It's not okay

So with the protests and violence spilling over in Chicago and actually canceling a Trump rally there, Rachel Maddow did a piece (non-autoplay video link here) on Trump's escalating rhetoric and the relationship it has to this violence that we see at his rallies and no other candidate's.

"Anybody who tells you that there is no connection between the behavior of the mob at these events and the behavior of the man at the podium leading the mob at these events is not actually watching he's been saying from the podium. What he has been saying, and the way he has been egging it on, it has been escalating," Maddow said.

Back in Reconstruction South, the KKK exploited the fears of the poor white sharecroppers who were seeing freed slaves competing to take their jobs. The race-baiting led thousands of Southern (and some Northern) whites to lash out at blacks and institute Jim Crow laws in an attempt to maintain what they perceived as their superiority.
Hitler did a similar thing with the Jews of Germany (and later all of Europe) in convincing the poor, uneducated electorate that their economic predicament was due to "terrible" Jewish business practices.
Now we are seeing it with Donald Trump. He's whipping up fear of Mexicans and Muslims and dismissing blacks. He's tarring all protesters as thugs and encouraging (wink wink) his rabid followers to treat them as such. He offers to pay legal fees for anyone who "accidentally" roughs one up. He laments the era of "political correctness" which requires him to treat fellow human beings as human beings. He notes that back in the old days, it was okay to beat a protester and in the next breath expresses a wish to return to those halcyon days when white folks got to beat black folks at a whim.
And then he blames the protesters. And the media. And Bernie Sanders. And the Trumpbots parrot all that and add Obama and Bill Ayers and George Soros. In 1963 a lot of uneducated poor white people were saying it was all Martin Luther King, Jr.'s fault that 1200 Birmingham, Ala, students were arrested and hundreds injured when the police used water cannon and attack dogs to disperse the peaceful marchers. At Kristallnacht, many Germans believed the destruction of Jewish-owned businesses was something that the Jews had brought on themselves.
I don't know if Donald Trump believes even half the crap that comes out of his orange-tinted lips as he waves his stubby fingers about while ranting from his podium, but even if he doesn't, he's making it implicitly okay for others to act on their fear with violence and that will Make American Hate Again.

Just stop

I'm disheartened and ashamed of the hatred I see everywhere for the poor refugees who are fleeing all they have ever known with only what they can carry to escape the evils of the IS terrorists only to come headfirst into our bigotry.

Stop. Stop letting irrational fear dictate your responses. Stop letting the terror induced by these despicable individuals color your impressions of all. Stop the hate. No religion preaches hate. Stop.

WWJD

I'm not a fan of religion. I will not try to talk you out of your personal beliefs, but I will fight your imposition of those beliefs on others. For this reason, I've never been a big fan of the Catholic Church which thinks that because they believe that Catholic women should be baby machines, every woman should be denied birth control and safe, legal abortions.
I give them credit for avoiding the hypocrisy of the Religious Right protestants (who used to be called Evangelicals) in that Catholics do not support killing any human being, while the Christian Conservatives have no problem killing adults who they feel "deserve" it.
But, I do have to say, aside from women's issues, I really like this new Pope. He seems to be trying to drag the Catholic Church back into the time when it was the catholic church and represented Jesus's teachings.
Rejecting a dinner invitation from Congress to dine with the homeless, is so Matthew 25:30-40.

All I'm saying about that man

I've been tempted to write about Trump recently, but have held back simply because too many people are talking about him. So I'm just going to say this: 
The fact that this arrogant, ignorant asshat is the front-runner in the race for the GOP nomination for PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES is so horrifying and desperately sad, that I fear for my country. Seriously.
If the racist jerks who feared an Obama presidency felt even ONE QUARTER of the trepidation and revulsion I feel for "the Donald" then I empathize. The difference being, Obama wasn't an incompetent buffoon who made our nation a laughing stock, whereas --even before the election-- by virtue of his leading in the polls, Trump has managed to elicit the scorn of every civilized country on Earth.
Enough. Please.

it's a start

We knew they weren't going to do anything about the guns.
South Carolina
Mississppi
even Walmart

Remembrance

I'm just going to take a moment to remind you all that Memorial Day is a day to honor and remember those who gave their life in service to this country. It is not a time to reminisce about just anyone who has passed away, or even any veteran who has.
My father served in WWII, but he survived it and went on to marry and have children (thanks, dad!). He did not die as a result of serving in WWII. And while I appreciate the Boy Scouts who put a flag on his grave every year because it says USMC on his stone, they are missing the point.
And, while no day is inappropriate to be appreciative of the service of every veteran -living or dead- look to the vets who recognize that today is for the ones with whom they served but did not return.
Rejoice in the freedom you have, be thankful to all who helped secure it --even those who fought in wars that were contrived, because their sacrifice is no less if the war was deemed unjust. And remember solemnly that there were many who volunteered and did not come back.

