Atheist Meditations

My PDA died a few months ago. Just now I decided that I will not be replacing it. I'll stick with the memo books and notepads that I've been compensating with. My Samsung cell phone, mangled with purposefully useless Verizon software, still serves some uses as a digital toy; I'm not going to completely embrace ludditism.

Yet I cannot help but hate the lousy things. I guess most people don't realize that every single little digital toy that that seems to define this hip new generation ( I can't think of anything else that defines them) contains some rare materials that are most commonly extracted from Africa by workers that are little more than soulless slaves.

I'm gonna opt out of that one. Just like Cindy and I are opting out of the whole 'diamond ring equals a lifetime of love' load of feces that a certain diamond cartel dreamed up a few generations ago to spike sales. It's a moral choice. Whether one be swayed by Leo de Cap's powerful performance in Blood Diamonds or you just read a bit about that industry and that side of the world, refusing to participate in a happy fantasy that fuels human suffering is a good thing.

Cindy loves her digital toys, so maybe this new moral edict will not apply to everybody. Still, at least we are trying, and that mean something. Most folks just seem incapable of taking the time to consider how systems like global trade work, and that some of these interactions are not morally justified.

I wish I could force them to contemplate the notion that all choices are moral choices. I'll never eat at Applebee's or permit positive things to be said about that chain in my presence, because I worked within that corporation long enough to know that it is not a good neighbor. They willingly operate under a business model that exploits labor and works hard to cycle through employees in under a few years - no benefits, no living wages, no real future. Their food is no better or worse than most of the trash that chains slop down in front of unsophisticated 'guests', but I think any rudimentarily conscious human being should aspire to more than predictable blandness and a scripted 'conversation' with every human being they encounter - from the host at the front door, to the server's 'personal favorites', to the managers visit.

I guess I'm still a bit cynical about the state of culture and social interaction in the our society.

So I was listening to this week's podcast of Skepticality from the folks at skeptic.com and was moved by this interview with former Nevada State Senator Lori Lipman Brown, now the official lobbyist in Washington representing the views of those who don't think that Noah's ark and countless species two by two really happened.

I'm impressed with her eloquence, and naturally I affirm just about everything I heard her say. I also learned even more about the levels of corruption and outright greed that has accompanied the activities of the Bush Administration. Every day I am more convinced that those motherfuckers intended to grab hold of the office of President and use their every waking moment in that position to transfer as much taxpayer revenue to their political friends and family as they possibly could. No Child Left Behind, Office of Faith Based Initiatives, Operation Iraqi Liberation . . . each just a damn cleverly designed vehicle that seems to have no higher purpose than to alter the flow of taxpayer largess into new, less accountable directions.

No Child Left Behind, just a whole bunch of rhetorical 'accountability' bullshit with no greater goal than to insure that a handful of test publishing companies (most with ties to his limp-dicked brother Jeb) become nationally contracted industries with annual sales in the tens of millions. That's the only reason it was pushed through, whatever the effects are on the education level of this next generation; who the fuck cares? Certainly not Junior and Jeb.

Since its inception the Office of Faith Based Initiatives has endured absolutely fucking zero oversight from the Republican Congress. Only now are we starting to hear about the grotesque levels of cronyism and favoritism that was built into that monstrous institution. Ms Lipman Brown brought up the amazing amount of money that got shifted to Pat Robertson's 'Operation: Blessing.' (yeah, the fucker who put the 'dumb' in 'Christendom' ) Mr. Robertson's organization has a bad track record when it comes to using contributions (the use of helicopters purchased with charity money to haul diamond mining equipment into the heart of exploited Africa comes to mind), yet GWB gives Mr. Robertson a few hundred thousand of our taxpayer dollars and he does not have to show shit to account for a single fucking dime. George Bush to the Television Evangelist: 'We trust you to spend it wisely.' Again a cleverly designed now apparatus that allowed the transfer of taxpayer funds from groups that formerly had to justify how they spent that money, to friends and political allies who could burn it for their own amusement for all the current administration fucking cared. Of course, they do expect their cut back in political donations and brainwashed automatons who vote based on 'their values.'

The Iraqi war is such an obvious example I can't even get myself to reiterate the facts again here. It really does not matter how may civilians were tortured to death in lawless Iraq or how many American Soldiers died in a country where they can accomplish nothing good by being there; Halliburten made money. Bush-annointed contractors are making money. Bush-annointed contractors are growing in size and power. Within the the myopic realm of Washington, no other figures get included in the calculus of war. You are a child if you believe otherwise.

Finally, in that excellent interview, Ms. Lipman Brown discussed some of what it is like working in the area of the federal legislation of sexual education. This really pissed me off.

She described the kind of person who devotes themselves to the political process of defining how sexual education is taught in this countries public schools, the kind of person who honestly cherishes in their heart the notion that sex before marriage is wrong, and such sinful behavior should carry consequences like accidental pregnancy or AIDS.

How do you sit across the table from a self-righteous piece-of-shit who smirks at the notion that a gay man might contract AIDS - 'sinful behavior has terrible consequences.' This religious infection goes beyond not caring if gays live or die, it actually takes pleasure in the fact that in their fucked up little reptilian minds AIDS reinforces their world-view. They use the deaths from AIDS to buttress their assault on the modern world.

The fact that most young Americans just want to have sex and enjoy their lives infuriates these fuckos, they want to use the Federal Government to insure that every member of the next publicly educated generation both gets indoctrinated that 'abstinence is the best policy' while also learning abso-fucking-lutly nothing about how to successful employ contraception.

People like that do not represent a functioning culture. They are the shitty kind of humans who would rather cripple and geld their children than permit the threat that they might rise above the stagnant sub-culture that is this modern Jesus-Drug Cult. This group does not evolve or produce human beings capable of engaging the majority of us, they retard their children's development to produce a generation on a collision course with fascist violence. Jesus may have been a philosopher with a message worth listening to, he was not a fucking drug to be abused.

Even a theist like Bono or a modern Methodist has to accept the fact that their religious group does not do any greater good than the secular groups out there, and the fact that they are a successful religious group only help legitimize the Faith Queers.

I'll end with that, I think I'm kinda groov'n on that adjective. Faith Queers, individuals who just don't seem right to the majority of us, cuz they are extracting pleasure from their association of sexual and social reinforcement with an irrational religious world view.

"Jesus loves me and gets me hard, cuz I'm a fucking religious retard."

"I will never ever engage my brain, I'll just sing this repetitive refrain."