Random Thoughts – Page 4

Now where have I seen that before…

Tarot cards offer little value in predicting the future. On the other hand, they can be used as a tool to separate fools from their money. However, setting aside the fortune-telling folklore and mythology that surrounds them, they are interesting to consider on their own merit.

Each card tells a story, and those stories have value. Some are stories you may recognize from the Bible, others come from different traditions. Many of these stories are beautifully illustrated on the cards. Some stories you will know instantly, just by seeing the picture. Others are a little more esoteric, the story having become lost over time, so that it is no longer recognized by the viewer. As with any story, what you get out of it will vary from person to person.

I say this only as a way of pointing out there is nothing particularly supernatural, spiritual, or occult, about these stories. They are simply stories, very old ones, and like many old stories, they continue to be told, precisely because they have value.

Many years ago I spent a little time studying these stories, not as a tool for telling the future, but for the same reason anyone reads any ancient story, to gain insight. And they are insightful. Many of the archetypes they depict are still with us today. Occasionally I see someone or something in our modern world that reminds me of one of the stories of the Tarot. If nothing else, it reminds me that this person or behavior I’m seeing is not new, they are, in fact, very, very old.

I say all that, so I can say the following, hopefully without sounding too much like a nut-case…

It occurred to me, the other night, as I was drifting off to sleep, there is a reason Trump Tower is the home of Donald Trump, and the headquarters of his campaign. And there is a reason it is iconic…

Trump Tower IS the Tower of the Tarot. It is the Tower of Babel. It is the eternal symbol of man’s pride and of man’s folly. It is man’s attempt to achieve greatness, only to fail miserably, buried under the rubble of the tower’s collapse. The Tower is the ultimate symbol of man’s destruction, brought about by his own hands, and the result of his own pride. In this illustration of the Tarot card we see the destruction of the Tower, at the hand of the Divine. The two figures falling to their death, I can only assume must be Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani…

Then I thought, is there a Tarot symbol that might represent Trump? One card came to mind immediately. The deceiver, the enslaver of man, the purveyor of false hopes, and false promises. Trump IS The Devil of the Tarot (not THE actual Devil, mind you, it’s more symbolic, anything that can become a “devil”). And in this Tarot card we see the Orange One himself, seated on his throne, surrounded by a few of his devoted supporters. It is important to note that they have voluntarily chained themselves to him.

Anyhow, that is my great insight for today. Treat it the same as you would any insight that comes from a pack of playing cards.

Are you ready for some …. politically charged racist nonsense, before getting on with a completely pointless game of …. football?

I suppose you’ve been wondering when I would get around to saying something about Colin Kaepernick and his sit-down protest of the national anthem. Well, I was really hoping we could let this one slide past, but some of you just won’t let it go, on both sides, so… Here we go. In no particular order, here are a few random thoughts on Mr. Kaepernick’s 15 minutes of infamy…

First, regardless of what I or anyone thinks of what he has to say, he absolutely has the right to say it. We have freedom of speech in this country for a reason. If you want to live in a country where everyone is forced to stand for the national anthem, move to North Korea. We stand by choice, out of respect. That is as it should be. If there is no choice it is a meaningless gesture.

Second, by the same token, if someone is disrespectful, of anything, you have every right to criticize it. First amendment protection only protects oneself from the government, not from the opinions of individuals. Speech has consequences. Our first amendment simply guarantees that one of those consequences is not prison.

Third, and more to the heart of the matter, I respect Kaepernick’s desire to protest, but I think he is an absolute idiot for choosing the method he did.

Yes, an idiot. Here’s why…

In a nutshell, his protest accomplishes nothing. Nothing. We have gotten so caught up in HOW he is protesting, that no one is talking about WHAT he is protesting. His protest started a dialog alright, but it’s entirely the wrong dialog. It is not just ineffective, it is a distraction from the dialog we should be having.