Freedom to be a dick

If I want to treat you as less of a human being because my religion says you don't have the same rights as everyone else, I should be allowed to do so without legal repercussions. And if you make me treat everyone the same, that is coercing me to disregard deeply-held religious tenets which could harm me irreparably.
My deeply-held religious beliefs tell me that I must refer to all men as "Useless Asses." I must address all men as Useless or Ass or Useless Ass. If I do not do this, I risk angering my Goddess-mother She-Ra. I cannot ever be fired for referring to any of my male employees as a Useless Ass because I could bring a religious discrimination suit.
In fact all the men who work for me are required, by my religion to always have an erection. I should be able to control the bodies of my employees, the Useless Asses, because my religion says so. And if you don't like it, you can go work for Hobby Lobby where they only control their female employees' bodies.

In a secular nation (we are still a secular nation, right?) when did it become standard to argue that discriminating against others (women and gays, really) is okay because Jesus would have wanted it that way?

A little help here...

Have you seen that meme with the sign that says "Stop making stupid people famous."?

How can we put that into action?

Je suis Charlie

Late last year, Slate compiled a visual guide to what they called "the year of outrage." In the accompanying article(s) they did concede that a few of the things that outraged us last year were deserving of it. They also pointed out that "it’s fascinating to look at how our collective responses skipped from the serious to the picayune without much modulation in pitch."
So what should we be outraged by? Slate's guide offered reader input, so you can check each outrage in hindsight and see what the collective thought. (ex: John Travolta's mispronunciation of Idina Menzel's name was voted overblown by 1195 to 107, while the non-indictment of the NYPD officer who killed Eric Garner was declared to be truly outrageous by a 1530 to 113 vote.) But if Slate continues to follow our Twitter and Facebook outrage in 2015, I can already tell you what will be legitimately labeled outrageous.

When proponents of a religion massacre human beings in retaliation for drawing a picture.

What you save in $ you lose in dignity

walmart1percent.org/

Between the terrible way the employees are treated and the innate greed of the owners, I have not shopped at Walmart in nearly 4 years and have no intention of ever setting foot in one again. Everyone who crowds into the store on Black Friday to fight over the 6 $200 tablets in stock is contributing to the problem. Stop supporting these jerks who put their profits over the welfare of the entire nation.

Rich white trash.

Why do we, as a nation, allow people like Kim Kardashian, or Paris Hilton or any number of talentless, brainless, twits whose only accomplishment is being born wealthy, to become famous? Why do we, as a nation, pay any attention at all to them? Stop. If everyone stops giving a rat's ass about Kim-ye's photoshopped butt, it will go away. And I for one, will be a happier person.

Thoughts on religious violence

I posted last month about Bill Maher's and Ben Affleck's argument over Islam.
Here is an alternate viewpoint which carries the additional weight of being written by a woman who was raised in the religion. She makes some outstanding points.
And if Bill Maher's goal in calling out Muslims were to liberalize the religion, I would support that. After all, Islam (compared to Christianity and Judaism) is a baby. Jews have been around for over 2500 years. Christians, technically, have worshiped just under 2000. But Muslims are 600 years younger than that. Think about what Christians were doing in the name of religion right around 1400 CE.
That is not to say that any religion which practices those things is acceptable. Executing heretics was barbaric in 1400 and it's not certainly not acceptable in the modern world. We could wait patiently for Islam to "grow up" and get past the awkward violent suppression age that Christianity at a whole finished up with... -when was the last time Christians advocated violence as a means of advancing its religion? 1992- ...20 years ago.
Yes, Christianity's use of violence tends to be isolated, less socially acceptable, less overtly violent (less wife-beating and more denial of rights), and advocating for the same in the Muslim world is justified. But (and this is hard for women and "heretics" who are subjected to violence in the name of Islam) we can only go so fast. Pushing dogma ahead half a millennium takes a big effort. Not looking like a bigoted asshat while agitating for change in someone else's religion is impossible.

