandonment of reason. What we see isn’t discourse on policy, but character assassination attempts without any real substance of where people stand on the issues. He outrages many more people than the number of people that find him appealing. Either way he wins, because he draws attention away from where he stands on the current issue and provides himself with more free press.                                                                                                                                              

The Trump we see in the debates isn't the "Real Trump," it is a persona; much like any TV personality.  He would run the presidency much more like a TV show than a government. Trump lacks any real political ideology, he has flipped on every issue, sometimes within the same statement. He is not concerned with liberty, the constitution or the traditions of this country. His only concern is power which comes from public approval ratings. What I find most terrifying is I don‘t think there is anything he wouldn’t do as long as it increases his popularity. I think when he gets in he will team up with Russia to go after ISIS, so we can have a victory and start feeling good again. I think he will go after the media and his political enemies to consolidate power. I think in the instance of a terrorists attack we can kiss our civil liberties goodbye.                                        

Much seems similar to Hitler's rise to power. He is using immigrants as a scapegoat, convincing everyone that America is losing at everything and making false promises to restore our country's diminished role in the world. He taps into an existing pool of disgruntled people, but not only reconfirms their beliefs, but exaggerates them to a much larger extent. Tears people down further, so his promises to restore the nation are that much more powerful.                                                                

Trump is manipulating America and the only way to defeat him, is to spread the word and to call him out when he is in the act. To continue down this road is to abandon reason and follow the road to serfdom."

- Jeff Hurley

Your Daily Rant - by Gog 3/4/16

 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/22/the-earth-is-on-the-brink-of-a-sixth-mass-extinction-scientists-say-and-its-humans-fault/

We're literally. LITERALLY digging our graves.

Destroying biodiversity, rising sea levels, arctic permafrost melting leading to a positive feedback loop. Meanwhile the front-runners of the GOP are fascist and theocratic demagogues and the front-runner of the Democrats is a corporate whore sociopath. Fuck the human race.

And then all the left wants to do is worry about fake feminism and offending Muslims, and libertarians think bitcoin will save us. I'm so sick of the idiocy. It's absolutely disguising.

This is the order of problems in regards to urgency, assholes:

1. Climate change

2. Nuclear war/accident 

3. Islamic jihad

4. American and European fascism on the rise

5. The $70 trillion derivatives bubble

Notice that bitcoin, third wave feminism, etc... Isn't on the list. it's irrelevant garbage. I don't want to hear it anymore if it had nothing to do with those five things.

Political Revolution: From Ron Paul to Bernie Sanders.

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. - Abraham Lincoln

I voted for G.W. Bush in 2000. There I said it. I knew nothing about him but of course my whole family votes Republican so back then I voted Republican. It was also the first time I could officially vote for a Presidential candidate so you always get one "mistake vote" in your life, right? Usually it's your first one too. Maybe I'm just trying to make myself feel better because despite Al Gore /actually/ getting more votes, G. W. was elected our 43 President. Sorry that I contributed to that, everyone. In the words of Rick Perry "... Oops."

As we all know the year after President Bush took office in 2001 the attacks on the World Trade Center happened. My friend and roommate at the time recommended I read some "unconventional" scholars on current affairs and history. So I did. I read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and Noam Chomsky's short book- 9/11: Was There an Alternative? Chomsky was against the war in Afghanistan from the start. This blew my mind. Virtually everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike, Fox News/CNN/MSNBC - ALL were lock-step with our President when it came to the Afghanistan war.

This is the very moment when I turned into a liberal. I began to read all sorts of books by many on the left about all of our wars and what the CIA calls "blow back". Then of course Bush makes his announcement we were going to go to war with Iraq. Like many people in this country I was confused. The media painted the picture for Bush's administration and made his case linking 9/11 hijackers with Iraq (even though the hijackers were all /actually/ from our ally- Saudi Arabia). Before they were looking for WMDs I was reading articles in the Nation and many other left-wing newspapers that said that this was all a lie - Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction.

