S.N.O.B. (Someone Needs Our Brains)

If you are running for the highest office of a country which has the power to affect the very climate of the planet, the political security, medical health and economic stability of other nations, and plays a critical role in preventing a world war, you will need to be (at least!) a college educated man or woman, even to contemplate running for that incredibly onerous office. And if you obtained that lofty position, you would need to make sure that every cabinet post, every high-ranking aide position, every secretarial post, every judicial position was filled by someone with (at least!) a college degree. There was a time when people could be leaders without a college education. It was called the Middle Ages. If seeking a college education is an act of snobbery rather than a simple act of survival, then I would like to inquire what collection of imbeciles in this great good land of ours exported to the Third World all the gainfully employing jobs that did not require a college degree, and thereby forcing all of us with any desire not to live in utter poverty to commit the unforgivable sin of "snobbery"! And if going to college destroys a person's spirituality, how come a great many of us had it rescued by our college education? Twenty years ago, a candidate speaking such stupidities in public for such a high office would have been called an "ass". Thirty years ago, such a candidate would have been called a "fool". Forty years ago the pertaining party would have quietly and politely asked such a person to withdraw from the race. By the way, does anyone remember SPUTNIK?!

Sharia Law Courtesy of the Christian Right

While you were sleeping, a state in our supposedly democratic union of the United States of America is making all forms of contraception and all forms of abortion...illegal. When I was still a kid, the type of folks who are today pushing these sectarian observances into general law were back then considered by the majority of the population as belonging to the lunatic fringe. They still are among the lunatics, but they are no longer on the fringe. This is due in part to voter apathy among those of us who are more sane. Yes, there are a growing number of people who believe that their vote doesn't matter. Well, you non-voters need to ask yourselves if you are still convinced of this. Not voting got far right-wing legislators into office, and they got busy doing their devil's work. They want a theocratic state, and they are going to get one if the apathy set leaves it to us remaining active liberal progressives to try to keep their hands from tearing up our Constitution. The Christian right votes by rank and file like military regiments. They will make homosexuality and masturbation felony crimes if you let them. Their abettors are rewriting history, creating a myth based on out-of-context snippets that our Founding Fathers were all fanatical fundamentalist Christians just like themselves. Never mind that the Founders of our Country were Deists (go look it up in the dictionary) who worshiped above all else the trinity of Reason, Science and Nature. Never mind that our Founding Fathers were trying to do everything they could to prevent the nightmare of State Religion that had caused so much miserable civil war and sectarian persecution in their ancestral Europe. Right or wrong, the Christian Right has a well-worked-out agenda that spans everything from making sure sex is only for procreation, to showing no mercy even if the pregnant one is still an undeveloped child who could die from the process of childbirth. They are blind fanatics who brutishly see the world in terms of black and white "facts", and want to force us to live under the mindset of superstitious peasants living four thousand years ago in the deserts of the Middle East. Science they throw in the trash-bin unless it can make them money, but don't dare make any reference to natural selection if you're going to use that profitable scientific technology! And forget responsible stewardship of the natural world God gave us. They believe all the Earth is for their plunder -- a most un-Christian attitude, but then, they are just as selective about what they choose to believe in the Bible as the progressive Christians they criticize. Let us hope that the next Christian Sharia laws they pass do not include stoning suspected "fornicators" in the streets by mob judgment. Methinks they need to develop a sense of humor about all this (anti-spiritual) religion they take so seriously: go and rent Monty Python's Life of Brian and get over yourselves!

Horse and Buggy Time Again

I hate to say this, but necessity is necessity. State by state, our politicians effectively sabotaged a federal program to lay the foundations for a (nationwide) passenger rail network, which would have been developed to provide the mass of America's citizens with the benefit of a durable and efficient form of transportation, affordable and green, for our shared future. So now we face a very real and imminent deterioration of modern transportation. Oil prices are going to inevitably continue to rise, and the price of a motorized vehicle (economic trends being stubbornly what they are) is going to continue to outpace the wages we earn. This is a recipe for disaster, because our society is designed for people being able to get from various points A to various points B within very narrow cycles of time. Huge areas of our country are going to effectively suffer a "land-locked" situation. You may be grooving with your pick-up truck or your SUV now, but the days for such vehicles are numbered in their present form. And you might have to ask yourself: will I be making enough money in the future to afford an electric version of the automobile I am now driving? I am only being half-facetious when I now make the following recommendation: in light of the fact that our politicians and corporations have abandoned average Americans, we need to save ourselves, and that means HORSES! We need to stop misbreeding this precious species of mammal for horse-racing and pedigreed shows. We need to start breeding this animal en masse for practical duty. We need to create road-lanes reserved and protected for horse and wagon transportation. We do it already for the Amish, and in the future, we will need to do it for everyone who can't afford a hydrogen-powered limousine or sports car. We need to find craftspeople who understand and can reproduce the crafts of the cartwright and the wheelwright. We need horses that are strong and healthy and resilient. Towns need to build stables for the commuters. People will have to leave hours earlier to make it to work. It is neither crazy nor impossible. The Amish do it and they are flourishing. We have been left with little other choice. Our ferriers will no longer be poor. Our woodworkers will no longer be hard up. Our harness-makers will no longer starve. Carts and horses will not come cheap, but they will be far cheaper than using oil and the cars industries will produce in the future. The corporations already are catering more and more to a wealthier set. We who are not so wealthy need to stop looking to the politicians and the fat-cat companies to save our transportation future. We must take care of ourselves, and all of us have it in us to take care of horses to provide us with a means to meet the harsh demands of conquering distance in economically attenuated technologies of the future. The horse and humankind have been partners for many thousands of years. The automobile, on the other hand, has already nearly used up its friendship with most of humanity, and it is only a little over a century old.