There oughta be a law

I can't discuss the elections yet. It's too soon.

Instead, let's virtually visit a country that has somewhat more voter turnout in their "midterm" elections. Hmmm. Let's see....
We could go to Malta where 94% of its eligible voters go to the polls on election day.
Or Chile where voting is mandatory and failing to vote is fined.

Or Austria. Or Belgium. Or Italy, Luxembourg, Iceland, New Zealand, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Greece, Venezuela, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, all of which have voter turn out at 85% or better. In fact the United States seems to stand alone in failing to have even HALF of its eligible voters cast ballots for its lower house of representatives of the 40 nations on the list who have direct elections for a similar body.

How about here: our erstwhile ally and nearest competitor for crappy voter turnout

 

If you guessed Pakistan, YOU'RE RIGHT! Congratulations. You win. Except you don't.

Turnout in national lower house elections, 1960–1995
Current estimates for average nationwide turnout yesterday are about 36½%.

The big God picture

Did anyone see the verbal sparring between Bill Maher and Ben Affleck on Maher's program Real Time? Did anyone NOT see it after the Inter-webs got a hold of the whole controversy.
Maher has a bone to pick with Islam as a religion and does it regularly. He is vocal in his antipathy for all religions, but he seems to hold a special hatred for Islam. I will grant you that most Muslim countries seem decidedly less liberal than the U.S. But at the same time, the fundamentalist Christians in the U.S., while a minority, are at least as conservative and repressive in their values as the more restrictive Muslim countries.
I don't understand why Maher keeps arguing that we should oppose Islam any more than we should oppose ANY religion that tries to govern. The best thing Thomas Jefferson ever did was the 1st Amendment. Religion has NO place in government. Whether you are a Ultra-conservative Christian or a Sharia-law Imam.Your spiritual beliefs, no matter how devoutly held, do not entitle you to tell me what MY spiritual beliefs must be. Nor should they ever be used to oppress any portion of the populace. (In that Maher is right, we should all  --liberals and conservatives alike-- be horrified at laws that allow a woman to be executed for adultery. Or forbidden to leave the house without a male relative to escort her.)
But Christians in this country have just successfully limited my right to control my own reproductive organs and he didn't seem all torn up about that. Frankly, if I had to choose between the Old White God-fearing Man laws that declare me a murderess if I use an IUD and wearing a headscarf but having control of my own womb, I'll take the headscarf.

So why we should be more upset about Islam when fundamentalists worshiping any of the traditional patriarchal Gods all want women silent and subservient?

This is gonna piss some people off

When people thank God (or Jesus) for something good that happened or ask for his intervention in a minor (or major, for that matter) life crisis, don't they stop and think that
1. God doesn't have time for your shit
and
2. If you believe he can help you out of the mess you're in, you have to believe that he put you there in the first place.
Also
3. If he has the power to bring down your kid's fever as you seem to think, isn't he a bit of a douchebag for allowing all the suffering in the world? What makes you so special? Do those other people deserve to suffer while God takes care of your kid?
Which brings us back to number one.

Subject to blue laws?

 A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court has found that “the actual purpose in displaying the Cross at Ground Zero has always been secular.”
That’s right, the court ruled the purpose of displaying a Christian symbol has always been secular.
The appeals court ruled on Monday that the memorial cross at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York can remain at the newly-opened facility because the purpose of the cross is secular, not religious.

Perhaps the judges are unfamiliar with the word "secular." Perhaps we could point out that a synonym for the word is profane. Now the cross at Ground Zero is legally PROFANITY. I know a lot of atheists might agree, but I'm pretty sure all the Christians out there can't be happy.

