"ROD OF IRON" SAYS IT ALL!

In Rev. 19:15 (KJV), is voiced one of the defining attitudes of New Testament christianity:  "And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of almighty God."

It's a carryover of the Old Testament attitude expressed in Psalm 2:9:  "Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel."

Again, in Rev. 2:27:  And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers."

Rev. 12:5 states:  "And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron."

The Abrahmic god seems to have been pissed off from day one, according to that Garden of Eden fable.  Hapless mankind, supposedly created perfect and "good" just can't measure up to the demands of this temperamental deity.  Like Phyllis often says, he's about ninety percent temper and ten percent mental.  And when that mythological construct throws one of his tantrums, he doesn't go for a little willow switch.

Oh, no!  Gotta be more emphatic than that!

That fictional paragon of supposed love and self-control grabs a sharp sword and a rod of iron and the blood and guts, mayhem and suffering flows like a river.  I've even read where the blood will supposedly come up to the bridles of horses in some expected future battle.  That's a horror movie scene, for sure.  Fabled Dracula couldn't hold a candle to that.

The psychological overtones of that picture permeates all the abrahamic religions and veritably oozes from fundamentalist christianity.  It powers state and national politics here in the USA.  The Westboro Baptists are just one of the most outstanding extremes of the prevailing hard boiled, self-righteous attitude that the Bible Belt soaks in.

It's a hard boiled attitude of contempt and condemnation of anyone who doesn't bow down to the dictates of fundamentalism and grovel before an imaginary supreme diety, and those who presume to be his representatives. 

When I was embroiled in my former cult, the rod of iron approach permeated everything, including childrearing and how individual members were treated.  Those in power relished demeaning and humiliaating those under them.  They were only following the example held up for them in scripture like the ones I quoted above.  Those scriptures speak to authority and power and most of those deluded "leaders" practically orgasmed at the prospect of being made immortal and wielding the full power of a ruler under Christ.

The same attitude permeates all the cult splinters that have sprung up since.  Mediocre men (it's almost always the men) lord it over all the sheep-like people who have been deluded into following them.  Each vies with others to get into ever higher "alpha" positions.  As soon as each goal is achieved, those under them are soon made to understand who is the exalted one and who is not.  Heartless ruthlessness tends to permeate everything.  (That sword is sharp, and the iron rod is thick.)

I'm not going to indulge in pointing fingers as to who, in the human realm, is most to blame for this state of affairs.  It's an insidious attitude that infects slowly and soon rots the whole corpus without the deluded individual ever being aware of what has happened.  After all, it's written in the scriptures that "god" acts that way, so why shouldn't they?

What isn't realized is that those scriptures are the constructs of men with mental problems of their own and those same scriptures feed a continuing round of psychological delusions that have plunged the world into an endless round of outrages and human suffering (pogroms, jihads, inquisitions, heretic burnings, and on an on).  The Abrahamic religions are foremost in the promotion of these evils and it's time we recognized that fact and divorced ourselves from those evil overtones. 

WHA' HOPPEN?

Oh, for the wisdom of an Eisenhauer! I'm referring to this quote from a 1954 speach: 

 

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.  TherE is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things...their number is negligible and they are stupid."

 

I remember Eisenhauer. I was 20 years old when he made that wise and understanding statement in 1954.  He could not have imagined what has transpired in the meantime.

Boehner and McConnell wouldn't be worthy of holding Eisenhauer's  coat for him. And tea party idiots like Bachman wouldn't be given the time of day by an intelligent man like him.

When did so many clueless retards come along? How did they manage to ascend to power?

It happened because people don't really think. They fill their minds with simplistic cliches promoted by bombastic blowhards like Limbaugh and hosts of self-proclaimed spokesmen for a non-existent god who would reject and crucify again the activist Jesus of the gospels they claim to proclaim. If Jesus got mad enough to upset the tables of the money changers in the temple, what do you think he would do to the larcenous bankers and heads of corporations of today?

I'm truly discouraged to see how all the progress of the first two-thirds of my life have been attacked and systematically destroyed during the most recent third. Wise men once led us. We Have descended to being ruled over by people who could barely aspire to the title of "cretin."

THE IMPERMANENCE OF LIFE

The longer I live, the more I realize that we're all just killing time in that space between birth and death. Some of us have the satisfaction of comparatively great accomplishments in the meantime, but those will soon vanish as the people who remember them also bite the dust.

Maybe that realization is part of the reason so many people are bored by history which is the only vehicle for remembering the accomplishments and triumphs of a few lucky enough to be written about. Even then, our remembrances don't go all that far back, mainly to Greece and Rome. Beyond that, it gets hazier and hazier and finally melts into the mists of time.

Abraham Lincoln was mostly right when he said at Gettysburg that people wouldn't long remember what was done or said there, with the exception of his saying that very thing. It's one of the great truisms of history that nearly everyone is soon forgotten.  Even old cemeteries get forgotten and built over.  The Egyptian pyramids remain.  Those who built them are long forgotten.  Even those pyramids are slowly and almost imperceptively turning to dust.

So, I'm going to pry my behind out of this chair and go start preparing to launch another young couple into a few decades of mundane existence as an ordinary married couple.  I hope their married life will be mostly happy and fulfilling. They, like all of us, have come. They, like all of us, will go. A century from now, only a few will remember that they existed, and then, only hazily.

ARE WE ALL ALONE?

Is there hope for the human race?