The simple fact is, black people are disproportionately more likely to be stopped, searched, detained, and arrested than white people. They are more likely to be convicted, and are more likely to serve longer sentences. Those facts are clear. (Go look them up, if you like… I’ll wait.) What is not entirely clear is whether, once stopped by the police, blacks are more likely to be injured or killed by the police than whites, but even if the rate of injury or death is the same, as one study suggests, the fact remains that they are stopped, and thus subjected to that possibility, disproportionately more often.

Regardless of the reasons, regardless of the perceptions, regardless of anecdotal evidence, the fact is that the black experience in their relationship to the police, and to the criminal justice system, is very different than the white experience. This is the conversation we should be having. This is what the protests should be all about. But no, everyone’s bent about whether or not athletes should stand before a ball game. Standing, sitting, or taking a knee is not the problem. Nor is it the solution. It is nothing but a distraction, and focusing on it does no one any good.

If I had any advice to offer Kaepernick (like he would have any idea who I am), it’s this. There are other ways to start the dialog we both know needs to happen, so stop freaking out the white people, stand up, and find another way to make your point.

Third, I’ve heard a lot of people say that he has no right to complain, because he was raised by a wealthy white family, has lived a life of privilege, and is paid millions of dollars to play a game. I’ve heard him called a whiny, ungrateful, spoiled little brat. And worse…

This notion that, just because one has not personally experienced oppression, that one cannot protest on behalf of the oppression of others, I find this notion deeply disturbing. This idea that I cannot complain about the unjust treatment of others, simply because I have had the good fortune to live a life or relative ease, I find personally insulting.

You do realize right, he is not protesting on behalf of himself, he is protesting on behalf of the millions of nameless, faceless people who do not have weekly exposure on national television. If the people who enjoy celebrity will not speak out for those without a voice, who will? Those of us who are fortunate enough to have used our skills and talents to achieve a level of success, do we not have a responsibility to advocate for those who have been less fortunate?

Personally, I believe we do. That is why you will find me here often, complaining about things that do not affect me personally. I believe Colin Kaepernick does too. I just think he chose an unfortunate and ineffective way of going about it.

I hope he changes his approach soon, his current “protest” isn’t doing anyone any good.

Post-rationalism in America, an Example…

Okay, by now you’re used to me saying we now live in a world where rationality is dead, facts don’t matter, and expertise is irrelevant.

Here’s an example…

I’m sitting here not watching TV, but Property Brothers is playing as background noise, and I’m catching bits and pieces. This is the piece I just caught.

The Property Brothers just finished a walk through with the homeowners, the couple has had the house listed at $1M for seven months, with no offers. The brothers tell the couple that, in their expert opinion, the house is worth $900K.

What do you think the couples reaction was? Thank you both for your expert opinion, you guys are the professionals, you obviously know what you’re doing, I guess we will just have to adjust our expectations.

No. Of course not. Their reaction was: No, absolutely not. That is unacceptable.

This couple, based on literally zero knowledge, simply out of hand rejected the findings of experts who are so expert at their job, that the have their own TV show. (Not that that means anything, but these guys are widely regarded as experts, with or without a TV show.)

Facts don’t matter. Rationality is for losers. Experts have no value. My uneducated ignorant opinion is every bit as valid as yours, even if you did spend literally years of your life closely studying the subject at hand as your profession, that means nothing. I can yell just as loud as you, therefore my words are just as relevant. Everyone gets a trophy.

Welcome to Post-Rational America.

Thoughts on Religion…

Lately I’ve been trying to prepare myself mentally for a Trump presidency. (Yes, I know the latest polls show him loosing, but… the Trump phenomenon has so far defied the conventional logic of polling as effectively as Kirk whooping Spock’s ass in three dimensional space chess.)

Trump has made his feelings on Muslims made very clear. Step one, don’t let any more into the country. Step two, register and track all the ones that are already here. I can only assume the unspoken step three involves rounding them up and/or shipping them off.

On the other end of the spectrum, Trump has said he wants to force everyone to say “Merry Christmas”. How he intends to do this is unclear, but that Christianity is his preferred religious group seems clear.