We all know how that turned out. These left-wing articles, magazines and books were all right about that. A complete failure of a war with the wrong country - creating a vacuum for would-be Islamic fascists after removing Saddam. And of course now we have ISIS. It isn't quite so simple, there is more to the story, but needless to say one thing is for sure: Without Bush's War in Iraq there would be no Islamic State as we see them today. (which actually IS a threat to the U.S. unlike Saddam's Iraqi army).

This was in the days of myspace and I did a bit of political blogging on myspace back then. I swallowed everything Michael Moore was feeding us young impressionable liberals hook, line, and sinker. I had a close friend who was a die-hard Republican and Bush supporter. We argued in great detail day in and day out online about the War in Iraq. Passions ran high in each exchange and she had her very Republican, Christian dad join in on some counterpoints from time to time. I still have those exchanges printed out (not sure why?). I read through them the other day and laughed at how misinformed I was about things and how misinformed she was as well. As these things usually devolve - we ended on a sour note, but she always said no matter what she just agreed with President Bush; that someday down the road history will judge the Iraq War and that overall it was a good decision to invade Iraq. I of course disagreed and still do.

I want to reach out to her again, but have lost contact unfortunately. I'd love to know where she stands now on the Iraq War since the overwhelming majority of American citizens (even Republicans) consider it a bad idea that we invaded Iraq. I also want to reach out to her because I want her to know where I stand now on other issues we once discussed. I was very wrong on many things ... One of the major things was my naive Reza Aslan-like views of Islam. I no longer consider it the religion of peace I claimed it to be. I no longer consider modern day terrorism to have "nothing to do with Islam." My views of Islam more currently line up with Sam Harris or Maajid Nawaz. My friend had very much been right about her thoughts on Islam back then.

Fast forward to 2008 with then-candidate Barack Obama gaining steam over Hillary Clinton (who, like now was supposed to be crowned the democratic candidate with no serious opposition). I didn't like Hillary Clinton back then and I don't like her currently. Like most of us I didn't really know much about Barack Obama. I did know one thing - He voted AGAINST the Iraq war while Hillary Clinton voted FOR it. This was enough for me. The horrible mistake to invade a country that never attacked our country by a horrible excuse for a President was at the top of my list of issues. Most democrats voted for the war in Iraq. It felt like a bad dream, at that time, when all who claim to be liberal suddenly bought the propaganda for the Iraq War by the Republicans! This was when I realized very much that I wasn't a democrat. Sure, I was a liberal, but I was an independent that couldn't be one of the two parties because both parties were dead wrong about Iraq.

This to me was an unforgivable mistake. It still is! I don't have a short memory like most of my democrat friends ... this is a war (supported by fiscal conservatives where trillions of tax dollars were spent) we're talking about not some pet issue. Hundreds of thousands of people died on both sides in this war of choice in which congress overwhelmingly voted with Bush. So I voted for Obama. The first four years of Obama's presidency were frustrating to me to say the least. Many of us liberals considered Obama a centrist at best. He didn't close down Guantanamo Bay as he had promised and continued many of the wars Bush had started. Obviously many of these things that bothered us liberals were obstructed by Republicans in congress but Obama had both houses in the beginning of his first term and didn't do much that he should have done with such control. He did hold strictly to Bush's timeline of exiting Iraq, but he was, and still does constantly bomb Pakistan and several different countries with drones with no congressional oversight. In some ways we liberals found him almost worse than G.W. Bush because he fooled liberals that he was much less hawkish than Bush. There were several bills he signed in his first four years that continued Bush's war on our civil liberties.