Why You Can't Be a Libertarian and Environmentalist at the Same Time

If we want to get into the basic psyche of many libertarians, it is this: they don't like most people. For them most people aren't worth the skin they're encased in. They were brought up or were educated to value only a very narrow definition of what constitutes a worthy human being, and the rest, for them, are fodder. The whole idea that some are entitled to fully decent life and some are not is the underlying truth behind their facile philosophy of survival of the fittest. So now we encounter a special breed of libertarian: the environmental or ecological libertarian. It strikes one as funny at first, because most libertarians are forever griping about government regulations on corporate or entrepreneurial activities that affect the health of the environment. But let us examine this group more carefully. They are not really about making this planet healthy for all humans -- just those who are worthy, and otherwise what they are really talking about is the wild animals, plants and trees, etc. This subgroup has an interestingly ironic psychology: they love nature, forgetting that their fellow humans (even the most contemptible of whom) are a part of nature too. These eco-libertarians actually believe they can save the environment without bothering with the bulk of the human race. I hope they're not suggesting euthanasia! Of course they could be more supportive of birth-control education, but they aren't, because they know they need those right-wing Christian votes to maybe get some of their candidates into office. Yes, overpopulation is the problem, but a lot of the crises this factor causes is because too much of the good land is in the hands of the too few. So the poor must clear wilderness to create new land with which to feed themselves, and can you really blame them -- I mean they are exemplifying the libertarian spirit of independent resourcefulness! But of course, these desperate humans are the very enemy of eco-libertarians. So you can give to wildlife charities to save this or that species, but if people are starving, you aren't going to win the battle to save the natural world. You must save both the humans and the wilderness. There is still room, it just needs to be shared. There are too many large estates and private pleasure parks for the rich that could be farmed to feed the poor. And the rich have confiscated too much former farmland for mineral and fossil fuel extraction, forcing regular people to make a life somewhere else (i.e., clearing the wilderness or else into an urban death-trap). So stand up for something, and support international birth control efforts if you aren't going to stop the seizure of ancient tribal lands! And remember, most of you libertarians came from humble origins a few generations back -- just like 99$% of the world's population. There are people with perfectly worthy genetic potential who are trapped by sociopolitical repression and lack of educational and employment opportunities. No one achieves success without help from someone else -- we are social animals not "lone wolves" after all. Rugged individualism is a myth, and if you examined your own lives, you would recognize the advantages you had and have that others don't, upon which you built and build your illusion that you are homo superior, ready to save Nature from the "vile mob". Please come back to real nature, O eco-libertarians, and embrace your human brothers and sisters whose rags you disdain. We all look the same under our clothes of make-believe identity.

The Absurdity of the Right Wing Term, "Eco-Fascist"

It brings a bitter smirk to the face when one encounters the supreme irony of the right wing forming ridiculous new compound words like "Islamo-fascist" and "eco-fascist". Historically, the fascists in Spain, Italy, Japan and Germany formed themselves from the extreme right wing of those countries. Once again we find our own right wing playing their game of smoke and mirrors, the veritable pot calling the kettle black.

Maybe we need to recall what fascism really is. Well, first of all, it makes a big show of honoring values it deems "traditional", it enacts idolatrous ceremonies over political symbols, it creates an atmosphere of twinned fear by threatening people with insidious political power and by teaching them to fear their fellow citizens, and it demands utter unquestioning obedience. In return, it rewards those who expose political dissenters, and throws out cheap amenities to the masses if they do not make trouble for their rulers. Lastly, fascism must focus people on a scapegoat, so that their unsatisfied frustrations may be bestially trained upon some vulnerable segment of the population.

I will not go into a discussion of why it is ridiculous to put Islam and fascism in the same sentence, since they are mutually incompatible. It is like saying "Buddho-fascist". No, let us address ourselves to the fresher vocabulary the right wing has imposed upon us: "eco-fascist". Hmm, it is so ludicrous a word that I question the effort of bothering to expose its stupidity. However, since it is so heatedly used now by conservatives and libertarians, I had better not make the error of assuming that the word will merely implode of its own self-contradiction. Eco-fascists are what the right wing are now calling those who are making a last desperate effort to actively educate the public and our political leaders about the very real time-clock we now face in being able to save this planet from becoming a super-heated hell. Those who must frequently give utterance to this neologism are those who want to make their quick profit from hydraulic fracturing, and are incensed that anyone should question the effects of their actions upon the land we must live upon.

For these conservatives, it is "fascistic" to want to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and demand that regulatory laws which protect the public health to be applied, enforced and obeyed. They believe they can excuse their sins by claiming that what they do is born of "economic necessity", disregarding the fact that the economy will be destroyed by what they do. An economy requires a healthy ecology to sustain itself. If the land is made fit for neither man nor beast (nor even vegetable), it has been rendered desert. If the aquifers of a region are polluted by petrochemicals, the food shall wither, the livestock shall die upon the hoof, and the people shall face the harrowing death of leukemia.

So, does not wanting this to happen make a person a "fascist"? The necessity of an economy is that a country can grow food upon the land, and feed and water the animals and humans that live upon it. If this is vouchsafed for only for a few acres, a few aquifers, a few herds, a few people, the country shall implode as a workable entity, and all that quick wealth will sit vainly in its vaults, have nowhere to be spent, and its ill-gotten gain will have no one to use it. One thing I do know from history: the fascists destroyed their countries. They were nihilistic. They did not care whom they destroyed, even if it included themselves. What of those who believe in life? They were named years ago. They are called ecologists.