From this we can extrapolate that Trump intends to establish a new American caste system based on religion, with Christians enjoying all the benefits and privileges of being on top, and Muslims being kept very firmly under foot on the bottom.

My question is, where do the rest of us fit in? In Trump’s America, what is the status of the Jew, or the Buddhist, or the Hindu? Are they near the bottom with the Muslims, based on their non-Christian tradition? What about Catholics and Mormons? Are they “Christian” enough to be near the top? And what about the Atheists/Agnostics/Nones/Others? Where do they fit in Trump’s America, if at all?

Of course, we could all follow Trump’s example, and say we go to a Christian church, without the bother of actually attending. (No seriously, the church Trump claims to attend actually went out of their way to issue a statement saying that despite a long history with the Trump family, Donald himself is not a member of their congregation.)

Anyhow, I propose the following Trump American Religious Caste Hierarchy (Trump ARCH™), let me know what you think…

Pretend Christians

Pretend Catholics

Actual Christians

Actual Catholics

Pentecostals

Mormons

Snake Handlers

Agnostics

Jews

Zoroastrians

Atheists

Scientologists

Buddhists

Hindus

Gays

Mentally Handicapped

Physically Handicapped

Democrats

Muslims

(photo: Reuters/Brendan McDermid)

Welcome to the Irrational Age

Side effect #1 of the Internet… because information is available to everyone, expertise is no longer valued. The ironic part is most people dismiss expertise without ever availing themselves of the information available on the Internet, because of side effect #2… because everyone can publish an opinion, everyone’s opinion is thought to be equally valid, therefore information is irrelevant.

Facts are nothing more than the archaic relics of an outdated way of thinking. Belief is all that matters now, and we will bend and shape the “facts” to fit the belief. The very idea that facts are immutable, or can and should be used to shape belief, is an unnecessary absurdity from a bygone era.

Our country was founded in an Age of Rationalism. Today, our country may well fall in an Age of Irrationalism.

Remember when we had facts?

We’ve reached this weird reality where any statement is just as valid as any other. And attempts to refute statements with facts are just other statements that is just as invalid as any other. Statements rise and fall based solely on their appeal to the listener, and facts have zero weight in the equation. We have literally factored out facts, to the point where most people don’t even recognize them as facts, or even understand why they might be important.

This is the new factless society, where rhetoric reigns supreme, where fear and hatred are the currency of the day, and facts are these useless ancient relics that only a handful of nerds collect and care about, like trading cards. No more trying to win an argument with facts, who needs that, way too tedious, just speak your mind and say what you think. If you say it, it is automatically valid, no matter what it is. Everybody gets a trophy.

We Are At War

Okay, let’s be real clear about something here. WE ARE AT WAR. And it is important, now more than ever, that we understand WHO our ENEMY is.

Muslims are not our enemy. There are 1.6 billion (that’s “billion”, with a “b”) Muslims. That’s one fourth of the planet. Most of these Muslims are non-Arabs, living quiet, peaceful lives in and around Southeast Asia. Only 20% of Muslims on the planet live in the Middle East. These Muslims tend to live lives that are neither quiet nor peaceful, but most are too busy fighting, or at least positioning, amongst themselves to be concerned too much with the West.

Arabs are not our enemy. Of the 300 million or so Arab Muslims in the Middle East, there are maybe 200,000 members of ISIS at most, and maybe half as many members of Al Qaeda, and those are the high estimates. That’s maybe 300,000 terrorists with both the interest and the capability of attacking us. That’s about one tenth of one percent of all Arabs, and less than two one-hundredths of one percent of all Muslims.

If we killed all the Muslims, not only would that mean wiping out one fourth of the population of the entire planet (probably not a good idea in and of itself), but it means we would have to kill over 5,000 Muslims just to get one terrorist. That seems like an awful lot of extra work.

Islam is not our enemy. Yeah, I know, they call themselves “Islamic”. So what. Have you never met someone who calls himself a “Christian” who didn’t quite live up to the ideal? The IRA and the KKK were “Christian” organizations. Calling yourself something doesn’t make it so.