h/t to LSH

Stop blaming the (potential) victim

The Miss USA pageant was this weekend. I didn't watch, but thankfully Vanity Fair correspondent Phoebe Robinson did. Her recap is blog-worthy.
She also notes with dismay that the winner (**spoiler alert**) answered her thoughtful question about what colleges can do to combat on-campus sexual assault with the suggestion that girls learn self-defense. (The implication being that if you don't adequately defend yourself, you deserve it.)
When are we going to WAKE UP AND REALIZE THAT IT'S NOT THE WOMAN'S RESPONSIBILITY TO MAKE SURE SHE'S NOT RAPED??!?! Seriously. This is the winning answer.
I get that all the hairspray and fake tans can take a toll on intelligence, but come on! This is 2014, not 1950. How about we suggest next year that a great way to prevent sexual assault is to teach boys to respect women. All women. All the time.
Every year we spend concentrating on the victims' errors is a year we lose in teaching the younger generation that women are not objects. We don't exist for men's gratification. Nor for their chores. Nor as an outlet for their violence. Nor as an incubator for their offspring. Nor as a pair of boobs in a bikini. (Unless you're Miss Nevada, apparently. Then you just learn Tae Kwon Do.)

Hashtag

Back a couple of weeks ago, I tweeted the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. I didn't (and still don't) think it would make a difference. Hashtag activism is knee-jerk and rarely does more than get the occasional jerk-off fired from a high-profile position. For complex issues like religious extremists in a nation torn by civil war kidnapping girls from a school that was instructing them outside of their religious faith, millions of tweets are not going to impact the situation.
It's a way for us, with our First World Problems to feel like we're making a difference without getting uncomfortable or inconvenienced: "I totally care about the unrest in Thailand. I tweeted about it." "Genocide in Sudan is terrible. #darfur" A lot of this loses even more significance when the following tweet is a spoiler for Game of Thrones or how much you hate the new Starbucks latte flavor for summer.
Now there is a study that also suggests that not only are the simplistic hashtags not working, the entire reason we latch onto them is because the issue at hand has been over-simplified for our snapchat brains. And once we do learn that the world is not divided into pure evil and innocent goodness, we First Worlders lose interest. Shame on us. Because, as the link points out: those girls are still being held captive just for going to school.

What ever happened to that secular society that our Founding Fathers envisioned?

I don't know how many of you are watching the Supreme Court case Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., but you might want to pay attention.
For those unfamiliar, it is basically a religious freedom case in which Hobby Lobby has declared exemption from the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) provision that says employers that provide insurance to their employees must be sure that insurance covers contraception with no co-pays. Hobby Lobby balked at this because, by golly, wimmen should be pregnant as much as possible cuz it is what the good lord intended.
They argue that allowing the women who work for them to actually receive the birth control pill as a fully covered prescription is a violation of their "deeply held religious beliefs." In addition there are at least three deeply religious, astronomically conservative justices on the Court who ALSO think that women should not be taking birth control pills willy-nilly.
Today, one of them -Chief Justice John Roberts- suggested that "closely held" businesses might be given greater latitude with religious freedom than a large public company.
The error in this argument is mind boggling. The Supreme Court is VERY close to deciding that YOUR company, if it is "closely held" -and I'm betting A LOT of you work for "closely held" companies- and is the source of your medical coverage, can decide what your insurance covers. Granted, this case is specifically looking at contraception (for women) because that is suddenly a thing that we are no longer allowed to control. Our wombs are being taken over by old white men who are being giant assholes about it. But, the arguments in Court are addressing a corporation's religious rights (and whether they are legally allowed to impose them on their employees). If the Court rules in favor of Hobby Lobby, technically there is nothing to prevent your company (provided, of course, that it's "closely held") to limit your access to anything the owner might deem offensive to his or her deeply held religious beliefs.
First they made corporations people. Now they're making corporations religious. And they are allowing those religious corporations to impose their beliefs on their employees who, apparently, have no recourse.
Let's all hope that saner, secular heads prevail, but based on the past shenanigans of this Court, you  might want to stock up on your prescriptions now, while the stuff is still covered.

Who is their PR guy?

The American Atheists are trying to have the 17 foot steel I beam cross found in the rubble of the World Trade Center after 9/11 removed from the 9/11 Museum on the grounds that the museum is leasing space from the government and the cross is an inherent endorsement of Christianity over other religious options.
I see their point, but this is a bad fight as far as public relations go. I'm all for removing overt signs of Christianity from government in general. But the cross from Ground Zero? Let it go, guys. Seriously. As Stephen Colbert said, "I know you don't believe God can hear you, but you realize the rest of us can, right?" Most of this country already thinks pretty poorly of atheists as evidenced by a Gallup poll showing that a generic Muslim has a better chance of winning the Presidency than an atheist. There is a better way to bring awareness to a cause than this.