During this time I began to read much more of the libertarian philosophy. There is usually a streak of libertarianism in many old school liberals - mostly in social issues. Obama was not talking as he is now about ending the drug war or decriminalizing marijuana. President Obama was still increasing the defensive budget as Bush did while libertarians were beginning to speak out against these endless wars and endless spending on national defense. Valid concerns were being raised by people like congressman Ron Paul. His son Rand was also vocal on issues with our civil liberties, with bills such as the Patriot Act and NSA spying. Obama was just not the man we liberals thought he would be or should be.

We wanted /actual/ change! Real progressive change! So in 2011 I joined up with some libertarian friends and started pushing for Ron Paul. My friend was a die-hard Ron Paul libertarian and convinced myself and my friend Forrest (Gog) to join in with him for the cause of Ron Paul getting the GOP nomination. We caucused for Ron Paul and became delegates for him. Ron Paul ended up winning in Nevada and we were all apart of this. The experience of being embedded in the political mix and doing the work to get our candidate the nomination was a very rewarding experience.

Once in Reno, NV my friend Forrest and I (liberals who mostly vote Democrat) found ourselves in the belly of the GOP beast. We certainly were upsetting this giant buffet-loving belly. For example, we were all asked to stand and bow our heads to pray at the beginning of the events each day. Forrest refused and stayed seated (he is an atheist like myself) and many people gave him dirty looks. We all engaged in several arguments with Romney supporters that could not understand why we would not be voting for whoever won the GOP nomination. They didn't understand we were there ONLY for Ron Paul. If Ron Paul got the nomination we would be voting Republican in that upcoming general election. If the GOP base didn't make Ron Paul their nominee we would likely be voting 3rd party or begrudgingly again for President Obama.

I still stand by my campaigning and being a delegate for Ron Paul. I had to recently switch back to a registered democrat because in Nevada you cannot vote across party lines in the caucus. There are several policies that I differ with Ron Paul. I don't think Ron or Rand give nearly enough attention to the very real and really the most looming problem of our lifetime - climate change. This is where I diverge with many libertarians. Yes I also want free-market solutions for sustainable, clean energy but I think at this point it's necessary to have federal and state government intervention and regulation of carbon and other fossil fuels. All-hands-on-deck approach to me is necessary for this problem we must mitigate immediately! Most my issues with Ron and Rand too have to do with environmental regulations. As of recent I also feel I've moved further away from isolationist philosophy regarding foreign policy. I think we to a degree do need a serious plan of attack to stomp out ISIS and many other radical Islamists terror cells. I feel as if the Chomsky/Ron Paul philosophy of U.S. military involvement = all our problems with terrorism is too simplistic and not the whole truth. It's just not that simple. It's much more complex with multiple factors - deep personal belief in a strand of one religion being at the forefront.

So here we are today. I went from being a delegate for Mr. Free-Markets-Solve-All-Things Himself (Ron Paul) to canvassing and caucusing for an open proud democratic socialist - Bernie Sanders. It's not all that unusual actually. I know a few once-Paul-now-Sanders supporters. And it's actually not even really like that. I have always liked the independent Bernie Sanders in congress. Even when I was campaigning for Paul. He was a frequent guest on Bill Maher's HBO show "Real Time" and made great points on issues in which I agreed with. So I've always liked Bernie Sanders. I liked that he wasn't beholden to one party! Our country clearly wants someone outside of the political two-party system this election cycle. Trump was basically once a liberal now he's playing the part of a Tea Party conservative with Neo-con talking points. Or what one person said - Trump's playing Stephen Colbert's old character, just will billions of dollars.

There really is a similarity here between Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders. I realize that many die-hard Ron Paul "rEVOLution" supporters would take issue with that. Ron Paul has said that he respects Sanders and they have worked together in congress in years past. Paul considers democratic socialism deeply flawed though, but I simply disagree. There are positives and negatives about libertarianism and I prefer to pick out the ones I like and mix them with democratic socialism. I know it's a radically absurd idea but if Sanders doesn't pick Elizabeth Warren (if she would even consider it) as a VP if he wins the nomination it would blow our minds and possibly unite the country if he picked Ron Paul as his VP. One could only dream I suppose. Though Warren as VP would be so amazing!