 

I really don't know, but I hope so.

 

It's hard to believe that, in the total vastness of the universe, there isn't another lifeform just as intelligent and advanced as we are. But, there may not be. We could be the only hope for the universe to be aware of itself.

I'm sure the universe is filled with life, and life entails intelligence of some sort, but an octopus or elephant, though very intelligent in their own right, could never develop a technological civilization. Our cousins, the chimps, even though they develop and use simple tools, are incapable of anything close to our achievements. So, there could be billions of planets throughout the cosmos filled with life that never progressed to even a stone age.

 

I'm not holding my breath over the possibility of rounding a corner and bumping into an ET. It's theoretically possible. Just not likely, all the UFO propaganda and theorizing notwithstanding.

We may be all there is in this league. Don't know about you, but I feel a certain level of responibility due to that fact. We'd better not mess up, but our history doesn't bode well for our future.

Every great civilization of the past has inevitably perished and if we don't salvage and preserve the present one, some tremendous natural disaster akin to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs could turn us into equally infrequent fossils with no comparably intelligent and gifted species to wonder at in the future.

So many things had to happen at just the right time and in just the right way for us to exist at all that the possibility of duplication somewhere else goes way, way down on the probability scale. Imperfect as we are as a species, a lot may depend on whether or not we get smart enough to survive.

WHAT'S ON MY MIND?

Facebook keeps asking me what's on my mind.

What isn't on my mind? If I wrote about every thought that came along, I'd have no time for anything but writing.

The madness, the lies, the hypocrisy I see and hear in the world drives me to despair sometimes. People can see clearly the nonsense in religion and politics and still cling mindlessly to it. I did too for a great many years. I often wonder how much more needs to be forcefully expelled from that space between my ears. What gives me peace with that wonder is knowing I'm determined to weed out every lie, every subterfuge, any and all false propaganda as soon as I see through it.

How do you get through to people who refuse to entertain the thought that anything they believe could be false? They stubbornly hang onto lies and superstitions and refuse to entertain the thought that it could all be a fantasy when the facts clearly show that it is. It's an emotional attachment with no basis in reason. That's why I turned my back on it years ago now.

People like to try to inject fear with "What if you're wrong?" They're usually christians, so they're absolutely convinced christianity is right. So, I have to be wrong. They try to scare me back into line by trying to make me fear the horrible fate their religion promises heretics.

Other millions of people believe in islam or mormonism. It never occurs to them that they might be wrong for rejecting those religions. Same goes for hinduism, budhism, shinto, etc., etc. What if they're wrong in summarily rejecting those belief systems?

Religions try to control their adherents through fear and societal pressure. Once you quit fearing and don't care what anyone else thinks, their power over you is gone. That's what makes me a truly free human being today. If you don't like me because of my humanist atheist free thinking, I really don't care.

There are no gods or hellish eternities to fear, but I'll still be sensibly wary of the humans who dreamed those religions up and have a vested interest in furthering and protecting them.

I'M ASHAMED

(This is from my Facebook entries.)

If you haven't already surmised by my shares, I'm in an angry, foul mood. I hate what my nation has become in the last three decades under the madness of wrong wing so-called leadership. The rethugs have turned my nation into an absolute crock of shit where social justice and fiscal sanity is concerned.

Several historians have commented that people usually get the government they deserve. We must be one helluva bunch of total dumb asses and irredeemable reprobates.

Once we were led by men of character and reason, like FDR, Eisenhauer, Truman, Johnson, Carter and a host of balanced congressmen and senators who were capable of reason. Now, we're inmates of a national concentration camp bossed around and brutalized by the likes of the Koch brothers and that fascist tea party. We will soon be burning witches and heretics at the stake again the way things are going!

For sure, we're going to see starvation and human suffering like no other advanced western nation would tolerate. If you can't scheme and underhandedly work yourself into privileged wealth, the hell with you, you undeserving peasant, is the attitude.

I am no longer proud to be an american. To be an american equals to be party to injustice and oppression and international bullying on a vast and growing scale. If I were to travel abroad, I would hate to have to show my passport, because it would now cause me shame!

I despise what my country has become, and I totally despise those who have reduced it to this sorry, horrible state! I mean you, George Bush, Boehner, McConnell, the insane Supreme Court that calls a corporation a person, Palin, etc., etc. ad nauseum. And, cursed be the name of Ronald reagan, the son-of-a-bitch that started the avalanche on its way!

I STILL HAVE HOPE

The biggest source of political hope for me is to see the Republican insanity in steadily alienating the young and women. That Texan ass, Rick Perry, and the rest of the ignorant, hateful cabal, are doing inestimable damage to their party, and they don't begin to realize it. Fanatics can never see themselves as sane people see them.

There was a big demographic swing that helped put Barack back in the White House in 2012. It's only going to increase in 2014 and 2016.

I can't feature any oppressed college student saddled with ballooning interest on their student debt wanting anything to do with a Republican politician. I know some are so brainwashed, they still will, but if they're that dumb, I question what the hell they're doing wasting time in college or universtity in the first place. They can drag their knuckles somewhere less tasking.

It's also a mystery how so many women can sit still for Taliban-minded men passing decrees about their vaginas and uteruses, while many of them are busily bedding every woman they can seduce as they profess their devotion to the "sanctity of marriage."

It's such thoughts that help me avoid total despair. But, then, I'm the eternal optimist who always bounces back. Giving up just isn't a tenable thought.