Take Christianity as an example. Based on the number of different denominations and sects, it seems there are a huge number of possible interpretations of scripture. And if you are so inclined, there are plenty of calls to violence if all you’re interested in is killing people who aren’t like you.

Islam is no different. One one-hundredth of one percent of Islam claims to follow a version that requires them to kill the infidels. The other 99.99% of Muslims mostly understand that killing is wrong, and are generally more concerned about maintaining their personal relationship with God than going to war with others.

Terrorists are our enemy. Terrorists. I don’t care what word you put in front of “terrorist”, it is the fact that they are terrorists, and nothing else, that makes them our enemy.

Terrorists kill, rape, and torture to inspire fear. Everything they do is designed to inspire fear. Fear and hatred. They WANT us to hate Muslims. They WANT us to hate Islam. Their goal is to bring about a World War, one that unites East against West, Muslims against Christians, Islam against Christianity. They think the Muslim world will unite behind them. They think they can win this World War, and rule over the entirety of whoever happens to survive.

In reality, the chances of anyone actually uniting the Muslim world are remote, but it is literally impossible unless they can unite the Western world against the Muslim world. Conversely, they know their days are numbered if we ever got smart enough to unite, Christian and Muslim together, to stand against the terrorists.

They want us divided. They need us divided. Their whole plan is to have us at war with each other. That is WHY they want us to hate Muslims. That is WHY the want us to hate Islam. It’s all part of their plan.

Let me say this again, it’s important. They want us to hate all Muslims. They want us to hate all of Islam. Everything they do is designed to bring that about.

Know your enemy.

And please, for the love of God. STOP giving the terrorists what they want.

There have been times in my life…

… when I have been drunk. Shocking, I know, but… I have been drunk. I mean really drunk. No, I mean really, really drunk. I have been pass-out, blind, stinking, staggering, slobbering drunk.

I have made bad decisions. I have gone places I shouldn’t have. I have passed out in places I shouldn’t have. I have woken up in places I shouldn’t have. I have woken up in places I didn’t even recognize.

I’ve been so drunk I thought I could sing. I’ve been so drunk I thought I could leap off buildings. I’ve been so drunk I thought I could catch a duck. (Hint: You can’t, if you get close, those suckers know how to fly.) In short, I have been all kinds of drunk, but…

I have never, ever been so drunk that I thought it was okay to fuck a woman passed out behind a dumpster.

I don’t think it’s possible to get that drunk.

You see, you are either a person who thinks it’s okay to fuck someone who is passed out, or you are not. No amount of alcohol changes that.

When people do things drunk that they wouldn’t do sober, it is always, and I mean always, things that they wanted to do. The only reason they didn’t do them sober was because they feared the consequences. That is what alcohol does — it removes fear.

So, if you get caught fucking a woman passed out behind a dumpster, it’s not the alcohol. I don’t care how drunk you were. It just means you are the type of person who would fuck a woman passed out behind a dumpster. In short, it means that, drunk or sober, you are a rapist.

God spoke to me…

He told me to tell you to leave the gays alone. They’re not hurting anybody, plus He really enjoys the Project Runway. He said what you should really focus on are the people who eat shellfish, they’re the real sinners. If they don’t change their ways, those dirty little clam-eaters are going straight to Hell. …… (Um, yeah… No, still talking about shellfish.)

Today’s topic: Friends.

I saw two news articles on FB today about friends.

In the first, a gay couple in Ohio sent out wedding invitations to all their friends. They received a reply from one of their friends stating that not only do they not support them, but that they would forward their invitation to an local anti-gay group so they could organize an anti-gay protest to disrupt their wedding. They closed by stating how much fun they were going to have watching their day be ruined.

In the other article, there’s these two girls who are described as friends. They go out one night with this third guy they know, and before the night is over, they go back home where the younger girl gets raped by the guy, while her friend takes out her phone and live-streams video of it to the Internet.

So, my question is, this word “friend”… have I been using it wrong all my life?