This coming Saturday is the caucus for Nevada democratic party and all of us Bernie Sanders supporters will be out in full force to support our candidate. I have received some push back from old school democrats that no matter what we all need to fall in line and get behind Hillary in the general election if she wins this against Bernie. I would hope that there are enough actual liberals and progressives in the democratic party to push the scales slightly over to Bernie's favor and elect him to represent us. It still seems unlikely but we have some hope now because Bernie, unlike Queen Shillery is surging!

I don't want to "fall in line" for Democrats like the Republicans wanted me to "fall in line" for Romney if he beat Paul in primaries. No. I'm not a Republican (gag!) and I'm not a Democrat either. Sorry, I don't want to "fall in line" because I can't stand Hillary Clinton. Some reasons are for the same reasons the Republicans can't stand her. She seems like a slime-ball politician that will (just like Ted Cruz) say anything to get elected. She's fake, she's a liar and she's wrapped in crony capitalism dark money. It's not at all progressive and it's barely status quo. We need someone that will actually change this country. President Obama's last 4 years were so much better than his first four years. He did some very rational, wise, and helpful things for this country, but we want to go further because we, for once, have a candidate that will take us that far -

Bernie Sanders!

So will I likely vote for Hillary over a Trump, Cruz, or Rubio? Yeah, probably (gag!). I jokingly said I will get black-out drunk first on November 3rd so that I have no memory of voting for some queen shill that strongly supported Bush's war in Iraq. I vowed years ago to never vote for anyone that supported that war. Hillary isn't quite as bad as a Romney, I guess...  but she's basically the same when the dust has settled. Romney and Clinton are pretty much the same - one just gives kick backs to different industries than the other. Hillary has Wall Street, giant financial firms, and banks. Romney had big oil, coal, all the above etc. Bernie is truly unique. He doesn't have a SuperPAC. He can't be bought by the billionaires. Nope. Bernie is not for sale. He doesn't take donation money from the same financial institutions and banks that brought down our economy like Hillary does. We, liberals are the smart ones right? So why would you ever vote for someone like Hillary (besides oh, right she's a woman).

So what? A vagina = vote? Really? That's really all it takes for some people. I don't remember thinking Obama is black - that alone is enough for my vote! NO. How ignorant. It's too late to sit back and just watch this all fall back into the hands that usual control our economy and all of our lives. We have this chance right now to vote for someone that will bring change to this country. Change we need now more than ever. Let's actually be fiscally conservatives! We need to take care of our own and stop spending trillions on wars with countries that never attacked us. Let's stop shoveling money into a broken war on drugs. Let's turn off our cable news altogether. Let's stop building straw men (Fox News w/ President Obama) then tearing down these straw men. Let's stop creating fake problems (Trump said a cuss word! Beyonce shook her butt on TV! OUTRAGE!) and deal with real problems like climate change. We need to realize making money off of the health of our citizens is fucking immoral. We need to realize that making money off of making college less and less accessible for working class citizens of our country is fucking immoral. We cannot survive as a whole nation, with crumbling infrastructures and this deep wealth inequality. This cannot be the way forward for America - the top 1/10th of 1% just take it ALL!

#FeelTheBern ! Please vote Bernie Sanders in your state's primaries, caucuses then general election. But NOW is the time to get political! Now is the time to not just settle for who the party wants you to vote for - the Bush's the Clintons. Stop! Wake the fuck up liberal America, black America, progressive America, ACTUAL conservative America - Bernie Sanders is right here- the perfect candidate to change it all for the better. We don't get chances like this very often in our life times if at all - this is it. Don't let this opportunity pass by because you are lazy or misinformed and/or brainwashed by the propaganda of TV news or your favorite radio personality. Vote smart!

