Tuesday Thoughts

For me, the only reason to be religious would be to experience the deep satisfaction of knowing so many Republican politicians are headed for eternal punishment in hell.

Something that's proven to be true every single day:

• Not all the people who are uneducated, uninformed, gullible, or just plain stupid are Republican voters, but
• All Republican voters are uneducated, uninformed, gullible, or just plain stupid.

Definition of the Day

Political correctness is defined as a form of discrimination against socially maladjusted white people whose freedom to say any nasty things that cross their minds is inhibited by changing standards of civil behavior. This discrimination has its greatest negative effect among conservatives, who are not biologically prepared to adapt readily to change.

Anniversary

Yesterday, this thought occurred to me ~~

One pretty good way to measure strength of friendship and devotion to family is by the distance adults are willing to travel to attend the first birthday party of another adult's one-year-old child.

Precious?

What is the value of a human life? Well, we know that it fluctuates like the price of gasoline. And it always depends on who is doing the appraising and who is being appraised. In spite of all the rhetoric about how precious human lives are, the evidence accumulated over the years indicates that human life is often a cheap commodity. 

Tombstones

When my time finally arrives, I hope someone will summarize my life with this brief epitaph: He had complications.

Origins

I'm a member of the baby boom generation, born in the first few years after WWII ended. I don't know much about the greatest generation, the one that actually fought WWII, other than what my parents have told me about it. The generation that my children are in baffles me more often than not. But I think all three generations have at least one thing in common.

People in my generation were raised to believe that since America is the greatest country on earth, every American can grow up to one day become president. The preceding generation taught us that, and we taught it to the following generation. I understand now that concept is horseshit but it's the way I was raised, as were millions of other baby boomers. America is probably the greatest country on earth; I haven't lived anywhere else but I've seen other countries in magazines and on television and most of 'em look like shitholes. So even though we have Limbaugh, we can agree that America is the best. That still doesn't mean everyone can grow up to be president, or even that they should think much about it. Our system of government was designed by the Real Greatest Generation, and it's complicated. Our economy is complicated too. Government ? Economy ? Both really complicated. The rest of the world is not like us, and by definition that makes it complicated. Foreign = complicated.

The president has a job that requires knowledge of the government, knowledge of the economy, and knowledge of the rest of the world, all things that are hard to understand. If his job was like college, you'd have to say he's carrying a really heavy course load.

Americans, having been raised with the horseshit notion they can all grow up to be president, believe the Prez is someone just like them. They want to vote for presidential candidates they believe are like themselves, who think like they do, who root for the same teams, fish the same streams, drink the same beer, eat the same pizzas, and so forth.

Reality check: It takes a huge shitload of money to get elected president. Most Americans don't have even a small shitload of money, and if they were able to save every dollar they earned in a lifetime, still wouldn't have enough money to make it through one presidential election cycle. And even if they somehow got their hands on the necessary cash, they wouldn't have the goddamned brains to handle the duties of the job, which involve working with things that are extremely complicated.

A lot of Americans still want the president to be someone just like them, since they haven't completely thought through the part about the complicated stuff. They want validation of things their parents taught them about the greatness of America. I believe many of the problems we're facing today originate in that kind of thinking by American voters, and the popularity of Gov. Falin, referred to by my sis as a duh girl, is the latest example.

How things work out

While we were looking at family photograph albums last night, it occurred to me. It's fortunate that getting to my age was a gradual process. If it had happened overnight, the shock and the horror would've killed me.

Sunday rambling on Methodists, movies and Morgan

I'm not overtly religious; in fact, my religious beliefs are among the few things I try to keep to myself. I have some, but they're personal. And I'm not talking about situations where religion sticks its nose into politics. I have strong feelings about that and will throw out opinions at the drop of a hat.

When I attend church, about 38 Sundays per year on average, I go to the Methodist church. It's the denomination I was raised in; when I was young it was a rare Sunday morning when my family wasn't present for services and Sunday school both. I like the Methodists because, at least at the church I attend, they seem to be more tolerant and less political than, say, the Southern Baptists. I've even read that some Methodists are protesting Bush's presidential library and school of public affairs at SMU in Dallas. Another plus for them on my scorecard.

This morning, the sermon I heard was above average. Its subject was the meaning of the benediction, its biblical origins, etc. To illustrate one of his points, the Rev used a short scene from the movie Deep Impact. Thanks to modern technology, the congregation was able to see the clip in question on the big screens above the pulpits.

In the scene the US president, played by Morgan Freeman, is addressing the country on television, telling them that efforts to destroy an asteroid headed toward the planet have failed, and an ELE (extinction-level event) is inevitable. At that point, President Freeman pauses and delivers his benediction to the nation, which happens to be the biblical passage about which the Rev had been preaching.

Watching that scene again reminded me that Deep Impact is probably my all-time favorite disaster movie. It's one of the few with characters interesting enough to worry about, and there are a few scenes that give me the old lump in the throat. The cast, except Tia Leoni, is good; Robert Duvall plays his usual 'Robert Duvall' character. The really interesting casting choice is Morgan Freeman as the Prez, who comes across as someone people of either party could be proud of. Barry Obama's misfortune is that he wasn't born Morgan Freeman; he'd be a shoo-in this November. In my opinion, Freeman is one of those actors who's never played a part badly. He portrayed God in Bruce Almighty, and took that picture to a level of excellence it would've missed otherwise. So I'm thinking that someday, if we ever have a black president for real, maybe Morgan Freeman will have paved the way a little bit.

The thought for today

When life hands you lemons, you can make lemonade. Or even better, you can throw the lemons at the person who handed them to you. Throw 'em as hard as you can and hope for a serious hit that draws blood or at least causes an ugly bruise.