Vote Sanders NOW in your state! Find out how and where you are voting and caucusing!

This is video below is short. If you are feeling apathetic towards politics. Watch this. Just watch it. and you will see why this is so important.

Bernie Sanders, "Don't let anyone tell you politics is bullshit"...:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ86jToKVPs

Sites:

How to vote for Bernie Sanders in Nevada Caucus:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs7Ve2l3mdA

Operation Cyclone (When President Reagan armed the Mujahideen to fight Russians):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone

Bernie Sanders explains democratic socialism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G6T_TCE064

Bernie Sanders (in the 80's) defends gay soldiers from bigot Congressman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAFlQ6fU4GM

Ron Paul on Sander's plan for free education:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOlpT4yGyZ4

Ron Paul on Debunking Bernie Sanders Myth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J4TLIPB1uc

Ralph Nader on Bernie Sanders:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHHewmk3_P8

The Mind-Body "Problem": A Blog Short by Gog

The mind-body problem arises from a category error due to grammatical muddles. For an obvious illustration: It's a bit like what Wittgenstein said that imagine that "Mr. Nobody is in the room" became part of our colloquial talk and it had the same use as the regular, "Nobody is in the room." In this case, the idea that 'Mr. Nobody' refers to something would be a mistake. And it'd be a grammatical mistake. So any so-called philosophical problem that came from treating 'Mr. Nobody' as referring to something would be a mistake.

Basically, the problem arises by treating "there occur brain processes" and "there occur mental processes" to be of the same grammatical rules.

Comparing "there occur mental processes" and "there occur brain processes" as having the same underlying rules of language use is a bit like treating "happiness came to my party" and "John came to my party" as having the same underlying rules of language use.  It would obviously be a mistake firstly to think that 'happiness' represents an entity, like 'Johnny'. But it is furthermore, and more subtle, a mistake to think that happiness coming to a party is anything like a person coming to a party.

The mind-body so-called problem arises because of a mistake that would arise from treating 'happiness' like 'Johnny' and their coming and going to places similarly, in that mental processes are treated as para-mechanical to make them "work" with (or at least be an epiphenomenon of) mechanical processes. Mental processes just don't make sense to be in episodic mechanistic pictures. It's not because they're "hidden" or "non-spatial". 

**A perfect example of how language misleads us given by Gilbert Ryle from his book The Concept of Mind:

Basically, If I say, "I'm attending to what I'm reading", we might think two seeming occurrences are simultaneously going on: reading and attending. But if I say, "I'm reading attentively", only one seeming occurrence is alluded to. Both sentences mean the same thing though, only there is an adverb use for 'attend' in the second sentence rather than the regular verb use that's in the first sentence. The second form of expression is less misleading than the first though, when philosophizing at least, because no occult occurrence is seemingly defined in addition to the reading. This book totally demolishes the myth of "the ghost in the machine ". So this "sky daddy theory" is largely the result of not being able to navigate basic grammar. "We aren't just physical stuff" - Okay, how are we defining 'stuff'? If you want to play the language-game of physics and evoke paramechanistic "things" in addition to mechanistic things, then you're just going to lose. Some stuff just isn't anything like other stuff! But that's a linguistic distinction, not a "beyond" or "outside of" or "supernatural" distinction. The stuff found in Super Mario bros, for example, just isn't the kind of stuff physicists study. But you don't need to explain Super Mario bros stuff in paramechanical terms. Maybe you explain it in terms of Koopa Troopas and mushroom kingdoms. Sorry, No "soul thing" exists in the way physical entities exist.

- Gog is Forrest Rice 

 SUPPORT HIM HERE!:

https://www.patreon.com/forrestrice?ty=h

**Taken from previous blog "Christ or Chaos": A Book Review+ by Gog and (Magog)

- Image taken from still of Forrest Rice's short film "Evolution of an Atmosphere" (in which I assisted in the making). Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFGoY4ZFbGo